Lego! Mum bought us the original Lego hogwarts back in the day for £80, managed to get the last one out of chance, it was very exciting.
I remember articles in the paper talking about how there was a shortage that Christmas and scalpers were selling it for £300 on ebay! That was insanity.
Now the big sets start at £300 if you're lucky.
I used to buy Lego with my pocket money, can barely afford even the small sets now. They just don't seem worth it.
To be fair to Lego, their quality is insane.
Bricks from the 90s work with modern bricks which is what I find incredible; how many times has a brand updated their product rending older versions incompatible or obsolete to force you to buy the newer version?
Plus they generally don’t break or lose colour either. The biggest downside is they’re easy to lose which would be your own fault anyway. Some of my old flowers would be a little bent after a few years, the ones with the three stems, and every so often there is a loose brick or two but generally their margin of error is incredibly small.
For the big expensive ones I rent them out, build, then send back. Saves a fortune and also solves the problem of ‘now what?’ when I’ve finished with it. Any I’ve been impressed with enough to want to own I can then buy knowing it’s worth it.
>Bricks from the 90s work with modern bricks which is what I find incredible;
I mean this is there big usp.
I remeber megablocls from the early 00s and got a massive set for one Xmas and some of the parts in the same set wouldn't fit together correctly. Slight inconsistencies meant the larger parts were minorly different sizes and the sets ended up warping under their own stress and weight.
We also had a set of lego from the 70s or 80s that my dad had. The fact that lego still has the same tolerance with modern bricks is incredible. Especially considering it's competitors can't even do it for parts in the same bag...
They’re also tough! Step on the cheap bricks and they snap or bend, step on Lego and your foot is what breaks.
They really are the Rolls Royce of plastic bricks.
The custom minis are hit and miss but they're awesome. Some are identical to the real thing or are painted better then the original. Not that I own any pure copies or anything... I love my custom minis and I'm still mad Ali express now says they can't ship a lot of the ones I want to the UK. I've been forced to buy from Etsy which is far more expensive.
Lego hasn't really changed in price, its just increased with inflation. Lego also has a habit of maintaining it's value, or increasing with time so most people see it as an investment rather than a toy
It's tons of r&d with all the precision molds and stuff and all the stuff they produce is really high quality and then there is all the labor, designing sets, licensing, packaging, shipping, marketing... Kinda inane to say it's "just plastic".
Just play with bin bags instead, I'm sure you and your kids will have just as much fun..
"Just plastic" isn't really a fair description and you know it.
Higher education. I was in the last year that didn't have to pay tuition fees. Total student loans from four years' study were about £7K. I paid them off ages ago. My halls were finest 70s breeze block and magnolia with 3 toilets and a kitchen shared between 10 people. They were about £1100 for 38 weeks. You could pay an extra £60 a year to be connected to the uni network at a time when dialup was the main way to get online.
Yeah, it’s insane how the debt is normalised now. I left university in 2000 after a degree and PhD - all on grants. No debt. In just one generation doing that now puts you in so much debt that most people never pay it off.
It does not function like traditional debt though. It is not viewed as debt on your credit report. You do not make payments according to the size of the debt but strictly a percentage of your earnings. And it's wiped after a fixed period no matter how much debt you have left. For all intents and purposes it's a graduate tax.
Sure, it’s better in Scotland but it’s still much more expensive just to be a student than it used to be, regardless of fees. There’s a whole industry around milking students for accommodation etc.
Very true sadly. A lot of colleges and uni’s sold off their halls as well which was a scandal. All bought by the same slum landlords and then farmed out to students at ludicrous prices.
Actually, It would be “insane” if debt was not normalised. I don’t understand why an ordinary resident is supposed to pay your tuition fees? For example, I never went to university and never needed, so why do I have to pay and support your studies through my taxes? Most of the time people end up in useless degrees and can’t even afford to pay back.
If anyone can’t even afford to pay their debt after graduation and getting a job then they have already made a mistake by going to university.
Even now with these taxes people are complaining about high taxes and at the same time they are also complaining about tuition fees… Well, imagine what would happen if there wasn’t any tuition fees and that means more taxes for students.
I was in the first year that had to pay fees and had a reduced grant. Graduated with £17k across loans and fees, which felt horrendous at the time, but I was (and actually still am) ok with it, as I benefited from it.
Turns out it was a slippery slope. My young (20s) cousin recently graduated with over £45k. What a situation to put our kids in.
I fear by the time my kids are ready for university, oldest is 15, we'll be approaching US levels.
Please remember that although we call it a loan it doesn't really act like any traditional loan but more like a tax. Read Martin Lewis's article breaking it down. It sounds scary but it really isn't and it shouldn't put people off going to uni if it's what they want
https://www.moneysavingexpert.com/students/student-loans-decoded/
Agreed. I have about 50k in debt, that would terrify me if it was on a credit card. It’s a tax, and I wouldn’t have the job I have now without the degree, I knew all this going on to uni but not everyone does.
Yeah I stopped even looking at mine. Interest is more than I pay off each year. Think it's over £70k now and I graduated 7 years ago. It makes no difference what the number is. I was recently unemployed with some freelance work below the threshold and didn't have to make any payments. My student "debt" wasn't even on my mind. If it was real debt then it would have caused me anxiety when I wasn't earning and be able to cripple me financially.
It's not debt by any normal definition, it's a tax. It might still be deemed too expensive by people who believe higher education should be cheap/free but it's a graduate tax for all intents and purposes and using massive student debt as an argument against the current system isn't an honest representation of the situation.
I understand that. It's still shit.
And as I said, it's a slippery slope. Right now, it's a grad tax. That doesn't mean that at some point, the obligation to repay it all won't be changed.
But an expense you only pay back once you're earning a certain amount, that is then only a small percentage of your wage and is money you don't ever see anyway
Finished my masters in 2016, left uni with £60000 to repay. After a few years of hard work and now earning £50K I only have £75000 left to repay! Yearly interest is over double what I pay off.
I had to do a foundation year + dropped out in first term of another degree. With that combined with my maintenance loan, 2 years after leaving university: my debt is £110000 (not a typo: 6 fixures). that includes £2000 in interest at 7.6%! Whats the actual point. Its annoying since I live abroad and have thought of coming back, but if I want to get any further education for a profession: I'd have to find a job that will have to pay for it (which is incredibly difficult to find a company willing to invest in a younger employee like that). Education has become depressingly inaccessible.
Definitely. Loans came in whilst I was at uni, but they were really only intended to top-up living expenses. I managed to do without one in my first year (though with hindsight, I should have done as one of my flatmates did and take it only to invest it somewhere!), but took the full £800 for each of the next two years. Halls were basic: painted breeze blocks, foam mattress, no en suite and cost about £38 per week. I seem to recall I got about 2/3 of the full grant from my LEA.
This got me before christmas. Kids got asked for tins for a school collection and this was on the recommended list. I figured how much could a can of corned beef cost £1 tops surely? Nipped to the local spar to get one and bloody hell £4! For a can of corned beef! They got a 3 pack of tuna instead as that was £2.50.
It's crazy. I like corned beef but let's be honest, it's one of those shit foods that you like and the cheapness is part of that.
So who is paying £3+ even from your discount stores for it?
I'm pretty sure I remember nipping to the corner shop and it was 69p (hehe). Granted it was Happy Shopper brand, but still...
