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Inflation

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Anecdotally it's definitely more common than it used to be.

Go back 30 years and certainly in my experience people mowed their own lawns, cleaned their own gutters, washed their own dog and so on. Anyone who didn't was either bona fide rich or was physically unable to do it themselves.

Today there's enough people running a business doing it that someone must be using their services.
 
Going by my own observation, I've noticed that us millennials (and a lot of x'ers) are working so much/living in dual income households that it's a question of time rather than money.

You know, work more to get more money then end up spending the extra money paying people to do the things you'd be doing yourself if you weren't working so much to get the money you're then using to pay them.

The one that seems to be bringing everyone to their financial knees is childcare - childcare is the one thing that's so expensive that it's just *not* worth the extra time at work if you have to pay $$$$ in childcare to do it.


But taking care of your children is a labour of love whereas mopping the floor or mowing the lawn or cleaning the gutters is just ******* shite so they're not really equivalents either. Not to mention that grandparents can (and want to) do a day of childcare whereas manual labour they don't/can't.
 
I think it is a matter of value, as older generation, money is more than a number on a monthly bank statement.
So we are frugal by habits and are number litterate.
So in this subject, we always compute:
What is the cost of childcare, what is the cost of a gardener, how much do I earn per hour, after cost, after travel time and after taxes: my taxes on income, the GST I have to pay and do I beat that supplier if I can do the job.
Once skills and specific tooling required are taken into account, very few jobs are worth employing an external supplier vs the home diy.
But the skills I gained during both education and years of hobby farming are not comparable to the average suburban dweller, nor the content of the shed tools ...you need the right tools
so yes I immunize or ring my cattle, I lack the skill of butchering a steer, but not chooks, doing earth works with a tractor.and I can and do weld, solder, put a slab, build a frame or repair a dishwasher.so do you think I will pay someone to clean my pool or mow my lawn?
Yet I do not think most millennials(aka 1 generation down, not targetting them especially) would be able to service a mower or change an oven light bulb
And it even reached a point where I gave up paid job as the sum of freed time and gain of non spending was imho worth the loss.
But that is past generation, us aka most of the posters here
China gave us cheap tools making it worthwhile (with the help of overpriced and overtaxed Australia) to buy a tool for one task.
The internet and YouTube provided us with free skill and tips : google is your friend so the can do man is on a roll .
But the very same internet, collapse of educational system brough us FB, Netflix, and mental laziness (to be kind).
"We are so busy" but how long a day do you spend on Netflix or your smartphone, or drilling on drug legal or not inc alcohol...
So what will happen if people can not afford a gardener, a painter , a landscaper ? Well you see it in any lower economic area or country: it turns to sxxt: the lawn turns into a tip/mess, the paint peels, the roof collapses and the people vote socialist blaming big money, while the out of work more enterprising former landscaper or dog washer turn into black market or whatever the next undeclared activity is.
I sometimes wonder why we even debate these subjects as we have clear cut example: for me, I use France as I obviously know much about it, but the UK or some of the US states (Ohio anyone) can tell us out the same tales: what does an un-developing country becomes/turn into and what become of the service economy:
Drugs, black market cigarettes and alcohol, prostitution and street market of stolen goods for the new entrepreneurs.
 
my folksy Friday morning read from Jarad Dillian
.
March 14, 2024

How to Beat Food Inflation​

Short answer: You can’t.

There have been some economists (like Paul Krugman) who have pointed out that the rate of inflation for food has slowed considerably in recent months. Hence, take a victory lap. But that does not tell the entire story.

The real story is that a few years ago, food purchases made up 6.5% of disposable income, and now it is 11.3%, which is the highest since the early 1990s.

I think one of the hallmarks of economic progress is that the cost of necessities goes down over time. In America, we have seen food and shelter costs go up a lot—I would not characterize this as progress.....
 
Spot on, M le Frog.

Though it is nice when the younger ones prove themselves. One aspect they do well is networking, and organising, possibly because of time constraints as you point out.

The point about numeracy is important, too, because it allows decisions to be made.

My son, an academic, a chercheur, is handy and recently moved home. He did the usual DIY to make the old place presentable and has a series of room upgrades in the new place. ...because an older well located shtbox is preferable to new suburbicide. He sources help from the 'net when needed and has found it's easy and better value to buy a secondhand tool online, use it for the job and onsell than to hire from Kennards. And having mates with differing skills, there seems to be informal bartering
 
My grandmother came over to OZ from Ireland before WW1 broke out.
She , along with a lot of other young women from the Uk and Ireland, came to work as live in housekeeper/maid/cook/child minder for a wealthy family in Kew. When she "retired" from that, she used to take in laundry and ironing for single men who lived in boarding houses without many facilities. I remember as a kid in the days when disposable nappies were yet to be readily available and cotton or "terry Towelling" reusable nappies were the go, there was a service called Nappy Wash which used to collect soiled nappies in a bucket and replace them with clean ones. It was a serivice that was probably out of reach of most people. We only got it because my mother won a years supply in some womens weekly competition. She was extremely grateful, as in those eary days she cleaned the nappies by boiling them in a briquette heated copper in the outside laundry.
I also remember men going door to door looking to odd jobs when work may have been a tad more irregular.
So no, this idea of outsourcing the unpleasant or unwanted tasks is not a new phenomenon.
Mick
 
Hit the nail on the head, I vote QldFrog for PM.

It's across the field in the workplaces here also. When I did my trade I had to learn about every aspect of working on a motor car. I was a proper motor mechanic, I learnt how to solder and repair radiators, learnt how to rebuild drivetrain differentials, learnt how to rebuild automatics, learnt how to wheel align cars, even though I worked in a shop doing mainly suspension, engine and servicing and maintenance work. I've brought this up before with @sptrawler, now the govt training system is focusing on individualising these sections of the trade, so for e.g. you can become a wheel alignment specialist but you can't legally service a car. Lose your job as a wheel aligner what other opportunities do you have in the same industry?
 
