Cost of living rise? Pubs and restaurants packed.

[MakeMineALarge1]

Ok. I'll be honest, this post is only a reflection of this weekend.
Peter Kay tickets flying out at over £50 a ticket and pubs in Manchester absolutely packed to the rafter's, with standing room only

My other Peter Kay thread? Sorry, I haven't made any other threads about PK

I don't know, I was picked up on my use of errant apostrophe's, I don't even know what they are x

Being in a pub doesn't mean you're throwing caution to the wind! It's quite conceivable that people who are in there have budgeted for it, or simply don't need to.

I work in a restaurant as an extra job. No cost of living crisis there. Although people are buying the cheaper meals rather than steaks etc. Locals happily spending 50 quid a night every night for pints on their way home from work. Don't know how they do it.

That's interesting about the move to cheaper meals. I think people are definitely still trying to have treats but adjust the way they spend on them a bit, if that makes sense. There was a post the other week about weekly shops and a lot of people were downgrading some meals so they could still keep their nice meals or a takeaway, iyswim.

Which is why the OP is daft really, quite a lot of the spending that we might see is actually people cutting down. They're in your restaurant choosing the pasta not the steak, they're in the pub having three drinks in a session when they used to have five, they're spending 2k on a holiday not 3k etc. Discretionary spending isn't zero sum.

@SirMingeALot - you are right ! As said up thread, we’ve been out for a couple of nights last week, but we’re not getting a new kitchen this year as planned and not going away at Christmas. But we’ll take the kids out for days out and to the theatre over the Christmas holidays - spending about half what we had planned. Kitchen will get done next year if things don’t go too bad.

lots of people are down grading their spending, not stopping altogether - it’s just if you are already at the bottom end of spending options you’ve got nowhere to go.

As already explained by others, not everyone has been hit by the cost of living crisis yet. However, the people you see in the resturants, going on holiday and buying concert tickets won't be the people who are massively struggling.

Those who have been hit the hardest are the poorest in society and a lot of them are living hand to mouth, they DO exist. You won't see them out spending money they don't have, so the people you will be seeing out are the ones who have not yet been hit too hard. There are people in incredibly difficult financial situations at the moment but they obviously won't be out in the resturants.

Also, the people who haven't been hit too hard yet might be making more of a conscious effort (such as myself) to spend money in their local pub or shops to keep them afloat. Our local pub has been struggling massively with energy costs and a reduction in customers, it's no secret, so we have made the effort to go up and spend money there as we are able to and understand that many of their regulars no longer can. The people you see out spending money might be eating into their reduced income to help the local pubs but at the end of the day, everyone has been impacted in one way or another, but not everyone has had to stop going out completely.

This is the thing that puzzles me the most about MN (as a new joiner): the assumption that people with anything remotely resembling a comfortable life are up to their eyeballs in debt. You see it a lot on the Holidays board “who can afford this??? must be in a lot of credit card debt” etc. It’s like the concept of earning a decent wage and living within your means day-to-day so you can afford ‘nice’ things is a completely alien concept to some people.

Not everyone makes the right choices either…

an employee’s partner recently chucked in her supermarket job because she didn’t like the new manager. Two weeks on employee sends a message he is looking for additional work as they have no food to eat.

We transfer funds to put fuel in his vehicle to be able to come to work on a Saturday, he doesn’t appear and we still haven’t seen him for two weeks, despite expecting him for his regular weekly work.

Turns out (he says) he helped his dad move (who also doesn’t have money to pay for fuel and whose bank account is overdrawn, so when they transfer our fuel funds to his account so employee (who doesn’t have his wallet with him) can get back, the account absorbs the funds… 😡

total circus, but they will still not have any food unless borrowed funds from elsewhere.

Exactly!

I have no stake in this argument but my feeling is that at least some of those people in pubs/going to events maybe haven’t done anything in a really long time so they are going once/twice instead of their old pattern of more regularly

i know that when me & my partner were really struggling financially, going out for a coffee once a month was a lovely treat that made the other sacrifices sufferable - maybe those people at the pub are doing the same…
or maybe they are loaded
or maybe they don’t care they won’t be able to afford heating/shopping later on

Central London has "week before Christmas"-sized crowds these days and it's only the second week of November. DP keeps asking the same question: "what happened to the cost of living crisis?"

I will post for money if there are any click-farms out there - just PM me but I do have a few principles. 😁

Everyone I know, and that is people with limited money,. are spreading the cost. So shopping a bit in November and a bit in December. No one has the money to leave it till December and we are all spending time hunting bargains.

Also in London you have a lot of US tourists shopping. The UK is very cheap for American tourists at the moment.

I was in the pub all weekend too. Because I've taken bar work on as a second job (FT NHS staff all week) to be able to pay my bills.

Just because those who are loaded are still able to eat & drink out and go on holiday doesn't mean us normal income types can.

.....Yet. 🤔

I spent the weekend in a lovely hotel in Ireland. Really busy and good to see. The restaurant was doing well. I hope it doesn't change any time soon.

Well I'm definitely struggling to the point that I'm not sure if I'll see out this winter! There'll always be people out there with money and cost of living won't affect them. I'm sick of all of it TBH .

I have a few friends who are on min wage or benefits who smoke and spend £10 per day just on cigarettes and I have no idea how they afford it!

Aah ok .Sorry I misinterpreted your message 💐

We’re on holiday at the moment, someone here was saying they’ve never seen it so busy in November. I reckon the real difference will
be next year, I would imagine a lot of people booked to be here way before this panic situation broke. We booked it 4 weeks ago, threw Caution to the wind and just thought fuck it, we’ve got the money now, we might not next year!

With so many lockdowns folks working from home, many paid off cards, paid extra money off on mortgages. They found it gave them respite from debts that are now cleared. No more car on lease, train fares, our local council have organised a huge Christmas lunch at a posh venue, it's now the only way they get to meet in person.

Very well they're packed. We don't want any redundancies. I hope people who are well off can maintain their spending.

This x1000!! Why is this met with such disbelief?

It's interesting because we were in York at the weekend for a break and noticed how quiet it was. Saturday was busy admittedly but most city centres are busy on a Saturday. The Thursday and Friday were much quieter than we have seen in a long time. Including cafes, bars, pubs and restaurants. In fact, even on the Saturday night we got into all of our usual haunts without having to wait for a table so i'd say places are quieter.