I’m “left behind” because I work contract, and while my salary in 2022 was good, it has literally not changed since I started my current assignment (renewed every six months). I make the same now as I did in June 2022. Gas is cheaper now, eggs, too. My electricity bill for the past month was the lowest in years. Hopefully, that trend will continue and I’ll be able to ‘catch up’ on my retirement and savings. And, maybe my salary will go up, even slightly.
22 years ago I started to put spare money into the market via a company sponsored 401K. Later I added an investment account and Roth IRA. The idea was to put my excess money (beyond my needs) in market accounts which beat the savings account interest rate and also inflation. It’s worked out very well.
The same can be done today thru a self-managed IRA opened with any brokerage. The idea is to squirrel-away every extra dime in it to beat inflation. Then you ‘roll the snowball’ via re-investing the interest on assets aka compound interest.
A simple way to become a millionaire while living life.
The military also has the Thrift Savings Plan which I highly recommend. Soldiers who did that via an index fund were easily millionaires after doing 20 years.
Yes, I did read Horatio Alger in my youth. But I also had some great teachers that believed in the markets.
At Eaglebrook, in my 7th grade History class we did mock stock market investing. In 3 weeks I made $700 via a $1000 investment in stocks we picked from the newspaper.
Bottom line: if you want to beat inflation you gotta use the markets.