What will actually happen?

[usernamechanged1]

There are many threads on here about mortgage, rent, utility, food prices all going up. I don’t think there are many left who aren’t noticing the financial strain.

So, whilst we’ve all heard “this can’t go on…” and “when will this stop…”, it is continuing to go on and shows no signs of stopping. I’m wondering what we should actually expect.

I feel like we’re heading towards a place where people will be working but literally unable to survive. I appreciate there are people in that position already, so what happens when this is a mass problem affecting a majority of the country.

It’s akin to working an eight hour shift and having 13 tasks taking 1 hour each to do. It’s simply impossible; the maths don’t add up.

Is it out of the realms of possibility that we could see people take to the streets? For crime to shoot up (shoplifting, robberies etc).

I think many of us thought the CoL crisis would be temporary, but maybe it isn’t.

@Billybagpuss because of technology & cheap airlines started to democratise flying. Progression is normal.

It’s turned into the older generation didn’t have it this hard but yes they did.

Who has said that?

For some reasons a COL thread which affects many difference age groups has become it's all young people fault cause they want shiny things and are entitled. It addresses nothing but perhaps that's the point 🤷🏻‍♀️

Some people love this don’t they? I bet they were the ‘lockdown is FOREVER’ people too.

It won’t be quite this bleak forever, OP. It wasn’t forever in the 70s, or the 80s. There are peaks and troughs, it was ever thus. That’s how capitalism works.

These discussions don’t make it any easier though, because the sad, scaremongering bastards who enjoy sucking every last bit of hope and joy out of others in an attempt to feel better about themselves always show up and whine.

I know it's shit at the moment I do, but this thread is a bit dramatic. Whilst prices won't go down inflation will slow, wages and benefits will increase; ok not to the extent prices have but they haven't for over a decade. Energy prices are dropping in the summer. Inflation is expected to be much lower by the end of the year. I'm not saying it's going to be all back the way it was, but this is how economics work it's rarely stable for long (especially when you have a shit, right wing, self serving government) some people will always be more affected than others, but I don't think society is about to come crashing down, people will adjust their spending, for some sadly it is monumentally shit and I don't mean to downplay their suffering at the moment it NEEDS to improve for them but for others it is a slight lifestyle change, probably temporarily, and things will gradually improve.

With Brexit and the Tories no I don't think we will ever be where we could be, but I don't think society is about to cease to exist.

harkerlee - You cannot blame everything on Brexit. There are other contributory factors, the war in Ukraine, effects of COVID, climate change to name a few.

Cheap food is not good. Chickens pumped full of chemicals so they grow faster are not good for us to eat. Cheap processed food has an adverse effect on the health of the population which causes problems and puts more strain on the NHS.

Over the years we have got in to the mindset of if we need to cut down on spending, it should be the food bill. That is so wrong. In the 1950s people spent 33% of their weekly wage on food, in 2018 that had dropped to less than half that.

The main problem we have today is rent increases. That does need to be addressed and there should be a cap on that

We defo should pay more for food but as you say so much is swallowed up by housing costs.

Praying it will stop. I work all hours I can and it’s not enough.

Part of the problem is the BOE has not given the interest rate increases to filter through before increasing again. Inflation needs to come down but it could all come crashing down once the first, second, third increase start to filter through, followed by the fourth, fifth, sixth, then, it's time to stop hit number seven and eight increase has already been implemented. I have a friend in social housing who have Increased their rents evens now. So with minimum wage increase she gets an extra £4 a week but her benefits have been reduced £9. I'm sure there will come a time again when it's simply better financially to be fully on benefits than contribute to work in any way. Let's face it the government had announced childcare for younger children.... to come in in three years time! By which point this governments fixed term of five years has more than expired so will this actually ever come into place? It's all smoke and mirrors with this government, just help the rich get as rich as they can before they get booted out of power

Housing is what worries me the most. People being forced to sell /getting repossessed because they can't afford higher interest rates, but then rent being equally or even more expensive, or no rental properties being available. Impacting not only that element of the population, but those who weren't home owners to start with, as demand for rentals drives prices up and availability down. How the fuck will that work?!

I think we'll see a period of repossessions and people caught in the spiralling personal debt trap.
I honestly can imagine families with children on the street homeless.
Something has to give, and there needs to be a complete rethink of housing costs, the ability to rent even with poor credit, a rebuilding of social housing programme, and a forced move away from air bnb's/ holiday home ownership.

Can I ask you where and when this mining wage was? What was his position?

To be fair, the housing market should've never been encouraged to get like this.

A third of a million for a shoebox house in the midlands was ridiculous during the pandemic.

What the hell was everyone doing? The coming increase in inflation wasn't a secret. People were whipped up into a frenzy because the government could not let the housing market tank.

This wasn't just the UK though, it was global.

The midlands. I'd have to ask him again as I can't remember what his job title was. He wasn't a basic miner.

I come from a very long of miners, that's why I'm asking :-)

Last night I read an account written by my g.grandfather. he started work in 1906 and earned 9 shillings a week.

What the hell was everyone doing? The coming increase in inflation wasn't a secret. People were whipped up into a frenzy because the government could not let the housing market tank.

The stamp duty pause caused lots of people I know to buy or upsize. For a long time a mortgage has been a lot cheaper then rent and obviously more secure. For many I knew who bought at the beginning of lockdown they got some real bargains. We moved last year & had to leave our area as were priced out.

I'm very worried for a lot of my family and friends. My siblings used to ask to borrow money for luxury items but now they're asking for help to pay for food or energy bills.
My sister was walking around with holes in her shoes as didn't want to ask to borrow money for some as couldn't pay it back.
I bought her shoes and she almost cried.

Also for those saying those in council houses will have the big houses to themselves when their children move out, that's not what I'm seeing. My friends children cannot afford to move out. They've moved their partners in so there's even more people in the house.
I have several friends in their 30s still living at home as buying a house on a single wage is impossible.

I just hate the thought of my siblings, nieces & nephews going without basics but my salary only stretches so far.

As do I 🙂

He didn't go to college or anything like that, just went into mining. He gets a good pit pension too and had a very good payout. He worked there until they closed.

I'll have to ask other family that were miners about their wages.

We were trying to move at the peak of covid crazy and people were overbidding the asking price by 60-90k in the area we were looking. We had sold but we just couldn’t buy because of the madness.

I do wonder if those people are on negative equity now.

Surely the important thing is wages vs housing costs?

@RudsyFarmer we got outbid on quite a few properties. I'm not sure if we should have gone higher because the cost of building work is ridiculously high now so in hindsight 60k for a house "done" isn't a bad decision. It wouldn't necessarily have meant negative equity as we had a good deposit & we took out a good 5 yr deal.

This is a real danger, and unlike the 80s we have a fraction of the social housing for people to fall back on

And no MIRAS policy either

Some of the properties were done but some of them needed a lot of work. It was just a mad time. The estate agents said people were ringing and just offering huge amounts over asking without viewing the property at all. It was a far cry from 2012 when we bought the house we live in now with little to no effort at all.

Things are just so different in ten years.

And to add the advice from friends was to sell and go into rented. My god I’m SO glad we didn’t attempt that. There’s hardly anything to rent. Prices on a four bed detached are over 2k a month and I still don’t think we’d have secured an ongoing property that gave us anything better than we have. It would have been an exercise to lose 50k basically.

We only got our house because we had sold & were able to move in with family. The sellers were moving out of London to an even hotter market where they couldn't view unless under offer. We still had to pay about 25k more than the listing price. It was mental.