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.

@KimmySchmitt £2 a day for food including tea is very low. Especially day in and day out.

I’m changing what I eat - downgrading not brands (already done) but products. So it’s reduced plastic ham not meatballs for pasta sauce. Dessert is a finger of fudge not apple pie. Thank the stars for lentils and the foreign foods aisle where pulses reign.

Everything round my way has gone up 50 per cent.

Eating healthily is tricky - very tricky.

I went in my local Tesco today and uncle bens pilau rice was £1.90 a pouch.

i don’t understand what’s meant to be the solution to this? If the majority of us can’t feed ourselves properly or heat our homes? What is the answer. It’s so upsetting especially considering the stress levels everyones under with it all

Yes and to the people saying we have had it cheap for too long.ugh ok.that might be the case.but that isn’t our fault and we have lived accordingly to these prices.
so the price increase is devastating whether it should have been more expensive in the first place or not!
I wish people would stop with this line it doesn’t help me afford anything now.

House prices and childcare are very expensive in the UK in comparison to other countries. With rising food prices we are becoming the poor women/men of Europe.

It’s the feeling of stress everyone’s under because of it. It hurts to think of all the families or people ready to implode with it all.not knowing what the fuck to do next or how to go about it.
these are decisions and dilemma we shouldn’t have to be making .
these are folk sitting at home with dread.going to the shops in fear.it’s awful.

I'm starting my lunches and dinners with a small salad at the moment. Today I had french carrot salad with a dressing. It was super cheap and made loads. It does help to fill you up so you can eat less of the expensive stuff.

Agree. They truly are.
I can go back to early shop orders to now and things have gone up dramatically.

There is a type of yogurt I like has increased from 4.50 to 7. I have to laugh on the weeks it is marked down to 6.50 as a sale! That's just one item.

When they quote an inflation rate for food of 11% they're talking per month, aren't they? It sure as heck isn't per annum in my neck of the woods. 😟

Blimey, harsh!

My mortgage fix comes to an end mid-2023. I’m really worried. And I’m trying to cut costs where I can, including my food shop. Thankfully, I haven’t yet got to the stage where I’d respond like that to someone who is politely asking people to think first. I’m nervous about what’s to come, but I’m also not trying to budget on UC.

I’m not wanting to dismiss the worries of anyone, but your swing might be very different to someone else’s roundabout.

I drink (far too much) red wine. That has not gone up in price, if it was just transport and fuel you would expect that to go up.

I can buy a bottle for under £5.

OP

Do you have a community shop? I've recently joined mine. It cost £5 to join but they give you £5 of food.

They have 'meal deals' eg £5 for a chicken, potatoes, 2 veg, stuffing and gravy granules.

Thanks to this thread, am definitely going to try some own-brand soups. Hadn’t really thought about that, but now it’s getting colder it’s definitely a good thing to try.

Have swapped a fair bit, using Aldi. The main thing I haven’t been able to swap is Heinz ketchup - the Aldi version is awful.

Don't people make their own soups anymore? A bag of irregular carrots is 35 p from Sainsbo and I chuck in some potato, swede, whatever is on its last legs and it does us days. Will also add some frozen peas or whatever.

I usually male my own soup but I've never been able to replicate heinze tomoato ir a couple of other tinned soups.

At the moment we are wading through a huge vat of curried pumpkin soup and before that it was broccoli celery and blue cheese.. depends what's dying in the fridge really

I love pumpkin soup but make it with chili and coconut.

Yes! Am sick of it. Toilet roll especially. Might as well wipe our arses with five pound notes

yes, i did my online shop Tuesday and scrolling through my regulars there were a lot of products i looked at and thought I'm not paying that! I'm down to buying 1 pack of mince a week and a bag of chicken & making do. Sunday morning is spent doing a huge batch cook for lunch boxes for the kids & husband and i just eat what i can find that's leftover of needs using up during the week. I know i should just be grateful we have food to eat but it's a struggle to be honest, i miss my nice lunches, extras with dinner and putting the heating on when I'm cold ffs!

