by Lisa Scherzer Thursday, June 11, 2009 The specter of rising inflation that is expected to plague consumers has yet to materialize. In fact, the latest consumer price index figures show that prices in April were actually flat compared to a year ago. Regardless, you may have noticed that you're paying more on certain items than you did, say, just a couple of weeks ago. States looking to raise funds have hiked taxes on everything from cigarettes to toll roads, banks are trying to cushion their coffers by charging exorbitant fees and struggling colleges continue to ramp up tuition hoping to cover costs. And those are just a few of the places consumers' wallets are getting hit. Despite any really significant signs of inflation, here are some items consumers are already shelling out more cash for (in order from the smallest percentage increase to the largest):

 

Life may be just a dream, but how do we interpret it? What we dream at night can give us clues about what is important to us in waking life. Dreams help us to process our conscious thoughts and can give us new and important insights into the problems and challenges we face in the world. Although we may have strange and unusual dreams, there are a number of common dreams that many of us experience over and over again. Read the interpretations below for an explanation of symbols that seem to appear frequently in dreams.

By Donna Freedman MSN Money Amiyrah M. can't remember the last time she paid for breakfast cereal. Laura N. recently spent just $4.03 to buy toothpaste, shampoo, toilet paper, dishwasher detergent and disposable razors. Emelyn de la Pena scored two bottles of shampoo, three bottles of lotion, two tubes of toothpaste, three boxes of high-fiber cereal and some organic face powder for less than $10. If you live near a major supermarket or drugstore chain, there's no reason you should pay retail either. By combining rebates, store incentives and coupons -- a combo hereinafter referred to as RIC -- you could stretch your dollars further than you ever imagined.

WEDNESDAY, May 27 (HealthDay News) -- A 62-year-old Spanish woman who for 20 years sold lottery tickets in a kiosk in Madrid developed asthma soon after she started using a point-of-sale terminal to print the winning or losing tickets. The cause, researchers suggest in the May 28 issue of the New England Journal of Medicine, was exposure to chemicals emitted by the new device. "These machines are used everywhere, for example, to pay with credit cards in a restaurant or in any shopping center, said Dr. Joaquin Sastre, senior author of the study and a professor at Fundacio Jimenez Diaz Allergy Service in Madrid. These terminals are used everywhere in the world." The machines print on thermal paper coated with a chemical called N-propyl-acrylamide and acrylate tints. "After performing all tests, we demonstrated that our patient was sensitized, meaning she is allergic to a specific substance, in this case, acrylates contained in the thermal paper," Sastre said. According to the researchers, acrylates have caused occupational asthma affecting printing-facility employees, among others.