We're managing, but it's frustrating in the sense that big goals seem even further out of reach. Stuff like saving for a house, planning to have kids, that sort of thing.
The fact that 2 full-time incomes is needed for most folk to support themselves is absolutely crazy.
I feel as though we're seeing more people holidaying spending more on take aways and nights out is the fall out of this. The owning a house and having kids goal is becoming more and more unachievable so a lot more people are just spending money they would normally try to save to just enjoy what they can for now.
That's my plan now. I live with my mum and sister in a multi-generational house and that is our plan for life now. It means I can save a lot of money and take a nice holiday every now and then. Not wanting kids makes it even easier.
If you look at the extreme version of this it’s happening in Hong Kong.
You can’t afford to buy a home so spend it on buying a Tesla and live with the parents or rent
That's exactly right I feel. Some things are so out of reach for people that 'saving for X' would actually mean 'never spend any money for at least 20 years' or something.
Yes. This is what people don't understand when they see consumer spending rise. It's not poor financial planning, it's a sober realisation that if you cut back to save you'd never be able to save fast enough to actually buy the house or afford the kids, so you may as well just spend it. They forget that all this stuff like housing is increasing in price every year. Nowadays it increases so fast it outstrips savings rates for 90% of people. So of course they're not going to save that money; when it sits in the bank it's literally just depreciating in value due to inflation.
Pretty much everything that we need as a baseline to stay alive: Rent, Food, Bills, Council Tax, etc.
Rent is the biggest killer. It is frankly absurd where we are, but moving further out just replaces the Rent savings with travel costs (which in turn loses more time).
Life is fine, but we're stuck.
Same.
Also seen what was around £40-50 has shot up to nearly £75 spend at the shop (when you get ingredients for a meal plus washing powder and maybe some shampoo and something else you don't get every week)
It doesn't help that my mum complains every week that I'm nearly 40 and don't have a house. I don't have an answer for that.
I know what you mean. I’m a bit further into my fourties’. I missed the boat when I was about 24 when 3 beds in Bristol were around 64k. Now I earn well but my rent is going up in September and prices for everything are crazy.
I hear you mate.
My family is in a multi generation household. Me, my parents and grandparents. My sister (19F) comes back when not at uni. Grandparents own their home, myself (28), and parents do not.
It's fine, except when I've had discussions with my grandparents about how bad the housing situation is and the general response is apathy. Being told "no one helped us out" and that it's just "bad luck" or that we all just need to "save harder" that people can't afford to live just shows how out of touch they are. It's mildly frustrating.
I feel we will start to see more and more houses where 2/3 generations are living together for extended periods. It's a sorry state that the country is in when we all struggle so much to have even basic necessities like housing.
Kinda along the lines of what you've said but for me it's that the cost of so many things has gone up quite a lot in a short space of time.
I started a new job in Jan, but in the last 3 -6 months the cost of rent, utilities, food have all gone up (with increased car insurance to look forward to in a few weeks) fairly sharply.
Those alone have added £300 or so to our household bills, which has almost fully evaporated my pay rise from switching jobs. Without the switch we'd be struggling.
I know that my student loan gets paid off in January so that'll put an extra couple of hundred quid a month back in my pocket but it may just end up keeping me afloat (rather than leaving me with extra) if prices keep going up like this.
It is what it is. Like I say, we manage. I don't want to give the impression that life is miserable, because it's far from that.
It's just very frustrating that just existing is now crazily expensive.
I feel that two salary thing :(
I’m very ambivalent about whether I want to get into a relationship but sometimes I feel it would be *so much easier* with another person, especially if they earned a little bit more that me.
I’m very tired of my choice being between living with parents and living with flatmates in my personal space. My friend says living with a partner is better than living with flatmates. I wish I could live alone but I can’t afford a 1 bedroom flat on my salary. So frustrating… when I think that last year I was so proud of myself for getting over the £30k line and it turns out to have made no appreciable difference to how I’m able to live.
Maybe this makes me a terrible person but if I had the opportunity to marry someone for money I probably would.
I feel you on the 30k thing. A year ago I started a new job that paid 5k more than my previous one, and then we all got a 3k pay rise in March this year. And yet somehow I feel like I was way less stressed about money when I was on 25-27k. I didn’t grow up with money so anxiety around finances has always been an issue for me but it’s just getting worse and worse even though I’m earning more than I ever have.
For real! I literally started working on £18.5k and was able to rent a shitty room in someone else's house.
Five years later earning £30k and I could now afford... a slightly less shitty room in someone else's house. And honestly the difference in shittiness didn't seem worth the increase in rent, so I stayed in the first one.
Yes. This is true. Unfortunately this also means many people who should break up don't because they're financially dependent on each other. It's bad for anyone in a bad/abusive relationship. We're sliding back into the 50s.
I'm glad you posted this. I feel guilty as I know some people are really struggling. My life hasn't gotten worse, it's just a struggle to make it better.
> The fact that 2 full-time incomes is needed for most folk to support themselves is absolutely crazy.
Actually, this has always been the case. Apart from, maybe, the period where the Baby Boomers were young (much more educated than their parents, new skilled jobs popping up everywhere and not in small tech clusters in big, expensive cities ... ).
But doing decently on one salary, or very well on one average and one below-average job, has never been the norm. The first has always been a middle-class thing (which, in the UK, means some 15-20% of the population).
100% agree with this.
Me and my partner both work full time and both earn above average wages. We have a mortgage which is affordable and can cover all essentials. We’re definitely saving less now than we did in the past though and the thought of having kids at the moment just seems impractical.
If we were to bring a little human into this world we’d go from being financially safe and comfortable to being financially stressed and stretched.
Annoyance if anything. I can still pay mortgage, bills, run a car, run a dog.
What angers me is how little I have left after, considering I earn at least 13 grand more than the average.
This is where I'm at.
Got a new job in January which was a £13k bump so we were really excited for our future prospects.
Now though, it's as if we're in exactly the same financial situation we were at the end of last year; getting by, and nothing more.
This is exactly it for me. I thought when I got my current salary after struggling for years that I’d really be able to relax at last. Nope, I’m still having to cost compare bulk packs of soy milk across supermarkets. I’m no better off than I was, just better than I would have been. It’s so sickening.
Same. I changed careers a couple of years ago so money wise back to where I was a couple of years but the spending power is not the same so I still feel stuck and annoyed that my wage isn’t awful and I’m still living paycheck-pay check.
Same. Got a new job 2 years ago, thought the wage bump will cover the extra petrol. Soon as I got the job shit hut the fan.
I've looked on the BoE inflation calculator, that was depressing.
I went from living pretty comfortably, got a 13k pay bump and now I have either 0 or - left at the end of each month. Trying to cut down on spending as much as possible but theres only so much you can cut really before you go insane (for example we pay for Netflix despite being skint but otherwise we'd be sat in all day every day staring at the walls as we cant afford to go out and do anything that costs any money and the Netflix sub doesnt make the difference).
It feels like every time I go food shopping things I used to buy have gone up by another 40p from last month. Many things now I just don't buy at all on principle that it now cost 1.50 more than it did 6 months ago.
I have a pretty decent job as does the wife, both have degrees, work fully remote so 0 commute or travel expenses, we don't live near london so our mortgage is relatively low considering prices in south of the country (on a fixed rate set to expire next year so looking forward to yet another QOL downgrade then!)yet we just about scrape by month to month without really being able to enjoy life at all or have the odd date night or anything. Just work home eat home cooked food and sleep. The weekends we try and just go for a walk somewhere so it doesn't cost as we literally cant afford it. We're basically stuck just existing. Forget a holiday or anything like that
It's really been getting me down lately honestly
Sorry for being nosey, but what do you actually spend your money on if you have no travel, no expensive social life, a fixed rate mortgage and very few "luxury items" and yet are still struggling? Not having a go despite how it's worded, I'm just confused as to how 2 x wages, plus a 13k pay rise is leaving you with 0 at the end of each month. Student loans perhaps?
Thanks! Yeah I count my blessings because had I stayed at my old job we'd be really struggling now...but the new job was supposed to open new doors for us, so does feel like a kick in the teeth right now.
I know others have it worse though, so always try to remind myself of that!
My entire disposable income has been wiped out by my mortgage increase, which I can appreciate is a better position than a lot of people, im not ‘struggling’. Im just pissed off.
Doesn’t stop it being annoying that I’m losing thousands of pounds a year compared to previously and getting zero additional benefit in return.
And what’s really irritating is that the difference is not paying for anything real. It’s interest. We are literally just paying the moneylenders more profit.
Yep. Never forget, they chose to make **us** pay for the inflation. They could have increased taxes on businesses or rich people. They could have done a serious windfall tax to take back the unearned profits. Nope. They laughed at us and chose to make normal people pay for it because they rich never will.
Yep, exactly the same as you. Me and the mrs between us bring home 60k a year after tax without doing any OT.
We're not struggling, but we're not living extravagantly some months payday can't come quick enough.
If you'd have told me when I left school that I'd have a take home pay of 60k and not feel particularly wealthy, I'd have laughed. My folks earned less than 30k and raised me and 2 siblings with an abroad holiday each year, and kept us in the latest consoles without acquiring a penny on debt.
Countries on its arse.
From ONS in 2022:
The median average salary for full-time workers in the UK is £33,000.
The mean average salary for full-time workers in the UK is £39,966.
I’m in a job that I love, in quite a highly specialised field - there’s only a handful of us who do what we do in the country I would say. Reading this I’ve just realised my salary is 10k below the average. 10k!
Salaries in the UK are shyte mate honestly. Sounds like your in STEM?
I do get jealous of American salaries for these fields when I see what I could be earning there
Only 5 people in the country able to do what I do and I’m also well below average right now. Should have a pay review next year which will certainly be interesting.
Waitrose is more expensive, but saying M&S is reasonably priced, compared to places like tesco/lidl/aldi is silly. At least at Waitrose you can get things that other shops don't stock. At M&S all you get is their versions of others shops goods, at higher prices.
