![]() “It allows me to escape or avoid many social situations I didn’t want to be in to begin with and I find colleagues and friends are more understanding.” “With the current financial climate, I have resumed cutting down on my socialising costs and have actually found it to positively impact my mental health,” she explains. For Dannie, 28, who was recently diagnosed with ADHD and Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD), the return of in-person events following the pandemic had been stoking her anxiety. I have already had conversations with my family about cutting back on gift giving this year too,” she adds.īut not everyone is viewing a reduced social calendar as a negative thing. “The prospect of being in a financial lockdown really doesn’t feel great, especially with Christmas approaching. “I try to grab a coffee with someone, usually at the park so it’s local and I don’t have to spend money on travel, or invite people over to mine for a cup of tea and a pastry. “When I don’t have the odd coffee or evening out, I start to feel quite down and isolated.”Īs a compromise, Lucy says that instead of lunches or dinners she’s taken to meeting friends for coffee at nearby parks or inviting people over for tea. I had to stop scrolling on Instagram as it was making me feel left out and tired to see other people on holiday or at festivals having a good time,” she says. “Summer was particularly hard as it felt like everyone had a holiday except me. Our summer was full of weddings so I had to turn down a lot of lunch/dinner and drinks invites to prioritise being able to afford to attend our friends’ weddings, none of which were local to us in London,” she explains.īut despite people being fairly understanding, Lucy shares that she goes through periods of feeling lonely and cut off from friends. “I have adapted my social life by being pretty strict about what I say yes to. “Budgets for socialising and shopping have been tight for me for a while, but now that the cost of living has risen so sharply, as a family we have been forced to be even more careful with our expenditure every month,” says 35-year-old Lucy, a mum-of-one currently pregnant with her second child. So my FOMO is less ‘I wish I was out doing that’ and more ‘I wish I had dual income and someone on hand to help keep the household running.’” “I’m currently in a situation where I’m on a freelance solo wage, so I have to be super-aware of my earning pipeline and ensure future security too. I personally can just about survive and once things are better hopefully I can thrive again… but those just starting out? They don’t have much of a chance unless they have family support.”īecause most people she knows are in the same boat, Emma says that she hasn’t experienced any backlash from cancelling plans or suggesting a cheaper alternative, although she does still get hit with waves of FOMO. It doesn’t stop going up and young people don’t stand a chance from what I can see. “It isn’t just household bills, it’s everything: groceries, clothes, music, travel, entertainment, internet. “I’ve found myself doing less networking and pro-bono charity work. Emma has also found that rising costs have impacted her career prospects. “Everything is more expensive now, which means fewer dinners and cocktails out and more get-togethers at home,” she tells Stylist. We drank cans of pre-mixed gin and tonic two metres from one another in the park and dreamed of the days when we could be back in the wild past the 10pm curfew.įor Emma, 36, the rising cost of living is impacting every part of her life: from socialising to her work capacity and dating. Lockdown forced us to retreat into our flat-shares and onto Zoom. We dreamed of the financial freedom it would grant us: the girly dinners, late-night cocktails or trips abroad to reward us for the hard work of adulthood.Īnd then the pandemic hit. We expected that our salaries (though not as generous as the generations before us) would at least cover a weekly wine night, plus the odd takeaway and Asos splurge. We ate Pot Noodles on the floors of dingy halls, drank the cheapest alcohol we could get our hands on and dutifully asked “Do you do student discount?” at every single place we shopped, declaring ourselves “broke” without contemplating what that really means.īecause the expectation was that when we graduated, got jobs and started earning a full-time wage, things would be different. When we look back on our youth or our time at university, we tend to romanticise living on a tight budget.
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