For the eighth time in less than a year, the Bank of Canada has raised its benchmark interest rate.

The 25 basis point increase announced Wednesday was the smallest hike increase since March. The key rate now sits at 4.5 per cent.

This is the highest the rate has been since 2007.

Aaron Ruston with Purposed Financial in Moose Jaw says the increase was expected.

"I think what we're hearing is this may be one of the last bumps over the next while. It appears on the surface that inflation has dropped a few percentage points. So they're going to see what this does to the overall picture and then make future decisions on whether to bump it up again based on where inflation is a month and a half, two months down the road."

Ruston explains that for those that have a variable interest rate line of credit or a variable loan of some kind, it probably will bump their actual interest costs up again.

He says the rate increases over the past year have made it very challenging for many people.

"It's been very dramatic for those that were already stretched...It's put an escalation on credit card debt in a lot of cases because people were literally taking cash advances against their credit cards to pay down on this variable rate. It's got people in the situation where they're taking from Peter to give to Paul and both of the options are creating quite a mess that hopefully we can somehow, over the months ahead, start to reel in a bit."

Ruston adds that this could likely be the last rate bump for the next couple of months.

"That's just the talk. They've seen an impact on inflation rates. They've seen inflation drop by up to two percentage points from its highs. What we're hearing is that this is probably a test. They'll drop this 25 basis points on it again and see when next month comes around what impact this has."