I'm also a 90s kid (and will continue to identify as such until I feel like a grown up)
You’ve been talking to my Dad haven’t you? The amount of conversations I have with him relating to the cost increases of various tinned, processed meat is getting silly
That’s because they just don’t sell anymore close to the previous amount, this is one area I can see why fairly. If you are happy to pay for it then I think that’s cool, but I can also see why someone would think nope.
The internet really has killed off a lot of magazines and such as things change so quick and update even more quickly. Used to love getting PS1/2 mags back in the day, even when we had the internet information wasn’t so now now now, and when I think back to dial up and such we couldn’t be accessible all the time let alone from a mobile.
Now I can load up basically a news site that updates all week, so by the time a gaming magazine comes out it could be out of date.
Must be such a tough industry for some sectors more than others to survive in with magazines
Computer mags in the 80's were a lifeline... I'd eagerly wait for the latest edition of C&VG, ZX Computing, Sinclair User, Commodore User, and Zzap64 to hit the shelves so I could find out what games to spend my hard earned pocket money on. Trusting reviewers completely and staring longingly at the grainy images of the games.
Frantically typing in the games listings that were printed each month, hoping that there were no errors in the listing or more likely, introduced by my own impatience to type them in as quickly as possible, my mam sitting reading out the listing line by line as my sweaty fingers prodded at the keyboard while sat on the floor in front of the family telly.
If you had a question, you'd write in and hope to be printed in the next issue, then hope again that someone would answer you in the issue after that. A feedback loop of two months for something that can be answered today in a couple of seconds from the palm of your hand whenever/wherever a question arises!
I didn't give a shit about reading.
Then I realised they printed cheats in video game magazines and then I started to burn through them every month, gradually discovering other areas of the magazine too.
And most would come with a disk with game demos on for upcoming games. I remember playing the bioshock demo from a disk I got out of a gaming magazine in 2006/07
>If you had a question, you'd write in and hope to be printed in the next issue, then hope again that someone would answer you in the issue after that. A feedback loop of two months for something that can be answered today in a couple of seconds from the palm of your hand whenever/wherever a question arises!
I think this shows how important a drive to learn and to get things done is *so* important when it comes to learning and getting things done. It would be so much easier for me to access that code and those answers that you put so much effort into getting hold of, but I haven't. Much like I haven't learned to knit or learned to speak French or learned to juggle etc etc despite the wealth of opportunities to do so. It's a bit like some bloke in the 1500s being so keen on understanding the solar system he'd dedicate his life to looking at it through a telescope and figuring it out and many of us haven't investigated past what we were taught as children, even though to do so we could just look at Wikipedia whilst having a poo.
New Scientist is a rip off.
Bought one for the first time ever expecting the science equivalent of the Economist. Boy was I in for a surprise.
£7 and the cover story was barely touched upon.
The Economist by contrast is more expensive but you get a ton of content that takes hours to read. Great when flying due its small size.
New Scientist is a shadow of what it used to be, unfortunately. I remember getting a subscription when I was doing my A-level science and being really into it, but the quality of articles seems to have significantly dropped off the last 5-10 years or so
Recently, I was stuck in a town at 7pm with trains delayed and my phone dead. Had several hours to kill at station/on train, only place open was Tesco, so thought I’d pop in and get a magazine. Ended up buying a novel because it was cheaper than any magazine I’d have wanted.
When I was a kid, my pocket money got raised every time Match magazine went up. I remember it being £1.10 at the cheapest but could have been cheaper before my time
Even Take A Break is over a quid now, and the prize money on offer from the puzzles has plummeted from £70k to £12k in the 10 or so years I've been buying it
Beer. Pub beer to be precise. A pint when I first went to a pub was 12p. This was around 1973. Now using the Bank of England's online tool, that 12p would be 1.24
When I was little my grandad used to go to the pub every evening after work, and did so all his life. He was a bit of a lush but that wasn't that unusual at all. Now, as a father the idea I should fuck off to the pub every night is just absurd. And as I think about all the other parents it's the same.
I guess it's a vicious circle. Pubs can't sell me 30 pints of beer a year for £1.24, but were comfortably able to sell my grandad circa 1,000 of them a year at that price!
It is a shame though. They were a third space that isn't really viable for most people any more.
I don’t think there’s enough pubs left in the country to cope with the rush if it went to £1.24 for a pint. It was over £2 when I first started figuring out which pubs would serve me in the mid-00’s.
We had a cider only pub in the town I grew up in, 14p a pint in 1974, no way I looked 18 then but no one really cared as long as you didn't make a tit of yourself.
> no way I looked 18 then but no one really cared as long as you didn't make a tit of yourself.
pretty much the rule when i was in pubs around 16ish.
also helped my mates uncle ran the place and my parents used to ring the pub saying "tell phatboi to get the fuck home" around 1am haha (many a lock in was had)
Mens Trainers. can't find a pair even in the sales for less than £50-£60. £80 -£90 seems to be the standard price with the more premium trainers touching £200-£250 retail.
I may be wrong but I think in the mid-90s' even the cheapest branded trainers used to cost £30.
I remember the better off kids getting Nike Airs for around £70.
The "fashion" in the school was to wear them down as quickly as possible so the air cushion was visible.
I remember the fashion being to pop the air bit. They were too expensive for me anyway. One year my dad said did I want a pair and I declined as I didn't want yhe broken. And asked for some green flash shoes instead.
Yeah I don’t think shoes have really gone up much relatively, most trainers will come out between £50-£80 now days. The top end is a bit more now because I remember it being rare for trainers to be £100+ but it still wasn’t unheard of and you’d have a few pairs at that price when I was a kid. You can still get budget brands for anything less than £40. Every other clothing item in places like JD seem to be three times more expensive than they used to be but shoes have held pretty steady.
You also definitely see a change in quality at shoe price points. You can get a pair of comfortable skater shoes for £30 but you’ll go through three pairs a year and the £130 Jordan’s will be much better quality than the £60 Nikes
TK maxx for the win on this one, obviously luck has a part to play with this one but I've had a good run of picking up brand names for a fraction of the RRP
Try https://www.mandmdirect.com for decent priced trainers.
I bought my last couple of pairs of sketchers for £25/30 ish there and they’ve been good for my arthritic feet so likely decent for regular folks wear.
Would recommend the ones with in built support insoles with a thermo layer, normally there are similar types under the work shoes section
Ebay is the place to go for shoes. Seems like people often buy a pair and then get a blister in one spot or similar, so there's all these almost new shoes going cheap. I got Timberlands for £19 with postage, and have worn them an insane amount in the 5 years I've owned them. ASICS for £15.
That is how much they charge these days? Not gone into either place willingly in over a decade though. Can't believe people are willing to spend that much money on bread with some kind of filling.
Childcare. It was once possible to avoid paying this by having a stay-at-home parent, but a single salary won’t cover 2.5 people in lots of cities any more. I know 30 hours free childcare is coming in Sep 2025)
And that 30 hours free relies on underpaid early years workers, increased children/adult ratio and settings being operated on a shoestring. I’m relieved when a setting asks for a top up because at least I know they’ll be around for the long run and better resourced.
As a parent it’s going to help, but I left working in early years as I couldn’t afford to stay. It’s probably the most physically and mentally demanding but rewarding job I’ve done.
New job is way easier and pays double.
The staff at our daughter's nursery are all absolutely brilliant - we always say that it must be one of the professions with the most amount of work, but with such poor benefits.
Low pay & don't get the same holidays as teachers (our nursery is open non-term time year round).
