What have you stopped buying due to a price increase?

[heartbroken22]

?? Don't buy as many eggs as we normally did or chicken...

Don't know where you are but when I was doing the shopping the other day I saw some honey macadamias that I thought I'd buy until I saw the price $19 for a 400g packet. Highway robbery!

@dreamingbohemian

There has been a Credit Crunch topic in Money Matters for years, it's got some great ideas and suggestions.

Got rid of all brand nme stuff, replacing some with value range, stopping buying anything ready made, trying to think of cheap from scratch meals now

^ exactly.

Funny how these threads where people share their purchasing choices become a magnet for people to nip on and hoik up their judgy pants.

Like the poster upthread pontificating to me (when I mentioned £1.95 for Tescos free range eggs being a reasonable price for a staple product) about how cruel egg production is yada yada. How clueless, would that we could all live in this utopian existence where everyone has a small holding and can have lovely little hens roaming around, and popping out an egg or two each day.

Back in the real world where real people have real families that need to be fed...

I think it might. Or reduced competition because cheaper alternatives would simply disappear so prices can be as high as the seller wants them to be.
I strongly suspect a lot of price increases are made up and getting higher by a few pence here and there every week.
Ukraine supply issues aside, we are paying for everyone's energy and fuel bills from the manufacturer to the shop. Plus our own.

Trying to buy less meat and have a few veggie nights. Baked potatoes, veg curries, bean chillis. Dahl etc all feature

We have both had recent promotions and have fixed our gas and electricity so for the moment consider ourselves fortunate. However, I’ll never get complacent as if the last 2 years have taught us anything it’s that it can all beyond your control change in an instant. Like when I was unemployed and my OH was furloughed

We've really cut back on the meat we buy, it's just so expensive now. Also takeaways, we used to have one most weekends as a treat for around £40 for the family. When we last had one a few weeks ago it was £55! Even a chippy tea that used to be relatively cheap is now expensive.

Luckily we have very small commutes to work so have found it quite easy to cut down on petrol costs. I'm not sure how anyone who needs a tank a week is coping.

Pet insurance is an essential. You don't believe it will happen to you, until it does like me with a 2.5k dog bill this year.

We are slowly swapping from ocado to Lidl and actually prefer Lidl for some things and the coupons on the app make it even better value

Bought an airfryer (£35 just a basic one) and hardly ever use the oven now. Air fryer also faster than the oven so win win

Stretching out all our haircuts, trimming the ends at home to keep it out our eyes to stretch appointments out

No more organic veg box, debating cancelling the milkman but feel guilty plus we would then have to go to the shop more and probably spend more on bits we didn't go in for so it's a conundrum.

No opening a midweek bottle of wine for DH and I (a luxury I know) instead it's a 99p beer from Lidl and a 89p gin and tonic can from Lidl!

No more ice cream van ice-cream after school for DC (used to be a Friday treat) now we buy a pack of Cornetto etc from the shop for the price of one van ice-cream!

Have done this for ages but always take bottles of water (insulated so stay cold) and coffee/ tea / hot chocolate and a pack of biscuits out with us so no cafe trips on days out unless a special occasion. Ditto coffee shops, I rarely get a coffee out now only if I'm meeting a friend or using a cafe to work in.

At the risk of sounding like a virtue-signaller, I absolutely agree that Union membership is an important expense to seriously consider as an essential (almost like an insurance policy) that I'll not be cancelling anytime soon - I'm up on employment law so can fight any battles (not that I have any, to be fair), but I feel it's important to contribute for the collective good - it's for those who are more vulnerable, who don't know their rights or are struggling with MH who may not have the wherewithal to stand up to bad behaviour - membership subs all go into the collective Union pot to keep it viable and fund initiatives to raise awareness in the workforce.

And having pet insurance goes down a lot easier at the vets. When our problem started, the first question was were we insured and it was beginning to be mooted that we may have to have our dog put to sleep until we were able to reassure them that we were for an entirely treatable, but expensive, operation

we have been trying to cut back on big food shops and using more special deals on things like gousto and hello fresh sign ups and also new customer discounts for various supermarkets shops we hadn't tried before. I have a good gousto discount which gives 4 meals for 4 people for £17 which we used if any one would like a referal code please message me as we also get further discounts too then

You absolutely cannot make the equivalent of a pack of biscuits for 30p at home. Just putting the oven on to heat up now costs more than that.

Luckily DHs phone contract comes to an end next month so he can go onto a sim only for £13 instead of £35 he's currently paying.

If anyone uses Marvel milk * my DH managed to find it for £1 in Home Bargains (or was it B&M ... one of those budget shops) when it's up to £3 in Tesco/Sainsbo

*I use Marvel for cheap breakfasts for work

milled porridge oats (£2 for 2 kilo bag) + spoon of muesli + spoon of powdered milk = 30p breakfast instead of 1 x Moma porridge @ £1.20 each 😧

Well, I always ensure the oven is full of stuff when it is on, but I am going to look into air fryers now.

@Jenasaurus I use a Faith in Nature shampoo bar. It costs me about £3.80 on Amazon subscription, and using daily lasts at least six weeks (I use a shampoo bag to hang it in between uses and stopping it from sitting in soggy water is key to lasting it out). It doesn't irritate my very sensitive scalp which has been much happier than it has in years, and there's no need for conditioner either as it doesn't strip my hair in the same way!

That’s a genius idea, do you just add some boiling water?

Oh that's right, thanks!

I won’t be cancelling pet insurance, have had several bills over the past 5 years, one £3,000 and another £2000 😬, it’s something that is now a must as vets charge a fortune.

I can recommend getting a air fryer, I use it a lot especially when only cooking for 1 or 2 people. It saves using the oven and is much quicker.

I have been reading all these and have decided that alcohol has to go. I tend to think our consumption is quite moderate- 1 Aldi bottle between the 2 of us daily - so circa £6.00 each day. But that's about £240.00 per month which is silly.

I’m probably going to get battered here, but we’re a high income household and had a lot to trim out of pure complacency.

We’ve cancelled our NT and Zoo memberships, virgin subscription, and landline.

We've cut back our shopping and gone back to Aldi / Tesco from M&S, although a few things are more expensive, overall it’s about 20% cheaper and it’s walkable instead of a 20 minute drive.

I bought an air fryer and hardly use the oven any more, it’s saved a fortune

We’ve cut a couple of days of wraparound childcare, we used to pay for the full week to give us flexibility but can’t afford to pay for unused days any more.

I’ve dropped my gym membership over the summer and have been running outside,

I’m also so glad that we got a new more efficient boiler between lockdowns as the drop in our bills means then means that we’ve been able to absorb the recent increase.

We have one car as I’m visually impaired and can’t drive. We had already decided to change our car and going from a large diesel SUV to an electric 208, the car payment and charging costs will be less than the current fuel cost, but we’re privileged to be able to make that decision.

We have a heated dryer from lakeland. I dont use it right now because of the weather but it/s quite nice in winter as we do try and keep heatings costs down as well so can pop it in the corner and it provides a second purpose. I think from memory I once did the calculations and it costs about 6 pence an hour to run, but this was before the price rises. You have to pay attention so it dries more or less evenly but it is one of those things that while I will not go into raptures about I find it mroe useful than not.

Oh and the milkman - it’s gone up to 89p a pint 😳

The other thing is we have turned our boiler thermostat down a few degrees and only have it on once every 2 days. 4 of us and we all have a daily shower, but we find you can get a decent shower day 1 and an acceptable luke warm shower on the second.