In the midst of continuing struggles to fork over billions in defaulted payments, the United States Postal Service is tightening purse strings and generally doing anything it can to ride this budget problem out. An upcoming retrenchment will hit customers right where it hurts the most next year — the wallet. Stamps for letters will go up a penny to $0.46 starting Jan. 27, while postcard stamps will increase a cent to $0.33.

If you want to save a penny (and who doesn’t? A penny saved is a penny earned, after all), better stock up on those $0.45-Forever stamps now, reports Reuters. A new global Forever stamp will also be introduced net year, which will allow customers to send letters to any corner of the planet for $1.10. However, that’ll increase the price of mailing a letter to Canada or Mexico by $0.25.

That still might be a tough sell for many consumers who can send free emails with the click of a button or have a face-to-face vide chat with say, their brother living in Siberia with his wife and three adorable children. A letter would take weeks to reach many places that the Internet can reach in an instant. Competing with the Internet is hard for the USPS, which relies on selling products like stamps to fund itself.

The increase in stamp price isn’t totally shocking, as domestic prices rose by 1 cent last January as well. Since 2006, there’s been a price uptick every year aside from 2010 by at least $0.01 since 2006.

U.S. Postal Service says stamp prices to go up 1 cent next year [Reuters]

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