When I first moved here, my rates were $670 PA, now $3700. & years ago I suggested in a letter to the editor that if rates continued increasing at the then current rate, [like it], they would exceed my total income in a few years. I don't know if that helped, but they stopped rising.

Power has gone from $300 a quarter to $300 a month, despite some reduced usage.

Hy house & contents insurance has gone from $1200 just 3 years ago to $3700 this year.

My groceries have gone from $100 to $170 a week in just a year or so.

Car registration has sky rocketed along with fuel, about the only thing that has gone down is my car insurance now I have my "special" cars on club registration.

Any suggestions for saving in this bright new overpriced world?

Any suggestions for saving in this bright new overpriced world?
Hasbeen,
I don't know how many more times it has to be suggested before the hangers-on elite will be forced to live by their merit like most normal folk & adjust salaries accordingly.
Flat Tax & remove negative gearing & a National Service. Problem solved & problem people put in their place !

Any suggestions for saving in this bright new overpriced world?

Move you into a bedsit in Dogville with Indyvidual, and have both your government welfare payments cut by 95%. Very reasonable, would you not agree.

>Any suggestions for saving in this bright new overpriced world?
Rooftop solar, obviously!

Hi Hassy,

No need for a bedsite with Indy, I was wrong on that score.How about sustainable agriculture, grow your own. The excess you can trade with neighbours or sell at the local 'Farmers' market. In those costs you list, there seems to be plenty of unnecessary fat, trim that fat for starters. Our Fijian family live a lot cheaper than you, about $200 Fiji a month, and no pension.

Bit hard to do that here Paul, when I have to pay almost twice that to keep a bunch of useless bureaucrats sitting on their fattening ass at the town hall, just to live in my own house.

It is pretty obvious that you have never grown anything useful in your life, or you would know it actually costs more to produce small quantities of food in your back yard, than to buy it at the super market.