High Inflation

Spikedriver said:

^^^ The skilled labor shortage is no joke. Where I work, if you have a welding certificate, and a class B CDL with hazmat, you'll be making $31-32 per hour within two years after you hire on. If you're female and have those credentials they'll pee all over themselves to hire you, for diversity. But when I tell young people about this, they look at me like I'm an idiot. I guess youngsters don't want to do the good paying blue collar work any more...

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It's strange, everybody was freaking out about all the "GOOD JOBS" being shipped off overseas. What a load of BS! If you need skilled work done 'right here and right now', the best guy in India isn't going to do it, the immigrant that can't read can't do it, and young snowflakes won't get their hands dirty. Who's going to step up and fill the old guy's boots?
Somebody has to.
And it won't be me.

Bacpacker said:

SPike is right. Skilled folks under 40 are hard to come by... We hired 4 of them. But the youngest of them is pushing 40... But there will be a bunch of retirements in 20 years... In the next 5-7 years we'll probably lose 10-12 techs and 5 of 8 of our managers, including myself... We are stretched very thin and I'm over working my other guys just trying to keep up... They won't be able to walk in and hit the ground running likely, but I can at least get some depth and do some much needed cross training.

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I did my part and trained dozens of replacement techs in certification courses. (and I mean more than 5 dozen)
Most of them went to competitors that had no training program and were in much worse shape than us.
And we always had continuous job openings for at least 2-3 techs for the last 5 years.
The current generation thinks a 'good-job' is behind a computer screen in an office. A degreed engineer in India will work 12-hour days for $8 per hour behind a screen hooked to the same internet.

Tell the young people to learn to work with 'hands-on' stuff.
And don't whine "I just can't find a good job for my 25-year-old son"

hiwall said:

I like the job I have now. Get up in the morning and look to see if there are any elk in the yard. Have breakfast and look at the weather to decide if I should go for a hike or maybe take the boat down to the nearby lake. Then have to do it all again the next day.

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You sound a lot like me except you're a lot more active.
Did you leave a pair of boots empty?

To the readers that made it this far, I apologize for 'derailing' the thread (Spikedriver pun).

We are always preparing for high inflation by keeping food stocks which we are increasing all the time being LDS. We also keep a stock of fuel, all our necessities here and are working on increasing that storage. Our local country supermarket doesn't have a lot of stocks of anything really but we just snatch and grab what we can when we are in town to stock with.

The property we purchased here was low cost and in a property slump and we knocked the price down further and we put down a 40% deposit. Our interest rate is 3.37% at the moment on a variable rate as here in Australia you are limited in what you can pay extra on a fixed rate mortgage and we wanted to pay more than 5% extra repayments. Up to date we have paid over double payments since January. Our mortgage is that small that we don't even figure on the economists radar when the interest rates drop. We have had one interest rate rise on the first month we paid our mortgage payment and two interest rate decreases of 25 and another 19 basis points. We definitely got on the property ladder at the right time price and interest rate wise.

Apart from that we have a home cash emergency kitty and a bank one as well so if inflation looked like it was going to go berserk then I would top up on everything further with cash. We have no other debts apart from the mortgage and own everything else paid with cash.

A group of us were talking last night about our kids buying property and a home. We remembered when we built our house, we were thinking.....gosh, we're so jealous of our parents who were able to build their home and it didn't seem to cost them a small fortune. Then we commented on how our kids would love to build their home for what we built ours for which is less than half of the prices my son is getting quoted for a home right now. We also bought twice the acreage for half the cost back in the 90's as compared with today. Then I thought....hey, wait a minute.....inflation hasn't risen THAT much in the last 30 years.....what gives? Well, I'm happy to report......I'm not going crazy.

