England is so expensive.

[Mooshamoo]

I just flew over from Ireland to England for a couple of days.

Jesus everything is so expensive in England! I felt like I burned through money.

I thought Ireland was pricy enough, but England is way more expensive.

I've come home, looked at my bank account and cried a little haha.

For example I got a train in Ireland before I left. It was 14 euro.

I got a train for the same distance in England. It was 40 pounds. It didn't even travel that far. And the guy in the train station told me that this was the best deal ticket "it was off peak"

Everything in the UK supermarket was so pricy.

I was just a little shocked. How are you all coping with it

I was charged $15 for 3 leeks recently in USA.

@Theimpossiblegirl prices have gone up, but comparative to the rest of the world statistically we have very cheap food as a proportion of income. It’s an old article but explains - https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-45559594

Everywhere has it’s cheap places to eat, & cheap supermarkets if you look around. When on holiday I’ll stay in a local neighbour & eat where the locals eat. Most people will want to stay in a tourist area, but they’ll pay the price.

Irish salaries are higher than UK so your money should go further!

Yes England does have cheap food compared to many European countries but our housing & travel costs are much higher.

Food in the UK has gone up and is now closed to being sold at its actual value. For years we've enjoyed under-cost food. When pasta, produced in Italy, exported to the UK and sold in a UK supermarket costs a third of what it costs in an Italian supermarket that's probably not because the Italian one is front loading profit, but that the UK one is undercutting. Add to that the EU subsidies that for decades helped to keep prices of some items low, plus the paltry wholesale prices paid to the producers.
Then realise it's no longer viable/possible to do any of that.
That's what's happened.

The UK has incredibly cheap food compared to New Zealand and, to a lesser extent, Australia. Yes prices in supermarkets have gone up, I can see that, but for my part I am grateful at how much cheaper the food is here than my home country.

We are over from the USA and yes I can see prices in UK have gone up.
But it is still much cheaper than USA for food.
The quality of supermarket clothes is still much higher for the same price or cheaper.
The UK could easily still have higher prices.

Well I would say Spain, Italy or Greece.

@Theimpossiblegirl So yes, stuff is expensive. It's almost like people just like to disagree with an op for the sake of it.

Or it’s almost as if people have direct experience with prices in the UK and prices in Ireland.

I'm in Italy.

Food here is generally more expensive than the UK. Unless it's very seasonal fruit and veg. A few things I bought yesterday: I litre of milk €1,69. A block of butter 250g €3,89. A lettuce (iceberg) €1,79. Strawberries (coming into season here) €2,99 for 200g. The dried pasta I buy is €1,15 for 250g. (cheaper on Amazon) Washing detergent pods 18 for €10 or thereabouts. I bulk buy on Amazon.

Rents, energy bills, petrol, water, now on a par with the UK city for city because yours have gone up to more or less match ours. Factor in wages here being lower generally. And families having to buy upwards of €400 of school books every year.

DD is at uni in the UK and came with me to the supermarket and can't believe how expensive everything is here compared to Sainsbury's.
It's always been a bit of a myth about Italy being "cheap". I guess from tourism where, sure, eating a pizza in a decent pizzeria is going to be cheaper than it would be in the UK. But I genuinely can't think of much else that is always cheaper here.

I lived in central Barcelona as a student and it was definitely more expensive than an average UK supermarket, but probably not more than a London Tesco Metro. It is quite hard to compare.

I always feel like people don't believe it.
I mean like.... Carrot for 19p a kg fgs on offer. 50p outside of offer. £1.12 per kg where my family is.
Uk has incredibly cheap food still actually.

@northeasrer yes, we pay rates in Australia which is the equivalent of council tax.

I did the same recently @AskMeMore - wanted to travel from the south to Crewe on a Friday, but only decided at the last minute, so I knew the traffic would be bad. I like the train, but when I looked it would have been around £160 for three of us, so I ended up driving and adding to the huge congestion on the roads. Irritating. From where we live (near Guildford), for a family of four, it’s cheaper to drive into central London, pay the congestion charge and park at the most expensive car park in Sloane Square than it would be to catch the train.

On trains. There are a few things.

1. We have an odd ticketing austem here. Train companies are obliges to keep "walk up" fares on all routes. For intercity routes these are often the shockingly high prices quoted - mainly cos the trian comlanie don't want peoole to tske those - they want to encourage people to book in advance, so price advance tickets accordingly - which can be very cheap.

1. Commuter routes fares are regulated and used to get a greater subsidy by the tax payer but the Tories shifted the settlement to make them more funded by fare payers. But ......

1. Covid and lockdowns saw journies taken by public transport fall off a cliff and business travel/commuting may never recover to pre pandemic levels - leaving a massive hole in funding.

1. Finally like everyone trains are exposed to soaring energy costs (many trains are electric)

Yes I was thinking of eating out and delicious seasonal fruit and veg (your seasons are much longer than ours). Also wine. Butter is expensive in Italy, but an espresso in a cafe was a little over a euro last time I was there. Gelato is cheaper and much nicer.

In Spain I paid for 5 people in a restaurant in the evening with wine- €69.

Didn’t find Sweden expensive at all when we went except for alcohol

It’s wired cause I was in Dublin in January and didn’t find it expensive at all in comparison to the Uk and definitely cheaper in comparison to the difference in the 80s.

We have very high taxes, high VAT which pushes wages up which then pushes up cost of goods and we have chosen to move to a very big state with highest tax burden for 70 years and spent so much on measures I was against in the pandemic that a generation is now burdened with the cost. We also have the very high power prices due to the Ukraine war (mine was £1100 this month based on my use the mknot before - highest in my life ).

A lot of wage demands aer being given into at present too so therefore prices will continue in an inflationary spiral.
Ireland v UK comparisons aer always difficult because what do people compare? I am outer London and even things like hair cuts and drinks are cheaper in outer than inner London. Dublin and London are both quite expensive. I am from NE England originally and that is cheaper than London and probably Dublin.

Food cheap in America? Found it to be one of the most expensive places we’ve visited.

Also the irish minimum wage is 11.30 euro an hour ( UK £9.92) and UK is £10.42 to the higher minimum wage in the UK probably makes a bit of a difference too.

high VAT which pushes wages up
Isn't uk VAT one of the lower ones? I might be misrimembering but I know quite a few countries are just ovet 21%

It also obviously is different if you’re living somewhere as opposed to visiting. We visited the U.K. loads of times before moving and never found it that pricy but now that we have an underlying level of costs for bills, rent, cars, it seems more expensive.
My parents say Australia seems quite expensive but when they’re there they eat out all the time in the city centre, whereas I don’t, and our underlying bills are a fraction of what we pay in the U.K., but this is partly because we’ve lived there for so long so obviously our mortgage is small now.
So it’s pretty hard to compare like with like, and also living vs visiting.

I'm visiting London for the first time in 4 years and finding the same - eating out is so expensive!! I'm not comparing like with like as I wouldn't eat out as much at home in Dublin, but compared to London 4 years ago it's so expensive!