Are you doing anything to deal with inflation?

[mommyoffive]

Are you doing anything because of inflation?   I read an article that said grocery stores are stocking up on things before prices go up.

Are you stocking up on anything? 

Investing more money?

Buying things now vs later? 

[TravelingChris]

I have been thinking about what we should be doing.  Will be reading this thread.  

Both dh and I remember very well the 'stagflation' of the Carter years.  But we weren't adults and were just teens.  It all seems to be coming back to the latter 70s.  We have had gas shortages due to ransomware, all sorts of items going short, giant spike in crime in many cities, and now high inflation.  My mom was widowed right before that happened and fell into a situational depression and I didn't have the means to do much of anything.  

 

[Ethel Mertz]

Unintentionally, we bought a new car when you could still negotiate a price lower than the mrsp. Within a couple of weeks, there were bidding wars.

The cat litter we use is no longer available at our local stores (in fact, there are many gaps in the pet aisle at the grocery store). We can’t run out of that item! We need to stock up on that item!

In general, we are stocking up as best we can as it looks like, in addition to inflation, we may be in for a tough COVID fall and winter.

[Carrie12345]

Not really. Many of our planned major purchases can’t be made until our house is ready. (Appliances, wood stove, generator, furniture, deck/patio materials, window coverings…)

I am considering topping off my food storage since I had been starting to make an actual dent in it.

My primary goal is to just quit hemorrhaging money on miscellaneous stuff, but it hasn’t been going as well as I’d like!

[hjffkj]

Not really.  We are pretty adaptable in life and there are no products we can't live without so if their are shortages in some areas we'll just adjust as we go.  I mean we are investing more money but that is because we have more money to invest.  

[Arcadia]

We have been stocking up on favorite non-perishable food items since last March when supply chain deliveries started being erratic. It’s nice to have our comfort food items even if we can do without if need be.

My husband has been buying for non-urgent needs earlier because prices are less likely to go down if we wait. 

We don’t do investments. We didn’t sell any of the employee stocks my husband was given so that’s our only stock portfolio. 

We do try to pump gas whenever fuel tank drops to half full instead of waiting for it to be almost empty as gas prices are always rising. My husband has been pumping gas mostly at Costco because they are the cheapest in town and with the 4% cash back for gasoline, it makes the Costco gas price even lower.

Edited July 16, 2021 by Arcadia
Autocorrect

[SKL]

I have thought about stocking up, but it goes against my grain, so I'm not sure.

The thing I'm most worried about is my coffee, LOL.  Other than vitamins, I think coffee is my most extravagant expense.  But there are reasons it's called my "don't kill the children juice."  😛  

I don't really buy a lot to begin with.  And it seems unlikely we will starve, as we have a paid-off house and no particularly expensive special needs.

[Amethyst]

Other than I-bonds, no. But we’ve been doing I-bonds for years. Stocking up on things, no. 

[TheReader]

We have started to watch our "frivolous" spending some, which is something we haven't had to do in a while. 

We have started noticing shortages of things again in our grocery store, so are returning to a "buy two when they have it" mentality (ie, buying extra when it's there) on some things. 

We have been finding/trying more recipes for cheaper meats, and continue to buy meat on sale and stash in the deep freeze. We also are continuing our homemade stuff we picked up during quarantine (so, today we made tortillas for tacos, instead of buying them), but that's not so much a budget thing as a boredom or convenience thing. Today's was because we had leftover taco meat, but no leftover taco shells, but we did have the recipe/means to make tortillas real quick, so we did that. 

We do gas up where we get gas rewards, but that we've always done. I also have taken on a few extra tutoring situations, which should help if we need it to. Mostly we're pretty well situated, though. 

[Shoeless]

Rather than selling tools and appliances before we move, we are probably going to bring a lot of them with us. It will be a pain, but when you add it up, it would be less expensive to rent a slightly bigger truck than to rebuy all this stuff. I was going to buy a new sofa after we move, but I am considering having my old one reupholstered instead and getting new cushions cut for it. I have to do some price comparisons.

We upgraded all our kitchen gear last year and started a garden. There really isn't a heck of a lot we need right now. We tend to buy second hand for furniture because we like the older wood furniture which fell out of style. It's been significantly cheaper to buy than new stuff. I don't know if that will continue to hold up in the immediate future, but I hope so! 

[Bootsie]

We are happy that we bought a house a couple of years ago when we moved so that we don't face rising housing costs.  We have been rotating some of our investments into things we hope will be more inflation-proof like some commodity ETFs and some ETFs that are valued in foreign currencies.  

