00:00The average man, woman and child to some extent, you know, what they're looking at is the amount
00:05they have to pay for the things that they consume are going up and the amount that they've got
00:09coming in is not going up as fast and so there is a sort of a cost of living crisis. Now inflation
00:15is coming down but not enough. We're probably going to see interest rates come down maybe a
00:21couple of sort of quarters in 2026 which will sort of perhaps alleviate the sort of the problems
00:27as sort of for mortgage holders although because most people are on sort of fixed rates of course
00:31the difficulty is somebody coming off a fixed rate presently is having to pay more because
00:35the sort of the rates are far higher than they were maybe when they took them out say five years ago.
00:39For many people the pressure is being felt most sharply in day-to-day spending. Prices for essentials
00:46remain elevated while wage growth has struggled to keep pace. Even as inflation cools, borrowing costs
00:52are still biting particularly for those coming off fixed rate mortgages. That imbalance continues to
00:58shape how confident households feel about their finances. So what is required well you know is to
01:04sort of a thriving economy where you've got a lot of money that you can spend on sort of the infrastructure
01:10getting sort of goods and sort of people moving around in such a way as of course there's much more
01:15dynamism. I think the big problem we've still got in this country we're very dependent upon sort of
01:19imports for everything that we sort of buy and of course that means we're sort of uh subject to
01:23sort of the markets going up and down and we've seen this sort of most recently sort of fuel um
01:28oil of course is the sort of the um the thing which of course drives our sort of cars but also gas
01:33which of course heats our homes and you know that the the transition to net zero is part of the the
01:38challenge if you feel like we're trying to get away from sort of uh fossil fuels but you know in the
01:43interim we're sort of uh very dependent upon the sort of the international prices so hence the sort of the
01:48prices go up and we have less money um whether people are going to sort of feel happier comes
01:53at the end of 2026 than they are at 2025 is um is you know it's a question to sort of uh that the
02:00remains open i suspect not you know but people sort of like to moan um and dare i say they have good
02:05reason at present the challenges don't stop with household budgets businesses are also navigating higher
02:11costs and uncertainty which can affect hiring and investment decisions sectors that rely on
02:17consumer spending are especially exposed when confidence dips all of this feeds back into
02:23the wider economy influencing growth tax revenues and how much the government has to spend in the years
02:29ways ahead
02:38you
02:38you
02:38you
02:38you
02:39you
02:39you
02:41you
02:41you
Comments