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Michael James on Money started it. Then BigCajunMan took over— trying to estimate how much income he could draw out of a retirement nest egg based on various factors including inflation and the rate that the investments grow before withdrawal. As he says, it is very hard to pick what percentage to use for inflation. CPP is also “indexed” to inflation at a rate picked by the government so your monthly check can go up. I’ve generally found our bills go up more in a year than that government rate, though. So for my personal retirement planning I wondered what rate of inflation I should use.

Being an Information Pack Rat Has Some Uses

I’ve always been an information pack rat. In fact, I could tell you how much income tax I paid for working for the public library one year while in high school. (I can guess how few people are actually going to ask that.) For this exercise, it’s handy though. I know how much we’ve paid each year, actually each month, for most of our billable household costs.

From that information, I can calculate an approximate rate of inflation.

Estimating Inflation When Costs Don’t Always Increase

It gets a bit tricky because costs don’t actually always increase. Our Natural Gas costs, for example, are significantly lower now than in the past. (Thanks to shale gas frac’ing: We now have cheap nat gas but one day when we can’t get any clean drinking water at any price we may not be so thankful.)

During the interval 2001-2012:

Highest Natural Gas year: 2006: $1727
Lowest Natural Gas year to date: 2012: $924

What should I use to estimate the rate of inflation if it’s actually deflation?

Well, if I estimate inflation too highly I will have extra money to spend on the occasional rutabaga; if I estimate it too lowly I will have to forfeit my semi-annual clementine: I vote over estimate. So I will cheat and pretend the price of natural gas rose from $924 to $1727.

Car insurance can also dip for some people as their car ages. Not for us of course! We live in a “car accident capital of Canada” so we pay almost identical insurance on our brand new Camry as we do on our 15-year-old Corolla. Go figure. We’re insured basically against what we can do to someone else. (Good thing we usually walk to work.)

Our Personal Planning Inflation Estimates Based on Costs from 2001 to 2012

Not all the numbers are in yet for 2013 so these estimates are based on payments from 2001 to 2012.

Our Property Tax Inflation

Our mayor has made a valiant effort to keep these increases as low as possible. Even so our property taxes have increased: 2.9% per year

Our Home and Car Insurance Inflation

I’m lumping these two together since we buy both from the same company and there is a discount involved.

Our insurance costs have increased: 0.46% per year

(Yes, that was surprising! Please remember though that the replacement value for one car in that time has dropped 12 years worth to basically 0.)

Our Natural Gas Inflation

NOTE: This is not the increase in cost per BTU. This is the increase in our total bill. It includes tax increases and if we had any increases in consumption per year.

This is the one I’m lying about and flipping from deflation to inflation. This is my “mad rutabaga” money.

Our natural gas rates have (decreased) increased: 5.8% per year

Our Electricity Inflation

We use more electricity now than we used to. I blame the kids.

Again, this is not the increase in cost per megawatt. This is the increase in our total bill including all the lovely surcharges added by the government and the time of use rates.

Our electricity costs have increased: 1.7% per year

Our Water Inflation

Strictly speaking, we pay for both water, waste water and water infrastructure based on how many m3 of water we use per year.

Our water costs have increased: 4.1% per year

Our Cable TV Inflation

Well, this is a bit misleading. We got rid of our cable this year when they tried to raise my rates again. However, in the interests of historical accuracy, and shock, here goes.

Our cable TV costs had increased: 3.5% per year

Our Telephone (Landline) Inflation

We aren’t really cell phone users having simple pay-as-you-go emergency phones only. So luckily, there’s only one number to report here.

This cost includes our long distance charges. We barely make any long distance calls and when we do we use one of those “dial 10-10-xxx” things so they only cost 25 cents.

Our telephone costs have increased: 0.8% per year

OK, I admit I was surprised by how low that is, too.

Our Internet Inflation

We were “early adaptors” to using high speed internet so we’ve always paid too much.

Our inflation rate is probably lower than people’s because when you start at the top, there’s less distance to climb.