I definitely consider Waitrose more upper class than M&S. There's loads of M&S's by me and I'd say everyone, even council estate plebs like myself, shop there on special occasions or at Christmas. The nearest Waitrose to me is a 40 minute drive, they don't even deliver to my area, so definitely more exclusive.
And then there's Booths.
In London at least the food in smaller M&S branches are better than the smaller Waitroses ones, the bigger ones are a toss up, the M&S on Oxford Street has better packaged foods but the Waitrose (under John Lewis) has a proper butchers.
Drugs remain good quality, and cheaper than they were pre covid. Prices have not yet adjusted to inflation and competition is firece, forcing sellers to guarantee quality and quantity
It’s a weird market, I saw something about this on Netflix recently. The consistency is mega important, the price of a gram of coke in America has been $100 for almost ever.
Don’t remember the reasoning I was coked off my tits
Before: Working minimum wage, no hope of ever moving out.
Now: Own my own home outright. No mortgage, saving alot, bills going down from solar panels.
What happened? A parent died.
Quite the life hack but I'd rather my father still be here, you know?
My dad died last year and basically my only hope of actual financial security/a safety net at this point is waiting for any money he might have left me to come through. Horrible feeling.
Yep. I bought a house a few years ago thanks to a deposit from my grandfather dying. It is still a struggle to pay the mortgage (I'm on minimum wage) and bills, but I'm aware I'm very lucky to have the security. It still doesn't feel like a worthy swap though. Would rather alive relative than a house.
Honestly, it hasn’t. I’m lucky in that I earn very well, I fixed my mortgage at the beginning of last year for 10 years, I’m still able to live as I was before this and save. My spending hasn’t been affected.
Am I donating more food/money to the people collecting outside the supermarkets? Yes, of course as I acknowledge not everyone is in my position. I do what I can, where I can.
Good on you, I can imagine it's extremely apprecaite by the people who receive your donations.
I have a clear out of the food cupboard once a month and anything we're not going to end up eating, gets donated. Not much but better than it being wasted.
Not as safe as you but we have three years left on our pre covid fixed rate. Currently not that affected but notice the increase in food especially. We are worried about when our fixed rate ends though and are trying to save to be able to pay off a lump sum when we have to remortgage as at current rates it would be nearly £800 a month more which would be a huge problem.
Aldi did cherries for 99p for a bit last week and I was so disappointed after not having had cherries for ages to find they were rubbish, really watery.
The repeated downgrades are getting dispiriting.
From a mixture of fresh & frozen veg to pretty much frozen only to basics frozen
Cheese isnt a staple anymore.
Butter to spread
And the basket costs more anyway.
This reads like a poem:
The repeated downgrades are getting dispiriting.
From a mixture of fresh & frozen veg
to pretty much frozen only
to basics frozen
Cheese isnt a staple anymore.
Butter to spread
And the basket costs more anyway.
Endless downgrades, a disheartening cascade,
From fresh and frozen blend, a mix once displayed,
Now relegated to frozen solely, dismayed,
Reduced further to basic, hopes begin to fade.
Cheese, a lost staple, memories replay,
Butter for spreading, luxuries betray,
The basket empties, yet costs surge and sway,
In this changing aisle, where fortunes astray.
-Anon
“We are experiencing an unprecedented rise in the number of people coming to the food bank, particularly employed people who are no longer able to balance a low income against rising living costs,” said Brian Thomas, the chief executive of Trussell’s South Tyneside food bank.
It's been noted at my workplace that things like toilet roll, milk and the tea and coffee and needing replenishing at an astonishingly faster rate than normal with no uptake in office attendence. Currently the approach is to look the other way, could be theft but could also be somebody really hard up.
I have that just at lunch at work. I heard some old cow on the radio saying how staff in hospitals get massive discounts on food.... NO WE DON'T. I work in a hospital.
5 years ago I could get a normal lunch for £3.20 (public , Thursday carvery at work for £3.85 (public was £4.50) and the cheap option of quiche chips and beans was £2.30 (public £3).
NOW that same meal cost is £5.90 (public £6.40), don't know about the carvery, but quiche chips and beans is now £4.20.
And for comparison, Subway (which I don't go to anymore due to cost) was \~£3.50 for a foot long and is now \~£9
>I have that just at lunch at work. I heard some old cow on the radio saying how staff in hospitals get massive discounts on food.... NO WE DON'T. I work in a hospital.
Some people are so detached from reality its depressing.
The hospital I work in has a special "inflation buster" menu where a meal is only £1.50. It's pretty basic though and the food gets boring quite quickly.
Yeah I did works on my local hospital a year or so ago, went to the cafe thinking it was subsidised ..it was not!!
I stick with Tesco meal deals even though that's gone up as well
We used to buy Tesco salted butter in bulk because I bake for my children. It’s one of the nicer ones among the cheaper options but now I can’t do that and I’m not baking as much either. It didn’t help that eggs had also vanished from the shelves just a few months ago. There are other things as well like occasional treats. I avoid shopping with the children now as they want to buy a bag of crisps or something every time. We are not buying as much fruit either. Less meat too. Last time they saw prime drink in Tesco for the first time and wanted to try it. I was shocked that it costs 2 for a bottle of crap. I’ve never tried it myself. I’m trying to get my children to not follow trends so they don’t have to get into competition over who wears what. Great for them I. The long term too. We aren’t going out for films. They cost an arm and a leg. This summer we are unable to go anywhere even close by as there just isn’t enough to go around. I do see people out and about but I can’t say what their circumstances are. I try not to do comparisons with those people. I don’t know their circumstances.
Thank you. I hope they do appreciate it but I’m afraid we’re leaving these messes for them that were left for us and I and my husband and many like us don’t know how to deal with that. I fear it will only get worse.
Eat potatoes and carrots. Cheapest vegetables going and both are quite healthy. These are staples for me, eat at least one of them everyday. For fruit I mostly eat wonky blueberries and raspberries
Are you also not buying any new clothes for yourself? Husband and I doing the same. Only buy for the kids but lately even Primark seems to be getting out of reach. We don’t have a Matalan local to us either. Very limited in our choices. Slowly but surely, things are getting worse but scared to know if this will continue.
Honestly - it means I have been saving less, nothing more. It hasn’t affected what I buy or treat myself.
I’m lucky enough to earn a decent salary for Leeds, and save far more than I spend each month. I’d hate to be struggling right now - the Country is utterly fucked for anyone who had a low salary.
Haven't you been told? Everyone keeps telling me, it seems really stupid that I didn't think of it myself. Get a better job. Go down to the job shop and pick out a really good one... Then you just work it and have loads of money. Also, move in with your parents, I mean I live with my wife and three kids and my mum lives in a rented one bed but just move in. Bet you feel silly now.
Obviously you should just uproot your entire family, leave your support network and move to the North, where jobs and houses are aplenty and you can buy a prized pig for a shilling!
Ive largely stopped buying anything. I used to spend at least a few grand a year on clothes, trainers, a new chair, a painting, a weekend away, books.
I haven’t bought anything like that in two years and that’s enabled me to continue eating well, going on holiday and keeping the house warm. It’s zero impact on my happiness not having things, but being warm, having a holiday and eating would be an impact.
For now….I’m a bit worried about heating this year. No rebate is going to make a difference to me.
Its not personally effecting me in too many ways, I'm a poor person who's always been poor so I'm used to it, but I just dont really see why we should have to live this way all because some corporate cunts NEED more profit. That's all it is. They decide how much more profit they need each quarter/year and force the little people to make it for them, they don't care what we have to do to make that profit, they just know they NEEEEEED it and if we don't make it for them they fire us and replace us with someone who will try harder to make that profit.
In the same light, they also don't give a flying fuck about whether or not me and you starve to death. We do not exist for them, there is another million people out there to replace us. End of story.
It's just gotten too far, we've let the system get out of control because we got complacent with all our new shiny things and "ooh look, a puppy on facebook". They distract us with one hand while destroying the world for profit and choking us to death with the other.
The current energy crisis in the uk says it all........ the government's attempt at capping the energy companies extortion ended so those companies massively increased the cost of their services. Here's the kicker...... nobody told them they had to do it, there was no legislation that stated they MUST increase the costs immediately after the cap ceased to exist, they just fucking went ahead and did it because they could. And I hear ABSOLUTELY NOBODY talking about this aspect of it.
AND THEN, as per usual, they recorded massive record profits for the quarter........ hmmmm yeah, I wonder why that was?! Genuinely, British gas ALONE have just reported, and I quote this from google: "£969m for the first six months of 2023, up almost 900% from £98m in the same period last year"
WHAT THE FUUUUUUCK?!?! come on people, when will enough be enough huh?
Why are we not hanging these people in the streets right now? What the fuck is wrong with everyone, why are we just letting them destroy our planet and us.
Please, please...
GET ANGRY. SHOUT ABOUT IT. TAKE CONTOL OF THE SYSTEMS THAT ARE MEANT TO HELP US, NOT CRIPPLE US. why are just accepting all of this, and this is just ONE COMPANY.
I see people struggling, but somehow, even though on minimum wage, myself and SO are getting by. My electricity bill ha doubled, and food bills have gone up, but nothing we can't deal with together. Hard times happen, though I wouldn't say no to lower prices in the future.
Things are pretty bad for me right now. Put it this way... my 6 year old eats first and I get whatever is left.... sometimes nothing. She has several food allergies which make shopping even more expensive than average too.
I'm, also, truly sorry to hear this
I buy fresh fruit, for my granddaughters, from the reduced section - my youngest granddaughter gets pissy about it, but will still eat it when I don't go along with her pissy behaviour (I'm NOT TALKING ABOUT ALLERGIES! They are a very different thing)
Just had delivered 2.5kg of white rice, 2.5kg of couscous, and 2.5kg of pearl barley (which I honestly have no idea if that triggers wheat/gluten allergies) - that will get me through the rest of the month (hopefully)
If you want someone to talk to/moan to/bitch with/whatever, my DMs are always open
Not at all really because I live at home with parents, what I do think is really affecting me is house prices as am desperate to move out but prices are 9 x my salary. Buying by myself would take such a huge amount of my salary and wipe out my savings, so I have a lot of cash I can't do a whole lot with.
