To ask, what's one item that you didn't realise was expensive until you became an adult?

[AvocadoHo]

Mine is toilet roll and cheese! 🙈

I was also going to say butter.

I was very surprised when I left home at how much you have to spend on household essentials like oil, loo roll and foil before you even start thinking about what you want for dinner.

Petrol.

I go to a place, I spend £50, and I don’t even get anything pretty or nice for it.

Just a tank o’ fuel.

What.

Toilet roll definitely! Dishwasher and washing machine liquitabs.

Squash! Why is it so expensive?

Fresh juice, I find myself saying "once it's gone it's gone! I'm not replacing it until the next shop" just like my Mum. Totally understand why she'd get so frustrated when we'd come home on food shop day and guzzle a carton of Tropicana.

Nice toilet roll.

Adult life and everything about it is expensive

@AllTheOtherCats
Oh god yes! Fences! I'm nearly 40 and have never had to buy one until now and I genuinely had to have about 10 tabs open on different website on Google before I would believe that was the price for just one fence panel. We also want a wooden gate - I'm planning on building it myself now!

Just generally how much all the garden DIY is. I can't imagine the cost to get someone in to do it.

Aldi dishwasher tabs are the best ones I've found yet

Teenagers.

Going out for a meal, my parents and grandparents would fall out insisting on picking up the bill for the whole table, I could never make such a drastic gesture unless we were at McDonalds

Squash, cartons of fruit juice and tinned fruit are my guilty pleasures I hide from the children. Ostensibly for reasons relating to high sugar content obviously...

Tins of tuna are mad expensive outside a supermarket deal pack.

And yes, cheese. But there's always a deal on if you scan the aisle top to bottom.

Water

Petrol! I used to earn about £25 for a day in retail at 16 and was gobsmacked that a tank cost the equivalent of 2 days of my wages.

Boilers. I go a bit cold when I think about how much a new one would cost us.

This reminds me of when my 16 year old daughter realised how much paying NI & Taxes would reduce her wages. My god, the rant went on for hours, "government taking more and more and delivering less and less. Was hard to argue that one!

12 year later she still mentions it. I think it was a deciding factor in her traveling and working internationally for the last 8 years.

And yes Cheese.
First supermarket trip after leaving home and staring at a £3.20 block of Red Leicester thinking WTF!!

Funerals, and everything associated with them. You spend near a grand on a coffin and then just as much to bloody burn it

The cost of a new patio or driveway

Picture frames
Decent kitchen roll
Dining tables
Teabags

A decent mattresses.

Definitely curtains. Though I am currently feeling bitter about buying curtains for the lovely / annoying bay windows in our new house grumbles

One time we decided for our holiday DP would pay for the flights and I'd pay all the outgoings when we were there.

I swear he enjoyed it. My purse was never away. Parking, coffees, entrance fees, lunch, afternoon fucking tea.

I know objectively it was fair but it was so dispiriting. Never again. I kept thinking omg imagine if you had to pay for someone else ALL THE TIME.

And fruit, like if you want several different kinds to make a smoothie or something.

Cheese and batteries!

Car repairs and maintenance. I remember thinking how cheap cars are when I got my first banger for £500 - and then spending £££ at each service.

Garden furniture - I still think it's not worth it and a total rip off.

Double glazing.

Strawberries

Days out with kids!