To be sick of sneezing and spending £20?

I work more hours nowadays than I’ve ever done - yet I also have less money than I ever have. Make it make sense!! The UK is becoming a miserable place to live.

5 years ago I worked part time with enough money left over for luxuries like a few meals out each month, holidays abroad etc. I’m now full time, earning double what I did - fast forward to the year 2024 I can comfortably afford none of these things.

This...

My life has a constant audio of that contactless payment noise whenever I step away from my front door

Not me - but someone in a parenting group on FB said she picked up a vegetable at a green grocers that was £8! £8! It was either a butternut squash or aubergine

The supermarkets are taking the piss. For years they've been going on about covid and Ukraine even though Ukraine has fuck all to do with us, while their profit margins are going up. Apart from Morrisons, but only because they were dumb enough to sell themselves to venture capitalists, the stupid fucks. Food is expensive because they want to charge us more money for it and they act like we don't know this.

Then there's the energy companies, going on about how the price they charge us is based on what they pay for energy. But they sell energy to their fucking selves! Through a different arm of the same conglomeration than the arm that supplies customers. Again, taking the piss by acting like they can't do anything about it, it's just what the price is, their hands are tied blah blah. It's a bloody racket.

Meanwhile the majority of people in the country are over 40, nobody's having enough kiddies and there aren't sufficient immigrants to plug the gaps so we're banging what little money we are able to scrape together into pensions and a frankly fucking terrible healthcare service that is almost entirely taken up with elderly care.

My partner and I both have public sector jobs. Since 2020 we would be lucky to see a gross increase between us of £1000,yet we are working harder and prices are s9 high we have less disposable income. A lot less. When will it all end!

Also to add, the cheapest tea lights were £3.75 in big Asda today!! I remember you used to be able to get a massive bag of them from Wilko for £1 not so many years ago. Couldn't afford the indulgence as only had £20 for groceries, so will have to rummage around the cupboards and hope there are some dusty candles in the back somewhere, from happier days...

Ah thank-you. They are - for now!!

Think I misunderstood this thread! I took the title to mean "being ill and also everything being super expensive". I can see now that I massively missed the point 😂

We used to have big enough balls to crack out a General Strike and now we just.... sit here and take it????
The country has been run like a giant Ponzi scheme for decades and those chickens are coming home to roost. So many people have done everything right - studied hard, worked hard, paid tax and NI - and are priced out of the absolute basics like heat and housing security, while being overtaken in life by those who've been gifted money/inherited well. Governments know that people won't kick up much of a fuss if they feel they might jeopardise what they have but we've reached the point where so many people have absolutely nothing to lose.

My tips..

Cancel the Amazon account - saved me a fortune. All of those small purchases really add up.

Go to the shops as little as possible. Order everything you can online to avoid the temptation to get extras.

Fruit and veg box weekly.
Milk, dairy, bread and eggs delivered twice a week.
Meat box once a month.
Toilet rolls every so often.
I have a cash and carry card to buy dry goods and other bits in bulk.

The beauty of this method is that it supports farmers directly and cuts out the price gouging supermarkets.

I find it quite scary
I'm on disability benefits and I'm frugal by nature but a basic shop of essentials has doubled now and I only eat once a day as it is!

My kids got 2 burgers and shared a shake at Gatwick today - £30!

Large paper bag of M&S shopping cost me £48, no alcohol only food. Bloody joke.

WHEN will this ever end?!

My husband expects me to stick to a budget with 2 kids in nappies, we are a family of 5... and the price of everything going up so much. It just doesn't work

If anyone's interested (I doubt it by hey) it's cheaper to get your meat online from places like muscle foods. We spend £75 on meat and it lasts us 34 days ish for a family of 4.
It's brought down my food shop by loads and the meat is really good too!

It's going to get a lot worse after the budget and fuel
Goes up again.

I agree. I worked in offices for years and could get a salad, or a sandwich and a snack for around a fiver. It is now double that. I went out for coffee with a colleague and didn't fancy a hot drink so grabbed a fruit juice. I was expecting it to be £2-2:50. It was £3:95! For a small bottle of fruit juice. Supermarket prices are crazy too, and dates seem to have got shorter so we are going more often and spending more. 😡

Went into M&S today: bag of onions, bag of carrots, three large tomatoes and a bag of coffee beans. £7.40. For mainly veg.

Popped into TGI Friday's with our DD yesterday as a 'well done' lunch.

Looked at the menu. Burgers were £24.

For a burger!

Ended up sharing a plate of tacos (£14), a plate of chicken wings (£14) 3 diet cokes (£12) .

£40 for a couple of snacks and a diet coke each.

Made the mistake of taking her to Sephora. 2 lip glosses, a eye liner and a hair treatment later - £70.

The cost of everything is just a joke now. As someone said up thread, leave the house it's £100.

Same! Today we’ve spent at least £200 and that’s just on groceries, few PJs for the kids, bday present for kids’ school pal, couple of groceries for dinner.

I feel like we spend £100 every time we leave the house.

But also the price of things is just getting silly!

I know there's a lot there I could not spend but I work hard, I'm a graduate, I ought to be able to buy a few cheap clothes, lunch and coffee without worrying too much!

I'm not sure how new this is. I'm the child of two graduates and this was still spending that was carefully thought about when I was a child. Cafés were treats, clothes were mainly second hand until my teens when I rebelled. Lunch was packed.

There was always enough food, and there was always an emergency fund in the bank, but money was carefully managed. I do feel we expect more of those fun things today. I certainly indulge in plenty myself!

I parked Waitrose three times this week and it cost me 45 a time. The carpark over the road is £11 for 24 hours but my brain tells me that's too much!! Stupid