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Cost of Living

Rather suspect that this will be the issue that forces some serious political upheaval to be honest.
TSB's post is really good and clear. Unless you're fantastically wealthy, you are going to be seriously hit this year. I feel very sorry for those who are genuinely poor, as they will have some exceptionally tough choices to make.
I am thankful mrs jelly found work 6 months ago after 2 years of unemployment. We had got into a situation of being very cautious, and had it not been for the pandemic forcing us to cease a lot of expenditure, we would have had to make a number of choices.
We don't have many luxuries. We don't drink (being discussed elsewhere - that is pricey too!) though I do have other habits (my expenditure is pretty low though).
We have 1 car, 10 years old, and my aim is to avoid replacing it for another 10 years if possible. I will be cycling more.
We're careful with expenditure, and our only real extravagance is concerts/theatre/live comedy.

We overpaid where we could on our mortgage (moved here in 2014) to bring that bill down, and make a long term saving. That will help us, and shield us if interest rates go nuts, which I am not expecting tbh.

We will be able to sustain ourselves. We aren't likely to go without unless we have a change of circs. But if that happens, then yes, decisions will have to be made. I mean, I was at the stage of cancelling my wolves membership (and tbh am likely to do so anyway) when we were a 1 income household.

Might be planting a few extra seeds and stuff in the garden this year!

As TSB says, whilst not directly the governments fault, people vote with their wallets, and will really feel the impact of this across the year.
Definitely expecting some turbulence as a result, which is a bit mad. thousands died, billions wasted on contracts to connections, corruption is rife, yet what could kick things off big style is the weekly food shop.
 
Alan said:
Don't suppose the UK is better than the US and you actually have more than one energy provider to choose from?

If you're as screwed as we are over here, it's kind of just tough shit. The only thing that's ever worked in those situations for me has been threatening to walk away from the SP all together. Otherwise they just run roughshod.
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There are quite a few energy providers here. As Tredman said it looks like we must have been on a good deal which is the reason it's going up so much for us now. My energy provider hasn't gone under due to the wholesale increases yet though.

I work in the public sector and there is a scheme whereby loads of people sign up and then they do a mass negotiation so rather than one person the company are signing up it'll be thousands, did it a few years ago and just stayed with them. Their electricity and most of their gas comes from renewables which I like. I'll probably just stay with them again unless I can get it massively cheaper elsewhere, which doesn't look likely. We're comparatively quite lucky in that it won't be a case of having to turn the hearing off etc but it's going to be so tough for so many people.

A few years ago my mom was working as a cleaner and living alone, after all her bills went out she used to have £70 a month left over, so people in her position now will be in the red just from these energy rises, that's before you factor everything else in like food going up etc. I don't know how people in that position are going to survive to be honest. It's sickening your going to have little kids going cold and hungry in a supposed civilised society such as ours.
 
Hmm, maybe taking early retirement 15 months ago wasn't such a smart move.
There's a few savings we can make, going to get in touch with ST about a water meter, it will make me get of my arse and get a better deal on our broadband and best of all we have only 5 months left to pay on our mortgage, so with all that, should be able to make about 250 quid a month savings......bit of a bastard though, I had plans for those. It will be interesting to see how our energy bill goes, currently paying £65 a month but our tariff ends in March....better gird my loins.
 
WolfMan said:
There are quite a few energy providers here. As Tredman said it looks like we must have been on a good deal which is the reason it's going up so much for us now. My energy provider hasn't gone under due to the wholesale increases yet though.

I work in the public sector and there is a scheme whereby loads of people sign up and then they do a mass negotiation so rather than one person the company are signing up it'll be thousands, did it a few years ago and just stayed with them. Their electricity and most of their gas comes from renewables which I like. I'll probably just stay with them again unless I can get it massively cheaper elsewhere, which doesn't look likely. We're comparatively quite lucky in that it won't be a case of having to turn the hearing off etc but it's going to be so tough for so many people.

A few years ago my mom was working as a cleaner and living alone, after all her bills went out she used to have £70 a month left over, so people in her position now will be in the red just from these energy rises, that's before you factor everything else in like food going up etc. I don't know how people in that position are going to survive to be honest. It's sickening your going to have little kids going cold and hungry in a supposed civilised society such as ours.
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I'm not (much of) a socialist but having spent the last 15+ years working in all 4 of the utility sectors (and going back even further with BT while at uni) I'd fucking nationalise the lot of them and tell Macquarie etc to get fucked.
 
Tredman said:
I'm not (much of) a socialist but having spent the last 15+ years working in all 4 of the utility sectors (and going back even further with BT while at uni) I'd fucking nationalise the lot of them and tell Macquarie etc to get fucked.
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Totally agree mate, it doesn't make sense to me to have things like utilities, rail, post privatised. I'm no socialist either but it's just common sense to me. They are essential services that the country can't allow to go bust like a normal company would if it was shit/unprofitable.

