Rising prices hammer seniors on fixed incomes

— -- Long before workers at the San Diego Food Bank began distributing cardboard food cartons from the back of a truck on a recent day, elderly men and women, many needing walkers and metal canes, formed a line in a church parking lot.

The free food amounts to a lifeline for these seniors, who have seen inflation wring much of the value out of their fixed incomes. For these retirees, the prices of essentials — notably, gas and food — have galloped beyond reach. Perhaps most of all, they're straining under the weight of crushing medical costs.

Nearly all Americans have felt the sting of inflation in recent months. But when you're retired and your sole means of support is a fixed amount that arrives each month — from Social Security and, for the lucky ones, a pension — the pain is especially severe.

Until recently, many retirees had assumed they had enough income to retire on. That was before gas and food prices began racing out of control.

Jannie Hicks, 75, who picked up a box of food at the San Diego site, is eating more canned vegetables as the price of fresh produce has soared. She's forsaken frozen dinners as too pricey. With gas a luxury, Hicks limits her driving to the grocery store, church and the food bank. She no longer drives to her friends' homes to visit; she catches up by phone instead.

Out of necessity, Carmen Gonzalez, a 73-year-old retiree, has shrunk her monthly grocery bill from $100 a month to $50 by making tamales and enchiladas with cheese instead of meat.

"We're all in a mess," she laments, clutching a free block of American cheese. "For seniors, everything is going up except the money to pay for things."

Those who work with seniors have seen the problem up close.

"By any measure, people who are retired are bearing the worst brunt of the economic slump," says Jim Dau, a spokesman for AARP. "Because they're living on fixed incomes, they're just getting crushed on food and medicine that they can't do without."

For the three months ending May 31, the annualized inflation rate for food topped 6%, the government reported. For energy, inflation exceeded 28%. (Overall prices during that period rose at a 4.9.% rate.)

In a recent survey, AARP found that 59% of Americans ages 65 or older reported having more trouble paying for food, gas and medicine. That's why a growing number of financially squeezed seniors are heading to places they've seldom gone before: credit-counseling centers.

"Our offices are telling me that they are seeing seniors coming in pushing their walkers, who are filing for bankruptcy," says Gail Cunningham of the National Foundation for Credit Counseling, which oversees a national network of more than 900 credit-counseling agencies.

Consumer Credit Counseling of the Black Hills in Rapid City, S.D., is one such site. Its typical clients have traditionally been young or middle-age adults, but seniors began increasingly appearing last year, says Bonnie Spain, the agency's executive director.