@Johnny Novgorod
Thanks for your perspective. It makes me curious about something tangentially related to the subject at hand: when there is a video game you want to play, how do you go about acquiring it? If the Argentine Peso lose over half its value in a year I suspect that makes the prices quite expensive, and I don't even know what platforms are popular over there.
Welcome to my TED talk.
Up until recently - literally 6 days ago - Steam had regional pricing for its games in Argentina. So understandably the overwhelming majority of gamers here are PC users playing on Steam. But between the conversion to dollars as of last week (Steam, very gallantly, let people know a full month ahead they could stock up dirt cheap one last time) and the 55% increase in taxes, PC gaming is finally as financially ruinous as console gaming.
You're charged 156% in taxes for every dollar spent. Essentially everything you buy, you pay two and a half times.
2% in gross income tax
8% in emergency tax
21% in VAT
25% in personal assets tax (or net worth tax)
100% in income tax (this was 45% until last week)
As for me personally, it's a matter of always waiting on sales, even when the value discounted will never match the taxes. If I buy a 60 dollar game that's on sale for "50% off" I'm not actually paying 30 dollars, because of the 156% overcharge I'm paying 76.8 dollars. And those are 30 dollars out of the allotted 200 that I won't be able to buy next month. Which sucks because buying dollars is how you save your money in this country. You gotta cash out of pesos regularly.
Conversely, if you wait for a sale long enough you might end up paying more for a "discounted" item than you would've half a year ago by paying the full price. 60 dollars on April are worth less pesos than 30 dollars in November. I paid less pesos for 60 bucks of Resident Evil 4 on April than I did for 30 bucks of Blasphemous 2 a couple of weeks ago.
There are basically three ways to go here:
1) Use pesos to legally buy dollars and then sell them for profit at the black market. The longer you hold on to them, the larger the profit.
2) Short-term time deposits. The interest in a time deposit is never going to 100% match the inflation rate but it's second closest after saving in dollars.
3) Invest in commodities and year-long plans. Anything from kitchen appliances to gaming subscriptions. Anything that isn't money goes up, always.
For gaming specifically, gift cards also work wonders. On any given day a gift card will always be more expensive than actually paying the amount at a digital store. But sit on a couple of gift cards for a few months and you'll beat inflation by a hell of a margin.
TL;DR It's a daily hustle and it never stops.