Archery is a great sport/hobby. I’ve loved it since childhood. It’s fairly inexpensive as long as you don’t lose arrows often like you stated. We shoot traditional bows (not compounds with sights) at scratch built foam targets in the yard or driveway if the gnats are bad. instinctive shooting is very hard to master.
Bullseyes get boring so mixing in some Zombie targets adds to the fun!

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Cut down slightly on steak for grill. More chicken. Driving wife’s Kia a bit more and my Challenger SRT8 a bit less. Not eating out as much.

I am completely blessed with a well earning but hard job so thank the maker I’m not suffering. Of course we are all one heart attack away from the poorhouse. Lol.

The Best Advice I share with Everyone....Its not what you earn, its what you get to keep.

I would imagine most people are going to do what what we do best in the US. Borrow and complain.

Credit card their way to piles of debt.

There is a ton of data out there about household debt.

America has "easy" credit and tons of bullshit like buy now, pay later, payday loans on and on.

We are a consumer based economy and people tend to spend above their means.

I got lucky enough to refinance my house mortgage when rates hit their lowest and turned it into a fixed mortgage. I put 10 miles a week on my car because I don't go anywhere, so gaz price crazy hike is not something I suffer from.
What's left is my groceries spending, I did see a price jump on some base products like milk, butter and eggs (and flour, paid 10 bucks for flour I couldn't believe it)
Overall and that's likely because cost of living here in SF was already out of control for a decade, I haven't seen much inflation out here.

How do we do it? VOLUME!

Can you offer any recommendations on reading material? Thanks

I've thought about this a lot several years ago when my wife was salty over not being able to stay home with the kids when two of her friends did.

Thing is those days where there was one earner people got along with a lot less. Now we expect to afford phones, multiple tvs, upgraded things like granite/quartz countertops tops, I style kitchen, furniture, computers, gaming systems, streaming services, internet, etc. We consume so much more and expect to than anyone from pre WW2 would have dreamt.

Whenever people complain about something being not worth the money, overpriced, etc, the enablers always say 'it's my money, don't tell me how to spend it'. And now you have record high pinball prices for example. It isn't a one sided issue. Amazon by far is not the cheapest place to buy things, yet millions do simply because they want it 'fast'. No patience. Tons of examples of things like this that combine to put us in the situations we are in these years.

We literally laughed in the banks faces back when we were first looking at houses (long before the 2008 reset). We went in with an idea of how much we wanted to spend, they saw how much we made and pushed like hell to get us to buy a house 3X the price we were willing to spend. We asked them if people actually fell for that...and apparently they did, as 2008 showed. We went through rough times of dual unemployment due to companies moving to Mexico, etc, but because we didn't overspend we never missed a payment, and actually paid the house off 12 years early. We know lots of people that weren't so fortunate.

How much has the standard of living increased though? Look at the average house built in 1970 and compare that today. Today's is about 1,000 square feet larger. Did most households have 1 or 2 cars? How often did a family eat out in 1970? Was the family relying on relatives our outside help for assistance with kids when needed? How often did they go to the doctor?

Living paycheck to paycheck is now 'the most common financial lifestyle' in the US — even the wealthy aren't immune

https://www.yahoo.com/finance/news/living-paycheck-paycheck-now-most-181000288.html

Anyone on this forum, who owns pinball machines, are not hard up to make ends meet. They’re only put into a possible position of having to make some hard choices....in most cases. There are those one offs that do happen, but for the average percent here, it’s the hard truth.

If you can sell a machine, you’re not hard up for cash. You may not want to sell, but you can.

https://www.amazon.com/Inc-Yourself-11th-Setting-Corporation/dp/1601633017

In the realm of fighting inflation on the cheap with used entertainment, I bought something I've been wanting forever but couldn't justify the expense. A legit stereo receiver sound system, woofer, surround sound, and CD player. Everything you see in this photo (- the echo dot I already had) was $55 after several trips to Goodwill. I had so much fun hooking this thing up and testing it. I finally have a nice stereo the kids can play the CDs they've been picking up at yardsales at. Also, With a simple 3.5mm to RCA wire, I have hooked up the Stereo to my echo dot and have a streaming media player. That receiver is 600watts and I can absolutely turn up the music loud enough to destroy my hearing. The next step is spreading the speakers around my basement. I had to buy new speaker wire (copper is expensive) but other than that everything has come out great. Will probably plop the receiver under a pin.

