What cost of living crisis?

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Beauty salons mega busy and some with waiting lists of a month or two.

People piling trollies high in supermarkets, carrying bags of shopping in shopping centres

Airports and flights busier than ever.

Tradesmen e.g. plumbers, painters/decorators, carpet fitters booked well into next year.

Is this people burying their heads in the sand? Or making the most of things while they can still afford to?

Right now it doesn't really feel like there is a shitstorm approaching.

Electric Company Cars are extremely tax efficient at the moment so it's not surprising you are seeing loads.

For most people their energy usage is low in the summer, so the real price hikes haven't bitten yet. You might have no experience of it, but it is affecting lots of people. Do you think people are lying? I know it is easy to blame the media for being hysterical because they usually are, but a 100+% hike in energy bills, petrol up by nearly 50%, food up 20%, interest rate hikes and a summer of drought is going to affect people and businesses. It is pretty obvious surely?

I saw this week that credit card debt has increased and asking prices for houses have dropped 6%-10% in some areas in the last couple of months (ignore the year on year figures at a time like this, you need to be checking the monthly stats). Sold prices are likely going to be lower if people are seeing price drops. People can't afford stuff anymore.

I was never particularly flush before, but am looking at my spending much more closely now, and yes, I did have a pint in an expensive pub yesterday after a day a the beach. What I didn't do was have lunch with it or have ice cream at an expensive ice cream stall but saved a few quid buying them from a shop instead. So you might see people around, but they are making different choices about how their money is spent.

I was planning on having my hair cut and coloured in a fancy salon for £150. No more! It'll be the box dyes for me at £7 every 2 months and cut it short and grow it out every 4 months at £25 a cut ( current prices)

Feel sorry for the hairdresser's, they will likely lose customers

My first ever

Honestly, I know so many people struggling. Full time higher earners unable to pay mortgages, people having to give up pets, foregoing meals so their children can eat.

You do not know everyone's situation, some maybe using gift vouchers, birthday presents, credit cards to go shopping.

This is not made up...it's real.

I don’t know anybody impacted by the COL crisis yet. Maybe it will change in the winter, lots of my friend’s fuel bills have risen by for example £200 per month but as we are now early 50’s with low or no mortgages it’s not impossible to find. I haven’t noticed restaurants, shops, hotels, hairdressers, theatres etc emptier than normal and lots of the nicer restaurants are hard to book.
I am quite wealthy but I don’t live in a particularly affluent area.
I found the high interests rates years ago more of a challenge as our mortgage went up to 55% of our income at one point.

My spending is worse than ever. Out of control, almost at the moment, and I don't do anything to address it. For me, when I think about it, it's like a last days of Rome type thing.

Of course there is a specific date - 1st October when the energy price cap is lifted. We are going to be paying £150 more per month, which we can just about absorb by cutting out a few things, but there a millions of people who will really struggle. Yes the media are perhaps over-egging things a bit, but have you been shopping lately? Prices are rising everywhere, bills are going up and most people's wages are staying the same.

Because of massive wealth inequality in the UK a lot of people WILL be fine and able to keep spending on luxuries. But use some critical thinking and realise that many won’t.

I’m with you op. I just don’t get it.
we are in the very lucky position of probably being able to afford what is coming, but that doesn’t stop me being very anxious. Everytime i do the weekly shop it comes to more money and i say “fuck” under my breath. We have no major plans now for the next few months other than to just ride
it out best we can. And yet most people I come across will make a joke about how we’ll all be huddling together this winter trying to keep warm but don’t seem unduly worried.

It's a mixture of things OP.

You won't have observed the people who aren't going to salons etc as they can't afford it. Given the current labour squeeze, the fact that many services are very busy needs to be contextualised. There are fewer businesses like these than there were pre covid. It might actually take a while for any reduction in demand to be visible in that way.

Then there are some people who can afford it. There are very different levels of exposure to energy price rises, and probably millions of people are fixed beyond this winter. There will also be people who are doing things while they can still afford them because they expect to be priced out or for the business to close soon. And there are some who have taken stock and decided on a particular priority, eg we won't go abroad next year but I'm keeping my salon appointments.

