What have you stopped buying?

[Rockthecasbah1]

Just like the title says. What have you stopped buying because it's become too expensive?
I'll go first.

Takeaways
Hair appointments
Lamb

Gas and electricity.

Clothes
some fish
Eating out
only one holiday per year now😕

Corn8sh wafers and butter puffs.
The blandest of crackers, yet priced as if decorated with gold-leaf and filled with butter hand-churned by virgin fairies!

Takeaways
Coffees when out, I’d rather take a flask.
No holiday this year or for the foreseeable future
Papers and magazines - I haven’t bought any for several years now and I don’t miss them

We used to get a nice 3 course meal out at prezzo or zizzi through buyagift but those offers have disappeared or doubled in price. It was the only time we went out for a meal like that so we dont go out for dinner now.
I used to love it.

Are bananas expensive? They are one of the cheapest fruits here.

Nothing really. We rarely bought branded goods before and I've cut my own hair for the large part of my adult life, aside from the odd dye job or special occasions. Not been in about 5 years now. We do sometimes get margarine instead of proper butter though so there is that.

I was about to say the same @MrsBobtonTrent bananas are far cheaper than apples.

I was going to say that, @GoodbyeCaroline ! I consider bananas one of the cheapest fruits. You get loads for about £1 - and they've had to be shipped from far away to get here, while apples and pears which can be grown in the U.K. are expensive.

-I am vegan, so no meat and fish

-Clothes/shoes. I have more than enough!

-I started making my own cleaning and beauty products with things like Castile soap, shea butter, aloe vera gel and essential oils/carrier oils. I was fed up with paying the 'vegan tax' (everything vegan/organic seems to be overpriced). My skin was getting really dry/irritated with standard products too so DIY gentle stuff has helped with that

-no takeaways and meals/coffee out. Had enough of paying almost £5 for a cup of hot chocolate in the local cafes (South East)...Instead I got a flask to bring with me

-colour my own hair after being disappointed by a series of hairdressers but still pay for a regular hair cut as I have short hair.

I am saving everything I can and my money just goes on the basics: food, utility bills, council tax and mortgage.

I love extra virgin olive oil and have it every day, so I've stocked up on a few bottles since the prices started climbing. I'll still buy it, though. Nothing would make me give it up. Same with good meat and fish.

I don't drink alcohol, drive a car or have any beauty treatments, so no expenses there.

What I can do is stop buying toiletries basically forever cos I've got a v large backlog.

Really? Apples are about 8-12p each and last longer than a week if not eaten immediately. Plus you can put half in the fridge wrapped up to eat later. Bananas are 25-35p each and you have to watch them like a hawk - too green to eat then suddenly black and mushy. Only a pear is more effort than a banana! But pears are delicious, so worth it.

I don’t know where you are buying bananas for 35p! Harrods? 😬

I bought a single banana yesterday in M&S to go with my breakfast yoghurt and it was 11p. That’s M&S!

I’ve just checked the Sainsbury’s website. Granny Smith apples are 28p each. Braeburn are 38p each.

olive oil, fabric conditioner, hair appointments, expensive kerastase hair oil and luxury face creams (look no different with the cheaper stuff which works as well),

Bananas are 25p each in Lidl (but you have to buy a bag of 6, which needs to be eaten before they are mush). Single bananas in Tesco are 35p. Cheapest nice apples are Waitrose (!) and greengrocer. Tesco ones are about the same price but unpleasant. We don't have Sainsburys here, but probably just as well if that is the price of apples! M&S here only sell prepackaged fruit - so no single bananas etc.

Branded crisps
Also pre-cut fruit. We used to like buying a pack of pre-cut mango at the weekend occasionally. It used to be about £2.50. Now it's £4-something.

@Startingagainandagain, that's amazing that you handmake beauty and cleaning products! Made a simple cleaning spray years ago but not tried making soap etc. Out of interest do you have a recipe or any online that I could check out? Am getting very itchy skin lately partly due to soaps/bubble baths (but maybe also due to vegetable oils in crisps as they can be inflammatory).

My costa coffee consumption has dramatically reduced

Meals out
Olive oil
Shower gel
Chocolate/crisps etc (unless they are half price)
Peppers (again unless they are half price)
Netflix/Prime subscriptions
I hike a lot and while I used to call in at mountain huts for a drink (and maybe a snack but usually not), I never do that any more as the drinks are extornionate so I just drink the water I bring with me instead.

I was never a big spender anyway, but I've still found ways to tighten up even more (or have had to find ways more like).

Really? Most places I've seen bananas are as cheap or cheaper than apples! Sainsburys bananas are 90p/kg, apples are around 30-40p each!!

Boxes of 4 sachets of Cup-a-soup in our local Spar was £1.25 which I thought was reasonable but now they've shot up to £1.80 something,..... £1.89 I think which is utterly ridiculous!

Lamb
Haircuts
Philidelphia cheese
Marmite - lidl version is nice

Branded cereals, sauces, tinned foods etc. The price of, for example, Kelloggs cereals & Heinz ketchup & beans has become so ridiculous that I simply refuse to pay it. These corporations aren’t stupid, and they obviously know that demand for their brands is resilient enough that they can push through big price rises without significantly affecting demand, but I’m out.

We also eat out much less than we used to because the price has escalated to such an extent that when you order two courses & a glass of wine at a chain restaurant or pub you walk out feeling like you have been mugged. I understand the reasons why eating out has become so expensive, but I still can’t justify paying it.

Oil for frying/roasting, switched to lard, it's loads cheaper, nicer, not upf and you use less because it's a solid.

Bread, bought a breadmaker on Facebook Marketplace for £5, easy, nice, smells lovely, loaves work out about 25-30p I think.

Basically anything new and not secondhand, we wanted to update our living room and we got a huge tufted ottoman (1 metre square) to use as a coffee table and footstool for free on facebook marketplace again, perfect condition, just had some dog hair so I cleaned it with my spot cleaner. Then we got a Sofa.com Iggy corner sofa on ebay, exactly what I wanted in dark blue velvet, it would have been £4500 direct and we paid £900 in almost new condition, they even threw in a bottle of the nicest prosecco I've ever had (£11 one from M&S) because the courier was late.

So much

All branded toiletries apart from toothpaste
Joints of meat - we have sausages or chops for roast dinner now
Hairdressers
Chiropractor
Puddings - DD gets cheap ice cream that we add some sauce and sprinkles to. We don’t have any.
We have downgraded all the sauces to Lidl own.

There’s no joy in food any more, we used to have lots of lovely salads with bbq meats in summer but it’s too expensive.

The only branded things we get are for DD’s lunchbox (she loves a few specific things that there is no own brand equivalent of) but she will have school dinners in September so that will stop then.