Share your stories of desparation!

KittyKate

Have any of you been so poor you've stooped to new lows?! I certainly have!! For example whilst living at uni I was totally skint and starving. The only food I had was tinned mince, tinned carrots and peas, and tinned potatoes. The resulting 'cottage pie' was so disgusting even my boyfriend (who eats anything!) called it 'dog food!'

I also had a friend who was so poor he couldn't afford loo roll so his housemates used the Yellow Pages!

Thankfully I'm not in that position any more and can chuckle now but at the time you did what you could to get by!

lynzpower

When I was really really skint I was working at some place which counted up gratis points that used to come in cigarette packets.

the moeny was pre-min wage, I think I was on 2.50 an hour part time.

to supplement my income I pinched gratis points before they went in the shredder ( dont worry all collectors got thier items ) and then used the points to buy toasters etc, which I then sold for a fiver. Must have made about £15 out of that, and boy did I need it at the time. Pretty shameful though.

THANK GOD FOR MINIMUM WAGE!

mrs_mug_2

We got married in 2003 (when our debt really started) and that year we lived off £40 a month for food. We only had meat once a month when we visited parents and lived off lidl beans with toast or potatoes. We had a lot of pasta and budget tinned tomatoes too. Infact, we were so hard up that when i got a pay rise we could afford £5 a month on luxuries and we were so excited!

pounds_and_pensive

When the kids were tiny, the mainstay of our diet were Safeway Savers fish fingers, until my OH got a job in a well-known faggot factory (meatballs, to any American readers!), and we enjoyed the staff discount. 'Enjoyed' is a word I use loosely here - after several weeks of faggots appearing on the table every other mealtime we all got bored, and I began to get creative. I'd defrost them to make Faggot Bolognaise, Faggot Lasagne, Faggot Cottage Pie... there was no end to it. Until the day I put a dish of apple pie in front of my then three year-old, and he poked it reluctantly with a spoon and asked hesitantly 'Mum? There's no faggots in here, are there?'! You can probably go too far in attempting to stretch the budget, but he's seventeen now, and seems to have recovered from the trauma

Snaggles

Hahaha, your faggot story made me giggle pounds_and_pensive! I remember at uni I lived off Space Raider crisps (10p a packet), from the vending machine in our halls of residence. Normally they just had the pickled onion ones, which are nice enough, but occasionally they had the beefy ones which were pure vending maching gold! I used to make crisp butties as we had a canteen which you could have a free breakfast in, so i used to eat some cereal and smuggle the bread (which you were supposed to toast in their toasting machine) out of the canteen under my jumper. Can't believe I did it now but desperate times and all that!

lynzpower

mmmm space raiders mmmmmmm

lynsayjane

i dont recall anytimes i've been 'desperate' really, thankfully i've caught myself before my debt gets that bad!

but probably my most embarressing money moment was argueing over whether buying reduced burgers i didn't need but could freeze till needed was more or less dfw than not buying the burgers until i needed them...:eek: it took me over ten minutes in asda to argue this point with myself.

Snaggles

I know Lynz, they're yummy! This thread has really made me chuckle, thanks!

pounds_and_pensive

Imagine the joy of faggot-flavoured Space Raiders though! No, best not

Snaggles

In those days, I would have given them a try hahaha!

lazy&indebt

I LOVE faggots and I LOVE space raiders so faggot flavoured space raiders sound ace to me!
I don't think times have gotten that hard with me but I have had debates with myself in the super market, and got out my calculator to work out if it's better to buy 6 bread rolls for 80p or 4 on BOGOF for 70p!