Low Inflation Again | Page 3 | General financial discussion | Discussion forum

They will only be forced to restrict businesses if businesses are seen, statistically, to be major settings for infection transmission. They could and should shut the bars, but they don't want to.

Right now they are focussed on young adults in large groups as being the major source of transmission, with increased fines. Personally, I don't think that's enough. I don't see why these people aren't charged with criminal negligence. But the police said they didn't want to go into these groups, finding it unsafe. Yet the by-law officers are expected to do the job.

I don't think they will do anything major in the LTC homes or retirement homes unless there are major problems, and, when they do, it will apply only to specific homes. These places all have PPE now, which they didn't earlier, and they have better training. PSWs are no longer permitted to work at several homes in order to pull together enough hours, so they can't bring the virus with them from one home to another. Everyone entering a retirement home, even now, must have a temperature check, and indoor visits are quite restricted and must be booked ahead - this much I know because my mother resides in one. I imagine it's even stricter in LTC.
I think they recognized, belatedly, that the severe restrictions they had earlier were not always in the best interests of the residents, who were deprived of meaningful human contact, and i don't think they will go that route again unless the situation is very very bad.

Ontario gov't keeps telling us they have a plan for Second Wave, and that they've had it since July. I don't believe that it was much more than a few jottings. They keep delaying release of it, and I imagine it will be skimpy, as always, when released.

We'll have to wait and see what happens but I'd put my dime on them not closing the LTC homes this week. I don't think they will have province-wide closures any more anyway.

The testing isn't keeping up, clearly. I had to go for the test every two weeks during the period when visitors to retirement homes were not allowed in without a current test- and they did make you prove it.
However, even then, when it was not nearly so busy as it is now, we had to wait too long and I just couldn't handle it, especially on hot days when they weren't honouring our appointments. Further, you are in line with people who have a solid reason to be there such as symptoms or personal contact and we were often too close to them due to lack of space. Honestly, that line-up was the riskiest place I went during that period. Enough is enough. I simply will not go back. If I should develop symptoms, I'll stay home. If the symptoms get bad, I'll go to the hospital. If the retirement home requires it, I won't go there. Not going to Shoppers either. Some of this testing could reasonably be done outdoors in a park, where they'd have all the room needed, at least in good weather.

Lots of references here to "they" without explaining who that is.

Anyway, death rate still lowest since this thing started, very few deaths for a while now, not good for media, so media focuses sheep's attention on cases, and sheep duly go where they're directed. As Norman1 points out cases are up because lots of people getting tests mainly because education systems back up and running. Fact: total of 12 people under age 40 (11 were 30 or older) have died from this in Ontario in about 6 months now, way less than from various other causes of death. Young people are having their lives indefinitely paused because Me-generation boomers expect society to shut down so they're safer. I'm actually shocked young folks aren't way more angry, but on the other hand public sectors are being paid anyway and others are getting CERB, CESB, off on paid "stress" leave, etc. so maybe that's why, not so bad if money's coming in while you're locked down.

Kidd said
If the covid numbers continue to trend upwards, governments will without doubt, be forced to close or restrict businesses. LTC homes can not be allowed to suffer the high casualty rates of the first wave. A preemptive move has to be taken for those living in that environment. I would expect LTC facilities to close by the end of this week, if the case numbers do not improve.
 

Loonie said

I don't think they will do anything major in the LTC homes or retirement homes unless there are major problems, and, when they do, it will apply only to specific homes. These places all have PPE now, which they didn't earlier, and they have better training. PSWs are no longer permitted to work at several homes in order to pull together enough hours, so they can't bring the virus with them from one home to another. Everyone entering a retirement home, even now, must have a temperature check, and indoor visits are quite restricted and must be booked ahead - this much I know because my mother resides in one. I imagine it's even stricter in LTC.
I think they recognized, belatedly, that the severe restrictions they had earlier were not always in the best interests of the residents, who were deprived of meaningful human contact, and i don't think they will go that route again unless the situation is very very bad.