Whenever they privatise something it's always the profits and never the losses. That's happening in the rail industry at the moment, passengers numbers collapsed so the govt is currently absorbing the losses as of course they can't allow the trains to stop operating. It's just a licence to cream money off the top with no risk. Everything is just run at as close to cost price as possible and the profit isn't reinvested into improving anything as there's no reason to as customers can't go anywhere else anyway.
 
I used to b
Tredman said:
I'm not (much of) a socialist but having spent the last 15+ years working in all 4 of the utility sectors (and going back even further with BT while at uni) I'd fucking nationalise the lot of them and tell Macquarie etc to get fucked.
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I used to be a staunch socialist and was totally against privatising utilities and public transport....now I'm less of of a socialist but still think those industries should be state run. People will say, yeah but efficiency etc and that was a problem in the past but that's always been down to weak/poor/lazy management imo...it doesn't have to be that way.
 
Thanks @Tredman I've just watched Martin Lewis on ITV wouldn't have done otherwise, he layed it all out well. I would have just fixed it for 2 years had I not asked the question on here and then seen that.
 
The support they are targetting & the N/I rise aren't helping as it's not going to help those most in need & hits lower paid workers disproportianly.

I'm retired so don't pay N/I - have been fortunate in life and have index linked final salary pensions plus a full state one & this will cost me nothing, but many earning far less than I receive will given that N/I kicks in at just over £9500 a year. Plus Employers will have to pay it which will restrict jobs.

Do I want to pay more tax, of course not - no one does. Can I afford to - yes. will it cause me a real financial problem - no & I'm nearer to potentially needing social care in old age than those who are going to be paying it.

Social Care needs the funding (though most won't go anywhere near that for a while & wonder whether it ever will), but this is not the right way.

All domestic users will get a £200 discount (well OK a loan in reality) on energy bills - whatever your income level is which makes no sense. The £150 off Council Tax bills won't help as that will only mostly cover next years increase in that anyway.

I'm sure that few of those making the decisions have any idea what some peoples lives are like.
 
Of course they don't realise the effect it'll have on people,
£700 fuel price rise = 1 roll of wallpaper in the Downing Street flat, or a 1/4 of Liz Truss' restaurant bill the other week, loose change down the back of the settee ay it.
 
Relatively fortunate to have some meat on the bones but the scale of some of the increases is staggering and not without affect. I think the psychological comfort of being self-employed and therefore some control over your own destiny gives a greater sense of relief than the actual reality.

Does seem not that long ago things were very different, but being fixed-income with costs spiralling out of your control despite your very best efforts is difficult in the best of times but at the moment must feel like an absolute nightmare.

There’s something fundamentally wrong and I’ve no ideas what the answers are, but the bigger concern is I don’t think our ‘leaders’ know either.
 
Keef said:
Of course they don't realise the effect it'll have on people,
£700 fuel price rise = 1 roll of wallpaper in the Downing Street flat, or a 1/4 of Liz Truss' restaurant bill the other week, loose change down the back of the settee ay it.
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I think they do realise. I think they don't really care, which is an important distinction.
 
Just had an email about our power tariff which ends 31st March. They've offered the standard variable option and estimated our bill will be about 12% more than currently. A 2 year fixed tariff (cheapest) is coming out at about 80% more.
Just wondering how they estimate the standard rate as its subject to rises and falls (haha) and how accurate its likely to be.
 
sycophantia said:
Just had an email about our power tariff which ends 31st March. They've offered the standard variable option and estimated our bill will be about 12% more than currently. A 2 year fixed tariff (cheapest) is coming out at about 80% more.
Just wondering how they estimate the standard rate as its subject to rises and falls (haha) and how accurate its likely to be.
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The standard variable will be subject to the cap so I would imagine that the quoted figure is the capped rate. Most domestic users in the country will be at the capped rate for at least the next 6-12 months.
 
Sniffer said:
The standard variable will be subject to the cap so I would imagine that the quoted figure is the capped rate. Most domestic users in the country will be at the capped rate for at least the next 6-12 months.
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If that's the case, that's much better than I was expecting, I mean 12% is way above inflation but a lot better than the 80% quote for the fixed rate tariff.
 
Had our email from Bulb the other day. Our monthly payment is going from £118.89 to £181.39

This is for gas and electric, no smart meters installed.

Is it worth shopping around at this point or is that a fools errand?
 
machin05 said:
Had our email from Bulb the other day. Our monthly payment is going from £118.89 to £181.39

This is for gas and electric, no smart meters installed.

Is it worth shopping around at this point or is that a fools errand?
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No. The cheapest price will be the capped variable rate which the majority of consumers will be on now, or soon will be. Energy companies are losing money by having the cap imposed on them, so they won't be offering anything any cheaper.
 
machin05 said:
Had our email from Bulb the other day. Our monthly payment is going from £118.89 to £181.39

This is for gas and electric, no smart meters installed.

Is it worth shopping around at this point or is that a fools errand?
Click to expand...
I tried a comparison site yesterday and it came back with 'there are no better deals'.....still worth a try though
 
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