Is this the most expensive it has ever been to live in Southeast Missouri?

I don't know. That's the honest answer.

I'm 40 years old. People around my age have lived through a strange stretch of American history. We remember the 1990s, the dot-com crash, September 11, the wars that followed, the crash of 2008, COVID and the years that came after it. We also remember when things were cheap. We remember the before, when a gallon of gas cost less than a dollar.

I remember putting gas in my first car, a tiny 1991 Toyota Corolla. The tank wasn't big. I would hand the cashier a $10 bill and a $5 bill and get change back. A friend rode to school with me, and his mother gave me $10 every week for the gas. I knew I could add $5 of my own money and fill the tank. A 32-ounce soda at the gas station was 50 cents.

My first apartment was $375 a month. Electricity was around $50. Water was maybe $15 or $20. A box of Hamburger Helper, with milk and hamburger, could make dinner for around $5.

Hamburger Helper was poor-person food when I was growing up. My friends with money had mothers who cooked dinner from scratch. The Helper was what you bought when you were trying to stretch a dollar. Today, with the price of beef and everything else in the grocery store, Hamburger Helper can feel like a luxury meal.

I remember going to Blockbuster with $2 and coming home with two movies from the dollar section. Friday night entertainment, covered. Five-dollar footlongs at Subway, a $5 large pizza from Little Caesars, and afternoons at the mall arcade on a handful of change my stepdad pulled from his pocket so I had something to do.

When I was 18, my brand of cigarettes were $1.98 a pack. I don't smoke anymore, but I remember what they cost. I doubt I could afford to be a smoker today.

I don't remember one particular day when everything became expensive. That's the problem. It happened in pieces. Gas, groceries, rent, electricity, insurance and cars all went up at different speeds, and the old prices never really came back.

The national numbers show the same broad direction. In August, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported consumer prices were 3.4% higher than a year earlier. Food at home was up 2.2%, shelter was up 3% and electricity was up 3.8%. Gasoline was up 27.4% over the same period. In the St. Louis area, shelter was up 4.2% and rent was up 4%.

Those are annual numbers. They don't capture what it feels like when every individual price has been climbing for years.

I keep coming back to the grocery store. I can handle one thing getting expensive. Everybody can. But when you walk through the store and the meat costs more, the milk costs more, the bread costs more, the cereal costs more and the things you use to make dinner all cost more, there isn't one bill you can cut to make the problem disappear.

I've talked to people who are putting everyday necessities on credit cards or using buy-now-pay-later services. We're talking about groceries. Medicine. Electric bills. People are financing their daily lives.

I've seen pastors talking publicly about church food pantries and blessing boxes that can't stay stocked. Some have blamed people for taking more than their share. Some people probably are. People are struggling and hungry.

My parents struggled financially. I remember that. But they were also able to buy a three-bedroom, two-story house with a basement while both working entry-level factory jobs for less than $7 an hour in the 1990s. They had two cars. We had a television in the living room and another in the kids' room. They eventually lost the house. They weren't wealthy, and I wouldn't call them middle class, but the opportunity to buy the house existed. That is what feels different to me.

My grandfather retired from General Motors with a pension. He had spent his working life in a system where an ordinary factory job could eventually provide a family with a house, benefits and a retirement.

My parents got Chevy.

My generation gets DoorDash, where you use your own car to make the deliveries.

There are plenty of differences between the economy of the 1990s and the economy of 2026. But I can't shake it.

I'm 40 years old and I don't think I could buy a new house today. I look at an 18-year-old or a 22-year-old and wonder how they're supposed to do it. Maybe 26 really is the new 18. Young adults are staying home longer. Some are moving back in with their parents. More households need two incomes just to maintain what used to be possible with one.

The latest federal data shows real average hourly earnings for private-sector workers were up only 0.1% from June 2025 to June 2026 after accounting for inflation.

Everything obviously costs more. The question is whether what we earn has kept pace with what ordinary life costs.

Televisions got better and cheaper. My first flat-screen television was 42 inches and cost around $800. Today you can walk into Walmart and find a 65-inch smart television for $250. The technology improved dramatically while the price fell. So why can't we do that with more of the things people actually need?

I don't have an answer.

I remember people complaining when gas went over $1 a gallon. They talked about how expensive it was and joked that they were going to stop driving. They kept driving. So are we. We just keep paying more to do it.

For the better part of a hundred years, generations of Americans bought fuel for less than a dollar a gallon. My generation never got that option behind the wheel. Gas is $4.29 a gallon locally today, and it's higher in other parts of Missouri.

Young people don't remember the before. I do, and I sure wish we could go back to it, even on a just a few things. This plastic toy washer and dryer set is selling for more than I paid for my first real set, used.

By Justin Stewart Burns

Publisher