Anyone in any doubt that the crisis is is real should read the report published by the resolution foundation today.

Dh and I have a good income (£75k combined), our housing costs are not going up, and our property is relatively new and well-insulated, so the increase in energy prices will have a more limited impact. Additionally, I've just accepted a new job, which comes with a pay rise that is big enough to absorb the increase in cost of energy, food, etc. I'm not saying this to boast, but to show the cost of living crisis doesn't impact everyone equally. I wish the government would do more to help the worst affected but instead we just get Truss bleating on about tax cuts.

I don’t think the OP is any doubt. Like me she realises it’s a total shitstorm but is surprised that people aren’t (outwardly at least) panicking yet

I agree OP. Everyone bangs on about this crisis yet everywhere is full of people.

Went to country pub for lunch on a week day. It was rammed with people, beer gardens full when passing, people going for constant days out, hair and nail salon booked up for weeks,
Softplays full, cafes full.
Beaches rammed with people in the summer eating fish and chips and ice creams so not a cheap day out.
people constantly going away on holiday.

Living crisis my ass.

Absolutely, but there are others blaming the media for overhyping it. I don’t think people realise quite how bad it will get for some.

For all you know those eating fish and chips on the beach might be having their only treat of the summer.

Tbf holidays this year are an appalling barometer of people's current financial situation. There are breaks being taken this summer that were booked and mostly paid in 2019. A lifetime ago. The fact that someone is going on holiday now doesn't say anything about their finances going forward.

I think there's a sense of enjoy it while you can before the prices go up even more.

Personally I'm going to be doing the bulk of my xmas doing this month. At least then it's done and paid for.

We might look to others like we're currently spending without thought. We've got two holidays coming up - but both were booked ages ago. We're also about to get our entire upstairs carpeted, but that's because we know the cost of carpet and fitters may increase and we want to get on with it at today's prices. We also want the insulating underlay ready in place for this winter.
I'm also buying a couple of key pieces that I want for my capsule wardrobe - a winter coat, new winter boots and a beautiful woolen jumper that I've seen.
But after that we are on a self-imposed financial lockdown. We are done with meals and drinks out - it keeps not being worth it anyway.
In the background we are working through a list of projects to insulate our home ready for what lies ahead.

People have spent too long being shut away because of COVID, now people want to live their lives to the full again. Our bills have gone up, it's annoying but not going to affect us enough to not go on holiday several times a year, meals out, cinema, theatre etc, . We're retired early, we're aren't going to change our carefully laid plans now.

It's also worth bearing in mind that some belt tightening will result in increased spending elsewhere. If people cut down on restaurants and takeaways, they may need to buy more food in supermarkets. That wouldn't be obvious from seeing the piled high trolley. If a family feel they can't justify going abroad this summer because they need to halve their spend, that budget could still cover a lot of ice creams on the beach or soft play trips, even as it results in money being put by for energy bills. What OP describes seeing isn't the whole picture.

This !
We won't be going on holiday for the foreseeable, that will offset the increased cost in fuel.
We are cutting down takeaways but we are on the line now, whereas before we would be comfortable with saving abit each month

We live in a massively unequal country. For some people the cost of living increases do constitute a crisis. But for a lot of people - who for obvious reasons are not going to be posting on the endless cost of living threads on here - it’s not a crisis. It will have impacts, but more along the lines of them only being able to save £1000 a month rather than £2000, or cutting down from 3 to 2 holidays a year, or putting off that extension for a bit. And so people like this will still be spending on various non-essentials and luxuries, just at a lower level than previously.

more worrying than household bills worries IMO is the impact on small businesses. They will go bust in their thousands. And think of how many people they employ. There's no cap on energy costs for businesses so they will literally go through the roof.

It's also sometimes a question of luck. If someone happened to get a new mortgage fix this time last year, they're going to be better off than an otherwise identical person doing it now, and that difference could buy a lot of fish and chips.