Cost of living squeeze in 2022, 23 & 24 (Vol. 2)

Apparently inflation is falling due to reduced price of Crumpet.......

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-68833077

You weren't seriously thinking that prices were going to revert to 2021/early 2022 levels were you? Being 'through' inflation simply meant that prices weren't rising at the same rate as the last 2 years - which........would be entirely correct. Not even sunak is stupid enough to be saying cost of living isn't high.

I suggest if your local supermarket really is increases it's prices by 20% every few weeks then you should change to another supermarket.

I think car insurance might have it’s own thread, but our renewals came in last week….
SWMBOs Kona EV up 20%….hmm, okay…
But my XC60 up 71%

Hastings Direct (mine) even had the gall to point out most were up 50% - “so why have you charged me 71%, you cheeky sods”. No changes to policy or us….

Onto the comparison sites…..got the XC down to ‘only’ 20% up…..& LV haggled the Kona down to only 13% up.
We are lucky enough that this isn’t breaking our world, but I feel for those who are running tight to a budget

My Volvo went from £281 to £577

Yep, mobile phone, broadband, council tax, Thames Water all taking a chunk.

Their cut plus the rate of inflation.

Funny that some companies manage to keep their prices down.

I use a Smarty sim for my 4g router. 3 years now and it's stayed at £16 a month since I started. Unlimited calls, data, texts and free EU roaming.

Don't get me on CoffeeMate. Now twice the price and half the size, hence a 4x hike in cost.

But I'm crafty, now only using 1 teaspoon not 2, that'll show 'em

I don't know anyone who has had a payrise in my business for years now.

The particular company I work for has not seen a payrise of any kind in 5 years.

I believe that they want us experienced oldies to get fed up and leave so that they can replace us with young eager multi skilled but master of none, for half the price.

But the hours are good so I'm clinging on

I don't know which supermarket you go to, but it is unlikely that prices are high because they are increasing prices for no reason.

Tesco's net profit margin last year was 2.71%, before that 1.48%
Sainsburys' was 0.91% last year and -0.52% before that

This is all fairly normal for the supermarkets because it is such a competitive sector.

Lazy journalism is helping fuel a misconception that supermarkets are increasing prices. Hell, even in USA, Joe Biden is asking shops to reduce prices. Talk about barking up the wrong tree.

The issue we have is that big conglomerates like Kraft, Nestle, Lever etc (go look at all the brands that sit under their umbrella) have an absolute stranglehold on retail supplies and make waaaay more profit than the actual retailers that sell the products. But lazy journalists and lazy politicians spout a big load of nonsense about the retailers and by default, the big conglomerates come out smelling of roses, despite quadruple profit margins.

Its kind of sickening to see these global behemoths get away with it. Remember Tesco stopped selling Heinz for a while? (Heinz are owned by Kraft)

That was, IMO, due to the strengthening of the dollar and for every £1 profit in the UK, that was only $1.10 profit instead of the $1.40 previously, so that huge margin drop was driven by FX currency movements and Heinz wanted to maintain the $ revenues so it shafted the world on local price, due to the strong dollar. That's how this st works unfortunately.

This was my response when someone at work mentioned the cut in national insurance, it coincides nicely with the increase in council tax/water rates/car insurance etc. I won't have any extra cash, my bank account will just act as a middle man for 24hrs.