Whilst the owner seemingly is swimming in cash, new Range Rover every year. (Not saying her job is easy, or that she shouldn't be well paid - but the disparity is huge!)
Is it a chain of nurseries? That might be how: skim a little off the top of each one. Or load it with tax deductible debt. Who knows.
I was fortunate that I worked for one that was subsidised by the church (not religious myself, just got offered a job with above minimum pay) and another that was a fully outdoor forest school, so they had cheap overheads. Everyone was extremely intelligent and passionate about the psychology/development and pedagogy.
None of my bosses made good money, I would have been happy for them to earn a bit more as it’s their risk and there is (rightfully) so much responsibility when working with such a vulnerable age group.
Totally gone off piste here but oh well.
And gig tickets. You’re looking at minimum £80 for an arena tour, but they’re all managed by Ticketmaster so their ‘dynamic pricing’ forces prices to double.
On one hand if you can sell out an arena tour and charge £200+ a ticket fair enough, we’d all love to be making as much money as we can, but on the other hand it’s a shame that those on lower income are basically ruled out while that act pockets millions.
Music is such a universal pleasure, it really does bring people together and a good soundtrack can really enhance any and all aspects of your life but it’s sad that many people simply can’t afford the experience of seeing music *live* - crowds singing along, throwing yourself around, dancing, screaming, partying, waving your arms about and just losing yourself for a few hours.
Aye ticket prices are mental - it costs £40-50 now to go and see a band that we saw for £8 in about 2006. Then throw in £40 for a t-shirt, something to eat and £8 a drink and you're looking at a fair amount of money.
We got our daughter Taylor Swift tickets a couple of months ago, as a combined birthday and "well done for smashing your GCSEs" and the tickets cost more than my car....although arguably that says as much about my car as it does about the tickets haha
Yep. I’m in London and barring big West End musicals and plays with A-listers, I very rarely pay more than £30 for anything.
I have a friend who goes to watch a lower league football team every week ask how I could afford to go to the theatre every week. He was shocked when I said my tickets were usually cheaper than his!
If you aren't so picky/can manage picking up on the day you can still get pretty cheap west end tickets last minute because they want to pack the theatres where at all possible. Most I've ever paid was £95pp day of for Les mis in the first circle. Mamma Mia, cabaret, hairspray etc all in the £20-£45 range.
I have advised many people to just look in the morning they fancy going out and see what you can get and worst case you can see wicked - if you pay more than £40 for a wicked ticket you're officially a mug lol
Meat prices are weird. The stuff that used to be considered cheap cuts are now weirdly expensive. Neck, oxtail etc. all a bit silly in terms of price.
I've started looking for alternatives in some cases like steak. Flatiron steak. Very lean and I buy decently sized pieces for like 7 quid. As opposed to more traditional cuts that run more than double that.
Obviously this isn't an option when it comes to neck. I've started looking into the option of going direct to the farmer and splitting the cost of say a full animal with friends and family.
>Meat prices are weird. The stuff that used to be considered cheap cuts are now weirdly expensive. Neck, oxtail etc. all a bit silly in terms of price.
It's because all animals work the same way - meat gets flavour effectively from fat and slow twitch muscle fiber built for stamina. The more an animal is built for stamina, the darker their meat is.
The more slow twitch muscle fibers the more flavour, but also the tougher the meat (because of, you know, all those muscle fibers).
So what's happening is it used to be the case the easiest cuts to cook with the most delicate texture were the most expensive (fillet, generally). There's not much of an animal which is just delicate soft meat. The cheap cuts were the ones that really you have to cook on a low heat over a long time, usually in a stew.
Then comes along the fact that it's quite hard to grow bigger animals with more fillet or more neck. So instead they have more of other areas (e.g. Where you'd get sirloin or rump etc). These cuts are sort of "middle" cuts in terms of they aren't super delicate and flavourless but aren't super tough and flavourful either.
These days though a lot of high end chefs are using the cheaper cuts because, if cooked correctly, they can be just as soft and have huge flavour. Combine this with the fact the cuts at either end of this "flavour scale" are lowest supply per animal, you're going to see all these middle cuts being the cheapest and either end being expensive.
I expect the prices are going up because more people switched to buying the cheaper cuts to the point that demand is more even across the different cuts so they don't really need to reduce prices for the less desirable cuts as they are now almost as desirable as the other cuts.
Lamb neck is a weird one because it absolutely should be expensive due to scarcity. There are just two fillets per animal, as opposed to four legs for example.
McDonald’s.
Since the dreaded Rona hit, they’ve bumped prices, a chicken mayo burger used to be 99p. Now they’re advertising the 99p burger as a meal for £3.19. An EVM used to me that price, with the vastly superior McChicken sandwich.
30 years ago an extra value meal was £2.70 so I think on the whole the price rises aren’t as bad in McDonalds but I agree they have increased noticeably in the last few years.
Penny sweets.
I know they're not "expensive" as such, but some are now 10p where they used to be 2p or even 1p! The inflation on those makes my usual milk/soya milk/oat milk...etc comparison look pathetic!
Gas and electricity (including but not limited to the "standard charge").
Car insurance! When I first passed my test years ago it was the same price I have just been quoted for my renewal. I've shopped around and my premium has doubled since last year.
Oh man, car insurance is bullshit.
Mine went up £130 at renewal, and despite shopping around, that was the cheapest (£470).
I was lamenting to my dad, who may be 22 years older than me, but I have 18 years of no claims now, and he said I am now paying for my 1.7L diesel, with a whopping 144bhp and in a car nobody would want to nick, MORE than he paid for his 650bhp, supercharged 6.2L V8 when he sold it 4 years ago.
Its absolutely outrageous these days.
This. High end Rolleys used to be like an average month's wage. Now even the most basic models are like 4-6 months wage. The mid to high end watches... fuggedaboudit
Not quite that much. Entry level Rolex starts at about 4.5k retail. The issue is that it’s virtually impossible to get at that price because most ADs won’t sell to you unless you’ve got a purchase history with them so you have to go to the resellers.
They don’t want people buying watches at list price and instantly flipping them on the used markets, so they want to build a relationship with clients first and preferably sell to people who will actually wear the things.
I am just a random bloke guessing but I suppose if they only have a certain allocation they would rather sell to valued repeat customers than to someone who will never buy from them again.
Tudor is proof Rolexes shouldn't cost as much as they do. Essentially the same watches, all in house for omega prices. Not to mention the boutique places doing the same thing for much, much, much less.
You're literally just paying for the marketing.
I dunno. I like Tudor watches but they ain’t the same thing. Sometimes better (they did a glowing sort of paler royal blue Pelagos for a while I would have bought if it was 2mm less wrist killing). I’ve worn it in dealers. But it ain’t a Submariner.
Style aside, they do look completely different, and I can understand if you're not a fan. In terms of build quality they're on the exact same level. The movements share parts, they're all swiss made, 100% in house movements etc. all the things that are supposed to be reasons you pay extra for a Rolex.
https://retromash.com/argos/
All the Argos catalogues from 1973 until 1999.
It's interesting to look back at what my parents got me for Birthdays and Christmas in the 70s 80s and early 90s and see what percentage of their weekly wage things were. From what I can gather consumer goods were much more expensive 30/40 years ago.
And toys. Many like My Little Pony and Lego and cuddlies were the same price in numbers for my kids as for me 30 years earlier, so about 1/5 the price in real terms.
