According to The Experts, Inflation Will Soon Be Stagflation

UPDATED: When I wrote this yesterday, I made a huge typo. Our assessment was raised by $ 140,000. not $ 40,000. It has been corrected! Now you see why we were so SHOCKED!

Bank Of America’s Global Fund Manager recently said that professional investors are growing increasingly gloomy about the future with the majority now predicting that stocks will fall into a bear market this year and the U.S. economy will be plagued by stagflation. Stagflation means high inflation and slow economic growth.

The Federal Reserve is trying to prevent this by raising interest rates. Will it work? I’m not sure because it could cool the hot labor market. Time will tell. I am just hoping that we don’t go back to the high prices of the 1970’s. Prices are high enough now and affecting the every day lives of Americans in a bad way. Now the government wants to print more money to advance quantum technology. Up go the prices again! Ugh!

So we are trying to get ready to survive all of this. We are doing many things to try to spend less than we ever have before which is not easy with so many things increasing in price. Hence we have to tighten where we can. We are retired so we only have so much money to work with and it is getting devalued every day just like every other American.

First let me tell you what we can’t do anything about. I told you yesterday the town we live in raised our assessment again. After a few years of $30,000 and $40,000 increases, this year they raised us by $140,000. We were shocked. Everyone in this neighborhood was raised but no one but us was raised that much. From the research that Hubby did, the seniors who live in here were raised more proportionately than anyone else. That is because most seniors live in ranches and those are the homes that increased the most. Many people must have complained to the town to the point they felt they had to send a letter out to all of us explaining that it should only be a 15% tax increase when all is said and done. Well Hubby checked ours and our increase will be over $750. and that is just the property tax. It will also affect our school taxes in September. Our total combined taxes will be almost $12,000. We fought our assessment last year and got nowhere. What had happened to all of us in here is that a new builder came in and is building homes extending our neighborhood. They are still building but about 70% of the neighborhood is finished and they most likely will finish the rest within a year. So the town took our 12 and 13 year old homes and increased us to their prices. My home has no other one that even comes close to being like ours so they just seem to randomly raise us. Ugh! Those new homes sold in the high $ 400,000.’s to $635,000. range. I wonder when the housing market crashes if they will lower us.. I doubt it! I have also realized that our homeowner insurance company will raise us next March to the cost of rebuilding the house. They do this every year. It just went up almost $100 this past March along with our automobile insurance which went up by $63.

However, we are tracking every penny we spend and lowering bills where we can. We are cancelling subscription services that we have deemed unnecessary. I lowered the Netflix service plan that we pay for Alexa after they raised their prices.

We are eating much simpler meals more like when I was living with my mom and grandparents. My grandmother, grandfather, and their children survived the Great Depression by watching the size of portions, making lots of casseroles and soups, and doing all of their cooking from scratch. If cooking from scratch and eating 1/2 of a boiled potato, a couple of tablespoons of a vegetable, and a very small piece of meat was good enough for them and while I was growing up, it is good enough today. I was never overweight when I was growing up so they fed us properly. People today eat way too much food. We only had some chips and popcorn as a treat every other month. Sure, I like junk food too but we rarely buy it anymore. It’s expensive and has no nutritional value. Soda came in a quart bottle and we made it last at least a week or two. If you were thirsty, you could have a glass of water. We have cut our portions of all foods including meat and try to make as much food as we can from scratch. We now have a meatless meal at least twice a week if not three times. We are getting our protein from meat, peanut butter, vegetables, and beans.

We purchased one beef tenderloin a month or so ago and had it cut into filet mignons. It is grilling season and we will make it last all summer. We purchase no other steak. I only buy organic ground beef when it is on sale at Aldi’s and I buy it in bulk. I just purchased 13 lbs. this past week. I have quit purchasing chicken unless it is on sale and looks good. The chicken at Top’s has gone way down in quality and so we don’t buy from them anymore. I try to get chicken legs and thighs when I can. We eat 4 oz. portions of meat or poultry. We buy salmon and haddock when it is on sale at a good price. Right now we have haddock but no salmon.

We are not adverse to eating tuna, canned chicken, beef, pork, and turkey when the price is lower than fresh. Frozen meats are almost as expensive in my area as fresh. A pound of ground beef makes two meals for us. Four small chicken legs go into the air fryer and make a meal for us. I buy reduced price meat when I can find it. That does not happen often these days. But I always look for it. We rarely purchase cold cuts but when we do we buy them at Niagara Produce because they are much cheaper and fresher there. They are usually used in a Chef’s salad. There will be lots of salads for dinner this summer.

I have so many more things that we are doing including making our own Keto ice cream but this post is getting long and I have to do some prep work for dinner. This post will be continued tomorrow.

How are you guys saving money these days? We all learn from each other.