Everywhere I turn everything is more expensive.

I'm spending less and less every month on non-necessities, buying more basic foods, never eating out, spending less on entertainment, etc but everything else just keeps going up and up.

Electricity just went up 12%, my gas bill is up 20%, rent has gone up 10% year after year, water is somehow 30% more expensive than it used to be, my groceries are more expensive than ever even though I'm buying in bulk and not buying anything fancy, I've stopped eating luxuries I used to enjoy like steak and fancy cheese because they've just gotten outrageous.

I have a good job that pays decently but my raises have been less than 3% a year and I feel like I'm getting squeezed out of everything I once had. There's no light at the end of the tunnel is there?

I've started to notice this narrative in my news feeds. The argument is high wage growth is contributing to stubborn inflation. So cooling wage growth is seen as positive. It'll help central banks pause the hike cycle sooner.

My knee jerk reaction is if wage growth is contributing to inflation it's minuscule; just enough to print the headline. I can't help but feel this narrative is a way to distract from the earlier price gouging narrative and to help employers scapegoat out of raises.

But I'll admit, I haven't looked into this topic deeply. So I'm happy to be schooled.

Child labor is making a comeback with a vengeance. A striking number of lawmakers are undertaking concerted efforts to weaken or repeal statutes that have long prevented (or at least seriously inhibited) the possibility of exploiting children.

Take a breath and consider this: the number of kids at work in the U.S. increased by 37% between 2015 and 2022. During the last two years, 14 states have either introduced or enacted legislation rolling back regulations that governed the number of hours children can be employed, lowered the restrictions on dangerous work, and legalized subminimum wages for youths.

Iowa now allows those as young as 14 to work in industrial laundries. At age 16, they can take jobs in roofing, construction, excavation, and demolition and can operate power-driven machinery. Fourteen-year-olds can now even work night shifts and once they hit 15 can join assembly lines. All of this was, of course, prohibited not so long ago.

Legislators offer fatuous justifications for such incursions into long-settled practice. Working, they tell us, will get kids off their computers or video games or away from the TV. Or it will strip the government of the power to dictate what children can and can’t do, leaving parents in control — a claim already transformed into fantasy by efforts to strip away protective legislation and permit 14-year-old kids to work without formal parental permission.

In 2014, the Cato Institute, a right-wing think tank, published “A Case Against Child Labor Prohibitions,” arguing that such laws stifled opportunity for poor — and especially Black — children. The Foundation for Government Accountability, a think tank funded by a range of wealthy conservative donors including the DeVos family, has spearheaded efforts to weaken child-labor laws, and Americans for Prosperity, the billionaire Koch brothers’ foundation, has joined in.

https://tomdispatch.com/caution-children-at-work/#:~:text=The%20Covid%2D19%20pandemic%20of,distinct%20sign%20of%20social%20pathology.

Here is a Robert Frost poem related to the subject of the article. https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/53087/out-out

I'm GenX and I worked as a teen, but my earliest jobs were babysitting, not industrial labor.

I've had the same secured credit card through my bank for years; I only use it for car rentals and when my debit card gets declined on international online purchases. It's very easy to maintain as there are no fees and I always pay off the balance within the week; however, there are also no rewards. I know that a lot of credit cards out there have cashback rewards, and it seems like kind of a waste not to take advantage of that. But there are so many different ones that it's horribly overwhelming for me to try to research which one(s) might be a good choice. Costco has one which would have probably been an easy choice if I were able to spend more money there, but as of currently I have very little space and only hold a membership for gas.

So, do any of you lovely folks have recommendations to give me a starting point for what to look into? What cards have you used and been happy with?

ETA: I am in the US!

Hey ya'll

Just getting used to this here Tildes now.

Is there a crypto group yet. I know we all ain't gott be into it, but it seems finance here is the best closest place to call it out of who in or wants a sub.

Can we have one, what's the best way to go about setting it up!?

Do you guys think they're using rate increases to kill off all the overleveraged homeowners in an effort to create a sell-off and thereby lower housing costs?

Could someone smarter than I please explain what is going on... or is our inflation that bad? Seems like some of the inflation might be what I've read as greedflation. I didn't realize we jumped almost 3.75% in less than a year last year...

