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.

The cost of living is getting higher and higher.
children to thrive need to meet socially, have different experiences and have access to good healthy food. They need parents who can spend time with them and be present in the moment.
Having no money after bills, constant worry that you will not be able to pay a bill if something extra pops up like a burst tyre and having to buy cheeper food as meat and fresh veg is so expensive means the basics for a child to grow up physically and emotionally healthy aren’t there. Then the cycle gets bigger. The children grow into adults who have a higher chance of having medical issues, obesity, to have fewer qualifications and earning potential.
so it does matter that a parent can’t go to a soft play and be present in the moment with their child.

And relatively, we can be annoyed that our standards of living we worked really hard for are not sustainable, right?

Yep! I was a live in volunteer in the 90s, I got about £53 a week for expenses. With that I bought clothes, food, cigarettes and went out 2-3 times a week. Mind you I often had a £5 bottle of vodka in my handbag...

Honestly I think economics and the cost of living have become a form of insanity all of its own. I keep an eye on these things as I am an unproductive obsolete economic unit with zero meaningful dispisable income and I just boggle at it all.

I actually think it's as much psychological warfare as anything else. It is ludicrous that people on any kind of full time wage need state top ups to be able to have a roof over their heads and keep being able to afford to work with little hope of progression as costs go up and up.

What happens when we reach the point where so many people cannot afford anything other than the basics that other businesses based on leisure or "nice but not essential" things cease to exist? When AI and automation takes enough traditionally middle class / professional jobs and people can't afford to employ the "trades" that are automatically recommended as the solution to said issue, regardless of capability or skill?

They say capitalism and necessity are the mothers of invention, and while useful innovation is a good thing, the former is often morally questionable as it advocates profit at all and any cost.

How many flavours of Oreo do we need? How many TikTok driven crazes? (See dumplings for a real rollercoaster of WTFuckery)

Everything seems utterly out of control.

I can understand where the OP is coming from to some degree. I think though it does need to be discussed and contexts examined as so many people who have "done all the right things" and are starting to struggle are allowed to have the feeling they have been sold a pup. Those of us who are at the bottom of the pile and "used to it" have traditionally been painted as lacking resilience or lazy or whatever, in the face of blatant structural inequality that has increased dramatically in the last decade, really ramping up since the pandemic. Now that those who have demonstrably played the game yet haven't won the prizes they were offered are complaining, there's possibly a chance of change. As long as the rhetoric of punching down on "poor people" can be dialled down, and people start really examining the idiocy of so much of modern life.

(Pins naive Neo Luddite bleeding heart badge to lapel and tries to fend of gnawing sense of futility)

I said, pretend you've got no money
She just laughed and said, you're so funny
I said, yeah
But I can't see anyone else smiling in here

Yer man Jarvis had a point there tbh. All I know is that my last payrise was wiped out several times over by increases in just about everything I pay for.

Another point. Revlon introduced nail polish in the 1920s. The reasoning behind it was because the standard of living was so bad that this was an affordable treat, to help women feel that life wasn’t that bad. I’d say having a hair cut once every few months or having your nails done now and then is the equivalent

The exact opposite of a melt in this case if my understanding of the term is correct.

Exactly, the idea that women didn’t spend on beauty or get their hair done in the past or that fish & chips takeaway wasn’t a thing is bullshit.

You just don’t think that many people are struggling?

I was thinking just the other day of all the things - so common and more or less taken for granted - and often seen as ‘necessities’ now - that hardly existed, or that there were far fewer of, a few decades ago.

Nail bars*, eat-in places and takeaways just about everywhere you look, takeaway coffees, gyms, food delivery services such as Just Eat - I dare say there are more.

*There was often a manicure service at a hair salon if you wanted it, but that was typically just for natural nails. Most of us did our own.

The new cars could be company cars like my DH’s. He has a 60k merc so it looks like we’re wealthy as a result but it’s a company car… We are classed as high earners but we have 5 DC so we’re just not, we have little savings because they constantly get eaten into when something in the house breaks. It’s a bit shit to be educated to PhD level and still feel like everything is a struggle. Obviously before anyone jumps me, we chose to have 5 so it’s on us and it is very much on us. We’re not eligible for a scrap from the government so everything we have is 100% from our pocket.

