On the frontline of the cost of living crisis

It’s being called “the year of the squeeze”: thanks to stagnating wages, rising costs of consumer goods, and increases in energy tariffs, plus changes in government measures, the cost of living is set to increase sharply in 2022. “The months ahead will not be easy for households who see their wages fall back as energy bills and taxes rise,” a recent report from the thinktank Resolution concluded.

“In the time that I’ve been writing about money – which is two decades, almost – it’s a year like no other,” Hilary Osborne, the Guardian’s money and consumer editor, tells Nosheen Iqbal. She says the price of everything – from food and clothes, to housing and transportation, and heating and energy – is going up this year. At the same time, the end of the £20 a week of the universal credit uplift and a 1.25% increase in national insurance will only add more pressure to strained budgets.

Amie Jordan, a single mother who lives in Salford with her eight-year-old, Jasper, is among those making difficult decisions about her household expenditures this winter. Jordan says that though she does her best to shield her son from the reality of their precarious financial situation, buying groceries has become a monthly struggle, and she often skips meals entirely. “Extras” such as takeaway dinners and a Netflix subscription are no longer part of her and her son’s life, and in these colder months, she’s wary of how often she uses the heating.