This Is Money Show

We’ve all felt it, that moment when you look at your bank balance and think ‘I’ve spent how much?’ But what if you looked at an entire lifetime’s worth of spending? What would the damage be and how painful would that number feel? According to a recent piece of research by Atom Bank, the cost of living an entire near 81-year lifetime in 2021 would be a whopping £1,543,834. That includes £169,159 spent on children, £266,742 on buying the average house and £69,793 on Christmases. The bank compared the figures to what the same lifetime would have cost at a 1971 snapshot, with £14,738 on children, £2,371 on the average house, and £4,177 on Christmases. Beyond highlighting just how much house prices have skyrocketed in 50 years – if they had only kept pace with standard inflation the average home would cost £38,000 – what does this tell us? On this week’s podcast, Georgie Frost, Lee Boyce and Simon Lambert discuss that and why a snapshot like this – vaguely precise as it may be – can help us under