This is shit!

[Rayn22]

Tend to do my shopping between Asda and Aldi.
Was going to do an online shop at Asda and priced it up to £101.
Decided to go to Aldi and bought the same and it was £93 so wasn't much difference. I also had to factor in petrol to get there.

Made me realise that there aren't really any 'cheap' supermarkets anymore. Looks like we are all eating less.

Was hoping to have a holiday this year but no chance. We have good money coming in and still can't afford luxuries.
We used to eat out, holidays and buy clothes.
It has gone crazy and just can't see an end to it!
By the time we have paid bills and food hardly anything left. Trying to be positive and look at what I have- not what we haven't but think tough times are going to be here for a while.

Steady on, I'm only 61. We had central heating pretty early. Also, most houses had fireplaces them. Difficult to have a coal fire with no fireplace.

I guess we were just poor then. 😕It’s funny that when everyone around you is the same you just don’t notice things when you’re a kid. This was 1970’s council housing in Scotland. We had coal fires on our estate.

We should be going forward, not backwards. This is the first generation that will be poorer than their parents.
The resources are there, they're just hoarded at the top. By billionaires buying spaceships while their employees are living in their cars.

@beguilingeyes We are poorer than our parents generation because our parents forgot teach us how to live on less than we earn and save the difference. It’s not rocket science. No one needs to go and buy shit on a credit card. No one needs to buy a new car. No one ever needs to buy a new car, but they do, because it feels good.

Probably just unlucky.

Before my parents bought their house we lived in a council flat in Scotland that definitely had central heating. Underfloor heating in fact.

They were really nice flats some of those 60s builds.

Ofc the estate went to rack and ruin by the mid 80s when industry collapsed under the Tories and a generation got thrown on the scrapheap. Even though we had the bloody oil!

But in the 70s our council estate in Scotland was pretty tip top.

I'm definitely eating worse food... and am guilty of eating less fruit and giving it to DD for her lunchbox while I go without...

So much has gone up

I shop at Aldi

Their beans
Chocolate chip brioche
Eggs 15
Sliced ham
Gala apples
Cucumber
Crisps
Bread
Pies
Oat milk

That's off the top of my head

I think everything has gone up tbh

10p 25p. All adds up 🥲

This is nonsense. Unaffordable energy and rampant inflation isn't the fault of the the Jones's buying a car, but the worst government in living memory.
The war and the Pandemic are obviously factors but I think the Tories are using them to cover up the havoc that Brexit and Austerity are causing.
The gap between the richest and poorest was closing in the 70s, worldwide. A CEO only (only!) earned about 50 times his lowest paid economy. Now it's something like 250 times. Forty years of neo-conservatism has done this. Not only here, the US has gone the same way. At least we have the NHS.
Instead of looking to Europe, we've been aping the US pretty much since Thatcher fell in love with Reagan. Hence Brexit and the selling off of every asset we had. Energy, transport and healthcare should never be in private hands IMO, now my electricity company is French and most of the transport near me is German owned, and don't get me started on the state of the waterways.
There are no council houses any more because Thatcher sold them all for votes.
Rees Mogg wants a bonfire of regulation,which sounds fine but that's how you end up with a Grenfell Tower. Shoddy workmanship and no-one is responsible.
Poverty porn and going back to the 1940s isn't the answer.
Being able to budget doesn't help when your gas bill goes from £40 a month to £300 and you haven't had pay rise for years.

lowest paid worker

If no one ever buys a new car, where do the second hand cars come from? Just mobility and lease cars? Would that be enough second hand cars?

I bought a brand new car, it was the end of that model shape. 11k. Or I could have brought it two years old for the same cost. I still have it 8 years on. Is it really too aspirational to pay Just over 1k a year for a car that has never once broken down? Its going to go for years so each year that purxhase cost goes down. Our house is 15 degrees max, we spend £100 a month on food for 6. One decent investment was buying that car.

Im on minimum wage and was getting top ups via universal credit
They have now decided that they have over paid me so have stopped it which has affected my council tax benefit.
I live in a private rental flat and once my rent and child maintenance is paid that's over half of my monthly income gone
That's before I buy any food or pay my electric bill and buy gas top ups
I don't have TV or internet simply because I can't afford them
I'm literally at my witts end and can't see how I'm going to cope

I just wish I could see a way out
I just keep having dark scary thoughts and fighting them off is getting harder and harder each day
It's a pretty dire situation when your dissapointed every morning that you have woken up

It's very unusual for UC to be overpaid. have they given a reason how the overpayment occurred? If you are not getting any UC now then council tax support should actually go up rather than getting less help?

I'm doing what I can with my food shop, but I have a picky veggie child, a non veggie who is going through a slightly pickier phase (also, neither of them like the same things), and a partner who doesn't like cheaper cuts of meat because he hates any fat, plus isn't a fan of vegetable/tinned tomato based meals. Trying to even plan meals is a nightmare, let alone trying to do so reducing costs.

I only found out that there was an issue when I questioned why it hadn't gone in the bank
They have said I didn't report my earnings in the set time frame which is rubbish
I then had a letter from the council saying I owe them nearly 700 which I don't have
Like I said I wake up every day dissapointed that I'm awake

I genuinely feel I'm done and the walls are closing in around me

How on earth do you manage to feed 6 for £100 a month? Do you grow a lot of your own food?

Watching with interest, could you share your meal plan, please? I've never managed less than £50 a week for 6, and that doesn't include toiletries etc 😮

60p per person a day give or take.
The meal plan won't be a l

*A long one

Maybe it should have read £60 per week 🤷‍♀️

I done the shopping at Tesco last week (I don't normally do the shop) and I have done again this week, honestly I'm shocked that items can jump up 20p in a week and that's just essential or aldi priced matched products. I cant believe there isn't being more done to stop retailers profiteering- since they are making record huge profits.

Maybe you can ring them and tell them it is causing financial hardship and they will take less back, you can do this with tax credits

I'm sorry to hear you are feeling like that.

If you talk to them they can often help. Ring them and explain. I can also recommend free debt management charities such as Payplan and Stepchange. don't give up x