I just looked at my older Walmart receipts. The cost of milk went from $1.35/gallon in February 2020 to over $4/gallon in 2022. Milk is just a quick and easy example. I’m sure I could find countless other examples if I took the time.
These odd local anecdotes are so silly - the benefit of having a Federal bureaucracy tracking prices is that they keep detailed records. Here's the nominal price of a gallon of milk over the last 25 years:
The average in Feb 2020 was $3.19/gallon. Today it's $4.15/gallon. So roughly 30% increase since then. The average cost of a gallon of milk since the mid 1990s has never been below $2.40/gallon so maybe that $1.35 you paid was a result of a panic during the early pandemic?
