MSE News: Households face squeeze as inflation bites

Former_MSE_Guy

This is the discussion thread for the following MSE News Story:

"Consumers' spending power is at its lowest since 1921 as wages fail to keep up with the soaring cost of living ..."

Read the full story:
Households face squeeze as inflation bites

Two9A

And don't we know it.

It's not just the big things, either: sure, I spend silly amounts on petrol to get to work, but my breakfast cereal has gone up by 30p, and what little savings I have are worth less every day.

These next few years are the absolute best time to be laden with debt, that's for sure... :rotfl:

Paulgonnabedebtfree

Two9A wrote: »

And don't we know it.

It's not just the big things, either: sure, I spend silly amounts on petrol to get to work, but my breakfast cereal has gone up by 30p, and what little savings I have are worth less every day.

These next few years are the absolute best time to be laden with debt, that's for sure... :rotfl:

So far I've been luckier than many because as a self-employed person who sells a comparatively low cost service, there always seem to be customers to replace those lost. This could change of course if their (and my) mortgages go up soon as widely predicted. Although it's difficult putting my own prices up in a squeeze, I at least still have the option of working an extra few hours a week to pay my way. New customers are getting harder to find though even with low mortgage rates. I find I'm having to travel a bit farther afield and keep the prices a bit keener than I would wish. If anyone thinks I am lucky to be in such a situation with still having some choices, I would say that it's by design. I learned from having three redundancies in two years in the last bad recession (early 90s). I decided that I would never again (unless there was no other choice) have all my income coming from one place. Even now I have a personal rule not to be too reliant on individual customers. No more than 15% of my turnover from one individual customer - unless I can sub the work out - when losing the customer wouldn't hurt so much.

As for breakfast cereal, the very basic Asda and Sainsburys corn flakes seem to be kept low in price and porridge is still cheap. The diesel bill is silly though. Not much I can do about that really - especially as I've had to widen my catchment area to get new customers. I do tend to charge a bit higher for customers who are further out though.

smk77

MSE_Guy wrote: »

"Consumers' spending power is at its lowest since 1921 as wages fail to keep up with the soaring cost of living ..."

Did anyone at MSE read the article at CEBR because that certainly is not what it said!

during 2011 we'll have 2% less disposable income than 2010. This is the biggest "squeeze" (i.e. current year compared to previous year) since 1921. However, that is not the same as having lowest "consumer spending power" since 1921.