To be absolutely sick of hearing about the cost of living crisis

[Katypp]

I surely can't be the only person sick to death of hearing about the cost of living crisis?
I am tired of reporters interviewing middle-class (usually) mothers inside paid activities such as soft play and hearing them moan about how they are struggling to make ends meet.
Have we completely lost the ability to cut our cloth according to our means or does 'struggling' now mean carrying on spending as usual then complaining when there's no money left?
There have never been as many massive new cars on the road, towns are full of hairdressers, nail bars, brow bars, tanning salons, soft play, play cafes, coffee shops, ice cream parlours, dog groomers, most of which didn't exist 25 years ago and are probably the recipients of the money of the families who say they can't keep up with spiralling costs.
Yes, some families will have been hard up before prices started to go up and will have nothing else to cut back on. They have my sympathy.
But i am utterly fed up of hearing how hard households ars being hit by the cost of living crisis when all that's needed is a few minor cutbacks which they don't want to make.

Well there you go....

Salaries

2 x £18k salaries in 1999 would have given you a monthly take home of around £2200

£18k today is around £37.5K - 2 x that would give you a monthly take home today of around £5000

Rent

1999 - £800, 36% of your take home. With inflation the rent would be £1600 and £1800 today.

Zone 3, 2 bed flats are actually around £2500 on average today - rent has increased in real terms by 47% and would be 50% of your take home.

If your 1999 rent had been the equivalent of todays rents you would have been paying £1200 - 50% more than what you actually paid.

House Prices

A typical commuter house outside London in 1999 was £75k. If housing costs had risen in line with inflation it would be around £160k. A 5% deposit on a £75k house would be £3,750.

Today a typical commuter house is £290k - an 81% increase in real terms. A 5% deposit would be £14500.

If 1999 houses had cost the equivalent of today you would have been looking at £140,000 and a £7500 deposit

Outgoings and savings

Not sure if it was you, but someone mentioned saving 50% of their individual income, so I've assumed that

Your situation:

1999
Joint income of £2200
Rent of £800, savings of £550 a month towards a £3500 deposit.
Leaves you with £850 a month to pay bills and live on
You would have been able to save for your deposit in seven months

1999 with prices the equivalent of today
Joint income of £2200,
Rent of £1200, savings of £550 a month towards a £7500 deposit.
Leaves you with £450 a month to pay bills and live on
Would take 14 months to save the deposit

However living of £450 a month would have been impossible even in 1999, so lets assume you kept living costs the same

Joint income of £2200,
Rent of £1200, living costs of £850.
Leaves you with £150 a month to save - takes 4 years to save the deposit

Now lets look at the real position for people today in your situation.

Today saving 50% of one salary

Joint income of £5000
Rent of £2500, savings of £1250 a month towards a £14500 deposit
Leaves you with £1250 a month to pay bills and live on which is wholly unrealistic - especially in London, with a baby, but even if you did manage it, it would still take almost 12 months to save the deposit.

Today keeping living costs equivalent to 1999

Let's be generous and give todays couple the equivalent of what you had to live on a month (£850 = £1750 today)

Joint income of £5000
Rent of £2500, living costs of £1750
savings of £1250 a month towards a £14500 deposit
Leaves you with £750 a month to save - would take 20 months to save the deposit -

And that is if you genuinely think you can live on £1750 a month in London paying full time nursery costs.

Now do you get it?

I was going to say this…flats are £90,000 near me in Peterhead or Fraserburgh.

Can't be bothered to do the research eh?

I buy socks probably every month. When I go to look what is there? A pair of trainers socks and one white school sock..

My dad actually had rickets in the 1950s when his mother fell on hard times as her husband was dying. He was sent away to convalescence by the seaside.

It should be better than it was 50 years ago.

What's more mind boggling is when everything is worse than it was only 5 years ago. When the price of some foods have doubled etc. It's daylight robbery when looked at like that.

Yep... it is not "real" poverty because your kid is not begging on the street like they might have been years ago.

Countless studies show that we’re worse off than our parents but they’re incapable of seeing past our Netflix subscriptions! 🤣

It’s attitude like yours that makes people end up in debt

What are you talking about?

My attitude isn't that people should do those things even if they can't afford it FFS.

It is that in the sixth richest country in the world and second richest country in Europe, we shouldn't have to live in a society where people can't afford a basic holiday or the occasional meal out.

It is barbaric that billionaires hoard wealth at levels they will never be able to spend, even if they lived forever, wealth that they've made off the back of the general population whether through people's hard work within their businesses or through the consumerism which they encourage. It is even more barbaric that they can take that wealth out of the country to avoid paying tax on it, hoarding it like some kind of modern day dragon sitting on their piles of gold.

