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Admiral Beez

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How is everyone dealing with inflation? My coping so far includes:

1) Negotiated for a pay raise (obvious option, not possible for many)
2) Canceled Netflix and Prime. The latter will stop me from buying stuff too.
3) Reduced restaurant dining and all takeout. And no in restaurant alcohol.
4) Reduced my driving and motorcycling. Instead enjoying my bicycle more (love my Breezer Downtown 8). My car must have square tires by now.
5) As for vehicles. As long as reliable, keep them old and paid off. My car is 24 years old, my motorcycle 40 years old. No payments.
6) Paid off all credit card debt (I've always done that), moving any residual to an ultra-low LoC.
7) Stopped buying cafe coffee. My Keurig has a K-cup filter, so no pod expense. Instead I buy bulk coffee and grind it myself.
8) Rarely run the house A/C, and all lights now LEDs and prudently used.
9) Buy almost nothing..... I'm WFM so clothes last forever. Still rocking my Blackberry Key2.
10) Switched from pre-boxed supermarket food to more DIY, bulk ingredients.
11) Buy dividend stocks for long term, don't worry if they drop due to recession. A down market is the time to invest.
12) Stay married, lol. Divorce is a killer for your finances.
 
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Not really a problem for my family because we're hardcore savers. Nearly all of our disposable income goes to savings. We've always lived this way. Consumer goods prices were never a problem.

Our focus has always been housing. This year, we're happy about rising interest rates quashing the property market because it means our income and savings (both high) are no longer getting destroyed every year.

This is in extreme contrast to the way everyone else seems to live. According to polls, the average Canadian family is a few hundred dollars away from bankruptcy during any given month; while the average savings rate before covid was something abysmal like two percent (proportion of disposable income which makes it into savings after discretionary spending).

So I'm not overly receptive to people claiming they're suffering from inflation when they're blowing every last cent on more moronic Amazon trinkets.

However, if one is spending responsibly, but still struggling because of inflation, then I'm completely sympathetic.

edit: but yes, after having recently spent $35 on a single burger at Kelsey's, I'm boycotting eating out.

9) Buy almost nothing..... I'm WFM so clothes last forever. Still rocking my Blackberry Key2.
This alone would solve most families' money problems. Sadly, it would also tank our economy because 60-70% of it is based on mindless consumer spending.
 
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How is everyone dealing with inflation? My coping so far includes:

1) Negotiated for a pay raise (obvious option, not possible for many)
2) Canceled Netflix and Prime. The latter will stop me from buying stuff too.
3) Reduced restaurant dining and all takeout. And no in restaurant alcohol.
4) Reduced my driving and motorcycling. Instead enjoying my bicycle more (love my Breezer Downtown 8). My car must have square tires by now.
5) As for vehicles. As long as reliable, keep them old and paid off. My car is 24 years old, my motorcycle 40 years old. No payments.
6) Paid off all credit card debt (I've always done that), moving any residual to an ultra-low LoC.
7) Stopped buying cafe coffee. My Keurig has a K-cup filter, so no pod expense. Instead I buy bulk coffee and grind it myself.
8) Rarely run the house A/C, and all lights now LEDs and prudently used.
9) Buy almost nothing..... I'm WFM so clothes last forever. Still rocking my Blackberry Key2.
10) Switched from pre-boxed supermarket food to more DIY, bulk ingredients.
11) Buy dividend stocks for long term, don't worry if they drop due to recession. A down market is the time to invest.
12) Stay married, lol. Divorce is a killer for your finances.