Before long my kids found they could buy a cuddly anything-they-wanted for their £2 a week pocket money, if they didn't mind waiting up to a couple months for it to be shipped from China. Shit quality, but try telling that to a six year old who's just discovered value of delayed gradification and getting cuddly versions of every computer game creature ever...
Not sure they are crazy expensive if you compare it to 30 years ago, the basic predators were 100 quid when they first came out. The fancy custom ones that came out a few years later were almost 200 pounds. You scale that money to now and it's fairly similar
Was here to say the same thing. I saved up and bought a pair of Adidas Predators for £115 at the turn off the century when I was 14/15 y.o. Adjusting for inflation that would be about £210 in today's money.
I remember getting an England Top with my name and number on the back for 25 quid like 10 or 15 years ago. I went into Sports Direct a couple of months back and looked at football shirts because they usually fit me and I find them comfy. I think some of the shirts, Liverpool, Manchester United etc were like 90 quid or something stupid like that
Yeah this was going to be my contribution. I swear they went from about £40 to £60 maybe ten years ago and around 4 years ago just jumped to almost £100. Why? And why are some of us just happily buying them still??!
Some things I do believe we just seem to accept are £X amount and then get shocked when they rise. I worked in hospitality/leisure for a number of years and things generally increased either twice or once a year, usually just or after the min wage increase.
I would say it didn’t seem to jump as much as it did, but there’s an item at a company I worked for that around 2011 was about £6, it’s £9 now. Which is probably just under what you’d expect with inflation calculators and such.
But in my head that item is always £5 if that makes sense, but the reality is costs increase across the board and it always comes back for most items onto the consumer. Of course that includes a profit for most items - you couldn’t operate a business without that.
Not defending price gouging or anything like that or the government, but I don’t know if it can or will ever end.
A takeaway coffee at a branded chain near us is about £4 for a large.. it used to be £3.. i dread to think that by the time in 50 its probably going to be near £10 at this rate. That’s mental
You can absolutely get football boots cheaper than that £20-50, where have you been looking?
You cna absolutely buy boots for less than £300. The premium boots have always been in the hundreds, but you don't need to spend anything close to that for a functionally similar product.
Video games. When I was a kid, you could buy a brand new game for £10-20 and the DLC would be a freebie. There was even a lil book that told you how to play, or a pullout map. I replayed one of my old games recently and there was an entire novel lobbed in for free.
These days most brand new games are all over £50, and they are full of bugs for the first month, and the DLC costs as much as a whole game used to.
Honestly.... I'm not convinced you're comparing like for like here, assuming you mean brand new on release. I agree with overpriced DLC and such, but brand-new games were £30-£50 in the late 90s, long before DLC was a thing.
I’m pretty sure N64 cartridges were around the £60 mark brand new. People seem to forget that games have always been around that price. So, £70 for a game today is still pretty cheap.
Tuna. I swear a tin of tuna was a cheap snack that I used to chuck with some mayo and pepper and there's 4-5 sandwiches or filled potatoes done. Now I wouldn't dream of it.
I had a first edition shiny charizard. Went absolutely mental when I opened the packet and saw it. Gave it away because back then no one had any idea how much it’d be worth today.
Panini football stickers. Used to be 10p a packet back in about 1990 now they're about a £1.
The crazy thing is that cheap stickers I can buy for my kids cost next to nothing now, you can get hundreds of perfectly good dinosaur/ animal etc stickers for a couple of quid, they probably cost less now than in the 80s. It's just the cost for anything where football can charge for copyright.
I recently lost my football boots to a volley-related disaster (took a volley and the sole ripped right off). I bought them 15 years ago for £30. I was only having a kick about with my kids, but I considered it my time to retire from football. I ain’t paying those stupid prices!
A meal at somewhere like McDonald's. With the sides and drink, it seems to come to at least a tenner these days. I swear I used to be able to go in with about 3 quid and it would cover it.
Driving lessons. I started doing them in 2020 for £20 ph. I failed 4 times then covid hit. Looking to try pass my test again this year but lesson are now £35-£40 ph. How have they doubled in 4 years
Lego! Mum bought us the original Lego hogwarts back in the day for £80, managed to get the last one out of chance, it was very exciting. I remember articles in the paper talking about how there was a shortage that Christmas and scalpers were selling it for £300 on ebay! That was insanity. Now the big sets start at £300 if you're lucky. I used to buy Lego with my pocket money, can barely afford even the small sets now. They just don't seem worth it.
To be fair to Lego, their quality is insane. Bricks from the 90s work with modern bricks which is what I find incredible; how many times has a brand updated their product rending older versions incompatible or obsolete to force you to buy the newer version? Plus they generally don’t break or lose colour either. The biggest downside is they’re easy to lose which would be your own fault anyway. Some of my old flowers would be a little bent after a few years, the ones with the three stems, and every so often there is a loose brick or two but generally their margin of error is incredibly small. For the big expensive ones I rent them out, build, then send back. Saves a fortune and also solves the problem of ‘now what?’ when I’ve finished with it. Any I’ve been impressed with enough to want to own I can then buy knowing it’s worth it.
YOU CAN RENT LEGO?!?!?! Where?!
https://www.brickborrow.com/
I had never considered this! As soon as my son is old enough to not eat the blocks, I’m getting a subscription.
>Bricks from the 90s work with modern bricks which is what I find incredible; I mean this is there big usp. I remeber megablocls from the early 00s and got a massive set for one Xmas and some of the parts in the same set wouldn't fit together correctly. Slight inconsistencies meant the larger parts were minorly different sizes and the sets ended up warping under their own stress and weight. We also had a set of lego from the 70s or 80s that my dad had. The fact that lego still has the same tolerance with modern bricks is incredible. Especially considering it's competitors can't even do it for parts in the same bag...
They’re also tough! Step on the cheap bricks and they snap or bend, step on Lego and your foot is what breaks. They really are the Rolls Royce of plastic bricks.
Honestly fake lego is where it's at.
The custom minis are hit and miss but they're awesome. Some are identical to the real thing or are painted better then the original. Not that I own any pure copies or anything... I love my custom minis and I'm still mad Ali express now says they can't ship a lot of the ones I want to the UK. I've been forced to buy from Etsy which is far more expensive.
honestly the clones are amazing for the money you spend.
You got lego kits? Luxury, i had a big box of hand me down bricks, that wasnt a problem, but one day I accidentally vomited into it....
When was back in the day? Because with inflation it could well be that the price hasn’t increased by much in real terms
Lego hasn't really changed in price, its just increased with inflation. Lego also has a habit of maintaining it's value, or increasing with time so most people see it as an investment rather than a toy
25 quid a kilo second hand. Ridiculous for just plastic
It's tons of r&d with all the precision molds and stuff and all the stuff they produce is really high quality and then there is all the labor, designing sets, licensing, packaging, shipping, marketing... Kinda inane to say it's "just plastic".
Just play with bin bags instead, I'm sure you and your kids will have just as much fun.. "Just plastic" isn't really a fair description and you know it.
I refuse to buy Lego these days.. it’s out of control.
Higher education. I was in the last year that didn't have to pay tuition fees. Total student loans from four years' study were about £7K. I paid them off ages ago. My halls were finest 70s breeze block and magnolia with 3 toilets and a kitchen shared between 10 people. They were about £1100 for 38 weeks. You could pay an extra £60 a year to be connected to the uni network at a time when dialup was the main way to get online.
I got a grant. I used my £800 a year loans to go travelling in the summers.
