Jeyan Jeganathan: Have you been doing mental math at the store and putting some groceries back on the shelf, maybe even stretching meals a bit further so you'll have to buy less? If so, you are not the only one. According to a recent survey from Spergel, an insolvency and debt relief firm, more than 60% of respondents said they've skipped meals or reduced portions because of financial pressure in the past six months. Over half used buy now, pay later line of credit or payday loans to buy groceries. And two out of five Canadians delayed paying a bill so they could buy food. And that's just groceries. Add housing bills, childcare. And you've got a lot of Canadians worried about the cost of living.

Jeyan Jeganathan: That pressure is especially acute for Canadians living alone. The data shows single people pay 66% more in rent and 27% more in household expenses, meaning things like phone bills, internet and basic supplies. So is life actually getting less affordable? We look at how the economy is treating Canadians and how many are trying to make ends meet. This is The Rundown. Back in December, Abacus Data found that 67% of Canadians said that the cost of living was the worst they could remember. Nearly two thirds said that it should be the top priority for the federal government.

Jeyan Jeganathan: So what's the situation right now and how hard is it to get by, let alone get ahead? Renee Sylvestre-Williams is a financial journalist and author of the Singles Tax no nonsense Financial Advice for Solo Earners, and Erin Kelly is the CEO of Advanced Symbolics, Inc. Kristine Beese is the founder and CEO of Untangle Money. Great to have all three of you on the program. How are you all doing?

Jeyan Jeganathan: All right. We're going to start with you. Take us through some of the research AI pollster Polly found on affordability in this economy. People are struggling.

Erin Kelly: Yeah, exactly. So we did a research here and we looked at how many people said that they're having financial hardship. And when Polly divides it, she divides it up into major struggle, somewhat struggling, not really struggling or I'm fine. And I think what was most amazing first off is how much that percentage of people saying it's a major struggle has grown since 2021. So you see, in 2021, 8.7% of people said they were having a major struggle, and now it's over a quarter, 27%.

Jeyan Jeganathan: And that was Covid when we're talking 2021, right?

Erin Kelly: So and I don't know, and you know, we'd have to go and look at it more. Did the Covid subsidies help people? Otherwise it would have been worse. I mean, obviously it would have been worse because we were having a pandemic. But you see how just it just really grows. And when more than a quarter of your population says every month it's a major struggle, that's a crisis. I mean, that is a crisis.

Jeyan Jeganathan: All right. Well, Christine, with this research, does it align with what you're seeing with your clients these days when we're talking about major struggles?

Kristine Beese: 100%. You know, what we look at is on an after tax after deduction basis, and we make your budget square. And then we fill it up with the things that you spend your money on. And we do fixed costs or we call it committed money. And then we know from research that there's amount you need for variable costs. So food, clothes, gifts, all the things and everything else. And then what's left over is what you can put towards future money, retirement savings and things like that. And we see these costs just compressing your flex money or your variable spend and your ability to save for retirement. It's just it is very hard. And the square isn't keeping up with the demands for the costs and the spending.

Kristine Beese: And one of the things that we talk about pretty that's really important to know and it's research backed, is that with your variable spending food, clothes, gifts, all the things and everything else, you need to get joy from this. As human beings in the middle income, if we do not get joy, we will do something called revenge spending. Okay, so we can do 3 to 5 years tight. So this is why I think it's interesting when we tell young people that they should live like they're a student for as long as possible. We really can't do it for more than 3 to 5 years. And then you will actually revenge spend and take away a lot of the hard work you've done. You might go into debt. It's really it is really hard for people.

Jeyan Jeganathan: All right, Renee, I'll get you to add on that.

