Just read on FB a young mum bemoaning the fact it costs £45 for her teenage lad to attend the high #school prom, plus around £200 for suit hire (for just 4 hours!). Some other mums are trying to help her, but I was just thinking "why the fuck did we import this whole concept from the USA in the first place?" What was wrong with the "end of term school disco?"
Rates for phone, broadband and water services will increase from Monday, while consumers also face rises in the TV licence fee, vehicle tax, dental charges and council tax.
Don't get me wrong about the linked news bulletin on public sector wages. I am very very very happy and grateful (especially to my Union!) to be getting a 3% raise as of April 1st. This is one of the biggest single-year raises I’ve had in 23.5 years working at VIU.
But the cost of a loaf of bread has increased by 100%, and no I am not exaggerating, in the past year alone so....
I just looked at my taxes going back to 2008.
In 2008 I made $65,342. Last year (2023) I made $77,342. Next year I should make about $79,662. Overall that’s an increase in 16 years of 21.9% or 1.4% per year on average.
According to the Bank of Canada inflation calculator, $100 in 2008 is $141.53 today.
We just received our "jaarafrekening". This is the final yearly invoice sent by our energy company. They are about to pay us €252, and we will continue to pay them €5 per month next year, just like last year. i.e. overall our energy company is paying us about €200 for last year's electricity. Everything in our home is powered by electricity. No gas connection. No wood burner.
Nothing that we've done to achieve a negative energy bill was especially expensive. In particular, our installation of a air-air heat pump and a couple of extra solar panels cost far less than several of our neighbours paid for the wood burning stoves they've installed, which stink up the neighbourhood all through winter.
We also don't have to buy wood to burn.
People concerned about the cost of heating with gas buy woodburners at a higher rate than heat pumps largely because they have no idea about the relative costs. If they knew, perhaps we could have clean air.
I'll write a comprehensive blog post at the end of March about energy consumption, costs & emissions due to the heatpump vs. gas this winter. I can tell you already that we using a lot less total energy now.
Only £1 over the direct debit for Gas & electricity this month (credit on the account deals with this). Seeing how standing charges account for around £23 of the total and the stupid cost of electricity I'm not sure how we could do any better and considering what i see some others paying per month we're getting by without too much in the way of shocks.
Pisser is we were paying a third of this only a few years ago. #CostOfLiving#GasAndElectricity#UK