It’s a brand new year but already the cash-strained United States Postal Service is showing that it’s feeling the financial heat that kept zapping it in 2012. Starting on Sunday, the price of a first-class stamp will go from $0.45 to $0.46 as we were warned last year. Post card stamps will also rise a penny to $0.33. Sure, it’s only a penny, but it’s a penny you don’t have to pay on Saturday that you do on Sunday.

Of course, we’re fans of Forever Stamps, which you can buy now and use no matter how much a regular postage stamp goes up in price, so perhaps today is a good time to stock up on those.

Letters you send off to international friends or family are rising even more to $1.10. It used to only cost $0.85 to mail letters to Canada and Mexico and $1.05 for other international destinations. Overall, notes CNNMoney, all kinds of shipping services will cost 4% more on average.

The USPS is still trying to recover from all the financial burdens that dogged it last year, when it defaulted twice on payments totaling $11 billion it was supposed to pay into its pension program. It still needs help from Congress to make up for its shortfalls after exhausting a $15 billion line of credit from the U.S. Treasury.

In the meantime it had to cut hours at post offices around the country, merge plants and has dropped its workforce by about 28,000.

If this year is anything like 2012, the USPS is in for another rough go of it. So grab those Forever Stamps now, or hey, pay an extra penny later and maybe it’ll help the agency even the tiniest bit.

Stamps rise to 46 cents Sunday [CNNMoney]

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