Are you deeply struggling right now? If so, I want you to know that you are not alone. The things that I am about to share with you are not meant to be depressing. Rather, I hope that you will be encouraged to see that there are countless others in the exact same boat. Over the past few years, the cost of living has been rising much faster than paychecks have, and this has put enormous financial pressure on millions of American families. In some cases, families are dealing with extreme financial stress even though both parents are working good jobs. Virtually everything has become substantially more expensive, and so our money is not going nearly as far as it once did.
Unfortunately, the mainstream media keeps telling us that everything is just fine.
They keep telling us that we should stop our whining because we haven’t “officially” entered a recession yet.
But Deutsche Bank says that one is coming. In fact, analysts at the bank are now warning that there is a 100% chance that the U.S. is heading into one…
Odds of a U.S. recession have been hotly debated with the labor market and consumer spending showing resiliency even after some of the most aggressive interest rate hikes in history. But Deutsche Bank sees a 100% probability the U.S. will have one.
If you want someone to blame, Deutsche Bank says that we should blame our policy makers, because they created the “boom-bust cycle” that we are currently experiencing…
“The U.S. is heading for its first genuine policy-led boom-bust cycle in at least four decades,” he writes. “The inflation we see was induced largely by expansive fiscal and monetary policy, and the aggressive rate hikes needed to tame that have now materialized. Avoiding a hard landing would be historically unprecedented.”
Sadly, many families don’t even want to imagine what harder times might look like, because they are already deeply, deeply suffering right now.
Recently, a very touching Facebook discussion was brought to my attention. In this discussion, people were sharing their financial struggles. I think that giving people an opportunity to vent and read the struggles of others helped them to realize that they are not alone.
So if you are also struggling, I hope that the examples that I pulled out of that discussion will encourage you.
You are not alone, because there are millions of others out there that are just like you…
- “We’re feeling it. It’s embarrassing to admit we’re struggling so much with what we make combined…. but we aren’t spenders, I broke down everything our money is going to & they’re genuinely all necessity things. Maybe I can penny pinch more with groceries and stuff but I’m just completely overwhelmed with the fact that we’re struggling so much for what our incomes are. Definitely feels like another Depression!”
- “We make about 60k a year and with inflation we are falling behind on our bills. We can’t afford mortgage, utilities and car payment AND food. We don’t qualify for any kind of assistance whatsoever. I just got a second job so hopefully that helps but it’s so hard right now”
- “Yes. 5 years ago we could put money aside every month. Now we are pulling from savings every month and we make 20k more now than we did then. We do have a slightly higher mortgage now though and 2 more kids than we did then. It’s rough”
- “I lost my job last year and I had to budget sooo much. I switched to cricket so the phone bill for two phones is $60 compared to like $220-$300 for Verizon. For food, I cook all the time. But I freeze our meat and I try to make multiple meals from that, frozen veggies, freeze the bread so it doesn’t go bad. I buy the Michaelina tv dinners that are like $1.30 for Mac n cheese and fettuccine Alfredo for my two boys(6 and 1). I buy 6 and those last for most of the week.”
- “So happy for summer to not have our school payment. And less laundry. It’s like idk how we are going to survive every month. And then I needed to go to the dentist. And now it’s like I wanna cry”
- “Yes when my husband first got his new job at what the pay he deserved finally for all the experience he has had nearly 15 years in the same field of work and we were like finally we will be able to save money and we were then this insane inflation hit and it’s like we are right back to where we were especially this month because we had to switch insurance plans and that took money out of his pay check and at the same time I was making some money to help out before but I had a surgery and was down for a few weeks and just now able to get back to fully helpful again. Budgeting is keeping us getting by but we also have used the credit cards this past month to get by so now it’s a catch up game and I will be looking to work in some way again.”
