How to survive in conditions of rising inflation: pensioners shared life hacks
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In the news, and worse, inflation is picking up again on store shelves. Following the exchange rates, economists promise a rise in prices. And common sense agrees with economists – food and utilities have already gone up. For an ordinary person, not an exchange speculator, the signal is unambiguous – you need to shrink. How exactly? The master class is given by those who were responsible for the survival of families during perestroika and in the nineties.
As a rule, people who are over sixty perceive the current troubles quite calmly. They also console the children: they say, they didn’t go through this. And indeed – for the average Russian family budget, the beginning of the nineties of the last century was an exemplary hurricane. Almost daily rewriting of price tags, salaries lagging behind them, which were not enough for anything, and even unemployment. It can only be compared with the beginning of the 1920s – but no one remembers this from their own experience.
Moscow pensioners interviewed by MK regard the situation in the economy as serious, but not fatal: we will not die of hunger. Here, for younger generations, it is necessary to reveal absolute figures: the usual amount of a pension even in the capital (if we are not talking about military and other special pensions, and if we are not facing a patriarch who is a veteran of the Great Patriotic War) is now about 20 thousand rubles, a little more than the subsistence minimum.
It is impossible to pay less according to the law, more – the pension system with its ingenious algorithms does not pull. Let’s compare this figure with consumer prices and tariffs for even the most necessary services – and it will become clear that you need to “turn around” thoroughly. Especially if you set yourself (as many do) additional goals: do not touch the main savings and save some money “for the soul” – for theaters, trips, and so on.
So, a brief summary of ways to save on everyday life. Let’s start with products: here the alpha and omega of savings is to remember or write down prices in all available stores and for all products of interest. And purchases for each position are made where it is cheaper. If in one supermarket there is a good price for milk and cereals, and in another – for eggs and cottage cheese, inexpensive fish is sold in a special department of the grocery store opposite, and the best and most profitable bread is in the bakery stall on the corner – these things will be bought there, in four different places. Yes, numerous promotions are necessarily taken into account: it is foolish to ignore them, if “only today and only with us”, say, sour cream costs 50 rubles against the usual price “for a hundred”. And this happens.
It is clear that with such an approach to purchases, one would like to create at least small stocks: here is the promotional price, why not buy, say, smoked sausage for future use and put it in the freezer? Therefore, the practice “do not touch this, this is for a holiday” is resurrecting.
By the way, about the holiday. “Many networks offer big discounts on the entire birthday check,” says the interlocutor of MK, a university teacher of retirement age. – Over the past couple of years, we have already established a company of collective purchases: for the next birthday, mine or one of my friends, we buy everything at once. Savings are obtained by several thousand, we are involved in this five or six people. But formally only the birthday girl buys, cashiers, seeing a check for 20-30 thousand rubles, usually smile – they understand everything.
Another way to save on everyday purchases is to take groceries at the dacha. It is relevant for motorists and those who have a chain supermarket near their dacha. Usually in the Moscow region, especially the distant, and even more so in other regions, prices are noticeably lower.
Fruit is a separate issue: in addition to the fact that during the season, shops sometimes put up very cheap price tags (fruits are not a sin to prepare – for example, in the form of compotes and jams), there are completely free ones. “I don’t have a dacha, I have a negative attitude towards dacha housing, but soon it’s time for me to“ hunt, ”says Natalya Fedorovna, a resident of the Northern District of Moscow. – Firstly, half of my friends are summer residents, and they have nowhere to put zucchini and pumpkins. I gladly accept them and freeze them in cubes, enough until spring. Secondly, in the suburbs, which is surprising, there are thousands of abandoned gardens. There is even an Internet resource – a digital map of abandoned apple trees. In a good year, you can pick up as much as you can carry. And then boil, make marshmallows, drive cider and whatever else.
You can save some money on utilities. For example, some people minimize the consumption of hot water, wash dishes in basins, and not under the tap. Reduce shower time. To optimize the cost of electricity and light bulbs, outdated, but more reliable incandescent lamps are used where the light is turned on and off often, and it burns for a short time: in the toilet, bathroom, pantry. Experience shows: LEDs burn out quickly, and cost several times more than Ilyich’s bulbs.
To save money, many people switch to using libraries instead of buying paper books (by the way, popular new items are often in the library). Excursions and other entertainment in the capital are also often free. But here’s what older Muscovites rarely see as an opportunity for reasonable savings – the use of second-hand things bought through an ad. Generational taboo, there’s nothing to be done.
This is only the first material on folk methods of saving in a series of similar publications planned by the editors of MK. We ask you to share your “author’s” methods of cost reduction – send us their description to the address of the editorial office or by e-mail [email protected]
Newspaper headline:
So that you survive on one salary
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