Every time this thread popups in my feed, I am always wondering if it is next Wednesday and how many 'Wednesdays' with new draconian measures we have had since this thread started.
Posts from serafina in thread „Draconian new monetary controls from Wednesday“
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I think they have cut a deal with the IRS and IMF and this is their present.
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I am paying USD 16.79/month for Netflix, as I originally subscribed in the US and never changed it because I couldn't understand what the final price would be in Argentina with these random taxes. I share my Netflix account with my mother in Italy and my cousin in Germany, as I put it on her TV when I visited two years ago to watch a show, and left it as a thank you gift. My mother has an Amazon Prime subscription because she purchases books and goods from Amazon.it, and it has Amazon Prime video included. I am using her Amazon Prime Video to watch some movies from Buenos Aires. I wouldn't subscribe to Prime myself as the catalogue is uninteresting compared to Netflix.
If I understand correctly, Splinter current pays 1650 plus 75% = ARS 2890. If I were to pay it with my Wise debit at the official rate, I would pay about 23 USD/month, and this is without additional households. But if I pay it with Mercadopago, using local pesos, that would be less than 9 USD.
I consider also that when paying locally I am drawing from our local reserve, which is limited.
I have Acrobat Pro DC by subscription as an Argentina resident, billed in pesos at 581 ARS per month, that become 952.84 ARS after taxes.
There was some mixup when I signed up: the subscription for Argentinians is cheaper than for the US. However, I didn't initially notice that they only accept payment by Argentinian credit card (we just have a debit card), so after a lot of chat and calls with the Argentinian customer service, I had to put in the details of my US debit card with Wise. Apparently, debit from abroad are okay, debit from Argentina is not okay...
On Wise, ARS are converted to USD/EUR at the official rate, so I pay €7.53. The price for Acrobat Pro DC for the US is $14.99/month, so I still pay a lot less.
Another service that is obviously cheaper here are courier services brokerage. I send documents by courier several times a month for my work, either from Argentina to the US or from the US to the rest of the world, so I have been exploring options.
I have found this courier that for just 3600 ARS sent by FedEx my documents from Buenos Aires to California. This at least half (if not a third) of the official FedEx rate in Argentina. They also quoted me 6300 ARS for the opposite route (from the US to Argentina) by DHL, which is quoted at USD 85 by DHL.com. 6300 ARS is 50 USD at the official rate, which is exactly the brokerage price from Netparcel for the same route.
Now, spending 6300 means exchanging 20 USD at the blue rate nowadays, so it is incredibly cheap... provided you have many USD here. (after the car debacle our reserve is low)
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I just get exhausted trying to decide which day I pay the credit card bills...
When we moved here, my husband's grandfather literally fathered him into accounting the Argentinian way. We adopted a huge spreadsheet where my husband keeps the family accounting: money in, money out, categories of spending, exchange rates, methods of payment. It is like a second job to me, but he assured me that it's worth the pain.
To be honest, over the years I have heard commentaries on 'savings' thanks to the dollar exchange basically every other week. During the Macri era, it was useful to make comparison of the costs in USD over the years.
Last week I had business downtown: however, October 1st marked new fees for many services. Hence, my cost estimate with my clients was based on the old fee, and I was quite pissed that the new fee with the provider was basically eating out all my margin. Needless to say, by Friday the exchange rate had changed so much that my margin was back in place!
I think we will start to see random price updates without even faking it is a quarterly or monthly update. With the cepo and the controlled price, the government is trying to keep a lid on the economy, but the soup is boiling hot!
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You basically have to sell to get rid of items now, which means selling for a low price. We just sold two kids bikes well below what they are worth just because I am tired of them lying around. If you drop the price 1000 or 2000 pesos below what the general price for your model is on Mercardolibre, you just find buyers quick. Facebook Marketplace is better for shifting things quickly, imo.
My husband is the one in charge of selling and he has a spreadsheet to keep track of all the ads he publishes and where. He posts on several FB selling groups (about 20), on FB Marketplace, ML etc.
Some things, like language learning/teaching books, are obviously slow right now. But I was surprised to see that even basic stuff is not going if it costs more than 4,000 ARS, which is worth less and less as the days go by. Is the economic advantage of a strong dollar worth underselling used stuff? Probably!
