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My Rent Is Doubling Next Month

Life with runaway inflation, part 2.

Taru Anniina Liikanen
3 min readApr 17, 2022
Photo by Millie Mae on Unsplash

Please don’t tell me to stop eating avocado toast. Okay, good that we’ve got that out of the way.

I’ve written about how living with 50% inflation changes your life, but I’m coming back to the topic because it looks like that wasn’t the end of it. This year, with global inflation rising and the Russian invasion of Ukraine complicating life even further, Argentina seems headed for anything between 60 to 70%.

I’m also back to writing about it because next month, I’ll be reaching a new milestone after 12 years here.

My rent is doubling in the apartment I’ve lived in for the past 6 years. It’s not surprising, since rents have skyrocketed in the past two years. The Argentine Congress passed a law destined to protect renters in the middle of high inflation, but it backfired, leading to less supply and high demand.

And now, next month, I will officially pay over 10x the price I paid for this apartment when I moved in. Let that sink in.

In the same period my salary has obviously increased, too, but not at the same rate. That never happens with inflation, which makes it a real tax on every worker. And of course, higher on those who aren’t homeowners.

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Taru Anniina Liikanen
Taru Anniina Liikanen

Written by Taru Anniina Liikanen

Stand-up comedian and recovering political ghostwriter. Finnish by birth, porteña at heart. Bad jokes frequent.

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