AIBU to be totally confused (cost of living crisis)

[LittleBitHeiressLittleBitIris]

AIBU to not be able to understand/ grasp the scale of impending disaster that is building over the increased cost of living?

I genuinely don't see how millions of people with outgoings that are about to be actually higher than income is going to play out.

I'm not trying to be goady and obviously realise no-one has a crystal ball but am I missing something? Has this ever happened before in other recent times/ other cultures and what was the result. I can't even imagine what could happen.

I feel really clueless! Any ideas/ opinions/ further reading much appreciated 👍

@Blossomtoes

It appears that I misinterpreted your comment in the wider context of the thread and the fact that I was skimming it

Apologies. No patronising was intended

@alltheapples

We're not going to be too badly off because, over the years we've been in this house we've not had a new kitchen or new bathroom, or even any new furniture other than replacing a secondhand 3 piece suite we got 20 years previously, and a bed. We've gone abroad for a holiday once (and that was paid for us), and generally don't have holidays.
Instead, we've invested in quality thickness double glazing, loft insulation, thick heavily lined curtains all round (I made them), new more efficient boiler, replaced all lights with LED, outdoor lights are all ow PIR operated or solar, and solar panels (which so have have luckily paid out enough to cover all our energy bills + £2-400 per year. Our initial investment will therefore have paid off after about 14 years. Our energy costs are minimal.
We grow lots of our own veg and fruit. We freeze and bottle a lot, so we spend very little other than this time of year (potatoes have run out, no peas/beans left).
We are efficient with our vehicle use - we save up outings and complete them all on one trip (unlike one of our neighbours who WFH same as us, they go in and out all day, not for work I was nosey so I asked: they collect their breakfast coffee from Costa, and go again at least once or twice more per day), so a tank lasts 3 or 4 weeks.

We're going to be relatively affluent because of this. Not because we earn a fortune, we don't. Is this so very wrong of us to have made the right choices?

@Girlmumdogmumboymum this is very extreme and I wonder if really these people are cutting back the right things? It's the old thing about benefit claimants having sky Tv.

Food is a tricky one to cut, but I know when my parents were in a bad situation ( having lived on overdrafts and credit cards to try max) they were buying basic everything, couldn't drive anywhere apart from work due to fuel cost, but still getting a bottle of wine here and there. I understand it when you have no money to socialise or buy nice things then a "treat" is a nice pick me up.

I ended up buying my parents things like a new oven and paying for their heating to be fixed. They have now forgotten this as seem to get great pleasure from not helping me out with the kids. They inherited a massive chunk of money and only paid off a tiny amount of debt settling with the companies.

The most depressing part of all this is that the public will continue to vote for this because they just don't link privatisation, and the core Tory neo-liberal ideology that pushes privatisation at all costs, with the mess we're now in. They don't link the problems inherent within a privatised system to the inability to respond appropriately to this crises. Because we no longer have the ability to respond, as we cannot regulate prices sufficiently in a privatised system. The Tory party do a good job of pretending they're fiscally responsible (ha!), and that they look after business and working people, when what they really only ever do is make a select few richer. They're still banging on about the recession of 2008, when even if they had been in power then, we'd still have been in recession. They try to sell the idea that recession was due to fiscal irresponsibility on behalf of the Labour government, when it was actually due to a worldwide failure to regulate the banks, something which the Tories were never going to do. First and foremost, the Tory party exist to look after their own, and enrich them. By their own I do not mean the middles classes, I mean the very wealthiest in our society. When a government privatises childrens homes or nursing homes, it isn't improving services, or enabling investment, or creating jobs. If anything jobs are cut, services deteriorate, and costs to the user (be that the elderly or the local authority, increase). All while some people make a massive profit. The idea that profit should be made from a childrens home is obscene. This is core Tory ideology, and they're doing it to the NHS, under our noses. It won't be long before that's completely sold off, services deteriorate and costs rise to such a degree that we have to start paying top ups. And then, as with every single other privatised public necessity before, the cost to everyone will massively increase. It's a travesty but it's inevitable, because we don't seem to be in a rush to oust our shambles of a government.

