Prices won't be going back down again...will they?

[blahblah56]

Seems to be a lot of "grin and bear it" or "things will get better" posts around but I'm wondering if this is it now?

Our shopping has jump up so much, a lot more than the 12% or so they say shopping has gone up. I'm not going to go into Tesco one day and be surprised that my shopping is £50 cheaper am I?

Likewise my electric has gone up from £100 in a month in 2021 to £330 a month in Feb 2023. That's not ever going to go back to the lower price.

So is this it now? Is life going to be pretty shit in the long run with little chance for most people to enjoy themselves?

I’d be surprised if we don’t get to 10% or 12% over the next two years, which probably translates to 15% on variable rate mortgages.

that is very unlikely to happen

It is a continuation of the GFC in 2008 with a heavy dose of people wanting a reset of some sort and not being directly affected.

Considering the last 10 years have been heavily documented online, it is going to be a sociological deep dive around how the world wide issues are not related to the colour tie the government wear.

A simple rule is that a large majority of those complaining about the cost of living crisis are also expecting by default houesprices to continually rise, complaining that cheap veg is not in readily supply and yet unironically being a champion of the working class and not realising why said working class don't want to work the fields or serve them coffee.

there is truth in this. Why on earth do people even think it's a good thing that house prices keep going up? wages have stagnated for years but people didn't notice or care because money was cheap & their house had increased in equity.

No prices won’t be cominh back down. Inflation won’t be negative so prices will continue to rise just more slowly.

You never know, maybe not everything will go back down but some things will, and already have. For instance, I buy a lot of pizza base mixes which I used to get from Tesco for 60p but got hiked up to £1.10. So I stopped buying from them and switched to Sainsburys who had also raised prices, but only to 75p and it stuck at that price for months.

Noticed the other day Tesco has lowered the price back down to 75p. Know its just a small thing, but does show things can come back down too.

To be honest, I have just been careful what I've bought and if anything there has been less food waste. I've been more careful about switching lights off etc.

No, retail, for those of us on the tracker tariff. I’m currently paying 6.1p/kWh for gas and 23.9p/kWh for electricity.

I have to challenge you on your statement that Canada is trialing euthanasia "for those who can't afford to live" - that's utter rubbish and you need to retract what you've said ir state that it's your opinion not fact or provide a validated source (and not The National Enquirer or the Daily Mail!)

The assisted dying Bill in Canada (2016) was proposed to be expanded to people with serious mental health illnesses but it has been put on hold because of major concerns expressed by clinicians.

Canada is delaying plans which would allow people with mental illness to access medically assisted death amid concern from some clinicians that the healthcare system is not prepared to handle the complicated cases.

www.theguardian.com/world/2022/dec/18/canada-medically-assisted-death-delay

Nothing in there about euthanising people who can't pay their bills. Please stop spreading misinformation on here, particularly about something as serious as assisted dying.

You don't need milk (you need calcium), Japanese don't drink it and they're the longest living oeople on the planet. And milk involves a lot of killing. You need a cow who has calved to give milk. They kill the male calves within days because they're usekess except for meat.

Yes everything has gone up but your increases seem very high (a £250 increase on your food is as much as many have to spend it total).

Your electric is also very high unless you live in a huge house.

In a nutshell.
I’d also suggest that they choose to be none the wiser about inflation, where it comes from, and what it does. An MP actually admitted that inflation was a stealth tax in Parliament.

I think most people just feel helpless and overwhelmed, so they do the head in the sand thing because it comforts them and blinds them to what is coming down the tracks.

Understandable, but hardly mature or productive.

DH is public sector and despite everything published on the news, didn't get a pay rise last year. This year looking at 3%.

I'min private sector, the last few years we've had 1%/2%. Pay has always been a bit above minimum wage, but as that keeps going up, they're having to make the difference up now so we're still a few pennies above minimum wage. Someone will have to pay for that pay rise (company have never got back to pre-lockdown takings, so won't come from company). I'd say half of our products are absolutely essential so customers can't avoid.

its interesting that for family in France - food has always been much more expensive than in the UK, both to buy and eat at home and the cheaper end of restaurants / eating in cafes. But housing was considerably cheaper.

those who expect house prices to continue to rise / rise at a similar rate to wages need to consider who will be able to afford them?

it may well be we have a rebalancing of our economy of costs - our “living costs” will be higher but housing will cost less as a percentage of income. But there will be a lot of pain along the way to get to that.

