I've decided this year to tighten my financial belt - and hopefully my real waistline as well - because of how out of control inflation has gotten in the States. Anybody else plan to do the same? My only frivolous expense right now is over-priced cold brew coffee.

Always interested to hear how things are for people outside of the States as well.

 

I am in the United States, haven't really noticed that big of a difference. Some things like eating out and junk food cost more but I am not doing anything different, I don't buy as much junk and from what I see it's about the same.

I get what I want when I go to the store and pretty much always have had. Overall I think I am spending about the same, the weekly grocery store run comes out at about 120 and that's what it used to cost before "inflation" +/- 5 bucks. Some things seem to be overvalued, if I see something that is in that category I just pass on it, not because of money, but because I just don't think it is a good value proposition.

Inflation at the moment is a global thing, we here in the states don't have it as bad and indexes are 2% higher than average and 1.3% higher than predicted if everything was normal. I wouldn't call that runaway but to each his own, I know we all have different means at our disposal.

That's pretty much all anyone can say without this becoming political as it is walking a fine line as it is already.

Good luck with the weight loss, your body will thank you for it.

 

In Australia inflation is running around 8% with energy expenditure pushing prices up. The housing market is unaffordable whether buying or renting. Fuel is averaging $6.20 a gallon. Food is affordable and seems to have avoided the worst of inflation. Maybe we are more self reliant than many countries in that regard. One thing I have noticed personally is that this is the first year in a long time that I have purchased nothing for my studio. In fact sometimes I have been forced to sell equipment to pay an electricity bill. So yeah, it's a problem that is global and tracing it's roots becomes political and as wisely stated above, we won't go there.

 

Here in Germany its the Same....the prices for food , gasoline, electricity .... everything is much more expensive two to three years ago.
Here, there is always talk of war and that supposedly everything is the fault of the crisis in Ukraine.
Everyone I know has to tuck back and tighten the belt, including myself.
I wish you all a nice day

 

I have a question about Australia if you would not mind.

Have large tracts of agricultural land also experienced sharp rises in prices. I've always kind of looked at Australia as one of my prime retirement location for buying a 10ha or so and waiting to die. Anyways a lot can change in the next 10-20 years.

Hope you are doing alright.

Cheers/

 

I see how rents, gas and food has gone up in Canada but for some strange reason, it didn't affect me at all. I got my place before the inflation started to go crazy and I never really buy anything very expensive in regards to food. I'm used to cook from the ground up as I spend half of each year in South America and they don't have access to processed food like we do in North America. Or at least it's not as popular so it became a normal thing for me to cook fresh. The only thing that really went crazy expensive in my budget is beer so I switched to wine.

 

Exactly. Let's keep this purely logistic and practical. Avoid political considerations.

If it's good wine, it's much better for your health.

Where I live prices have aroused around 25 to 30 %. I also always cooked from the ground, but everything is much more expansive. Gasoline, electricity, food, also shows and culture.
It does not affect me too much because I already own what I need, so no great expenses needed. But for young people it must be horrible to get into adult life with such limitations, as the salaries have only got up around 3 to 5%...

 

Last edited: Jul 14, 2023

I find it very frustrating that my costs continue to skyrocket, yet my pay stays stagnant because smaller companies are feeling the squeeze as well. Somewhere up the food chain there are people who are profiting from this global financial crisis, but certainly not visible for the average Joe. Here's to hoping for a stabilization in the near future.

 

I have actually lost weight cuz I got tired paying $15 bucks for lunch everyday. Not that I cant afford it, it just seemed too much compared to what was an $8-$10 lunch that was much more reasonable. Because of this I eat maybe 2-3 lunches a week and instead settle for a nice big dinner when I get home from my 9-6. But if you live in the states you have to have noticed how high simple shit like bags of chips have gotten. a bag of just normal lays chips is like Canadian prices, if their dollar were worth the same as ours lol

 

I myself have never heard of "de-flation"... Hate to break it to ya but relaxing in this context would mean slower increase. Stuff like you speak of doesn't ever go down in price.

 

Where I live (Scandinavia) a lot of daily stuff you need... like food etc has fallen a little in terms of price, but the price level is still incredibly high and I guess this will be going on for a very very long time - especially for some of the basic products like milk, bread, olive oil, vegetables, eggs, etc. are still incredibly expensive compared to a year ago and I have a feeling that this will continue because the food industry in general has found a way to exploit the situation.
I don't think we'll ever get back to the prices we knew before. I guess we need to work harder and make more money to solve this problem - sorry to say

 

Last 2 years. Income cut in half, cost of living up at least 50%.