Even worse than the billionaires are the people like you who act as their handmaidens - claiming to be happy to not be able to afford to go out once a month for a nice meal and only have a holiday once every few years, despite working hard and doing everything society says you should - paying your mortgage, saving for your retirement.

Why aren't you angry about that? Why aren't you angry that the like of Jim Ratcliffe can avoid paying £4billion in UK tax on his £15 billion fortune while his privately owned company gets a £50 million payout despite making billions in profit?

Why aren't you angry that the likes of Amazon avoids UK tax and pays its UK employees so poorly that they have to have their wages topped up with UC, while the company makes Bezos so much money that he can afford to spend £50 million on a wedding and essentially book out Venice for the weekend?

Instead of recognising the inequality and demand a fairer society, you play into their hands, punching down on people who are significantly less privileged than you, people who will never be able to afford to buy a house or pay into a pension like you have been able to.

You blame them for being a drain on society and begrudge them benefits just because they choose to spend what little they do have to try and enjoy life occassionally - even if it is only meals out at shitty chain food places.

You do it because it is easier than recognising your own luck and privilege and because it is easier than opening your eyes to the inequality that exists in todays UK. Its safer not to rock the boat and sit in your comfortable little bubble feeling like a king!

We had a wood burner fitted in this house (rural farm in N/E Scotland) when we moved in twelve years ago and it was the best decision we ever made.

It has enabled us to stay at home through multiple ten-day long power cuts and the initial £3000 outlay for stove, flue and fitting when things were easier financially is now saving us huge amounts of money as a truckload of local firewood that lasts months is much cheaper than the propane gas we have for the central heating and hot water.

If we moved again now the absolute first thing I’d do is fit a wood stove.

@ForWittyTealOP and @XenoBitch

😂😂😂😂

Agreed.

In my area rents for one bedroom flats are around 700-1000 pcm.

And yet universal credit only pays a single adult with no dependents around £550 for rent so they would get something like £1000 in total which is a joke, because how can that cover rent, council tax and energy bills let alone food, and travel or any car payments etc ?

And if you owned your house your UC wouldn’t even get the housing element, shocking!

In some European counties I hear they pay you something similar to what you earned when you had a job, at least for a short period of time for you to be able to maintain your financial commitments, until you get back on your feet work wise.

It’s criminal to think in the UK people, including many who have paid into the system for many years, can be left destitute and saddled with increasing debt . It feels criminal tbh

Even worse than the billionaires are the people like you who act as their handmaidens - claiming to be happy to not be able to afford to go out once a month for a nice meal and only have a holiday once every few years, despite working hard and doing everything society says you should - paying your mortgage, saving for your retirement.
Why aren't you angry about that? Why aren't you angry that the like of Jim Ratcliffe can avoid paying £4billion in UK tax on his £15 billion fortune while his privately owned company gets a £50 million payout despite making billions in profit?
Why aren't you angry that the likes of Amazon avoids UK tax and pays its UK employees so poorly that they have to have their wages topped up with UC, while the company makes Bezos so much money that he can afford to spend £50 million on a wedding and essentially book out Venice for the weekend?

This this this! Well said @BloominNora

Petrol is cheaper now than in 1990, relative to wages.

I don’t know how far back in time you are going, but all of that stuff was totally normal in my early 80s state village primary. Everyone went to EuroCamp or similar for two weeks in summer, everyone had plenty of clothes and shoes (certainly as many as DS has), everyone went to Brownies, swimming lessons and often gymnastics or ballet as well. Boys did cubs, swimming and football. We definitely had Halloween outfits.

Driving them away by expecting them to pay the same proportion of tax on their wealth as they expect from people who earn through PAYE?

Driving them away by bailing out their privately owned companies with tax payer money despite them not paying tax themselves?

What else do you think we should offer job creators besides:

• subsidising the low wages they pay their staff with benefits while they go on TV and whine about benefit claimants, some of whom work for them

• giving their privately owned companies that have made billions in profits, grants and low interest, government backed loans

• letting them get away with leaving to country to avoid billions in personal tax

• honoring them with knighthoods

That is not celebrating success, it is rewarding selfishness and narcissism.

Maybe we should also roll out the red carpet every time they deign to grace the country with their presence, pay for their hotels and provide them with an on call masseuse? Perhaps you could personally volunteer to follow him round, doffing your cap?

It is not about being generous with other people's money when it comes to the likes of Jim Ratcliffe - not when the only reason he has that amount of money is because his companies have been subsidised by the tax payers.

Maybe, instead of rewarding people who just take and take for their own gain, we should invest in infrastructure and health so that job creators have a healthy workforce and the ability to move their products around the country.

Maybe instead of subsidising companies that pay low wages with benefits for their workers, we should give tax breaks to companies that pay their workers enough to live on without needing benefits and who contribute to society in other ways and tax those companies who pay low wages more to recoup the subsidies.

