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.

“I wanted to go to Leeds castle but they make you buy a yearly ticket which is £88”.

It does last all year though, so you go time and time again. Useful if you live nearby.

@BetterBeCarefulBoysYouJustMightSetTheWorldOnFire unidays staff and student beans for teachers?

I didn’t mean in an insensitive way I meant finding £88 up front, you’re made to pay for the whole year, when I’m probably spending £80 extra on food a month - about an extra £20 a week with meal plans

I don’t wanna go everyday! especially in the winter with a little one

It's difficult but we have to adapt.

I hate all the snobbery around the Asda Just essentials range. I buy their meat and veg and make up meals myself. It can be expensive if you rely on convenience foods.
Whereas making soup yourself is very easy and cheap.
I always shop around, its a necessity to in our home anyway due to DS having complicated allergies.
Even stuff like lunchboxes for the teens, I batch make things. Their current fave is picnic bread. Cheap to make. I make a bread dough, then roll it out flat. Put some oil, cheese and ham on. Roll it up and slice. Freezes well and makes up a week's worth for two teens. I stopped buying prepack cakes and snack bars.
This week I made a loaf cake. Put a spoon of Aldi own Nutella in. Sliced into squares and I now have enough for a fortnight of lunches.

Making stuff from scratch is cheap because you but the ingredients and have them for more than a couple of things.

Slow cookers are great for leftovers too.

With laundry, I hang my shirts and tops on the shower rail in my bathroom. I open the windows to let the air in and they dry in 12 hours. Airers are good but people tend to crowd them and the air can't circulate.

i think some posters must have had their eyes closed when shopping in the past
complaining now about the price of heinz soup.
did you never ever look at the prices?

just go down a brand, shops own

We also get quite a bit of our shopping from M&S, as it's not as expensive as you might imagine.

I saw a post a few weeks ago about big blocks of very good value cheddar. Also milk, eggs, basic salad and veg like lettuce, cucumber, carrots, potatoes, mushrooms etc, some meat such as the higher welfare Oakham chicken boneless thighs (or we sometimes get these from Ocado as they sell larger packs with quite a good saving per kilo, I've never seen these in M&S stores), the 'family meal deal' and Dine in type deals, the stir fry deal, bread and of course anything reduced. Their canned soups are good. I don't like Heinz and their tomato soup is more like Baxters, which I do like and it's only 55 p.

On pricing, a lot of things have been held at 'round' pricing like 50 p, £1 etc as a loss leader and they've probably held these for as long as they can, but now they can't, they've priced them at what they need to sell them at, hence huge and sudden price rises like £1 to £1.60.

I think it's sometimes possible to mitigate the price rises a little, but it requires flexibility over brands and an ability to shop around. We've never done a regular weekly shop and have always rotated round a few different places and stocked up when in shops where the things we like are cheapest, so we rarely 'need' anything from a single weekly big shop, so if it's more expensive or not available in one particular shop, it can be left until the next shop.

I do think a lot of people never did look at prices, or think about how much their energy costs.

A lot of the things people say they're going to start doing, such as buying an own brand or drying their laundry using something other than a tumble dryer have been ingrained here since childhood. It's how we've been brought up and how we've always ran our own home.

The solution is not to buy uncle Ben's. Buy own brand!!!

Some of the ongoing comments about branded products really do astonish me.

I think this too. There will no doubt be ‘record profits’ just like Shell and BP have. It’s disgusting that they’re profiteering and getting away with it.

I've just looked at the Leeds Castle website as it sounds strange that you have to buy an annual pass to visit once, you can buy day tickets, but if you're going as a family they are nearly the cost of an annual pass anyway, so unless you're sure you'll never visit again, you might as well buy an annual pass, as it's only a few pounds more than a day ticket.

I've seen a few places like this, but you'd only have to go twice for it to be worth buying an annual pass and it does look like the sort of place you can go for a walk, kids run around, picnic etc, even if you rarely go in the house etc. Although, having looked at the website, I'm now quite curious about the 'fascinating dog collar museum'.

Something else to look out for would be whether they ever do BOGOF or kids go free type deals.

Otherwise, you need to be a bit strategic. Buy annual passes and for that year, only go to that place. So Leeds Castle one year, National Trust the next, the English Heritage etc. In my experience it's rare that you can't get quite a discount off the headline day ticket price.

Exactly. Own brand microwave rice sachets are about 40 p in Aldi up to about 60/70 p in Waitrose or M&S. More fool anyone buying Uncle Bens, is it really worth three to four times the price?

We like the Waitrose pilau rice the best and always have it in to go with Indian takeaway instead of paying £2/3 for rice from the takeaway.

If you can get a second hand greenhouse or cold frame you’ll extend your growing period. Plant tomato seeds really early - mid January- in the house, in pots with a glass jar as a dome. You can use cut down plastic bottles too. Plant seeds every two weeks and you’ll get a succession of tomatoes.
You can plant pepper seeds from a pepper you're chopping up. Ditto chilli seeds.

Bog standard ream of paper from sainsburys yesterday; £6.50. Used to be around £3.50.

I used to get a basic plain white box of tissues from Lidl for about 70 or 80p; I haven't tracked the rise precisely but I remember them going up (presumably in stages) to around £1 a few months ago, now £1.35.

Glad it wasn’t just me who thought “paper is that expensive?”

That sounds awesome OP. I love butternut squash and chilli soup, I wonder if coconut would go well with that?

Everything is up. A notable increase in recent weeks is the cold sliced meat my kids like. A year or so ago it was 2 packs for £2.50 now £3:50 and last week the pack size reduced by 10g from 100g to 90g. So they've effectively put the price up by another 10% ie inflation rate.

In fact unnoticed that Tesco are saying about how they've frozen the price of so many 1000s of products until next year....I wonder how many of them will be or already have reduced in weight?!

we make own pizzas. much cheaper and tastier

I am finding Waitrose essentials good and cheap. Also they do good vouchers online for big shops, regularly get £20 off the weekly shop...

We used to love to go to Leeds castle in the winter, because you go go for a nice walk along decent (tarmac) footpaths in a pretty environment, and the play area is really good. Admittedly, it’s only thirty minute drive from us though, so we could pop over for an hour or two.

(Heads up to anyone looking Leeds castle. It’s the annual firework display this weekend so will be busy).

Aldi 24 pack are less than £6.50 and they're far superior to Asda ones.
Morrisons have their saver butter on offer at the moment at £1.85 a pack.
I've never bought Heinz stuff, it's always been overpriced.
My husband is a baked beans fan and prefers Asda beans to other supermarket ones, they're £1 for a pack of four.
I feel sorry for families, it must be an awful struggle.

The only branded items I’ve stuck with are heinz tomato ketchup and instant coffee. Ketchup for the kids (I’ve warned them I’m not buying it again) and coffee for me.
Has anyone found a decent own-brand take on the ketchup? I can suck up shitty coffee but the teens… they are good with everything else (no heating yet, I’ve never given them pocket money, I’m a ‘thrifty’ house) but heinz ketchup is their One Ring.

Yes and no. Own brand quite often isn't the same quality or even ingredients as whatever the brand is you were buying.

I've been trying different brands of tomato pasta over the last few weeks. You'd think tomatoes were just tomatoes but there's a surprisingly amount of variation in taste and consistency. Some are really watery.

tomato pasatta not pasta