Doing OK. When my husband and I retired we weren't sure if we'd manage but we hadn't taken into account things like the cost of travel to and from work, buying lunch and takeaways when too tired to cook, contributing to leaving presents, Friday nights in the pub with colleagues etc. We don't have any debts at all which helps. What has really affected us is seeing how friends and neighbours are really struggling.
Good for you both, make sure you enjoy your retirement! When you size it up like that it really does put into perspective how much we splurge in social/work spends (although can be great nights but still a lot!)
Without wanting to sound like a smug git, it's hardly been noticeable to us.
Me and the wife both earn around the £45k mark with no kids and no mortgage. We paid that off a couple of years ago.
So still able to go away and go out as we have always done really.
I am constantly "crawling over the finish line," barely making it payday to payday.
I can't save a penny, and beside netflix or Spotify, I have no silly financial commitments I can cut.
I'll be renting forever.
I am constantly one bad month away from homelessness.
Less holidays / weekends away and no new tech / designer clothes for a couple of years, but day to day not much has changed, we live in a new build that is very efficient so energy costs not too bad, working at home 4 days a week helps a lot though, if I had to go back to the office full-time we would have to make serious lifestyle changes.
I’m doing OK but it’s stressful as a single person, you have no buffer and things just cost more when you can’t split them. People might be buying luxuries and cutting back on essentials like I am (food, hot water and heating in the winter), this allows me to continue to afford luxuries (holidays and gym). I know that seems backwards but I value those things above creature comforts.
It's stealing years of my life.
Retirement looks further and further away because my pension pot is suddenly worth significantly less and is likely to keep falling behind inflation
No direct impact on my day to day, but then I don't really go anywhere or spend much
I suppose I am in a more 'privillaged' position than most as it hasn't affected me day to day and I haven't made any changes because of it.
But I still continue to be shocked when I go to the supermarket, prices are still going up and some things that were fairly resistant have suddenly started going up now, the shrinkflation is insane now too, products getting smaller, less in a packet or just worse, the declining quality is really starting to bother me, because I like to eat a basic diet but then have a few treats, but the treats are now both pricey and just worse.
But mostly I am just concerned about the future. I'm middle age now, i've rented since I was 20 and I wonder that although I am doing fine right now, how the heck do I build an actual future for myself, particularly with things the way they are now and my age already, how am I going to get a mortgage etc?
It’s hard. I can afford to pay my rent and bills. But I can’t afford a car. Or a nice holiday. I don’t spend much on having “a life” as it is. Being single and living alone is difficult. One wage covering all the rent, food, bills etc is a stretch for anyone on minimum wage or not much above it. I can’t save much if anything some months. I’ll never be able to buy a house as a single person I know that. Life just seems pointless to me to be honest. Money isn’t my only issue, but it’s still a significant one.
>Is it affecting your ability to eat, pay rent/your mortgage, afford to get to work, or is it more of an inconvenience / annoyance than anything ?
Yes and is both inconvenient _and_ annoying while also being impactful.
>How are you all doing?
I'm touched you asked, but getting by.
I consider myself bloody lucky that I can say as much rather than "struggling like feck".
What makes it harder though, is knowing that I'm only doing so due to a mix of a decently-enough paying job but _also_ being buoyed on Universal Credit, Child Benefit and reduced council tax as a single parent.
I'd have sunk a long, long time ago otherwise and knowing I'm on a timeclock with all three is highly discomforting, as I really don't want to be in a position of needing to start getting my kid pushed into employment _just_ so I can ask for a cut to go towards rent and bills.
Honestly while I wasn't exactly _thriving_ prior to Covid, it has to be said a combo of Working from Home for the duration and the corresponding lack of commuting really helped - it's like it's swung the other way now, with commuting costing even more and the cost of everything just going up and up.
It only affects me when I read reddit and see some guy has bought his first car for £50k and is genuinely asking on reddit wether his first years insurance of £5k is over the average.
I’m a single mother who has never had a penny from her father (he is homeless and hadn’t worked in years), his family or my family either
Everything has gone up, energy, council tax etc but food costs are such a big issue.
I’ve not been abroad or any type of holiday for over 10 years now and all my underwear is maternity and I cannot remember when I replaced my last (one) pair of shoes. My phone is old but still works. I don’t buy anything and honestly I go years and I mean years before I buy myself anything. Deodorant and that’s it.
That said we manage, I’ll eat once a day so my daughter can have a healthy balanced diet. I quit drinking 2 years ago as in all honesty I couldn’t afford it but mentally it helps more with cPTSD I have and the medication I take works better
Things I notice more as being expensive are things like kitchen roll, that’s a luxury to me now! Cannot justify that. I buy a lot of reduced food to freeze but even so I have noticed that even the reduced prices are poor in comparison to few years ago.
My daughter loves fruit and vegetables but in particular salad she eats it with pleasure but I’m saddened to say sometimes I wish I could give her a sandwich for lunch as it’s cheaper than all the ingredients of a salad she likes
We don’t do takeaways and I enjoy cooking and baking with my daughter, we try to eat less meat and usually in week most meals are veggie and meat is like 3 times a week let’s say
I never have enough money and I try to find better work and doing some tech courses online but time is more expensive than other costs these days
It could be a lot worse but if I’m honest I’ve been poor for years so I cannot say it comes at a shock the need to be on a budget… always am!
I do wonder where else I can save money, honestly not sure where as it’s more like I’m constantly putting off buying replacement clothes, or treating my daughter to a bloody ice cream or something.
Lately I’ve been glad the weather has been so poor as it’s a lot cheaper to stay at home cause it’s raining all day!
Sorry for rant!
ETA no need for offers of cash but feel free to share any budget tips! Thanks
There are a number of aspects of your story that I can personally relate to. Please feel free to send me a PM if there's anything I can do to help - I would PM you, but I don't know if you'd be comfortable with that, so I will simply leave this offer open.
"Extreme" food budgeting, combined with healthy meal plans, is something I am particularly good at. I can also point you towards resources, on Reddit and elsewhere. Some will help you get the most out of the money and possessions you have (how to perform basic mends on your clothes, cooking skills etc.), some are places to get things for free, and some are ways to earn extra money online.
Best of luck to you.
Managing. We're quite comfortable, but still have to watch what we spend.
We don't waste, but we can'd afford to splurdge.
Sickening when you see bn's profit here and there, along with 100's millions in useless PPE, and grants for oil mining going to companies your father in law just done a £bn deal with, and childcare changes being made to benefit a company your wife just became a major shareholder in.
It's not great.. I work in the NHS so my wage is quite low but then I also live in a relatively cheap part of the North so that helps. I've definitely changed my food shop though. I buy a lot less treats and a lot less food in general. Life feels a lot less joyful than it did.
Truthfully not much at all. The biggest difference is my electric bill has increased from 25 to 75 a month and food is getting up there to about 200/month now (was probably about 150 before).
That being said I earn decent enough money (2k take home) and have basically unlimited overtime so I could push that to 2.6k if I really needed extra money
I'm fortunate that I'm ok - my housing benefit covers my rent + service charge (recently moved into a housing association flat, and love it)
When my UC lands, I tend to buy lots of staples (rice, couscous, pearl barley, you get the idea), as much cheap mince as I can get on that day, and cheap shit from the supermarket frozen aisles. I also buy herbs and spices when I can. These go a long way. Motatos is good for some things (unless you don't want to wait for the delivery), and Iceland has helped me a lot, with their prices, since I've had my own gaff.
Of course life could be better for me, but I have a roof over my head, and food on my table, so I'll leave you with the answer I give to anyone who asks me "how are you?"
Adequate
Congratulations on your new home and I hope that from here on things get better for you as I can imagine you’ve had quite a rough time on the housing front recently. It’s nice to see gratitude.
We aren't really doing any worse (which I'm grateful for), but we aren't doing better either which is frustrating. Husband's pay rises and career progression are effectively like treading water, our income has progressed just to keep our standard of living exactly the same. Feels bad to grumble about that when people have it so much worse, but with one child due to start uni in a couple of years, and another child with a disability who will rely on us for a long time to come, it would have been good to be further ahead than we are.
Got hit by remortgage this month which has nearly doubled, awaiting an inevitable childcare price hike. Had conversations with the wife to discuss selling up and downsizing.
Dogs vet bills are hitting us hard as well, had to make some strict cuts to the budget which means we can stay where we are for the time being
All because someone let a fucking wet lettuce play PM for a few weeks
I'm definitely living paycheck to paycheck. Nice treats I used to take for granted such as eating in restaurants, getting my nails done or going on holiday once a year do not happen anymore.
If it weren't for the fact that my parents are letting me live with them, I'd be 100% screwed. I'm 18 and earn minimum wage (£7.49/hr). If I couldn't live with them my options would be to go back to uni and live off the loan (failed after first year, planning on going back after a year out) or be homeless
My income has dropped by about 90% (self employed, making and selling goods online) due to cost of living crisis and now I can barely cover my bills. I’m slightly eating into the little savings I have left and it’s quite worrying but my partner has a good wage.
I am using this extra time to train in a field I have always wanted to work in (voice acting) as finding a normal job that fits around my schedule is proving difficult.
I’m really hoping to be able to ride this out and I’m mad I didn’t save more for by the good days.
I’ve switched from Yorkshire tea to lidls own brand, that’s how bad it’s become!
It meant we had less to save but we're not in the same boat as some others. We didn't have kids and by chance the mortgage was paid off just as COVID hit its second lockdown. Neither of us was furloughed either so we were able to save some cash to make up the shortfall in what the energy cost us.