- “It’s not just you. Sometimes I have to choose what bill takes priority over another. I live paycheck to paycheck and every penny is for a bill. There’s never anything leftover. I am a single mom BUT I’ve been a single mom on my own for years! I used to have money leftover for my hair and fun things like jump time with the kiddos. But now all our “fun” activities fare free activities. Like nature walks, swimming in ponds, hikes, etc. Cause this momma is broke 😂 Waiting patiently for inflation to go down…”
- “More just to vent…. but is anyone else struggling financially hard right now?! Between my husband & I, we make $100k after taxes… so not bad, not amazing either. We both have pretty good jobs though… and we’re struggling. Hard. We own a house & outside of paying for mortgage, bills, food, the necessities etc, it’s like we have nothing left at the end of our paycheck. 😩 is anyone else in a similar boat?”
I could have included countless more examples, but I will stop right there.
As you can see, even those that are making 100k a year are really struggling.
When I was growing up, I considered anyone that was making 100k a year to be extremely wealthy.
Times sure have changed since then. Sadly, this is just the beginning.
All of the major economic trends are pointing in the wrong direction, and even the normally optimistic World Bank is warning that much rougher times are ahead…
“Nearly all the economic forces that powered progress and prosperity over the last three decades are fading,” the World Bank warned in a recent analysis. “The result could be a lost decade in the making — not just for some countries or regions as has occurred in the past — but for the whole world.”
A lot has happened between then and now: A global pandemic hit; war erupted in Europe; tensions between the United States and China boiled. And inflation, thought to be safely stored away with disco album collections, returned with a vengeance.
But as the dust has settled, it has suddenly seemed as if almost everything we thought we knew about the world economy was wrong.
Ultimately, we are all in the same boat.
We are all going to have to endure the exceedingly harsh economic environment that is in front of us.
But hopefully you are encouraged by the fact that you are not alone.
Millions of other families are also deeply struggling, and at times like these we are going to need one another more than ever before.
Michael’s new book entitled “End Times” is now available in paperback and for the Kindle on Amazon.com, and you can check out his new Substack newsletter right here.
Article cross-posted from The Economic Collapse Blog.
Two Storms, One Harvest
Every food crisis in living memory has been a one-shock event. The 2008 price spike was a commodity bubble. The 2020 shortages were a logistics failure. The 2022 grain scare was a war on one exporter’s ports. Each time, the system bent, adjusted, and recovered, and each time the experts assured us afterward that global markets are simply too big and too diversified to fail.
What nobody in Washington seems eager to discuss is that 2026 is shaping up to be something the modern food system has never actually faced. Two independent shocks, one climatic and one geopolitical, are converging on the same harvest cycle at the same time. Not sequentially. Simultaneously.
Start with the weather. The Pacific Ocean is currently building toward what forecasters now openly call a record event. NOAA’s Climate Prediction Center puts the odds of at least a strong El Niño near 88 percent, with roughly two in three odds it reaches “very strong” status, the tier reserved for perhaps three or four events in the entire satellite era. Every major global model now projects a median peak in Super El Niño territory, and most of them project it exceeding the 2015-16 event, which until now held the modern record. Sea surface anomalies were already brushing the super threshold in mid-July, months before these events normally peak. The atmosphere has already shifted into El Niño mode, and the event is forecast to crest in late fall and early winter.
This is not about “climate change.” It’s about the standard cycles of weather, and the cycle we’re currently in is one that has likely devastated societies in the past. We’re better prepared as a society today, but not all Americans are equally prepared.
Serious households have started doing the quiet math on their own. Grocery bills tell part of the story, and the forecast maps tell the rest, which is why long-term food storage has moved from fringe hobby to mainstream line item in the family budget, with established suppliers like Heaven’s Harvest seeing demand from people who five years ago would have rolled their eyes at the idea. That instinct is not paranoia. It is pattern recognition, and the pattern is worth walking through carefully.
Editor’s Note: Heaven’s Harvest IS a sponsor, but the warnings of this article are real and would be written even if we didn’t have a survival food sponsor. With that said, those who take advantage of what they offer can use promo code “Patriot” for 15% off.
The Fertilizer Clock Is Already Running
While the Pacific warms, the second shock has been unfolding in the Strait of Hormuz. The conflict with Iran turned the world’s most important energy chokepoint into a contested waterway, and the consequences reach far beyond the gas pump. Roughly a third of global fertilizer trade moves through Hormuz, and the disruption sent urea prices up 86 percent year over year by March, with a 53 percent jump in a single month.
