5 steps to help your members manage financial stability during inflation
“Inflation impacts families on a fixed budget,” says Claudia Keller, CEO of Second Harvest Food Bank of Orange County, California. “For a family, the most fungible part of your budget, the part you can cut back on, is food.”
From the hurricane-damaged landscape in Louisiana to the serene coastal beaches of Orange County, California, the most rapid inflation in almost 40 years is causing consumer goods from coast-to-coast, especially food, to skyrocket. More Americans, in fact, are turning to their local community food banks for basic sustenance. As those hunger-relief organizations gain even longer lines for food, in turn, those same nonprofits are feeling the burn of paying more for food to supplement donations.
Solving for what’s causing these inflationary conditions isn’t a simple one-off explanation. One cause is certainly the cost of energy, which had already started to rise in the weeks prior to the war in Ukraine. Wendy Edelberg, director of the Hamilton Project at the Brookings Institution, also noted core goods’ impact on inflation. Approximately two-thirds of the rise in inflation in the last six months can be attributed to goods, the result of a massive deluge in consumer demand and sluggish supply – both pandemic-related factors.
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