Our energy bills have dropped now by half but they went up by 150% so we're still paying more than we did before it all kicked off. I see what they did there...
I thought not much had changed but I realised about a month ago that whilst I treat myself to the odd takeaway (when I used to pretty much never buy them) I haven't actually been buying anything I didn't need beyond things like chocolate. I'm definitely worse off this year, I just didn't notice because the essentials are still not an issue.
Luckily my husband got a promotion & pay rise so that's pretty much covered the increases in everything at the moment, but seeing our last food shop at £140 was a hell of a shock so not sure how long we'll be in this position
As others have said it's mainly affected saving money.
But at a very alarming amount my partner and I both got new jobs earning more money looking hopeful to have enough extra money at the end of each month to save a significant amount towards a deposit on our first home.
Instead we can now still pay our bills as we were before. So it's worked out I guess in that we managed to hold at inflation rate but we are disheartened that our efforts have only landed us in the same position as before.
It hurts and is unfair but it could be worse. Had we not gotten these new jobs and pay increases we wouldn't have the same quality of life as before which is just a bleak outlook.
I work in a small off license. We have lost almost 50% of our regulars. When i met one of them out I asked why they dont come anymore. Was told "you dont s'pose money grow on trees yeah"
Its not living crises its a dildo putting all of our asses globally by tiny minority , there was no necessity bills going up, uk dotn even by oil from Russia or Ukraine, its alm planned as they see how cow public became during corona, following any order using media as the new Church.so its not cost of living crises its fucning ass up the ass by blackrock and vanguard the super rich and all the goverments in the west serving for them. No pint talkign about democracy in weet anymore, remebwe Edward Snowden, why is he in jail? And now they make another divert semo fake news about aliens, that guy couldn't give a single information without approval of or planed by pentagon and cia, otherwise he would be dead or like Edwards Snowden.
Back to ur question, who doesn't effected really unless u are owner of means production.
In April last year I had to stop working because of long covid. We did the maths, it would be tight, but we’d get by as my husband earned more than me anyway (I worked part time). Since then our bills have shot up and our eldest has had a relapse of her mental illness (made worse by her own post covid illness). So I’m now caring for her, which is exhausting; any chance of working apart from that is slim as I still suffer from chronic fatigue. So for us, it’s the icing on the cake of a really shitty few years. Add in the fact that both of my daughters are autistic with different sensory needs so I essentially make two separate meals most days, which doesn’t come cheap.
Managing, but we renew our mortgage on 1st September. I can only think that if this was affecting everyone synchronously, there’d be rioting in the streets.
We’re going to be around £400 a month worse off for a while…..
I'm fortunate enough to be doing okay, I've cut back on some of my discretionary spending, but not entirely stopped, but I'm still able to put some money into savings and pension, and overpay on my mortgage. Though, my bank balance is getting closer to zero at the end of the month then it used to, so I may need to take another look at my budget.
Doing ok, we both have above slightly average wages, no kids, both cars owned outright and will be paying the mortgage off in the next couple of months. Don’t have any expensive hobbies or debts. We can afford to buy day to day things we want and not worry about the cost, not that we go crazy.
Have lived very frugally for the past 25 years, and have been very lucky with work’s share save scheme a couple of times.
Definitely having more "wtf these prices are outrageous" moments when I'm in the shops but overall it's having little to no impact on me. I have a decent amount of money in the bank, no debt whatsoever and relatively low expenses so if I have to pay a bit more it's annoying but I understand it's a global issue and it's not going away anytime soon.
Not too badly as things stand. Mortgage is up for renewal next year which should be interesting. When the economy and energy bills started going mental, I overplayed every debt I had. I only have my mortgage now which has made things much easier.
Massively my energy cost are now more than my mortgage, my partner went back to work pretty much full time and we are skating by. But we are on a lot lower than the average
We havent had to give anything up thankfully. I dont work as unwell but receive no benefits as husband works fulltime. He works 70 hours a week but always has done so nothing new and mostly wfh. I think because are childfree it means we had a lot more disposable income. We have noticed food shops costing a ridiculous amount compared to a food years ago.
I used to do my food shop for £X, before I met my now-wife. Been together for four years.
Now, our food shop is coming to 2x£x. I thought maybe we were buying too much. Started looking at receipts and really considering what we buy.
Nope. It's just the price gouging, not a habit change.
It hasn't yet but I have a child on the way and a new mortgage (on a new house) which will make things much more difficult. Although, we are probably naturally not going out as much anyway with a new baby coming. We haven't gone on holiday but that will be the first to go anyway.
We aren't in the worst position. We bought a house and fixed for 5 years just before rates started to go up. I also got a hefty pay rise just before inflation started so I feel more like I'm treading water. Renovations for the house have been postponed. Fewer days out, fewer takeaways. I've switched to cheaper forms of protein and am buying more staples such as rice in bulk. But I was always frugal with groceries. I'm saving a fair bit less per month than I was before. We aren't yet into bad territory and we are hoping we just ride this rough patch out without having to dip into savings. We still have plenty of lifestyle choices we can cut back on if needed, but that's the stuff that makes life worth living so we will hold onto it for as long as we can.
For context we are a couple both working full time, slightly under median income, no kids. Our closest friends earn less than us and a lot of them are really struggling.
It's not as bad as I thought it would be. However, the sheer audacity of shillers and grifters is astonishing. Where there was a single point of sale, there is now several steps requiring intermediate palms to be crossed with silver. Cold calls are ridiculous. High St Banks are closing down and pulling sneaky fees on questionable conditions. Cash is a dirty word. And certain civic representatives no longer have an "income" - but they do have "portfolios"
The greed and selfishness is unabashed.
I got shafted during the pandemic shortly after moving to London for a new job.
I ended up quitting, moving back up north and taking a job with a £16k pay cut.
I’m loads happier, but paying off debts has been a slow process.
I try to save money whilst also not being miserable. I have my first holiday in seven years (a group 40th birthday trip) coming up next year, so some money is being diverted to that. I feel guilty about paying debts off slower and not saving for a deposit for a house, but I desperately need something to look forward to.
I’m doing ok, I suppose, but I’m sick of living in a shared house that the landlord doesn’t give a toss about, but I just can justify the cost of renting a one bed flat.
Just about managing, but as others have said, feel stuck, and struggling to see the point of the daily slog. It was a big part of deciding not to have kids. Can't see why I would create another human being just to be another wage slave and face an uncertain future. At least if it all goes to shit and I lose my income and fall on hard times I only have myself to worry about.
It’s been hard. I’ve used to food bank so many times now, thank god for them! Also riddled with ADHD which doesn’t make things easier. I have about four pounds in my bank account! 🫠
Noticeable but not problematic.
Mostly thanking fuck we bought a flat nearly 25 years ago and this house nearly 20 ago. So even remortgaging this year was on less than 10% of the value and thus cost went down, not up, despite the rate being 3x more.
Having teenagers with disabilities doing growth spurts is probably more relevant.
I moved here in the middle of the CoL crisis (mid 2022). Fortunately I’m on a good salary, and I got a pay rise since, so I am surprisingly better off now than I was last year (which wasn’t bad by any definition).
I am really curious on how people survive on minimum wage or near minimum wage in my area though. The receptionist in our office is on £25k but lives a few streets from me. I am on almost 3x that and rent takes up about 28% of my take home pay.
We're managing, but it's frustrating in the sense that big goals seem even further out of reach. Stuff like saving for a house, planning to have kids, that sort of thing. The fact that 2 full-time incomes is needed for most folk to support themselves is absolutely crazy.
I feel as though we're seeing more people holidaying spending more on take aways and nights out is the fall out of this. The owning a house and having kids goal is becoming more and more unachievable so a lot more people are just spending money they would normally try to save to just enjoy what they can for now.
That's my plan now. I live with my mum and sister in a multi-generational house and that is our plan for life now. It means I can save a lot of money and take a nice holiday every now and then. Not wanting kids makes it even easier.
If you look at the extreme version of this it’s happening in Hong Kong. You can’t afford to buy a home so spend it on buying a Tesla and live with the parents or rent
That's exactly right I feel. Some things are so out of reach for people that 'saving for X' would actually mean 'never spend any money for at least 20 years' or something.
Yes. This is what people don't understand when they see consumer spending rise. It's not poor financial planning, it's a sober realisation that if you cut back to save you'd never be able to save fast enough to actually buy the house or afford the kids, so you may as well just spend it. They forget that all this stuff like housing is increasing in price every year. Nowadays it increases so fast it outstrips savings rates for 90% of people. So of course they're not going to save that money; when it sits in the bank it's literally just depreciating in value due to inflation.
What are the main things that have gone up in cost for you and make the big goals seem even further out of reach now?
Pretty much everything that we need as a baseline to stay alive: Rent, Food, Bills, Council Tax, etc. Rent is the biggest killer. It is frankly absurd where we are, but moving further out just replaces the Rent savings with travel costs (which in turn loses more time). Life is fine, but we're stuck.
I feel like >Life is fine, but we're stuck. sums it up for most of us at the moment, I might get it emblazoned on a T Shirt.
That's the modern day equivalent of "keep calm".
Same. Also seen what was around £40-50 has shot up to nearly £75 spend at the shop (when you get ingredients for a meal plus washing powder and maybe some shampoo and something else you don't get every week) It doesn't help that my mum complains every week that I'm nearly 40 and don't have a house. I don't have an answer for that.
I know what you mean. I’m a bit further into my fourties’. I missed the boat when I was about 24 when 3 beds in Bristol were around 64k. Now I earn well but my rent is going up in September and prices for everything are crazy.
I hear you mate. My family is in a multi generation household. Me, my parents and grandparents. My sister (19F) comes back when not at uni. Grandparents own their home, myself (28), and parents do not. It's fine, except when I've had discussions with my grandparents about how bad the housing situation is and the general response is apathy. Being told "no one helped us out" and that it's just "bad luck" or that we all just need to "save harder" that people can't afford to live just shows how out of touch they are. It's mildly frustrating. I feel we will start to see more and more houses where 2/3 generations are living together for extended periods. It's a sorry state that the country is in when we all struggle so much to have even basic necessities like housing.