The World Bank projects energy prices rising about 24 percent in 2026 and fertilizer about 31 percent. By its own accounting, fertilizer prices ran 35 percent higher in the first five months of this year than the same period last year.
Here is the mechanism the nightly news will not explain. Fertilizer is not a grocery item. It is a time-delayed input. The nitrogen a farmer in Iowa or Punjab could not afford to apply this spring does not show up as a problem this spring. It shows up as a thinner harvest six to twelve months later.
The World Bank’s own food security brief concedes that the effects of reduced applications earlier this season “are likely to become visible only later in harvest outcomes.” Translate that from institutional language into plain English and it means this. The damage is already done, it is already in the ground, and we are simply waiting for it to arrive on the shelf.
Now check the calendar. Six to twelve months from the spring planting season lands us squarely in late 2026 and early 2027. Which is precisely when the strongest El Niño in the instrumental record is forecast to peak, bringing its signature droughts to Southeast Asia, Australia, southern Africa, northern Brazil, and South Asia, the very regions that grow the world’s rice, sugar, and oilseeds.
The World Bank warns openly that a strong El Niño “could disrupt multiple crop belts simultaneously” on top of the conflict-driven input costs. Their baseline projection assumes the Middle East disruptions ease by autumn. What in the last two years of Middle East history suggests that assumption is safe?
The System Has No Slack Left
The comfortable answer is that global markets always adjust. But adjustment requires slack, and the slack is gone. Global cereal production is expected to decline from last year’s records even before El Niño does its work. The UN World Food Programme, hardly a den of right-wing preppers, is calling this the most significant disruption to its supply chains since Covid and the invasion of Ukraine, and its supply chain director put the stakes bluntly.
Today’s supply chain challenges are tomorrow’s hunger crisis.
There is also a political dimension that markets cannot price. When food gets scarce, governments do not behave like economists. They behave like politicians. Export bans, hoarding mandates, and panic buying at the national level turned the modest rice shortfall of 2008 into a global crisis, and analysts are already warning that import-dependent nations are the first dominoes.
The 2015-16 Super El Niño, a far weaker event than what is now forecast, threw tens of millions into food stress across Africa and Asia. This one is projected to be stronger, and it arrives with fertilizer already rationed by price and shipping lanes already contested by missiles.
What Joseph Knew
Scripture does not treat preparation for lean years as faithlessness. It treats it as wisdom delivered in advance to those willing to act on it.
Behold, there come seven years of great plenty throughout all the land of Egypt: And there shall arise after them seven years of famine; and all the plenty shall be forgotten in the land of Egypt.
Joseph did not respond to that warning with a hashtag or a committee. He stored grain during the years of abundance, and when the famine came, Egypt stood while its neighbors begged. The lesson is not that famine is certain. It is that the time to prepare is precisely when preparation still looks optional.
Nobody who filled a pantry in a year of plenty has ever regretted it, and nobody standing in an empty aisle has ever been glad he waited for certainty.
None of this calls for panic, and panic is the enemy of sound judgment anyway. It calls for the same unglamorous prudence our grandparents considered ordinary. Keep some cash margin, know your local growers, and put real food in deep storage while it is cheap and available, because the entire arc of this story is that cheap and available is a closing window.
Families looking for a straightforward place to start can visit Heaven’s Harvest and use promo code Patriot for 15 percent off long-term storable food. The forecasts may yet soften, the strait may yet reopen, and we should pray they do. But hope is a fine thing to hold and a foolish thing to eat.
The U.S. has been in a recession since 3 consecutive quarters of no economic growth. Of course, we are in a deep recession.Biden and the democrat communist party are doing it on purpose. The real problem is that it will not be another Great Depression. It will be the Greatest Depression in world history. We are well on our way to be like socialist/communist Venezuela…over 1,000% inflation…hyperinflation! Duh!
The U.S. has been in a recession since 3 consecutive quarters of no economic growth. Of course, we are in a deep recession.Biden and the democrat communist party are doing it on purpose. The real problem is that it will not be another Great Depression. It will be the Greatest Depression in world history. We are well on our way to be like socialist/communist Venezuela…over 1,000% inflation…hyperinflation!