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Do you also have these huge price increases, gas and electricity already went up 50% in January, and now in October they will go up again by 110% resp. 90%. That's gonna create some quite high bills now.
Plus I just got the letter from my bank that from October on my interests of my house loan will go from 1.75% up to 3.00%.
Yes, the UK prices have been rising a lot. Very similar across most of Europe. I think only France has managed to hold prices to customers lower because their energy is still state owned and a lot if it is nuclear. I think they have only seen a 4% increase so far.
Here in the UK we were paying £80 per month for our gas and electric combined in April. That has increased a lot. The average household in the UK is now paying over £200 a month. We manged to quickly get one of the last fixed rate energy deals when it started going up in price. I think we fixed it at £187 per month until July next year. That still means we were paying about £960 per year up until May/June, and are now paying £2244 per year. So more then doubled. I just don't know how anyone on low wages could even manage.
According to UK news. The energy cap average at the moment is at £2400 for an average household. But this was projected to increase to £4000 or even £5000 per year by next year. That would be impossible to afford.
But the UK government is due to make a big announcement on Friday to subsidise energy bills and keep the energy price cap at the current £2400. So if true that's something. But doing this will cost the government up to £100 Billion that tax payers will at some point need to pay back.
As for house repayments. With all this causing inflation mortgage interest rates will be rising, meaning higher repayments. We are currently lucky that we have a fixed mortgage rate that's locked at 1% for I think 3 years from last year, so we are ok at the moment.
The really bad thing for the UK is that this is being caused by global wholesale energy prices. A lot of the EU was reliant on Russian gas to generate electric and heat homes. With that being cut off by Russia the energy prices are climbing because gas needs to be imported from elsewhere. But in the UK we don't have that issue because we have our own gas, and don't get any gas or oil from Russia. But because wholesale energy prices are globally set the UK is also having to pay these increased prices.
Our petrol and diesel prices have come down a bit though. Petrol is currently £1.67 per litre and Diesel is £1.79. Still far higher than the £1.36 it was earlier in the year. Apparently wholesale oil prices have dropped but they are not passing this on at the pumps.
Have petrol prices come down much there?
Petrol prices here have risen a lot, you know that French and Germans always came here to fill their tank, but at the moment the prices in Luxembourg are higher than in their countries. It also fluctuates a lot.
How much are you paying for diesel there at the moment?
At the moment it's 1.75€, but like I said, it changes constantly, it was already way over 2.00€ at some point.
They are now saying on our news tonight that they are worried UK inflation rates will push interest rates higher. Some predicting as high as 5% next year. Good for savers but not for mortgages.
Same here too, things are getting more and more expensive. We've never been good at budgeting, so now I think we might need to. The thing is, even though we are in a pretty good position it doesn't feel like it'd take all that much to suddenly make things feel a lot tougher.
That's the thing these days. Most people have been living comfortably within their means, but only just within it. But many able to save much for emergencies like our parent's generation could. It only takes one thing to change and a more of people will really be struggling.
Is also mad that the whole world economy is so tied together that an event in Russia and Ukraine can directly effect Australia.
This surely needs to be a wakeup call to change our this world operates for our children's future. We can't have this happening.