When we moved in, the place was furnished and we had to sell most of the stuff that was here. We got rid of half over the weekend doing a "Vendo todo por mudanza" ad on several FB groups. We raised a good amount of money, I think we got more than 500 USD back then! Right now, 4,000 ARS or 28 USD is already too much for an ordinary item. (Unless it is a collectible or electronics).
Another example: our Dyson vacuum cleaner apparently died a couple of months ago. No service has spares for Dyson, so we bought a new Black & Decker on ML for 108 USD. We tried to sell the dead-Dyson for spares, but obviously nobody was interested.
My husband had a lucky intuition... what if it was the new Argentinian plug we had installed on the Dyson? He was right!
Our Dyson was alive and well, and the plug screw was loose.
So we had two vacuum cleaners... and the 1-month-old Black & Decker, now costing 14,000 ARS new, got sold for 9,000 ARS. We were requesting 11,000 and we rejected a couple of offers for 10,000, but the more we waited, the less we would be making. So after sitting two weeks in the living room, we accepted the first new offer (9,000 ARS).
All in all, it cost us about 30 USD not thinking about the plug immediately. I was the one being picky on the price on the B&D, but for a combination of weird reasons (the exchange rate going up, the price on ML for the new item being slightly reduced by the reseller) the new model was costing even less than we bought it, so we had to sell it for even less.
Trying to navigate the Argentinian market is like trying to walk on an inflated mattress... very wobbly!
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I am debating with my husband whether we should be proactive and buy a new aircon unit, since our old one goes from zero to Greenland and the fan is not adjustable (it is the one in the bedroom, so it blows on the mattress directly).
I would also like a silver refrigerator for the kitchen. The issue is that selling old stuff has become harder. There isn't much money to spare nowadays.
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Cómo pagar en pesos Netflix y Spotify para no perder cupo de compra de dólares
Paso a paso para pagar Netflix, Spotify y Amazon Prime Video en pesos:
Aunque Netflix, Spotify y Amazon Prime Video cobran en pesos en la Argentina, algunos emisores de tarjetas de crédito y débito procesan la transacción en dólares al valor del día y computan el impuesto PAIS del 8%. Para que ese monto sea tomado en pesos se debe reclamar al procesador de pagos (la entidad que emitió el plástico) o realizar la gestión de manera online desde la plataforma de cada servicio:
- Llamar a atención al cliente de la tarjeta de crédito.
- Pedir que ese pago se realice en pesos.
- Actualizar los datos de facturación si es necesario.
- Comprobar en el resumen de tarjeta que el cambio se efectuó, de lo contrario se debe realizar el reclamo correspondiente.
Netflix sugiere también pasar a una tarjeta nacional.
I am still happy to pay USD 14.99/month. I wouldn't want to be on the radar for something stupid like Netflix!
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They want to discourage saving in dollars when the peso is practically worthless yet historically, everyone in this country with access to USD has always fallen back on them for security.
Maybe in the bags of Lazaro Baez there is enough USD bills to provide some relief. Not to mention in the caveau of Cristina & Family.
I bet that also the Moyanos have a considerable stack of USD somewhere...
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Kirchnerism is denial at its finest. It remembers me of the (good?) ol' days of Berlusconi. Around the world, everybody was making fun of Italians and of Berlusconi. Italians living abroad were alerting Italians in Italy of how Berlusconi's political move were read by key opinion leaders abroad, what the newspapers abroad wrote about him and his politics. (This was even before the sex scandals)
However, Mr. B.'s crew and supporters were labeling as envious critics the rest of the world, who still weren't unable to grasp the greatness and innovativeness of Mr. B's politics.
With Peronism and Kirchnerism it is the same thing. They are doing what nobody else in the world has done/does (except Cuba, Venezuela, and some exotic African countries, which are doing SO GREAT, by the way!) thinking that they are beating everybody else with their breakthrough political and economical moves, instead of recognizing that nobody is doing those because they S-U-C-K. And worse, they produce the opposite effect the Peronists and Kirchnerists claim they want to achieve.
Anything that a prominent economist or journalist abroad says on Argentina, is labeled as merely envious outsider who cannot grasp the greatness and innovativeness of their politics.
Yeah, exactly...