[Murphy101]

Mostly we are using swiftly dwindling limited funds to stock up bc my husband was just laid off.  Medical needs. Freezers and pantry. Maintenance in vehicles. School supplies. Paperwork.

oh. I’ve been selling a lot of stuff too. Generally speaking I am not even slightly a hoarder to begin with but since we had to replace flooring in the house and painting and lots of furniture - it just made sense that as I put stuff back I evaluate if I really want to even keep it. Turns out there’s a lot I don’t. And selling it now makes more sense than waiting for the economy to get worse to do it. 

We did get a car loan for the first time in decades a few months ago. I’m glad we got it when we did. Good deal and decent interest. But I’m helping a son find his first car now and wow. There’s slim pickings out there bc everyone is trying to use their money to get decent affordable transport.  Anything worth having below $10k is gone within about 24 hrs.

He did have an interview for a job that said it was virtual/remote work that went great until they insisted he would need to move to Tampa, FL. Travel there a few days 3-4 times a year? Sure. Move? In this economy? In this insane housing market?  For a job that described itself as remote/virtual? Just, why would we take such a huge financial risk for that when it wouldn’t even pay what the previous job did?  No. 

[Carol in Cal.]

Well, I was planning to stock our deep freeze, but our local utility has warned that PSPSs will be longer and more frequent this year, so I have abandoned that idea.

I now have a dehydrator, and plan to dry our unconsumed Fuyu persimmons instead of leaving some out for decoration and the birds.  And I'm overdue for a new to me car and might just buy new for a change, since you don't save nearly as much right now buying used.  That's a big change for me; have not done that since 1989.  I'm gradually building our supplies of OTC medicines and consumables that don't require refrigeration.  But VERY gradually, as in 'buy two rather than one' rather than 'buy a case and stick it under your bed'.  

[Arcadia]

19 minutes ago, Carol in Cal. said:

Well, I was planning to stock our deep freeze, but our local utility has warned that PSPSs will be longer and more frequent this year, so I have abandoned that idea.

PG&E are slowing converting electric overhead lines to underground so hopefully that would reduce the frequency of PSPS for you.

https://www.pge.com/pge_global/common/pdfs/customer-service/other-services/electric-undergrounding-program/Rule20A.pdf

[Shoeless]

I've been looking at the used furniture listings on fb marketplace and craigslist.  Oof, prices are up and inventory is way down.  This is going to come as a shock to DH who still prices everything like it's 1989. Maybe he'll suddenly like our existing stuff a whole lot more when he sees how much it would cost to replace it. 

[Lecka]

We waited on something with a hope the price of lumber would go down.

It has gone down quite a bit here!

But it’s not something we would do in the summer so we will wait and see.

Lumber has been the main thing for us and I guess I have heard it isn’t expected to go back up?

We aren’t hurrying for it now, anyways.  
 

We have a lot of house projects but we are able to be flexible on when we do the different ones, so I think in the Fall we will just see the price of lumber. 

[TravelingChris]

6 hours ago, Murphy101 said:

Mostly we are using swiftly dwindling limited funds to stock up bc my husband was just laid off.  Medical needs. Freezers and pantry. Maintenance in vehicles. School supplies. Paperwork.

oh. I’ve been selling a lot of stuff too. Generally speaking I am not even slightly a hoarder to begin with but since we had to replace flooring in the house and painting and lots of furniture - it just made sense that as I put stuff back I evaluate if I really want to even keep it. Turns out there’s a lot I don’t. And selling it now makes more sense than waiting for the economy to get worse to do it. 

We did get a car loan for the first time in decades a few months ago. I’m glad we got it when we did. Good deal and decent interest. But I’m helping a son find his first car now and wow. There’s slim pickings out there bc everyone is trying to use their money to get decent affordable transport.  Anything worth having below $10k is gone within about 24 hrs.

He did have an interview for a job that said it was virtual/remote work that went great until they insisted he would need to move to Tampa, FL. Travel there a few days 3-4 times a year? Sure. Move? In this economy? In this insane housing market?  For a job that described itself as remote/virtual? Just, why would we take such a huge financial risk for that when it wouldn’t even pay what the previous job did?  No. 

I know my son has a virtual job that has to be in our city.  It is a health care job and I wonder if HIPPA laws or something require it.

[Clarita]

12 hours ago, mommyoffive said:

Are you stocking up on anything?

I stocked up on Clorox wipes. Only because I hadn't seen them for a year and was so excited. We also stocked up on air filters, because we live in CA and we have a new season now called fire season. 