Some people aren't even picking up their own take away anymore, I mean look at the spread of Uber eats.

Adam Smith predicted it 300 years ago when he said - Adam Smith famously said in The Wealth of Nations that the division of labour is limited by the extent of the market. This is because it is by the exchange that each person can be specialised in their work and yet still have access to a wide range of goods and services.
 

Disposable income and easy credit.

When I got my first home in 1990 I, with the help of friends and family, repaired and painted all the interior walls and ceilings before moving in. And then, over the years before children, my wife and I removed the carpets and polished the floors, prepared the children's rooms, improved the front and rear yards. We didn't have much money and didn't like the idea of using credit or borrowing money.

Later as our incomes improved and time became rare as our family grew and different priorities came along, including school activities, sports and coaching, and so on, we started hiring trades to renovations and other things around the house.

Now we pay a gardener to mow the lawns and keep all the bushes and trees trimmed, because we are traveling more and use our limited time for other things we enjoy.

We can afford it, but I worry about the way the modern cashless system fool's youth into thinking they can add all the easy stuff to the mortgage and credit card.

Easy money is a big part of inflation, and it will become worse as cash disappears. When there is a limited amount of money in your wallet you think twice about spending it, when there is easy access to funds on your phone or card the purchase become easier.
 
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As economies become more and more advanced, labour naturally gets more and more specialised, and that means we can produce more and more products and services.

Being a Jack or all trades can be fun and its especially good if you enjoy pottering around on home projects, But it can a huge draw back if your career has opportunities to specialise that pay very well.

for example a heart surgeon can earn hundreds of dollars per hour, can you imagine going home early because you want to mow the lawn? saving 2 hours by paying Jim’s mowing and ordering Uber eats can be to your advantage if it lets you work in your specialised field longer, or complete more study.
 
Yeah, we are all constantly making value judgements, I find it worth while to mow my own lawn, it’s a bit of exercise and makes me feel better about flying business class.

But, they thing with value is it has to be weighed against other options, and just because one person doesn’t find value in it, doesn’t mean it’s not a valuable option for another person with a different lifestyle and different budget.
 
over9k said:
The one that seems to be bringing everyone to their financial knees is childcare - childcare is the one thing that's so expensive that it's just *not* worth the extra time at work if you have to pay $$$$ in childcare to do it.
Click to expand...

A hidden form of inflation, not in the strict sense but in terms of costs for the middle class, is changing societal expectations.

These days children are definitely far more heavily supervised and kept a watch on to an older age than used to be the case. Back when I was a boy the expectation was to grow up fast and basically the whole of society pushed that along firmly.

Changing societal norms are a hidden cost increase there.
 


I'm actually in a similar position to QldFrog as I'm retired, and I look at life as if it's a never ending learning curve. I look after a few rentals and if I had to rely on every job being done by a tradie I would have long been broke and 9 times out of 10 I can do a better job because most people don't give a dam about the quality of work they do these days. I can usually make good decisions before most of these tradies in any case as I have years of experience in self repairs. It's like when the plumber started to jack hammer all the cement to find an underground leak, I said stop right there and just run a new pipe and bypass the leak under the cement.

I'm not a brain surgeon so I wouldn't make that type of money in my field but going back to work for me is pointless, as it pushes me into a higher tax bracket and I would end up broke by paying people to do all the maintenance I do.
 
Yeah, if you are retired and therefore given up on your specialised career, then the more odd jobs you can do yourself the better, because you are basically becoming self employed in the same way a subsistence farmer is self employed.

But, for people Still working in specialised industries, with the ability to do more specialised work, it is often not worth the time to divert their labour into lower valued areas If it meant being able to achieve less in their high valued area.

We all kind of know this automatically, when we see a bag of rice costs $4 and it takes us less than 5 minutes to earn $4 the chances we can grow a bag of rice with 5 minutes labour is not great. So it’s best to outsource the rice farming.

90% of people used to work in agriculture, now its about 1%, that is what has raised our standard of living, freeing up that other 89% of labour to specialise into other areas.
 
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I did a fencing quote for a family a couple of days ago.
Seemed very likeable and easy to get on with.
Nothing hard about the job. T
he bit that amazed me is the swimming pool fence that surrounds the said pool.
The Shire in their wisdom have blacklisted it after OK'ing it 4 years ago.
Now it is not rocket science to make the alterations to make how God the pool inspector wants it.
Undo four clips on each panel and lift to the correct height and re-assemble.
He is a highly schooled university lecturer, me, left school at 15 and am reasonably good the hands and the brain when it decides to function.
Horses for courses.
 

things do go down in value over time, 250 years ago, according to Adam Smith the average worker in scotland earned a 5 pound bag of oats per week. the average worker earns that in 15 mins now.

prices go up and down in the short term, but the trend is that over longer periods our buying power for a hour of labour is going up.
 
Value Collector said:
I do think everyone should have some exposure to international markets, but should probably ignore Bitcoin.

Every Thursday my super allocation for that week gets put in at the following ratio.
Click to expand...

Nice mix. I had 100% Australian shares in my super in the past but changed it to 30% in recent years. I understand wanting to support local companies. The PE is lower so sounds appealing to buy Aus shares for cheap. But the companies here are really quite stagnant. A lot of bloated banks who have a monopoly here but are absolutely non-competitive internationally. Miners who don't seem they'll be liquid in a few years. A lot of scammy small random companies.

One Australian company that I actually liked is Atlassian. Global. High growth. Innovative. Here I was thinking it was dual-listed on the ASX but nope, NASDAQ only!
 
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