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Comment by woodruffw | Hacker News Reader

Could a UK HN'er give a first-hand perspective? I'm curious to hear what it's like "on the ground" in your area, versus what a government or industry announcement might say.

At least for the US, it's a lot more nuanced than "inflation is X%" -- certain things are consistently more expensive, others are more variable, and others yet are cheaper/the same price. I'd like to understand if it's the same there.

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I live in the UK, and our weekly shop has gotten a lot more expensive than the 14%. Me and my wife did the calculation literally last month and our weekly Tesco order has gone up from £50 to £70-80. We both follow a relatively strict diet so we just order the same stuff each week, and the increases are small but they are on everything and they add up.

To give a simplest example - 4 pint milk bottle used to be £1.10 earlier in the year, now it's £1.55(and that's a cheap milk, nothing fancy) - that's an increase of 40% on milk alone.

Oh and to add to this - energy is bonkers. Last year I used to pay 3p/kWh for gas(the heating kind, not petrol), and 12p/kWh for electricity. Now it's 10p/kWh for gas and 34p/kWh for electricity with much higher standing charge(daily payment for being connected to the network) for both. In effect our energy bill tripled from £100 a month to £300 a month.

Thanks for sharing (this goes for everyone adjacent too; I figure it's better to say once than spam)!

>I live in the UK, and our weekly shop has gotten a lot more expensive than the 14%. Me and my wife did the calculation literally last month and our weekly Tesco order has gone up from £50 to £70-80.

Anecdotes like this (ie. "government says inflation is x% but my grocery bill went up y%", x < y) seems to be very popular. Why is there a discrepancy? Is there some sort of methodological issue on the part of government agencies (or in this case, private data providers)? Or is there some sort of sampling/recall bias on the part of internet commenters?

The government uses a "basket of goods approach" that allows for substitutions and is averaged out over multiple grocery stores.

As someone pointed to in this thread, half of the inflation is attributed to profit increases for the grocer. Thus, it stands to reason that groceries that aren't packing on the profits would see lower price increases. So where you're shopping matters a lot.

I am completely disinterested in the "record profits" narrative, of course if the base cost goes up, and margin % stays the same you will have "record profits"

This is an emotional argument targeted the same crowd (63% of the US Population by recent survey) that believes stimulus checks should be used to fight inflation

I want to see what the profit margin % is, not what the raw profit is. I have yet to see anyone show a "record increase in profit margin" only headlines in currency not percentage

> course if the base cost goes up, and margin % stays the same you will have "record profits"

Yes, we know this. But we disagree it is a good thing to maintain a constant percentage margin.

Tesco’s (etc.) isn't innovating. It's being rewarded solely for putting its prices up significantly.

Ordinary people are being forced and asked to afford less. Corporates could also show some restraint.

This is showing extreme business ignorance, I am not sure about Tesco, or UK grocers, but in the US the average margin is around 3%, this is one of if not the lowest margin industries. Keeping that margin at 3%, even if raw profits increase is a responsible business model, margin that low can put businesses in terrible places when recessions hit.

To believe grocers to stick to a raw profit number, and not look at margin at all is ridiculous and irresponsible to not only the shareholders of the company but the employee's and customers as well

Your advice is what leads to store closings and food deserts

Society won't gain much if a grocer keeps a steady 3% margin over base cost while capturing the increase in price instead of distributing it as part of salaries as well, don't you agree?

The record profit in figure is important when compared to employees' salaries, if those aren't increasing in proportion (as part of the cost) then the grocer owners are just increasing their wealth while impoverishing their own employees.

Well there are a few factors here, some percentage of the inflation is infact increase wages for workers at the grocer, this is what is keeping the margin the same. Here for example the 2 largest grocers are Kroger and Walmart, both have increased their wages several dollars per hour since 2019.

Further I hear all the time about "food deserts" and what not, The increase raw profit could be used for many things including expanding into those area's and could even make them profitable to service.

Finally they can use the money to expanding their technology, for example Kroger has invested heavily and made many awesome customer service enchantments to their mobile app, web site, and curb side pickup services (I know this because I am a weekly user of the app)

All 3 of these things I consider to be good for society

I am relatively highly paid and short of shamefully I never really paid much attention to prices when doing a shop (I live by myself, only occasionally have friends or girlfriend staying over so shop was never huge % of my monthly budget)

Recently i've been shopping a few times and when paying i've thought "holy shit _how_ much did X thing cost". Cheese is the big one.

