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.

Not so Hassy,

Don't you have about 30 acres with ample water? My wife worked as a child in the family garden, the maim garden was about 5 acres and the house garden was smaller, they grew about 20 different kinds of vegetables, a good permanent water supply from a spring and creek, had no pumps, just watering cans, and 44 gal drums. They had very little money, and 12 kids, living in a 'Homestead' with dirt floors, no running water, a wood stove and no electricity, plenty of wood for the fire. They supplied themselves and other family with produce, they got fruit from the whanau (family) orchard. When a beast was slaughtered, or a wild pig was shot, they got a share, no one staved. They kept a milking cow, chickens. Gathered kai (food) from the bush, eels from the creeks were plentiful, the wife loves smoked eel, and sea food was always plentiful. When the wife is back home, she loves her 'rotten corn' and kina, both an experience for the taste buds. I'll stick to the paua, oysters, mussels, lobsters, raw, cooked or smoked fish and crayfish and other things from the sea, but not kina.

In the Islands did you ever go to a lovo (Maori Hangi), well I've been to a few and the food is sensational, both in quality and quantity.

Inflation is just another form of tax;
When governments expand the money supply by borrowing and spending too much
- But don't receive enough tax to cover that spending.
They screw us over one way or they screw us over another way.

Inflation is the inevitable by-product of greed which can be broken down to mismanagement, incompetence, plain stupidity, lack of foresight, lack of common sense, lack of discipline & above all the removal of merit by the use of the Peter Principle !

Indy,

You astound me, you are simply an economic genius! Why arn't you the Governor of the Reserve Bank, or better still Treasurer of Australia. I know, some horrible "burotoid" found your application and tore it up! I am disgusted!

$18 a dozen: how did America’s eggs get absurdly expensive?
http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2023/jan/25/18-a-dozen-how-did-americas-eggs-get-absurdly-expensive

"Attempts to smuggle eggs across the US-Mexico border have surged, US border patrol says, with the agency reporting that the number of egg and poultry seizures rose 108% from 1 October to 31 December."

- Stupid Americans -

That certainly wasn't in SE Queensland Paul.

My experience.
Leaf crops need too many nasty sprays to beat the grubs.

Root crops, can produce but require far too much water pumped to be economical, onions excepted.

Tomatoes OK, particularly cherry type. Corn OK if neighbors cattle don't break in. Strawberries OK

Trees. Apple, apricot peach citrus all require too much nasty chemical to beat the fruit fly.
Even if used, Lorikeets eat apples to hanging cores before half grown, even if netted. Crows & magpie pick holes in green citrus. Every thing attacks Peaches Plumbs & Apricots.
White cockatoos destroy even the vines of passion-fruit
White Mulberries & Brazilian grapes produce so quickly & massively the birds do leave you enough.
Dragon fruit if netted you can get some before the blue faced honey eaters destroy them.
The wild dogs have destroyed most edible game, leaving only kangaroos & said neighbors cattle to shoot, not really allowed.
I'm not yet ready to eat my dogs, cats or horses.

With the river 450 meters down the paddock & 24 meters below the plain, [50 meters below the house paddock], pumping water is expensive. Supermarket fruit & Veg is much cheaper, if not as tasty.

Hasbeen,
Surely your local Green Member will be able to point you to a reliable alternative energy gadget that'll pump your water up from the measly 50 meters ?

Hi Hassy,

With fruit and veg. Why are you shopping at the supermarket? Woolies and Coles are generally outrageous with their fresh food prices, meat F&V the lot. We shop in much cheaper places, I'm not exaggerating, just today the wife wanted 'komera' (sweet potato) we were in Woolworths getting milk, said get a komera for dinner tonight, $5.99/kg, no way, 1/2 a rock melon $5. No I'll stop on the way home at our regular bloke, komera $1.29/kg up from 99c last week, 2 beautiful 'rockies' 2 for $5. The other day at the Asian shop 'Bok Choy' very fresh 5 in a bag $2, Woolies 1 limp item for $2.49! With tomatoes I get a bag of "those on the turn", getting too ripe, quick sale, about 4kgs/$2.49, keep a few in the fridge for eating in salads over the next week, rest into boiling water, skinned and into the freezer in 2l ice cream container, use in cooking, good for about 6 months, We pickle some things, wife makes the best mustard pickles,and tomato chutney. For the spices we buy the larger bags from the 'Fijian Indian Shop' for $3, at the supermarket $3 a tiny jar name brand.

One for AC, have you been to the 'Golden Circle' outlet at Capalaba, not far from you, some stuff is cheap as chips, 2L/Juices $1 or 12 box for $10, lots more items, big shop and not just 'Golden Circle' brand products. 'Arnotts' biscuits 3 for $5, some $1 each.