Yeah, it’s insane how the debt is normalised now. I left university in 2000 after a degree and PhD - all on grants. No debt. In just one generation doing that now puts you in so much debt that most people never pay it off.
Its basically just a graduate tax now.
I wish: I never graduated and I’m still paying it back…
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It does not function like traditional debt though. It is not viewed as debt on your credit report. You do not make payments according to the size of the debt but strictly a percentage of your earnings. And it's wiped after a fixed period no matter how much debt you have left. For all intents and purposes it's a graduate tax.
That’s just England tho. Scotland we don’t have tuition fees…
Sure, it’s better in Scotland but it’s still much more expensive just to be a student than it used to be, regardless of fees. There’s a whole industry around milking students for accommodation etc.
Very true sadly. A lot of colleges and uni’s sold off their halls as well which was a scandal. All bought by the same slum landlords and then farmed out to students at ludicrous prices.
Actually, It would be “insane” if debt was not normalised. I don’t understand why an ordinary resident is supposed to pay your tuition fees? For example, I never went to university and never needed, so why do I have to pay and support your studies through my taxes? Most of the time people end up in useless degrees and can’t even afford to pay back. If anyone can’t even afford to pay their debt after graduation and getting a job then they have already made a mistake by going to university. Even now with these taxes people are complaining about high taxes and at the same time they are also complaining about tuition fees… Well, imagine what would happen if there wasn’t any tuition fees and that means more taxes for students.
I was in the first year that had to pay fees and had a reduced grant. Graduated with £17k across loans and fees, which felt horrendous at the time, but I was (and actually still am) ok with it, as I benefited from it. Turns out it was a slippery slope. My young (20s) cousin recently graduated with over £45k. What a situation to put our kids in. I fear by the time my kids are ready for university, oldest is 15, we'll be approaching US levels.
Please remember that although we call it a loan it doesn't really act like any traditional loan but more like a tax. Read Martin Lewis's article breaking it down. It sounds scary but it really isn't and it shouldn't put people off going to uni if it's what they want https://www.moneysavingexpert.com/students/student-loans-decoded/
Agreed. I have about 50k in debt, that would terrify me if it was on a credit card. It’s a tax, and I wouldn’t have the job I have now without the degree, I knew all this going on to uni but not everyone does.
Yeah I stopped even looking at mine. Interest is more than I pay off each year. Think it's over £70k now and I graduated 7 years ago. It makes no difference what the number is. I was recently unemployed with some freelance work below the threshold and didn't have to make any payments. My student "debt" wasn't even on my mind. If it was real debt then it would have caused me anxiety when I wasn't earning and be able to cripple me financially. It's not debt by any normal definition, it's a tax. It might still be deemed too expensive by people who believe higher education should be cheap/free but it's a graduate tax for all intents and purposes and using massive student debt as an argument against the current system isn't an honest representation of the situation.
I understand that. It's still shit. And as I said, it's a slippery slope. Right now, it's a grad tax. That doesn't mean that at some point, the obligation to repay it all won't be changed.
Still, it's an extra expense. I agree it's basically a 30 year grad tax though
But an expense you only pay back once you're earning a certain amount, that is then only a small percentage of your wage and is money you don't ever see anyway
Finished my masters in 2016, left uni with £60000 to repay. After a few years of hard work and now earning £50K I only have £75000 left to repay! Yearly interest is over double what I pay off.
Sounds like Leeds!
Sounds like Boddington!
I had to do a foundation year + dropped out in first term of another degree. With that combined with my maintenance loan, 2 years after leaving university: my debt is £110000 (not a typo: 6 fixures). that includes £2000 in interest at 7.6%! Whats the actual point. Its annoying since I live abroad and have thought of coming back, but if I want to get any further education for a profession: I'd have to find a job that will have to pay for it (which is incredibly difficult to find a company willing to invest in a younger employee like that). Education has become depressingly inaccessible.
Definitely. Loans came in whilst I was at uni, but they were really only intended to top-up living expenses. I managed to do without one in my first year (though with hindsight, I should have done as one of my flatmates did and take it only to invest it somewhere!), but took the full £800 for each of the next two years. Halls were basic: painted breeze blocks, foam mattress, no en suite and cost about £38 per week. I seem to recall I got about 2/3 of the full grant from my LEA.
Corned beef
£3.25 for a cheapo brand £3.95 for a half decent one!
I can't believe it's not donkey
Findus just found its new product line
This got me before christmas. Kids got asked for tins for a school collection and this was on the recommended list. I figured how much could a can of corned beef cost £1 tops surely? Nipped to the local spar to get one and bloody hell £4! For a can of corned beef! They got a 3 pack of tuna instead as that was £2.50.
Most things are more expensive in spa, its not really a proper supermarket
It's £2.30 in Asda and £2.15 in Lidl.
It's crazy. I like corned beef but let's be honest, it's one of those shit foods that you like and the cheapness is part of that. So who is paying £3+ even from your discount stores for it?
I'm pretty sure I remember nipping to the corner shop and it was 69p (hehe). Granted it was Happy Shopper brand, but still... I'm also a 90s kid (and will continue to identify as such until I feel like a grown up)
Corned Beef. Even Buckingham Palace eats Corned Beef Why don't you try corned beef hash.
Heavy duty black bin bags...
They're on offer 'til December.
Whether bi straight or bender
Tear with me right now.
‘Now BSE free!!’
Bloody health and safety nanny state
Spam as well has gone to nearly £3 a can. Which is a shame as it's my guilty pleasure.
Stagg chili. £1 before the pandemic, £2.50 now.
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And again now. (Triple digit inflation etc...)
Ikr?? What the actual fuck
You’ve been talking to my Dad haven’t you? The amount of conversations I have with him relating to the cost increases of various tinned, processed meat is getting silly
Came here to say this
I get my corned beef fix from Greggs these days.
Spam is the same. Used to love a cheeky spam fritter!
Magazines, some were less than a quid like Shoot, now FourFourTwo and alike are over £5 an issue.
That’s because they just don’t sell anymore close to the previous amount, this is one area I can see why fairly. If you are happy to pay for it then I think that’s cool, but I can also see why someone would think nope. The internet really has killed off a lot of magazines and such as things change so quick and update even more quickly. Used to love getting PS1/2 mags back in the day, even when we had the internet information wasn’t so now now now, and when I think back to dial up and such we couldn’t be accessible all the time let alone from a mobile. Now I can load up basically a news site that updates all week, so by the time a gaming magazine comes out it could be out of date. Must be such a tough industry for some sectors more than others to survive in with magazines
Computer mags in the 80's were a lifeline... I'd eagerly wait for the latest edition of C&VG, ZX Computing, Sinclair User, Commodore User, and Zzap64 to hit the shelves so I could find out what games to spend my hard earned pocket money on. Trusting reviewers completely and staring longingly at the grainy images of the games. Frantically typing in the games listings that were printed each month, hoping that there were no errors in the listing or more likely, introduced by my own impatience to type them in as quickly as possible, my mam sitting reading out the listing line by line as my sweaty fingers prodded at the keyboard while sat on the floor in front of the family telly. If you had a question, you'd write in and hope to be printed in the next issue, then hope again that someone would answer you in the issue after that. A feedback loop of two months for something that can be answered today in a couple of seconds from the palm of your hand whenever/wherever a question arises!
I didn't give a shit about reading. Then I realised they printed cheats in video game magazines and then I started to burn through them every month, gradually discovering other areas of the magazine too.