One also noticeable thing is security tags on food items that never had them before, meat, the aforementioned cheese, even some deserts.

Seems like a lot of items are shrinking too. I never drink Lucozade (a sugary drink here) but when I walk past it I notice the bottles are only about 90% filled now.

We are very fortunate that on my salary we can put about £1000 a month into savings in a normal month. But in the last couple of months it's gone down to maybe £500. Partly because my partner is on maternity leave but mostly due to bills and mortgage going up.

I feel hugely sorry for those people who's finances don't have that buffer built in. It must be a scary time when there is almost nothing left to cut and you are still being expected to pay more.

Similar story here. My salary went up by a considerable amount back in December and our ability to save has now gone back to where it was before that raise with no life style or circumstance change.

Lots of people who live mostly pay to pay are very worried.

This is something I keep thinking about. I'm not rich by any means, but way over the national average and if I am starting to get concerned about the cost of things, how the hell can someone on minimum wage cope.

I think this comment makes me sound potentially like an asshole (hate talking about money due to this), I don't mean to make it sound that way, just trying to get across it feels like my purchasing power has been greatly affected.

In a supermarket beverages like Lucozade should have a price tag indicating the price per 100ml so you can compare that irrespective of whether the containers are filled. Most packaged products that make sense to measure in mass or volume units work the same (but the unit required is different for spices than for flour, for vanilla essence versus water, because you don't buy 5 kilos of nutmeg or 10ml of water)

The cheapest of something has become much more expensive, whereas the middle range has only gone up a little.

e.g. Aldi:

250g cheapest butter was £1.45 now £1.95

250g premium butter was £1.95 now £2.10

That's an 8% increase for me because I always bought the nice stuff anyway and I continue to but it's a 35% increase for someone who was already buying the cheapest item.

There's also a notable lack of choice recently.

One tiny example I was frustrated by recently... soy sauce. You used to be able to get light / dark / reduced salt / premium versions of soy sauce in most supermarkets.

Recently I had a couple of weeks where I couldn't find any at all, and now it's down to just a single brand of supermarket own dark soy sauce.

I'm a bit of a food/cooking nut so since covid supply issues I now buy anything I'm not willing to substitute in bulk from reliable outlets (usually ethnic shops) and rely on supermarkets only for basic perishable 'English food'- vegetables, meat, dairy. Though even those items are in poor supply sometimes.

It looks like stuff that has higher margins go up less. With higher margins, sellers can still profit the same price per unit (even if that profit has less purchasing power) than items with smaller margins.

It's more nuanced in the UK too, the headline figure is calculated on a "basket" of goods each of which might change in price individually. I didn't find the exact contents and weightings, but there's an article on it here with a little widget that highlights some of the changes at various points in last ~100 years: https://www.ons.gov.uk/economy/inflationandpriceindices/arti...

Doing the weekly food shop over the last 12 months has felt reasonably nuts. For the most part, we usually get the same stuff each week (fruit/veg/meat/dried food etc...) and it's gone from being about £100 to almost £170. Fruit and veg prices in particular seem really crazy.

For a while now food has seemed to be getting more expensive very quickly so this isn’t a surprise. It’s very easy to spend £50 on just a bag or two of groceries (albeit buying some fancy stuff).

Cheaper items have gone up a lot. They are still cheap in absolute terms (55p for six pitta breads) but the price increase is very difficult for people on the breadline.

The UK’s inflation problem is compounded by the fact that wages have stagnated for over a decade now. Salaries are really quite low. Only 15% of income tax payers are on the higher rate (over £50k). That was sort of manageable during the period of low interest rates but I really don’t know what people are going to do now.

Yes, I'm in the Uk and it sounds the same as you describe in the US. Inflation rates are very variable depending on the product.

From memory, in my local supermarket for example,

tea is still about 0.90/1.00 a box.

Freshly squeezed orange juice has gone from about 1.60 to 2.20

Butter has gone up a lot (don't have numbers)

chocolate biscuits not much increase (why not?)

milk prices are higher for organic, not so much increase on non-organic.

