Anyone else want to scream 😱 about prices

[Cupcakeicecream]

Anyone else feel like screaming 😱. The smart meter is now the enemy. I'm constantly topping up the meter. Yes it's prepayment they won't change it I've tried and tried. The budget just keeps getting tighter. It's hard to find cheap food no offers things constantly out of stock. You need a bank loan for just to buy toliet roll 🙄 I don't have the heating on constantly I try to just heat one room with a heater. Radiators are barely on an hour here and there to keep away damp. Dryer needs to be used in in emergency since the house is colder so clothes aren't drying properly. I use an airer and it's constantly raining and windy to use the washing line. Food budget is through the roof food is smaller and more expensive and always out of stock honestly what a joke.

YANBU OP. I’m not hard up, I’m in a very privileged position really, but it’s making me quite anxious. We are living beyond our means with two in nursery, we knew that, thought it would be temporary and made provision. But the gap we’re plugging is getting wider and wider.

I meal plan and keep going over the shop once its in my basket (online) and try to skim as much off as I can. But then end up feeling short by the end of the week.

I’ve never checked the utilities but find myself checking the smart meter and cursing when I’ve had friends round as there’s a noticeable difference when cooking for a group etc

I realise many people on mm don’t believe in climate change (or that it will have much impact) but this year a lot of major food producing areas suffered record heatwaves and record flooding.
Major crops cannot withstand sustained high levels of heat.
Less crops, higher prices.
This will only get worse.

The issues are the production costs, the fact we get a lot of grain/crops from Ukraine, the shortage of staff, cost of utilise - production costs and costs in stores themselves, costs of fuel so therefore costs of haulage (because of cost of fuel and staff shortage). One of the biggest haulage firms supplying a top supermarket has just gone bust. I’ve no doubt climate change has made a difference. But the issues were facing now which are becoming worse quite rapidly are for the reasons I’ve listed above.

I agree, this time next year we will be reading about Tesco making their millions. They seem to be the worst round here for price hikes. And their fuel is always the highest price for miles.

I’m in Sydney are our prices also spiked massively a couple of months ago, but seem to have come down a bit. I felt like it was supermarkets taking advantage of “cost of living” to see what they could gouge out of customers and then I would see so much meat just left because it was insanely expensive.
Things went up way more than the 8% inflation we have here, it was bullshit.
But I think now they realise that customers can only accept so much especially when it comes to more discretionary things like beef and lamb and so it’s come down.
They were asking $12 a kilo (about £6) for red pepper and $14 a kilo for cucumbers! They’re back down to $4.50 now.

Just bought a 24 pack of Shades toilet rolls in Asda… £10.50 😳. That’s 44p a roll of basic toilet paper. DH can happily use a quarter of a roll per shit 🤷🏻‍♀️

We put bag a 500g bag of supermarket branded frozen mince as it was 5.99.
Went for the vegan option instead at 2 pound!

Too good to go is excellent. As is olio. As are food rescues, but I appreciate you need the time to go to them.

We also joined the local food pantry which is a life saver.

I was getting concerned and then I swapped to Aldi. All good now 🙂

Which supermarket was this?! In Waitrose(!) 500G of fresh own brand essentials beef mince is only £2.

Sainsburys lightly smoked salmon gone from £4.50 a couple of years ago up to £7. We don't eat much meat so salmon was always a good source of protein, but getting too expensive.

Not so long ago I used to write "cheap butter" on the shopping list for OH as I used it for baking. It was 85p. Horrified to find it's now £1.99. That's in little over a year.
Cat crunchies have gone up from £1 to £1.30 a bag in a week.

It’s scary. I’m trying to just have one meal a day, and my son has two.
it shouldn’t be like this. Makes me so angry and sad.

When I went to Aldi recently there were fewer things in the multipacks to trick me into thinking the prices had not changed.

