You began your retirement plan with plenty of money to pay bills. Your plan expectation of a reasonable inflation rate worked for years. But now one of the key assumptions of your plan has collapsed. Annual inflation is running at some six percent, a thirty year high. That’s why, for millions of elderly Americans living on fixed incomes, inflation is the cruelest tax, according to critics. It hurts their ability to maintain a standard of living. “A retired person is said to be living on a fixed income for a good reason. In turn, coping with rising prices when one’s income is fixed is far more difficult that for a younger person who can negotiate a pay raise from their employer,” Peter Palion, an adviser in East Norwich, New York, told the Epoch Times. The problem of long-term high inflation hurts senior citizens in a unique way, another adviser added. …