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.

It definitely was as this is a memory my adult daughter has of one of our shops as I was upset at the cost and it stayed with me. I think she would have been around 6 so it could have been 2003/4. She had been popping extras in the trolley so I think this was probably an exception but I seem to remember budgeting for 600 per month. South of England.

I don't remember a spiral staircase. Just a bed with the cooker down the side.
It would have been a bedsit, usually over a shop, in my similar northern town. It's where most of us started.

I don't think uni's even offer shared rooms anymore but that was still common when I went.

There are shared rooms at Imperial this year. DS has friends in them.

Late 90s we were recently married, our mortgage was c£600 pm. I gave up a well paid job to do a PGCE and a first year teacher in 2000 earned around £16/17k.

In the 90s I could pay £10 for a food shop just for me, £15 felt like pushing the boat out. I was a student then, just as student grants were wearing down every year and finishing. £1000 debt was a huge huge deal.

House prices were much lower then.

Dont take it from just me or the op, look up the wages v prices and the stats on intergenerational inequality. Early 00s were when buy to let was pushed by Blair and exploded, early 00s were when house prices quadrupled in less than 4 years and never came back down. For some reason the posters claiming to be Boomers on here have real trouble remembering easily Google-able facts.

There was a big difference between the 90s and 2004 op. By 2004 the damage that impoverished younger generations ever since had already occurred.

Also, the memory of your now adult daughter, so would have been a child then...maybe not the most reliable memory!

Me and the wife met another couple in Glasgow City centre recently, and four drinks in a pub was over £27. That's just unsustainable for working class folk, and if you'd said in the times the op's talking about we'd be paying that for drinks nearly 30 years later we'd have thought you were mad.

Same situation here, out all night for a tenner in the pubs and clubs.

A chip barm the size of your head was a quid. A chocolate bar was about 30p.

I worked at b&q and earned £4.60 an hour. That was 1998. It was double time on certain days, Easter Sunday etc and I do seem to remember New Years day was triple pay

No, but I remember the baked bean price war of 1992 or 93. Own brand went down to 1p a tin at one point, and 3p for Heinz.