[quote Parpophone]@Blossomtoes

It appears that I misinterpreted your comment in the wider context of the thread and the fact that I was skimming it

Apologies. No patronising was intended[/quote]
Thank you. Apology appreciated. 😊

I,m really looking forward to revisiting my childhood:

One fire in the front room on for a limited time only. blankets on the couch to keep warm
5 of us in a 2-bed terrace.
Outside toilet with cut-up newspaper squares as toilet paper
One bath a week in a tin bath (shared and only about 4 inches deep) because heating water was expensive and time-consuming, strip wash in between in a freezing cold kitchen.
living on potatoes and offal and pulses, because that was the cheapest food
No treats, no snacks
New clothes twice a year at Christmas and Easter. If they got damaged between that period then tough, they got patched, repaired, or hems taken down.
Ice on the inside of bedroom windows and going to bed with hats, gloves, hot water bottles socks, and jumpers.
No holidays
No transport

It all sounds so wonderfully nostalgic. not

[quote Ariela]@alltheapples

We're not going to be too badly off because, over the years we've been in this house we've not had a new kitchen or new bathroom, or even any new furniture other than replacing a secondhand 3 piece suite we got 20 years previously, and a bed. We've gone abroad for a holiday once (and that was paid for us), and generally don't have holidays.
Instead, we've invested in quality thickness double glazing, loft insulation, thick heavily lined curtains all round (I made them), new more efficient boiler, replaced all lights with LED, outdoor lights are all ow PIR operated or solar, and solar panels (which so have have luckily paid out enough to cover all our energy bills + £2-400 per year. Our initial investment will therefore have paid off after about 14 years. Our energy costs are minimal.
We grow lots of our own veg and fruit. We freeze and bottle a lot, so we spend very little other than this time of year (potatoes have run out, no peas/beans left).
We are efficient with our vehicle use - we save up outings and complete them all on one trip (unlike one of our neighbours who WFH same as us, they go in and out all day, not for work I was nosey so I asked: they collect their breakfast coffee from Costa, and go again at least once or twice more per day), so a tank lasts 3 or 4 weeks.

We're going to be relatively affluent because of this. Not because we earn a fortune, we don't. Is this so very wrong of us to have made the right choices?[/quote]
So you have enough spare cash to spend on double glazing, loft insulation, new boiler, solar panels (ie several £1000s all in) and space to grow your own fruit and veg (so, therefore, your own home with which you can do as you please) and someone who will fund a foreign holiday for you too...

...but of course your affluence is all about your sensible choices...

Shame money doesn't buy self-awareness.

Honestly @Ariela, how do you manage to grow lots of your own fruit and veg? I’ve tried it, and can only manage to grow enough for a few salads, a couple of meals worth of potatoes, and an onion soup. I probably get by without buying tomatoes in August and September though, which I reckon saves about £20. Growing at home is incredibly labour intensive, I just do not have the time around my paid employment. And that’s even without the costs of compost, some of which I make at home, but not enough. It’s hardly the Good Life, unless you have masses of garden and oodles of spare time.

My point being, it’s a hobby, not a means of saving money or feeding a family. Most people would be much better off doing a few extra shifts at work, or doing a few online surveys for cash.

@GrolliffetheDragon

Whose job right now with the biggest global crisis of lack of workers in every conceivable industry sectory is under the threat of redundancy ?

Mine. And the jobs of a lot of people I know in the voluntary sector.

And there's no chance of a pay rise. I've been asking for the last 18 months.

I've got friends and family who've been made redundant 7—10 times since 2000.

Some of them are looking at redundancy yet again.

@Lilac57

My point being, it’s a hobby, not a means of saving money or feeding a family. Most people would be much better off doing a few extra shifts at work, or doing a few online surveys for cash.

I grew a tiny crop of potatoes once. All the compost cost me ten times as much as buying a huge bag of potato’s in a supermarket would’ve done.

We're arable farmers growing directly into the UK food supply.

Fertiliser prices are expected to rise to over £1000/tonne. Forward wheat prices are charting £450-470/tonne. Our tractors run over on 34 litres per hour and red diesel is expected to reach £2 in the coming weeks. If I put costs dont level out, uk agriculture will not be able to grow food without losing significant money, even with subsidies.