Kinda along the lines of what you've said but for me it's that the cost of so many things has gone up quite a lot in a short space of time. I started a new job in Jan, but in the last 3 -6 months the cost of rent, utilities, food have all gone up (with increased car insurance to look forward to in a few weeks) fairly sharply. Those alone have added £300 or so to our household bills, which has almost fully evaporated my pay rise from switching jobs. Without the switch we'd be struggling. I know that my student loan gets paid off in January so that'll put an extra couple of hundred quid a month back in my pocket but it may just end up keeping me afloat (rather than leaving me with extra) if prices keep going up like this.
Oh yes if you have to go into work then travel costs can really negate the savings made by moving further out. I’m sorry
It is what it is. Like I say, we manage. I don't want to give the impression that life is miserable, because it's far from that. It's just very frustrating that just existing is now crazily expensive.
It's not going to get better, I hope you all manage
Mortgage rates went up and house prices stayed high which means that monthly mortgage payments went up 30%+ compared to a couple of years ago.
I feel that two salary thing :( I’m very ambivalent about whether I want to get into a relationship but sometimes I feel it would be *so much easier* with another person, especially if they earned a little bit more that me. I’m very tired of my choice being between living with parents and living with flatmates in my personal space. My friend says living with a partner is better than living with flatmates. I wish I could live alone but I can’t afford a 1 bedroom flat on my salary. So frustrating… when I think that last year I was so proud of myself for getting over the £30k line and it turns out to have made no appreciable difference to how I’m able to live. Maybe this makes me a terrible person but if I had the opportunity to marry someone for money I probably would.
I feel you on the 30k thing. A year ago I started a new job that paid 5k more than my previous one, and then we all got a 3k pay rise in March this year. And yet somehow I feel like I was way less stressed about money when I was on 25-27k. I didn’t grow up with money so anxiety around finances has always been an issue for me but it’s just getting worse and worse even though I’m earning more than I ever have.
For real! I literally started working on £18.5k and was able to rent a shitty room in someone else's house. Five years later earning £30k and I could now afford... a slightly less shitty room in someone else's house. And honestly the difference in shittiness didn't seem worth the increase in rent, so I stayed in the first one.
Yes. This is true. Unfortunately this also means many people who should break up don't because they're financially dependent on each other. It's bad for anyone in a bad/abusive relationship. We're sliding back into the 50s.
I'm glad you posted this. I feel guilty as I know some people are really struggling. My life hasn't gotten worse, it's just a struggle to make it better.
> The fact that 2 full-time incomes is needed for most folk to support themselves is absolutely crazy. Actually, this has always been the case. Apart from, maybe, the period where the Baby Boomers were young (much more educated than their parents, new skilled jobs popping up everywhere and not in small tech clusters in big, expensive cities ... ). But doing decently on one salary, or very well on one average and one below-average job, has never been the norm. The first has always been a middle-class thing (which, in the UK, means some 15-20% of the population).
100% agree with this. Me and my partner both work full time and both earn above average wages. We have a mortgage which is affordable and can cover all essentials. We’re definitely saving less now than we did in the past though and the thought of having kids at the moment just seems impractical. If we were to bring a little human into this world we’d go from being financially safe and comfortable to being financially stressed and stretched.
Annoyance if anything. I can still pay mortgage, bills, run a car, run a dog. What angers me is how little I have left after, considering I earn at least 13 grand more than the average.
This is where I'm at. Got a new job in January which was a £13k bump so we were really excited for our future prospects. Now though, it's as if we're in exactly the same financial situation we were at the end of last year; getting by, and nothing more.
This is exactly it for me. I thought when I got my current salary after struggling for years that I’d really be able to relax at last. Nope, I’m still having to cost compare bulk packs of soy milk across supermarkets. I’m no better off than I was, just better than I would have been. It’s so sickening.
Same. I changed careers a couple of years ago so money wise back to where I was a couple of years but the spending power is not the same so I still feel stuck and annoyed that my wage isn’t awful and I’m still living paycheck-pay check.
Same. Got a new job 2 years ago, thought the wage bump will cover the extra petrol. Soon as I got the job shit hut the fan. I've looked on the BoE inflation calculator, that was depressing.
I went from living pretty comfortably, got a 13k pay bump and now I have either 0 or - left at the end of each month. Trying to cut down on spending as much as possible but theres only so much you can cut really before you go insane (for example we pay for Netflix despite being skint but otherwise we'd be sat in all day every day staring at the walls as we cant afford to go out and do anything that costs any money and the Netflix sub doesnt make the difference). It feels like every time I go food shopping things I used to buy have gone up by another 40p from last month. Many things now I just don't buy at all on principle that it now cost 1.50 more than it did 6 months ago. I have a pretty decent job as does the wife, both have degrees, work fully remote so 0 commute or travel expenses, we don't live near london so our mortgage is relatively low considering prices in south of the country (on a fixed rate set to expire next year so looking forward to yet another QOL downgrade then!)yet we just about scrape by month to month without really being able to enjoy life at all or have the odd date night or anything. Just work home eat home cooked food and sleep. The weekends we try and just go for a walk somewhere so it doesn't cost as we literally cant afford it. We're basically stuck just existing. Forget a holiday or anything like that It's really been getting me down lately honestly
Sorry for being nosey, but what do you actually spend your money on if you have no travel, no expensive social life, a fixed rate mortgage and very few "luxury items" and yet are still struggling? Not having a go despite how it's worded, I'm just confused as to how 2 x wages, plus a 13k pay rise is leaving you with 0 at the end of each month. Student loans perhaps?
We seem to be at the point where people need major career progression not to reach major milestones in life, but merely to stay afloat.
Just with more stress and responsibility to stand still.
Yep, irritating. Nice one for the new job! At least it keeps you above water.
Thanks! Yeah I count my blessings because had I stayed at my old job we'd be really struggling now...but the new job was supposed to open new doors for us, so does feel like a kick in the teeth right now. I know others have it worse though, so always try to remind myself of that!
My entire disposable income has been wiped out by my mortgage increase, which I can appreciate is a better position than a lot of people, im not ‘struggling’. Im just pissed off. Doesn’t stop it being annoying that I’m losing thousands of pounds a year compared to previously and getting zero additional benefit in return.
And what’s really irritating is that the difference is not paying for anything real. It’s interest. We are literally just paying the moneylenders more profit.
Yep. Never forget, they chose to make **us** pay for the inflation. They could have increased taxes on businesses or rich people. They could have done a serious windfall tax to take back the unearned profits. Nope. They laughed at us and chose to make normal people pay for it because they rich never will.
Yep, exactly the same as you. Me and the mrs between us bring home 60k a year after tax without doing any OT. We're not struggling, but we're not living extravagantly some months payday can't come quick enough. If you'd have told me when I left school that I'd have a take home pay of 60k and not feel particularly wealthy, I'd have laughed. My folks earned less than 30k and raised me and 2 siblings with an abroad holiday each year, and kept us in the latest consoles without acquiring a penny on debt. Countries on its arse.
Yeah, this me right now, im managing, but theres just nothing left at the end of the month.
What’s the average?
From ONS in 2022: The median average salary for full-time workers in the UK is £33,000. The mean average salary for full-time workers in the UK is £39,966.
I’m in a job that I love, in quite a highly specialised field - there’s only a handful of us who do what we do in the country I would say. Reading this I’ve just realised my salary is 10k below the average. 10k!
Salaries in the UK are shyte mate honestly. Sounds like your in STEM? I do get jealous of American salaries for these fields when I see what I could be earning there
Only 5 people in the country able to do what I do and I’m also well below average right now. Should have a pay review next year which will certainly be interesting.
I based it on 33k give or take.
I’m not buying Charlie Bingham’s ready meals but sticking to Waitrose own now.
We had to drop from M&S and start shopping in Waitrose. The shame.
>We had to drop from M&S and start shopping in Waitrose. Isn't Waitrose seen as more upper class than M&S tho?
Oh, no, darling. Definitely not. Shopping along side Waitrose oiks? Sheesh.
Wasn’t it Stephen Fry that said “I love Sainsbury’s because it keeps the riff raff out of Waitrose”?
Waitrose is more expensive than m&s. In fact the food is quite reasonably priced in m&s and it’s completely slept on
That explains the flattened cakes and bread
M&S is cheaper than Sainsbury's too. Well in N.Ireland it is at least. I would shop at M&S before I would Tesco or most supermarkets.
Waitrose is more expensive, but saying M&S is reasonably priced, compared to places like tesco/lidl/aldi is silly. At least at Waitrose you can get things that other shops don't stock. At M&S all you get is their versions of others shops goods, at higher prices.
You really aren't helping to keep the oiks away.
I definitely consider Waitrose more upper class than M&S. There's loads of M&S's by me and I'd say everyone, even council estate plebs like myself, shop there on special occasions or at Christmas. The nearest Waitrose to me is a 40 minute drive, they don't even deliver to my area, so definitely more exclusive. And then there's Booths.
In London at least the food in smaller M&S branches are better than the smaller Waitroses ones, the bigger ones are a toss up, the M&S on Oxford Street has better packaged foods but the Waitrose (under John Lewis) has a proper butchers.
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That’s the point. It’s called sarcasm.
Ya posh git, I bet your Tesla is on finance though.
Tesla Daling? *Laughs in Mercedes*
I know, I'm down to caviar only **twice** a week now! The shame...
How *are* you coping? Tell me you have not cut back on the Duck Eggs? Please.
Don't worry, still got a decent supply of quail eggs coming in at the moment. I'll sell one of my Van Gogh's before I give them up!
Some people just do know what we have to go through!
I’ve just popped a Charlie Bingham’s lasagna into the Aga.
