Cost of Living - How are you handling it?

Benzin wrote:We've still got £400 credit from previous supplier before they went under so hopefully will cover us a bit.

Boss told me I'm getting a small pay rise too. Every little will help especially with baby turning up in a few months.

I fixed my prices last October and turned off my boiler completely. My last bill was £40 for electricity but I’ve been overpaying because next October the price hike will be a shock to the system. I doubt Scottish Power will let me continue paying 2021 prices for my energy consumption.

twitter.com/guardian/status/1558530685853392896

The Labour leader, Keir Starmer, is to call for a ban on crippling energy price rises this autumn in a move that would save the average household more than £2,000 a year on gas and electricity bills, the Observer can reveal.

The demand to freeze the energy price cap at the current £1,971 level – blocking the regulator Ofgem from allowing a huge anticipated rise to around £3,600 in October – will place intense pressure on the Tory leadership candidates Liz Truss and Rishi Sunak to follow suit when one becomes prime minister.

Starmer’s plan, to be announced on Monday, comes as 70 of the country’s biggest charities and organisations across health, mental health, education, care and other sectors, today warn Truss and Sunak in a joint letter of dire consequences throughout British society unless they take more drastic action to address the energy and wider cost of living crises.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-62496728

Nurseries being forced to close at short notice due to increasing costs and lack of staff.

Nursery fees are my second biggest expense every month after my mortgage, and they already increased by 5% earlier this year. If they go up, again, we'll be close to it being more worthwhile one of us stopping work and becoming a stay at home parent.

If they have to start closing ad hoc, then we're going to be losing out with unpaid time off as well. Really feel for anyone in a precarious employment position who then has to keep requesting additional days off for childcare.

Garth wrote:

twitter.com/guardian/status/1558530685853392896

The Labour leader, Keir Starmer, is to call for a ban on crippling energy price rises this autumn in a move that would save the average household more than £2,000 a year on gas and electricity bills, the Observer can reveal.

The demand to freeze the energy price cap at the current £1,971 level – blocking the regulator Ofgem from allowing a huge anticipated rise to around £3,600 in October – will place intense pressure on the Tory leadership candidates Liz Truss and Rishi Sunak to follow suit when one becomes prime minister.

Starmer’s plan, to be announced on Monday, comes as 70 of the country’s biggest charities and organisations across health, mental health, education, care and other sectors, today warn Truss and Sunak in a joint letter of dire consequences throughout British society unless they take more drastic action to address the energy and wider cost of living crises.

Finally he's doing something that the opposition should be doing.

My household is probably going to raise the Jolly Roger for some of our TV outgoings. The NHL and 4K disc rental service we use adds up to £30/m, something I can hopefully watch via…other methods.
I pay Netflix (4K), Disney+ and Prime Video and my family have at it, but I’ll be asking them to pony up some scrilla to help me out.

For those of you in need of a new laptop, Currys has increased their interest-free promotion to 24 months on a wide range.

What about those of us currently paying off a Curry's purchase? :slol:

Aren't those type of things usually based on your credit score? I remember when my Mum bought a sofa she was unable to take out anything else until she'd paid it off.

twitter.com/natalieahood/status/1556025795461713921

twitter.com/natalieahood/status/1557398220564844547

Apparently there is no price cap for businesses.

Say goodbye to small takeaways.

Can't do anything that might harm energy company profits, though. That would be bashing business.

Steady hand on the tiller

Profit isn't a dirty word!

I don't get how "energy prices have to rise because of the increasing wholesale prices"... when the energy companies are already making record profits.

I guess fish and chips will now mean a packet of fish fingers and some oven chips.

Using the oven! Get a load of Rockefeller here.

jawa_ wrote:I don't get how "energy prices have to rise because of the increasing wholesale prices"... when the energy companies are already making record profits.

It's a strange situation. As I understand it the suppliers themselves aren't making record profits at the moment, but many suppliers are owned by companies that also own the production/wholesale side and it's that part that's making the record profit. So whilst Centrica are making record profit, the British Gas arm is seeing massive reductions. For the bug suppliers that isn't an issue, but for the small suppliers they're basically screwed as they don't have a wholesale side to make up the numbers.

That's why just nationalising the suppliers isn't going to really fix anything, a nationalised supplier is still going to be at the whims of the privately owned wholesale market. It's the production/wholesale side that needs to be nationalised right now as that's where the current price gouging is coming from.

Ideally the whole chain would be nationalised, from extraction and production of energy to end user supply. The only thing it wouldn't solve is the price of energy we need to import, but it would still being costs right down (and in cases where the UK was exporting energy would allow the government to make a bit of profit to invest back into public utilities/services)

jawa_ wrote:I don't get how "energy prices have to rise because of the increasing wholesale prices"... when the energy companies are already making record profits.

The retail energy companies aren't making record profits. You'll get more of them going out of business if the cap is frozen without any kind of support.

Of course, some companies have interests in both the wholesale and retail markets. Which is why the windfall tax needs to happen on the wholesale side so the burden on the retail market is met by their insane profits and not by the public.

Tomous wrote:
jawa_ wrote:I don't get how "energy prices have to rise because of the increasing wholesale prices"... when the energy companies are already making record profits.

The retail energy companies aren't making record profits. You'll get more of them going out of business if the cap is frozen without any kind of support.

It's worth also mentioning that the price cap only applies to retail clients (I'm 99% sure).
Small businesses (and large but smaller will be harder hit) are still in the firing line even if Lab's proposal

Thanks, guys. So if I've got this right... the producers selling at wholesale are almost printing their own money whilst some of those companies selling to consumers and business are struggling.

Probs no way out if this, really, unless we somehow use something different for our energy source? Or, as others have said, tax the profits of the producers? I guess that the former would be an impossibility for the near-to-medium future whilst the latter is probably the way forward but notoriously difficult to carry out?

twitter.com/musicvenuetrust/status/1559446265863311360

We can say goodbye to live music as well.

Cost of Living - How are you handling it?

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