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Notes -
Additionally, part of it for me is the expense breakdown and where the cuts have to be made. There are several unavoidable expenses, and a very small field of adjustable expenses. As such, all tightening of the belt has to be done out of a very small portion of the overall budget.
Heating, and gas cannot be adjusted. I already use them as little as possible, and any further reduction would be stupid and harmful. Any increase in heating or gas costs then, has to be cut out of something else. Hard goods (furniture, dishware, clothing, appliances etc) likewise cannot be adjusted, as I pay nothing for them (hooray Facebook Marketplace!)
Food and other consumables can be adjusted, but only by dropping in quality noticably. Because this is my only flex point, it is where almost all of the change in standard of living occurs. Say my overall spending power drops by 10%. That's not a lot, but this category makes up only 20% of my spending, and is the only area where change can occur, so I have to take a very large hit to the quality of consumables just to break even. This hurts a lot. Eating cheaper makes me feel worse, noticably, both physically and emotionally.
I think many experience a similar effect. If only 10% of your budget is discretionary spending and your real purchasing power drops by 10%, you now have no discretionary spending money at all. That is a massive hit to quality of life. Straight from "well I work a lot but I get fun outings and the occasional vacation," all the way to "I literally just work to live to continue working."
This is my experience as well.
In our case, we switched to both working, and are sending our children (toddler and pre-k) to childcare, because the state pays for 90% of the childcare cost. This is fine, I think the kids like it well enough, but it pads out the GDP without necessarily improving living standards in comparison to having more households with stay at home mothers in them. This is the kind of detail that makes me suspicious of some of the economic figures.
There are positives to the current situation, but it also feels more fragile -- when someone is sick, it's a bigger problem, including calling out from work (and we aren't supposed to call out morning of, so we have to decide the day before), and a general lack of flexibility with the children. This is part of what's going on with being unable to suspend kids or even have them home sick -- there's nobody around to look after them. There are kids I teach who are clearly stressed out, lashing out, disrupting things for the others, and shouldn't be in a large school 7 hrs a day, but there isn't an alternative, there's nobody else they're able to be with, everyone is following very strict rules watching one another's children and elderly, without any slack.
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