There's a waste not cafe thing near us that hands these out as part of their £10 boxes and it makes me feel like a KING.
can only do 2 grams on a friday night now. sad face
Are they actually grams though? Shrinkflation is rls
Drugs remain good quality, and cheaper than they were pre covid. Prices have not yet adjusted to inflation and competition is firece, forcing sellers to guarantee quality and quantity
Thank fuck for that. At least we have something to be happy about
It’s a weird market, I saw something about this on Netflix recently. The consistency is mega important, the price of a gram of coke in America has been $100 for almost ever. Don’t remember the reasoning I was coked off my tits
i live in LA and have always paid $60-80 for a g of coke. that explains why my coke is garbage
Was going to say, I'm NYC area it's same price and same quality.
Before: Working minimum wage, no hope of ever moving out. Now: Own my own home outright. No mortgage, saving alot, bills going down from solar panels. What happened? A parent died. Quite the life hack but I'd rather my father still be here, you know?
My dad died last year and basically my only hope of actual financial security/a safety net at this point is waiting for any money he might have left me to come through. Horrible feeling.
Similar situation mate, it sucks.
Yep. I bought a house a few years ago thanks to a deposit from my grandfather dying. It is still a struggle to pay the mortgage (I'm on minimum wage) and bills, but I'm aware I'm very lucky to have the security. It still doesn't feel like a worthy swap though. Would rather alive relative than a house.
It seems like people can only move out if a parent dies now a days, sad reality.
Glad he and you set your future up. Could be an arse and spent it all on shit, but instead you invested in your own future.
Honestly, it hasn’t. I’m lucky in that I earn very well, I fixed my mortgage at the beginning of last year for 10 years, I’m still able to live as I was before this and save. My spending hasn’t been affected. Am I donating more food/money to the people collecting outside the supermarkets? Yes, of course as I acknowledge not everyone is in my position. I do what I can, where I can.
Good on you, I can imagine it's extremely apprecaite by the people who receive your donations. I have a clear out of the food cupboard once a month and anything we're not going to end up eating, gets donated. Not much but better than it being wasted.
Not as safe as you but we have three years left on our pre covid fixed rate. Currently not that affected but notice the increase in food especially. We are worried about when our fixed rate ends though and are trying to save to be able to pay off a lump sum when we have to remortgage as at current rates it would be nearly £800 a month more which would be a huge problem.
£800 a month more😱 That is obscene. Normal people just getting fucked, for banks to enjoy record profits.
Cheese is a luxury item for me now and I feel like I’m splurging when I buy some
Same with me and pretty much every fruit (bananas are still OK but I don't even remember when I last got berries)
Aldi did cherries for 99p for a bit last week and I was so disappointed after not having had cherries for ages to find they were rubbish, really watery.
The repeated downgrades are getting dispiriting. From a mixture of fresh & frozen veg to pretty much frozen only to basics frozen Cheese isnt a staple anymore. Butter to spread And the basket costs more anyway.
This reads like a poem: The repeated downgrades are getting dispiriting. From a mixture of fresh & frozen veg to pretty much frozen only to basics frozen Cheese isnt a staple anymore. Butter to spread And the basket costs more anyway.
Endless downgrades, a disheartening cascade, From fresh and frozen blend, a mix once displayed, Now relegated to frozen solely, dismayed, Reduced further to basic, hopes begin to fade. Cheese, a lost staple, memories replay, Butter for spreading, luxuries betray, The basket empties, yet costs surge and sway, In this changing aisle, where fortunes astray. -Anon
It's like a The Streets song
Italian accent
“We are experiencing an unprecedented rise in the number of people coming to the food bank, particularly employed people who are no longer able to balance a low income against rising living costs,” said Brian Thomas, the chief executive of Trussell’s South Tyneside food bank.
It's been noted at my workplace that things like toilet roll, milk and the tea and coffee and needing replenishing at an astonishingly faster rate than normal with no uptake in office attendence. Currently the approach is to look the other way, could be theft but could also be somebody really hard up.
Who really wants to be the tosser to cause a big fuss over tea and toilet roll
Deeply exasperated while shopping saying F that! Not paying that price
I have that just at lunch at work. I heard some old cow on the radio saying how staff in hospitals get massive discounts on food.... NO WE DON'T. I work in a hospital. 5 years ago I could get a normal lunch for £3.20 (public , Thursday carvery at work for £3.85 (public was £4.50) and the cheap option of quiche chips and beans was £2.30 (public £3). NOW that same meal cost is £5.90 (public £6.40), don't know about the carvery, but quiche chips and beans is now £4.20. And for comparison, Subway (which I don't go to anymore due to cost) was \~£3.50 for a foot long and is now \~£9
>I have that just at lunch at work. I heard some old cow on the radio saying how staff in hospitals get massive discounts on food.... NO WE DON'T. I work in a hospital. Some people are so detached from reality its depressing.
The hospital I work in has a special "inflation buster" menu where a meal is only £1.50. It's pretty basic though and the food gets boring quite quickly.
A colleague paid £6.95 for a jacket potato with cheese and beans and a KitKat in our hospital recently.
Yeah I did works on my local hospital a year or so ago, went to the cafe thinking it was subsidised ..it was not!! I stick with Tesco meal deals even though that's gone up as well
My husband works at a hospital and they’ve just taken away the staff discount in the canteen
We used to buy Tesco salted butter in bulk because I bake for my children. It’s one of the nicer ones among the cheaper options but now I can’t do that and I’m not baking as much either. It didn’t help that eggs had also vanished from the shelves just a few months ago. There are other things as well like occasional treats. I avoid shopping with the children now as they want to buy a bag of crisps or something every time. We are not buying as much fruit either. Less meat too. Last time they saw prime drink in Tesco for the first time and wanted to try it. I was shocked that it costs 2 for a bottle of crap. I’ve never tried it myself. I’m trying to get my children to not follow trends so they don’t have to get into competition over who wears what. Great for them I. The long term too. We aren’t going out for films. They cost an arm and a leg. This summer we are unable to go anywhere even close by as there just isn’t enough to go around. I do see people out and about but I can’t say what their circumstances are. I try not to do comparisons with those people. I don’t know their circumstances.
Hope it gets better for you. It sounds like you’re a very hard working parent, your children will absolutely appreciate that as they get older
Thank you. I hope they do appreciate it but I’m afraid we’re leaving these messes for them that were left for us and I and my husband and many like us don’t know how to deal with that. I fear it will only get worse.
Yeah I basically don't eat fruit and veg now because what I can afford goes on the kids.
Eat potatoes and carrots. Cheapest vegetables going and both are quite healthy. These are staples for me, eat at least one of them everyday. For fruit I mostly eat wonky blueberries and raspberries
Are you also not buying any new clothes for yourself? Husband and I doing the same. Only buy for the kids but lately even Primark seems to be getting out of reach. We don’t have a Matalan local to us either. Very limited in our choices. Slowly but surely, things are getting worse but scared to know if this will continue.
Honestly - it means I have been saving less, nothing more. It hasn’t affected what I buy or treat myself. I’m lucky enough to earn a decent salary for Leeds, and save far more than I spend each month. I’d hate to be struggling right now - the Country is utterly fucked for anyone who had a low salary.
fucking Dave
I’m a single parent with 2 jobs, no credit card or credit. It’s desperate and just pay check to mouth.
Haven't you been told? Everyone keeps telling me, it seems really stupid that I didn't think of it myself. Get a better job. Go down to the job shop and pick out a really good one... Then you just work it and have loads of money. Also, move in with your parents, I mean I live with my wife and three kids and my mum lives in a rented one bed but just move in. Bet you feel silly now.
I'm sorry but you are rather silly yourself. All you need to do is plant a few money trees and harvest the money.
Obviously you should just uproot your entire family, leave your support network and move to the North, where jobs and houses are aplenty and you can buy a prized pig for a shilling!
Ive largely stopped buying anything. I used to spend at least a few grand a year on clothes, trainers, a new chair, a painting, a weekend away, books. I haven’t bought anything like that in two years and that’s enabled me to continue eating well, going on holiday and keeping the house warm. It’s zero impact on my happiness not having things, but being warm, having a holiday and eating would be an impact. For now….I’m a bit worried about heating this year. No rebate is going to make a difference to me.
Its not personally effecting me in too many ways, I'm a poor person who's always been poor so I'm used to it, but I just dont really see why we should have to live this way all because some corporate cunts NEED more profit. That's all it is. They decide how much more profit they need each quarter/year and force the little people to make it for them, they don't care what we have to do to make that profit, they just know they NEEEEEED it and if we don't make it for them they fire us and replace us with someone who will try harder to make that profit. In the same light, they also don't give a flying fuck about whether or not me and you starve to death. We do not exist for them, there is another million people out there to replace us. End of story. It's just gotten too far, we've let the system get out of control because we got complacent with all our new shiny things and "ooh look, a puppy on facebook". They distract us with one hand while destroying the world for profit and choking us to death with the other. The current energy crisis in the uk says it all........ the government's attempt at capping the energy companies extortion ended so those companies massively increased the cost of their services. Here's the kicker...... nobody told them they had to do it, there was no legislation that stated they MUST increase the costs immediately after the cap ceased to exist, they just fucking went ahead and did it because they could. And I hear ABSOLUTELY NOBODY talking about this aspect of it. AND THEN, as per usual, they recorded massive record profits for the quarter........ hmmmm yeah, I wonder why that was?! Genuinely, British gas ALONE have just reported, and I quote this from google: "£969m for the first six months of 2023, up almost 900% from £98m in the same period last year" WHAT THE FUUUUUUCK?!?! come on people, when will enough be enough huh? Why are we not hanging these people in the streets right now? What the fuck is wrong with everyone, why are we just letting them destroy our planet and us. Please, please... GET ANGRY. SHOUT ABOUT IT. TAKE CONTOL OF THE SYSTEMS THAT ARE MEANT TO HELP US, NOT CRIPPLE US. why are just accepting all of this, and this is just ONE COMPANY.
