Well, another month and a little bit of movement. Though I’ll be honest, watching the Sensible Basket from month to month is a bit like standing on a harbour wall watching a calm ocean. Minimal waves, the odd ripple, and you’re never quite sure whether the tide is coming in or going out.
The August basket comes in at £20.94, up 55p on July’s £20.39. We’re also now 24p higher than where we started back in May at £20.70. Not dramatic. But it’s moving in the wrong direction.
The eggs are at it again
The most notable mover this month is the Happy Hen free range eggs, up from £2.35 in July to £2.90 in August. That’s a 55p jump in a single month, and it brings them to the highest price we’ve recorded since we started tracking in May.
Now, there is a caveat worth mentioning. At Tesco, the Clubcard price on the same eggs is £2.60. Which raises an interesting question I’m going to resist going fully into here, but I will say this: there’s a growing debate around whether the “standard” shelf price on some products is a genuine price or simply a reference point to make the Clubcard price look more attractive. It’s something I’ll be exploring in a future article, because it affects how we should all be reading our supermarket bills. Watch this space.
For now, I’m recording the standard shelf price in the basket to keep things consistent.
Some good news on milk
On a more positive note, the pint of milk has dropped 5p, from £0.90 in July back down to £0.85. A small but welcome reduction. It’s still 10p higher than the May price of £0.75, so we’re not back to where we started, but a reduction is always a relief.
Petrol creeping back up
Fuel is up 5p a litre, from £1.51 in July to £1.56 in August. Nothing alarming, but after a couple of months of declining pump prices it’s a reminder that the relief at the forecourt doesn’t last forever.
Everything else held firm
The Big Mac remains at £5.19, the Grande Latte at £4.65, bread at £0.74, Coca-Cola at £1.55, Guinness at £1.41, cucumber at £0.99 and the Twix at £1.10. Six items in a row with no movement whatsoever. Which in the current climate is probably the best we can hope for.
Four months in
We’re still in early days with this tracker but we’re starting to build up a genuinely useful dataset. Four months of prices across 10 items gives you something to actually look at rather than just react to. The eggs are clearly the volatile one. Milk moves around. Petrol does what petrol does. And the branded items at the top of the basket, the Big Mac and the latte, haven’t moved a penny since May.
Whether that changes before the end of the year is the interesting question. Head over to The Sensible Basket to see the full chart and history, and come back in September to see what autumn does to prices.
My money is still on the eggs doing something unexpected.