Things I didn't know were that fucking expensive

[HairsprayBabe]

I am happy to admit we are virtually the modern equivalent of peasants but it blows me over when I find out the cost of things that I had previously never considered.

Front doors is todays example, nearly a grand for the most bog standard door, I fear we shall just have to live with the leaky one for now!

Make me feel better, what did you not know was that expensive or maybe I am just dense!

Getting your bathroom tiled.

Had to get someone to do it after a leak. I’m shit at DIY so couldn’t do it myself.

@Quooth that's not true, my NHS dentist has done me a white crown and the latest i had done was a white false front tooth on a bridge permanently attached to the teeth either side. Cost was still about £350 as band 3 on NHS payments.

Omg yes! The cost of a bloody shed! Even one you have to build yourself is bonkers!
Somewhat related - the cost of getting a concrete base put down is eye watering.

Cushions! It always amazes me the price of cushions. Even the most basic😳 And yes I agree about tree cutting. My DH and FIL cut down our large tree in the back to save costs... DH cut into separate piles, blocks/branches/twigs and leaves and it cost us £350 to have the twigs and branches taken away to local amenity by a man with a van! Shook I was!

@WouldYouLikeToSwingOnAStar
The best money you can ever spend though!😘♥️
My beautiful Brodie, lost him in November… with his side kick Barney !

Wood. I have a field to refence. Post and rail used to be cheap as chips, now it's Rolls Royce prices. We do it ourselves as employing somebody with all the equipment is mind-blowingly expensive on top of materials.

My first thought was dogs and their care.

Curtains

Windows

Have you got a family railcard. Reduces the cost a lot. Also, book your tickets early. They’re cheaper then.

New gas Boiler! Looks like our replacement plus system flush - and which we have to wait unti mid September for because it cant be done sooner and desperately hoping the old one doesnt fail again before then - is going to cost circa 3k all told ( and that is as long as everything else is OK.. )😩..

And yes definitely curtains.. even ready made .. horrendous cost .. I have bought several pairs second hand ...

Aahh....sorry for your loss, what a beautiful dog. Totally agree. Cost of RioRetriever was eye watering 4 years ago. But the hairy goofball is worth every penny!

I preferred the olden days when I could turn up at the station and know that I could get a decent price. Now it’s all about planning ahead and it doesn’t suit my adhd brain.

Shes and boots. I still exist shoes to be around £30 and boots £60. I’m shocked at boots priced at £100 in Clarks!

Agree about front doors. Especially when it’s only the seats gone and they refuse to reseal it.

We ended up getting a heat pump, new hot water tank, some pipework and virtually every rad in the house replaced on one of those green schemes. Cost £1.5k more than like for like boiler and tank replacement. Still £££ but felt like much better value for money.

Taps. Carpets.

When you think about what doors go through and how long they last a grand kind of makes sense to me. My shock is eye glasses- a few of the girls in work were talking about the costs because they have to have certain lenses and it was shocking.

Ones I knew- dental care and veterinary care- unaffordable for most now

Agreed. I lost my beautiful girl last year. Sorry to derail the thread.

Fitting a cat flap in a glazed door. The hole has to be cut into a new sheet of glass. About £500 and that was 10 years ago!

And car keys. My car key malfunctioned/corrupted - £480.

Any kind of emergency call out. Particularly when it's something urgent and everyone tells you they can't come out for three months.

I had a leak on my immersion tank - every local plumber told me they might manage to get to me in six to eight weeks time, meanwhile water is pissing all over the bathroom and through the floor. Finally had to ring one of those 'guaranteed to come in one day' people who charged me £800 to do a ten minute job.

I paid $3,000 for my pre-nuptial agreement. And that excludes the fees DP will have to pay to get it reviewed by his attorney, and any counter-reviews my attorney needs to make.

Looking at upwards of $5,000 altogether.

I had a figure of $1,500 in my head. 😂

Bog standard semi. New front door and some new windows last year cost 6k.
And by the way the cost of house insurance is just ridiculous. I haven’t claimed in 20 years and it was close to £500 last year. It’s like putting a bin in the garden full of cash and setting fire to it

Replacing one wing mirror on a bog-standard Toyota Corolla. Hundreds!

Norway.

I have worked in eyewear and let me tell you the profit margins are absolutely huge. Yep, you can get cheap ones that are really shoddy.
But once you move up the chain a bit the margins are massive. The profit on the lenses even more so. When you look at the price of some of the Chanel frames and then add in a varifocals, say, you’re looking at £1,000 for a bit of acetate. Lovely, but not that lovely.

Building materials. I do work in construction so it shouldn't be a shock but we're we're looking to rebuild some decking that was built without proper foundations (by previous owner) and has heavy sheds on it - the cost to do so, for labour and materials will be anywhere from £7k - £14k depending on the severity of the bits that can't be seen until the work starts. Lumber is particularly expensive. We were going to do it and have been waiting for weather and availability of the guy since this time last year - now I'm seriously considering just taking it all down and doing something new with the garden. Its currently 80% decking and it's a bastard to keep on top of and becomes a slippery death trap in winter. I think it'd be best to get rid of the lot and just have a mix of grass, flower beds, veg patch, etc.

Front door, new windows or new glasses. All beyond my budget at the moment.

we have a car breakdown and major repair to cope with at the moment
the car is my DP’s way to work as travels all over the country so can’t work without it. We’ve been without it for a month now, got the quote today for the work minimum of £3k . Much worse than I expected and the wait for the parts is another fortnight.

Trains.

It is madness that it costs our family less to fly somewhere than travel an equal mile distance by rail.

IMO that is due to privatization. They sold them off for better management and efficiency for end user (us). We got higher prices, less efficiency, and absolutely no accountability. On the other hand, shareholders, CEO, COO etc. got maximum efficiency!

The same applies to the postal services.

I think we need to accept that some things need to be run in service of the economy (eg - decent train system getting people to/from work, to/from school etc) rather than drivers of the economy.

What is the rather anonymous and ominous sounding "economy" for ? Is it there for profit only, or is it a facilitator of human life and that includes profit?

Sorry for the rant!