I have solved the egg problem, by having chickens.
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We are down to one hen in our back yard but her egg laying days seem to be over. Even in their prime, our hens only laid in the nice weather months. The cost per egg was high but the grandkids liked them.
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My brother lives on a farm (not as a farmer, though) & they have chickens. He did some back of the envelope math. Given the cost of raising them, what they sell their eggs for, and not accounting for the imputed cost of the ones they keep for themselves, they about break even.
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Slight tangent from the overall topic… But perhaps you know this… I know in the U.S. when interest rates were falling people would get new mortgages with better interest rates. Is this an option in Canada or do the penalties kill the financial viability of doing this?
Many Canadian mortgages have a three months interest rate penalty if you try to pay them off early or renegotiate them. My son had a floating interest rate mortgage that went from 1.45% to 6.45% in a short period of time. We did the math and figured it was in his interest to pay it off rather than sustain another few years of paying high interest rates. (He was able to do this as he received an insurance company settlement after his debilitating bicycle accident). However if that money had been left invested in US tech stocks it would have been better to have not paid down the mortgage!
If you’re early in your mortgage and interest rates have fallen a bunch, it seems like you could make that penalty back fairly quickly. I’m going to have to prod this a bit more.
You have to crunch the numbers. You also have to factor in that, unlike the US, Canadian mortgage interest costs are after-tax as they are not tax-deductible for our primary residence. I was not optimistic my son could earn better than 6.45% after tax on his invested funds.
The Bank of Canada rate has fallen by 2% since my son paid off his mortgage. Probably would not bother paying it off now at 4.45% versus the 6.45% he was paying two years ago.
Yeah, I won’t be paying off mine anytime soon. On the other hand, I wouldn’t mind going from paying 5.29% interest down to an interest rate that starts with a 3.
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Meanwhile we are maintaining the course here. At least the Fed does not listen to Trump, yet.
**Federal Reserve officials on Jan. 29 held interest rates steady, with inflation still above its 2% target and President Donald Trump’s call for the central bank to further cut rates.
The Federal Open Market Committee left the federal funds rate unchanged at a range of 4.25% to 4.5% following its two-day meeting.
Trump, who in his first term frequently insisted the Fed cut rates, said he’ll “demand” it during a virtual Jan. 23 speech at the World Economic Forum’s annual event in Davos.
After calling for an end to the Russia-Ukraine war, Trump said, “With oil prices going down, I’ll demand that interest rates drop immediately. And, likewise, they should be dropping all over the world. Interest rates should follow us.”
Fed Chair Jerome H. Powell has preached the importance of Fed independence in his public remarks and said the central bank does not take outside voices into account when making decisions.**
Yesterday at Trader Joes - they had eggs listed at $4.99/$5.99/$6.99 dz. I think they were regular, free range and organic but I didn’t really check because there was no stock on the shelf just the price.
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At Costco yesterday I think it was $5.49 for 24 eggs and $6.49 for 2 gallons of 2% milk
The eggs were the regular white ones. Seemed to be out of the organic free-range brown ones
This morning at my local grocery store there were tons of eggs (New England, if it varies geographically), think I paid $5 for a dozen. (Regular eggs, not hippy dippy ethical ones).
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Where I live organic eggs are currently cheaper than non-organic ones. Maybe less bird flu at the hippy dippy farms???
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Eggs were back in stock at my local grocery store yesterday, $6 for a dozen of the plain large eggs.
Check both organic and kosher eggs. At my grocery store they are currently cheaper than regular eggs.
Same here, although they have sold out of the fancy eggs. But last time I bought eggs, the Best Choice were $7 and the fancier eggs were $3.49.
A similar thing happened during the great lumber shortage of 2021-ish. Plywood and 2x4 lumber was insane, but when I went to buy quarter-sawn oak for my bathroom, prices were basically the same as the year before.
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Makes me wonder if there are people out there who prefer the Frankenstein regular eggs to the hippy dippy eggs, even if they’re more expensive. Reminds me of the time when there was an event in Wisconsin where they had free beer. The beers were millers lite and a bunch of good craft beers. As soon as they ran out of millers lite (and not the craft beer) half the people left.
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Eh. There are “drinkers” and there are “tasters.”
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I checked. One variety was $9.79, another was $10.99. They were out of everything else, including the regular eggs.
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