There's a lot of people who even with a wage rise haven't seen enough of a rise to cover the increases, so they're still worse off. But they got a rise, so they should be grateful, right?

Things costing more isn't necessarily the issue. It's wages not increasing in line. Inflation's always been a thing but mostly, historically, wages have kept up with it. Not the case now.

My gran used to say, when angry, "You're a Whore's Melt." Whore was pronounced Hu-Er.

I understood what she meant by Melt, even though it was never defined for me.

Makes me laugh when I see a candle company called Melt!

I was born a few years before the introduction of the minimum wage and my mum was a hairdresser. She basically earned fuck all, couldn’t afford a car so we had to walk 4 miles to her workplace and back and she told me we lived off beans on toast most of the time. Thank fuck for measures like the min wage but it still doesn’t pay enough!

A few decades ago we weren't a service economy.

Exactly. And you are perfectly entitled to complain about the COL “crisis” in my opinion. People who work hard , people who can’t work, people who have worked and now retired. We are all feeling it and have the right to complain. You don’t have to be starving to feel angry that your money is running through your fingers with nothing more to show for it.

I agree it's a bit tedious and annoying to hear about comfortably-off people having to cut down on holidays or manicures or eating out.

But it is a totally genuine crisis for millions who are struggling to feed their families, clothe their kids, heat their homes or even have homes at all and have absolutely no cloth to cut in the first place.

Same here. I agree 100%. The spending habits of those supposedly hard done by leave me very bewildered.

I can't get my head around the choices people think is normal spending that to me fall under the category of luxuries.

The same people who will tell that I'm lucky because I can afford bigger expensive items I've saved for for months.

cars on the road, towns are full of hairdressers, nail bars, brow bars, tanning salons, soft play, play cafes, coffee shops, ice cream parlours

Ice cream parlours?

Which were booming in the early 1900s! In Glasgow alone there were 89 ice cream shops in the city, 3 yrs later in 1905 there were estimated to be 336 ice cream shops.

And then we had another boom in the 70s & 80s.

Who visited these places I wonder since everyone was licking bin lids for scraps to get by….

The cof living crisis doesn’t immediately affect me-apart from an occasional “shit-that’s expensive”. But that doesn’t mean I don’t understand and worry about the huge effect it has on other people in particular, and the economy in general. Maybe read a bit more, OP?

I retired last October. I get the state pension and a small private pension.

Until very recently, those pensions covered all my regular bills, food, haircuts, petrol, everything bar clothes, books, holidays and going out, really.

My pensions went up and I got the first payments at the increased rate a few weeks ago. It was also the first month that my income exceeded my outgoings. because everthing else has shot up too, and by more than my income

I'm very lucky, I get a lot more to live on than someone of working age who's reliant on benefits would, and I only have myself to worry about. And I have some savings that I am now having to dip into for everyday stuff, instead of using them for big expenses like replacing the boiler. I really feel for people on low incomes, especially if they have children. It must be both stressful and soul-destroying.

Anyone who's "sick of hearing" about it should spare a thought for those for who it is a very real source of stress and anxiety.

Yes, thank goodness for the minimum wage but it should be approached with caution.

It does mean that in order for differentials not to be eroded, everyone's wage has to go up because, why would someone with a promotion pull their gib out for a couple of pounds an hour more than someone with no responsibility at all.

So, naturally the whole wage bill will have to rise and that will-almost inevitably-result in rising costs for the customer. The loaf that once cost 60pence to make now costs 80pence and there will be a limit to the time that the bread maker can absorb this rise-eventually it will be passed on.

Nothing happens in a vacuum.

They also look to the middle class as a bellweather. If they are doing it tougher there is a problem. The poor are always there and we see articles on their struggles regularly in the papers.

You just to look at the businesses that are expending when others are shutting down. All delivering non essential services. Costas are exploding, as are fast food places, massages, tatoos, nail places, vaping shops and the low value, cheap stuff that are full of unnecessary tat.

People go on & on about coffee shops but they replaced pubs.

There were 70k pubs in 1980, half of those are gone.