Not to stir up the hornets nest... but this inflation is wild.
The Consumer Price Index has gone up so much it is insane. (CPI is basically the calculation for the spending power of a US dollar.)
I highly recommend going and calculating your income from the beginning of 2021 vs what it should be now due to inflation.
Here is an example of what that would look like. I used $35 per hour because I thought that was probably a good square number that is reasonable for a programmers salary.
I went to buy some silver a few days ago. A 100 oz bar had a $450 'dealer premium' on it due to high demand. That's a lot to overcome on the investment.
Kind of like new cars have $5k 'high demand' premium added to them.