How can we cut back!?

natlie

Hi
will you get statutory maternity pay, income support or tax crddits? you could also try for JSA, and apply for help with rent and council tax, if you are not woring you should still be entitled to something try www.entitledto.com sorry if its been posted before

I was only in work for a few months when I was pregnant as I started a new job I has statutory maternity pay £114 a week.

You could try getting a job they can't not employ you because you are pregnant - thats illegal. Just look for a job somewhere legit - a big name firm maybe telemarketing or something you can do sitting down?

HTH
Nat

juliethemuse

before this gets locked i thought i would mention Steph, competitions, last year i won quite alot of prizes, and if your stuck at home you can spend a few hours a day comping, its a bit hit and miss though at the moment i am going through a mega dry spell, but last year won loads including a trip to Vegas :T and money prizes too, this year cant seem to win a sausage but you've got to be in it to win it as they say,

FatVonD

I don’t know why I think I’m going to triumph in explaining this when so many have failed but here goes…

We could all argue until the cows come home about whether something is ‘essential’ or merely ‘desirable’ but, whichever they are, at your current level of expenditure (and with your current income which looks unlikely to change in the near future) whether you deem them ‘essential’ or not, you simply can’t AFFORD some of these things! You are living beyond your means, simple as.

Think of it like a diet, if you’re only half a stone overweight you can lose that excess weight in a week. If you choose to do nothing about it and continue with the same eating pattern that got you there in the first place some way down the line you will find yourself several stone overweight and you will have to work harder for longer to lose that weight. Isn’t it better to do the financial equivalent of cutting out a few chocolate biscuits now rather then a full starvation diet a year down the line? It was your current spending habits which have got you to where you are at the moment and, unless you make some changes, you will only continue to go in the same direction! (What’s that expression, something about the definition of madness being repeatedly doing the same things expecting the outcome to be different?)

I get the impression you’re very young and you probably see that a lot of other people have these things and you feel it’s your right to have them too but maybe their situation is different to yours. Maybe they have two wages coming in, maybe they live at home still (or maybe they’re just one step behind you before THEIR debts bite them on the rear!)

I agree your car is an essential and I can see that your OH needs a mobile phone to stay in contact while he’s at work (not least of all for when you go into labour!) but roaming internet?? No way! I understand he works long hours with little stimulation at work but could he not read a book instead? The library is free! Roaming internet I think falls into the ‘desirable’ category rather than essential. (It’s ‘desirable’ that I have a bigger house with an extra bedroom so my step kids don’t have to sleep on the sofa at weekends but I can’t afford one so I can’t have one, end of!)

I don’t believe that you personally need a mobile phone other than for emergencies as you described. Once your contract comes to an end Tesco sell a very basic PAYG phone for £5, it may not have knobs and whistles but would be perfectly adequate just for that purpose. Until the contract does end, is there a (trusted) family member who is thinking of taking out a contract of their own that could take it off your hands for you (tell your provider you’re getting nuisance calls and want to change your number so they don’t end up getting all your calls.)

I can see why catch up TV would be very desirable given the hours your OH works and the quality of daytime TV (I personally attribute my own post natal depression entirely to the Chuckle Brothers) but (once your contract ends) wouldn’t freeview and a video recorder do the same job? (People are always giving away video recorders on freecycle.)

You seem to be making a lot of excuses as to why you need all these things, maybe you feel you’ve been unjustly criticised and this has made you defensive or maybe you just aren’t ready to halt the slide and turn it in the other direction. Be assured though that everybody on this thread has tried to help you. Far from being frugal-living bores they are people who have already had the light bulb moment, know how hard it is to claw your way back, and have tried to share their enlightenment to help you avoid making the same mistakes. Whether you choose to take it on board or not is up to you but do you not think that you will be the one to lose out if you don't?

PS I think delivering the local paper and ironing are great ideas for upping your income, as is casual temping for a few days or a week at a time (as opposed to a temporary contract which I understand may be hard to come by.)

stephbond89

I have to stick up for whoever it is who asked about the colour blindess been a thing about driving, as it was somehting I was worried about with him too before I knew anything about it. Although i dont agree with anything else they said (retard stupd etc), but no, he is ok to drive, he has eye tests each year, he has a very weird form of colour blindness, so much so I didnt even believe he was colourblind, until an optician told me when I was there!! he can distinguish red and green, which means he can drive, but it is blue and some other colour he cannot see or somehting like that, I dont personally understand it. And I dont actualy think it is called "colour blindness", but whenever he goes for an interview he has to tell them about it (it is always on the application form), and they can for some reason stop him for working for them even though they shuldnt be able to discriminate!! The only reason he got this job, is because they were desperate for guards and he explained it wasn't red/green colour blindness and so wouldnt affect the danger colour buttons etc!! So yes he can drive, i wouldnt allow him to if he wasnt supposed to!

On the other note, maybe we do live beyond our means by having Virgin Media and mobile internet, but the thing is our income isnt low, we are not on £600 a month, and so when we got them we didnt realise our bills would get out of hand during the horrible low wage months making our bills an extra £100 a month approx in total, which is why we didnt hesitate to take them on, but the fact of the matter is we are stuck with them as they are, I have tried very hard to lower them, and have lowered them as much as I can, which has now lowered my outgoings by around £15 a month, which I think is a sucess. And as they say, Rome wasnt built in a day, you say it is like a diet, we have cut out ALL name brand products from our shopping taking our monthly bill from £120 a month to usually between £60 and £100 (depending on whether the freezer needs meat or not), we shop direct from wholesalers and buy everything bulk now, we never have branded loo roll, coffee, tea, frozen foods. We used to go out for a meal once a month, we have cut this out of our life, saving us £50 a month, my husband no longer taks money to work for food but takes his own instead, which is a plain sandwich with basic meat (not deli).

