Am I just stuck in the past or are price increases recently out of control?

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I am late 40’s and so there is some change my idea of prices are stuck in the past but my DH had a day off yesterday and we went up to town to go to a film and then dinner at very basic but nice Greek place, we got up to town early so went to a café for a cup of tea and a bit of cake to share. By the time we got home we had spent £100. In 2019 we could have done the exact same evening out for half of that. Which does leave me feeling like the goal posts have been moved quite a bit.

Obviously, I know prices go up, that hospitality is under a lot of pressure but prior to this it took more like 20 years for prices to double and now they have doubled in the past 4 or 5 years and it shows little sign of slowing down. Same with anything you buy, a new paperback book can be £15! It feels like Tea is more expensive every week.

Like I say I know prices go up but am I crazy to feel that things have gone up excessively? Even though inflation is supposed to be falling the price of products and services never seems to fall. Or am I just getting old and stuck in the past?

I am glad I just work now and come back home. No coffee shops or restaurants but nothing stops me having nice fruit juice at work which I bring from home. Buy my own coffee packets ...If I did not dip into savings and helped husband

I just refuse to go to the cinema anymore, because the prices are absolutely ridiculous.

But it's a vicious circle. Fewer people are going, so they have to charge more to make up for it. Cinemas will be a thing of the past.

Same with restaurants I think, starting with the closure of independents. Chains will last a little longer.

I don’t let it affect me since there’s nothing I can do except what I’m already doing - shopping around. I’m also frugal with my money but love drinking coffee and sitting in coffee shops (every day) and eating out occasionally. Sure I can make the same at home for a fraction of the price but that’s not the point for me. We all need our luxuries in life that help keep us sane and life is short.

I live in a UK city that’s perhaps the second most expensive city in the north after York and it’s an average of £40 per person for a cinema ticket at peak time and then a meal with one alcoholic drink at a slightly above restaurant, which to me is all fairly priced given the current financial context we’re in, as is £3.70 for a really good Americano at an independent coffee shop.

Yes they have. But it’s all everyone’s been talking about for ages!

We like Lidl baked beans

Colour and cut at hairdresser £60.

Used to eat out in the evening a few times a month - now it's a cheap n cheerful lunch at the golf club once a month.
Same with takeaways. Our Indian order was £18 a few years ago. Now it's £32.

Since these price increases there has been a deterioration in the quality of the food and service. Nothing is ever hot. I have noticed an increase in places adding service charges and hoping you'll be too embarrassed to ask for them to be removed.
No chance.

I've stopped buying single chocolate bars or packets of crisps now, no way i'm paying over £1 for a bar that's 1/3 smaller and 3x the price!

Cafe tea and cake, cinema and dinner for 2 people who have cost more than £50 in my area in 2019. Dinner for 2 would have been £50 by itself.
I do think restaurant prices have really gone up thou

OP, if you're late 40's, I've got at least ten years on you, so yes! I remember even cheaper prices, so I can moan a little bit more! 😁Cinema tickets not too terrible. I've just booked myself and DP to see Spinal Tap on Saturday and it's come to around £18 for both of us. Small discount of £2.50 as I'm 60. What does piss me off is having to do the whole thing online, personal information, card details etc. just to go to the bloody pictures. This constant tracking and everyone in your business just for doing everyday things is not on. DP and I have just had a weekend at the nearest local seaside town and could hardly believe that fish, chips and mushy peas were £20 each! For fish and chips! My grandparents would be spinning in their urns. Yes, we can all sit here going, "Eeeeh, them were the days!", but how has it come to this when you have to think about every last thing and how much it's going to cost? You look at having a break away or booking a self-catering place. A pathetic little caravan parked next to a muck heap in Cornwall calling itself a ' Shepherd's Hut' is charging £900 for a week! Do they think we're thick? And don't get me going on food. I'm no economist but my cynical old brain tells me an awful lot of this so-called 'cost of living crisis' is down to pure greed. Someone out there is making an awful lot of money and it sure as shite isn't us.

Regarding pay, this link gives teachers’ pay for England https://neu.org.uk/advice/your-rights-work/pay-advice/pay-scales/pay-scales-england

M6 has gone up about £13K since 2012/13, but according to the NASWT quoting the RPI, in 2023 that figure should have been closer to £20K (https://www.nasuwt.org.uk/news/campaigns/new-deal-for-teachers/how-much-pay-have-teachers-lost/how-much-pay-have-teachers-in-england-lost.html)
I’m using figures from different years but the first link shows pay in this current year and the second was written a couple of years ago. But they illustrate the pay a teacher who started in 2010 might have expected to be earning by now, without going onto the leadership spine, compared to what they are actually earning.

