Memories of cost of living in the late 90s, early 2000s

1st full time job in 1991 was £6000 a year - £3.33 an hour, £500 per month
Bedsit cost £200 per month plus bills of about £100, food budget was £25 a week.

Social life at the time was church.

Really interesting post, InveterateWineDrinker.

I also remember spotting a huge jump in odd things when coming back to the UK. My memory (I think) is that a lot of it coincided with the Euro coming in, but it might just have been because I wasn't working in the overseas place by the late summer after then.

We never recovered from the 08 crash

I graduated in 1998 and got a retail job in the Trafford Centre when it opened in September that year - £4.12 per hour. Under 18's were paid £2.12ph for the same job, and 18-21 year olds £3.12ph. My food shop was something like £30 a week, and diesel was 60-something pence per litre.

I went back to my home country for the first six months of 1999 and remember being shocked at how much food prices had jumped in that time when I returned. A single green pepper was 73p, and a pineapple was £4. Household goods and clothing was expensive too. A fairly basic desktop computer was around £1,000. The idea of disposable fashion would be laughed at. Interest rates had also risen quite rapidly since the 1997 general election when Gordon Brown gave interest rate-setting independence to the Bank of England. Inflation had been high and was just coming under control. Then came the dot.com crash, which was deflationary.

What has happened since then is interesting, because the turn of the century was when international trade really took off and we were able to 'export' much of the UK's inflation. The cost of almost anything that is now manufactured in the Far East - clothing, electronics, furniture - began to fall quite rapidly both in absolute terms and relative to incomes. Same for things like pineapples, which are now 98p, although a single pepper is still around the same price as it was in 1999. It helped that the Asian financial crash and currency crisis was extremely deflationary in many emerging markets there too.

At the same time, Gordon Brown flogged off all the gold and borrowed like there was no tomorrow, and he redistributed all that money to people through tax credits. Freedom of movement and the EU enlargement helped keep a lid on labour costs to businesses, but incomes were then topped up by government. So, although the average Brit's productivity started to decline in the early Noughties their incomes actually went up, as prices were coming down.

The years 2000 to 2007, when everyone in the UK got better off in aggregate, turned out to be entirely illusory. What's happened since then has mostly been an unwinding of those fateful Gordon Brown years, augmented by huge policy car crashes associated with the Great Financial Crash and covid, and crowned by Brexit.

The £150 can't be right. I remember shopping with mum at sainsburys for a party and 2 trollys full, and I mean full, came to just over £200. I remember vividly because we were both stunned at spending that much. It was definitely an appropriate price for the time, we'd just never spent that much in a single shop before.

No alcohol in there though, that was all done in an earlier booze cruise to Calais! (Doesn't seem to be a thing anymore).

I’m not sure on the shopping amount. I used to go to Asda with MIL when DC1 was a baby as we only had one car then. I remember spending around £40 for three of us and being quietly gobsmacked at MIL spending £90 one week (for 5 people).
DH earned £12.5k and we bought our first house for £17.5k We had £2k deposit and borrowed £25k to pay for improvements and furniture. It had no bathroom just a toilet downstairs and the only furniture we had was inflatable sofas a black and white TV and a mattress on the floor.
DH got a pay rise to £15k and tax credits came in when DC2 was a baby and we felt like millionaires.

I'd love 30 - 40k now! In fact, I recently interviewed for a job with a starting wage of 35k and I would have cried on the spot if they'd given me the role. I cried because I didn't get it instead.

£30-40k salary was my aim for a luxurious lifestyle

which would be the equivalent to 60-78k today.

DD was born in 1999, for the three of us our food shop in the 00s was about 50-75 quid. We had a big mortgage yet we could afford to go abroad every couple of years, fund dd's rather costly hobbies and eat takeaways.

We were screwed over by the GFC in the late 00s due to the industries we worked in (dh tourism business profits decreased, and I was made redundant from the construction company I worked for). We never financially recovered due to debt we accumulated during that period. Dh died when DD was 13, so it was a long struggle through her teen years, enough to make ends meet but that was it, no other luxuries.

I'm impressed that people can remember actual figures from so long ago! I was a single mum in 1999 and I remember getting income support of about £50pw for me and the baby. I had a council house with 2 bedrooms that cost £45pw to rent, paid for by housing benefit which went straight to the council, and council tax was fully covered too. I was a student and other friends were paying the same rent for a room in a shared house. I arranged a council swap to London in 2003 and my rent there was £80pw for a 2 bed flat in zone 1, the full rent was paid by housing benefit.

