It's Too Expensive Here!

[Rich One]

For us in a non-metered Water building can't do a thing .... Flush once a day for ·#2 ? , shower with a friend? Curse the portero for wasting water when washing the sidewalk ??

 

[dennisr]

Welcome to the world of realistic energy costs, today's inflation woes. More importantly, inflation this go around is not the result of some idiot printing $$$ to subsidize a dog and pony show economy.

 

[fcoulombe]

i find this month to be particularly bad. Basically, everything that I buy seems to be more expensive than what you would pay in a first world country. It feels like it wasn't the case before.

I'm going with the assumption that prices kept going up assuming that the peso would lose its value at the usual constant rate when the peso actually went from 16 slowly back to 14 which seems to make everything quite expensive when you convert to how many dollars stuff is worth.

locro de 25 de mayo in a normal corner place.... 130$! i thought locro became popular for being something cheap to make!

I'm guessing things will rebalance themselves soon enough otherwise you'll see argentine migrating to bolivia.

 

[ElQueso]

One must find ways to save on costs. We've gone from all of us going out to eat together 3-4 times a month to my wife and I going out to eat once, maybe twice a month, and at cheap places as well. We don't go out and do anything as a family hardly anymore. A movie now costs us $675 pesos for one outing together (that's about $9.31 USD a ticket! and without 3D...and just the ticket price. The snacks to go along with now about 400 pesos for all, so over $1000 pesos) when I remember first coming here it cost about 12 pesos, or $4 USD a ticket (actually a little less, because the exchange rate when I first came was about 2.9 - 1). I got sick recently, for about two weeks and took advantage of that to try (again) to quit smoking - not only because it's good for my health, but because cigarettes went up in one week from 26 pesos a pack to 50 pesos a pack. And that's not due to inflation, but rather a supposed "temporary" "sin" tax (I really hate sin taxes - probably almost as much as income taxes though not as much as death taxes). And don't give me any shit about it being a good tax because it's good for the health...

I'm blown away by people who are paying $5K a month for electricity - I thought I had it bad, never had subsidies in the last 6 years, and I went from paying about $800 every two months to paying about $1600 now every month (which is a huge increase, for sure). I can understand things like utilities going up, but I can't understand things like the gouging that is going on by businesses as even locally-produced products (food in particular) climbs higher and faster than the rate of inflation.

I don't know how many of you know about places like Vital (there's one near Abasto shopping), where you can buy stuff 1) cheaper than normal at retail prices and 2) buy in bulk for prices at a wholesale level (without any requirements). I went for the first time Wednesday and spent $5K on all kinds of stuff, from cleaning supplies, shampoo and such, all the way to food and drinks. I easily saved 50% on stuff I would normally buy at the supermarket. They have carts similar to what one would use in Home Depot to carry the stuff (only a bit bigger and just flat ones). Our oldest and I went and piled the thing as high as we could with merchandise. We calculated everything we were putting on the cart as we loaded it and by the time we got to the checkout lines, we calculated roughly $4700 pesos (the total was actually $4900) but we were carrying so much stuff we thought there was no way it could be so cheap - surely it would have been more like $10K! but no, we were only a couple of hundred pesos off in our calculations and as we loaded the back of my car full, I almost felt like I was stealing it was so 9relatively) cheap!

Of course, I can remember when I used to go to Jumbo Palermo or Pilar (when we lived out there) and fill up a grocery cart and a half and feel like I was being ripped off when it cost around $1100 pesos because Jumbo was expensive, but they had good stuff - at 3-1 (when I would buy from Jumbo) that was roughly $365 USD while our trip to Vital cost about $344 USD - not much of a savings relatively, and about the same amount of product purchased (although way fewer luxuries now compared to what I would have bought in the past at Jumbo). Goes to show how even discount places are as expensive as retail used to be, but are still a good deal because I saved about 50% over what I normally would have spent at the super - or I got about twice as much as recently normal, while paying the same, however you want to look at it.

In all of this, I don't know how the average Argentino is dealing with this and I sympathize deeply, while at the same time remembering that it is they and their way of thinking about government that allowed this to happen...again.

For those of us who are stuck here because of whatever relationships or commitments we may have that don't allow us to leave, well, it's not very fun to experience - and worse if you are earning in pesos as well!

 

[Rich One]

It can't last much longer ..... It will not get better until mid 2017.

 

[fcoulombe]

I doubt the country will hold a whole year on yankee prices

 

[Noesdeayer]

BaKaZoO :
I don't doubt it at all. It lasted on Yankee prices for about 7 years from 1994 until 2001 during Menem's US dollar peg.Prices here were the same as in NYC.It was one peso= one U$D and you got them over the counter at any bank.Of course,it was all a trick and a mirage but it lasted a long time and in the end ruined the economy.It's like Lanata says Argentines live on "wishful thinking" and heavy hedging..All pie in the sky .Hopefully,Macri's policies will bring some of them down to earth.Only time will tell.
In Ecuador Correa's dollar peg is now backfiring on him also. A country needs their own currency with low inlation .It's the only way to go.

 

[fcoulombe]

I'm more looking at the cost of life than the peso to dollar.
This is hard to calculate but the cost of life since 2010 was roughly 1000$ a month. (No family, no car, dpto in Palermo and going out every now and again)
And it feels like that price was maintained fairly well despite what was happening.
You could live relatively well but couldn't save much money.

Now, I'm trying to calculate how much it costs per month (in dollars) and I feel we've at least doubled. (I could be wrong). It's now looking more like 2000$ is the price which is a very high figure considering how much the average person earns.

Was it the same during menem s time?

 

[Ceviche]

Personally I have felt my expenses have increased by at least 50% percent since Jan 16 in terms of USD only.

My rent is not affected as I had signed the leased with a fixed USD rent for 2 years. And I am so glad about it. Probabably the best decision in recent years.

 

[fcoulombe]

It could have started in Jan and I didn't noticed. I spent a month and a half out and was a bit in the clouds until this month.
My rent is about what it should be (500$ between 2 people) but I signed in Jan 2015 with 6 months increase.

The rest is starting to be off the chart.

I'm ok with the utility stuff since it was way too cheap. When people run air conditioning with the door wide open, you know there s a problem.