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.

DD was born in 1999, for the three of us our food shop in the 00s was about 50-75 quid. We had a big mortgage yet we could afford to go abroad every couple of years, fund dd's rather costly hobbies and eat takeaways.

We were screwed over by the GFC in the late 00s due to the industries we worked in (dh tourism business profits decreased, and I was made redundant from the construction company I worked for). We never financially recovered due to debt we accumulated during that period. Dh died when DD was 13, so it was a long struggle through her teen years, enough to make ends meet but that was it, no other luxuries.

£30-40k salary was my aim for a luxurious lifestyle

which would be the equivalent to 60-78k today.

I'd love 30 - 40k now! In fact, I recently interviewed for a job with a starting wage of 35k and I would have cried on the spot if they'd given me the role. I cried because I didn't get it instead.

I’m not sure on the shopping amount. I used to go to Asda with MIL when DC1 was a baby as we only had one car then. I remember spending around £40 for three of us and being quietly gobsmacked at MIL spending £90 one week (for 5 people).
DH earned £12.5k and we bought our first house for £17.5k We had £2k deposit and borrowed £25k to pay for improvements and furniture. It had no bathroom just a toilet downstairs and the only furniture we had was inflatable sofas a black and white TV and a mattress on the floor.
DH got a pay rise to £15k and tax credits came in when DC2 was a baby and we felt like millionaires.

The £150 can't be right. I remember shopping with mum at sainsburys for a party and 2 trollys full, and I mean full, came to just over £200. I remember vividly because we were both stunned at spending that much. It was definitely an appropriate price for the time, we'd just never spent that much in a single shop before.

No alcohol in there though, that was all done in an earlier booze cruise to Calais! (Doesn't seem to be a thing anymore).

I graduated in 1998 and got a retail job in the Trafford Centre when it opened in September that year - £4.12 per hour. Under 18's were paid £2.12ph for the same job, and 18-21 year olds £3.12ph. My food shop was something like £30 a week, and diesel was 60-something pence per litre.

I went back to my home country for the first six months of 1999 and remember being shocked at how much food prices had jumped in that time when I returned. A single green pepper was 73p, and a pineapple was £4. Household goods and clothing was expensive too. A fairly basic desktop computer was around £1,000. The idea of disposable fashion would be laughed at. Interest rates had also risen quite rapidly since the 1997 general election when Gordon Brown gave interest rate-setting independence to the Bank of England. Inflation had been high and was just coming under control. Then came the dot.com crash, which was deflationary.

What has happened since then is interesting, because the turn of the century was when international trade really took off and we were able to 'export' much of the UK's inflation. The cost of almost anything that is now manufactured in the Far East - clothing, electronics, furniture - began to fall quite rapidly both in absolute terms and relative to incomes. Same for things like pineapples, which are now 98p, although a single pepper is still around the same price as it was in 1999. It helped that the Asian financial crash and currency crisis was extremely deflationary in many emerging markets there too.

At the same time, Gordon Brown flogged off all the gold and borrowed like there was no tomorrow, and he redistributed all that money to people through tax credits. Freedom of movement and the EU enlargement helped keep a lid on labour costs to businesses, but incomes were then topped up by government. So, although the average Brit's productivity started to decline in the early Noughties their incomes actually went up, as prices were coming down.

The years 2000 to 2007, when everyone in the UK got better off in aggregate, turned out to be entirely illusory. What's happened since then has mostly been an unwinding of those fateful Gordon Brown years, augmented by huge policy car crashes associated with the Great Financial Crash and covid, and crowned by Brexit.

We never recovered from the 08 crash

Really interesting post, InveterateWineDrinker.

I also remember spotting a huge jump in odd things when coming back to the UK. My memory (I think) is that a lot of it coincided with the Euro coming in, but it might just have been because I wasn't working in the overseas place by the late summer after then.

1st full time job in 1991 was £6000 a year - £3.33 an hour, £500 per month
Bedsit cost £200 per month plus bills of about £100, food budget was £25 a week.

Social life at the time was church.

Definitely much cheaper then even in relation to average earnings.

I think it was right. I vividly recall my mum spending £100 per week on shopping in the 90’s and she then did meat separately from the butcher plus a few bit in m&s. We have been very spoilt in our food costs, they are far more in most places in Europe an the US

I was a student living away from home for the first time in 2000 and I used to spend £10 a week on a 'big shop'. My target was to get at least 12 items for my tenner, which you would really struggle to do now. It wouldn't have been high end stuff, and I'm sure I picked up the odd item through the week, but if I could live of £10-15 a week I don't understand how it could cost you £150 for a weekly shop? I don't spend that now on the weekly shop with two adults and two kids to feed.