I'll keep my diatribes to myself.

 

Yup. I'm in the US. Between COVID and inflation, my business took a big hit.
Fortunately, my wife has a good solid job so we're getting by but just.
There is no "disposable" income. And yeah, thankfully I'm pretty well set
for gear. BUT.....I used to do a LOT of buying and selling of gear online.
That market is at nearly at a standstill. Buyers don't have the spare cash
to buy and sellers, in desperation, are foolishly pricing themselves out
of the market......and don't even get me started on shipping costs!!

 

For once things (work, business, passive income, etc) are going well for me personally, so I'm pushing rather than tightening. I consider myself fortunate. Investing in crypto and stocks as the last year and a half has been a total meltdown.
I live in Sweden and we have seen overall prices go up some 10%. Electricity have been the worst increase as this last winter was horrible for many businesses and people with big houses (most of them got stimulus though, but they say this coming winter will be even worse).

 

Yes I noticed junk food prices going up.

I generally don't do lunch. At first it was a time issue where I didn't want to stop what I was doing and then when I quit smoking lunch was always a big temptation to buy a pack of cigarettes, decades later it's just a habit. Even on the weekends, I am not a noon eater, maybe a coffee or a tea but that's about it.

However pices depends on location and market.

Driving through rural areas where things used to be cheap the cost of living has gone up. In urban areas where prices have been higher they haven't moved much. In NoVA/DC/MD or NYC things are like I said above. However, where you could expect things to be cheaper like South of Fredericksburg, between Baltimore and Philadelphia or the Hudson Valley and Upstate things are more than they used to be and close to city prices. I paid something like sixty dollars for a tostada and couple of slices of pizza and two soda's in Lake George NY. Three years ago that would have been closer to 15-20. I don't know why things are more expensive in Lake George than they are in Manhattan but that's Lake George's problem to solve.

On the Canadian front, for a funeral a few weeks ago, they seem to have more price stability than in the US in the areas I went through anyway. I came through Ontario on my way to Quebec and other than Canadian fuel prices everything outside durable goods was less comparatively. I was in Kirkland on the west side of Montreal & was kind of shocked at how inexpensive after conversion things were, even trash food like BeaverTails and Timmy's were noticeably less of what you would pay stateside. The loony might be down but it still going far.

I gave my brother a 20 at a service area Tim Horton's to try to liquidate the monopoly money before crossing the border. 2 espressos, doughnuts and 2 regular coffees and he came back with change in bills. The coffees were terrible of course but if this was DD or KK he might have come back with coins or needing more money.

Things are trending down though, the more you refuse to buy to stuff the faster it will stabilize.

 

That is amazing. I feel bad for you guys that is a huge jump.

Is this a local phenomena or France wide? I was expecting 5-6% which is what the median is in the Euro zone but 25% is scary. I hope it gets better. Good luck.

 

To be honest, it's some of the cheapest one I can find at the liquor store but I found quite a few bottles that don't break the bank and get me there.

I agree that for young guns it must be extremely difficult. I saw rents for a 2 bedroom apartment go from 800$ a month 6 years ago and now is minimum 1400$ a month for a cockroach sh!t hole. One thing that hit me hard is that we have A LOT of available job where I live. I mean, businesses started to close earlier and open way way later then usual because they are all short staffed. I also noticed how many young men and women in their early 30's still live at their parents house while I was thrown out when I was 17 haha.

Life has changed incredibly for the past few years.

My father is the usual boomer not caring one bit about any social claim and even he keep on telling me how much he is convinced that everything is on the verge to crash.

It cannot continue like that, I agree with him.

 

My living expenses were not bad to begin with so there's not much to cut. My luxuries tend to be instruments and software really... Oh, a streaming service every now and then, but now I've not had one for a while either. Easy to say I'm supporting the writers and actors strikes in Hollywood

Sure I leave out the occasional takeaway and I'm pretty solid. My biggest extraneous expense has been alcohol, but since I've quit drinking (apart from maybe a couple times a year for some celebration or the other) that's not an issue either anymore.

But prices have come up, like other expenses and there's nothing I can do about it.