 

Today I received a new memo from my mother's Ontario retirement home. They are in fact opening up further, not locking down, compared to during the First Wave. During the First Wave, no visitors were allowed in the building, even if no outbreak (cases) in the home, and this went on for months.
The new rules allow up to two "caregivers" (e.g. family members helping out in some capacity, very broadly defined) EVEN IF the resident has a positive diagnosis, in which only one visitor is allowed at a time.
Further, they wil now allow prospective residents/families to tour the facility - a privilege which was suspended last March.

This is in line with my expectations of what would happen. As the PM said today, we are already in the Second Wave.

I hope for the best too, but, as someone over 70 and having sole responsibility for my very elderly mother (along with my spouse), I'm worried, not just for mum but for us. For one thing, the elevators in this place aren't very big and there are often 2 or 3 people in them with us (along with their contaminated walkers). Social distancing is not even possible there, and ventilation appears absent. In order to accommodate social distancing in the dining room, they have additional seatings, so the elevators are busy much of the day taking people back and forth to the dining room.

And this is not a bad retirement home. It's pleasant and the staff are good. Mum is not asking to go anywhere else and thinks we chose well.

In today's throne speech, they said that there is a plan to amend the Criminal Code to criminalize neglect in LTC homes. Details not specified. If they're going to do that, they need to have a way to ensure that the homes have the facilities, equipment, staff and training they need - a huge challenge.

To be clear, anyone who was said to have died of covid will almost certainly have died from covid. Anyone who dies in an institutional setting must be seen by the coroner's office before disposition of the body - or at least that used to be the case and I believe it still is. In my experience this happens at the funeral home, so it may not be obvious to families.

However, if the coroner or physician signing the death certificate notices other contributing "underlying" factors, these may also be noted. The version of the death certificate which is given to family members in Ontario at the time of death does not state the cause of death.

I doubt anyone could get a nursing home patient to drink 8 glasses of water a day, even if they had the time, but the point is that they don't. Feeding a patient who has swallowing difficulties due to Alzheimer's - a very common situation in nursing homes - is just far too time-consuming. And many are unable to feed themselves or lack the presence of mind to do so. So, if you don't have a family member coming in frequently or you don't have the money to hire someone, you will likely suffer. This is why there is an effort now underway to create minimum nation-wide standards for nursing homes, but we will have to see how far that gets us and how long it takes to get there. Clearly some of the standards that were being reached, in Quebec for example, were sub-human.

Nonetheless, even with the best of care, a nursing home resident who contracts covid has a significant chance of dying, simply because they are not in robust health and will not have good defenses. That's why they are there in the first place.

We have at least two challenges.
First, to ensure residents are well cared for. The only real solution to this is more and better staffing and facilities. This has been a known and identified problem for decades but no government has seriously tackled it, at least not in Ontario.
The other problem is keeping covid out of these homes so that the residents don't die prematurely from a frightening disease incurring heavy costs on the health care system and very serious risks to staff and visitors. If well treated, most can still enjoy some aspects of life and be appreciated by their families.

I am not sure if one caregiver is being permitted in the nursing homes if there is an outbreak, although it's quite possible. I can only report on the retirement home. The rules are probably posted by the Ministry but I haven't checked. This retirement home normally only changes its rules when directed to do so.

In pre-covid days, no visitors were allowed during a Norwalk virus outbreak. These outbreaks are fairly common. In my experience they seem to happen once or twice a year in nursing homes and can last a few weeks. I am not sure if any exceptions were made in these cases. I would say that an exception could and would likely be made if a resident were dying, so that family could attend.

Getting back to the topic of this thread…

Kidd said
Rodeworthy, then I gather you and I are in agreement, inflation does exist, it’s real and it’s not the measly 0.1% as reported?
I also track my expenditures but not in percentages, in real dollars and I have nowhere near the number of categories you use….

