Hard to make things affordable again
It’s been a year since I left behind comfortable wages with as a university lecturer. I should have downshifted significantly because now I am feeling the pressures of affordability in daily life.
Affordable Food
Like many Irish shoppers, rising food prices have reshaped how I approach my weekly walk through local shops. I now pivot and go to the checkout counter when my bag reaches a certain weight because I know what €40 feels like in my bag.
Since I retired last year, the Central Statistics Office recorded food price inflation of 3.4% and staples such as bread and beef rose further. I haven’t see the price reduction in dairy items like milk that Agriland reports but that probably means I need to look at off-brand milk.
I can personally attest to the fact that overall CPI reached 3.6% this year, making it the highest annual rate in over two years. Like many others I follow through local supermarkets, I now mixing branded and own-brand products. My wife refuses to go to Tesco and gravitates toward discounters only.
Affordable Apparel
I have a hard time finding affordable apparel because my waist is too wide. A large waist limits my clothing options. For my wife, price now outranks quality as the primary purchase driver and that is the tendency for 58% of Irish consumers. This tendency has not affected my 18yo fashionista daughter.
Years ago, while we were shopping for school clothing, Mia would stand with me and look at shoes in shop windows. She was very aware of how long I wore shoes and thought I should buy a new pair more frequently than my three year buying pattern.
Clothing and footwear posted the sharpest annual price increase of any CPI category this year in Ireland, up 9.0% in the year to March 2026, and this has driven a measurable shift away from traditional retail. The CSO numbers show spending in clothing stores fell 9%, while second-hand spending, notably through platforms like Vinted, rose 197% year-on-year.
Behavioural data from the National Payments Institute shows 68% of adults now delay non-essential clothing purchases until sales, with roughly half of under-40s expecting to buy second-hand as a matter of course.
Affordable in-country travel
According to Hospitality Ireland, affordability concerns are steering Irish holidaymakers toward domestic trips rather than travel abroad. More than half (56%) of Irish holidaymakers are planning a staycation in 2026, led by Kerry, Galway, and Dublin, as travellers avoid international flight and package-holiday costs that Fáilte Ireland estimates are 5–7% higher year-on-year.
I tend to remember pleasant in-country trips by the food I eat. When in County Donegal, it was a plate of chicken curry that will entice me to return to Letterkenny.
I get a lot of promotional offers for short breaks across Ireland. It seems to me that short-term-letting costs are falling in Kerry and Galway but rising in Cork and Clare. From a few weekend breaks in Northern Ireland there seems to be better value than in the Republic.