But despite how bleak the next month will be for our bank balances, the situation will only get worse. The energy price cap will not fall back to its near-£1,200 figure any time soon, mobile phone bills will not go down and a perverse stealth tax will only keep eating away at our take-home pay.

The biggest cost on taxpayers is the Chancellor’s decision a year ago to freeze tax allowances – the amount of income we can earn before tax is due – for four years. This coming tax year alone that will cost a basic rate taxpayer £78 and those who pay higher rate tax £396 compared with the tax they would have paid if allowances had risen, as the law says they should, with inflation.

Over the following three years that loss will grow as they stay frozen instead of rising each year. Using official inflation forecasts my calculations show that the personal tax allowance should rise from last year’s £12,570 to £14,700 in 2025/26. Over those four years the total cost of the freeze to a basic rate taxpayer is £1,108 in extra tax at 20pc and then 19pc from April 2024.

By April 2025 the higher rate threshold should be £59,000 instead of the frozen £50,270. Over the four years higher rate taxpayers will pay nearly £6,000 in extra tax. The latest Treasury estimate is that this freeze will cost all of us £33bn more tax over those four frozen years.

Prices up every month. Taxes up every year. There will be more cruel Aprils after this one and the Chancellor, not war or energy markets, is to blame.

Paul Lewis is the presenter of BBC Radio 4’s Money Box