I have literally no money!

debtmuncher

gotnodosh wrote: »

There is a Food Bank in Cardiff, run by the Trussell Trust. Maybe you could see if you can get a food parcel from them?

http://www.cardifffoodbank.org.uk/

thats a fantastic link...a good place to try out .

if by chance you get more than enough food that you need you could always donate some things to them. just make sure your cupboards are well stocked for about three months!

still waiting for my pm biw!!! cmon!:kisses3::D

bank_of_slate

Hi broke,
You've had lots of kind offers, now time to look at why this happened, is there anything you can do to prevent this happening to you in future months or is this a vicious circle that you're in every month?

Have you filled out an SOA (statement of Accounts) yet?
www.makesenseofcards.com/soacalc.html

If you post it up we can offer you advise and support (apologies if you already have, I haven't had time to read through the whole thread)

Also look at the Up your income board to see if there is anything that would help E.G. paid surveys!
I do surveys on Toluna, Onepoll, Valued Opinions and Lightspeed Panel.
I've had over £150 in vouchers in the last year! :T
...Linda xx

brokeinwales

hey everyone,
I am completely overwhelmed by all the PMs with messages of moral support and offers of help / friendship - as well as all the replies on the thread.

Just wanted to say that I will be sitting down with my toast this lunchtime to go through them all and reply, and also to post about how I got on on my freebie Tesco trip last night.

Speak to you all shortly

xxx

jo1972

brokeinwales wrote: »

I will be sitting down with my toast this lunchtime

Hopefully you will be able to eat something other than toast tomorrow xx

brokeinwales

Well today I am suffering froma nasty mouth ulcer – which at least is making me less inclined to eat so much!
Last night I took my £5 Tesco voucher to the Tesco Express about 7pm – think I picked the time pretty well, as they were just pricing up a load of stuff in the reduced section. This is what I bought:
A bag of salad tomatoes
2 Onions
4 Baking potatoes
An apple (reduced to 4p for no obvious reason)
Pack of crumpets (Reduced to 10p – will stick them in the freezer to give me breakfasts for a few days)
Loaf of wholemeal bread
A massive bag of frozen mixed veg that was slightly ripped at the top
A dented tin of chickpeas
A bag of nuts and raisins (they wouldn’t give me change from the voucher so I had to find something to make up the face value! I figured at least I’d be getting some protein from the nuts, and protein is meant to make you feel full.)

For dinner I made an omelette using some of the free eggs and mushrooms from yesterday, plus a tomato. I had it with wedges made from one of the potatoes, and a handful of the mixed veg. It was actually quite nice.

Exercise wise I went for my run (three miles) and threw in some sit ups, press ups and some weights. Thing is my “weights” are actually tins of baked beans, so at some point I’m probably going to need to eat them!

I also had a search around the house for spare change. I only managed 3p – but I also found two little jam pots I stole from a caf! a while ago, anda glasses cleaning spray (so at least I have shiny specs.). Breakfast, consequently, was toast and jam. For lunch I bought some bread and a tin of beans with me. I’ve decided as the beans are moist anyway, I can do without butter without notcing much difference.

I logged in to an insane amount of PM’s! I’m concerned now that I’m going to end up with more food than I actually need at this rate. I will get around to replying to you all I promise – but to be honest, I’d rather you all gave it to someone who needs it more than me now. I at least have another Tesco voucher and a payday looming at some point in the future. And I have a roof over my head – which is more than a lot of people have.

I’ve been thinking that maybe I ought to talk a bit about how I managed to get into this mess in the first place. Partly because I hate that people might think I’m a victim of my own extravagance or materialism with Jimmy Choos lying around the house, and partly because as you’ve all been so nice you probably ought to know more about me.

Don’t get me wrong, a lot of this is my own fault. I don’t go out much (my new bf is astonished by my lack of knowledge of Cardiff nightspots!), rarely holiday, and all my clothes are either charity shop or Primark – I have always been a pretty savvy shopper, and I hate the thought of spending more than a tenner on a single item. I am, however, guilty of disorganisation when it comes to money (and everything else for that matter!) . I’ve always had trouble staying on top of bills, working out what needs paying when and getting it all organised in a way that works for me. I constantly seem to be catching up with myself and hurtling from one minor crisis to another.

It’s something I need to work on. I have never had great organisational skills, I struggle with maths, I don’t understand financial language money is something I find difficult and stressful. Dealing with it makes me feel incredibly stupid.

