I am curious what the cost of living is in your neighbourhood. Since I am a price sensitive individual, it has been a hard few years. Let’s use the metric of a per month or week basis.
To keep it related to the community: have you refrained from spending as much on photography and tech because of the higher costs or shortages (or looked harder for better deals)?
Frankly, no. I’ve been lucky to not be affected much by the pandemic, even though I changed jobs and had a baby during lockdown. On the contrary, the pandemic has allowed me to work from home indefinitely, which I prefer.
And the used market for tech and photo gear went through a rollercoaster in the last year, which I happened to mostly profit from. I do buy most photo gear used, and almost never buy current models.
Cost of living certainly has increased, especially in heating and traveling, but also food. Not needing to commute to work helps, as does not even owning a car. Still, I am fortunate enough to say that this is currently mostly a luxury problem (fewer vacations) to us.
For reference, I live in Germany and work as a programmer/engineer.
Cost of living has increased massively and is still increasing massively, and of course it affects the relatively poorer people hardest. It’s easy to see this in the average rent prices that have gone up by almost 53% between Q1 2014 and Q1 2022, whereas inflation over the same period has been ~15%. Also, the energy prices have gone up by ~35%. I cannot find reasonable numbers for groceries and so on. I think it’s safe to say that the increasing trend was already there, but the pandemic has accelerated things.
Edit: average rent seems to be ~€14/m² but this heavily depends on the area. In the bigger cities it’s difficult to find anything below €800 per month, except if you want a tiny apartment.
For me personally, I am lucky to have a steady salary working in education and the pandemic has not affected me in that sense. Then again, I have not been actively pursuing my photography hobby that much anyway, so no change in expenditures there 
Here in Portugal the inflation is through the roof and housing is just crazy. I’m 24 and made the decision to keep living with my mother for a couple more years while it stabilizes or I start earning a little more money.
Working from home also made me save around 1300€ per year(And 3 hours per work day!) in commute money, which is a great boost for the hobbies.
By my countries standard I earn above average, but not by much. Thankfully I keep my cost of loving down so I can put some money into savings while also imvesting in my hobbies. I usually buy new, but need to change that habbit, at least for photography gear. For the rest… not so much because portuguese people think their items don’t devalue over time so they try to sell their things at the same price they bought them… No useful second hand market locally.
I’m currently a software engineer with 6 years of work experience.
On technology and equipment, no.
The one thing that has increased my costs is travel. Actually getting to places to take pictures is much more expensive than it was pre-Covid.
A few months ago I bought a Galaxy Watch kind of out of “despair”, because lately I don’t know what to do with my money. I mean a smartwatch is really something that you don’t need. But let me explain this. I have a 2-year-old semi-pro camera and a “pro” standard zoom lens and most of the time they are all I need. About a year go I bought an ultra-wide lens, but I find that I hardly ever use it. I have many other older lenses but basically I don’t use them. So, photography-wise, I think I am happy with very little. I think I am finally in a place where I don’t desire things that can be bought with money. I am happy with what I have. Apparently, the more money I have, the fewer expensive tech things I want.
I do spend some money for traveling and books about holiday destinations, but there, I am also happy with comparatively little: I think I spend approximately 20 eur/week for train and bus tickets. And you know, recently I had to cancel an expensive journey because something came inbetween.
Well, I don’t know. Sometimes I think or fear that inflation will eat up all my savings - so is it better to save money or spend it? At the moment I am ok, but that might change as inflation progresses…
We’re about eight years into “homeownership” so housing inflation hasn’t effected us much here. I put that in quotes because really the bank owns in and unlike renting I’m on the hook for maintenance. We did a refinance back at the end of 2020 but property taxes have gone up to the point where we’re basically back to where we started cost wise. Still, at least it hasn’t gone up I guess but overall I’m not a fan of this living situation and would go back to renting if I could afford it. American homeownserhip is wasteful and just encourages accruing more material goods. Frankly I don’t care for it.