I think we have done well to do this considering it has made our lives relatively boring and taseless, we dont socialise, we dont go on trips, we haven't been on holiday in 2 years (this is how long we have been married, our last holiday was our honeymoon which my parent in laws paid for, and it was only to York, thats York UK not New York!).

Yes we have tv, and as have said about 100 times now, we will cut the package down once it comes to an end, but we need internet and home phone, as mobile calls cost so much, and without the net, Id spend much more on calls (I email most places, I online bank meaning no calls to them, I email friends and family instead of phoning), we have the lwoest internet package and lowest phone packages.

The mobile phones as I have said for us are essential. It may sound ridiculous, but my husbands phone is a works phone, I dont mean he has to make hundreds of calls to and from people from it, but it is his means of communication in work, if he needs to call the police *he is not allowed to use the landlines in his place of work* or the help centre of his work if anything is wrong, he also has to make check calls every hour to tell them he is alive and nothing is wrong. Yes his work shoudl pay for a phone...but they dont.

And for me, it is essential, I keep in contact via text with my hubby all night, maybe not essential to some couples, but I see him for 2 hours a day at most, without that communicatuon, we'd never speak. So for me its essential.

On te other post about benefits, Nope I canot get any benefits at all. Not one until baby is born. I get a £190 grant next month but thats it, no regular benefits.

Its all well and good saying get a job until maternity leave would kick in, but i was looking for a job for 2 years when I was available to work full time in ANY job, (i applied for anything from cleaner to managerial posts!), and got nothing but around 5 interviews which went nowhere. So considering I have 3 working months left before my maternity leave would kick in, I find it very hard to believe I would find anything, I cannot go back to work, unless over 16 hours a week once the baby is born, as I wouldnt be able to afford child care (only get childcare vouchers if you work over 16 hours a week), and I have no family here who can babysit (as I said earlier my parents live 60 miles away), and my husbands familyu all work full time themselves. So childcare would be my only option - i plan going to work when the child is in nursery and school, but until then it wouldnt be feasable without spending ALL of my wages on child care unless I worked over 16 hours a week, which I wouldnt really want to do.

Anyway, thanks for the help.

Material_Girl_2

Hi Steph,
To be honest it doesn't look as if you can cut back any more at the moment? I actually agree with you that any employers may be reluctant to take on a pregnant woman even on a temporary basis. Perhaps you could do some babysitting or so for now for friends or family just to earn a little bit of pocket money? Not sure if that is feasible at all though? Or take on ironing work that you could do from home?

If these are not options for you at the moment perhaps for now you just have to stick with your lifestyle now and accept that you cannot cut back any more for now. I know that is difficult because you'd like to go out and enjoy yourselves and have some treats etc, but if you can't there is just nothing you can do about it for now. However, things may change once the baby is a bit older and in nursery, so it won't be forever! Wishing you all the best though!

daveyjp

stephbond89 wrote: »

HAHAHAHA I WISH we had a BMW and could afford it!!! We have a 15 year old Proton GL with a boot big enough for a dead horse! A BMW lmao god thats made me laugh!!!

If you look back to my first post many days ago I mentioned the company who thought 3 BMWs costing £2000 a month were more essential than the rent on a property which was £800.

At the moment your" BMW" is cable, mobiles and even the car. Until you accept these items are not essential (inconvenient not to have, but not essential) you won't get anywhere.

flubdub

Whilst I agree with most of the advice on here, as I said before, I feel she really DOES need the car. It can be very lonely when you have had a baby, and to not even be able to nip to asda and get a few bags of shopping, can be quite depressing!
(Steph; BTW Mopeds are not as expensive as you said. You can get a good one for around £200. Also, I noticed you live Lancs, where abouts if you dont mind me asking? I live in preston )

stephbond89

No no its my mum and dad who live there!!! I am in Warrington now!! My parents live in Lancaster, a little village called Glasson Dock, you may have heard of it, its quite popular I think but very tiny lol!

And sorry but once again someone bringing up our car as inessential...its starting to annoy me a little now, the car IS essential and not somehting we want to have...my husband NEEDS a car for work, without it he would have no job, and our situation would be 100 times worse, or would you suggest he sits at home and we sponge off all the tax payers on here because he cannot work more than a couple of miles from home and on the bus route?? Many people on here can acutally see our car is essential, it wouldnt be if it was a £50,000 car whcih cost a fortune to run tax and insure. But it isnt, its a banger, the cheapest we could get.

Anyway. Done.

flubdub

Oh yes, my dad takes my eldest there all the time to see the boats!! Theres a couple of pubs there, and a shop, but thats about it! My friends used to live there so I spent alot of time there. Im about 20 minutes down the road in Garstang?

stephbond89

Ooooh yes I know Garstang!! love it there, the new booths there is great! lol!!! My mum and dad go there all the time, went to the Victorian market near christmas, which I was a bit jealous about lol! i love it around there, love going up there when we can afford to, I lived there for a few years and miss it loads, would love to move back but just no chance of it as there just arent jobs there!!!

Yep thats the one! Lots of boats there, my brother goes crabbing down in the dock in the summer and kayaking on the canal!!! My mum and dad live on the holiday home site just up the road, Marina??? We love it up there in the summer, cant wait for the baby to be able to spend the summers up there like I did as a kid! x