Cost of Living

[Scot_Lover 1,876]

The cost of living is affecting everyone, what are some of the things affecting your part of the world?

A couple of things in The Land of Aus are:

Beans - $60 per kg

Coffee - $24 for 500 grams (this price has doubled)

Lettuce - $12, up from $1.90

Petrol is $2.49 per liter, used to be $1.20

Interest Rates for home loans have jumped from 0.18% to 2.62%, adding to the woes of people with loans.

According to 'the gubermint' these prices are set to increase more before things get better.

 

What changes have you seen?

[Bacardi 10,131]

Gas here on EC America has gone up the most, from about 3 dollars a gallon to almost 5 in my area. It's recently dropped down a few cents tho to about 4.75, but it's still stupidly expensive. 

The only other things I've noticed have gone up is oranges which have increased from 50 cents to 89 cents, and the bales of hay my friend gets went from $21 dollars to $26. Shit is wild.

Do not even get me started on the price of rent. Even before the pandemic that was rising and out of control.

[mickymoist 3,513]

My last fill up with unleaded was £94, I believe its gone up a bit more since then, thats about £20 more than 4 months ago

[mickymoist 3,513]

Although as usual here, there are certain companies that will put the prices up on a daily basis but are rather slow to reflect decreases

[gldenwetgoose 21,486]

No disagreement to any of these ridiculous cost rises.  Energy seems to be the biggest hit.   Perhaps though the easiest to understand globally is the price of petrol / gasoline and diesel fuel.

Currently in the northwest of England a litre of petrol is about £1.78 and a litre of diesel is £1.90.

For comparison of units and prices, a UK Gallon is 4.54 litres and a US Gallon is 3.79 litres.

So at todays exchange rates Petrol is

• £1.78 per litre
• Euro 2.12 per litre
• £8.08 per UK Gallon
• $8.19 per US Gallon

And Diesel is 

• £1.90 per litre
• Euro 2.26 per litre
• £8.63 per UK Gallon
• $8.75 per US Gallon

 

Out of interest, I was in our neighboring country of Wales a couple of weeks ago and the prices were maybe £0.10 less per litre which doesn't sound much but adds up.  And last week I was in Spain where the prices were maybe Euro 0.25 less in both cases.

[Bacardi 10,131]

3 hours ago, gldenwetgoose said:

$8.19 per US Gallon

😱😱😱😱

The highest I've paid here in EC America (won't give away my state, sorry) is like 4.80 us dollars a gallon. The highest I saw was like 5.01 a gallon. However, these last few weeks we've seen a serious decline in prices. In some stations it is almost down to 4 dollars a gallon. I hope they go down more. I am broke af.

[mickymoist 3,513]

@gldenwetgoose I'm in wales and paid £1.94 for unleaded a couple of days ago so you did well 😁👍🏻

[steve25805 126,015]

In the last 12 months the cost of my fuel has increased by about 70%, my car insurance by about 40%, my food by at least 25% in spite of buying cheaper, my energy by about 35%, and set to increase again in October, my local taxes by about 11%, my rent by about 9%. All bar my rent have increased by vastly more than the "official" UK inflation rate of 9.4%. Yet my pay rise is far lower than any of it at 5.8%. And I am one of the "lucky" ones. Most are getting pay rises lower than that.

We are heading towards mass poverty and destitution, not to mention recession. People cannot spend what they cannot spare. And if they cannot spend the economy will collapse.

Some stark figures. If annual inflation were to stay at 10 percent for the next ten years, 24k today will only be worth 8k by then. If we all got 5 percent pay rises for the next ten years at that rate of inflation, 24k today would be worth less than 14k by then. How could we all possibly get this much poorer without unheard of poverty in a first world country, and total economic collapse in an economy utterly dependent upon consumer spending? 

We are on the highway to disaster right now.

[steve25805 126,015]

On 7/28/2022 at 6:49 AM, mickymoist said:

@gldenwetgoose I'm in wales and paid £1.94 for unleaded a couple of days ago so you did well 😁👍🏻

In SW England in my supermarket workplace, unleaded petrol is now down to £1.81.9 a litre, having reached a high of £1.96.9 a litre. £1.81.9 is still a whole lot more expensive than the 99.9p a litre it was at two years ago.

[Sexismygod 1,782]

When I got diesel at the weekend it was £1.88 per litre.  My average grocery run has gone up by about 20%.  And I got a whopping 3% pay rise this year (still better than 0% that I know some people got).

Overall, life is just more expensive than it was in January.