Although inflation isn't running quite as hot as it had been earlier this year, the general prices of things we rely on every day are still often ahead of where they were last year or the year before that. If, like many of us, your salary hasn't kept up with those costs, that may be causing you to look for ways to cut back to assure that your money goes far enough to meet your most important needs.

If you're making those types of decisions, it's one thing. If everybody is making them, then it could be a sign that the companies that focus on the essentials in life may end up holding up better than the ones that offer products people can do without. With that in mind, three Motley Fool contributors uncovered companies involved with products people use every day whose stocks look like they could be worth owning. They picked Berkshire Hathaway (NYSE: BRK.A)(NYSE: BRK.B), Bank of America (NYSE: BAC), and Kinder Morgan (NYSE: KMI). Read on to find out why, and decide for yourself whether any of them might provide solid performance for your portfolio in potentially rocky times.

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Source Fool.com