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

Chips! Im not ultra poor..but £2.75 for a potato, in essence. Nah.

Mayo, butter and salad cream unless on offer .

Many things...

95p for 6 large ones. Really!

I bought a banana in tesco today, it was 27p. It was bloody lovely.

How often do you give it them to save that much?!!! Lol 🤣. Drug em up 🤣🤣

Branded most things. I was a tea snob but Sainsbury's red label seems to be just fine. Ditto unbranded most things TBH.

We have takeaway only for birthdays/holidays

Holidays are UK only now, and self catering.

Swapped the company car for the extra income and bought a banger as one of us WFH now.

Feels like I am in my early 20s again.

Heinz soup £2 a tin!

Fresh fish (frozen nearly as good and loads cheaper)
Meat from the butchers
Fresh veg (frozen better value)

Yes!! Used to be about 75p .... ridiculous

Thank you for the info@Startingagainandagain, will check out that website and give it a try. Thanks@Sgtmajormummy too :)

Most heinz stuff has gone up ridiculously I refuse to buy them I'm boycotting them

£8.95 for olive oil today🥲

it’s come up a lot on here. What is a healthy alternative?

Butter is £1.70 in m&S and it's really nice too.

Cheaper than utterly fucking butterly.

@AnnieSnap

I don’t think everyone is struggling.

Some will resent the price hikes, some will have changed priorities after the last few years, people are geared to being more frugal and cautious - some will be saving more due to the higher rates of interest at the moment.

Could you justify the £9.99 per month for the Readly App. It has the electronic version of most magazines? It includes many I’d never heard of! It also has Newspapers, including local ones and one off stuff (on photography, cooking, Apple products etc). It can be shared with other family members, so really good value. We love it!

Nut oil. We buy Sainsburys own brand Groundnut oil.

Nothing is the same as olive oil unfortunately.

Beans, cereal, bread to a point ... the cheap version is mostly a difference in taste. But other oils are a different product entirely.

new cars

Persil - now buy Aldi's persilalike
Lenor - just stopped using it
DH haircuts - I do his hair now

@MrsBobtonTrent
Did you know that bananas can be sliced and frozen ? You can either then put them in a smoothie or if you let them defrost about 10 mins and then blend they have the texture of ice cream (you could add honey or peanut butter or cream or other fruit to it if you wanted)

Unless you work in education yourself I would just take your DC out for a couple of days. There are also websites where people advertise private caravans on sites like Haven which are cheaper than booking through the park website .

@catmothertes1

I find this thread rather bizarre considering on MN any thread about casual dresses will have people posting about £300 dresses and every day jumper will be £150! But,on the other hand,they can't afford bananas anymore.

One would assume that it's not the same posters ! I do see the few posters who link to the £300+ dresses but for everyone who does that, there are about 10 posters advocating vinted and others sharing purchases from H&M and Next.

Can you subscribe to the free Borrowbox app via your local library membership? Good Housekeeping, Ideal Home and House Beautiful are all available, to name a few + all the cookery favourites. Not the same as having a mag in your hand but you'll still get your fix.

I am not cutting back on good food, I am just paying the extra. But I no longer buy a slice of cake or have a coffee out. No more lunches out, rarely go out to eat in the evening. Takeaways are a very rare treat now and no more fish and chips. At least with the portions, a Chinese will last two nights - fish and chips only lasts one and is ridiculously expensive. I have bought my clothes on ebay for years but I have put a stop to all clothes buying as I really do have enough and I have to stop buying things for the dopemine rush. I also need to stop buying books and just read my TBR pile until it is gone! DD is in her least year at uni and it is proving to be a very expensive one, we are trying to contribute as much as we can to keep her out of debt (in Scotland so fees are paid and she lives at home), so no trips away, no days out unless they are very, very cheap.

I've been buying coconut oil instead of olive oil. There's no fucking way I'm spending the best part of a tenner on cooking oil! The coconut stuff was £1.99.

Magazines have gone - too flimsy and not worth £5.99.

Also cutting down on coffees from places like Costa ones Starbucks. They are such a rip off.

I'm quite happy to spend money but I loathe feeling that I'm being ripped off.

I think there are quite a few people who might happily spend £150 on a jumper (not me) but would also baulk at the cost of baked beans and olive oil. It's not always about being able to afford it or not, it's that feeling of getting rinsed by supermarkets exploiting a situation, which makes people say no to items they could afford, if they really to wanted to!

We're not struggling, luckily. But when we sat down and did our tax returns last year (both myself and DH are self employed) we felt sick at how much money we were spending just living day to day. So it did make us look at our spending patterns. For instance, I have a long haired dog I used to bring to the groomers. While she was there, I would grab a coffee and a sandwich and pick up some sweet treats at the bakers for my family. Getting a £15 dog clipper from Amazon and staying home is saving £1100 a year. Considering my hair dresser charges me £10 from a trim and I dye my hair myself with henna, I was spending more on the dog than myself! COL has really made us look very hard at our spending and stopped us from being so self indulgent. I also write down every penny I spend and add up all the unnecessary spends at the end of over month. Some of it I really came to resent. It is also shocking how the odd tenner here and there really adds up - it is easy to say no to the big purchases, but I found we were letting little ones snow ball.