Also... this was a high end receiver back in the day and it's funny to look a the inputs. VCR1, VCR2, LD, Phono, Cassete, CD, Tuner, Cab/Sat. Who/why would you need 2 VCRs back in the day?

I'm guessing a setup like this would have been 4 figures new back in the day. Pioneer is not cheap.

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I've been handling it very poorly. I'm very broke.

To make dubs of VHS movies, or edit your own home movies or projects. I knew many people who did this.

Some VHS rental tape companies had a system that would ruin VHS dubs (it would get light and dark, distort) but there were fairly inexpensive and easy to obtain ways around this.

Yep the guy whose parents had 2 vcrs at home was probably the most popular guy at school and eventually the richest !

Observations from Sam's Club yesterday...

Had to wait in line for a $5 rottisserie chicken. The week prior they were just totally out.

They are grinding prime rib into hamburger and selling it for a couple bucks more than regular hamburger. Lack of demand?

Im not nearly as clever as many folks in this thread, but I am proud to say ive had 0 credit card debt for a very long time, and a stupidly inexpensive mortgage (compared to most of the country). So from a debt standpoint I am in fine shape. That said I waste tons of money on silly stuff, but could easily stop if push comes to shove.

I truly do feel for those who live in houses they can't afford and live off of credit cards. That sounds like an unbelievable burden to carry right now, especially those who purchased houses in the past year or so. I am far from an expert, but it seems like they are going to be terribly underwater for the next couple years.

The key is, to live just slightly above what you can afford comfortably. Gives you the incentive to keep going to work

I like monies. Sucks that others like it more. Cuz I like stuff more. And that takes away my monies.

I have been self-employed for over 30 years, and I had already started cutting way back on spending about 5 years ago.

Some clients I do work for just tick me off, and life is too short for all that.

So years ago I started cutting expenses, to make up for the lost revenue of no longer doing business with them.

It also really helps that my girlfriend is like minded with trying to have the most fun for the least amount of money.

We used to take long road trips to try out a new game before thinking of buying one.

Now it is nice that we can just buy a new game, play it awhile, sell it and break even if not a keeper, or even make a few bucks on the sale now, for the money and space for a new game.

And not so much because of gas and food prices, but the damn property taxes just went way up, so soon I plan to shop around to try to get some better prices on insurance.

Between my house and 3 rental houses, property taxes are now taking a bite worse than anything.

I have awesome tenants, and 2 of the 3 are retired and on fixed income, and no way will I go up on their rent. I am sure they are already getting hit hard enough without me taking another dent.

Eventually, because of the damn property taxes, I will probably do some more work for some damn clients that I was really hoping to never see again.

Gas and food was already peanuts to me years ago.

BUT! Hell yeah, I would love to see gas back to $1.78 again! And luckily I do not even have to use much gas anymore, I keep all my work within a couple of miles of where I live, except for 2 times a month I do a 20 mile round trip to work for 2 clients.

If I do work again for that one client that ticks me off, then that is frequently around 100 mile round trips. Hell No!

It really sucks that my best friend who was also my real estate agent passed away a couple of years ago from pancreatic cancer, and my lawyer recently retired, because I am so tempted to work a deal with professionals I could trust, to make it to where my tenants would have the same price for rent, and I could use their homestead exemptions on property taxes to save some money.

More than anything, I hope the real estate market goes to crap, and prices come way down, because of the high property tax crap.

I lobbied for a big raise. thankfully, it worked. Now I can break even every month. [Removed]

i forgot to mention the most important factor in my new found financial stability. I finally walked away from the biggest financial parasite known to man in 2020, my soon to be ex wife. Despite the burden of alimony and child support obligations exceeding 2500 bucks per month )ouch), I am still more financially stable than I've ever been in my life, and enjoy being able to actually save money for new pinball games and dirtbikes. When I was with that leach, I could never save a penny because she spent every red cent of my income before I could stash it away. It was bad. Financial freedom for me was as simple as looking at my own situation and confirming that I was married to and barely surviving with a complete money grubbing locust of a human being. I still can't believe I lasted nine years with that human virus. She still comes after me for money adamently. lucky for me, I'm an attorney and can endure her fruitless attempts to steal my livelihood, home children, and assets. let this be a lesson to all of you: Never tolerate a woman who is using you for your money. too many men fall into this trap.