It's insane
Our normal fish is now 'on sale' at £5 when it used to be 4.25
DCs' yoghurts are now 4.50 up from 3.00, and used to regularly be on sale for 2.50

I used to buy a few of Sainsbury's Hubbard's Foodstore products, as they are much cheaper than the other own-brand stuff. But some of these have started to disappear. I used to buy the ground coffee at about £1.05 for 227 g. But they no longer sell it. The cheapest option now is Fairtrade Italian- or French-Style at £2.65 for 227 g, which are not superior to the Hubbard's Foodstore. So a 152% increase from 46 p/100g to £1.16/100 g.

Yes OP I regularly have an internal strop during my weekly visit to Lidl… I manage to get a full 7 days of all meals and snacks for four of us for around £70 but that’s only by picking up the absolute cheapest of every product and Lidl’s own simply range.

My basic shop has gone up by about £40 a week and that’s using lots of own brand things.

The dog food for example has increased from £14-£18 for the tins and £20-£26 for the bag. The cat food has increased £2 a box, thats roughly a £10 increase per week on pet food alone!

I have no idea how I will afford it if my mortgage goes up.

I found a grocery shop receipt from April 21 in the back of a drawer this week … ALDI. Butter was £1.48, now £2.20 I think

2 pts milk, 80p
500g Greek yogurt 45p (!! Think it’s £1.40 now)
Family bag of crisps 75p (now 1.20 I think)
6 eggs (free range £1.49, now £2.20)

These are all pretty basic/essential (well, maybe not the crisps 😊), nothing fancy/luxurious

I don’t know where ‘10%’ inflation has come from … but I also don’t think supermarkets/food manufacturers are raking it in/exploiting the situation - I work for a food manufacturer and most of the increase is simply due to increase in costs

I earn a good salary but am making bean & veg stews for lunch nearly every day to keep costs down … healthy at least I guess

Yeah I’ve noticed Asda’s price creeping up, the cheese used to be 2 for £3, it’s now 2 for £4.50! They've extended their 10% off for blue light card until NYE which is good though.

My food shop is still £80 per week for four and my kids are teenagers. It is still possible to budget.

My DM moved house recently and the new place had pay-as-you-go meters. DM is elderly and disabled so is really vulnerable - on the registered list with the supplier.

The existing energy supplier at the house were a pain in the arse and awful to deal with so DM immediately switched to British Gas as she's been with them for years and years. Has an excellent credit rating with them, and she's been on their list for disabled/vulnerable customers for years too. British Gas said once she'd switched, after 28 days they'd take her off the prepayment meter and onto the standard direct debit scheme she'd been on before.

Of course, it all went tits up. It took a further two months to persuade British Gas to take her off the prepayment meter. It's been a fucking disaster. And DM was left with being unable to top up her meter twice, and ran out.

I never appreciated before just how much easier life is when you don't have a prepayment meter, or how ridiculously difficult it is to swap over. Or how bloody expensive the tariff is on prepayment meters!!

Yanbu, wet washing everywhere, can't peg out because it's raining, don't want to put dryer or heating on.

I've taken all but one of the shelves out of my airing cupboard and put in a hanging rail. Heating is on for an hour in the morning and the same in the evening. If I do a wash late afternoon everything's dry by the morning.

My mum works at a supermarket and is in charge of the price changes (changing them on a shelf, not the fact that they change) and she says its as if the HQ are plucking prices out of a hat. Options Hot chocolate was £4.50 this week, normal everyday Options thats normally £2 a tub.

We are very fortunate that she works there which means I can benefit from her staff discount which takes the sting out of the price increase a bit. But Im changing what I buy simply because I resent paying ridiculous prices.

We haven't seen anything yet. If electric prices aren't got to grips with, and the £ doesn't come down, next year will be even worse as food production costs increase. Talk to any farmer, our animal feed prices are increasing with each delivery, which will have a ripple effect obviously on the human food chain next year.
VAT is also a problem for small businesses. With the increase in costs had to come an increase in prices, pushing turnover for many small businesses into the VAT threshold of £85(?)k. This is going to increase the price you pay small businesses by up to 20% to cover the further cost increase caused by having to pay VAT.