Rising costs: inflation. Assume a rate of a little more than 3.5% per year and you're at 9x after 60. That's pretty much the same reason why college cost rose u

Rising costs: inflation. Assume a rate of a little more than 3.5% per year and you're at 9x after 60. That's pretty much the same reason why college cost rose up. In fact inflation is necessary in our current economics. Imagine there was no inflation. Then very wealthy people could put all their money on a savings account, live of the interest rate and still accumulate more money. Thus the economy would eventually stagnate because of no investments. Inflation kind of stops that, also the central bank can control it by setting the interest rates for credits. There are attempts to make inflation unnecessary like currency that loses value over time (and you need to frequently put stamps on it). But that's very far away from any widely used currency.