Despite that – I’ve always “managed” before. I’ve never had spare cash, but always been able to just about stay afloat. What’s really pushed me into this mess is circumstance and bad luck. Though if I’d been more organised maybe I’d have the resources to be able to cope with it better.

After splitting with the ex earlier this year I was left in a flat I couldn’t afford to live in with two sets of bills to pay. I managed to find a room in a shared house to lessen that problem – but had to find a deposit, whilst still paying rent on the old place. Also got stung by an electricity bill – suppliers took nearly a year to sort out the first bill – so it ended up being over £800. (I had been putting a little money aside for this, but the other payments wiped it out). My ex refused to contribute to this.

Then- the real pain in the backside was my bank mucking up. They didn’t cancel my standing order to the old landlord (despite me asking them to). Hence over £500 went out of my account when I wasn’t expecting it to. The bank were incredibly unhelpful, implying it must have been my fault(I hadn’t signed anything, just asked them to cancel) and telling me I’d have to contact my landlord direct to ask her to return the money. This I’ve done, but she’s not forthcoming (haven’t had my deposit back either), and says that I owe money for cleaning and damages anyway so “she’ll just take it out of that”. I don’t know if I’ll ever see this money again.

All put together this has led to my “£3 in the whole world” situation.I also have two £1000 overdrafts and owe my father £400, as well as the utility bills debts.

My ex, of course, think all this is hilarious and my just desserts for “the way I treated him” (despite my helping to pay off his debts and supporting his booze and fags habit as well as paying for a training course he never finished, he still thinks I used him for money – but that’s another story you don’t want to hear! Pointless being bitter….)

I have put myself together a budget for when I do get paid, some semblance of a plan for beginning to sort my life out. But it’s so frustrating that I have to get through this no-money-period before I can even begin to think about getting organised. Sometimes I feel like I’m constantly catching up with myself, disasters happen, I have no resources to deal with them, so I get further into debt, so I can never build up any savings in order to give myself a safety net so I CAN deal with them. And this is where it’s ended up this time.

Thanks again so much for the support. I will keep you all up-to-date!

biw xxxxx

PARIS_5000

You are doing very well and payday will be here very soon.

Stay strong

debtmuncher

a very impressive menu and the shopping trip was just fab. well done! i am sure you can manage to ride through to pay day, did you look at the cardiff food bank link? a handy back up if you need it. also dont be afraid to ask for some help....nothing wrong in it and i would rather you got yourself prepared for next month instead of wasting your energy worrying about how to eat tomorrow. i would quite happily send a tin down for you to use as ammunition to your ex lol. cheeky sod for laughing at you about your worries.

jo1972

BIW, I think that most of us here know where you are coming from. I did initially have constant spending sprees which built up debt but I did have the money coming in to pay the debts, unfortunately my organisational skills are pretty crap too and so I ended up out of my depth.

Thankfully, after a couple of years of being on this site and learning new ways to cope with things, I'm debt free, it's not been easy but quite addictive

My credit was shot to pieces, but last week was accepted for a credit card, the first bit of credit in 10 years! It arrived this morning and I will not be using it, only for a small purchase at the end of the month, like my Tesco shop or something and this will be just before payday when I will pay off the FULL balance which hopefully in time will improve my credit score. It was a bit scary getting that card in the post this morning, but I've grown up, and hopefully now got some responsibility and will be sensible :cool: :rotfl:

Hope you have a good day, enjoy the beans on toast :drool:

ETA: I think you should speak to CAB about your rent deposit

xx

pmlindyloo

Hi

Re: not getting your deposit back from your landlord. (landlady?)

Have a look at this:

http://www.adviceguide.org.uk/index/h_tenancy_deposits.pdf

If you think this applies to you I suggest you contact CAB and they will help you sort this out.

Note - if your landlady hasn't used the deposit protection scheme you may (eventually) get 3 times the amount of deposit back!

Hope this helps.

brokeinwales

I've just briefly looked intot his deposit thing - I think I may have a case (the idea of going to court over it absolutely terrifies me though - I am hopeless with anything legal or financial - I'm just too thick and not bolshy enough!), I may try and put together a letter to my old landlady.

Incidentally beans on toast most definetly does not need butter to be nice!

I'm slowly working through the other links people have kindly given - there's a huge bank of information on this thread now that I need to investigate. I need to go to the library after work I think and spend an hour or so just going through them all.

I hope others get some use out of them as well. I'm sure I'll be using this as a resource for months - even years - to come.