Also many teachers now aren’t on main scales; academies, colleges and so on don’t have to follow them and can pay less. MPS is the most that teachers are likely to earn.

The other thing is that as these salaries have stagnated (and I understand that the private sector has stagnated too, but public sector figures are easier to use) and NMW has risen- so the gap between the lowest pay and the median pay is getting smaller. Great for those on NMW but it does mean that those in skilled jobs are not seeing the benefit of their training/experience now, whereas once upon a time you could reasonably expect to earn more than double NMW as someone with skills and qualifications. It’s now less clear that financially, training and higher education are worth what they used to be.

Vielle, totally agree with your post below

I don’t know what the official inflation rate is but many foods have doubled in price since Covid. So that’s a 100% increase.

Inflation rates were much higher in the 1970s and 1980s than they are now (for all the people on this thread remembering the 'good old days').

It's a complex stuation wirh a lot of causes.

Wages and energy costs have risen a lot , especially for hospitality and retail.

Some sectors - cinemas in particular are atill suffering from the financial effects covid lockdowns.

Food costs are rising masively due to a number of factors. Climate change is having a huge impact on food availability and quality. Brexit has also increasd labour costs made it more expensive and difficult to import from Europe.

Take beef prices. Cattle cost a lot to rear. Dry weather has reduced the amount of grass and increased feed costs. Brexit has meant there are fewer workeds inclidig butchers and meat processors. All adds up.

TL:DR. You can't shut down the economy for over a year and not expect long lasting economic consequences. Brexit was a long lasting act of national self harm and if you care it affordable food vote for polices to tackle climate change.

Add NI increases.

But if they don't cover the cost of what it costs to deliver that service, they'll also fold.

Everyone knows that utilities and food have risen, that everything to deliver a meal out or a cup of tea in a coffee shop has risen, because we use those services ourselves and people are complaining about it (me included!) but have a mental block when it comes to prices rising in hospitality. If 'everywhere' is charging £3 for a pot of tea, isn't it more likely that that is what it costs to deliver it, rather than every single hospitality business has unanimously decided to rip it's customers off on a whim?

I work in hospitality and part of my job is to do audits and stock takes. I was looking at one product this week, trying to lower the cost, to prevent having to increase our prices, it has trebled in price since 2020, across all suppliers, and that's just one out of thousands of products and services needed to deliver. Who should cover that increase if not the person wanting and using the service? Should I earn less as an employee? Should the business just take the hit until it goes bust? What doesn't get paid to prevent passing the price rises on to the customer? The electric bill? The business rates? (Which have also all increased).

I get not being able to afford the prices, I can't! But some people seem to think that someone else should be subsidising their luxury experiences. Using hospitality is expensive because providing it is expensive.

Do you live down South? These prices are much higher than Manchester.

It wasn’t like this in the 80’s though. Britain was wealthy then. Well, the south was, the north was just ignored

No, Scotland Central belt.

£16 at the Odeon here. God knows what Everyman is but I know it's more.

What's sad is I would consider £3 for tea a bargain now because of how dramatically costs are increasing nowadays. I'm in London and hardly ever get hot drinks while out and about any more.

6.99 for the local Vue here but you get the added bonus of mice streaking about by your feet looking for dropped popcorn 😅 I took my little boy for the cinema for the first time recently and he was more interested in the mice than the film 🤣

I miss going to the cinema! In my teens (90s, Irish provincial town) a group of us used to go every weekend and watch whatever awful High School movie / rom com was currently running. Sometimes we just turned up and watched whatever was starting in 15 minutes. I don't remember it being expensive at all.

Going to the cinema cost about £3 a ticket back in the 90s in my northern town. Three decades on, that price is £9.99, which is not expensive at all. I paid £17 for a cinema ticket at an Everyman in north London a few months ago - a really lovely experience - which again isn’t expensive.

Wow. Its very expensive where you are! We quite often eat out as a family of five, with four of us being adults (18,19 year old kids) and manage one drink and a main for under £100 in mid range decent places.

I wanted to go to the Everyman in our nearest city for my Birthday, saw what it would cost and just closed the browser tab.