The cost of living crisis:
manage what you can control.

no lattes were blamed in the making of this guide · a 5-minute read

Rent up. Energy up. The same trolley of food costing a third more than it did. Let's say the honest thing first: the cost of living crisis is not happening because you bought a coffee. You cannot discipline your way out of macroeconomics, and anyone selling you that idea is selling something.

Two buckets, one rule

Every pound you spend sits in one of two buckets. Bucket one: costs you can't control — rent or mortgage, energy, council tax, the price of milk. These respond to switching, negotiating and claiming support, not to willpower, and definitely not to guilt. Bucket two: the leak — impulse buys, forgotten subscriptions, convenience premiums, late-night baskets. This bucket answers entirely to you.

The rule: never let anxiety about bucket one push money out of bucket two. That's precisely the wrong direction — and it's exactly the direction retail is pushing.

Retail can smell the anxiety

The persuasion machine read the same headlines you did, and it adapted fast. "Cost of living deals" on things you weren't going to buy. Buy-now-pay-later moved next to every checkout button, because splitting the pain into four works best on people already stretched. "You deserve a treat" advertising spikes when the news is worst, because powerless people buy small comforts. None of that is a discount. It's the algorithm monetising a crisis — a £30 basket dressed as self-care is still £30 leaving an account that needed it.

Close the leak — the money you didn't know you were losing

• Measure it before you fight it. Most people guess their leak at half its real size. The free budget calculator takes two minutes and tells you what impulse buys, takeaways and unused subscriptions actually cost you a month — the number is usually the motivation.
• Run the subscription audit. Subscriptions are impulse purchases that renew themselves monthly without asking. Twenty minutes, keep/kill/pause — it's routinely worth £20–£60 a month.
• Price the convenience premium. The delivery apps quietly became a three-figure monthly line for a lot of households. The takeaway maths is brutal but freeing.
• Put friction on everything non-essential. Ten seconds and one honest sentence before any Buy button — the 10-second rule kills most bad purchases on its own, no spreadsheet required.
• Give the saved money a job. Money you "didn't spend" evaporates unless it's pointed somewhere — an emergency buffer, a bill cushion, a goal with a number and a date. A leak you close and count is the one raise you can give yourself this year.

The essentials are sacred

Cutting back should never mean second-guessing medicine, heating or a bill. We build this rule into our own product: really? never interrupts NHS, pharmacy, government or utility payments — that's enforced in code, not policy. Apply the same rule to yourself. The goal is intention on the wants, never hesitation on the needs.

If it's more than a leak

Sometimes the honest answer is that no amount of trimmed subscriptions covers the gap. That is not a personal failure, and there is free, judgement-free help that actually works:

• StepChange — free debt advice and real repayment plans, no lectures.
• MoneyHelper — government-backed money guidance, including cost of living support tools.
• Citizens Advice — benefits checks, energy grants, and help negotiating with providers. Billions in support goes unclaimed every year; some of it may be yours.
• Your suppliers, directly. Energy companies and councils run hardship funds and payment plans they don't advertise. Asking is not failing.

More field guides: Doom Spending · Subscription Creep · Why Budgeting Apps Don't Stop Overspending · all 26 guides