Always curious what others peoples finances look like, what they use to manage it, etc.

Do you use budgeting software? Do you follow a certain "method" to achieve your financial goals? How strict are you with your budget? Do you automate your retirement investments/contributions?

I understand how distributing bond etfs could work, you get part of the coupons when the etf distributes profits, which compensates somewhat for the price changes of the etf. Interest rates would affect the price of the etf but that would be partly compensated by the distribution.

But how does this work on accumulating etfs? If the profits are always reinvested in the fund, shouldn't the price of the fund always go up? Assuming all/most bonds dont default, interest rates would affect the price but that would be compensated by the reinvested profits?

I am missing something here, dont see the point of a bond etf if the price can change so much.

Do you expect a Fed rate hike, pause, or rate cut on June 14?

I personally believe the Fed will surprise the market with another rate hike because although CPI has cooled, core PCE has remained sticky and the Fed doesn’t want inflation to rear its ugly head at all costs.

According to the CNN Fear & Greed Index we are at “extreme greed” levels not seen since February 3rd, which also coincided with a temporary market top.

This leads me to believe the market will begin to fall over the next few weeks until we hit “fear” or “extreme fear” levels again around July.

So I'm 20, in the US (California to be exact), and I'm planning to (secretly) move out of my parents' house sooner or later. I have a plan and all that, but I'm a bit anxious since I know nothing about finance. I was never taught about it at school beyond some surface-level vocabulary words (no personal finance. Only like how econ is related to governments and all) and I grew up with a dad who thought he was being selfless by making sure I never had to think about money ever. Mix that in with some good ol' learning problems and I'm clueless about money

Here are some things I learned to give an example of what I mean when I imply I'm absolutely clueless:

• Apparently taxes will sometimes differ from each store I buy from. I have not learned how or why each store has a different percentage (I thought it was by state), just that it sometimes does
• Also, groceries don't have taxes, but they tend to cost more than the pre-packaged stuff
• Speaking of taxes, apparently if you make enough for them you can completely ruin your parents' taxes if you forget to communicate with them. Luckily, I didn't have to learn this the hard way, but I suddenly realized why people who were keeping their jobs a secret from their parents were concerned about making too much
• Credit cards are like a loan that you are forced to pay monthly. I legitimately thought the money was directly transferred from your bank account to the card, but no, it's from this storage in the bank that they have where they take your and everyone else's money and lend it to others
  • This was also why I was so confused as to why the banks collapsed right before the Great Depression
• A lot of things only take credit cards. For example, paying a house via cash is literally impossible, which is why you need to rely on a bank (to my disappointment). In fact, living bankless will only cause more problems than it does save money
• I figured out what a lease was. No one taught me that and I never sought to learn it until I was asking for apartment rooms

I'm lucky in that I'm not paying any sort of bills or insurance, and that I'm still reliant on my parents for that. However, I really want to get away from them, even though I would be tied to my parents' insurance plans and all. (I don't think they will ever kick me out of them, no matter what I do.) I don't want to be thrust into something that's difficult to reverse, so for those of you who are older and know what you're doing, is there any finance advice you recommend? What should I expect money-wise when I move out? What has been a regretful decision you've made and what has worked for you?

Resources are also nice, though I'm wary of books that are only found online and thus, I need to pay to see what's inside.

Rate hikes. "COVID mortgages" up for renewal at much higher rates.

Wondering how badly the current rate environment is affecting people IRL. How much of this do you think (or know) is actual bad news vs. just media doom and gloom?

Putting aside specific criticisms of the GOP as it exists today, what do you think of using the debt ceiling as a tool to reel in spending and put the US on a sustainable path with its national debt? People make it out to seem backwards and manipulative, but this whole situation seems like we're driving a hundred miles an hour toward a cliff and the person saying we should slam the breaks is getting flack because it'll damage the car.

So I browse Tildes, Hacker News, and Reddit, but I'm wondering if there are online communities or hubs out there where entrepreneurial folks discuss actionable business problems and projects, instead of news or memes.

I notice that people will spend endless time online discussing the minutiae of their personal lives, celebrity lives, politics, and son, which are fine. But I want to read about how people are working out the kinks of drone delivery, improving access to and availability of mental healthcare, making municipal permitting more streamlined, and other processes.