As Chancellor John Healey puts the final touches to his first Budget, how are the "squeezed middle" feeling after years of cost-of-living pressure? Dawn Fazackerley-King is trying to work out how she and her family will pay higher mortgage costs anticipated in a few months' time. "There's just no more fat to trim," says the mother-of-two.
The interest rate on their Ipswich home loan could rise from 1.4% to about 5.3%, which, Dawn says, could add "about £250 extra a month just for living in the same property". "We just have to find that money from somewhere, but when you look at the direct debits every month, there's nothing fancy in there," she adds. The BBC has contacted HM Treasury for comment.
Dawn lists the usual monthly bills, including their mortgage, council tax and energy costs, adding "there's no regular meals out or anything like that". Over the past few years of increasing costs, Dawn says her family – which includes two children aged six and eight – have been "trimming the fat accordingly". "It's quite worrying... where that money is going to come from when we're already feeling that squeeze," she says.
Dawn, 42, works as a full-time self-employed Pilates instructor in Ipswich, while her husband works in an office and the couple have a household income of about £70,000 a year. Life is definitely getting more expensive," she says. In August 55% of adults that responded to an Office for National Statistics survey, external said their cost of living had increased compared with the previous month.
That rate was lower than the 62% recorded in August 2025 and lower than the 79% who said so in April this year. But with more than half of adults facing increased expenses, the rising cost of living appears to be more chronic – a long-term issue rather than a shorter-term crisis. For those who said costs were up, the most common reasons were the price of food shopping, fuel and energy bills.
"I think we've come to accept that is just the way it is at the moment – and we're lucky that we're able to keep our heads above water," Dawn says. In the summer Prime Minister Andy Burnham promised to create "breathing space" for households struggling with costs. He announced a £2 cap to most single bus fares in England and a cut to VAT on domestic electricity bills.
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