Everything has gone up

[coulditbeme2323]

Had a great weekend (one night) as family of five in London.

Just dawned on me paying the CC bill last night how expensive things have got.

Now London has never been cheap, but I think it cost us probably double what it would pre COVID and that was only 6 years ago.

We were only there 36 hours, and it cost quite a bit of money - not that I regret it.

Given best cheesecake of your life! Where did you get it from?

you aren’t being unreasonable though, I only go to London for business now. Gone are the days of booking a last min train & having a cheeky overnight stay because the cost of hotels are scandalous.

I have tickets for an event soon that I am considering selling because I just can’t justify the hotel cost to myself. I mean even travelodges are £200+ for one night & we definitely aren’t even guaranteed our safety so its stay at your own risk kind of thing.

Not in most cafe, well maybe just - but most around £4.50-£5.50 in locals

Cakes and bubbles

You can't get cake for under a fiver!
Maybe I need to go to Specsavers because that prices im seeing in my cafes look to be under a fiver to me!

( I normally pay between £2.50 to £4 depending on the cake)

Last time I checked £4.50 was under a fiver

Fair, but that's a minimum!

Anyway slightly off topic

You’re right OP, the cost of everyday stuff has been going up and up and whilst it’s not unnoticeable the creep makes it less obvious.

We tend to do the same, if we’re going on a day out we’ll spend whatever we spend, I don’t want to be watching every penny. These days are fairly infrequent though so when I tot it up at the end it’s quite a bit more than last time!

I could understand it if we came back with shopping, but 36 hours in London was just under 2k!

I don't resent it, but it would have been half of that 7/8 years ago.

I think if your style is to tap tap away and not look at cost later you are going to spend a fortune. Yes things have gone up but there’s always deals.
I went for an overnight trip to London last month. Train was free as had a free first class ticket to use but I ate lunch on train and popped in 1st class lounge for some drinks and snacks on arrival.
Evening meal I had a lovely salad and a drink at slim chickens was £12? eat in, I was shocked how good and cheap it was, right opposite the Harry Potter theatre. Breakfast at hotel inc in price and dinner on train. I wouldn’t pay £19 for cheesecake or for expensive coffee or matcha though. We had an ice cream near British museum which was delicious and not overpriced and went in the museum plus walking in parks. I don’t think we spent anything other than ice cream.

I think it's more like adjusting budgets - if I'm meeting a friend for lunch we used to go to our local "Lounge" for brunch but as that's about £15 each for the food and drink now we'll go to a café where it is cheap(er). Some people who used to go out every Saturday for lunch will now do it fortnightly or will go to Wetherspoons instead of the farm shop café.

This is why so many chain restaurants are doing deals. I get desperate emails from Prezzo almost every day.

Eating & drinking out is where we have really noticed how much the price of things have increased I have to say. Even at just your regular pubs/cafes. We went back to a cafe we haven’t been to in a good few years a couple of weekends ago and we used to get 2 coffee’s & a couple of cakes/scones with change from £10, when we went recently it was £27 for the same plus a little kids smoothie for our daughter which is a crazy increase.

We like to go out for a Sunday roast at least once a month and now for the 2 of us with adult meals plus a kids meal for our daughter it’s the best part of £80, and thats not even at a posh restaurant thats just at one of our local ones. We are lucky that the money isn’t an issue and although annoying we can afford to pay it but for lots of families it is just unaffordable now.

That's because food establishments have suffered the triple whammy of increased energy costs, increased food costs and increased labour costs, plus possibly higher business rates too.

I've read about cafes and fish and chip shops seeing their energy bill going from under £10k pa to over £50k pa. That change alone could have seen the owner going from earning a decent living to earning nothing, unless they put their prices up significantly and continue to sell the same amount of food/drinks.

The NMW has gone up over 50% since before COVID plus higher employer NI costs. Ingredients costs have likely doubled, or more.

All against a backdrop of their customers seeing their own disposable income decrease leaving them with little choice but to reduce their spending on food and drink out of the house, because for many, it's one of the few areas where they have any scope to cut down.

According to the menu, the cheesecake was for sharing. So £9.50 each

My DH and I have a fair amount of disposable income and we used to eat out a lot at weekends. Coffee and cake there, a nice lunch somewhere else etc. we still go out at weekends but we have massively cut down on spending because of the cost of everything. We might have a cheaper lunch and tap water, or we take our own lunch, or have a coffee no cake. Food inflation is set to get worse in the coming year. Maybe we will shed loads of weight - trying to find the silver cloud!

Dinner at Slim Chickens (referring to a previous post)? I would rather have a packet of crisps or eat nowt.

That is very steep, I grant you!

This probably won’t make much dent in 2k but I do try to have snacks etc with me when we go for days out - even with teens!

I live in London though.

You only have to look at the calorie counts to see that the cakes in that restaurant are tiny. Look at it here, dwarfed by a champagne flute.

Even the most teeny tiny Mumsnetter could probably manage a whole cheesecake even though she could reasonably describe it as 'very rich'.

I think some is how you are brought up. I grew up 80s when eating out regularly wasn’t a thing. Days out were packed lunches and a flask. Maybe have an ice cream as a treat.
We can afford it but I’d not pay £80 for a roast, would rather cook it myself.
Just a run of mill cafe for drinks and cake I’d not think it worth spending money on.
I’ve just arranged a day out on train with my mum and both happy agreed we’ll take lunch to eat on train. Some people will get a Starbucks coffee at station £5/6 and lunch out £15/20? It’s just not on our radar and wouldn’t add to the trip, I don’t see taking a coffee from home in my nice refill cup or some food a hardship. But it’s very much what you are used to habit wise. I can see if you are spending £25 for a coffee and a run of mill sandwich and drink in cafe makes things seem very spendy.

Each to their own. Was my first time and I thought was really nice. It was a beautiful evening so I was walking around sightseeing and didn’t want a big sit down meal.
I mentioned it as it shocked me price wise in a good way - big salad and refill drinks in a prime tourist location and not expensive.

£19 for a slice of cheesecake ! That is daylight robbery.

Oh that annoys me so much when the word “rich” is misused like that.

I often find taking a picnic on a day out - going to a museum or similar - makes the day less stressful rather than more so!

We have just had a £6000 vets bill for our beloved dog

Not true.

Yep. Had a night out a couple of weeks ago. Started with a meal, nothing fancy, just ramen. Then a few bars, drinking gin and tonic. Spent £150 without blinking.

Cocktails used to be under a tenner - around the £8-9 mark in a nice place - about five years ago. A bog standard cocktail bar we went to didn’t have a single cocktail on the menu under £20, so went for a spirit and mixer instead.

Prices go up but more than double in the space of a few years? Nah.