How significant is the “cost of living” crisis in your country?

6 comments

1. Like most countries in the world right now, we are experiencing inflation, but it’s been slowing down the past couple of weeks. It’s in no way comparable to the Great Depression. Inflation is around 8 to 10 % right now, during the Great Depression they were literally printing 1 billion mark notes in Germany for example.

2. I live in Berlin and haven’t noticed anything.

   This will be weird but i actually got money back from my energy company because i used less than planned, and twice got money from the government for energy costs. Also, Berlin made their public transport pass super cheap so in many ways costs went down

   As for food kebabs got a bit pricier but drinks and general stuff i buy, not so much. Slightly at the Edeka grocer down my street for random dairy or something

3. Almost everything has gotten more expensive, some things more and some things less. But it’s really not a catastrophe, the majority has made some changes like thinking more about what to buy and if it’s actually worth it. Not like before when we threw money at all kinds of unnecessary things haha. Though phasing away from Russian energy is going to be really expensive but it’s for the better.

4. Energy prices, especially gas prices have been very high.
   Groceries have not increased as munch as energy.

   Families heating with gas (This is approx. 10%), or people having a tight economy (On welfare or low paid job) before the crises, have problems.

   The average Dane can manage this by buying a little less of luxury items, and using less on vacation.

5. A lot of it is media sensationalism, indeed. The significant aspect was the spike in energy costs, which did push prices for many products and services upwards, but it’s now declining again, there’s no runaway inflation that would be a horrible scenario.

   We did luck out a lot because we barely had a winter here in Germany so far. People were afraid that heating would be unaffordable with the high energy prices of 2022, but in the end, we didn’t even need to heat that much at all.

6. In Ireland the peak of the inflation effect seems to have passed and it all depends on one’s situation. Personally I haven’t experienced any hardship (due to government energy credits that have covered the rises for us, with surplus, and some other fortunate life developments) but people with tighter budgets and higher bills would see more of an impact.