Fruit and vegetables a bit higher maybe, but not that noticeable as yet.

I can't think of much that's gone down, but it might have done.

edit: found and correct juice price 2.30->2.20

> Butter has gone up a lot (don't have numbers)

Was pretty stable (over years) at:

    Country Life - £1.40-1.60
    Waitrose (supermarket) own - £1.30-1.40

Now:

    CL - £2.65
    Waitrose - £2.20

and that's where it's settled, was pretty volatile (up to a pound or so higher) for a while.

What's curious to me is that milk & cheese don't seem to have gone up so much nor been so volatile.

I'm really surprised you say that, because in my experience all 3 of those have massively gone up in price.

Like I said in my other comment - 4 pints of milk have gone up from 1.10 to 1.55(40% increase), countrylife butter(we buy the 500g pack) could be had for £3, maybe even £2.50 in a deal, now it's £4.25 at both tesco and sainsburys.

Tesco also removed their cheese deal which they had for years, where you could buy any two packs for £3, it went up to £3.50, and now it's £4 for two packs. Literally a 33% increase in less than a year.

I noticed cereal has gone up a lot (£5 for Weetabix) but bread hasn't really. Not sure why that would be.

I think bread is often a loss-leader for supermarkets - my local Morrisons has amazing fresh bread by the entrance for just 60p a loaf.

I'm sure it must cost more than that to have an in-store bakery constantly churning them out.

Bread definitely has gone up, it's not as dramatic but this loaf has gone from £1.10 to £1.25 in under a year: https://www.tesco.com/groceries/en-GB/products/300134377

That's still a 13% rise, even if it's not as dramatic as the near 50% on things like butter.

I am a lead frontend engineer. I am in the very high salary percentile, probably top %2-3, excluding CEOs. I can barely save.

I don't have a car. I don't have any expensive hobbies, gym subscription or anything.

I am paying %50 of my salary to rent & bills in Zone 1, Angel, Islington. I keep looking for alternatives, but rents have gone further up since I got in 6 months ago.

Maybe I don't understand the UK real estate market, but how in the world is this possible? I live in one of the most expensive retail and commercial areas in the world (NYC), and my rent is maybe 30% of my post-tax take-home.

UK salaries are low. Even lots of lead/senior devs working in London are on less than £100k. That’s high for the UK but not much compared to what junior devs can get in the Bay Area.

And if someone lives in Zone 1 or even in the city directly, then those £100k devs are competing for rent with £200k+ bankers and financiers, so yes, I can absolutely believe that.

this is possible since global money factory (the thing you are paid with) is in the us (nyc in fact) and so you are closer to the spigot

I don't think that's the reason. London is one of the world's financial centers.

Not only that, my place is not even fancy by any standards. It is actually a pretty old building with patches here and there.

If I wanted a nice newly built (newer than 15 years) place, I would have to pay around %70-90 of my salary.

London housing market is ,famously, a joke, literally. There is a whole trend of Tiktok videos making fun of housing ads in London.

A noticeable feature of the Sainsbury’s website is that weights encoded in the URLs don’t change with the weight in the webpage as shrinkflation happens. So the following link to 115g of ham still has 125g in the link itself:

\www.sainsburys.co.uk/gol-ui/product/sainsburys-british-cooked-ham-125g

https://www.sainsburys.co.uk/gol-ui/product/sainsburys-briti...

Thanks for asking this question. For what it's worth, the general sentiment in the answers feels very similar to what I'm seeing in the US, where my grocery bill has gone up about 40% in the past year.

My general hypothesis has been that since grocery costs make up a relatively small percentage of overall budgets in affluent urban areas that stores have more room to increase prices. I'm curious what is happening in more urban areas where people are on tighter in budgets to begin with.

We ate lunch for ~£6 today - 4 people. Cod[0], mashed potatoes[1], Brussels sprouts[2], Broccoli[3]

[0]https://www.iceland.co.uk/p/the-fish-market-cod-fillets-320g... (3 for £10! - I stocked some in the fridge as well!) [1]https://www.iceland.co.uk/p/garden-of-elveden-baby-salad-pot... [2]https://www.iceland.co.uk/p/iceland-button-sprouts-900g/8369... [3]https://www.iceland.co.uk/p/iceland-broccoli-florets-800g/83...