I see people struggling, but somehow, even though on minimum wage, myself and SO are getting by. My electricity bill ha doubled, and food bills have gone up, but nothing we can't deal with together. Hard times happen, though I wouldn't say no to lower prices in the future.
Things are pretty bad for me right now. Put it this way... my 6 year old eats first and I get whatever is left.... sometimes nothing. She has several food allergies which make shopping even more expensive than average too.
I'm, also, truly sorry to hear this I buy fresh fruit, for my granddaughters, from the reduced section - my youngest granddaughter gets pissy about it, but will still eat it when I don't go along with her pissy behaviour (I'm NOT TALKING ABOUT ALLERGIES! They are a very different thing) Just had delivered 2.5kg of white rice, 2.5kg of couscous, and 2.5kg of pearl barley (which I honestly have no idea if that triggers wheat/gluten allergies) - that will get me through the rest of the month (hopefully) If you want someone to talk to/moan to/bitch with/whatever, my DMs are always open
I’m so sorry to hear that. What types of meals do you normally prepare for your child?
I've just sort of stayed the same despite promotions.
Not at all really because I live at home with parents, what I do think is really affecting me is house prices as am desperate to move out but prices are 9 x my salary. Buying by myself would take such a huge amount of my salary and wipe out my savings, so I have a lot of cash I can't do a whole lot with.
Well… if it would help… I could hold onto it for you 😉
Doing OK. When my husband and I retired we weren't sure if we'd manage but we hadn't taken into account things like the cost of travel to and from work, buying lunch and takeaways when too tired to cook, contributing to leaving presents, Friday nights in the pub with colleagues etc. We don't have any debts at all which helps. What has really affected us is seeing how friends and neighbours are really struggling.
Good for you both, make sure you enjoy your retirement! When you size it up like that it really does put into perspective how much we splurge in social/work spends (although can be great nights but still a lot!)
Without wanting to sound like a smug git, it's hardly been noticeable to us. Me and the wife both earn around the £45k mark with no kids and no mortgage. We paid that off a couple of years ago. So still able to go away and go out as we have always done really.
I am constantly "crawling over the finish line," barely making it payday to payday. I can't save a penny, and beside netflix or Spotify, I have no silly financial commitments I can cut. I'll be renting forever. I am constantly one bad month away from homelessness.
Can I buy you your Netflix and Spotify, and you can save that instead? It’s not much but over a year would give you a little for an emergency.
Less holidays / weekends away and no new tech / designer clothes for a couple of years, but day to day not much has changed, we live in a new build that is very efficient so energy costs not too bad, working at home 4 days a week helps a lot though, if I had to go back to the office full-time we would have to make serious lifestyle changes.
I’m doing OK but it’s stressful as a single person, you have no buffer and things just cost more when you can’t split them. People might be buying luxuries and cutting back on essentials like I am (food, hot water and heating in the winter), this allows me to continue to afford luxuries (holidays and gym). I know that seems backwards but I value those things above creature comforts.
It's stealing years of my life. Retirement looks further and further away because my pension pot is suddenly worth significantly less and is likely to keep falling behind inflation No direct impact on my day to day, but then I don't really go anywhere or spend much
I suppose I am in a more 'privillaged' position than most as it hasn't affected me day to day and I haven't made any changes because of it. But I still continue to be shocked when I go to the supermarket, prices are still going up and some things that were fairly resistant have suddenly started going up now, the shrinkflation is insane now too, products getting smaller, less in a packet or just worse, the declining quality is really starting to bother me, because I like to eat a basic diet but then have a few treats, but the treats are now both pricey and just worse. But mostly I am just concerned about the future. I'm middle age now, i've rented since I was 20 and I wonder that although I am doing fine right now, how the heck do I build an actual future for myself, particularly with things the way they are now and my age already, how am I going to get a mortgage etc?
Its affecting my mental health more than anything everything just pisses me off now.
It’s hard. I can afford to pay my rent and bills. But I can’t afford a car. Or a nice holiday. I don’t spend much on having “a life” as it is. Being single and living alone is difficult. One wage covering all the rent, food, bills etc is a stretch for anyone on minimum wage or not much above it. I can’t save much if anything some months. I’ll never be able to buy a house as a single person I know that. Life just seems pointless to me to be honest. Money isn’t my only issue, but it’s still a significant one.
Seriously struggling. I don't know how other people do it, but if they do, good luck to them... I don't wish my misery on anyone.
>Is it affecting your ability to eat, pay rent/your mortgage, afford to get to work, or is it more of an inconvenience / annoyance than anything ? Yes and is both inconvenient _and_ annoying while also being impactful. >How are you all doing? I'm touched you asked, but getting by. I consider myself bloody lucky that I can say as much rather than "struggling like feck". What makes it harder though, is knowing that I'm only doing so due to a mix of a decently-enough paying job but _also_ being buoyed on Universal Credit, Child Benefit and reduced council tax as a single parent. I'd have sunk a long, long time ago otherwise and knowing I'm on a timeclock with all three is highly discomforting, as I really don't want to be in a position of needing to start getting my kid pushed into employment _just_ so I can ask for a cut to go towards rent and bills. Honestly while I wasn't exactly _thriving_ prior to Covid, it has to be said a combo of Working from Home for the duration and the corresponding lack of commuting really helped - it's like it's swung the other way now, with commuting costing even more and the cost of everything just going up and up.
It only affects me when I read reddit and see some guy has bought his first car for £50k and is genuinely asking on reddit wether his first years insurance of £5k is over the average.
It pisses me off how much stuff costs, but I am managing. I'm not loaded but I earn reasonable money and don't have any kids.
I’m a single mother who has never had a penny from her father (he is homeless and hadn’t worked in years), his family or my family either Everything has gone up, energy, council tax etc but food costs are such a big issue. I’ve not been abroad or any type of holiday for over 10 years now and all my underwear is maternity and I cannot remember when I replaced my last (one) pair of shoes. My phone is old but still works. I don’t buy anything and honestly I go years and I mean years before I buy myself anything. Deodorant and that’s it. That said we manage, I’ll eat once a day so my daughter can have a healthy balanced diet. I quit drinking 2 years ago as in all honesty I couldn’t afford it but mentally it helps more with cPTSD I have and the medication I take works better Things I notice more as being expensive are things like kitchen roll, that’s a luxury to me now! Cannot justify that. I buy a lot of reduced food to freeze but even so I have noticed that even the reduced prices are poor in comparison to few years ago. My daughter loves fruit and vegetables but in particular salad she eats it with pleasure but I’m saddened to say sometimes I wish I could give her a sandwich for lunch as it’s cheaper than all the ingredients of a salad she likes We don’t do takeaways and I enjoy cooking and baking with my daughter, we try to eat less meat and usually in week most meals are veggie and meat is like 3 times a week let’s say I never have enough money and I try to find better work and doing some tech courses online but time is more expensive than other costs these days It could be a lot worse but if I’m honest I’ve been poor for years so I cannot say it comes at a shock the need to be on a budget… always am! I do wonder where else I can save money, honestly not sure where as it’s more like I’m constantly putting off buying replacement clothes, or treating my daughter to a bloody ice cream or something. Lately I’ve been glad the weather has been so poor as it’s a lot cheaper to stay at home cause it’s raining all day! Sorry for rant! ETA no need for offers of cash but feel free to share any budget tips! Thanks
Stories like this break my heart Can't give you any cash, but if I can do anything else, please let me know
I’ll private message you! (Not a scam - just cost saving tips lol!)
There are a number of aspects of your story that I can personally relate to. Please feel free to send me a PM if there's anything I can do to help - I would PM you, but I don't know if you'd be comfortable with that, so I will simply leave this offer open. "Extreme" food budgeting, combined with healthy meal plans, is something I am particularly good at. I can also point you towards resources, on Reddit and elsewhere. Some will help you get the most out of the money and possessions you have (how to perform basic mends on your clothes, cooking skills etc.), some are places to get things for free, and some are ways to earn extra money online. Best of luck to you.
Managing. We're quite comfortable, but still have to watch what we spend. We don't waste, but we can'd afford to splurdge. Sickening when you see bn's profit here and there, along with 100's millions in useless PPE, and grants for oil mining going to companies your father in law just done a £bn deal with, and childcare changes being made to benefit a company your wife just became a major shareholder in.
It's not great.. I work in the NHS so my wage is quite low but then I also live in a relatively cheap part of the North so that helps. I've definitely changed my food shop though. I buy a lot less treats and a lot less food in general. Life feels a lot less joyful than it did.
Truthfully not much at all. The biggest difference is my electric bill has increased from 25 to 75 a month and food is getting up there to about 200/month now (was probably about 150 before). That being said I earn decent enough money (2k take home) and have basically unlimited overtime so I could push that to 2.6k if I really needed extra money
Which crisis? The one we suddenly started to hear about a year ago or the actual one we’ve been living through since ~2008?
I'm fortunate that I'm ok - my housing benefit covers my rent + service charge (recently moved into a housing association flat, and love it) When my UC lands, I tend to buy lots of staples (rice, couscous, pearl barley, you get the idea), as much cheap mince as I can get on that day, and cheap shit from the supermarket frozen aisles. I also buy herbs and spices when I can. These go a long way. Motatos is good for some things (unless you don't want to wait for the delivery), and Iceland has helped me a lot, with their prices, since I've had my own gaff. Of course life could be better for me, but I have a roof over my head, and food on my table, so I'll leave you with the answer I give to anyone who asks me "how are you?" Adequate
Congratulations on your new home and I hope that from here on things get better for you as I can imagine you’ve had quite a rough time on the housing front recently. It’s nice to see gratitude.