Housing priced at $100,000 in 1970 → $710,758.71 in 2018
http://www.in2013dollars.com/Housing/price-inflation/1970-to-2018?amount=100000

And those rates from the 90's until now were low inflation periods. I clicked in the rate we paid for our home and the year we built vs. what it would be today and it was still about $50-60K too low. So, that calculator isn't entirely correct as it doesn't account for location, but it is fun to play with.

angie_nrs said:

I think those price increases in service industries have a lot to do with the labor market. Right now (at least in my area) employers have to increase wages and benefits in order to get workers, and even then, they are having trouble filling positions. Anyone who can pass a drug test and really wants a job can get a job at starting at $12.....increasing up to $15 after 3 months with full benefits and OT available and sometimes even mandated. It is a factory job, but definitely a good wage. These places are constantly advertising on the radio and I am in a fairly rural area.

Those summer, low paying (typically high school student jobs) are abundant around here and going unfilled. We rarely go to restaurants, ice cream shops, tourist spots, etc. in the summer b/c you are gonna wait a looooooong time to get served. I remember when I was a teen and we were fighting to get those jobs. Apparently that is not a problem these days. It's sad. I got some great experience and had a lot of fun in my younger days with summer jobs. Today's kids are missing out on a great opportunity to have fun, get skills, meet new people, and make some cash.

Personally I don't think taking on debt is a good strategy no matter what the economy is. IF you were thinking of pulling the trigger on getting a mortgage right now, then I think this is a great time to do it. Other than that, debt is not something I'd get cozy with.

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Summer jobs.... Schools in many areas are going to year round. No summers off to get jobs.

That's not good. Teens need jobs to pay for their own cars

The town were moving from has a "new" superintendent who is trying to start year round school. The town has been fighting him on it. He had summer school opened up from just kids that were failing to all elementary students and those moving up to a new school. That meant that instead of limited buildings operating ALL of them were going. Just wait until the electric bills come in. Parent complaints about kids being to hot on school busses were a daily occurrence but then they got upset because busses didn't run if the temps hit 102° and they had to pick up their own kids. This was a "cool" summer for us too.

So many schools are very poorly run.

hiwall said:

So many schools are very poorly run.

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I'm hoping the school the kid will be going to that's between your place and mine will be better. It has a student to teacher ratio of 8:1 and a better reputation.

Twins are complaining that inside of the high school is freezing and they're all wearing jackets. It's been in the 90's here. Teachers can't change the thermostats. That electric bill will be insane, but taxpayers pay it.

Amish Heart said:

Twins are complaining that inside of the high school is freezing and they're all wearing jackets. It's been in the 90's here. Teachers can't change the thermostats. That electric bill will be insane, but taxpayers pay it.

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The kids have likely spent the summer being outside and have acclimated to the temp.
The central office being in control of the thermostats over a network is a 'bill-of-goods' that has been sold to the schools by electric companies to "save money".
They convince the powers that be, teachers will get hot and simply sling the thermostat to 60 and it will run all night costing tons of money.

As a member of 'The Dark Side' I can tell you that "we" will only convince people to make changes that make us more money.

I worked one year in a really old school building. It had no air conditioning. I was on the third floor, above the part of the basement where the boiler was. The facility manager (FM) had worked in the building for 20 years. He was a creepy and lazy guy. Supposedly he was known to hit on the females that worked in the building. One woman, whose room was on my floor, wrote him up for sexual harassment. Evidently that was when the heat came on in the building and could never be brought down to a reasonable temperature again. Until...

A new principal came into the building. She wrote an email to the district folks about how bad the heat was in the building, and asked if there was something that could be done about it, because the current FM couldn't seem to do anything about it. She included the facility manager on the email. He resigned and was gone shortly after wards. The building was never comfortable, ever, even after he was gone.

