Friday, August 20, 2010

Keeping Up with the Cost of Living

[EDIT] Blog has been moved to http://freedom-thirtyfive.blogspot.com/

Over the course of our work life the obvious assumption is that we make more money as we become more experienced in our careers. But with everything from food to housing becoming so expensive these days I'm led to believe that we will always be losing real purchasing power because our pay raises will never grow as fast as that of the cost of living.

A combo meal at McDonald's was only $4 twenty years ago, but today it's $8. That means if we were making $40,000 back then, we would have to be making more than $80,000 today (factoring in a higher tax bracket) in order to buy the same amount of meals. Here's a graphic that shows how other things have changed in Vancouver, in the last 20 years.





Are we slowly becoming poorer without even realizing it? I especially empathize with the younger work force. We pay astronomical amounts for school, graduate with insurmountable debt, and often can't even find jobs in our field of study.

My friend who also works in computer graphics said his starting salary when he entered the field in 1998 was $40,000, which is a bit higher than what my starting salary was. And I started working in 2008. So on top of fighting price inflation on the spending side, I was also met with salary deflation, how fair is that. I admit I was at least lucky enough to find work right out of school, but I still feel like my post secondary education isn't worth as much as it used to. I just hope the young adults of today will somehow find a way to still live a modest to prosperous life despite these challenging times.

3 comments:

  1. Excellent post. It's nice to know everything is increasing except wages...

    ReplyDelete
  2. My goodness, your infographic post is excellent!!!

    I hate inflation.

    =(

    You forgot stamps, I think.

    I'm such a geek I love buying the "P" stamps because you can still try to use them 10 years down the road as long as it still sticks lol.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Great to see young people need to know how they will fit in and retire not poor. Savings and investing is down, but costs are rising. I am at the leading edge of the Baby Boomers, and have left space for you to pick up and run with it. As we age we depend on you to retire us in style, with pensions and medicines, while you grow a lifestyle of housing and family needs. We count on your success as governments fail us all. Bismark set the age of pensions at 65 after he learned that was the actuary death age. They never planned to pay a pension! Now with better health and foods we out live the 65, but do not fund it, counting on government pensions, or the lottery?
    Invest in commodities, Canada has plenty to share for those who need it. Retired!

    ReplyDelete