Bizarrely M and S is far cheaper than Tesco for us to shop at.

Own brand baked beans are 40p a tin.
They have an equivalent to super 6 each week.
The pizza meal deals, Italian meal deals and stirfry meal deals are all about the same as other supermarkets but much nicer.
Basic biscuits, bread, cereal same as own brand supermarkets but again better quality.

If you are on a tight budget you would want to shop around for fruit and veg, but stuff like mince, sausages etc same as other places. But again better quality if you can't get to the butchers.

It's also the fact that so many food items have reduced in size! Paying double for some products but they don't stretch as far because they're smaller. And batch cooking now costs much more than just buying cheap junk food. Wages stagnant, morale low, tories threatening more cuts, boe threatening rises.... its so depressing.

I bloody hate soup 🤮

Have to agree with pp about it being hard to eat healthily — also with an eye on the environment. In our case, I always used to buy certain things organic, eg butter, which was EXPENSIVE (ie £2.30 region). Now usual butter is that price, and I simply can’t afford organic. Ditto I was religious about organic for various fruits and veg and eggs and meat. Have had to stop, in many cases, so those farmers must be suffering too.

on the other hand, the price hikes do mean perhaps less waste, eg muslin cloths and not baby wipes. Kitchen roll ridiculously expensive, but we never used it when I was a child.

on the upside, porridge homemade, from a bulk bag, is still quite cheap and is tasty (easy in the microwave! No need for expensive sachets!). I also think we are thinking so carefully about cost that we aren’t buying all those impulse buys etc we used to. Maybe not a bad thing since they were normally big bags of crisps… 🤤. That said, DH still buying beer and wine, and that also all gone up. Be better if he stopped. But he says that’s a step too far.

Just gone to add gnocchi to my online shop, haven't had it a couple of months and it's gone from £1 to £1.60!
Yes I know I could make from scratch but it's my easy dinner of roasted veg, Mozzarella and gnocchi which usually costs £2.50 for the 3 of us 😭
My food budget is low, there are only 3 and I make majority from scratch but it's hard when it's all becoming so expensive.

Looking at the reverse advent for the food bank (which I do every year) I'm dreading the actual cost.

im feeling the pinch with kids activities too, an average day out (not anything extraordinary, things like soft play, local farm, little town things is like £20 minimum then there’s petrol and some places you can’t take packed lunch you have to buy there which is always extortionate!! So you’re looking at at least £40

I wanted to go to Leeds castle but they make you buy a yearly ticket which is £88 for 2 adults and 1, 3 year old

swimming lessons the cheapest I found was 70 a term, one I looked at was £150 a term😩 sometimes finding the money upfront is a problem too

just 3 hours of classes a week (3 hours) is costing me £72 a month, that’s before the extra days out which doesn’t sound a lot by itself but as winter approaches you’re forced to pay for more indoor activities instead of local parks etc and those classes are bare minimum

luckily my son does appreciate the great outdoors a lot because that’s free 🫣

Well I am a bit bitter, not for the people who get it but for the fact there’s no equivalent for education workers, which is a similarly underpaid and overworked profession who haven’t had a pay rise or cost of living rise in many years. You have to admit that amidst a cost of living crisis with food being so expensive that’s a decent discount to have at a major supermarket, and I do think there are other professions, teaching amongst them, who this should be extended to. Especially as the Blue Light Scheme seems to encompass so many people.

Never said it was cushy, although suspect my MIL working for the NHS has a cushier job than my husband does in an inner city secondary school. I know lots of doctors, nurses, midwives and paramedics and their jobs all sound as tough as ours are in teaching.

Anyway, I said I would say anymore about it because it just sounds like whingy moaning, but please be assured that my problem is not with NHS workers but with the lack of help for a forgotten education sector.

Pasta is my goto marker to look at price changes. It used to be 50p for a standard Tesco pack, my local one was selling it for 95p.

Prompted by a post up thread, just looked at the M and S price on Ocado and it’s 90p. So Marks is cheaper than both my local Tesco (and also online price of Tesco). The world has gone mad!