 

8 hours ago, Carol in Cal. said:

our local utility has warned that PSPSs will be longer and more frequent this year,

2 years ago we got more solar and battery walls, because 4 days without electricity was horrible. 

So most things not so much for the inflation but more because I can't trust the supply chain to work.

We are getting a new mortgage because interest rates are ridiculously low.

[Arcadia]

27 minutes ago, Clarita said:

. We also stocked up on air filters, because we live in CA and we have a new season now called fire season. 

Sugar Fire, part of the Beckwourth Complex Fire, burning in the Plumas National Forest is currently the largest for California. Friends have bought more n95 just in case. There is currently 11 fire of interest. https://www.fire.ca.gov/incidents/

[mommyoffive]

Shrinkflation is happening across grocery stores - here are 14 of the most extreme examples, from toilet paper to candy bars (msn.com)

[Carrie12345]

“This phenomenon, known as shrinkflation, was already happening before the coronavirus pandemic, but is set to get worse because of rising labor costs and ingredients prices combined with soaring demand and a shipping crisis.“

Yeah, definitely been noticing it for some time. I’ve always hated how dollar stores have been manipulating that way forever.

I wonder how it impacts/will impact warehouse stores?  I haven’t used one in ages because their per unit prices so rarely beat grocery sales. But I’d start if they held more steady. 

[hjffkj]

47 minutes ago, mommyoffive said:

Shrinkflation is happening across grocery stores - here are 14 of the most extreme examples, from toilet paper to candy bars (msn.com)

this has been happening for years though,  but I imagine it is going to ramp up a bit more now. 

[ScoutTN]

Small scale stocking up. We live in a very small house with no garage or basement, so not much extra room.
 

As Reader said, reducing frivolous or unnecessary spending.

May be buying some Christmas gifts quite early, as soon as we make August tuition payments. I’d like to have one nice thing for each person purchased by Sept.

[hjffkj]

Just now, ScoutTN said:

Small scale stocking up. We live in a very small house with no garage or basement, so not much extra room.
 

As Reader said, reducing frivolous or unnecessary spending.

May be buying some Christmas gifts quite early, as soon as we make August tuition payments. I’d like to have one nice thing for each person purchased by Sept.

getting christmas gifts early isn't a bad idea at all. This is usually around the time I start shopping anyway but maybe I'll start working on the list of people to shop for this weekend and inventory the gifts we already have.

[mommyoffive]

Anyone who is shopping for holiday stuff for little kids both Walmart and Target have a toy clearance going on now. 

[prairiewindmomma]

@Clarita, I assume you have inverters, etc. so you can access power when the network is down? Are you happy with your system? Would you please share more about it? 

Many of our neighbors have solar but don’t have any sort of storage going on or the ability to un-tie from the grid. For us, as we design our system, that is a total must-have. 

———-

For us, we are less concerned about inflation at this precise moment and we are a bit more concerned about supply chain. Clothing here is still glitchy. We dug through racks of clothes recently trying to find anything in a particular size. Certain styles of things are difficult to acquire. We did our fire season prep back in March-April and we have been working on clothing restocking (all of the kids changed sizes) for a couple of months now. We finally found a proper raincoat for dd (which are almost all imported). 
 

We put off buying a car (a vehicle died in March) and a home improvement project. We can live without either, but we hope some price corrections will happen in the next 6-9 months as chips and milled lumber begin to flow more freely.

[Clarita]

1 hour ago, prairiewindmomma said:

@Clarita, I assume you have inverters, etc. so you can access power when the network is down? Are you happy with your system? Would you please share more about it? 

We just got the Tesla power walls and Tesla took care of it all (they were also by far the cheapest). Yes it has the panels, the batteries and a power converter. It comes with an app where you can track your solar production, set up how you want to use your solar, and track your power usage. We set it up so between 4-9pm we use our own generated battery, and we have a 30% reserve on the battery for power outages.

I really like it. I don't have to worry about power outages anymore. Occasionally we have to hose off the solar panels. Installation was a breeze, my husband went and took some pictures of our roof and sent it to them (you can choose for them to do that part), they sent us back designs and you can change them if you don't like the solar panel placement for aesthetics, and they sent a crew that took care of the whole system.

My friend's currently getting it done and she says Tesla is swamped right now and their installation experience hasn't been as great as ours. (Slower response on things, their main project leader hasn't been responsive, but they got some other representative to help them with their issues/questions, install slot is months out).