To ask why everything is so f**kin' expensive?!

[MummyStruggles]

Just that really?

And, also, there's ALWAYS "something" that needs to be bought or replenished i.e new pillows and duvets for the whole household! Grrrr!

Meant to be a lighthearted thread but you know, I get really bloody stressed about it!

Anyone else?

If you’re careful put some bleach on the blood stains but leave for a short time then rinse that area in cold water. I’ve got blood out of white linen before. Just don’t leave for too long.

Food in the U.K. is so cheap.
We live in Cyprus - we spend €130 a week in feed for 3 of us. I was home recently and bought food and was shocked how cheap it all was.
Children’s clothes here are expensive and the quality is rubbish. I get stuff sent from the U.K. as much as possible.
Fortunately the cost of eating out here is cheap, as is the wine, so there’s benefits!!

"In my experience people who pay more for articles are more inclined to mend them."

Well, yes. I'm not going to pay a cobbler more than I paid for my shoes to get them fixed.
Same goes for socks, etc. Not many people darn them these days. I can't sew anyway, but I think even people who can would just throw them away and buy new ones.
As a child and teenager I'd wear socks with holes on them, but the increase in people making you take your shoes off when you visit now means you need to make sure your socks are respectable.

"Food in the U.K. is so cheap."

That's true, but I do think the best prices are in the massive out-of-town shops that are difficult to get to without a car.
You don't get all the offers that you get in a Tesco Extra in a Tesco Metro or Express, for example. I haven't counted up to see if it's cheaper to take a taxi to a large one than to walk to a smaller one.

But you can get your shopping delivered for next to nothing if you can't get there cheaply/easily.

You don't have to get everything delivered but even one or two shops a month of staples and heavy stuff is likely to make a big saving compared with using taxis or shopping from convenience stores.

I think what pisses me off is the sneering tone when people refer to others buying full price and/or new. Someone has to otherwise there's no Boden bargains on eBay or in the charity shops, no cheap washing machines on Facebook marketplace, and no furniture in our local BHF furniture recycling shop.

"But you can get your shopping delivered for next to nothing"

I thought it was £10 or something for weekend or evening. That would be the same cost as a taxi.

agree i hate it.and it something that causes me dread every day.

Delivery safer at Tesco is good value

Nowhere near £10 for supermarket delivery. From £1 or passes for a few quid a month. Iceland also deliver for free if you spend over £35 and it's not only frozen food they sell.

www.lovemoney.com/guides/3444/cheapest-supermarket-online-delivery-deals-asda-tesco-iceland-cost

Tunnocks34, if your duvet is plain white you should be able to get the blood out with bleach. Spread it onto the stains straight from the bottle, leave it for an hour, then wash in hot water.

Ocado also deliver for free if you choose less popular times - I had a free delivery on Saturday evening recently, which was fine for me as I don’t go out much anyway. Ordering the same delivery on Saturday morning/afternoon would’ve cost £6.99.

We seem to be becoming a society where rich but time poor people pay full price for their state of the art stuff and the rest of us acquire their stuff second hand as it trickles down when it is replaced.

And there’s also a high number of people who make a living servicing these time poor people: cleaning their houses, doing their gardening, odd jobs and diy, delivering their shopping, walking their dogs, tutoring and looking after their children. And that’s without services like hairdressing and beauty treatments.

The gap between the rich and poor is increasing. It’s like we are returning to Victorian times, only now our servants are outsourced.

From 10 years ago? Almost everything is more expensive as wages haven't kept up with inflation. Most of us earl less in real terms than we did before 2008.

From 20, 30, 50 year ago? Housing is much more expensive. Almost everything else is cheaper. Except maybe public transport.

I had a Tesco shop delivered here on Monday. It was £120's worth of food (but we had £50 vouchers, luckily) and I was expecting a MOUNTAIN of stuff. It was more of a hillock.

I said to my delivery man, "Don't get much for your money these days, do you?" and we shared a rueful smile.

I don't think things are cheaper now. I grew up in modest circumstances but never had threadbare sheets or school uniform with holes in like my dcs seem to keep having atm. Maybe things were made to last back then.

I think one of the biggest leaps is in entertainment. When I was a student you could see a really decent band for a few quid, the cinema was a very affordable night out, even the theatre was reasonable.

Shop at Lidl not Tescos, I have just switched to there and am amazed at the value for money we get - I used to shop at Waitrose so it's a big difference.

Ebay and Facebook market place are your friends. When stuff packs up we try to fix it ourselves first, then consider paying someone to fix it or replacing with second hand before considering buying new (which can be justified if the longevity of the item will be reasonable).

I think people expect too much today. I led a comfortable middle class life as a kid which meant second hand cars (rich enough to have two but second one was a banger), one holiday a year (in a caravan, though in my teens a caravan in France), and a takeaway as a treat on family birthdays. Very little stuff bought at all, my mum washed and hoovered with the same items they'd bought when they first bought a house.

I suspect our lifestyle would be considered poverty nowadays.

I agree. Food, furniture, bloody toothpaste - it's all so expensive.

Except for bananas - which currently seem to be inexplicably and unsettlingly cheap...

The Vimes' boots analogy is a pretty good one, actually, and is born out by research too. There are of course people who have to have it all, but the central idea is one of cash flow. If you have enough money to lay down £50 in one go, then you can afford boots that are cheaper - much cheaper - in the long run, and keep your feet dry.

In household goods the same applies, if you're well off, you can buy in bulk or larger packages. For example (Tesco prices today) A 6.5kg box of Persil Non-bio £9 and thus £1.38 per kg. But not everyone can justify the added expense of £9 in one go on top of the weekly shop. So they may buy the 2.6 kg box at £7 or £2.70 per kg, nearly double the price. Or worse, the 1.5kg box at £5, thus £3.35 per kg. So if you cannot afford to drop £9 one week on laundry detergent, but only the small box, you buy a quarter of the weight for nearly two and a half times the price.

There was a book several years ago, called Garbage, the Archeology of Waste (don't remember the exact title) which proved this exactly. They searched through and researched landfill sites in the eastern US and found (based on newspaper dating of layers) that in lean times/economic downturn you found a lot more small packages of things like laundry detergent - so you're poor, cannot afford the cheaper pack, but it makes you even poorer as you pay so much more in the longer run.

GilbertH1 Cheap options aren't always so cheap for glasses. Specsavers and the like do not reglaze your glasses, so if your prescription is likely to go up every year/two years, you'll have to buy new - so £69 for a frame (and the second pair free) is nice, but you have to buy that every time it changes.

Then you have the ones with uneven prescriptions. I cannot buy a cheapy boots reading set, as I need different strengths for each eye or I get a terrible headache, so it's not optional. And then I either need to faff with reading and computer ones (ie, a pair of old reading specs no use for reading but doing fine for computer) for work which is undoable, so there goes a pair of vocational varifocals at £450 (but reglazable in 2 years). The old reading specs work a treat at home, though, as I don't need to read on paper and go up and down all the time.

People with astigmatism and other eye-conditions often pay a lot for lenses as well, even with a cheap-ish frame.

Milkgoatee specsavers and lots of online ones do reglaze. They also do different prescriptions for each eye.

I have bought from specsavers and many other online companies as I reglazed my sunglasses and old and new frames.

Hardly anyone needs to spend a fortune on glasses, even designer frames can be bought cheaper and then reglazed.

You can try on in a shop and take down the frames code and buy far cheaper. It's not even hard to do.

If you need different glasses for each eye you're fine at specsavers, but not a cheapy boots reading set was my point. I don't think specsavers reglazes, at least not the ones here.