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Stamp Prices Are About to Go up (Again)
By Pete Grieve MONEY RESEARCH COLLECTIVE
A 5-cent price hike is scheduled for this weekend — and another increase is expected for January.
The cost of a standard postage stamp will increase from 68 cents to 73 cents when a new pricing scale goes into effect next week.
This will be the sixth time the U.S. Postal Service has raised stamp prices in the last three years. The new cost of mailing a letter will be 33% higher compared to July 2021, when the price of a standard “Forever” stamp was 55 cents.
The USPS has been updating its prices on a twice-per-year schedule as it tries to grow revenue. The 5-cent increase is scheduled for Sunday, July 14, which means Saturday, July 13, is the last day to buy stamps for 68 cents. Yet another stamp price hike will likely come in January.
The agency says these frequent price increases are necessary, citing inflation in recent years and “the effects of a previously defective pricing model.”
For more than 15 years, the USPS has been losing money even though it’s supposed to sustain itself financially without taxpayer funds.
Stamp price hike: New USPS rates for sending mail
In an address last month at the National Postal Forum, Postmaster General Louis DeJoy said it’s his priority to “fix the broken business model.”
Despite recent price increases, the agency reported a loss of $1.5 billion for the most recent three-month period (January to March) and a $2.1 billion loss the quarter before. Higher stamp prices are part of the plan to address the USPS’s issues.
“As changes in the mailing and shipping marketplace continue, these price adjustments are needed to achieve the financial stability sought by the organization’s Delivering for America 10-year plan,” officials said in April, announcing the stamp price increase. “USPS prices remain among the most affordable in the world.”
Forever stamps can be used for sending all regular-letter mail weighing less than 1 ounce, and they remain valid indefinitely. That means you could stock up on stamps before the price increase and save some money.
Alongside the stamp price change, the USPS is also adjusting prices for many other mailing services on July 14. Here’s what to expect:
- The price of a Forever stamp will increase from 68 cents to 73 cents.
- The price of a domestic postcard will increase from 53 cents to 56 cents.
- The price of mailing an international letter will increase from $1.55 to $1.65.
- Metered mail postage will rise from 64 cents to 69 cents.
Overall, the price increases for mailing services will average about 7.8%.
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Pete Grieve is a New York-based reporter who covers personal finance news. At Money, Pete covers trending stories that affect Americans’ wallets on topics including car buying, insurance, housing, credit cards, retirement and taxes. He studied political science and photography at the University of Chicago, where he was editor-in-chief of The Chicago Maroon. Pete began his career as a professional journalist in 2019. Prior to joining Money, he was a health reporter for Spectrum News in Ohio, where he wrote digital stories and appeared on TV to provide coverage to a statewide audience. He has also written for the San Francisco Chronicle, the Chicago Sun-Times and CNN Politics. Pete received extensive journalism training through Report for America, a nonprofit organization that places reporters in newsrooms to cover underreported issues and communities, and he attended the annual Investigative Reporters and Editors conference in 2021. Pete has discussed his reporting in interviews with outlets including the Columbia Journalism Review and WBEZ (Chicago's NPR station). He’s been a panelist at the Chicago Headline Club’s FOIA Fest and he received the Institute on Political Journalism’s $2,500 Award for Excellence in Collegiate Reporting in 2017. An essay he wrote for Grey City magazine was published in a 2020 book, Remembering J. Z. Smith: A Career and its Consequence.