Our food has been too cheap for too long. I’ve just checked the price of a cucumber in the Netherlands - it’s about 1€40 in a major supermarket. I’ve been paying between 50 and 60p for years - that’s half the price.

This is also one of the reasons we have a fruit and veg shortage; not only is it Brexit but our supermarkets (and we) just won’t pay enough.

No I don't think any of it will reduce at all, it will keep rising

The one thing you can be sure of is that prices will not go down. Never known it before and I have lived a long time. However, wages gradually rise or they should if the economy can stand it. It is all relative. When we married in 1960 my food shop cost about £5. However I was earning around £8. Our rent was £4.50. These were weekly amounts. In 1965 we bought a house for £4,800. The interest was fixed at 6 and a half per cent. No way were we well off. It was a struggle. I will make this controversial statement - we were all better off when we joined Europe’s Common Market. The standard of living improved for the majority. This country has suffered recently from world troubles, Covid and a terrible government voted in by so many as the Labour Party were then unelectable. However, things continually change and we will adapt to them.

Mixture. Energy costs probably will somewhat, for reasons previous posters have explained. I can't see that food will. Also things like hospitality, sectors that previously relied on a lot of cheap labour and where the jobs are simply not attractive now, lots of people will continue to be priced out of those. I don't see that inflating away either.

I hope housing will get cheaper and that house prices will drop, but that one is hard to call because we've seen the government do such utterly ludicrous shit to prop them up in the last decade.

We live in a detached four bed, we have four children, older two at uni, younger two at highschool so we are basically feeding six adults these days. I realise are lucky to have such a large family and that was a choice we made.
The older two both have part time jobs and do fund their selves a lot these days but while they are still in full time education I don't take any "rent" from them so all the increases fall on us.

No.
But they will eventually stop rising so quickly.

Exactly this, this is an illustration of the inflationary spiral that happens in response to high inflation and hence why the govt dint want to increase the pay of striking workers!

When I was in primary school in the 90s I didn’t know anyone who had 3 brothers and sisters apart from a very well off family who could afford to feed 4 kids. It now seems that larger families are more common these days, due to the low costs of food. This might change back as people can’t afford to feed more than one or two children.

Japanese people certainly drink milk; there is a thriving dairy industry in Hokkaido.

Honestly I do read some tosh on here sometimes

There's been very little change in UK TFR in the last 40 years, so it isn't that. Jumped about between low 1.7s and high 1.8s.

www.statista.com/statistics/1033074/fertility-rate-uk-1800-2020/

There was a little bump in the early 2010s to 1.87, but then it was 1.84 in 1990 so we're not talking a huge difference. Large families weren't especially common in the 90s, and I say this as one of 5 all of school age then, and they're not especially common now either.

@Kelmsy

*Japanese people certainly drink milk; there is a thriving dairy industry in Hokkaido.

Honestly I do read some tosh on here sometimes *

Okay, they drink some milk. No where near as much as the UK though.
Kg/yr/capita
UK 232
Japan 72

Source:
worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/milk-consumption-by-country

You still don't need to drink milk as a calcium source, and it would be better for the enviroment to cut that back (just like eating less meat).

Yep.
Costs are rising across the board, and there isn’t anything to stop them.
But house prices will fall because huge chunks of the middle classes never bothered to check if they could afford their mortgages at 12% let along 15%.
They will all downsize, or be forced to sell to corporate landlords, because they are unlikely to have the incomes the meet the requirements of remortgaging deals.
The good news is cheaper housing and a much larger private rental market dominated by corporate landlords as opposed to private individuals.
great news if you are a buyer with a big deposit.
Bad news if your eyes were bigger than your bellies in the last housing boom, because inflation is gonna wipe out the equity in your overpriced home.
I think the next ten years are a buyers market.