My conclusion? Your timing sucks. BTW complaining about Moore's Law is futile it will always be that way. I do not think you really understand how the Government calculates inflation and controls prices to keep it low. Energy, for example, is not used to calculate the core inflation. Also, let me know if you feel the urge to buy more gold.
I wanted to make a snarky response, but in the end, I’ve always told people that if they want to make money in the stock market, they should find out what I am doing, and do the opposite.
This has been pretty much universal. So for example, I finally put a tiny amount of money into a “commodity fund” — and yes, I did so right before the bottom dropped out on gold and silver. It is like a superpower, only in reverse.
On a non-snarky response — there is no such thing as “good timing” when it comes to buying consumer products. Whatever you buy, it will be cheaper later, before it becomes outdated and a new product appears that costs what yours did, but has a lot more features.
A new phone might cost almost as much as my first phone cost. On the other hand, if you wanted to buy a phone that had the features of that first phone I bought, you could get it at the dollar store.
So what is inflation? Is it the cost of the “standard” telecommunication device today, compared to the “standard” phone of 30 years ago?
There’s a reason that energy and food are not in the monthly core inflation numbers; they simply change in price way too often, and for reasons having little to do with the actual economy.
They are not ignored though, and are part of the larger inflation picture. They are included in the Consumer Price Index. And there are many who argue that CPI is actually over-measuring inflation, and are trying to use a different CPI number for adjusting things like social security payments (I’m not pushing that myself).