Instead of using the amount of money someone has as a measure of their success, we should use their contribution to the betterment of society - instead of the Forbes Rich List, why don't we have the Forbes Philanthropy List.

Instead of giving people knighthoods and titles when they do everything they can to avoid paying tax on their personal wealth, maybe we should take the titles off those people and give them to people who don't decide to spend more than half the year sunning themselves in Monacco to avoid paying their taxes!

Stop being such a serf!

Oh no - the seaside. That would be frowned upon today. Can't be having seaside holidays if you're on hard times!

If you are middle class and have a professional job then you should be able to go to soft play! My partner and I both have professional jobs but are struggling to afford a holiday which was never the case. My parents had much more purchasing power 20 years ago

I don’t have DC but I do have a mortgage, student loan and the only discount I get is 25% off council tax as I live alone so one salary
28.5k

We're the same as you, a d were grateful for it.

I can ALSO acknowledge that even having had a pay rise this year, and most years, my money goes less far than it used to. My budget has had to stretch further every year.

In fact, I'm finding I'm having to cut things from my food shop monthly to keep within budget.

I drive a 13 year old car. We cook. I use the library for books, we have "free" at home hobbies and spend a lot of time in the park and at free activities rather than big ticket days out. Those are rare treats for DD. I last changed my phone three years ago and it wasn't top of the range then. We live in a small house which gives us no room for downsizing to cut costs, but mortgage payments are large because of the area of the country, which is where the jobs are.

I'm not broke. I'm not struggling. But I am worrying about where this situation is headed and how we'll cope when there's no room left to cut the cloth. And I'm annoyed that I earn more than five years ago and can't actually afford any more. People are allowed to worry. People are allowed to be annoyed.

And the other thing about HS2 is that only the very rich will be able to afford to use it. Massive spending by the super-rich, for the super-rich.

How much was spent on the Millennium Dome again, and what was it sold for? £1 or something?

This country loves spending public money on costly vanity projects, many of which come to nothing.

I actually think you’ve got a really good point about rewarding good business. I’m an employer. I try really hard to pay above NLW. However, the supermarket knows our costs and bases all costs on NMW for every hour worked in our business from Saturday staff right through to management level. Nor do they include the perks of a a house that are expected in the kinds of roles we offer.

But as a society we have to work towards a much more moral code I think. The old Victorian business men spent their profits on good housing,libraries, parks and town halls. What do ours do today. But it starts with every tiny purchase. Amazon aren’t going to be sponsoring your local football team so don’t buy from them - buy local and British where you can. Problem is people don’t, they buy as cheap as possible.

we also need to absolutely ostracize parents who choose not to pay for their own children. To my mind it’s criminal they can get away with that.

Absolutely. I agree with this.
Despite what pps have said, i have not said and never would that prices are going up and money is not going as far as it did.
What i am pushing back on is the idea that downgrading a holiday, cutting back on eating out and days out constitutes a 'cost of living crisis'.
The constant rhetoric means people are spending annual salaries of £120k on what? And still think they are helpless victims of this 'crisis' without taking accountability.
I also push back that young families struggling is unique to this generation.

Amazon aren’t going to be sponsoring your local football team so don’t buy from them - buy local and British where you can. Problem is people don’t, they buy as cheap as possible.

Most of us WANT to buy local and British. The problem is, we ALSO have to cut our cloth accordingly. So sometimes to be able to buy both food AND allow DD to do her crafting (for example) I have to go to the supermarket and Amazon, rather than the farm shop and the local craft shop. Because I only have a certain amount of money and how often do I have to tell DD she can't do something (no we can't go to the zoo, no to soft play, no you can't go on all the rides at the local free to enter fun day AND then no you can't craft at home?).

I would much rather put that money into the local businesses and I do when I can. But people can't always afford it. Because everything is expensive. And if we did that, we'd be told we aren't spending within our means and to buy cheaper.

You can't win.

The struggle is DIFFERENT.

We earn a lot more than my parents ever did. We can't afford for one of us to stay home, they could. We would have to massively cut back everywhere to go on some of the holidays they took us on. Their house is twice the size of ours.

And as I've already pointed out and you've acknowledged, we don't spend on constant eating out, fancy cars, yadda yadda. DH gets (gentle, affectionate) fun poked at him at work for his lunch box which is all homemade stuff and often a sandwich filled with leftovers because we stretched the meat the night before to account for it. I can't remember the last time I had a coffee out (coffee shop coffee does not match what I can make at home).

We haven't been abroad for the last decade, we stay in the UK and camp more than anything else.

I love our life. I don't particularly want any more than we have. But lots of people are in the same position as us and we are worried.

You not wanting to hear about it doesn't stop that.