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US Consumer Price Index up 4.2%

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Re: US Consumer Price Index up 4.2%

#271

Post by josh-sematic »

scarecrowbob wrote: post #257
w10-1 wrote: post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would never, ever leave work regardless of the pay. Regardless of your skill and reputation, time off can quickly put you below the bar for even getting a call-back, and you lose access to relevant lessons. You'll be shocked at how irrelevant you become, and how quickly the retirement accounts will give up the gains of the last 3 years (particularly when this 2026 IPO summer terminates US equity markets). The feeli…

Oh no, you mean I might not be able to get another really annoying job so I can, what, have more money than I need to live on? I used to get paged at 1am to mess with downed webservers, now I hang out in a shack with no running water in rural CO. I'm 48 and have a chunk of cash that made more last year than I've ever been able to make in a single year doing salaried labor as a programmer. I quit 3 years ago when my k…

You are describing where I want to be when my kid graduates (years from now), mandolin and all! Low cost of living, contributing to the community, enough time for passions… Not able to get there yet but it’s what I’m working towards. I just hope LLMs don’t eat my current career path before I can achieve it.

Re: US Consumer Price Index up 4.2%

#272

Post by cyanydeez »

inigyou wrote: post #220
cyanydeez wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Y"eah, the same reason we're going to have a trillionaire soon is why even if someones making a great salary, their 401k is inflating faster than they need to earn a living in a low cost of living area. Absolutely absurd, but if you got the upswing between 2010-2020, you might be in an upper class while still living in lower class, meaning your 401k is all you need to survive on while the billionaires continue to pum…

It's just yet another wealth transfer between classes. They can happen frequently and unpredictably, and usually but not always from workers to owners. If you happen to be in the class that benefits, you take the windfall.

UNFORTUNATELY, the movement from rich to poor is not gradual, pretty or effectively transitioned.

Not sure if you intend it, but the struggle to reverse course from rich to poor is bloody and not always effective.

Re: US Consumer Price Index up 4.2%

#273

Post by jrflo »

infecto wrote: post #215
jrflo wrote: post #193

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Zooming out tells you this tick up to 4.2% is not nearly as bad as the post-covid inflation, and drastically better than the 70s. Not a good sign, but also not too far outside the historical mean and probably no need to panic in and of itself.

I don’t think that tells us anything. We already know 7% > than 4.2. This should already be a fact that inflation was worse during Covid. I don’t think know that inflation was worse in the 70s helps fixes the narrative that 4.2% inflation is not good.

Obviously more inflation is bad almost always. The question is how bad. By looking at a graph, you can get a sense for the mean and standard deviation of inflation over time, and this looks to be a small deviation in the grand scheme of things. Of course, no one would call this good, but it's just good to put stuff like this in context.

Re: US Consumer Price Index up 4.2%

#274

Post by [deleted] »

dw_arthur wrote: post #93

Paradoxically, inflation has contributed to me taking a sabbatical. While I live in a LCOL area and made ~140k/year it just no longer felt worth it to work as I saw my retirement accounts start to match and exceed my salary in yearly gains. I do plan on going back to work in a part time manner, but inflation has killed any reason for me to work hard at a job for that level of salary. Furthermore, the feeling of "what…

[deleted]

Re: US Consumer Price Index up 4.2%

#275

Post by pibaker »

bluGill wrote: post #255
SirMaster wrote: post #219

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This never made sense to me. Doesn't this assume you are spending ALL your income though? If I make 100K and get a 3% increase, that's $3000 more. But if I only spend 30K to live, and my living expenses go up 5%, that's only a $1500 increase to my living expenses while I earned $3000 more that year. So how is that a pay cut if I actually have even more money left over that basically just goes into my investment accou…

> Doesn't this assume you are spending ALL your income though? Why wouldn't you be? You will die, and the vast majority of religions (including atheism) don't let you take it with you. Sure there is some saving for a rainy day or retirement. However why are you earning more than that? If you need a job for social reasons only there are plenty of volunteer jobs that can provide that.

Do you have children?