If you cook yourself it's all good.

Our monthly grocery bill is actually less because we switched to Lidl, Tesco and Iceland. We do notice higher energy bills but it's still manageable.

One really noticeable thing is the shrinkflation. Packets for everything getting smaller in supermarkets.

I've noticed this for "junk" goods in the US (e.g. candy and chips), but less so for normal groceries (since most things are sold in common sizes, or have distinctive shapes). Is it your impression that shrinkflation is happening uniformly, or is it isolated to particular goods?

I'm starting to see shrinkflation happen with staples such as flour and sugar. Have definitely noticed it now that we're preparing for the holiday bake. The price of butter has remained remarkably stable here in the States. Spices are also getting more expensive. The name brand spices have always been expensive, but now even the store brand spices are soaring in cost.

That's interesting -- in my part of the US flour and sugar have been pretty consistent, but butter is much more expensive (like $6-7/lb) when it isn't on sale.

I bake a lot, haven't noticed flour or sugar getting any smaller? They're the same size bags as they always are

I'm starting to see 3.5 lb bags of flour showing up. By no means universal, but I'm starting to see them and I've never seen them before. I have family in all different areas of the country and we're seeing dramatic differences in food costs between regions that we've never seen before. But it's not across the board. Like you say, butter has gotten quite expensive where you are - but it hasn't here.

More stores are selling 4 or 3lb flour bags vs prior 5.

Coffee is now 10.5 oz instead of 12-16.

Even cereal has shrunk

That’s just one way of masking it. Here in Poland someone leaked a conversation with a premium dog food producer who admitted adding some dubious stuff into their food to maintain current price. I just found out had some cans in my storage (this thing lasts for years) and notice the aroma and texture difference to current units is extremely obvious.

Comparing digital receipts from a year ago for roughly same set of groceries, its more like 30%-40%.

It's not just food. Purchase history in online stores shows current prices are insanely high - electronics alone up to 100% increase.

Our usual weekly shop (which rarely changes at all) is now around £75 as opposed to £55-60 before.

Petrol and energy are WAY more expensive.

Everything is just more pricey at the moment.

That shopping is literally 36% more expensive.

It's painful. Within my late 20's age group, the number one topic of conversation seems to be a lack money. It's impossible to get my group of friends together at the moment as everyone is scraping the barrel. Most are starting to accrue pretty large amounts of debt to get by. I've spent the last 6 months cutting my subscriptions, nights out, shopping, and I'm still spending more than my take-home most months.

---

To give some context, here's a completely honest account of my last months spending which was only a little above average the last 9 months:

£926 in bills (£750 rent; the rest in assorted council tax, utilities, phone, insurance etc).

- Up £70 YoY, driven by gas/electric.

£270 in groceries.

- Up £100.

£280 in entertainment (rugby/gig/festival tickets, books, a day out to a local town, trip to the movies, spotify and audible).

- Up about £50, although this is highly variable month to month.

£400 on eating out (birthday meal, pub with friends, date night, a couple of takeaways, and one regretfully expensive night out).

- Way up, about £150, driven by the cost of drinking and eating out. This is the one I'm looking to drive down the most.

£180 in transport (fuel and public transport).

- About the same, but only because I avoid driving anywhere as much as possible. If I still drove to work, this would be double. My car needs repairs but I'm putting it off.

£130 on shopping (clothes, birthday gifts).

- The same, due to a reduction in spending. I shop almost entirely second-hand now.

All in all, I'm spending about £400 a month more, while doing and purchasing much less.

I earn ~40k a year as an electronics engineer. My take home after tax (12% earnings taken for national insurance, 20% for income), student loan (9% for undergrad, and another 6% for post-grad), and 10% for stock EPP (which I can sell every 6 months), was £1850 (this shifts around with bonuses). I used to socialise 3-4 days a week and managed to put away £200 a month minimum. Now I socialise once every 10 days roughly, and I'm down the same. Don't get me wrong, I'm well aware there's still things I can do to squirrel some money away, but I'm trying to hold on to some sort of QoL together.

