Inflation is high and has been for months. It’s weighing on consumer confidence, making policymakers nervous and threatening to eat away at household paychecks well into 2022.This is the first time many adults have experienced meaningful inflation: Price gains had been largely quiescent since the late 1980s. When the Consumer Price Index climbed 7 percent in the year through December, it was the fastest pace since 1982.Naturally, people have questions about what this will mean for their pocketbooks, their finances and their economic futures.Closely intertwined with price worries are concerns about interest rates: The Federal Reserve is poised to raise borrowing costs to try to slow down demand and keep the situation under control.To bring some clarity to a complicated situation, we collected more than 600 reader questions, narrowed them down to a handful that reflected common themes, and asked top economists and …