Renee Sylvestre-Williams: I completely agree with everything because the thing is, like, there's always there's it's the conversation is changing. But for decades. And Christine, you let me know as well. The conversation has been like budget, budget, budget, budget, budget. Right. And that goes back to revenge spending. Somebody cannot live on a stringent budget for months or years at a time, because what happens is you get no joy, you're deeply unhappy, you spend a lot of time very conscious about your spending, and then next thing you know, you are revenge spending. Revenge spending became a very popular term in what, year two or year three of the pandemic, because people were just so tired of one being indoors a lot, especially in Ontario. There was a lot of financial stress about, you know, because some people weren't working, some, you know, there was Cerb and all of those things that people just started spending in order to feel something.

Jeyan Jeganathan: All right, Renee, we're going to move from revenge spending. We're going to talk about sacrifices. So Aaron, what did poorly find in terms of what people are sacrificing to get by right now?

Erin Kelly: Well, some people are sacrificing very deeply. I mean, we're beyond we're beyond the the fluff at this point. So if we look at families, families are sacrificing vacations. Number two is savings saving for retirement. Parents aren't saving. Now, what I found interesting in the right here, you'll see we have the single spending. The singles are continuing to save, and I think that's probably because they don't have that safety net. Maybe there's a false sense of security with couples, right. But so couples number two is savings is going out the door. And then you go down the list. Subscriptions and gifts both both groups giving up gifts for singles. That's number one. That's going out gifts and then subscriptions. And so yeah, I mean people are already giving up those those joyful elements that Christine mentioned. And we're into basic things like television.

Renee Sylvestre-Williams: Honestly, when I saw those slides, a lot of it wasn't a surprise to me. Right? But the fact that people are giving up savings, I would agree with you. I think possibly it might be a case of couples are like, especially if you've got younger children, like, okay, we're just going to do this hopefully short term sacrifice. And then longer term we're ideally we should be reaching our peak financial earnings years, be able to catch up. The fact that single people are still saving tells me a couple things. I think a lot of single people realise that they do have to save, no matter what the situation is, because there's those costs down the road, right? Retirement. You know what, if you're ill down the line and all of those things long term, care for yourself. And again, I would also add probably somewhere down the line as parents get older, as a single person, you may be the sole caregiver for them. So you have to have that cushion. So the fact that single people are still saving reassures me, but also kind of like the vacation thing that tells me, like a lot of people are not getting that ability to, you know, get some stress relief, walk away from work. And that work life balance concerns me a lot.

Jeyan Jeganathan: Okay. Well, Christine, I want to get you in on there. What advice are you giving clients right now about spending versus cutting to get by?

Kristine Beese: Yeah. So we protect that flexible spending even though it may be harder to spend. We call it the do it all years that most, most couples with young families in Canada have. These do it all years. Sometimes it's with elder care as well. Where you're there just isn't. Actually, there's not enough money to do it all. And so what we look at is and it in some ways you can think it's depressing, but I think it's it's nice to have at least some options. We look at retiring later, having a part time job in retirement. We really focus on something that you might enjoy doing in part time and then potentially downsizing. Or the Golden Girls retirement, which isn't for everyone, but we. It is a trend we see in all countries other than the US. Increasing is is people.

Jeyan Jeganathan: People who aren't familiar. Yeah. Golden girls retirement.

Kristine Beese: It's mainly women who outlive their partners or are single to start with. You know, collecting their resources together and owning or renting a home with other women. And they say the, you know, maintenance goes down because you're not the only one cleaning. They say there's always somebody there and then there's a built in social life. So it's people who like it, really like it. Some people really don't like it. So depends on it, depends on the person.

Renee Sylvestre-Williams: Surprisingly realistic. The housing chapter in my book is the longest thing, and there's a whole section on sort of that communal community housing situation, and it's been done, okay, not abroad. So there was that whole meme that kind of went viral of seven women in China who bought a house. Yeah, right. And all of that stuff. But there's Clarence Commons in Toronto where they about 6 or 7 people pooled their resources, got a mortgage with the insurance and bought a place. And you can read it in the book. But they sat down and had a very transparent conversation about finances and how much they're willing to spend on renovations and repairs and all of that stuff. There is, I forget the radish in California, where they pooled their resources, bought a land, and there are multiple houses on it, right? Families, kids and all that. They're actually selling it right now as we're. . . compound of sorts. And then there is an association called Single Women Living Together, which provides support for lower income women, mostly in Ontario. And what it is, it is a resource for women who are looking to partner up with other women and rent. So these are all options. And people love a Golden Girls scenario.