Re: US Consumer Price Index up 4.2%

#276

Post by pibaker »

mjamesaustin wrote: post #50

Prices have doubled since 1999!? Restaurant prices near me have doubled since 2015, easily. And that's not counting delivery going from free to 25% of the meal cost.

Dining out is expensive because service workers got the biggest pay raise percentage wise after 2020.

Your food delivery was subsidized by doordash and uber and low interest rates. And let's be serious, do you seriously think you should not pay any extra to have a human drive half an hour to deliver a salad bowl to your home?

Re: US Consumer Price Index up 4.2%

#277

Post by PearlRiver »

thrance wrote: post #259
markerz wrote: post #205

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Like, do you even understand what you're saying? That comment is unnecessary and has the effect of making people feel bad. I think the rationale is that wages are stagnant in comparison to investments (stocks) and costs (inflation). So there's decreased incentive to focus on wages as a form of income, and more incentive to focus on investments. I've definitely felt this personally, as my income shifts towards inves…

> So there's decreased incentive to focus on wages as a form of income, and more incentive to focus on investments. That's been the case for a while now, and is steadily getting worse. But the issue is, workers usually rely on their wages to live. It's not a choice for the vast majority of people. And it's unsustainable. You can't build a society of exclusively parasites that feed on the work of fewer and fewer hands…

Most people do not have money to invest. There should be a law that forces the rich to go on an annual safari to see how poor people live because we are literally entering "let them eat cake" levels and it will not end well.

Re: US Consumer Price Index up 4.2%

#278

Post by wat10000 »

inigyou wrote: post #263
wat10000 wrote: post #224

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Stock market returns will tend to exceed inflation. Salary may not. It's quite possible for inflation to make your salary shrink in real terms, making it no longer worth working if you can afford to retire.

There is absolutely no guarantee that stock market returns exceed inflation. The big US indices have for the last few decades, but they're extreme outliers.

I said "tend to," not "guarantee."

You'd expect this to happen with a couple of reasonable assumptions, like stock prices being somewhat based on real value most of the time, no wide-scale long-term economic collapse, and new companies replacing incumbents over many years rather than very quickly. If the real value of a company stays constant, then the stock price should, on average over the long term, rise at a pace that matches inflation.

Re: US Consumer Price Index up 4.2%

#279

Post by DennisP »

aidenn0 wrote: post #200
DennisP wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's fine as long as t-bill rates match or exceed inflation. Then you can avoid losing purchasing power by just putting your money in the world's safest investment. Over the past century, t-bill returns have slightly exceeded inflation on average, though there have been periods when they didn't. Stash paper cash in your safe and sure, you lose purchasing power. Use fiat money the way it's designed to be used, instead…

Us debt as a fraction of GDP has doubled this century and roughly quadrupled in my lifetime. It would seem to me that eventually t-bills will not be safe.

True, but that's a different problem and to hedge against that you probably need hard assets.

Re: US Consumer Price Index up 4.2%

#280

Post by mancerayder »

jr3592 wrote: post #185
dw_arthur wrote: post #93

Paradoxically, inflation has contributed to me taking a sabbatical. While I live in a LCOL area and made ~140k/year it just no longer felt worth it to work as I saw my retirement accounts start to match and exceed my salary in yearly gains. I do plan on going back to work in a part time manner, but inflation has killed any reason for me to work hard at a job for that level of salary. Furthermore, the feeling of "what…

This actually makes 0 sense. Like, do you even understand what you're saying? The value of your savings is decreasing at a faster rate than ever before, so its a good time to stop saving and spend it? The stock market increasing is not the same thing as inflation. What you're saying makes sense only if you are referring to stock market valuation... strictly retiring because inflation is high makes no sense.

He's saying there's no direct connection between effort and wealth. He works and made 140k, seeing his portfolio go up 140k a year by itself. So what's the point?

You and he are in different language games. His is an existential philosophical one, yours is the financial planning one.

Both make sense. I'm trying to transition to his, but I'm not ready yet.

What's the Point? is exactly the question we should be asking ourselves.

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