Every man deserves to enjoy the fruits of his labor. When a parasitic woman deprives him of that, while simultaneously dictating the terms of the marriage, he needs to let her go. It is a hard move to make, admittedly. However, the liberty gained by taking the action required to rid himself of such a parasite is priceless, and the grass is GREENER on the other side of the situation, however difficult and adversarial the battle for freedom actually is. nothing worthwhile is ever easy. Everyone deserves liberty and reciprocity in their relationships, and nobody deserves to be robbed of their hard earned money by anyone.

I hope that this message finds any yet undecided and vacillating husbands who are currently toiling with the prospect of leaving a bad marriage and motivates them to take action to preserve themselves, their financial future, and their ultimate opportunity to enjoy their lives. Such a decision and action are hard to initiate, but they are paramount if one desires to live a fulfilling and liberated life.

Hog

I can't tell if this is a serious comment or not. If it is, I hope you are doing well, and reach out if you need someone to talk to.

I am definitely feeling the squeeze from increased prices on everything.

We sold our house right when the pandemic was starting so we could move closer to my wife's school for her to finish up the last 2 years of her program. This wasn't the only reason we decided to sell. We sold to her family for multiple reasons, and walked away with nothing. If we would have waited another 6-8 months, we most likely would have opted to put it on the open market and walked away for some extra cash. We have money set aside for our next house purchase, but with inflation the amount of house and our saving towards that house is growing smaller every month. Our price range is going to be about 75-100k less than what it was when me sold the previous house.

Rent just went up by almost $200 a month, our groceries are up about $50 extra a month, along with all our utilities slowly creeping up. Our buying power and ability to out save inflation has been crushed in the past 6 months.

I went to our leasing office to try and negotiate our rent increase, and they told me go pound some sand. They could fill our apartment in a matter of days with the number of people they have on their wait list to move in.

So inflation made you leave your wife?

I'm glad the separation with your wife has worked out, and I hope it helps you fight inflation.

However, I can't let this post go without leaving you with a few words from Elwood... whom for your sake I hope is wrong.

I swear HGTV has been the cause for many stretching their money to full extent. Now everyone has to have high end countertops, latest hardwood and tile, and landscaping. Shows like House Hunters and the fixer uppers push all this and make it appear your house sucks otherwise. People used to live simpler.

Glad I saw your post before the moderation, wtf.

How to mitigate inflation is the topic at hand. My solution. Play better pinball and get more replays.

I like to think that the smell is what makes my home unique .

Also... HGTV was rediculous about unrealistic expectations.

She's a stay at home mom, he sharpen's crayons for a living. Their budget? $1,200,000. Must haves include beachfront with dock access, mountain view, walk to city sights, and a large yard for their 15 Cocker Spaniels. Join us this week on House Hunters!

I know more than one person who lost their butt trying to flip houses Flippers style. Nothing prepares you for a life in real estate like computer programming!

Cutting the dogs nails went up.

Between that and her addiction to small hard round beef things. I told her she is going to have to get a job.

LTG : )

I was exceptionally well off at 25 and bought my first house at $363,000 on a 30 year loan. I was a separating USMC Captain with a wife, kid, and new 6 figure job. With that said, I actually changed realtors because he kept showing me stuff outside of my budget. I didn't want to spend more than $350k on my house (although I fudged a little) and they wanted to show me stuff at the VA loan funding limit (550k) plus the down payment money I had saved up. They pushed hard to get you in the biggest home (for the biggest commission) that you could get with a 41% debt to income ratio.

What the realtors do to first time home buyers is help them get qualified for the biggest home loan they can find and then try and put them in the most expensive home they qualified for.

I could have bought the home I live in today as my first home, but the debt would have been crippling had I bought my current home at my fresh out of the military income... although the bank would have happily sold it to me.

Yeah, well my wife just farted. Now our house smells too.

Smart. Wish I got married and bought a house much sooner. College was a major setback for me, probably the biggest financial mistake I’ve ever made. Total waste of time. Imagine if you could start life four years sooner with $100k in your pocket and no student loans?? Yes please.