To be sick of sneezing and spending £20?

We get milk delivered but it’s very expensive compared to supermarket ! The company phone me last week asking if we want eggs as well. £2.47 for 6 eggs! No thanks! Only get the milk as we don’t use much at all.When DC were small it was at least 4 litres a week now it’s only 2 pints. If we need to cut back it will be the first thing to go!

It’s not just food, it’s the other costs we need to pay just to get through the day. At my local railway station it used to cost £4 to park off-peak and something like £5.50 peak iirc (bit hazy about that as I avoided peak times as much as possible!).

Then a new company took over, they steadily pushed up the prices, and it's £10 for a day's peak parking now. OK, they do small discounts if you buy a week/month, but they scrapped the barrier with a stored-value pass-card that meant you could purchase a set number of entries and just use them until they ran out, which was good for people like me who don’t commute 5 days a week. You’re now penalised if you're a non-standard traveller working at odd times - no discount available.

I bought my train ticket the other day and they'd silently hoicked it up, too - the second increase this year. I always forget that they do this in January but also in autumn.

Ukraine has fuck all to do with anything apart from being a means of distraction from the fact that our former PM sold London to the Russians twenty years ago back when he was mayor.

Olive oil is a separate matter anyway - that's down to diseased trees. Although I'm sure there's an additional element of supermarket profiteering, just for us, as well, now that we're out of the EU loop.

1L of Olive oil in Sainsbury's is now £7.80. I'm sure it was around £3.50 before the war in Ukraine.

The cost of oil will of course be pushing up the cost of takeaways etc too.

How are we going to stop printing money though? We have record numbers of working age people out of work, and the highest tax burden in decades. The UK has a productivity problem and so living standards are falling.

Prices are batshit atm and quality has gone to shit with skimpflation and shrinkflation.

Some food we used to buy has gone up by £1-2 each and the size has shrunk too, and the prices keep creeping up every week when I go shopping. One random example - I used to buy granola bars for £1. Now they're £1.45 and the size has reduced. It's just price gouging at this point.

And never mind things like buying new clothes, eating out or drinks. No chance. £8 for a single drink at the random pub near me.

I've heard shoplifting for groceries is through the roof.

It's only been since Brexit and Covid that things have got so noticeably bad.

These prices are common even in pubs now. Theres a pub in Woolwich (a disadvantaged part of london) charging nearly this price for burgers.

it’s just ridiculous.

Yesterday, I went to a comedy show, the book the comedian was selling was 17.99!!!! Just for an autobiography… the comedian is not famous or v well known!

£24 for a TGI Friday burger!!!????
I live in Norway and can go out for burger in a restaurant that's (not quite) as expensive!
I don't go out often as cost of living has hit us here too.
But...£24! ....at TGI's!!!!!

I am without speech!

I know. I saw that there is likely to be a 7% rise in fuel costs again soon and thought: how the hell do they think people can pay this? They simply aren;t earning enough to be able to absorb these constant price hikes.

The cost of living is absolutely untenable right now. Something has to change and it certainly isn't increasing prices for the masses so the 1% can double their billions yet again, as they did during lockdowns. But we all seem too ground down and preoccupied to do anything about it, and decades of Tory indifference to the suffering of their fellow man has made people think they are powerless to effect change.

I spend £15-16 a day getting to work from zone 6 to zone 1 London. I actually called in sick before to avoid these costs. I try to budget but it’s impossible to stick to it as there’s always something that needs buying.

But if everyone's wages go up, then prices also go up further.

This is untrue. Wages are worth less than they were 20 years ago - they went through the floor in 2008 when we gave all our money to the banks and they have never recovered. That's also when we started printing money at which point prices started tipping upwards until 2020 when they galloped. Keeping wages low is blatantly not the answer. Stopping printing money might be. Getting our cash back from the banks might also help.

It’s a joke, even takeaways are so expensive now, you spend the same as going out. DH and I spent £9.5 on two bags of chips the other day. We didn’t dare add in fish.

