To ask for your rising cost of living examples

[CervixSampler]

Inspired by another thread but mainly by my own experiences today.
In February it was 20p to use the public loos at our favourite seaside town. Today it has doubled to 40p! There are now contactless points incase you don't have any cash. 40p to pee!
Mr Kipling cherry Bakewells have jumped to £1.90 in Asda and I'm sure they used to be £1.40 or sometimes even £1 and that was only a few weeks back. Cake isn't essential I know, but peeing is. Things have gone up generally but the odd pence here and there isn't always noticed but these are huge jumps.

We had a Chinese takeaway the other night, a rarity for us and it was the first we’d had since February. I noticed when ordering that all dishes seemed to be more expensive than I remembered and when I looked at the order after placing it I could see our last order from Feb.

On Wednesday we ordered 6 mains plus a couple of rices and one lot of chips and the cost was £50.40 (we collected so that didn’t include delivery).

Back in February we ordered 7 mains, two rices, chips, spring rolls and prawn crackers and that cost £53.80. I’ve just worked it out that the same order would cost £64.60 now.

Many cost of living increases are hidden by the food industry trend towards shrinkflation - they are just about on the right side of the law with their weasley "new size" or "new recipe" -

• new size always shaving off some weight or smaller/different shaped pack size (eg Philly Family Pack is now 280g when it used to be 340g),

• new recipe - removing a key ingredient which also reduces the weight. Eg Moma instant porridge sachets, they removed powdered milk which is a key ingredient to make the product creamier and not akin to wall paper paste.

-reduced sachets or quantity - cappuccino 8 sachet box, was a 10 sachet box.

they mask all this deceit by working with the supermarkets to do regular promo prices which confounds the stealth shrinkage and means consumers have zero ability to know they are being well and truly ripped off.

if I had more time, I'd launch a massive campaign against deceit of the food industry, it's vile and pernicious, if I win the lottery, it would be the first campaign I'd launch as it affects everyone, as we all have to eat!

@daisychain01

i had no idea of this, thank you for sharing and those products should be boycotted!

Aldi ham is the same, 14 slices are £1.99 however, previously each slice was a good thickness that you could peel off one at a time, now each slice is so fine, it's a real struggle to get 1 slice so end up using 2.

It's my pleasure, the more people whom are aware the better x

@daisychain01 that's absolutely fascinating. Maybe you could start a food awareness website (a la the money one started by Martin Lewis) and become a millionaire in the process?

People could crowd source the info.

A fab idea, I could give up my day-job and be the Product Tzar, doing a daily trawl of the supermarkets and picking up all the shrinkflation cons I kid you not, it's something that has riled me for a long time, the people it affects are already struggling and the food industry are preying on them. I just need to afford to give up the day job - oh well it's the Euromillions tomorrow, so that should sort me out!

Just noticed upthread @Mig28 mentioned Corner yoghurts. They've shrunk in size from 130g to 124g. Grrr 😡

Kiddylicious fruit drops were £2 but frequently on special for £1.50 - now cant find them for less than £2.20.

Lidl butter is actually more expensive that Sainsburys own brand atm...

I found a shrinkflation item the other day. Sainsbury's chicken nuggets are listed as 36 (approx) in the bag, but the photo showed they used to be 40-something!

I'be deleted the screenshot I sent to DH, annoyingly.

I don't think Lidl or Aldi seem to be that cheap anymore for some things. Iceland as well. In particular the branded stuff is often cheaper elsewhere, bit even the own brand stuff can be more recently

www.itv.com/news/london/2022-05-09/safety-warning-after-man-burns-timber-in-living-room-to-save-on-energy-costs

The price of 4 pint bottles of milk is slowly going up (it's been well-publicised that this was needed, so it's not a surprise and I don't begrudge it, as long as it's going to the farmer). It's gone from £1.15 to £1.25 to £1.30 on our delivery today.

I am just doing a supermarket online shop for relative in barcelona....Dia...a bit like Asda....shocked at the prices...a lot of stuff is 30% dearer than here....some item 50%...and sunflower oil is £3.76 a litre...its about £1.16 here....if you can get it...!!

It's gone up another ten pence nearly every time I go to the local co-op. Now the organic milk is £2.10 and I can't afford it anymore I think (we go through a lot of milk) £4.20 for two which we get every day or two. It used to be 2 for £3 for ages, now that is around the price of 2 non-organic. £1.60 each in there.

Four pints of milk in my area has gone from £1,54 right upto £1.84 in less than a month 😱

That's a lot. I noitice it seems to be a bit cheaper in the bigger supermarkets. Even in Waitrose it is £1.35 (up from £1.30 last time I was there.)

Smaller shops such as co-op more expensive (around £1.60)

www.london-fire.gov.uk/news/2022-news/may/new-malden-blaze-prompts-warning-from-london-fire-brigade-as-energy-bills-rise/?utm_source=Twitter&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=Orlo&utm_content=Heaters

Lurpak is now £5 a tub! Was £3.95 a few weeks ago I've just looked back on my online receipts, this is with ocado

The Govt are saying that inflation is at approx 7% right now.
I am aware that thinks like mobile phones and cards are used to work or that percentage, not just food/ grocery items.
I know even a 7% increase in the cost of our groceries would be bad enough but they're not increasing by JUST 7% a we've seen from pretty much every post on here. I've personally seen increases in the supermarket anywhere between 15% and 75%.

According to an article on the cost of living that is in the current issue of Platinum, inflation is predicted to hit 8.7% in the last three months of this year.

Well, it's at 9% now, with the fastest rise in 40 years.

www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-61483175

So many things are up by 9% though. I wonder what's dropping / staying the same to keep the figure that 'low'? (In comparison to the rises we're actually seeing, not that it's actually low.)

^By more than^ 9%, that should say.

Tiny hatchback runaround used to do work commute and daily school runs on a tenner a week, now it’s £20.

I can still get 1.5 weeks of family and pet food (not including meat) for around £53 in Aldi though, whereas every time I go in little Tesco it always comes to £13, whatever I buy.

I’ve just been to my local co op and it seems every item as gone up by about 25p. For the first time ever today I bought a tin of chilli rather than make my own as it’s considerably cheaper. I didn’t look at the ingredient list though as I couldn’t afford to be put off😬

M&S best prawn Mayo sandwich has jumped from
£3.85 to £4 in a week. M&S sweets no longer on offer.