California’s Cost of Living is on the Rise
If California wasn’t expensive enough, it’s frustrating to experience skyrocketing inflation rates push prices up even further. We’re not just talking about increased pricing for entertainment and fine dining, but rather, we’re talking about your everyday necessities – housing (i.e. rent), owning a car, gas, food, clothing, and even utilities!
In fact, according to federal data, inflation has pushed consumer prices up nationwide by 6.2% in October – compared to last year, this is the largest annual increase in more than three decades. Moreover, gas prices increased 49.6%, making California officially the most expensive state for gas. Furthermore, compared to this time last year, electricity costs have increased by 9% and groceries by 14%!
How to Cope with the Surging Cost of Living
When it comes to affording life – particularly California’s cost of living, in the most basic terms, you have to consider it a balancing act – of money in vs money out. Although you can’t completely control how much you have to pay for your necessities, you can do one of two things – either increase the amount of money you bring in OR reduce the amount of money you spend.
Reduce Your Monthly Expenditures
We’ll begin with the latter – reducing your expenditures. One way to go about this and afford California’s cost of living, is by first creating a list of ALL your monthly expenditures, including housing, car loans, car insurance, health insurance, food, utilities, cell phones, childcare, pet bills, memberships, subscriptions, entertainment, credit cards, Starbucks runs, etc…
Next, highlight all your necessary expenses in one color, followed with unnecessary expenses in another. Then take an honest look at your unnecessary expenses. These generally are your more lavish expenses such as eating out (as you can cook and make coffee at home), gym memberships (as you can workout at home), or even your paid Spotify account (as you can stream music for free with ads). Determine which of these expenses you’re willing to temporarily eliminate – and do so.
Afterwards, take a look at your remaining expenses and see how you can reduce them. For instance, perhaps you can switch vendors or renegotiate your existing plan.
Contact your vendors and creditors. Ask them how they can work with you to reduce your monthly payments and interest rates. By reducing your interest rate, not only will your payment drop, but with your newly achieved monthly savings, you can try paying more than your minimum payment to pay off your debt even sooner. You may be surprised by how much you can decrease your monthly expense with a single phone call – and always remember, if the first phone call doesn’t work, try again.
Increase Your Monthly Income
That all said, many are already living with the bare minimum and don’t have any room to cut or reduce expenses. If this sounds familiar, then the next step is to increase how much money you bring in.
One of the fastest ways to increase how much money you bring in is by increasing your pay – which you can by visiting American Forklift Training Centers, INC and earning your forklift certification.
You see, forklift operators are in high demand, as the forklift and warehouse industries are growing – and with great strength. In fact, as other industries slowed down during the pandemic, these industries were booming. Reason being, E-commerce and online retailers are continuously demonstrating their value and therefore expanding. In turn, to meet rising consumer demands, these industries must hire forklift operators – thus creating great opportunities, job security, and perks for certified forklift operators.
Additionally, a career in forklift operations opens the door for many lucrative supervising and managerial roles, such as team and shift leads, logistic managers, and warehouse supervisors.
Accordingly, to help you cope with California’s cost of living and help you leverage the great opportunities available to forklift operators, we want to help you!
We can teach you how to safely, properly, and efficiently operate a forklift. Then, upon earning your forklift certification, we can provide you with job assistance. We have partnered up with hundreds of So Cal agencies and upon receiving your forklift certification or renewing with us, we will send your information to the companies and agencies hiring in your sought area.
To learn more, call us at (323) 620-7000.