Here's me for comparison

1) I left my long time job in mid-2021. Early this year they asked me back due to other people in the same team quitting, and I got a 25% pay raise from over what I had when I left. I would note a big part of the reason I left was I felt I was significantly underpayed, and had very low raises (average of 2%) for about ten straight years, so I think that really only caught me up for the past decade of inflation to where I should have been when I left.
2) Canceled Netflix and Spotify at least for the summer. Spotify of course I can still use in the free mode, and the ads are few and far between, if annoyingly repetitive when they do show up.
3) I rarely ate out or got take out before, so this didn't change much, but I spend even more time carefully reading the fine print on menus now to watch out for surprise add-on costs ($4 to sub out fries for a small caesar salad now), or for "specials" which aren't specials at all (pizza places have been infamous for this for decades but all restaurants do it now). As for groceries, I honestly have not seen much inflation at all in the raw produce and meat that I buy, with only beef and dairy seeming to have really gone up in price but I generally don't buy either of those to begin with aside from an occasional splurge on fancy cheese when it's on sale.
4) I stopped paying for TTC streetcar rides since they stopped inspecting fares.*
5) Don't have a car so this one doesn't apply, though I have cut back on taxi use in favour of the TTC in instances where the TTC can actually get me where I need to go in a reasonable time; essentially going straight in one direction and not traveling "diagonally".
6) I got an LoC open too and moved a small amount of debt there, but I have paid it off now so am once again debt free. Also got the 2% cash back MasterCard from Tangerine! Woo-hoo money back!
7) I don't drink coffee, but I stopped buying Red Bull, which is probably very good for me health wise anyway as I have gone from a can per day to none.
8) A/C is supplied by the building and I guess I pay the electricity to run the fans, but so far the monthly electricity bill is up only about $6/month in the past two years. Quite manageable.
9) I have not made any large purchases recently. One I regret missing out on is a new bedroom set which I see has increased in price 50% since this time in 2020. All furniture costs seem to be way up. I wish I got it back then but I declined as everyone stopped offering the service to enter your home and assemble the bed, nightstand, dresser etc. for you, instead they would dump all of it in boxes at your door, and I did not want to put together a whole bed myself, never mind the other stuff. Not sure if I will buy it this year or not now. I'm going to wait and see if there are boxing day deals.
10) I like to cook myself so buying raw ingredients has always been my thing, but an occasional frozen pizza has gone away since the prices for frozen prepared meals have risen a fair bit (almost now the same as a takeout pizza where ten years ago they were always under half the price).
11) Loaded up on several thousand shares of AGF stock when it dropped down to $6.00 a month ago, offering a sinfully high 6.66% yield.
12) I have stayed renting the same place and wow rent control has been the biggest saver for me, now in my fifth year in the same apartment. The two year government COVID rent freeze on an already low rate has me at $1,787 for a one bedroom in a relatively new apartment building (six years old) in the Corktown area. I just got my lease renewal for the next year and it's for the mandated 1.6%, so it's going up only a tiny bit this time. The identical unit one floor up was listed for rent recently at $2,175. I have a friend who owns an older condo unit (built in the 90's) and is exasperated at the enormous increases to the monthly maintenance fee while I see essentially no monthly rent increase at all.


* I'm joking! Mostly.
 
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So I'm not overly receptive to people claiming they're suffering from inflation when they're blowing every last cent on more moronic Amazon trinkets.

However, if one is spending responsibly, but still struggling because of inflation, then I'm completely sympathetic.

edit: but yes, after having recently spent $35 on a single burger at Kelsey's, I'm boycotting eating out.


This alone would solve most families' money problems. Sadly, it would also tank our economy because 60-70% of it is based on mindless consumer spending.


That's the problem. It's just too easy to spend money these days. Take out your phone and spend away! Families would easily save hundreds of dollars a week, If they deleted half their apps, like Uber Eats, Skip, Amazon, Lyft/Uber And all those stupid prepared meal kits like Hello Fresh! You can go to any No Frills and get the food and make the same meals for like a few dollars lol.
 
That's the problem. It's just too easy to spend money these days. Take out your phone and spend away! Families would easily save hundreds of dollars a week, If they deleted half their apps, like Uber Eats, Skip, Amazon, Lyft/Uber And all those stupid prepared meal kits like Hello Fresh! You can go to any No Frills and get the food and make the same meals for like a few dollars lol.
Just last weekend I was walking out the front door of the apartment building on a Saturday morning at 8:00 a.m. and there was a guy bringing in a McDonlads delivery with the smallest of bags I think they have. He couldn't get a hold of the person by cell phone or the front door buzzer, so he just left the bag on a table in the lobby and then went on his way. I came back to the building an hour later and the bag was still sitting there on the table. The receipt was stapled to the outside; it was about $12 including HST and a $3.99 delivery fee. I wonder if the person who ordered it ever picked it up or building staff just threw it in the trash. Either way, I would not be surprised it the orderer complains about how "it's too expensive to eat in Toronto."

EDIT: Oh and McDonalds is less than a 10 minute walk away. You could get there on the streetcar in about 3 minutes for less than the delivery fee, and yeah, you would have to get out of bed, but it's the 501, so you could still wear your pyjamas at that time of day and you would fit right in with all the other passengers coming and going from around Moss Park, if not actually being more dressed up.
 
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8) Rarely run the house A/C, and all lights now LEDs and prudently used.
Full dad mode, I guess?

With LED lighting, I am more willing to have a few low wattage always-on lights in the house. Small night lights in hallways/bathroom, and I leave the LED range hood light on. A 4 watt bulb is a few dollars a year in power consumption. Maybe on balance it means I turn on lights less often as I try to avoid bright lights at night when I'm going to bed.
 
OMG as a Quebecer (well, ex-) I find this sort of bean counting to be extremely boring. I mean, I'm debt-free, but I'm not overly concerned with how wealthy I'm going to be when I'm no longer able to enjoy it.
 