Our internet costs have increased: 2% per year

Our Gasoline Inflation

This one is a bit tough to calculate too. I’m not interested in the percent increase in the cost per litre, although I could tell you that if you forced me to. I’m interested in the percent increase in total annual spending. The problem is that we only go on a major cross-Canada road trip every second year. And after someone totaled my car last year, we went down to one car for 6 months. So I think I’ll just have to skip this one.

It’s not really a mandatory retirement expense anyway, as we’ll probably have to walk everywhere when we retire because we’ll be too broke to afford a car. Unless there’s some way we could power one off those extra rutabagas….Hmmmmmm.

An Overall Personal Rate of Inflation Based on 2001-2012

So what do I get if I try the same overall calculation but based on the sum of our costs for

natural gas
electricity
water
property taxes
cable
telephone
internet
house and car insurance

Our overall personal rate of inflation for 2001-2012 was: 2.3% a year

OK, I admit it again. I’m surprised. I was expecting more like 4%.

If you want to know how that compares to our single-year rate of inflation for 2011-2012, please see: Budgeting for Retirement Requires a Good Estimate of My Personal Rate of Inflation for 2012.

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Have you ever tried to calculate your personal rate of inflation? (No, I don’t mean pre- and post-turkey dinner!) Please share your horrific results with a comment.

Way back in 2004 we decided to get Cable TV from Rogers. We were leaving the country for several weeks with our youngest child and were leaving our elder child in the care of my parents. It seemed merciless to cut my Dad off from 7×24 TV news coverage for weeks, so we got cable for him. For a variety of reasons, most of which are spelled p-r-o-c-r-a-s-t-i-n-a-t-i-o-n, we didn’t cancel it when we got back. But the time has come to cancel our cable service; To me, though, it seems like the Rogers cancellation policy borders on illegal.

Whose Bill Is It?

I should have known that cancelling cable would be similar to severing my own limb using a plastic knife. However, since I am eternally optimistic (if cynical), I phoned Rogers at the number listed on our bill. I should have known there would be a problem because it technically is my husband’s bill, not ours. It is in his name only.

Anyway, I tried.

I called at 1:28. At 1:29 after selecting a variety of voice mail options that led no where, I was put on hold. At 1:30 the call was picked up.

At 1:42 I finally hung up.

I had not been able to cancel the bill. Nor was I able to find out how my husband could cancel in writing by fax, email or Canada Post.

Rogers Cable Says I Cannot Cancel My Cable TV Service In Writing

This is the part that seems borderline on illegal to me. The representative on the phone told me, repeatedly, that it is not possible to cancel Cable TV by sending in a letter: Not by fax, by email or by registered mail delivered by Canada Post!

I have heard many people complain about contracts that MUST be cancelled in writing. This is the first time I’ve encountered one that CANNOT be cancelled in writing!

To have spent 12 minutes waiting just to be told I could not cancel the service was very annoying indeed.

Why Did It Take 12 Minutes to Not Cancel the Service?

I told the agent plainly that we were cancelling because the cost for the service has become “way, way, way too high.” When we started cable in 2004, we were paying $26.44 including taxes etc. We are now paying $40.50 including taxes and strange fees to the CRTC. That’s an increase of $14.06 or over 53% in less than 10 years.

Now, to add insult to injury, Rogers has announced that as of Sept 17, 2013 they will charge you $2 to send you a bill. That’s right you have to pay for the privilege of owing them money. I wouldn’t take this from Bell and I won’t from Rogers either. (To do the agent justice, he did say that we could work out something to remove this $2 fee. Of course I had to phone in to find that out.)

The agent said he had to check what discounts he could offer for the service before he could accept a cancellation since we had stated the reason for cancelling is price.

Will my husband have to endure another 12 minute delay when he calls in to cancel?

How Can I Cancel the Cable If My Husband Can’t Phone Rogers?

Believe it or not, there is one way I can cancel the service if my husband can’t or won’t phone in:

I have to get a Power of Attorney
I can fax the Power of Attorney in to Rogers
I can then phone in to go through the phone in cancellation process again!

I’m amazed. Actually sort-of stunned. Why on earth can you not simply write a letter stating you are cancelling your TV service?!

Rogers Cable Has the Worst Cable TV Cancellation Service I Can Imagine

In conclusion, I think Rogers should win some sort of prize for most bizarre contract cancellation policy.