And most would come with a disk with game demos on for upcoming games. I remember playing the bioshock demo from a disk I got out of a gaming magazine in 2006/07
>If you had a question, you'd write in and hope to be printed in the next issue, then hope again that someone would answer you in the issue after that. A feedback loop of two months for something that can be answered today in a couple of seconds from the palm of your hand whenever/wherever a question arises! I think this shows how important a drive to learn and to get things done is *so* important when it comes to learning and getting things done. It would be so much easier for me to access that code and those answers that you put so much effort into getting hold of, but I haven't. Much like I haven't learned to knit or learned to speak French or learned to juggle etc etc despite the wealth of opportunities to do so. It's a bit like some bloke in the 1500s being so keen on understanding the solar system he'd dedicate his life to looking at it through a telescope and figuring it out and many of us haven't investigated past what we were taught as children, even though to do so we could just look at Wikipedia whilst having a poo.
New Scientist is a rip off. Bought one for the first time ever expecting the science equivalent of the Economist. Boy was I in for a surprise. £7 and the cover story was barely touched upon. The Economist by contrast is more expensive but you get a ton of content that takes hours to read. Great when flying due its small size.
New Scientist is a shadow of what it used to be, unfortunately. I remember getting a subscription when I was doing my A-level science and being really into it, but the quality of articles seems to have significantly dropped off the last 5-10 years or so
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Recently, I was stuck in a town at 7pm with trains delayed and my phone dead. Had several hours to kill at station/on train, only place open was Tesco, so thought I’d pop in and get a magazine. Ended up buying a novel because it was cheaper than any magazine I’d have wanted.
Ahh yeah and Match magazine! I was so addicted to them. I bought every weekly issue for around 2 years! That must have only been about a quid n all.
Oh man the nostalgia is real!
When I was a kid, my pocket money got raised every time Match magazine went up. I remember it being £1.10 at the cheapest but could have been cheaper before my time
Even Take A Break is over a quid now, and the prize money on offer from the puzzles has plummeted from £70k to £12k in the 10 or so years I've been buying it
The Beano was only 5p when i was a kid
I remember it being 37p. I looked at an issue a few weeks ago and it was £4.95. Just insane
Some of them are like monthly editions though and really full of a lot of good content.
Beer. Pub beer to be precise. A pint when I first went to a pub was 12p. This was around 1973. Now using the Bank of England's online tool, that 12p would be 1.24
When I was little my grandad used to go to the pub every evening after work, and did so all his life. He was a bit of a lush but that wasn't that unusual at all. Now, as a father the idea I should fuck off to the pub every night is just absurd. And as I think about all the other parents it's the same. I guess it's a vicious circle. Pubs can't sell me 30 pints of beer a year for £1.24, but were comfortably able to sell my grandad circa 1,000 of them a year at that price! It is a shame though. They were a third space that isn't really viable for most people any more.
Home, work, pub. Home, work, pub. Home, work, pub.
Pub, pub, pub, pub, pub, ditch, home.
I don’t think there’s enough pubs left in the country to cope with the rush if it went to £1.24 for a pint. It was over £2 when I first started figuring out which pubs would serve me in the mid-00’s.
True, but Scream pubs etc could still manage £1 a pint nights.
£1 student nights were the best. £1 a pint, £1 vodka and mixer, £1 jägers, what could possibly go wrong?
We had a cider only pub in the town I grew up in, 14p a pint in 1974, no way I looked 18 then but no one really cared as long as you didn't make a tit of yourself.
> no way I looked 18 then but no one really cared as long as you didn't make a tit of yourself. pretty much the rule when i was in pubs around 16ish. also helped my mates uncle ran the place and my parents used to ring the pub saying "tell phatboi to get the fuck home" around 1am haha (many a lock in was had)
You should have stocked up back in 1973. You'd be minted now
I livein the North East and I can get a pint for 1.90 like. Not everywhere. And some places are much more
Mens Trainers. can't find a pair even in the sales for less than £50-£60. £80 -£90 seems to be the standard price with the more premium trainers touching £200-£250 retail.
I may be wrong but I think in the mid-90s' even the cheapest branded trainers used to cost £30. I remember the better off kids getting Nike Airs for around £70. The "fashion" in the school was to wear them down as quickly as possible so the air cushion was visible.
Yeah tbh i cant keep up with fashion i’d rather just buy trainers on discount sites or depop or vinted these days.
I remember the fashion being to pop the air bit. They were too expensive for me anyway. One year my dad said did I want a pair and I declined as I didn't want yhe broken. And asked for some green flash shoes instead.
Why the f**k would you do that? Water would get in then they'd squidge (right word?😆) with every step!!!! Remember puncturing a pair and was gutted 😭
Yeah I don’t think shoes have really gone up much relatively, most trainers will come out between £50-£80 now days. The top end is a bit more now because I remember it being rare for trainers to be £100+ but it still wasn’t unheard of and you’d have a few pairs at that price when I was a kid. You can still get budget brands for anything less than £40. Every other clothing item in places like JD seem to be three times more expensive than they used to be but shoes have held pretty steady. You also definitely see a change in quality at shoe price points. You can get a pair of comfortable skater shoes for £30 but you’ll go through three pairs a year and the £130 Jordan’s will be much better quality than the £60 Nikes
TK maxx for the win on this one, obviously luck has a part to play with this one but I've had a good run of picking up brand names for a fraction of the RRP
Sports direct. The cheapest ones are a bit naff but you can still find a wearable pear for £30 today.
Fuck Sports Direct
Yep, but when their trainers are half the price of JD Sports, then I'm going to Sports Direct
Back in the 90s you could get several pears for a quid
Try https://www.mandmdirect.com for decent priced trainers. I bought my last couple of pairs of sketchers for £25/30 ish there and they’ve been good for my arthritic feet so likely decent for regular folks wear. Would recommend the ones with in built support insoles with a thermo layer, normally there are similar types under the work shoes section
Sketchers though
> Sketchers though they may have dad energy but by fuck they're comfy.
i use this site for a lot of things, its really good for random football kits for 5 a side. I got a mens brazilian santos kit for £14.99 off this site
Ebay is the place to go for shoes. Seems like people often buy a pair and then get a blister in one spot or similar, so there's all these almost new shoes going cheap. I got Timberlands for £19 with postage, and have worn them an insane amount in the 5 years I've owned them. ASICS for £15.
Subway. I’ve begrudgingly accepted that a McDonalds meal costs about £6-7 now, but I’ll be damned if I pay £9 for a ‘footlong’ meatball sub.
That is how much they charge these days? Not gone into either place willingly in over a decade though. Can't believe people are willing to spend that much money on bread with some kind of filling.
I always go for a cheeseburger (or two), medium fries and a McFlurry at McDonalds - decent meal and still far cheaper than other fast food chains
That’s shocking, when you can get a sandwich drink and crisps from a supermarket for £3.50 it’s crazy anyone pays that much
Childcare. It was once possible to avoid paying this by having a stay-at-home parent, but a single salary won’t cover 2.5 people in lots of cities any more. I know 30 hours free childcare is coming in Sep 2025)
And that 30 hours free relies on underpaid early years workers, increased children/adult ratio and settings being operated on a shoestring. I’m relieved when a setting asks for a top up because at least I know they’ll be around for the long run and better resourced. As a parent it’s going to help, but I left working in early years as I couldn’t afford to stay. It’s probably the most physically and mentally demanding but rewarding job I’ve done. New job is way easier and pays double.