But if everyone's wages go up, then prices also go up further.

The problem is that the UK has passed its peak and is now in decline. People need to adjust to the fact that the country isn't as prosperous as it once was. Little 'treats' that we've taken for granted in the past are likely to become increasingly unaffordable in the future.

I was just thinking this the other day.

I used to be able to afford to shop at Waitrose - not every day - but sometimes if it was on the way home.

Now we shop at Lidl topping up with Sainsbury's for variety.

I get that this is the "world's smallest violin" grumble when others have felt it much harder.

But your point is right.

@Honourspen It's not relevant to the modern day though, because the sorts of foods that are cheap, are addictive and don't fill you up - even if you feel full for an hour, the sugar crash after the spike, will induce hunger in a way foods in the 70s and before just didn't. Anyway, the proof's in the pudding (excuse the pun), and the research, which shows that what you're saying just doesn't happen. "In the UK, healthier foods are three times more expensive per calorie than unhealthy foods".

See

https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC10947515/

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41366-022-01242-9

https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.theguardian.com/society/article/2024/jun/19/uk-children-shorter-fatter-and-sicker-amid-poor-diet-and-poverty-report-finds

https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.theguardian.com/business/2020/aug/09/poverty-causes-obesity-low-income-families-need-to-be-better-off-to-eat-well

The thing about driving too, is that unlike yester-year, most people don't live a walkable distance to work. Many people also need a car FOR work, such as to get between different sites. As such, they will still need and use a car.

So unless UPFs get outlawed and we all miraculously get a job in a local mill, your argument is optimistic, to say the least.

We thought we’d treat ourselves to a Pizza Express lunch on Tesco vouchers this weekend, we saw they were now offering a set menu so decided to go for that only to be told when the bill came that we couldn’t pay with vouchers because it was an offer despite this not being made clear anywhere (apart from no doubt in some teeny tiny small print). It was a nice meal but not worth what it cost in ‘real’ money. It was a shame because it seemed like an affordable treat but didn’t turn out that way.

you could probably feed a family an evening meal for the price of a Saturday newspaper these day. Some things seem disproportionally expensive

I've been frugal for pretty much my whole life, I spent decades at working being the only one to bring a packed lunch and coffee in every day. It used to be a once in a week treat for me to spend a fiver on lunch from a local spot and coffee used to be something like 1.40 for an americano. Now that I go to work twice a week I need to get back into the habit of bringing in a packed lunch, but I've noticed pret a manger has brought back 99p filter coffees. If you use your own travel cup it's 50p off. I'd say that's still a bargain and I can't tell the different between that and a 4 pound something americano frankly. I've got to get better at cutting back I think - these companies are all just ripping us off and laughing all the way to the bank

The necessity to lower our expectations is hard to swallow. I can't afford now the lifestyle I had 20 years ago, prices are so out of kilter with salaries.

Same here. My husband and I have had big payrises. Doubling income and now seem to have less money

I went to the supermarket earlier thinking I’d only be spending £15-£20 but ended up spending closer to £50. Since giving up full time work to be a full time carer to my grandson I’m constantly watching my bank account. When I was working full time me and my husband thought nothing of dropping a couple of hundred quid on things we didn’t need but we wanted. We’re no worse off as we receive guardianship allowance for my grandson but now, I’m watching the bank after we’ve paid all the bills and bought everything my grandson needs for the month- milk, nappies, food, wipes etc. everything is going up and what the government don’t seem to realise is that people are getting poorer because of rising prices and the rich are benefitting

@towardstheocean true. In fact you'd probably have bought a pint for lunch! In the pub.

(Normal when I first started work.)

Thanks Labour SPAD. It's still shit.

A lot of the finger wagging re the restraint showed in the past forgets that it’s not less spending but of a different type. In the 1970s you wouldn’t have bought a takeaway coffee but you would have bought a pint. You might not have gone to a cafe for lunch but you’d probably have smoked like a chimney.