After the FM retired and was gone, an interim FM took his place until a new FM could be hired. There were many, many repairs that were desperately needed in the building. She told me she spent days writing up requests for repairs between the time he retired and the new lazy guy was hired. She had more than 20 repair slips in just a couple days. Fixing those repairs would have meant that the FM would need to write up a repair slip, a form in duplicate (Maybe triplicate or quadruplicate), and send the copies to the central office and district people would come out and do the repairs. One of the needed repairs was to a faucet in the boys restroom next to my classroom. The water ran non stop, as though it was turned on all the way. It could not be turned off, until a district plumber came and repaired it.

FM jobs are a promotion with higher pay, and it seems that by the time people can achieve that position, they have also been schooled by other FM's how to do as little as possible. In all the buildings I worked in and was familiar with, there was always a problem with lazy do nothing FMs.

Honestly my life has changed so much since Granny has moved in, but the biggest thing I would do would be starting back my garden. . . Hunny would just have to step it up to help out more. A

Caribou said:

In another thread it was suggested that we are at risk for high inflation. How would you prep for inflation?

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You have to start by making your money work for you instead of giving it to the financial community in the form of interest, fees, and other waste. Second you need to live well below your means if at all possible so that at least 10-20% of your income goes directly into savings every month. And that does not include the 3+ month emergency fund you should have. If you build a foundation of financial stability then inflation is only a slow down or set back instead of a disaster. After that it comes down to being a good steward of your money and prioritizing properly. Something you see and hear a lot about on this forum. People growing food instead of buying it, hunting instead of buying all their meat at the grocery store, and so on.

While my wife and I fall into the upper middle class range based on income and the number of people in our home, we do not live like it. People are usually surprised to find out that we don't have cable or satellite tv, we don't have unlimited data $75/mo cell phone plans with $25/mo leased smart phones, we don't buy new cars and when we buy used we will spend 6 months or more searching for the best deal possible, we shop sales and are constantly trying to find ways to save money, we belong to produce clubs and buy our meat direct from the producer, we take very modest vacations and usually stay with relatives, we shop thrift stores and garage sales, etc. While I will admit that I do tend to be a bit spend-thrifty when it comes to guns & ammo, and my wife does not scrimp in the realm of massage/hair/makeup, we otherwise live a life of fiscal conservatism.

Fun fact: Our oldest boy just moved out to attend technical college. He is driving an AWD 1998 Honda CRV. The same 1998 Honda CRV that my wife drove when she went off to college. It has over 285,000 mile on it, is on it's second engine, and has had many rebuilt & replacement parts but it is still road worthy and will get him through school.

I think one key for living a more frugal lifestyle is not eating out except for special occasions. I have always cooked to have left overs. A pot of soup, a big salad, some casserole that we could have a couple meals from, and also lunches from is big. I had an assistant who always had Starbucks, yet always complained about money. Lunches out also add up. A loaf of bread or lettuce leaves for wraps with sandwich fixings can make for much cheaper meals.

Weedygarden said:

I think one key for living a more frugal lifestyle is not eating out except for special occasions. I have always cooked to have left overs. A pot of soup, a big salad, some casserole that we could have a couple meals from, and also lunches from is big. I had an assistant who always had Starbucks, yet always complained about money. Lunches out also add up. A loaf of bread or lettuce leaves for wraps with sandwich fixings can make for much cheaper meals.

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Bars and restaurants get a lot of people's money.

Weedygarden said:

I think one key for living a more frugal lifestyle is not eating out except for special occasions.

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This is so true. One can eat out frugally if they know what they are doing, but for most people it's a huge waste of money.

People also get caught up in this idea that one must eat a fancy meal every night. Some nights we just cut up some summer sausage, cheese, and veggies. Other nights we go all out. It's all about finding balance.

Sentry18 said:

You have to start by making your money work for you instead of giving it to the financial community in the form of interest, fees, and other waste. Second you need to live well below your means if at all possible so that at least 10-20% of your income goes directly into savings every month. And that does not include the 3+ month emergency fund you should have. If you build a foundation of financial stability then inflation is only a slow down or set back instead of a disaster. After that it comes down to being a good steward of your money and prioritizing properly...
Fun fact: Our oldest boy just moved out to attend technical college.

