‘Everything’s going up apart from wages’: one UK family’s struggle to beat rising cost of living

Since the Daly family last spoke to the Guardian, they have had to find more ways to cut costs as bills and inflation soar

When inflation was last running at 7% Margaret Daly was training to be a teacher and bringing up a young family, so money was tight. In the early 1990s I was studying," she says. That was very difficult. I had two small children and I was always trying to make ends meet. When I qualified it took a few years after all that struggling and living frugally to find my feet."

As the 90s wore on, things improved for Margaret, now 60, as she progressed through her career and saved up enough to buy a home. Throughout the rest of the decade and the early 2000s her salary rose, against a backdrop of inflation that was typically 1.5-2.5%.