Hi Paul,
Yes I have been to Golden Circle, but not for a long time.
Maybe the last time I went was just as the pandemic was starting to take hold.
I bought up a big heap of tinned stuff and other bits and pieces, and then went into that butchers a few doors up and bought a whole freezers worth of various meat.
Roasts and rib fillets to slice up at home etc.
I remember when Golden Circle first opened and it was called Co-Co's I think.
I think they even have a cheap day once a month for seniors and pensioners - extra 10% off everything if I remember correctly.

I was reading along your comment and thinking to myself 'Yeah Woolies really is a rip-off these days, he's not wrong - where's he getting all this cheap stuff'.
- Now you've made me want to go and check it all out again.
Where are you getting all the cheap fruit and veg?

The big stores Coles and Woolies, they really aren't at all good value for money anymore, you go in there walk out with one bag of groceries and it costs you $50.
They pretend to care about value for money, but there seems to be little truth to it, all about profits.

Hi AC,

I to go to that butcher, sometimes, but not much value in our area for meat. There's a bloke on Logan Rd whose good value on some meat, wife likes a load of pork bones for 'boil up' from him, he was $3.99/kg with a bit of meat on. and I turn some of them into bacon bones in the smoker, takes a week of prep with salt, brown sugar etc, but I'm told they're the best bacon bones in town. Get meat from the step-son in Toowoomba, good quality bulk, he's got 4kids, so not a problem, that butcher was doing his shop made snags at 10kg for $80, I think if you spend $200 with him, they're not bad snags.. When there are down they stop at Costco's, they are cheaper, but you got to buy a bit. Fruit and Veg, the bloke on Old Cleveland Rd is not bad, but the bloke on Tingal Rd at Wynnum is good, got the Bok Choy at Sunnybank. I only go to the Fijian shop about once a year, its on the north side, so a bit of a hike. The wife likes his tinned mutton....a bit fatty! but a change from that shocking fatty tinned corn beef (older) Maori like. Our young Maori kids, wont touch half the stuff the oldies enjoy, like turoturo, (pigs small intestine). The wife had the niece get her 6kg from an Asian butcher in Sydney, frozen, brought it up on the plane last time. Young niece said to me that stuff is disgusting, but I would only do it for Aunty.

I'm not sure what supermarket Hassy shops at, but Aldi is the best on price, IGA is poison on price, W and C are just a bit better than IGA. You pay for name brands.

That Fish House in Capalaba is good for green mussels @ $7/kg and whole mullet in winter for $2.50/kg but not much else. The new "wholesale" butcher opposite is a shocker for price, had a look, plenty of meat, but nothing worth buying, too expensive.

Hi Paul,
"Get meat from the step-son in Toowoomba"

Ah yep, you get some great deals out that way, I had a housemate that used to bring home steaks the size of dinner plates.
He used to do an awesome marinade as well, letting them soak in the fridge for a few days, sometimes longer.
- Tasted so good and just fell apart on your fork.
I have another mate who told me he just puts all his meat in olive oil in the fridge, but I haven't tried it.
You sound like a bit of a skilled food connoisseur, it always makes me feel hungry.
- Thanks for all the tips, I saved them on the PC for later.
I'm going to have to go and check Golden Circle out again now, and I might check out some of those other places as well.

Suddenly I feel like going to that fish shop in Capalaba you mentioned for some green prawns to make some prawn cutlets.

Hi again AC,

The 'Old Man' would tell me stories about the Chinese market gardens in Sydney, they grew everything, very intensive, all without power, no pumps, no running water. Their water came from a well they dug themselves in the centre of the garden, it was a big rectangular pit about 20 to 30 ft deep, sloping from the deep end back to the surface, covered with boards to run on. To water the garden a man, several men actually, would have a wooden yoke across his shoulders with two big heavy metal watering cans attached. Run down into the well pit, fill the cans, run back up and around the garden watering the plants, time and time again. Little blokes some of them, the Old Man said he didn't know how they did it, working from sun up to sun down. He also said, we never want to go to war with the 'Chinamen', they'll win, because they'll never give up.

The problems of the white settlers.

Every since the arrival of the European, nature and alike has been the settlers enemy, a constant battle against the climate, pests and diseases, mostly introduced. From early reports the first European settlers almost starved to death, ironically if it wasn't for the assistance and plunder of Aboriginal people. Its surprising that today Hassy is unable to produce much at all from a block about the same size as our Fijian "family" farm and produce an abundance for the entire village. I put it down to the settlers lack of harmony with nature, resulting in unsustainable waste.

All mouth & no knowledge.

Hassy,

I can understand how as a member of the colonial squattocracy occupying stolen Aboriginal land, you and those of the settler class before you, have managed to turn what was once sustainable productive native habitat into a mini version of a 'Sandhill in the Sahara'. This has been caused by your ignorance and your fight against nature, you have failed to embrace sustainability. I suggest you call on both the local mob of Indigenous, and the environmentally sustainable Greens and beg for advice on how best to turn your 30 acres of 'Saharan Sandhill' back to its former productive self.