What adult purchase really shocked you once you saw the price tag?

[AmbsPhillps]

like when you became an adult , what things surprised you with by the cost

Hahaha, love this.

I remember as a young renter being horrified at the cost of rent on moving to the south of England. As a result, we rented the absolute cheapest possible ugly concrete box flat, next to a road flyover. Inside it was perfect - ideal layout, huge south-facing window across one side.

Still, it was a source of much consternation/ embarrassment to my MIL. I think it was a case of "no son of mine....". I wasn't keen on the snobbery aspect, it just didn't bother me at all. Then his sister moved down south and for less money than we were paying got a pretty Victorian terraced house. That upped the pressure on us to move somewhere more posh, and made me even more delighted to be challenging the norms.

Strangely my driving instructor was also obsessed, and kept insisting "are you sure it's not a council flat?"

It still makes me chuckle to this day.

Soap powder.

The cost of having your cat's teeth cleaned,
cinema popcorn, school uniforms and Rigby & Peller bras.

Bills were a shock, although the electricity was still on a coin meter.

On becoming a homeowner, it became a whole new level. The biggest shock to me was the cost of any building works, parts, materials, decorating etc.

We are still very parsimonious about household jobs. Can't understand where people get the money to do up homes, extend etc. They must be very savvy.

Door handles !!! To get the nice chrome ones to match the rest of my house every time one of the kids rag the door near my front door when their rushing out an it eventually breaks. It's costing a fortune ! Thinking of just taking the door out. May be a better idea now iv wrote it down.... 2nd set this year and £50 a set

Also my husbands bloody phone bill. Been away for a week )thought he had data for abroad and didn't !!!!) So he's been charged an it has blew me away the price he's having to pay. Wow. Safe to say he's banned from his phone as you could of got 2 food shops out of it !!

Train fares
Fabric for curtains
The daily rate of tradesmen
Holidays in school holiday period
Decent quality women’s clothes

Rugs

Milk. As a young child I thought that milk was free, because it just showed up on the doorstep.

To be fair we did used to get [apparently] free milk at primary school, which may have contributed to my belief that milk was free.

We drank it through straws from those little glass 'pint' bottles!

Nostalgia!

Oh, and dry cleaning.

Not me, but a heads up for DS in his last year of uni:

Disposable contact lenses
Any kind of insurance
Holidays
Gym membership

Train fares. Unbelievable.

I'm going to say public transport but only because when I was a child, my bus fare from school was 2p. This was in the 1970's.

Vets, dentists and tradesmen, I grew up with a university education drummed into me, but it seems that its the plumbers who have all the money

Let’s see:
Car maintenance
Curtains
Fencing
Shoes for little ones
Healthy diet (fresh fruits and veg)
Go and see a movie + popcorn (prices doubled up when??)
Salmon

I'm ashamed to admit this but I was well into my twenties before I realised how expensive funerals are. I naively assumed that as we are brought into this world for 'free' there'd be a similar, basic, state funded exit plan too. I thought that undertakers made their money with fancy 'add ons' like superior coffins or posh cars, and that all their other duties would be covered automatically. It came as a huge shock to realise how wrong I was.

Another vote here for mattresses - I had no idea!
How are bananas so cheap?

Replacement electric tooth brush heads, and i pads.

The thing I found oddly shockingly expensive was washing powder/tablets. Why are they so fucking expensive?

The cost of taking a car over to the Isle of Wight on the Ferry from Southampton

Everything really.

My parents and school prepared me for nothing at all. I hadn't the faintest clue what being an adult entailed.

Complete shock.

Locksmith hourly fee...exorbitantly shocking

In my innocence/ignorance as a new student I asked for 2lbs of mushrooms on a market stall.

^
Sorry but

Why is cheese actually so dear?

Not RTFT

My husband.

Toyota trucks that cost $10,000 in Japan are like $35,000 in the U.S. and we even manufacture them here. I don't get it.