Jeyan Jeganathan: I want to get Erin involved in this. We hear the news and it's grim. We see the data, it's grim. But many of us are still living as usual. And I'm curious, is there perhaps a disconnect, or are people perhaps ignoring it and maybe leaning into debt a little bit?

Erin Kelly: Oh, people are definitely leaning into debt. There's there's no question about that. And some people aren't feeling it. I mean that we do have that small slice of the population there. They know that inflation has gone up and stuff, but they weren't they weren't so close to the edge that, you know, but but people are definitely leaning into debt.

Kristine Beese: Yeah I would agree. . . I don't think enough Canadians understand how debt works and understand, you know, the difference between getting your money working for you versus getting your money working for someone else. Getting your money working for you means that the money that's invested is making money on itself. And so we actually break down what you contributed and what what money came that you did not contribute came from that return on investment. And if you start early enough, the return on investment is more than half what you contributed, which is how you can afford a life, a retirement. And so when you're when your money is working for someone else, you're doing that to the benefit of someone else. You're paying this instead of it going up, you're paying this going down. And so one of the things that really bothers me when the government talks about, oh, we've made mortgages longer, so housing is more affordable. I'm like, that's actually not more affordable. It's a misnomer. You're you're now asking people to pay much more in interest. And it's you're you're asking people to work much harder for banks.

Erin Kelly: Okay. . . everybody, whether you're single, you're a household. Everybody feels our tax system is too complicated. It's actually not working well for anyone. Okay. And, you know, if you have to hire a professional just to pay the government your taxes because you feel otherwise, you're not getting all the little exceptions you could have gotten or, you know, if, heaven forbid, you're in a bankruptcy situation. You can't afford to help anyone, but you can't get through it on your own. So you're kind of at the mercy of the others who do have professionals.

Renee Sylvestre-Williams: There's a lot of shame and blame about money, like if you cannot manage your own finances personally for some reason, that just becomes that you are a failure as a human being. But if you think about it, like a lot of Canadians aren't really exposed to actual proper financial education, they kind of see how their parents or their family react to money, so they kind of build up their own money stories.

Jeyan Jeganathan: I want to go back to housing. Yes. How are singles being short changed when it comes to housing?

Renee Sylvestre-Williams: So if you are a high earning single, you probably have a better chance of qualifying for a down payment. But these days you need a minimum two income and possibly money from family. Family member, the bank of mom and dad, or, you know, a gift, a monetary gift to afford something, especially in the, you know, 6 or 7 major cities across the country. So financially, it can be more difficult for single person, especially somebody who may not be in the top 20 or top 15% of income earners in the country to buy a place.

Jeyan Jeganathan: All right. I want to give some people some solutions, some advice. What are some some top three. Give me top three tips in terms of protecting themselves.

Renee Sylvestre-Williams: Well, I like to say I'm not going to tell people to budget. . . kind of just know where you are financially. Like, you don't have to know what every single dollar is doing, but kind of a general picture of where you are and where you want to be. And I would say the second thing I would say is get involved in your community. . . having a strong community around you, especially when you're single, is even more important. . . obviously friends and family, but also things like having a good employment lawyer. Right? There's a lot of layoffs happening right now. Having a good employment lawyer can be the difference between getting two weeks severance and 12 and 12 week severance. . . And the third thing, and this one is, I would say, get more politically active, like support politicians that are looking or have concrete ideas about how to address housing affordability, how to make it easier to live in a city, whether as a single person or as a family. Right? Because there are just some things that cannot be solved by the individual in and of itself. It takes perhaps a whole bunch of people getting together and supporting political action.