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Comment by stegosaurus | Hacker News Reader

Nothing except housing is relevant. Nothing at all.

For a UK citizen buying a home (or renting cheaply and saving) is the thing to do. It is the first step along the way to retirement. It's the only thing that matters.

If housing is cheap we are rich. If housing is expensive we are poor.

Hell, the fact that 'stuff' is getting cheaper may well be because demand is repressed by the fact that everyone is scrambling to pay the rent and has no disposable income.

I maintain that the price of stuff is totally irrelevant. We can live without stuff (regardless of whether the average person actually does). We can't live without shelter.

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I'd say food is very relevant for most people, especially since prices have gone up so much in the past 5 years or so. For many their food bill will be the 2nd or 3rd most expensive monthly outlay.

My experience is the opposite. I've never had to worry about food; in fact I'm always amazed at how cheap food is, at least if you stick to economy brands. Rent and heating have always been the big ones for me.

The rise in food banks in recent years would appear to contradict your experience.

If there indeed is a rise. We've only been recording the existence of food banks for the last few years, so the rise could be attributed to the time its taking to catalogue them.

Re posts below:

Food is not expensive. It is expensive when you have already spent all of your money on housing and transport, obviously. (It is about 10% of min wage in UK).

That's kind of the point I'm trying to make; if housing is cheap then inflation is actually a reasonable metric. If it takes up most of your income it is really just a measure of 'how much the things you already cannot afford are increasing by'.

When you have a stable home, spending money is fine! Until you do, every pence spent is just taking you further away from that stability.

Transport costs for commuters is the other big one

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