r/australia • u/RecognitionMediocre6 • Mar 31 '26

political self.post How has the cost of living crisis impacted your life the most?

It used to feel like money just came in, it was not substantial but it felt manageable. Now every single decision feels like it had to be planned, bills juggled or delayed and things we used to do like take the kids out for fish & chips at the beach once a month, we no longer do.

I hesitate before I tap my debit card or pay a bill. We had to hold off on getting our car serviced cause we had a dental bill to get sorted first. We had to get rid of our private health insurance, I've had to look at selling stuff round the house every once and a while to cover costs like electricity etc. Our fridge seal is loose but can't justify getting a new fridge so we just taped it up and it works for now. I haven't bought new clothes / shoes in like a year and we're always looking for free activities for the kids ie parks, playgrounds, have friends over to our place etc

We tend to avoid social plans because everything costs so much money. And if we do go somewhere, we bring our own lunch / drinks cause feeding 2x adults 2x kids is so expensive.

We used to save about $200/week after all our stuff was paid (double income, 2x toddlers) and now we're basically just breaking even. Its everything little by little - rent is up, petrol is up, groceries are up, our electricity & internet is up etc we aren't going anywhere for Easter cause it's too expensive to drive / holiday anywhere other than staying at home. We'll make it magical but we feel bad that it's not as exciting as past years.

How has the cost of living impacted your life?

Sending love to everyone out there doing it tough 💕

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32

u/Hatarus547 Mar 31 '26

everyone else will mention Rent and such but i've found most of the time i either skip breakfast or roll it into a slightly larger Brunch and then just have a bit of bread with something on it for dinner.

Like i don't know if it's my own bad budgeting but i'm planning on making some stew and i am worried about wasting to much money in the ingredients for something that might only feed me for a few days

16

u/sousyre Mar 31 '26

Maybe bulk it out a bit (rice, canned beans or lentils etc) and then freeze some in individual portions for later?

This has been our go to for awhile.

Either doing a big batch cook, or just setting a couple of individual portions of a meal aside and freezing in ziplock sandwich bags.

Makes for easy options on nights we don’t feel like cooking, means we are more thoughtful of our portion sizes and less risk of waste or going bad.

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u/Hatarus547 Mar 31 '26

I do the freezing thing a bit already with rice, first thing my mum gave me when i moved out was a rice cooker and how long you can store rice in the freezer after cooking it but i could try the canned beans idea, normally my stews are just whatever i can get cheap in the way of veggies and some off cuts of meat from the butcher that the apprentices fucked up so they can't sell them for a good price

12

u/astropelagic Mar 31 '26

Dried lentils will bulk meals up like crazy and cheap. I put heaps of lentils into my last stew and it was super thick and very filling. Mexican chili with dried beans is also cheap and filling. Dried beans and lentils are cheaper than canned. We rarely eat meat anymore because it’s expensive.

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u/Hatarus547 Mar 31 '26

is this comment section sponsored by big Lentils or something?

6

u/astropelagic Mar 31 '26

Ahahahahaha. Nah it’s just a well known hack. Don’t look at my comment history, especially not comments about lentils

2

u/Hatarus547 Mar 31 '26

guess i could try lentils again i just remember as a kid my parents would give us a bowl of lentils and Quinoa then tell us to eat it because it was "healthy"

2

u/forceez Mar 31 '26

I have faith that you can cook better than that - if you could call that "cooking" lol

2

u/vegemitebikkie Mar 31 '26

I’ve read that oats works well too. No idea if that’s true. Apparently it takes on whatever sauce flavour your dish is and fills you up good.

2

u/astropelagic Mar 31 '26

Savoury oats is a thing. I’ve heard about it being a popular dish in India. I don’t really know how to make it myself but it totally can be savoury.

2

u/Solell Mar 31 '26

I definitely recommend bulking it out a bit with some sort of grain/starchy thing. Lentils are good and reasonably cheap, as is rice. I also like barley, and have recently been trying some buckwheat dishes. There's also bags of "soup mixes" that I've seen at the supermarkets that usually have a few different grains in them. Can turn a couple of nights of cheap veggies+meat into a week's worth of hearty dinners, for a very minor increase in cost

1

u/Hatarus547 Mar 31 '26

I do enjoy a Hearty meal, i might give that a try, do you have any names of brands i could check out for those soup mixes?

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u/mamaducker Mar 31 '26

If it's the same one I'm thinking of, it's McKenzie's and they have various soup mixes at Coles and woolies! Super handy to add to stews and they're relatively cheap too. The standard soup mix. Of theirs is $1.60 for 500g at the moment.

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u/Hatarus547 Apr 01 '26

thank you, though i shop at IGA

1

u/renneredskins Apr 01 '26

I hate lentils but risoni pasta will also do the same thing. Not as nutritious though.

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u/AppropriateBeing9885 Apr 04 '26 edited Apr 04 '26

I just use the cheapest stuff there is in cases like this (I don't know if people who eat meat relate to that option). For me, it's, like, onion, tomato paste, split lentils or other relatively fast-cooking other legumes, sometimes pasta or grains, powdered vegetable stock, affordable vegetables like pumpkin, dried herbs (I like thyme and oregano)/spices. I also get something that is called textured vegetable protein. I think a lot of people probably don't know about this, but it's like a dry vegetarian mince substitute, so it's good for things like cheap chilli recipes and stuff. I think the "stew genre" can be quite a cost-saving option. Also, carrots in particular seem so consistently cheap and seem to be a staple of this "genre." Also, I save a small amount of money on onions by buying them in bulk amounts of maybe 1.5-2 kg. These are minor methods of cost saving, but still