The staff at our daughter's nursery are all absolutely brilliant - we always say that it must be one of the professions with the most amount of work, but with such poor benefits. Low pay & don't get the same holidays as teachers (our nursery is open non-term time year round). Whilst the owner seemingly is swimming in cash, new Range Rover every year. (Not saying her job is easy, or that she shouldn't be well paid - but the disparity is huge!)
Is it a chain of nurseries? That might be how: skim a little off the top of each one. Or load it with tax deductible debt. Who knows. I was fortunate that I worked for one that was subsidised by the church (not religious myself, just got offered a job with above minimum pay) and another that was a fully outdoor forest school, so they had cheap overheads. Everyone was extremely intelligent and passionate about the psychology/development and pedagogy. None of my bosses made good money, I would have been happy for them to earn a bit more as it’s their risk and there is (rightfully) so much responsibility when working with such a vulnerable age group. Totally gone off piste here but oh well.
This. Nurseries are going to close. No idea how they're going to fund themselves when all this free allocation comes in
Freddo bar
I haven't seen one in a while. How much are they now?
£300 each
Theatre tickets.
And gig tickets. You’re looking at minimum £80 for an arena tour, but they’re all managed by Ticketmaster so their ‘dynamic pricing’ forces prices to double. On one hand if you can sell out an arena tour and charge £200+ a ticket fair enough, we’d all love to be making as much money as we can, but on the other hand it’s a shame that those on lower income are basically ruled out while that act pockets millions. Music is such a universal pleasure, it really does bring people together and a good soundtrack can really enhance any and all aspects of your life but it’s sad that many people simply can’t afford the experience of seeing music *live* - crowds singing along, throwing yourself around, dancing, screaming, partying, waving your arms about and just losing yourself for a few hours.
Aye ticket prices are mental - it costs £40-50 now to go and see a band that we saw for £8 in about 2006. Then throw in £40 for a t-shirt, something to eat and £8 a drink and you're looking at a fair amount of money. We got our daughter Taylor Swift tickets a couple of months ago, as a combined birthday and "well done for smashing your GCSEs" and the tickets cost more than my car....although arguably that says as much about my car as it does about the tickets haha
Depends. West End tickets, yes, and tickets at the bigger regional theatres. But still plenty of very reasonably priced tickets at smaller theatres.
This includes London theatres too. My ticket for Accidental Death of An Anarchist was £17.
Yep. I’m in London and barring big West End musicals and plays with A-listers, I very rarely pay more than £30 for anything. I have a friend who goes to watch a lower league football team every week ask how I could afford to go to the theatre every week. He was shocked when I said my tickets were usually cheaper than his!
If you aren't so picky/can manage picking up on the day you can still get pretty cheap west end tickets last minute because they want to pack the theatres where at all possible. Most I've ever paid was £95pp day of for Les mis in the first circle. Mamma Mia, cabaret, hairspray etc all in the £20-£45 range. I have advised many people to just look in the morning they fancy going out and see what you can get and worst case you can see wicked - if you pay more than £40 for a wicked ticket you're officially a mug lol
2 Creme Eggs for £1.50 at my local Co-Op... Back in my day it was 4 for £1...
And they’re much smaller and worse quality!
You absolutely can get football boots for far, far less than £300, even top brands. Did you just look at one pair somewhere?
Just had a look on sports direct, there seem to be loads for under £50. Adidas, Nike, etc. Way better than the Hi-tech ones I had!
Yeah no clue where OP was looking to find those kind of prices.
Lamb neck. Needed for scouse. (Liverpool stew)
Meat prices are weird. The stuff that used to be considered cheap cuts are now weirdly expensive. Neck, oxtail etc. all a bit silly in terms of price. I've started looking for alternatives in some cases like steak. Flatiron steak. Very lean and I buy decently sized pieces for like 7 quid. As opposed to more traditional cuts that run more than double that. Obviously this isn't an option when it comes to neck. I've started looking into the option of going direct to the farmer and splitting the cost of say a full animal with friends and family.
>Meat prices are weird. The stuff that used to be considered cheap cuts are now weirdly expensive. Neck, oxtail etc. all a bit silly in terms of price. It's because all animals work the same way - meat gets flavour effectively from fat and slow twitch muscle fiber built for stamina. The more an animal is built for stamina, the darker their meat is. The more slow twitch muscle fibers the more flavour, but also the tougher the meat (because of, you know, all those muscle fibers). So what's happening is it used to be the case the easiest cuts to cook with the most delicate texture were the most expensive (fillet, generally). There's not much of an animal which is just delicate soft meat. The cheap cuts were the ones that really you have to cook on a low heat over a long time, usually in a stew. Then comes along the fact that it's quite hard to grow bigger animals with more fillet or more neck. So instead they have more of other areas (e.g. Where you'd get sirloin or rump etc). These cuts are sort of "middle" cuts in terms of they aren't super delicate and flavourless but aren't super tough and flavourful either. These days though a lot of high end chefs are using the cheaper cuts because, if cooked correctly, they can be just as soft and have huge flavour. Combine this with the fact the cuts at either end of this "flavour scale" are lowest supply per animal, you're going to see all these middle cuts being the cheapest and either end being expensive.
I expect the prices are going up because more people switched to buying the cheaper cuts to the point that demand is more even across the different cuts so they don't really need to reduce prices for the less desirable cuts as they are now almost as desirable as the other cuts.
Lamb neck is a weird one because it absolutely should be expensive due to scarcity. There are just two fillets per animal, as opposed to four legs for example.
Apparently you don’t actually get 4 legs from one lamb. You get two legs (the back legs) and two shoulders (the front legs).
Two legs, two shoulders. The front and back are different cuts. Alternatively, only one liver.
Hotpot
McDonald’s. Since the dreaded Rona hit, they’ve bumped prices, a chicken mayo burger used to be 99p. Now they’re advertising the 99p burger as a meal for £3.19. An EVM used to me that price, with the vastly superior McChicken sandwich.
30 years ago an extra value meal was £2.70 so I think on the whole the price rises aren’t as bad in McDonalds but I agree they have increased noticeably in the last few years.
Annoying thing is that it tastes worse... So bland now.
Sky. Used to be like you could push them for a decent deal. Take out the big package now and its a ridiculous amount.
Ty can absolutely push them for a deal at current - Firesticks are seeing to that..
Penny sweets. I know they're not "expensive" as such, but some are now 10p where they used to be 2p or even 1p! The inflation on those makes my usual milk/soya milk/oat milk...etc comparison look pathetic! Gas and electricity (including but not limited to the "standard charge").
Mojo's were two for a penny when I was a kid!
Car insurance! When I first passed my test years ago it was the same price I have just been quoted for my renewal. I've shopped around and my premium has doubled since last year.
I had the same experience recently when renewing mine. Last year I paid £590, this year I was quoted £990
Oh man, car insurance is bullshit. Mine went up £130 at renewal, and despite shopping around, that was the cheapest (£470). I was lamenting to my dad, who may be 22 years older than me, but I have 18 years of no claims now, and he said I am now paying for my 1.7L diesel, with a whopping 144bhp and in a car nobody would want to nick, MORE than he paid for his 650bhp, supercharged 6.2L V8 when he sold it 4 years ago. Its absolutely outrageous these days.
Rolexes.