We had two young children around the same time. We struggled because of extra child care costs etc. But if you were spending £150 in Asda each week back then, that is the cause of much of your hardship.

It definitely isn’t right for the majority of people.

We were a one income household. We bought our first house in 1995 for £39995, so had the mortgage to pay on that plus the bills. We didn’t have £600 a month to pay out on food. I know my parents didn’t either. We used to go to Kwik Save when DH got paid to buy the bulk of our groceries then do top ups each week.

I found an old receipt from Sainsbury’s the other day. 17th December 1991.

J/S Large white bloomer loaf £0.67
J/S Pork/beef sausages 454g £0.99
J/S Provencal Pate £0.74
J/S Farmhouse cheddar £0.99
Heinz baked beans 450g £0.29
Heinz baked beans 450g £0.29
J/S Shortbread £0.35
J/S Shortbread £0.35

Balance due £4.67

Food is cheap now. Sure, it’s always a shock when it goes up quickly and outpaces inflation for a while - which is happening now - but historically, it’s still very cheap. Food takes up a smaller percentage of the average family’s take home pay than it ever used to.

Fuel also seems quite cheap. I remember vividly (I was a child) a news report that petrol had hit £1 per litre at “Princess Diana’s local garage” - I think the implication being that a West London garage might be a bit more expensive than the average but it was all head in one direction. So that must have been 1996 or 1997. For something to only be 60% or so more expensive 30 years later seems crazy.

I think it was a bit easier to live frugally then. Going out for coffee wasn’t really a thing. We went to restaurants, but it wasn’t as common as it is now. Pretty much everyone - child at school, adult at work - had a packed lunch and it was just completely normal.

I was a student 1994 to 1998, off campus rent was £155 a month. Bills were tiny for gas/electricity. A housemate set up some weekly payment plan where we were meant to to take turns pay £3 at the post office to spread the cost. Probably sensible budgeting technique for families but too much hassle for 6 students with plenty surplus.
Food was about £20 a week and I ate well on that. One housemate was tighter and made a sausage casserole from cheap sausages (50p), tinned tomatoes and tinned pineapple that made many meals. I didn't sample it!

That would have been an extragavant food shop! Before primark came along I do remember clothes being expensive. But then charity shops weren't trendy and I used to find all kinds of lovely clothes for 25 or 50 pence.

In 1994, l used to go to the big Tesco in Manchester where Richard Madely got done for shoplifting.

I used to buy 2 weeks worth for 3 including alcohol. It came to about £130 quid a fortnight. So £65 quid a week. And loads of goodies in there.

In the late 90s I had just met my husband. We moved into a rented flat in a good area of the city we lived in. I remember withdrawing DM400 at the beginning of the month, which covered all our food shopping and a couple of meals out.
That would be around €200 today, which would definitely cover food shopping, but the cost of eating out has gone through the roof, so perhaps one outing, judiciously chosen.

Buying a house was cheaper but we still paid £450 for the mortgage on our 3 bed small end terrace in early 90s.

I used to spend about £20 a week on food in the early 90s

Yes and no. I would agree that food, housing, utilities were cheaper but of course than ran alongside lower wages.

Where it’s a damn site easier now is you can shop around online for deals and have access to second hand clothing/toys through Vinted and similar.

There were SO many things I could afford to buy when I was younger and I never had the right stuff for school because it involved specialist shops and expensive prices that my parents either couldn’t access or struggled to afford. Nowadays I can get the kids everything they need without spending a fortune and they still get to feel part of their peer group. It’s a real relief.

In the 90s you could get cans of coke for 50p, sweets for 5 or 10p. The local kids used to queue out the door of the local garage to spend their money on sweets before school.

Going to a rollerdisco on Friday nights for £1 where they played 90s dance 😊
£2 cigs and £1.50 pints.

I got £25 money from my Saturday job aged 16-18 in 2001-3 and it paid for a night out , 3 Tia Maria and cokes , chips on the way home - and I still had enough for my bus fares the following week!

It lasted until a bit later too.
I clearly remember when I first lived alone after uni in 2007 buying a weekly shop for about £18 consisting of fruit, veg , bread and a rotisserie chicken!

It wouldn’t go far now. Good times.

I remember getting the bus to the nearest town in the mid 90s as a teen and it was 20p for a child ticket. I went to uni in 1999 - 3 spirits & mixers for a fiver in the halls bar, bottle of Bacardi Breezer was £1 in the union on club nights. I smoked back then too so a packet of fags, drinks, portion of chips, night bus home and you'd still have change from £15. Glorious days.

We rented our first flat in 2004 and that was £350 pm, I checked recently and the same flat was now £1600pm.