@SuitcaseOfWhine

I read that quote on the 50 year reference here www.bbc.com/news/business-60649217

@Dwightlovesjim for seasoned food growers, even on allotment scales, it costs little other than time because they have had years worth of soil fertility management. Digging up a corner of turf in your garden to grow food on will obviously require a lot of work to create a good fertile starting point.

when you pay taxes for the majority of your life and get taxed AGAIN when you come to draw your pension on money that's already been taxed when you are working

@PurpleThursdays - You don't pay tax on pension contributions or NI...

I'd love an allotment. There's a 25-year waiting list for ones in my town though.

And even if I had one and was able to devote the necessary time and money to making it genuinely productive, I'd sincerely hope I'd never be so tone-deaf to suggest that it was somehow a 'right choice', when others are worrying about paying their bills.

[quote gonetogroundnow]@Dwightlovesjim for seasoned food growers, even on allotment scales, it costs little other than time because they have had years worth of soil fertility management. Digging up a corner of turf in your garden to grow food on will obviously require a lot of work to create a good fertile starting point. [/quote]
Yeah, which is why when people say “just grow your own fruit and veg!” it makes me want to scream.

It’s really hard and expensive to start from nothing in your back garden.

@FlowerArranger

when you pay taxes for the majority of your life and get taxed AGAIN when you come to draw your pension on money that's already been taxed when you are working

@PurpleThursdays - You don't pay tax on pension contributions or NI...

Which is why you get taxed when you take it out.

Pensions are a tax free wrapper to save for old age.

I'm so torn on this issue, on the one hand I agree with the poster that said years of poverty porn television programmes created a climate of thinking people on benefits were workshy scroungers....programmes like Benefits Street are a classic example of this. I watched the programme last night about the Jeremy Kyle show and looking back it was absolutely awful....people on there, often at the poorer end of society were offered up as entertainment, with Jeremy screaming "get a job" at them. Watching it felt like it was programming from the distant past but really it's only a few years ago and these programmes ran for YEARS. I feel like it created the climate of people voting Tory and for austerity, although that may be unfounded.

On the other hand I see so much waste and materialism, at least in the area I live. We live totally different lives now than when I was growing up and I'm only mid 30s. So many massive cars, meals out, huge children's parties with professional photographers etc. DH and I earn a decent amount between us and still are trying to tighten our belts..... trying to really cut back on food spending for example and eating things like tinned tomatoes on toast for dinner. Then at the same time I was talking to a mum in the playground at school the other day about smoking, I used to smoke and quit because it was just ridiculously expensive and I genuinely felt I couldn't afford it. She replied in all seriousness "thank God for child benefit because it pays for my fags." It made me quite angry to be honest. I don't know what the answer is.

@Ariela

You’re ‘right’ choices required the means to make them in them first place.

@fallfallfall

what did people do in the 20's; well simple meals, extra clothing and nothing new. homes were tiny and furniture sparce. people used their time making and selling. no tv, no "nail art", no phones in most homes, people added things to meat to stretch it out (oatmeal in ground beef, eggs and breadcrumbs). oil filled lamps for a couple hours after sunset and in bed by 8-9. awake with the sun. they used scraps of material to make rugs in the winter. but everyone was in the same situation (although some were very wealthy).

By this logic we'll eventually regress to the Stone age and spend our days hunting prey with sharpened sticks and huddling together in a cave for warmth. A life expectancy of 30 will save the NHS a few quid though I suppose.

By this logic we'll eventually regress to the Stone age and spend our days hunting prey with sharpened sticks and huddling together in a cave for warmth. A life expectancy of 30 will save the NHS a few quid though I suppose.
Isn't this what the climate change campaigners also want though?
Also what NHS?
:)

I don’t think it’s just a benefits thing. I definitely have a few working friends who have spent years spending every penny they earn and having expensive cars and massive mortgages with no wriggle room who are feeling the pinch now.

Earlier last year we almost took out a stupidly large mortgage (the max we could borrow) and all our cash to buy a house. I was quite nervous and uncomfortable about it. It fell through.

We bought a different house a few months ago - whilst it’s still a silly mortgage, it wasn’t the max we could borrow and didn’t take all our cash in addition (it will take a fair chunk of it in modernisation however but we have choices there). I’m now so grateful we didn’t max ourselves out as we have a lump sum of cash in case the shit hits the fan (as we are unlikely to be able to get a builder until end next year/early 2024 anyway due to demand)