How is everyone dealing with rising prices?

[itsybitsy]

No, I didn't fix prices last year - by the time a new fix was on my timetable, Martin was advising the same as he does now, to stay on the standard rate for almost everyone. I like him, I trust his openness about his decision making, so I just sat here and did nowt

Same.

[ForgeCorvus]

I was fixed and then that company hit the skids and now I'm on the standard rate of the company I was switched to.

They are the third company in less then a year!

As Mr Lewis suggests I'm going to stick for a bit and see what happens next.

[hobo]

Fixed here with a community switch last May. January’s direct debit was £45 dual fuel. Though it was offset by a free builders bag of wood from a warm homes scheme
Unfortunately, the landlord is selling up and the only rental properties here seem to be prepayment flats. Bah. Was time to downsize anyway with my lads flying away.
We plan to use the ‘big’ carpeted bedroom as a living room in the cold months and camp out in the huge linoed living room in summer. Not a fan of storage heaters, so I’ll be actively looking for a bungalow with wood burner!

[mbbaltic]

I fixed and they went bust in October so now I'm with Shell. And tearing my hair out because they are so incompetent. As soon as I can get their errors sorted I will switch even though it will be from one standard rate to another, just to get away from them

[Stonecarver]

Had a look at that Tesco 7.99 monthly clubcard + but ditched idea. Would mean have to do all shopping at Tesco and they aren't usually cheapest

[PreppingPingu]

Looking at our incomings and outgoing carefully.

Sat down with a print out of the last couple of months bank statements, highlighted most of it into different colours for different categories - ie yellow for my weekly main food shopping, purple for bills such as gas and phone, green for petrol and car parking, pink for any takeaways and food on the go etc etc. Helps you see where your money disappears as though you may know that you're spending too much on random sundries, when you see it highlighted on paper, it stands out so you know where you can cut costs. It make it more visual. We have something we want to spend out on but with rising costs, this helped us see our biggest areas of expenditure so we can now budget for it better. For example, hubby knows that him buying a bit of food at lunch most days is not good but when he saw how much it was adding up a month and how much we'd save a month, it focussed him a bit more. "I really must bring my own food to work..." I was pleasantly pleased to see I barely spend any money on clothes when you average it our a month unlike some of my friends and unlike my 21 year old daughter ( Well ... she used to spend before she moved out and had to budget herself )

[GillyBee]

I have started to put together a table for houshold appliances and their costs per day to run. Unsurprisingy the tuble drier is expensive at about £1.50 a time. The electric cooker also costs about £1.50 a day Yhe adult sons cook separately so it always seems to be on. The surprise was the laptop power supplies - If running (which they usually are) and using the rated 65 watts or so the 5 laptops in the house add up to the same as the tumble drier. Washing machine was less than I expected unless I do a boil wash and lighting is not a big worry.
Now to start to get everyone into better habits before our costs all go up dramatically and then repeat the exercise with the groceries.

[jansman]

We are finding ourselves pleased we have a good stock of food,cleaning and hygiene products.Animal feed too. It means we can budget our weekly shopping a lot better. As everything creeps up ( except income) there is going to be less money to spare.
Cutting waste is a big one too. Anything thrown in the bin is money in the bin.

[mbbaltic]

Unless it's peelings in the compost bin. Why pay the council for composted green waste (which will probably import Japanese knotweed)?

[Zedsdead]

We’d be ok but with 3 kids in the house the weekly shopping bill is rocketing up at quite a rate at the moment.