Don't Hassle The Hoff - Spending HBD in Germany
The Hoff was recently on twitter promoting HBD source
You may be surprised to learn that the home of "Vorsprung durch Technik", The Hoff and Scooter is a very cash-dependent economy and country. The world's largest payment provider Visa has in my experience only been able to get its Visa debit card accepted at major retailers in the last few years and I have found that it's still not accepted everywhere.
Taking credit card payments for everyday transactions is also not accepted in most shops, so you always usually need some cash with you, especially at the beer garden.
This could be because of the bad experiences with inflation in the past. Unlike the USA or UK, the German currency has changed over a few times in the last 100 years since the Weimar Republic. The Euro has only been around since 2001 and it was initially strengthened by German monetary policy. But that doesn't seem to be the case anymore!
We are approaching almost parity with the USD, 1 USD = 0,95 Euro. Therefore if we were to adopt the HBD which has a peg to the USD, we would also almost have parity.
Scooter recently in Moscow to see if Putin will accept HBD for oil source
Prices for things in Germany have been generally quite reasonable compared to other western European countries. Even more so in East Germany, although the days of living on a few hundred euros a month in Berlin are probably over, you can live cheaper than in West Germany where I am now.
We can see how far your HBD will go in Germany. The effects of the massive money printing are starting to be seen here now but also the command economy effects where prices are being manipulated and companies are forced to restrict supply even though there is plenty of the product available.
The first example is the cost of fuel, at the beginning of 2021, it was possible to get a litre of diesel for around €1 or (0,95 HBD). Now however it has more than doubled.
Diesel = €2,03 x 60 litres = €138 or 131.1 HBD compared to €60 or 57 HBD just over a year ago for a tank of fuel.
The price rises are noticeable in the supermarket too. There are certain products where the government has directly limited supply and fixed the prices to absurd levels. One product was sunflower oil. Usually, it costs around €1 or 0,95 HBD but it was deliberately not restocked for a few weeks to cause a so-called panic and then re-stocked but with a €4,99 or 4,74 HBD price tag. It was the biggest farce I've seen for a few weeks.
The cost of the products here:
Branded Crisps - €1,29 - 1,22 HBD Crisps - €1,09 - 1,03 HBD Asparagus - €1,99 - 1,89 HBD Cereal - €1,88 - 1,78 HBD
Most of these were on special offer, so they may seem cheap.
Fresh locally picked strawberries cost €3,99 or 3,79 HBD here for 500g. I later found the same strawberries in Lidl reduced from €2,99 to €1,99 or 1,89 HBD, so it helps to shop around.
My next stop was to a restaurant for some lunch. With this great weather, it would be nice to sit outside and enjoy some Italian food.
This reasonably sized pizza cost €7 or 6,65 HBD and the bottle of water was €3,50 or 3,32 HBD. In total a pretty good €10,50 or 9,97 HBD for a lunchtime meal in an Italian restaurant. I think the prices here are up maybe 10-20% compared to a year or so ago.
On my menu, I found they had to adjust the prices of the beers already! A half-litre of german beer costs €3,80 or 3,61 HBD on tap or €4 (3,80 HBD) from a bottle.
I think the prices are rising pretty quickly in most places, I remember wanting to order a lunchtime special from a takeaway service flyer that was recently delivered to me and they told me directly, it's not available anymore, prices have gone up too much! I was surprised because they had only just sent out the flyers advertising it and the prices had gone up so much that it was unprofitable for them to sell it.
That was my day comparing prices with HBD, let me know if you have any questions in the comments.
This post was part of the Leo Challenge: The real value of HBD.
Link to The Hoff's famous song! Check out the flashing jacket!
Thanks for reading!
Resources: Photos are mine unless indicated. Scooter and The Hoff photos were created in Canva with sourced photos as indicated.
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