ROANOKE, Va. – The start of the new year may mean reevaluating your spending, but here’s the big question: What prices will look like in 2024?
From gas prices to groceries, the new year may bring some changes to the cost of your day-to-day necessities.
“I think we will probably see some increase; will it be as drastic as the increase that we saw in 2021 to 2022, maybe not, but I do think we will continue to see some increase there,” said Jesse Lineberry, Assistant Professor of Practice for Finance at Virginia Tech.
Groceries may rise slightly but not gas. GasBuddy expects the yearly national average will drop from $3.51 per gallon this year to $3.38 in 2024.
“If you are a consumer right now and you look around and say wow that’s great but when I filled up with gas on the way to work this morning it was still much more expensive than it was 5 years ago. I’m paying more for milk and food. All of these things that was true and those things are still more expensive,” Lineberry said.
Lineberry said most economists are predicting inflation will ease two to two and a half percent because of the strain on the supply chain easing up.
However, Lineberry is expecting consumer spending to remain strong leading to the three to three and a half percent range.
“The consensus is that we will see inflation continue to ease, to slow, we are looking at the November number that they just released, it will be really interesting to see the December number in a couple of months when it comes out, but I think we were up year over year at around three to three and a half percent,” Lineberry said.
But it’s hard to anticipate where inflation will land.
“These things are difficult to predict, oftentimes, factors in the economy take a while, it’s not an immediate change right if the federal reserve makes a small change to the fed fund rate it takes a while for these things to ripple,” Lineberry said.
He said these are all predictions. Nothing is set in stone until we see how the year unfolds.
You can check out the Consumer Price Index report here.