US biased investing literature. What can a non-american investor do?

[johnbroker]

I think that, for you americans, the market basket is this one http://www.bls.gov/news.release/cpi.t01.htm

If fact, you could build your own index using your expending for the last years (if you track it).

[BlueNote]

@jacob and @johnbroker

Good point on inflation relevance to the individual.

Heres a tool to build your own personal inflation rate (for Americans): https://www.umb.edu/editor_uploads/calc ... lator.html

My rate is about 1.4% vs 1.7% average in USA.

My real rate of inflation is harder to define because I'd have to categorize and measure all my purchases for a base year and then measure all the same purchases the next year and calculate the % increase. I could have developed more skill in finding deals which would put me below the personal rate of inflation calculations. Nonetheless inflation is mostly unavoidable in the long run IMHO.


I couldn't find a Canadian version, maybe I'll build one, it wouldn't be too hard as long as I had the data. Added to the to do list for my blog.

[Seppia]

@Seppia - Prices don't rise uniformly for all consumer goods. For example, IIRC, in the US, much of the CPI is driven by quickly rising health care and educational costs. Whereas technology has become a lot cheaper. And so on. YMOYL discusses the impact of inflation in fair detail.

I definitely understand that, my point is:

- I believe we can counter the effects of inflation by shifting spending across categories, or even slashing spending tout court, but

- Inflation is still there. In the long run something will definitely catch up. Food has experienced a huge deflation in the last centuries, and is now generally at zero inflation, but for example housing costs have a very good history of tracking inflation (over multi year periods). Everybody needs a place to live.