I don't remember exact grocery figures or what I paid for bills or bus fares now. But I remember managing OK on what I got, I was able to pay all my bills and buy food and clothes. I managed to oay for some cheap holidays. But I did have access to credit cards so that helped with budgeting.

I was 20/21, lived with a boyfriend, not much money and I used to budget £20 per week for food. I earned about £50 per week plus commission. He earned I think about £100 and worked for his dad. We ate really well. It helped that I could cook though I suppose and I know how to stretch a meal.

DH and I graduated in 1994, bought our first house in 1997 (2 bed semi). We were 23/24and 25/26 in 1997. Teacher and doctor both working full time. Definitely didn’t feel we could afford children at that time with us both lower on our salary scales and still paying off student loans, needing to furnish a house and buy cars etc. Holidays seemed a lot cheaper but we only went on one every other year. Definitely only modest/necessary spend on clothes. Shopped in Sainsbury’s and didn’t budget for food - no idea how much we spent. I think I would’ve been a massive stretch to have children before we were 30 but felt we had a very comfortable life as a couple.
By the time we were 29/31 we felt we could afford children then - were earning more, student loans (and the loan we took out to furnish the house) paid off and we were moving to a bigger house.

We had our children in 1994 and 1996. No way were we spending £150 a week on food. You could buy a tin of beans or tomatoes, albeit value ones, for 9p back then. Bread was about 50p a loaf, too. We used to buy big packs of nappies in Boots which worked out the most economical way of buying them iirc.

Clothes were more expensive but we didn’t buy them as often as people do now, which was a good thing imo.

We got married in 2000 and I was the higher earner as a PA to a construction company on £17,500. DH was a forklift driver on £12,500. Our 2 up, 2 down in a run down seaside town was £550 a month to rent with a damp problem and dodgy electrics (I remember having to buy fuse wire from Woolies to replace it when it blew, which often happened if you boiled the kettle at the same time as running the washing machine).

We put £25 each in the pot for our weekly visit to Safeway which covered everything including packed lunches for work, although it was a stretch if it was a "washing powder week". I'd felt quite well off in the late 90s on a similar wage but it was starting to feel like a stretch into the early 2000s - but with hindsight, this was down to repayments on storecards and having to be more sensible than I'd been in my early 20s.

My DH and I met at in the mid-1990s at uni. I agree the food shop seems far too high. We did used to go to Asda some time and it was more like £50 to £60 for two adults…

I arrived in uk in 1994

i was paid £3.01 ph at Weatherspoons.

my first full time job I took home just over £200pw. I think that was £13k Pa. I was 26.

i remember going to Sainsburys for the first time & being very confused as lots of ready meals/prepped food when I had always cooked from scratch. It was very different to what I was used to.

You could rent anywhere in a shared house for £200-£250 a month late nineties early noughties. Might have even included bills but they were low if it didn't. I used to go to a club where drinks were £1-£1.50 around 2003. Same drinks would cost 6 or 7 quid now. Since then housing costs here are 4-5 times more. My salary has only gone up about 2.5 times.

I left home in 2001 and could spend £14 on a night out including the bus home!

I was renting a room for £60 a week. I remember in 1998/9 my mother was spending £60-70 in Aldi for a week's shopping for 8 of us.

I mostly got my food shop in Netto because it was close, and clothes from Select, New Look, Topshop, and they were affordable. I've still got some Topshop stuff from 1999.

Agree, no way was it £150 per week. Nursery costs were around £600 per month.

Private school was similar costs, so felt more affordable/aspirational.

Spot on, I was similar. The same job now pays £24k yet most costs have gone up way more.

We have just become poorer as a nation.

I wonder if a decade plus of wage stagnation and pointless austerity might have contributed?

My children were born the same years as yours and my weekly food shop in 1997 was £30 and I put £5 of petrol in the car for a week.
My weekly food shop now is £150 per week and fuel is £50 per week

I was 18 in '94 and started University. I worked part-time and my wages seemed to go really far I was out all the time, buying new clothes and travelling during the summers. I look back and have no idea how I managed it all, I didn't get handouts from parents so things must have been more affordable. I do remember getting fivers out of the atm and being out for the night on that.

A big food shop for us in 1997 would be £40, even Christmas was only £100.

I used to buy 2 litre bottles of Asdas own cheap pop for the staff where I worked, this was in 2004, they were 7p!

Now about 70p. I am aware this is very specific.

£150?
Surely that’s not right!
You must’ve been eating like royalty?

21 hours a week! Not month (otherwise I'd still be doing that!)