I mailed a letter the other day.
It cost 55 cents.
That's more than a half dollar. As in two shiny quarters and a nickel.
Seems like a lot of money just to send someone you know, or maybe you don't know, a piece of paper folded up inside another piece of paper.
I won’t tell you my age, but I do remember 10 cents stamps. That was reasonable. I don’t mind mailing someone a letter if it only costs me 10 cents.
But for 55 cents you’re going to have to be a family member or someone who saved my life during the Vietnam War.
I don’t like companies that send me bills—like electric bills or car lease bills or colonoscopy bills. If they include a self-addressed, postage-paid envelope with the bill, then I’m not quite as mad at them. But if a company sends me a bill for a service or a product that I’m sure they overcharged me for, and then they want me to pay 55 cents out of my own pocket for the privilege of mailing my money to them, well, that just pisses me off.
But, you say, it’s only 55 cents.
Yeah, that’s what it is today.
Just wait.
I told Teresa our bookkeeper this week, “You watch. It’s going to cost a dollar to mail a letter before you know it. A whole dollar for one little letter. Can you believe it?”
She just ignored me.
But it’s those little things that keep sneaking up in price while we are distracted worrying about the bigger things like car sticker prices, new housing costs and hospital bills.
I used to buy a whole carton of cigarettes at the Air Force Base Commissary for just $10. Granted that was when Nixon was President.
Still, a single pack of cigarettes today will cost you about $7, and as much as $15 in New York City.
At $15 a pack, that’s 75 cents a cigarette.
Just you wait.
It’ll be $1 a cigarette before you know it.
Same as the cost for a stamp by then.