US workers in debt to buy groceries - 'I had to downgrade my life'
www.bbc.com
Americans are taking loans to afford basic necessities - as groceries prices have surged by 25%.

…

Ms Ellis works full-time as a nurse’s assistant and has a second part-time job.

But she needs to economise. She has switched stores, cut out brand-name items like Dove soap and Stroehmann bread, and all but said goodbye to her favourite Chick-fil-A sandwich.

Still, Ms Ellis has sometimes turned to risky payday loans (short-term borrowing with high interest rates) as she grapples with grocery prices that have surged 25% since Mr Biden entered office in January 2021.

“Prior to inflation,” she says, “I didn’t have any debt, I didn’t have any credit cards, never applied for like a payday loan or any of those things. But since inflation, I needed to do all those things…I’ve had to downgrade my life completely.”

The leap in grocery prices has outpaced the historic 20% rise in living costs that followed the pandemic, squeezing households around the country and fuelling widespread economic and political discontent.

  • Rentlar@lemmy.ca
    11·
    5 months ago

    Was it only me that was told in school to avoid using the word “But” at the start of a sentence? I break that rule quite often, but this BBC article starts many paragraphs with that.

    To address the article itself: Payday loans are awful and lead to ruin. If you’re at the point where they’re your only option, you’re already screwed.

    If someone thinks that Trump as President is going to make things better, that is very much delusional thinking. No matter that you lose your rights, your immigrant friend or family members getting kicked out for no reason, and your country sold to Republican connected contractors! At least you get sent a $1000 cheque from the US treasury as a special bri-, I mean ‘gratuity’.

    • HubertManne@moist.catsweat.com
      4·
      5 months ago

      trump making it better would be pretty delusional given the inflation was just after biden took office and has not been that bad in the last year. it drives me nuts that folks don’t understand fed policy and what interest rates did between the end of obama and the start of biden. Interest rates were at two and half at the end of obama and instead of being 3 or more when covid hit they were zero. ugh.

    • Ranvier@sopuli.xyz
      3·
      5 months ago

      A lot of “rules” taught in high school writing classes are more stylistic choices. They’re not necessarily wrong. Some of them might help to improve clarity, or a rule might help encourage new word choices so writing doesn’t sound so repetitive. Lots of reasons. But many are more for style. Hey I did it! I even made a sentence with only an implied subject and verb, naughty.

      I would also argue that sometimes a period followed by a conjunction can be the best stylistic choice. Maybe the sentence was already getting too long and a break was needed, but you still wanted to draw contrast. Maybe you could have put a comma but wanted an increased emphasis on what comes after but. A lot of these things are just preference or style though. Like “never ending a sentence with a preposition.” Of course you can end a sentence with a preposition, but you might want to make sure what the preposition is referring to is clear to the reader too.