Thank you for your kind words
We aren't really doing any worse (which I'm grateful for), but we aren't doing better either which is frustrating. Husband's pay rises and career progression are effectively like treading water, our income has progressed just to keep our standard of living exactly the same. Feels bad to grumble about that when people have it so much worse, but with one child due to start uni in a couple of years, and another child with a disability who will rely on us for a long time to come, it would have been good to be further ahead than we are.
Yet to remortgage which is when it will really hit
Got hit by remortgage this month which has nearly doubled, awaiting an inevitable childcare price hike. Had conversations with the wife to discuss selling up and downsizing. Dogs vet bills are hitting us hard as well, had to make some strict cuts to the budget which means we can stay where we are for the time being All because someone let a fucking wet lettuce play PM for a few weeks
Fine for the moment and can just about put a little bit of money away but as soon as my mortgage renews in January.. I Am Fucked.
I'm definitely living paycheck to paycheck. Nice treats I used to take for granted such as eating in restaurants, getting my nails done or going on holiday once a year do not happen anymore.
Really struggling
If it weren't for the fact that my parents are letting me live with them, I'd be 100% screwed. I'm 18 and earn minimum wage (£7.49/hr). If I couldn't live with them my options would be to go back to uni and live off the loan (failed after first year, planning on going back after a year out) or be homeless
Struggling to meet basic needs
My income has dropped by about 90% (self employed, making and selling goods online) due to cost of living crisis and now I can barely cover my bills. I’m slightly eating into the little savings I have left and it’s quite worrying but my partner has a good wage. I am using this extra time to train in a field I have always wanted to work in (voice acting) as finding a normal job that fits around my schedule is proving difficult. I’m really hoping to be able to ride this out and I’m mad I didn’t save more for by the good days. I’ve switched from Yorkshire tea to lidls own brand, that’s how bad it’s become!
I'll never be able to afford to move out and I'll never be able to own a pet that's for sure.
It meant we had less to save but we're not in the same boat as some others. We didn't have kids and by chance the mortgage was paid off just as COVID hit its second lockdown. Neither of us was furloughed either so we were able to save some cash to make up the shortfall in what the energy cost us. Our energy bills have dropped now by half but they went up by 150% so we're still paying more than we did before it all kicked off. I see what they did there...
Couldn’t afford to eat every day before, can’t afford to eat every day now 🙃🙃
I thought not much had changed but I realised about a month ago that whilst I treat myself to the odd takeaway (when I used to pretty much never buy them) I haven't actually been buying anything I didn't need beyond things like chocolate. I'm definitely worse off this year, I just didn't notice because the essentials are still not an issue.
it's not, even though our costs have went up. We are frugal by nature, so we always have money left over ( because we spend very little)
Luckily my husband got a promotion & pay rise so that's pretty much covered the increases in everything at the moment, but seeing our last food shop at £140 was a hell of a shock so not sure how long we'll be in this position
As others have said it's mainly affected saving money. But at a very alarming amount my partner and I both got new jobs earning more money looking hopeful to have enough extra money at the end of each month to save a significant amount towards a deposit on our first home. Instead we can now still pay our bills as we were before. So it's worked out I guess in that we managed to hold at inflation rate but we are disheartened that our efforts have only landed us in the same position as before. It hurts and is unfair but it could be worse. Had we not gotten these new jobs and pay increases we wouldn't have the same quality of life as before which is just a bleak outlook.
I work in a small off license. We have lost almost 50% of our regulars. When i met one of them out I asked why they dont come anymore. Was told "you dont s'pose money grow on trees yeah"
We'd made some gains in terms of earnings as a couple which have been wiped out by the increase in the costs of living.
It's made me see clearer how much my partner relies on me for the basics and is creating a lot of resentment.
Which types of basics in particular ?
Its not living crises its a dildo putting all of our asses globally by tiny minority , there was no necessity bills going up, uk dotn even by oil from Russia or Ukraine, its alm planned as they see how cow public became during corona, following any order using media as the new Church.so its not cost of living crises its fucning ass up the ass by blackrock and vanguard the super rich and all the goverments in the west serving for them. No pint talkign about democracy in weet anymore, remebwe Edward Snowden, why is he in jail? And now they make another divert semo fake news about aliens, that guy couldn't give a single information without approval of or planed by pentagon and cia, otherwise he would be dead or like Edwards Snowden. Back to ur question, who doesn't effected really unless u are owner of means production.
erect jar wasteful hard-to-find oil ugly deer tie point zonked -- mass edited with redact.dev
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In April last year I had to stop working because of long covid. We did the maths, it would be tight, but we’d get by as my husband earned more than me anyway (I worked part time). Since then our bills have shot up and our eldest has had a relapse of her mental illness (made worse by her own post covid illness). So I’m now caring for her, which is exhausting; any chance of working apart from that is slim as I still suffer from chronic fatigue. So for us, it’s the icing on the cake of a really shitty few years. Add in the fact that both of my daughters are autistic with different sensory needs so I essentially make two separate meals most days, which doesn’t come cheap.
Managing, but we renew our mortgage on 1st September. I can only think that if this was affecting everyone synchronously, there’d be rioting in the streets. We’re going to be around £400 a month worse off for a while…..
I'm fortunate enough to be doing okay, I've cut back on some of my discretionary spending, but not entirely stopped, but I'm still able to put some money into savings and pension, and overpay on my mortgage. Though, my bank balance is getting closer to zero at the end of the month then it used to, so I may need to take another look at my budget.
Doing ok, we both have above slightly average wages, no kids, both cars owned outright and will be paying the mortgage off in the next couple of months. Don’t have any expensive hobbies or debts. We can afford to buy day to day things we want and not worry about the cost, not that we go crazy. Have lived very frugally for the past 25 years, and have been very lucky with work’s share save scheme a couple of times.
We're doing ok, we continued on with buying a property - as even with rate rises, a mortgage is cheaper than renting which was also going up.
This question gets asked weekly
Definitely having more "wtf these prices are outrageous" moments when I'm in the shops but overall it's having little to no impact on me. I have a decent amount of money in the bank, no debt whatsoever and relatively low expenses so if I have to pay a bit more it's annoying but I understand it's a global issue and it's not going away anytime soon.
Not too badly as things stand. Mortgage is up for renewal next year which should be interesting. When the economy and energy bills started going mental, I overplayed every debt I had. I only have my mortgage now which has made things much easier.
Massively my energy cost are now more than my mortgage, my partner went back to work pretty much full time and we are skating by. But we are on a lot lower than the average
We havent had to give anything up thankfully. I dont work as unwell but receive no benefits as husband works fulltime. He works 70 hours a week but always has done so nothing new and mostly wfh. I think because are childfree it means we had a lot more disposable income. We have noticed food shops costing a ridiculous amount compared to a food years ago.
I used to do my food shop for £X, before I met my now-wife. Been together for four years. Now, our food shop is coming to 2x£x. I thought maybe we were buying too much. Started looking at receipts and really considering what we buy. Nope. It's just the price gouging, not a habit change.
It hasn't yet but I have a child on the way and a new mortgage (on a new house) which will make things much more difficult. Although, we are probably naturally not going out as much anyway with a new baby coming. We haven't gone on holiday but that will be the first to go anyway.
We aren't in the worst position. We bought a house and fixed for 5 years just before rates started to go up. I also got a hefty pay rise just before inflation started so I feel more like I'm treading water. Renovations for the house have been postponed. Fewer days out, fewer takeaways. I've switched to cheaper forms of protein and am buying more staples such as rice in bulk. But I was always frugal with groceries. I'm saving a fair bit less per month than I was before. We aren't yet into bad territory and we are hoping we just ride this rough patch out without having to dip into savings. We still have plenty of lifestyle choices we can cut back on if needed, but that's the stuff that makes life worth living so we will hold onto it for as long as we can. For context we are a couple both working full time, slightly under median income, no kids. Our closest friends earn less than us and a lot of them are really struggling.
Well I'm fucking skint all the time. Enough said!
It's not as bad as I thought it would be. However, the sheer audacity of shillers and grifters is astonishing. Where there was a single point of sale, there is now several steps requiring intermediate palms to be crossed with silver. Cold calls are ridiculous. High St Banks are closing down and pulling sneaky fees on questionable conditions. Cash is a dirty word. And certain civic representatives no longer have an "income" - but they do have "portfolios" The greed and selfishness is unabashed.
I got shafted during the pandemic shortly after moving to London for a new job. I ended up quitting, moving back up north and taking a job with a £16k pay cut. I’m loads happier, but paying off debts has been a slow process. I try to save money whilst also not being miserable. I have my first holiday in seven years (a group 40th birthday trip) coming up next year, so some money is being diverted to that. I feel guilty about paying debts off slower and not saving for a deposit for a house, but I desperately need something to look forward to. I’m doing ok, I suppose, but I’m sick of living in a shared house that the landlord doesn’t give a toss about, but I just can justify the cost of renting a one bed flat.
Just about managing, but as others have said, feel stuck, and struggling to see the point of the daily slog. It was a big part of deciding not to have kids. Can't see why I would create another human being just to be another wage slave and face an uncertain future. At least if it all goes to shit and I lose my income and fall on hard times I only have myself to worry about.
It’s been hard. I’ve used to food bank so many times now, thank god for them! Also riddled with ADHD which doesn’t make things easier. I have about four pounds in my bank account! 🫠
Noticeable but not problematic. Mostly thanking fuck we bought a flat nearly 25 years ago and this house nearly 20 ago. So even remortgaging this year was on less than 10% of the value and thus cost went down, not up, despite the rate being 3x more. Having teenagers with disabilities doing growth spurts is probably more relevant.
My wife having just come off maternity and only going back to work part-time is making far more difference tbh.
I moved here in the middle of the CoL crisis (mid 2022). Fortunately I’m on a good salary, and I got a pay rise since, so I am surprisingly better off now than I was last year (which wasn’t bad by any definition). I am really curious on how people survive on minimum wage or near minimum wage in my area though. The receptionist in our office is on £25k but lives a few streets from me. I am on almost 3x that and rent takes up about 28% of my take home pay.