Half of the people polled by Ipsos for the MNP survey say that to save money they are staying home more often and a third are socializing less. This is especially evident in younger Canadians and those with an income of less than $40,000, the survey said.
But wait, it gets worse:
Nearly half of respondents say they don’t believe they will be able to cover their living expenses over the next 12 months without going further into debt, up two percentage points from the previous quarter.
I’m guessing some of this debt includes student loans and car loans:
Credit card balances hit a record high of $107.4 billion in the second quarter, with average non-mortgage debt for consumers rising to $21,131, according to Equifax Canada
I’m always suspicious of this kind of poll. Every year or two we seem to get a poll saying our financial health is abysmal, but time passes and the rate of bankruptcies/insolvencies stays around the same. I guess this one is different because of the increasing cost of living.
The insidious thing about inflation is that many measures that would lessen the pain would also exacerbate the inflation itself.
I imagine the 3 trillion dollar bailout the US pumped into the market when it crashed in 2020 that no one seems to remember or talk about has more to do with inflation than anything Canada did.