Food and fuel has been the biggest cost increase we’ve seen but if were looking for housing now it would be in trouble there too. I work for a university and they’re looking at making dorms for faculty and staff now because the cost of housing has greatly increased and the school can’t pay enough for people to afford rent or buy anything. We have people commuting over an hour one way to work as it is to afford a place to live. The student apartments in town are $800-$1000 USD a month per bedroom and are financed mostly by the student loans they take out. Before the pandemic I think $750 per month per bedroom was more normal on the high end.
Edit: on the photo gear front I’ve bought a new strobe (but am selling an old one to offset) and a used 70-200 2.8 Nikon F-mount lens recently. My habits haven’t changed there too much as buying used or refurb was a common pattern for me outside of my Fuji stuff and a few pieces of Nikon gear over the decades. Although lately I’m taking stock of my propensity to buy things as a hobby and purging stuff. Buying things is not a substitute for a personality or creativity.
That puts things in perspective. Here in semi rural Germany, that pays for a nice house with back yard.
This isn’t a large city either but a small mountain resort town which has a very high cost of living. We live ~12 miles (19 km) out of town in a very agrarian rural area as that’s where we could afford a place. Now the prices have sky rocketed here so much that we could no longer afford to buy our own home again. According to the county we added $120,000 USD in value to our home the last two years. Our taxes have gone up to match but the services out here haven’t increased in exchange.
Edit: I think before the pandemic $450-650 USD was more average apartment bedroom rate that usually included some utilities (electric, water, sewer, maybe an ISP too) with $750 USD being for a high end luxury place.
Here in Portugal our minimum wage is ~700€ and in our capital that amount doesn’t even get you a 1 bedroom apartment in most cases. Our second biggest city has things a little better but not by much. This is really turning into absurdity for poor and younger people who don’t own houses yet.
According to world economic forum by 2030 you will own nothing and be happy. With rising inflation and cost of living happening on a global scale, it looks like things are going according to plan. All the young will be priced out of housing market, and forced into City renting.
I’ve become quite patient and selective about gear purchases, doing plenty of research and waiting for sales. With the pandemic, I’ve also had to learn to roll with things being back-ordered for several months. So, in general, I’ve learned to savor what I eventually get.
@afre, I also live in Toronto, and the escalation of housing prices here has been crazy. I would hate to be trying to break into home ownership at this point in time. And with the government eliminating rent controls, the other alternative is also getting expensive.
I can barely wait to have my entire life as a subscription, what a wonderful future! /s
We should start becoming more independent from the state and crops, not the other way around.
In some rural areas of the US, that amount will also rent a modest house with a yard.
Some of my photographic work is on film, and those costs have risen dramatically over the last couple of years. A 100’ roll of 35mm HP5+ used to be <$60 USD just a few summers ago, and now is well over $90 USD and should approach the $100 USD mark very soon. The last roll of 35mm Kodak Ektar I bought was $16 USD. I don’t trust my home processing for color work, so to do that commercially will be $6 USD per roll, with costs for scans/prints on top of that. I can easily be into the $40-$50 USD range for a single roll of film. I have budgeted for 5 color rolls this year, and a bulk roll of HP5+ that I will do myself at home.
Student housing is always extremely expensive/lucrative for landlords. That is the source of controversy in many locations - most new housing development in my area (Binghamton, NY) is focused on the student market, and there are few new apartment complexes constructed for those who are actually working for a living. (The local university is kind of notorious for attracting students that are from wealthy Long Island families - families wealthy enough that some of them will buy a house for their kid for four years, and sell it or become a student slumlord after their kid graduates.)
For reference, when I was a student: A single bedroom in a multi-tenant apartment ran $450-500USD/month 20 years ago, and that was actually on the cheap side of things.
My last apartment (which I lived in for a decade) was around 800 square feet and had a riverfront balcony for $500-560/month (rent slowly increased during the decade).
My current location is $900/mo for 1400 square feet with a garage, but I got extremely lucky - it has a long waiting list usually. Student housing only a few miles away goes $1500-2000/month for less space and amenities, and all new construction is focusing on that market.
Please explain: How do you do that?
I wish I knew! 
Wow, such variability in your accounts. That is why I love creating Lounge topics. It can be a hit or miss: usually people don’t bite, but I was sure this one would because of the effect of COVID-19, economics, politics and even war on our respective nations.