The median income for 22-29 y/o group in the UK is £24,600. I'm privileged enough to only have to worry about losing my social life. I dread to think how badly things are going for everyone else.

Germany, just prices in Euro from the cheapest Aldi store (you cannot get anywhere cheaper):

Barilla pasta, 500g: 0.75 -> 1.49

Basmati rice, 1kg: 1.99 -> 2.69

White sugar, 1kg: 0.45 -> 1.35

White flour, 1kg: 0.39 -> 0.55

Sunflower oil, 1 liter: 0.99 -> 3.99

I guess that sunflower was more like 7.99 few months ago, and practically impossible to find (and its equivalents like colza or grape seed).

We shop across the border in France and I see similar trends. Since family of 4 and tons of kid-related items, before we practically never hit 200 euro mark for big weekly shopping unless adding something special 1-off. Now we are more like 250 euro and even higher, and I keep putting the +-same things in the shopping cart.

From an anecdotal perspective it's just applying more and more pressure on people I know. Food bank usage is sky rocketing and I'm seeing a lot more requests from them as a result as they're struggling to keep up with the demand.

The UK has heavy class divides and things are getting really difficult for those in the working class. For those in the middle class they're not struggling with food or fuel, but the ability to build wealth and invest is starting to erode.

Electricity is much more expensive than its ever been. 60-odd percent comes from gas turbines. That drives the raw cost of everything up.

It's definitely gradual, and many things with margins are losing profits rather than just doubling in price, but if this effect is sustained, many businesses just won't be able to afford to stay open.

If it's a cold winter, many will suffer in cold. We turned our heating on for a few hours a couple of days ago and it cost £7 (for mere hours). We can afford this, many can't.

Our mortgage repayments doubled recently. We now pay less into savings. It's fixed for another 2 years but who knows where we'll be after that.

So yeah, the worst is yet to come and I think we all know it.

In the UK and a bit anal about expenses (track every expense for the last 10 years).

I can only speak about groceries. I paid around £200 more per month for the same basket, which is consistent with the claim. Eating out is definitely more expensive and probably around 20-25%.

Everything else, I'm a bit of an outlier, I rent but luckily pay the same for a long time, actively using less heating, not a big goods consumer in general.

Others have already commented on food and energy, but the one that stood out to me was regional holiday accommodation - weekend getaway stuff. Feels substantially up from prior years - way about the 14.7% quoted. Almost like covid reset it to far higher.

Grocery prices have been going up a lot, and for a lot longer than just the last year. "Shrinkflation" is a thing too. I just bought a packet of hobnobs which has to be 2/3rds the size of a normal packet from a year or two ago.

Honestly the only place I've noticed it is the petrol pump. Fuel prices shot up dramatically early in the year. They're back down now from the peak, but still higher than they were a year ago.

Based on gurgus' adjacent comment, you should probably be eating more vegetables and fruits.

and milk products

It could be that it they only meant they only notice petrol price changes because during a weekly shop you're looking at dozens of items, and maybe aren't in the habit of looking at each one then at the end you pay for everything at once. Whereas petrol prices are something you tend to specifically look out for when you're out and about, and it's the main component of the bill when you go to pay.

This has me curious: has the UK's gas prices gone up consistently with "normal" inflation, or have they stayed relatively static against it until now?

Gas is already cheap in the US, but it's actually cheaper in real terms (adjusting for inflation and engine efficiency) to drive in 2022 than it was in ~2005. Is it the same there?

So I think that most people "feel" as if the price of petrol has been going up, but it really hasn't - it's been mostly frozen for years now.

As an example - I found in my google photos this picture from 2011, literally 11 years ago, and it shows petrol at 134p/litre, which is actually more expensive than it has been for few years(other than this year, obviously). Definitely 2016-2020 petrol has been around 120p/litre, with 130p/litre for premium(which I remember well because I had a sports car for those 4 years and remember thinking that 130p/litre is expensive for fuel).

https://imgur.com/a/JqT15rm

https://www.racfoundation.org/data/uk-pump-prices-over-time

Prices are a bit higher but it varies from item to item. Nothing seems that out of reach mind. I think my weekly food shop has gone from £50-£55 to £65-£70.

Lots of scaremongering, lots of panicked news article but nothing tangible i've seen on the ground.

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