Memories of cost of living in the late 90s, early 2000s

[goudacheese]

My kids were young then, born 1994,97 but I remember finding it quite tough financially. I have memories of our weekly food shop at asda being £150 per week and buying new clothing was a struggle so I always waited for the sales. Nursery costs swallowed up my salary at £600 per month and there was no funding. Nappies were at least £6 per pack.
I don't know if I was just young and just not very savvy at that time. Both husband and myself were lower on our career ladders but we had OK salaries. Maybe it was just that period of having young kids and I worked part time but my clearest memory was the high cost of the weekly food shop. I remember asda seemed the cheapest as lidl back then was rubbish compared to now. Just wondering if anyone else felt the same or things weren't as bad as I remembered.

Life stages probably played a part. I was 18-21 and everything felt really cheap compared to now. I could get 10 cigs for £2, could go out clubbing with £20 and it was more than enough to get hammered, get chips, and get a taxi home. I was able to buy new clothes regularly from the likes of Top Shop, Miss Selfridge, C&A, H&M.

£150 for a food shop are you sure? In 1994?

I think we would spend about £40?

I think the nursery costs are probably accurate as my children were born 2007 and 2009 and it was £2k per month for both of them. I never had a food bill that high in the 90s though. I shopped at Sainsbury’s in the 90s (there was one at the end of the road) and a £150 shop would have been huge. I don’t even spend that now.

My dc were born late nineties, and I remember having to manage budgets carefully as well.

The Nectar card was fairly new then and once you’d saved enough points, gave you a £2.50 voucher. However, in Adams (children’s clothes shop), it was worth £5 so I used it for school uniforms etc.

Sales only happened twice a year. The Next sale was a huge event, and people saved money for it, and queued at 6am in the morning to get the best items.

The NCT used to organise sales where you got a percentage of what was sold. They were very popular as a way of getting cheap
baby and children clothing, plus getting a bit if extra income.

Everyone with young kids did caravan holidays in Cornwall.

Don’t remember nursery fees actual
costs, but have some vague recollection that after fees were paid, transport costs to work etc , there wasn’t much left over (so opted to be a sahm, which I wanted to do anyway).

That can’t be right about the food shop. That’s more like prices now.

Food is definitely cheaper now relatively when you look back at what things did actually cost. Electrical goods were also much more expensive. And yes, clothes are cheaper now, but the problem is that wages (generally) have stagnated so everything seems to cost more. Housing though, which is the biggest expense, is much more, along with the eye-watering cost of a car.

I was at school but remember food being so cheap back then. I could go clubbing on £10 & get myself a drink, bus home, cloakroom & chips!

Wow, are you sure you're not remembering wrongly?
I moved out in 2001, and I used to spend about £30-50 for 2 of us for 10 days food shopping.
I had my eldest in 2004, and nappies were about £3-4 I think, baby milk was definitely £6-8 at the time, depending on brand. I was a single parent, and would generally spend £30-40 a week on food for us both.

I agree, £150 for a family of 4 in the 90s doesn't sound right. I was spenfing £60-£80 for a full weekly shop (cooking from scratch, plus other consumables, etc) in the mid 00's.

I remember my food shop for a single person in 2005-6 was £27 a week.
Zone 1-6 travel card in London was £25 and that seemed expensive. I am laughing at that now!
Two bed flat rent in zone 2 was £825 in 2011

These are the figures I remember most clearly. I was on just above minimum wage in early 00s and I had wardrobe full of designer shoes (multiple pairs bought on boxing day sales every year) and used to go out every weekend, travel etc.

I am now in a professional job with a decent salary and I can't understand where my money is going. There are no designer shoes in sight and my annual holiday is visiting parents in Europe which my mum jokingly calls an "all inclusive holiday".
And I don't even live in London any more.

And yes, clothes are cheaper now, but the problem is that wages (generally)

I have clothes from Topshop & Oasis back then & the quality is fantastic. 100% cotton, silk etc.

Pret was much cheaper then too!

Student in the late 90s /2000s. Admittedly cheap student food but my budget was £20. An expensive night out would have been £30-£40. I remember a slap up meal for two costing £80 and we thought we were rich! £30-40k salary was my aim for a luxurious lifestyle. My first house cost £90k albeit tiny and in a cheap area.

However early 90s I remember my parents struggling.

Tina was about 50p a tin and contained 195g.

Inised to buy for me and ds. About 50 quid a week food or less. No childcare help though.

I agree , we were spending £35 per week at Aldi and Sainsburys for two of us, it was just food, no cigarettes or alcohol and cooking from scratch, no ready meals.

Nah. I was single in 2016 and budgeting £25 a week for food and often that was organic.

I was a young mum in the late 90's early 00"s and my husband used to earn £40 a day. Every Saturday I would go to the post office and pay all the bills which we had payment cards for, go to the newsagents for my £5 a week each for gas and electric and go to Asda for the weekly shop which was about £50 for 4 of us.

£5 for electric wouldn't last more than a couple of days now and I'd be lucky to feed myself for the week for £50!

My dc were young in the early 2000’s and it felt like everyone around me had plenty of money, even though many women worked part time or not at all because of tax credits. Tax credits were very generous and even people with a decent income could claim them if they had children.

I was a student in bristol mid 90s and I remember paying £40 a week rent for a shared house room in a fairly nice part of bristol. The trendy parts of bristol were £45 per week.

£150 a week? Were you shopping at Fortnums?!

Our mortgage was only £140 a month. No way was shopping anything like that for us.

Nursery fees were a killer though.

£150 a week food shopping sounds wrong, maybe that was for the month?

Yes things seemed cheaper for me then too.

My husband and I spent 25 a week in 1994 on food. That was a very, vert strict budget and the minimum we could manage because we were in negative equity and had to save the difference and a new 5 percent deposit to move - which we did in Dec 1994.

I was a kid in the 90s but I remember my DM's weekly food shops being about £80 - but much less when the Aldi opened nearby and we went there for a bit. (It was rubbish at first.)

I went to university in the mid-2000s. After rent, I lived pretty comfortably off £300 a month in a southern city. My fortnightly food shop was around £30. I'd take £20-30 on a night out.

While housing was much cheaper, life was generally simpler as well.

I left school in the mid 90s. I'd never been abroad bar the school day trip to Calais. I didn't go out for meals with my family more than a handful of times across my entire childhood, and those were to the Beefeater.

I had a shared room at uni and bathroom was down the corridor (we struggle to let anything not en suite now).

If you watch old re runs of Two Pints of Lager and a Packet of Crisps the bedsit and terrace looks exactly like the accommodation we all moved into. Posters and wood chip, old fashioned mis matched furniture.

And none of this made me stand out in any way. Only one or two of the people I knew in secondary school went in an annual holiday abroad (and even then it was to France camping).

We were happy with a few pints in an old man pub. Sometimes we'd go to a club afterwards but it was drunk whatevers cheap (and it was cheap) but no shots etc and usually night bus home.

Edited to say I started my part time job on £2.10 an hour and think I was on about £3.50 an hour by time I started uni.

In my graduate job when minimum wage came it it was about £11.5k a year because I remember mine going up to £12k and being delighted