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

Mattresses are ridiculously expensive.

Peppers
Taps
Fascias and soffits and guttering and getting them fitted.
And cheese.

My parents were very open about the cost of things when I lived at home, so I knew the cost of most things. The big shocker was the mortgage as they didn’t have one. My philosophy has always been, pay for the roof over your head first, everything else can wait.

Water rates. I thought water would be dirt cheap for some reason, not the £36 a month I'm currently paying.

House maintenance of any description, prescriptions and made to measure curtains.

Susannahmoody Tolleshunt and tanqueray10 have you looked at ink subscriptions. I use HP Instant Ink and, for me, it's so much cheaper than buying cartridges. Not all printers are compatible though.

Coffee
Mattress
Washing powder/liquid
Heating!

Everything! Until I moved out, I assumed that there was some correlation between wages and living costs, so minimum wage would be sufficient to cover rent/mortgage on a flat and all bills, but you'd probably need to earn a bit more to get a house, go on hol, etc.

I wasn't allowed to know anything about finances and money as a child, and we were comfortable but only due to my dad's income.

I wish someone had told me that I would need to pick a career that attracted a certain income level in order to fund the lifestyle I'd grown up with, which was my expectation.

Mattress
Branded food in the supermarket. I used to tell myself that when I'm an adult and have my own house I'll buy everything branded... I then became an adult and got my own house and do not buy everything branded

Service charges.

@Kote furniture costs as much as you are willing to pay though, I furnished my first flat from the charity shop

Paint!

Not just the price but the difference in price. Why does Farrow & Ball paint cost £19.20/l, B&Q paint costs £6.40/l? What is in F&B paint to make it worth the difference?

I can only imagine that you open and F&B paint tin and a painter & decorator appears in the room!

Boilers.
Duvets.
Black cabs.
Le creuset.
Printer ink.
Glasses frames and lenses
Dentistry work (I understand the cost but good god!)
Winter coats

@thelegohooverer @molifly14

Mattresses don't have to cost much, my DD's cost £100 and is pretty comfortable, mine was £190

Re: council tax, the only things I seem to get for my £2200 a year are a grey bin emptied every two weeks, one of those bumbling street cleaner machines clears the leaves and sticks away from the drain grids twice a year, and we have a library.

We don't have street lights. And the closest police station is 17 miles away.

They did mend a crater pothole in our road this year but there were two of them, side by side. They filled one and left the other.

Buying and then running a car
Furniture

@Mintjulia

Kitchens. A stack of mdf should not cost that much.

And council tax - £2200pa to have a bin emptied twice a month, clear the drains twice a year and provide a library

🙄 Plus lighting up the streets when you want to go anywhere in the dark, gritting them when it's icy, looking after the elderly, making sure shops are not ripping you off, providing parks and leisure spaces, looking after kids whose parents can't or won't.... Oh and educating your children.

@thelegohooverer

Mattresses. It costs a lot not to sleep on the floor

I mean it doesn’t have to...I remember buying my first matress from Argos for around £150. Which for a matress in my mind is nothing.

That said we’ve just bought a new tempur one. So super spendy.

Cheese.

Council tax is expensive but it covers a huge array of services many of which if you don’t need in your life it is only a good thing eg child protection and foster care. Lots of their services support some of the most vulnerable people in our society and for me it’s worth it.

Anyway, the cost of soft fruit and meat. I don’t normally eat meat due to personal preference so it’s always a surprise when I do buy some. And the cost of dairy free milk and yogurts.

Learn from my mistake people. More expensive furniture is not better furniture. We recently bought a holiday flat and decided that, as a symbol of us no longer being broke but having finally reached the giddy heights of ‘doing alright for ourselves, it would be the first property we owned that was not furnished with an eclectic mix of family cast offs and IKEA flat packs. We would choose exactly what we wanted for it and hang the expense!

It was not a success. With the notable exceptions of a settee made to order by a small factory in Manchester (and still under £1000) and a fifties style diner table and benches (produced for the catering trade so very robust), everything was rubbish, from the butchers block that split in two a few hours after delivery to the bedside lockers that fell apart every time we shifted them to change the bedsheets. Paying 4 times as much as we would have done in IKEA generally gave us furniture with about 25% of the quality and longevity of the IKEA equivalents.

[quote movingonup20]**@thelegohooverer* @molifly14*

Mattresses don't have to cost much, my DD's cost £100 and is pretty comfortable, mine was £190 [/quote]
Yes, I just got basic spring mattresses from ikea. I just like a firm mattress, hate pillow top mattresses, and I'm fairly light though.

Front door. £1600 for the one I want, not even fancy

Defo beds/mattresses and sofas! Our sofa was about £450 and we thought that was really expensive it is the cheapest most basically made thing.

Also bloody pushchairs! People pay £1000+ for them and the process of "configuring" it as though you're buying a car. (This is all new to me because when I had babies I just picked one off the shelf and paid about £200 :o )

Back to furniture though - DSis and I invented this game where we furnished an imaginary flat out of the Argos catalogue. I gave us a budget once which I thought was incredibly generous - £100 :o We ended up with things like a microwave and a lava lamp but no wardrobes!

Kids shoes (not so much the price but how fast they out grow them coupled with the price! Toddler DS has very wide feet (H) so Clarks or startrite are about our only real options currently. He is out growing them roughly every 8-12 weeks at £35-£45 a pair!)

Carpet

Curtains

Paint

Built in microwaves. You can buy one for £20 why is it £700 to stick it in a cupboard

Yes! Was gobsmacked at the price of them we barely use ours as well