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Sage advice!
And +1 on technical college! He will soon become a 'wanted man'. I got a degree at a technical college, never was without a job in 30 years, and I was treated good because I always had 3 more job offers waiting in the wings. But I did have to move 500 miles away to get free of the occupation when I retired.
We lived a pretty frugal life while we were working and saved; we now have nest-eggs that will outlive us and we don't have to scrimp in our 'golden-years'.
It works.
Doing nothing today is the only way to guarantee you will have nothing later on.

Supervisor42 said:

Sage advice!
And +1 on technical college! He will soon become a 'wanted man'.

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He was recruited while still in high school and given a full ride scholarship to include a stipend. He's going to get his dual tech degree in precision machining and robotics. The summer between he has a guaranteed $19/hr internship and then a guaranteed $28/hr job with full benefits when he graduates. All he has to do is report to work within 45 days of graduation and then work for the company for 3 years. After which if he elects to stay he gets a cash bonus and a pay raise. So the boy is set. Fortunately he got his momma's sense of finances so he will be (and is as) frugal as she is.

My oldest friend brought his grandson on a hunting trip and used my home as a staging area. He also used my side-by-side and truck. The kids is 18 and will be heading off to a seamanship academy for 8 months of classes followed by 4 months as an able-bodied seaman in which he'll earn $40,000. This is the start of the process to get his masters license. There are all types of schools out there. P.S. the kid just shot his first caribou.

Sentry18 said:

...he has a guaranteed $19/hr internship and then a guaranteed $28/hr job with full benefits when he graduates... So the boy is set...

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Caribou said:

... heading off to a seamanship academy for 8 months of classes followed by 4 months as an able-bodied seaman in which he'll earn $40,000...

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Why people can't grasp this is beyond me.
Parents are doing anything they can (paying people off to take their kid's SAT test, risking prison time bribing people, etc.) just to get their kid into a "good" college.
After all that, and thousand$ in student loan$ to pay off, they end up with a 28-year-old indigent living in their basement playing video games.

Even more shocking is how many people are taking out loans to go to college for something that won't produce an actual job, and then somehow they feel victimized for their poor choices and want to force the people who made intelligent choices to save them. Plus maybe they should have to sign a waiver when they register for college that the degree they selected is pointless and unlikely to result in gainful employment. Gender studies being the top degree on that list.

Them: I owe over $100,000 in college loans and the only job I found ONLY pays minimum wage! How am I ever going to pay it off?

Me: Well what was your realistic plan for repaying the loan(s) BEFORE you borrowed it?

I have a friend who has three daughters. He borrowed to pay for their college and borrowed for their weddings. He worked 2 full time jobs and a part time to pay the debts. Loans lasted longer then the marriages. His daughters feel no obligation towards him.

The Lazy L said:

Loans lasted longer then the marriages. His daughters feel no obligation towards him.

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My wife recently had a subordinate who had the most lavish wedding I have ever seen. Her parents allegedly spent over $35,000 on the wedding and a big chunk of that was in the form of a bank loan. Then as a wedding gift her grandma gave her $15,000 to help with a down payment on a newly constructed house. 18 months later she came home from a work trip to find some photos on her iPad of a different women taking selfies in the mirror of her bedroom, in her lingerie. Her husband was sleeping in the buff behind this woman. Apparently the woman has used the iPad to email the pics to herself and deleted the local pics, but forgot to delete them from the cloud. My wife's employee filed for divorce and transferred to another state. Mom & Dad were just out of luck, so was grandma.

Sentry18 said:

Even more shocking is how many people are taking out loans to go to college for something that won't produce an actual job, and then somehow they feel victimized for their poor choices and want to force the people who made intelligent choices to save them. Plus maybe they should have to sign a waiver when they register for college that the degree they selected is pointless and unlikely to result in gainful employment. Gender studies being the top degree on that list.

