POLL: Real Inflation figures

beingjdc

PasturesNew wrote: »

Food: 2% of income

Can I have your recipe book please! I can't believe anyone's food bill is less than a third of their electricity / gas bill...

WillowCat

You can get your own inflation by going to http://www.statistics.gov.uk/pic/ and entering in your expenditures.

Wow - I tried mine - currently 9.5%, and was 10.5% in August.

Thing is my biggest bill is rail fares (500 per month), mortgage, council tax, fuel (road & home) and food. I spend next to nothing on clothes, electrical items, furniture etc as they've all been bought and paid for in the past. We don't really do foreign holidays or meals out etc......

Take out the rail fares bit and my spending pattern is not far off a pensioners. What depresses me is that the statistics are skewed towards discretionary spending, but inflation on essential spending is higher. Yet the government pensions increases are not based on this essential spending.

izzwizz_2

I agree Willow cat, it seems to me that personal inflation is much higher for those who are less well off and whose spending is mostly on essential items, but increases in payments are based on RPI which is more representative of the spending patterns of people with more disposable income.

I'd estimate our personal inflation to be over 10% - probably 90% of our outgoings are on food, fuel, council tax & water rates.

Joyful

Mines the same as Izzwizz for the same reasons. 10.2% That's scarey.

ModernSlave

Thanks Lavendyr - that's exactly the kind of info I was hoping to collate!

Please could people post their results here? Going to do mine now.

Generali

WillowCat wrote: »

Wow - I tried mine - currently 9.5%, and was 10.5% in August.

Thing is my biggest bill is rail fares (500 per month), mortgage, council tax, fuel (road & home) and food. I spend next to nothing on clothes, electrical items, furniture etc as they've all been bought and paid for in the past. We don't really do foreign holidays or meals out etc......

Take out the rail fares bit and my spending pattern is not far off a pensioners. What depresses me is that the statistics are skewed towards discretionary spending, but inflation on essential spending is higher. Yet the government pensions increases are not based on this essential spending.

It gets worse than that for pensioners. As you get older you tend to require more services as you become less able to do things for yourself. The price of services rises more closely to wages than the RPI and wages tend to rise faster than the RPI, most of the time at least. That has a tendancy to push pensioners behind long term.

Let's not forget that the real price of food has been falling for the past 20 years and fuel was at historically lowish prices for a long time too so for a long time the essential spending prices were rising at a lower rate than the RPI as a whole.

Mozette

merlinthehappypig wrote: »

Pay rises are reportedly at around 4.5% which is always a decent indication.

:rotfl: :rotfl: :rotfl: :rotfl: :rotfl:

Oh I wish!!!

Spark

[QUOTE
Originally Posted by merlinthehappypig
Pay rises are reportedly at around 4.5% which is always a decent indication][/QUOTE]

That is if you're lucky enough to have a payrise!

DaveyDave_3

But all of these count for nothing. Despite the obvious increases in transportation, fuel, and food cost apparently CPI is still 2.1%!!. Yeah right. Unfornuately, it is this measure of inflation that is used by the BoE to control interest rates (or vica versa).

It is sad reflection on the state of the ecomony that the BoE has abandoned any sensible consideration of the 'true' inflation in its pursuit of cushioning the impending large monetary calamity and likely recession that may result. Happy New Year!.

ManAtHome

Even stranger - EU CPI is around 3.1% and the Euro had gone up 10% against the pound in the last year (implying 3.4% CPI in quids). Maybe the EU Cheese and Plasma Index has more cheese in it..?