Cpi+0.2%>2.90/rpi+0.2%>3.3%

CLAPTON

last July petrol at my local garage was 132.9 per litre

yesterday is was 132.9

that conclusively proves that year on year inflation is zero.

wotsthat

IronWolf wrote: »

Not a guess, just observation.

For example the sandwich I usually buy at lunch has gone from £1.80 to £2. I used to buy 1kg of turkey for £6, now the size of the portion has been reduced to 800g, still £6. That's a 25% price increase and accounts for about half my food bill.

Food and non-alcoholic beverages were up by 3.8% in June YoY.

Your spending is way out of line with the CPI food basket - food prices have fallen since April.

OffGridLiving

IronWolf wrote: »

Not a guess, just observation.

For example the sandwich I usually buy at lunch has gone from £1.80 to £2. I used to buy 1kg of turkey for £6, now the size of the portion has been reduced to 800g, still £6. That's a 25% price increase and accounts for about half my food bill.

The simple solution is to take a packed lunch to work with you. You could more than half that lunch bill.

If meat products are more expensive, then bulk up the meal with some veggies and/or salad. Both your bank account and body will thank you for it.

As far as reducing other inflationary items, energy bills are expected to rise much faster than inflation. To combat this, we've been installing insulation into the loft, internal walls, floor spaces. We're soon going to be replacing windows to reduce drafts. I calculate that we will halve our heating bill with these changes.

We've already reduced our electricity bill at an inflation busting rate by fitting LED lights and energy efficient white goods. Apart from installing a heat pump tumble dryer, we've reached the stage where we can't reduce our electricity consumption any further, so the next step is to look at generation and get PV fitted. Again, this should halve our electricity bills. The final step I have been considering is investing in energy companies and using the dividend to pay the (much smaller) electricity bill. In a sense, I'd effectively have no electricity bills.

wotsthat

Graham_Devon wrote: »

Cathdral city cheese has gone from 400g to 350g, and it's now 300g!

Noticed last night actually as I opened a pack and thought it was incredibly thin while cutting it. Checked it out and 300g. They have kept the cheese the same length, so still looks like one of the large blocks, but cut down the width of it. Makes a mockery of cheese on toast! Slices no longer fit right!

Same price though.

We're quite undemanding as consumers such is the abundance of cheap food in the UK.

You would have been better off if Cathedral City had kept the 400g pack size and put a price increase through. Reducing pack sizes doesn't deliver a proportional saving in overhead costs so it's relatively more expensive to produce a 300g pack than a 400g pack.

The retailer assumes that the consumer is more conscious of price point than price/ gram. The consumer seems to happy to be stiffed by both inflation and the additional costs of smaller packs whilst the retailer and producer maintain margins.

GhIFA

Graham_Devon wrote: »

Cathdral city cheese has gone from 400g to 350g, and it's now 300g!

Noticed last night actually as I opened a pack and thought it was incredibly thin while cutting it. Checked it out and 300g. They have kept the cheese the same length, so still looks like one of the large blocks, but cut down the width of it. Makes a mockery of cheese on toast! Slices no longer fit right!

Same price though.

No, this is good news - Rather than eat all 400g, I'll only eat 300g. Hopefully this will drive waistline deflation!

Generali

It's interesting to see that if you look at how weights have changed over time,

http://www.ons.gov.uk/ons/rel/cpi/consumer-price-indices/june-2013/consumer-price-inflation-reference-tables.xls

opens in Excel, table 11

spending on food and non-alcoholic beverages is down from 14.4% of total spending measured by the CPI to 10.6% while spending on misc items (financial services, jewellery and 'personal grooming products') has increased massively as has spending in hotels and restaurants.

Conrad

People keep telling me no one has any money, so how does this square with rising prices?

My own hunch is people have more money than the statistics show. Even had a basic engineering contractor for network rail in, who's salary is paid by an off shore outfit - all he gets is a monthly text notification, not even a payslip! Yet another example of 'the poor'?

Yesterday did a mortgage for a night shift carer - she gets £24k plus she owns 2 buy to lets making her a profit of £1500 per month and has no resi mortgage.
She employs a good accountant and shows nothing like her actual take home profit, she would be classed as what, one the poor or squeezed yet she is sitting pretty with an effective gross equivalent income of about £50k pa and no resi mortgage to pay - not bad for the carer people would assume is poor.


Her female spouse is a warehouse manager in the NHS making £53000 pa, so here we have again an oridinary working class couple on £100k pa effectively.

They are going to retire in 10 years on an equivalent of about £70k (again the buy to let income will be notionally reduced thanks to clever legal accounting). So much for naïve mp's on QT saying hardly any pensioners are well off - my day to day experience is that a very high proportion have high incomes.

IronWolf

OffGridLiving wrote: »

The simple solution is to take a packed lunch to work with you. You could more than half that lunch bill.

If meat products are more expensive, then bulk up the meal with some veggies and/or salad. Both your bank account and body will thank you for it.

As far as reducing other inflationary items, energy bills are expected to rise much faster than inflation. To combat this, we've been installing insulation into the loft, internal walls, floor spaces. We're soon going to be replacing windows to reduce drafts. I calculate that we will halve our heating bill with these changes.

We've already reduced our electricity bill at an inflation busting rate by fitting LED lights and energy efficient white goods. Apart from installing a heat pump tumble dryer, we've reached the stage where we can't reduce our electricity consumption any further, so the next step is to look at generation and get PV fitted. Again, this should halve our electricity bills. The final step I have been considering is investing in energy companies and using the dividend to pay the (much smaller) electricity bill. In a sense, I'd effectively have no electricity bills.

I do take a packed lunch now, but with my turkey meat going up 25% its inflating even faster.

My bodies like a greek god, it needs protein not veggies.

All these ways to save money are well and good, but doesnt change the fact that inflation is high, at least for me.

IronWolf

Generali wrote: »

It's interesting to see that if you look at how weights have changed over time,

http://www.ons.gov.uk/ons/rel/cpi/consumer-price-indices/june-2013/consumer-price-inflation-reference-tables.xls

opens in Excel, table 11

spending on food and non-alcoholic beverages is down from 14.4% of total spending measured by the CPI to 10.6% while spending on misc items (financial services, jewellery and 'personal grooming products') has increased massively as has spending in hotels and restaurants.

It just shows that CPI is a rubbish measure of inflation. People adjust their spending habbits because of inflation, you shouldn't incorporate that into the calculation of inflation !!!!!!! If I cut my energy usage by half because the price doubles, you cant just cut the weight in half and say "oh inflations low"

A better measure of inflation would be just the cost of fags and booze. That's the inflation of the working classes as my banker friend tells me

wotsthat

Generali wrote: »

It's interesting to see that if you look at how weights have changed over time,

http://www.ons.gov.uk/ons/rel/cpi/consumer-price-indices/june-2013/consumer-price-inflation-reference-tables.xls

opens in Excel, table 11

spending on food and non-alcoholic beverages is down from 14.4% of total spending measured by the CPI to 10.6% while spending on misc items (financial services, jewellery and 'personal grooming products') has increased massively as has spending in hotels and restaurants.

That's only since 1998 so quite a dramatic change even in that short timeframe. Is more historic data available? I'd bet that the proportion of spending on food has been on a decline for decades.

Electricity, gas & other fuels is interesting too - some fluctuations but spending has gone from 4.3% of total in 1998 to 4.8% today. Many wouldn't agree with that.