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My younger brother went 4 years to The University of Alabama and graduated with a degree in archeology. Guess what, the USA doesn't have that many job openings for an archeologist.
He went to work as an instrument fitter and electrician while waiting for a 'good' job to open up.
Then he found out that the world desperately needs people that can actually do something constructive.
Fast forward 30 years, and he actually beat me to retirement with a full pension.
...He never worked a single day as an archeologist.

Supervisor42 said:

My younger brother went 4 years to The University of Alabama and graduated with a degree in archeology. Guess what, the USA doesn't have that many job openings for an archeologist.
He went to work as an instrument fitter and electrician while waiting for a 'good' job to open up.
Then he found out that the world desperately needs people that can actually do something constructive.
Fast forward 30 years, and he actually beat me to retirement with a full pension.View attachment 23154
...He never worked a single day as an archeologist.

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Archeology would have been a fascinating subject for me to study. I was too practical for that and went to college for a degree in electronic communication (i.e., radio/TV) with a minor in sales and management. I figured something in that mess could get me a job. But I hated business classes, and discovered I liked beer a lot more than classes. It only took 10 years to pay off that mess...fast forward 25 years, I've been an injection molding press technician, an industrial woodcutter, and a railroader. Only one school prepares you for all those things - Hard Knocks U.

My brother got a degree in archeology. Luckily he got a minor in computers. Yep, he got a job in IT and will be eligible to retire in a bit over a year.

I always thought that any school after h.s. was an opportunity to train for better employment. I went to colleges that were primarily nursing schools, with other degree possibilities as well. Nursing is an excellent field for being able to find employment almost anywhere.

I know many people who went to college and got worthless degrees. How about a degree in philosophy? Why? How about theater? Or history majors? Where are the guidance counselors when these young people are signing up for this?

Many of my cousins have gone to vocational schools. They have all done well.

Daughter had an idea that she would pay for college as she could afford it and graduate debt free. It took her 14 years. She applied for scholarships and grants and got good money from that, but still paid for some of it. She did have some help from me. One of her strategies for saving on college expenses was buying older textbooks on Amazon. She would take her older textbook, and in the before and after class tutoring sessions (free at her college and she always attended all of these), would compare her books against the expensive required or requested books. In the tutoring sessions, there was a teacher's assistant available to answer questions and provide help. It was a great time to work on homework. One of the tutoring people pointed out to her once that she was the only person who came to all of these sessions.

Weedygarden said:

I know many people who went to college and got worthless degrees. How about a degree in philosophy? Why? How about theater? Or history majors? Where are the guidance counselors when these young people are signing up for this?

Many of my cousins have gone to vocational schools. They have all done well..

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Guidance counselors are there to sell interesting and fun courses for the college to make money off of.
They could give a rip less what happens to the "student" after they leave.
Some departments receive funding based on the number of students enrolled.
If a department only needs 2 more students for it to move up a level in funding, you can bet they will lean hard on the counselors.

Supervisor42 said:

Guidance counselors are there to sell interesting and fun courses for the college to make money off of.
They could give a rip less what happens to the "student" after they leave.
Some departments receive funding based on the number of students enrolled.
If a department only needs 2 more students for it to move up a level in funding, you can bet they will lean hard on the counselors.

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We all know that children do not necessarily listen to their parents at that age either. Some do not even get any guidance from their parents, or when they do, it is not good guidance.

Weedygarden said:

We all know that children do not necessarily listen to their parents at that age either. Some do not even get any guidance from their parents, or when they do, it is not good guidance.

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And this is why you have to instill logic and reasoning into them when they are young enough to listen. We tell our children constantly that the most important factors in an education and subsequent career are (1) job security, (2) career longevity, and (3) long term market demand. How much money you make is way down on the list. As are the fun perks that seem to be all the rage right now. We also tell them that the old saying "If you love your job, you never work a day in your life" is not all that accurate.