Kidd, the percentage information I displayed in my post was determined from ‘real dollars’ in the records I keep. I call this work my ‘budget’, but it is effectively just accounting. I keep track not only of where our money is coming from but also where it is going.

Bit of history on this: Back in 1974 we moved into a new house. One day we went out and came home with a thousand dollars’ worth of lamps and fixtures. Could we afford this? I determined to find out. I went out and bought a supply of 3-column ledger sheets and so began the journey.

I set up categories of expense that I thought were appropriate to guide us. Remarkably, those separate ‘expense categories’ have remained pretty much intact to this day - 46 years later. A couple were added along the way. Thankfully better tools to manage this work came along but I used those ledger sheets for several years. I took a night course in bookkeeping to see if I was on the right track and discovered I had created a double-entry accounting system. Well OK – just seemed logical when I did it. But now I had a name for it.

The introduction of the personal computer was very significant in my life. They were pretty cool but really came into their own for business use with the introduction of database and spreadsheet software. This was in the MS-DOS era before Windows took over. I became heavily involved with dBase, a database compiler. VisiCalc was the first spreadsheet tool I used, but soon I moved on to Lotus 1-2-3. These were remarkable tools and my ‘Budget’ was ported over to 1-2-3. The electronic era of my financial management was underway. The fine tuning has been pretty much stabilized and I am using the period from 2003 to present to provide data for most pertinent trends and historical reference.

Everyone has to decide for themselves what works for them for financial management. The tools I developed have worked very well for us.

INFLATION
I played around with our records to see if I could detect effects of inflation. I don’t think I succeeded on the expense side. The non-discretionary categories Groceries, Insurance and Utilities that seem to be ‘more expensive’ are depicted here. Most assuredly we will have higher Grocery costs for the year. The years ’18 – ’20 we lived full time in Canada. Previous years we were away 5-6 months per year. In all categories, there are too many ‘explanations’ required to rationalize the differences.

The ‘real numbers’ don’t show again. I removed the Y-axis information. It is too personal and not relevant to the purpose of showing useful year-to-year comparative variations.

Non-Discretionary Expense

On the discretionary side we have Entertainment. Notably down for the year (so far):

Vatox said
Everyone needs to stop comparing their own living costs to the CPI.
I report it for one reason only, because it’s what is used for indexation of government benefits.

Vatox, you are so correct on this. It didn’t stop me from trying but I came to the same conclusion you did. Where inflation, and its inherent ‘inflation adjustment’, comes into play is on the income side. The graph below depicts our pension income much of which is indexed to inflation.

Jon said
Good job Roadworthy, the visualization of your budget is amazing, and it can truly point out problems in spending. I am wondering how you make it possible, is it just an Excel file….

Thank you, Jon. Your comment is appreciated. Yes, the charts provided were a product of the spreadsheet program I use. The data used to facilitate them were contained in the files I described above. Once a sufficient amount of data is available, many useful roll-ups can be made.

One chart in particular I like. I track our income in two categories — ‘Income from Labour’ and ‘Income from Capital’. ‘Labour’ is a bit of a misnomer since we don’t work for a living anymore but our pensions and other benefits are derivatives of our working years. So, all that is categorized as Labour.

Tracking ‘Expense vs. Income’ reveals:

55% of all our income comes from labour;
55 % of all our income was consumed by expenses;
45 % of all our income comes from capital;

Therefore,
all expenses have been met by income from labour;
and all income from capital converts to more capital.

The Growth chart debunks the theory that we are going to run out of money in our old age. We are already there and doing quite well, thank you.

In our situation, we are less concerned with the reduced ability to grow our money. Of more concern is the devaluation of the dollars we have. Hmmm…. Isn’t that what inflation is -- devaluation of the dollar?

That is a topic for another thread.

NOTE:
The charts shown may not be legible.
Click here to view/download them from Flickr (which requires an up-to-date browser).