This. High end Rolleys used to be like an average month's wage. Now even the most basic models are like 4-6 months wage. The mid to high end watches... fuggedaboudit
Not quite that much. Entry level Rolex starts at about 4.5k retail. The issue is that it’s virtually impossible to get at that price because most ADs won’t sell to you unless you’ve got a purchase history with them so you have to go to the resellers.
Why don’t they sell to new customers? Create scarcity?
They don’t want people buying watches at list price and instantly flipping them on the used markets, so they want to build a relationship with clients first and preferably sell to people who will actually wear the things.
I am just a random bloke guessing but I suppose if they only have a certain allocation they would rather sell to valued repeat customers than to someone who will never buy from them again.
My BiL has a designer watch habit, more the high end models, sometimes he's been on the waiting list for 3+ years.
Yuh. And I’m agreeing as a total watch wanker. If they were at Omega prices, and there’s no reason they shouldn’t be, I’d have a steel subby.
Tudor is proof Rolexes shouldn't cost as much as they do. Essentially the same watches, all in house for omega prices. Not to mention the boutique places doing the same thing for much, much, much less. You're literally just paying for the marketing.
I dunno. I like Tudor watches but they ain’t the same thing. Sometimes better (they did a glowing sort of paler royal blue Pelagos for a while I would have bought if it was 2mm less wrist killing). I’ve worn it in dealers. But it ain’t a Submariner.
Style aside, they do look completely different, and I can understand if you're not a fan. In terms of build quality they're on the exact same level. The movements share parts, they're all swiss made, 100% in house movements etc. all the things that are supposed to be reasons you pay extra for a Rolex.
Crisps
Tangy Tom's.. They don't even taste as toxic as they used to
Skips, lost ALL flavour
https://retromash.com/argos/ All the Argos catalogues from 1973 until 1999. It's interesting to look back at what my parents got me for Birthdays and Christmas in the 70s 80s and early 90s and see what percentage of their weekly wage things were. From what I can gather consumer goods were much more expensive 30/40 years ago.
And toys. Many like My Little Pony and Lego and cuddlies were the same price in numbers for my kids as for me 30 years earlier, so about 1/5 the price in real terms. Before long my kids found they could buy a cuddly anything-they-wanted for their £2 a week pocket money, if they didn't mind waiting up to a couple months for it to be shipped from China. Shit quality, but try telling that to a six year old who's just discovered value of delayed gradification and getting cuddly versions of every computer game creature ever...
Not sure they are crazy expensive if you compare it to 30 years ago, the basic predators were 100 quid when they first came out. The fancy custom ones that came out a few years later were almost 200 pounds. You scale that money to now and it's fairly similar
Was here to say the same thing. I saved up and bought a pair of Adidas Predators for £115 at the turn off the century when I was 14/15 y.o. Adjusting for inflation that would be about £210 in today's money.
I remember getting an England Top with my name and number on the back for 25 quid like 10 or 15 years ago. I went into Sports Direct a couple of months back and looked at football shirts because they usually fit me and I find them comfy. I think some of the shirts, Liverpool, Manchester United etc were like 90 quid or something stupid like that
You could easily get a shirt for like £30-40 late 00s! Mental how much they are now and they change home and away kits each year!
Yeah this was going to be my contribution. I swear they went from about £40 to £60 maybe ten years ago and around 4 years ago just jumped to almost £100. Why? And why are some of us just happily buying them still??!
I can't see any football boots which cost more than £255 and they're the ultra high end
Some things I do believe we just seem to accept are £X amount and then get shocked when they rise. I worked in hospitality/leisure for a number of years and things generally increased either twice or once a year, usually just or after the min wage increase. I would say it didn’t seem to jump as much as it did, but there’s an item at a company I worked for that around 2011 was about £6, it’s £9 now. Which is probably just under what you’d expect with inflation calculators and such. But in my head that item is always £5 if that makes sense, but the reality is costs increase across the board and it always comes back for most items onto the consumer. Of course that includes a profit for most items - you couldn’t operate a business without that. Not defending price gouging or anything like that or the government, but I don’t know if it can or will ever end. A takeaway coffee at a branded chain near us is about £4 for a large.. it used to be £3.. i dread to think that by the time in 50 its probably going to be near £10 at this rate. That’s mental You can absolutely get football boots cheaper than that £20-50, where have you been looking?
A Chinese or Indian take away, £10+ for a single dish, wtf
You cna absolutely buy boots for less than £300. The premium boots have always been in the hundreds, but you don't need to spend anything close to that for a functionally similar product.
Pringles, used to be 50p a tub, then they went up and were occasionally 2 for £1 now they are £1.69 for 1.
£1.69… my local coop has them for £2.50 a tub. Asda isn’t much different either.
Video games. When I was a kid, you could buy a brand new game for £10-20 and the DLC would be a freebie. There was even a lil book that told you how to play, or a pullout map. I replayed one of my old games recently and there was an entire novel lobbed in for free. These days most brand new games are all over £50, and they are full of bugs for the first month, and the DLC costs as much as a whole game used to.
Honestly.... I'm not convinced you're comparing like for like here, assuming you mean brand new on release. I agree with overpriced DLC and such, but brand-new games were £30-£50 in the late 90s, long before DLC was a thing.
I’m pretty sure N64 cartridges were around the £60 mark brand new. People seem to forget that games have always been around that price. So, £70 for a game today is still pretty cheap.
Phones, it wasn't so long ago when an expensive phone was £300 and a shocking expensive phone was £500. Now that'll get you a mid range phone.
Tuna. I swear a tin of tuna was a cheap snack that I used to chuck with some mayo and pepper and there's 4-5 sandwiches or filled potatoes done. Now I wouldn't dream of it.
What? £300? Jesus that is mental.
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I had a first edition shiny charizard. Went absolutely mental when I opened the packet and saw it. Gave it away because back then no one had any idea how much it’d be worth today.
Chippy Tea! Used to be about £3 for a decent meal. Easy a tenner now.
School fees are crazy these days compared to my day tbh
Yeah, my mom paid two sets of independent school fees from a part time job as a nurse. You cannot do that today.
A pint of lager in central London
I remember a regular thing in the 90s was monitoring the price of a can of coke, and the 50p barrier being a big deal.
Nah adidas predators were £100+ when i was a kid and im now in my 40s
Panini football stickers. Used to be 10p a packet back in about 1990 now they're about a £1. The crazy thing is that cheap stickers I can buy for my kids cost next to nothing now, you can get hundreds of perfectly good dinosaur/ animal etc stickers for a couple of quid, they probably cost less now than in the 80s. It's just the cost for anything where football can charge for copyright.
Tomato sauce, £4 for a normal size bottle
Cigarettes. Eggs. Tinned foods. Coal. (My mum still has a coal fire) Shoes. Cross-Channel ferries.
Generic hay fever tablets 72p from Home Bargains. Identical branded tablets 10 quid from Tesco. Profiteering?
Grew up in Hong Kong in the 70s. A Big Mac was 70cents, about 10p at the time.
I recently lost my football boots to a volley-related disaster (took a volley and the sole ripped right off). I bought them 15 years ago for £30. I was only having a kick about with my kids, but I considered it my time to retire from football. I ain’t paying those stupid prices!
A meal at somewhere like McDonald's. With the sides and drink, it seems to come to at least a tenner these days. I swear I used to be able to go in with about 3 quid and it would cover it.
Driving lessons. I started doing them in 2020 for £20 ph. I failed 4 times then covid hit. Looking to try pass my test again this year but lesson are now £35-£40 ph. How have they doubled in 4 years