Kids or the cost-of-living crisis?

Kids or the COLC?

No surprises here, but my life’s seen a few changes since the economy took a turn.

Money’s on my mind more regularly these days. I now ride my bike pretty much everywhere, and only take the car when absolutely necessary. I’ve never spent less on alcohol than I do now, yet my food bills are regularly hitting new highs. The same goes for energy bills, which seem to go up no matter how leanly we run the house. I don’t really go to the pub much anymore either – I’m more likely to have a quiet drink in the garden with my mates. And, despite all these cost-saving measures, I’m really not managing to save much at all.

Cost of living, eh? Tragic as it is, my summary above reads like a greatest-hits of how people claim to be muddling through the current economic crisis, namely:

• Drive less
• Enjoy less
• Save less
• Weep anyway at the cost of everything

However, I’m finding it hard to work out how much of my behavioural change has come from the rising cost of living, or the fact I’ve had two children since the economic snowball started rolling during Covid. I think the changes I’ve seen in my life are due as much to kids as the COLC.

Take my lack of driving, for example. I’ve been a keen cyclist since my teens, but I ride more than ever now. Part of it is trying to teach my daughters the value of exercise and encourage green ways of getting around, but there’s also something about being time poor that’s particularly motivating. Pre-kids, I had enough time to put things off until later, ironic as that is. There was always time to do something tomorrow, so it was easy to not bother doing it today. However, now that I only get a free hour or two every other night (if I’m lucky), I feel an urge to use that time to the fullest… and that usually sees me back on the bike. The cost savings are a bonus, but they aren’t the main reason the car doesn’t get run much anymore.

What about other changes I’ve noticed? Bills going up is an obvious one; kids aren’t cheap. Between clothes, food, toys, appliances, nursery and a subscription to Disney+, spending wince-inducing amounts of money is inevitable. Things like clothes and toys can be offset somewhat by buying used (cheers Vinted), but we’d be doing that anyway even without macro-economic factors making the headlines constantly. One area where I’m sure the COLC is hitting us is food – I’m fairly confident the rises we’re seeing can’t be put down entirely to my eldest’s addiction to strawberries. That said, it’s still hard to separate what’s down to a change in our lives and what’s down to a change in supermarket prices.

The same goes for energy bills. We’re lucky enough to live in a reasonably new-ish house which was built with a focus on efficiency. It’s small, but it doesn’t lose heat too fast, and it came with solar panels which take the sting out of running appliances during the day. Regardless, bills are high. Part of that will be the price of energy – can’t avoid that. However, some of it will also be running baths every night because I once said to my daughter that the sign of a good day is being filthy by the end of it. Bit of a double-edged sword, this parenting thing.

So what about socialising? Well, one of the most common things I was told when having my first child was that my social life would evaporate completely. Two and a half years (and one extra child) later I’m not convinced that’s true, but it has changed. Socialising these days is more easy-going and ad-hoc – mates show up when they can and leave when they need to, because they’ve got child commitments too. This means it’s usually easier to meet up at one of our houses rather than go out-out, and subsequently our alcohol spend has dropped across the board. Turns out you can get a few cans of something nice for the price of a pint of the same in a pub.

The reason I’ve been thinking about this is due to the difficulty of separating what’s in the news from the reality of people’s situations when it comes to market research. Whenever we ask how the COLC is affecting people, the answer we get is fairly predictable: everything’s more expensive, so they’re doing less of everything. It’s understandable since the media is constantly reminding us that we’re less well-off (which we are to be fair), but I think there’s work to do in fully understanding exactly how much change is directly thanks to the COLC, and how much is down to sticky behaviours following Covid or just natural evolution in life given the timescales involved.

Having given it some thought, I’d put maybe half of my behavioural change down to the COLC, despite the ease with which I could blame rising costs for all of it. I think the rest is just a product of having kids, and that’s nobody’s fault but my own (and maybe my wife’s).