Plastic money, $925 Billion dollars in credit card debt in the third quarter of 2022. At my LGS, Hodgdon and IMR powders are just as expensive as Vihtavuori, in fact some of the Vihtavuori powders were actually cheaper. Accurate and Alliant powders are the only ones that are reasonably prices in the lower to mid $30 range.
I've probably said this before, because I've at least THOUGHT it every day since April of 2020, when I waited and waited for CCI primers to get back down to $22/k. FINALLY, after they sat at $24/k for about a week. "something(?)" nudged me, right out of the blue and said "BUY SOME!"
I did, and the next day they were all GONE, EVERYWHERE.
If I'd had any sense at all, I'd have bought all they had, paid the freight, given the driver $50 and my car to go have a nice meal somewhere while I unloaded them by hand. I don't have a forklift.
My home equity line of credit is sitting there with a ZERO balance, and THIS would have been god reason to leverage myself a very reasonable bit. It's have been paid off in a year. $5k would have gotten me 200K+ and I could have sold off 50k and paid off the HELOC.
Not that I typically think that way, regarding gouging my fellow shooters or going into debt, of course. Otherwise, I'd not be kicking myself.