‘Everything’s going up apart from wages’: one UK family’s struggle to beat rising cost of living
When inflation was last running at 7% Margaret Daly was training to be a teacher and bringing up a young family, so money was tight. “In the early 1990s I was studying,” she says. “That was very difficult. I had two small children and I was always trying to make ends meet. When I qualified it took a few years after all that struggling and living frugally to find my feet.”
As the 90s wore on, things improved for Margaret, now 60, as she progressed through her career and saved up enough to buy a home. Throughout the rest of the decade and the early 2000s her salary rose, against a backdrop of inflation that was typically 1.5-2.5%.
When the recession hit in 2009 she weathered the storm. But now, four years after she retired, things are getting harder for Margaret, who lives in Colchester. “At the beginning of retirement the pension I was getting was enough – I live comfortably; I could buy what I wanted to buy; I could save a bit of it.”
During the pandemic, there was not much to spend money on. But now she says her bucket list has “gone out of the window” and she is “starting to worry because everything has gone up”.
“I’m having to be a bit more savvy when I shop – when I go to Tesco I get the Clubcard offers or look for the yellow stickers. I’ll buy the fruit and veg that’s on offer.”
In Norwich her son Jon, who works for the insurance company Aviva, and daughter-in-law Jess, who works for the University of East Anglia, both 35 with an 13-month-old daughter, Robin, and a cat called Polly, have noticed the same. The Dalys, who first spoke to the Guardian about their soaring bills late last year, are also thinking twice before putting anything in their trolley.
“There are non-essential items that I just don’t buy any more,” says
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