The different is, consumption doesn’t bring me enjoyment.
I can understand that, I'm not a shopper. I don't spend much on clothes or trinkets, but I cook every day and I have a large food and wine budget! And I've never owned a vehicle, which is great money saver, especially in downtown Toronto.
 
OMG as a Quebecer (well, ex-) I find this sort of bean counting to be extremely boring. I mean, I'm debt-free, but I'm not overly concerned with how wealthy I'm going to be when I'm no longer able to enjoy it.
I have no children, but my sister has five, and one of my thoughts is that I will help them out a little bit, in part because my now-deceased great uncle had no children so he decided to use some of his lifetime savings to pay for the entirety of my first year of University, including a new computer, which was expensive in 1999! I would like to pay that forward by doing the same thing. One of my sister's kids is coming of age for that next year, so I want to make that effort to have the money, while not leaving myself broke afterward as it's quite a chuck of change to pay for a year of University these days, no matter which school you go to.
 
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I have no children, but my sister has five, and one of my thoughts is that I will help them out a little bit, in part because my now-deceased great uncle had no children so he decided to use some of his lifetime savings to pay for the entirety of my first year of University, including a new computer, which was expensive in 1999! I would like to pay that forward by doing the same thing. One of my sister's kids is coming of age for that next year, so I want to make that effort to have the money, while not leaving myself broke afterward as it's quite a chuck of change to pay for a year of University these days, no matter which school you go to.
It's great that you can do this, but it shouldn't be necessary. Tuition is much too high; it is as if people believe higher education benefits only those who get it. My total BA tuition at Laval University in the mid-80s was $500 a year. I was mostly concerned about my living expenses. But with a student loan and a bursary, I had enough to live on.
 
The more taboo thing about degrees which few people say or even realize is that they're just credentials to land a basic job to pay the bills.

Most degrees, especially in the humanities and social sciences, are not worth the paper they're printed on. And they lead to similarly silly jobs which could be done by any reasonably responsible person with or without a degree.

But go try to land a half decently paying job without a degree.

Then there's the credential inflation/arms race which is another can of worms exacerbating the situation.
 
I'm probably different than most; I've been retired for 18 years, solid pension, live outside of the GTA, no mortgage, one vehicle payment. We have never had Netflix, et al although might sign up for one or two this winter (we have said that before. Neither of us have mobile data (talk/text only) and have a fairly basic Internet package. We still have a landline but the missus won't give that up, and still get a real newspaper tossed at the end of the driveway. We've never been much of consumers - we hardly ever ordered anything through Amazon before COVID. During COVID, we decided to order junk food once a week. Obviously, fuel costs have been noticeable, but we don't normally go that far. We have noticed food costs and simply refuse to buy certain items anymore.

I do feel for folks being impacted by things like housing costs and inflation but, it seems for many, lifestyle is out-of-sinc with income. We all want a lot of things in life, but it seems too many want it all right now, That includes kids. We grew up in a modest post-war house, dad had a solid government job but didn't own a new car until into his 50s (and only because of two teenage boys).

Our daughter and son-in-law are in their 30s and have been married for about 6 years. Two new-ish vehicles. Good jobs well outside of the GTA. They will have their mortgage paid off in 3 years. He is very focused.

Regarding home delivery food services, our daughter and son-in-law are real foodies and both worked from home for a couple of years. They signed up for probably every service available using the 'new customer' promotions. They've settled back down now to once in a while but quite enjoy some of the offerings. If nothing else, now that they are back to their workplaces, they are a decent meal when time and energy is lacking without being 'fast food'. They also have the advantage of access to farmgate beef, chicken and eggs. They eat well.
 
The more taboo thing about degrees which few people say or even realize is that they're just credentials to land a basic job to pay the bills.

Most degrees, especially in the humanities and social sciences, are not worth the paper they're printed on. And they lead to similarly silly jobs which could be done by any reasonably responsible person with or without a degree.

But go try to land a half decently paying job without a degree.

Then there's the credential inflation/arms race which is another can of worms exacerbating the situation.
I would have never got my job with a degree. 1991-1995, BA in International Relations, Poly Sci, 1996-97, International Trade Diploma from George Brown. The co-op at the latter got me in front of some top employers. The degree gave me the cred in front of others with similar degrees. 1997 hired by a Canadian confectionery firm to manage export sales, 1998, shipped off to China and Europe to sell candy. It's been a good run.
 
I'm not saying there aren't exceptions. And in the case of real STEM jobs, one certainly needs the training and credential. But it's absolutely the case that the majority of "soft" office jobs require relatively paltry training. And correspondingly, the basic lib arts degrees leading to these jobs are equally stultifying. These days people are actually stupider coming out of the universities than they were going in.
 

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