What things have you dropped due to COL?

[Woodstocks]

What food items or other household bits have you stopped buying due to COL?

We used to love garlic bread with pasta, onion bhajis with a curry, nachos with a Chili etc. but have now stopped these side bits as too expensive. What about you- what has fallen by the wayside and do you miss it?

Disney plus stopped
Tesco delivery saver stopped
No hair cut or colour for a year
Less heating
Less alcohol
Supermarket own brand cans, bread
No coffee shops or meals out
Less meat - pack of bacon lasts 2 meals now, a medium chicken 3 meals, some meals just egg on toast
No cinema
No swimming
Change bedding fortnightly instead of weekly
Wash my own car
No cleaner
No new clothes for 2 years
Desperate to buy plants but can't afford many of them at all ( 2for £6 only)!
Can't get bitch spayed

Council tax.

And when they jail me well that means I'll be cutting down on utilities too .

Fuckers.

Netflix gone.Don't buy honey or ground coffee. I halve face wipes and re-use foil.I don't use my tumble drier. I haven't upgraded my phone either.

Same.

Joints of meat…were practically vegetarian

Random thank you presents for family and friends, Sylvia Young drama school singing, dancing clubs for my child, gym membership for me, alcohol, luxury cosmetics

Takeaways are a very seldom treat for me nowadays, used to be maybe once a month.

Swapped daily diet drinks for squash and saved a fortune plus feel much less bloated for not drinking so much fizz.

I had a coffee machine that used pods and switched to Costa instant which I stock up on when it’s on offer, hardly noticed any difference.

Coffees. My local (and not particularly nice) coffee shop recently did another price hike and a takeaway coffee is now £3.45 - £4.

I’ve had two coffees since the increase but gone are the days of popping in and taking one home, and I take such exception to the latest price hike, that I will never go back to regularly handing over my hard earned cash for it.

Bye bye telly
Bye bye Hotel Chocolat

I hardly ever buy make-up or new clothes now. Takeaways are a rare treat, e.g. for birthdays, and I only go to the cinema about once a year.

Our issues are mostly self-inflicted, although COL is obv not helping.

Will have 2 lots of nursery fees for 6-9 months to pay when I go back until eldest starts school so we are budgeting for that currently.

We've long been doing the planned weekly shop at Aldi with top ups at the others for key items. Probably buy more frozen veg than we used to but other than that not much changed. We buy nearly all meat and fish at other places. Been buying big bags of rice (5kg/10kg) as these last us for ages.

Stopped buying coffees outside of the office, only buy 1 a day when I'm in with my keepcup for a discount.

Eat out a lot less after a few incidents of food poisoning and less than stellar experience vs cost. Both good cooks so we'd rather buy better quality meat and do it ourselves.

No more takeaways via deliveroo/just eat as again too many incidents, poor quality and the price is astounding.

Doing renovations so needing to manage that too but that was always going to be a slow process over the years.

Foreign holidays and eating out.

DC still has his garlic bread with pizza though. It's only 35p per baton from Tesco and I'd feel genuinely mean cutting that.

Stopped buying takeaways, we used to regularly have at least 2 per week costing anything up to £40. I've also cancelled Netflix, joined Readly instead of buying magazines & newspapers, got a cheaper phone contract & stopped buying so many clothes, I've cut my budget down to £200 a year, £100 in summer & the same for winter. I now put £300 a month in my savings.

What's Readly?

Used to take the kids to meet up with a friend and her kids at soft play each week (cost £15-20). Have changed to meeting at a cheap family swim session at the council leisure centre (£2.50). The kids actually seem equally happy with this, and are learning a life skill.

Have started batch cooking and freezing single portion to heat up at work, instead of ready meals.

Switched the kids from school dinner to packed lunch.

Getting most cloths second hand, mainly vinted, but I've also had free bags of kids cloths from pass it on, that were great.

Meals out. Probably wouldn't do it so much anyway due to young kids but we literally never eat out now and wouldn't have spontaneous cake while out shopping.

Takeaways about once every 3 months rather than once a month.

Used to by organic when I could. Never do now.

Don't use our nespresso machine anymore. Just instant and filter coffee.

Husband and I haven't bought new clothes for months.

Not a nice thing but my 17 year old cat died end of last year and it has made a lot of difference not having to buy food/vet visits/litter. If it had happened 2-3 years ago we would definitely have had got a new cat but there is no way that I would take on a new pet with col. Food wise I go for the cheaper cut, such as chicken thighs over breast. For the last few months I have banned myself from buying any new clothes, make-up, alcohol, any new clothes are for the kids. No longer eat out and have drastically reduced any outings.

Don't eat out as much.

When I do, I find it very expensive and not always good quality.
A bottle of wine can be extortionate and then a 15% service charge on top.

Usually have friends round for the evening instead.

Alcohol, eating out, buying new clothes.

Oddly enough my income increased during COL so I was breadline beforehand but now I'm much flusher.

The one thing I can't do though is make any major purchases.

Kudos to the people who have cut out alcohol. I know I need to and it's a dead weight in myriad ways.

Cutting alcohol has been hugely beneficial for me, I highly recommend it, not just to save money. I still have a drink on special occasions, but daily/weekly drinking is out.

Congratulations on going tobacco free.

Same as so many others, we hardly ever eat out now. We didn't often anyway, but now things are so expensive it is impossible to justify or enjoy when we don't really have the money. We had a takeaway as a treat recently and the quality had really dropped, presumably to try to keep prices lower.

I know this is niche but we have given up our hot tub. We used to use it pretty much every day and I found it really helped with aches and pains from my arthritis but we just can't afford the energy costs.

Otherwise trying to prioritise activities for the children and keeping the home and garden a lovely place where we are happy to be and spend a lot of our time as we are definitely going out and about a lot less.

We have stopped take aways, reduced groceries, removed some channels from Sky. No more weekends away or eating out.

Two good salaries here.

Flowers, alcohol

Actimels , juices (as in orange and apple), most yoghurts (and now dh and I don’t have any yoghurts), a treat used to be those yoghurts with the chocolate pieces, haven’t been able to afford them forever now, cereal wise it’s shop brand only, fizzy drinks (a good thing but I miss them!). Shampoo is whatever is in the pound shop as opposed to what was on offer in supermarket which is now even unaffordable