Posted
on Wed, Mar 27, 2013 at 11:09 AM
If you are anything like me you are young and broke with more debt then you'd like to acknowledge.
I'm in my late 20's, I went to university and have been working in finance for the past 7 years or so. Finance is can be a very complicated thing so I'll try to make my bitch as easy to understand as |I can.
WE ARE BEING ROBBED OF VALUE
The government tells us inflation is 2-3% (if you want to reference this its called the CPI).
The actual figures are much higher. The necessities of life are food, heat and shelter.
Over the past year food prices have gone up approx. 10% (chronicle herald did an article on this a few months back)
Electricity cost are going up a minimum of 3% a year (plus whatever else they get approved for as they seem to ask and receive more approval every few months)
Rent for most people goes up by 3-5% a year (mine personally went up 4% from 720 to 750, and was 680 2 years ago when I started living there). If you own, and are debt free this doesnt impact you, if you have a mortgage, get ready for prime to climb, it isn't going lower.
If you drive, its pretty easy to see that fuel costs rise about 5-10% a year lately too.
If you aren't too good at math, it is impossible to have a lower average then your lowest figure.
For those of you skilled in math I challenge you to take a weighted average of your own expenses (if you have your bill history from a year ago, or keep it now to look in a year).
The rate of inflation I personally have experienced over the past year is 7%, I did the same exercise for my father and his was 9%.
I turns my stomach every time I have to talk the CPI numbers at work and feel like I am knowingly being dishonest to customers.
Simple economic laws of supply and demand confirm that creating new money makes all existing money have less value. Companies realize this and increase their costs, normal citizens end up paying for it.
New money is created when banks (through loans and credit cards) create new money from nothing on computers and people spend it and it goes into circulation. It is estimated that 95% of Canadian dollars in existence only exist on computers from this practice. If you are interested to find out more about this, research fractional lending.
My point is that we are getting ripped off, and I encourage anyone interested to not believe the propaganda being fed to us by our governments, banks and media, and to look at your own finances and make the best decisions for yourself.
If you want to keep your value, that 2% investment isn't going to do it for you.
Gold and Silver have survived all currency collapses (history tends to repeat it self) and has always kept up with inflation. Also interesting to look into is Bitcoins (the 2nd most used currency in the world to government currencies) as bitcoins inflation is predefined and controlled, also it is tax sheltered due to its private nature.
I wont get started on how corrupt our tax system is.
Live Long and Prosper. —rEVOLution