Readers familiar with my blog know we live on a tight budget and I am Queen of the Spreadsheets. I have one for the accounts, one for the house, one for food, one for the car, one for utilities………. you get the idea.
I have done posts in the past about trying to save money on our food bill and making ends meet by adding more veg, using less meat, or reducing the portion size.
For years I have noticed weights reducing and prices rising, and know that it is not us consuming more but the fact that there is less of it.
So, when I saw this headline today (source)
We’re pricing the poor out of food in the UK
I homed in.
Extract:
“It was reported last week that the consumer price index (CPI) measure for inflation rose to 5.4% in December, the highest level for nearly 30 years. The CPI and the retail price index (RPI) are used interchangeably to document the rising price levels of groceries and household goods across the UK. Yet they only tell a fragment of the story of inflation, and grossly underestimate the true cost-of-living crisis.
A collection of 700 pre-specified goods that includes a leg of lamb, bedroom furniture, a television and champagne seems a blunt and darkly comical tool for recording the impact of inflated grocery prices in a country where two and a half million citizens were forced by an array of desperate circumstances to use food banks in the last year.”
I’ve always thought that ‘the shopping basket’ used to calculate inflation figures is a joke for Joe Public and those on low incomes. You can’t eat bedroom furniture, but I suppose you could burn it, and a new TV to drink your champagne in front of is all very nice, but that does not help families already below the breadline, and if anything rubs salt into an open wound that will never heal. Our article author is quite right that the budget lines in our supermarkets are limited, and when Covid first took hold, shelves were cleared of the basics, leaving only the most expensive brands that most of us can’t afford.
On top of that, the quality of ‘budget’ goods recently in our supermarkets has been abysmal and now I am paying that little bit extra for what we can eat, rather than save a few pence and throw half of it away.
The stock cube example is a classic. I buy chicken and veg stock cubes from the discount supermarket for 39p for a box of 12. That has recently gone up from 35p, but at least I am still getting a dozen. I stopped buying the favoured brands when a box of 12 went up to over a pound, and I had to laugh when a special offer was a box of 18 was £1.50, whereas further along and on a lower shelf, a box of 24 was the same price.
Shopping these days isn’t just a matter of grabbing a trolley and putting things in it. It’s non stop calculations trying to get value for money and catering for the family’s needs, so for busy parents doing the weekly shop, it is a nightmare.
IMO, in order for our politicians to have any idea how the lower paid are living, they need to live on a tight budget for at least a year, no handouts, no expense accounts, no savings (as most people have exhausted those years ago) and no-one to do the legwork. I’d love to see how they get on, but then they’ll probably be too busy sipping champagne in front of their oversized tellies whilst their minions put together the latest bedroom fitment and The Cook is preparing a roast lamb dinner.
Prices are insane here! I have been spending a lot on groceries and I don’t even buy meat. Just eggs, milk, bread, cheese, yogurt, bananas, and frozen dinners when they are on sale for 2/$5. Luckily my cat’s food hasn’t increased (yet)…
Our food bill last year was less than £1800 but we had no pet food to buy so in comparison, prices have gone up.
I agree completely. Right now we have enough to live comfortably, I can’t complain too much, based on how little others are dealing with, but the amount of money some have is ridiculous and that is who makes all the decisions. Two blocks from our home are mansions that seem to be seasonal homes only since I have never seen anyone in them. Our home could fit in the garage of theirs. I don’t say we all need the same but the distribution of wealth is so skewed!
With you here Christine. Our home is a modest two bedroomed bungalow, the entire footprint probably the size of a mansion’s bedroom or garage. We are lucky in that its economical to run and we don;t have a rent or mortgage to pay. Our leaders have absolutely no idea what it’s like in the real world, especially as they say they cannot manage on £80K a year and thus need a £2000 pay rise when a hard working nurse is lucky to get 2000 pence.
Yeah, it is really sad. Many teachers I used to work with had to have a second job to make ends meet. Hello, teachers are teaching all the future little buggers!
That’s what so scary………….. they are our potential future leaders.
This post is on point here in US also
Sent from my iPhone
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Thanks Cheryl.