It's STILL tough and not getting better - so how are we coping?

kezlou

lauren fantastic bargain with the nappies1
northwest i pay £1.98 for sainsburys basic dried skimmed milk, 400g. Just checked comparison site and its gone up to £2.17:( Oh and they basic teabags have gone up to 34p instead of 28p.
thanks purpleheather will be looking in there at the weekend.
thrilla i agree completely 100% regarding union reps. I know a few, but one in particular is amazing. He has managed to gain funds for so many people who lost they jobs when corus closed down. He work long and i mean long hours, personally seeing into detail in the early hours. He's such a lovely man.

Okay for me thatcher destroyed the unions power but we do still need them, especially now. I think the emergency services, teachers,nurses and doctors deserve pay rises. My SIL is in amazing amount of debt from paying herself through medical school. Yes she gets a fair wage but she works 28days straight on a rota, 70+ hours a week and yes she's a surgeon but still its ridiculous. Yet all doctors have to work like this otherwise the NHs system will fall apart. Teachers don't earn enough at all, i actually supported them every time a strike has happened.
I won' t say anything else in case i offend anyone.

Well i managed to get all the material i needed off the market for more curtains i hope. So fingers crossed all will go well tomorrow.
Should be a NSD as i already have money for bus fares sorted.

I'm off to bed as i'm wiped out.

purpleheather2810

maryb wrote: »

Re the comment about renting an allotment, we rented one because it was a lot cheaper than buying a house with a bigger garden. It looks out over National Trust land which makes you feel you are right out in the country. A real bargain!

We rent an allotment too, however one day we hope to have a bigger garden as we are not allowed fruit trees or to keep livestock on our allotment which we would love to do (just chickens, not herds of cattle...)

katholicos

Ok, lots of interesting reading to be done in here tonight, but I have nothing to add at present time.

However, today was DS's 15th birthday and since he left home to live with his Dad almost a year ago, things have been very difficult for us (myself and my DD). Before now i would have worried myself silly about not being able to give him much for his birthday but this time I haven't been worried at all. He had a card off me with a little bit of money in it. I told him i would have liked to have been able to give him more but there was no more to give. He was fine about it and seemed genuinely pleased with what he had...though i think that is cos his Dad had already given him money and other relatives had also given him money too.

Anyway, DS is on a healthy eating kick at the moment so he had already told me last week not to buy/make a birthday cake, so i just made him his favourite homemade meal, lasagne (DS's Dad is italian) and we sand 'Happy Birthday' to him before we tucked in!

All in all it's been a good day. It even turned out to be an NSD since i had DS's card and money put away already in preparation for today.

This afternoon i harvested some potatoes from my garden and they are now dehydrating in the erm, dehydrator.

purpleheather2810

Ok so I was going to read the whole thread, but I'm sorry it's now bed time and I haven't! Although from what I've read, I think I will feel at home here

So, I'm 30, DH 41, have 2 dd's, 5 and 2, and 2 grown up (ish) step kids too. DH set up his own IT business 18 months ago after being made redundant. He's doing ok at the mo, fingers crossed. I do language tuition with groups of nursery/primary school children and earn peanuts but I do enjoy it very much Long term, I would like to train as a primary school teacher hopefully using my language skills if possible. We have a lot of debts at the moment though, which mean we have to delay any big decisions like that until our youngest is in school at least, and the debts are under control. I suppose you could say, like a lot of people at the moment, we are treading water. There's a roof over our heads, food in our bellies (mainly lentils...!) and all bills are paid. There just isn't much left over!

So, to keep costs low, we:

have an allotment which DH mainly looks after although we all muck in when it's time to pick things. This year we have had bumper crops of gooseberries, rhubarb, beans, strawberries, cabbages... we try to grow things we like to eat and/or tend to be expensive in the shops.
go foraging for free food such as elderflowers, blackberries, sloes, crabapples.
cook from scratch/batch cook a lot - at the weekend, to save time on weeknights which can be really busy.
use charity shops/freegle/freecycle where possible - although I haven't been on freegle for ages, I really must get back on it!

what we could do more of:

baking - especially flapjacks/muffins/traybakes for packed lunches - my problem is that I'm very overweight and I struggle to have cakes etc in the house without eating them all myself.... but I must TRY!!
wine making - both myself and the DH like our wine and we spend too much money on it. must investigate making our own.
being more frugal with washing powder, shampoo, conditioner etc.
stop using the tumble dryer - my guilty secret - and stop doing the school run in the car where possible - my other guilty secret! there, I said it!

I think the thng to realise is, the more cutbacks like this I can make, the closer our dream of being debt free becomes. I have spent so long in debt that I'm not sure I know what it will feel like, IYSWIM?

Anyway, if you're still reading, thanks for letting me take part and I've really enjoyed reading up til now so I look forward to all the tips and interesting conversations still to come....

mardatha

I think unions are like vaccinations. Once they achieve their much-needed objective, we tend to forget how very needed they were....then we get lazy and things tend to turn back on us.

Charis

On a lighter note this shaggy dog story has got to be the funniest thread I have ever read on this site. Do not read while imbibing liquid. You may choke.

Charis

ginnyknit

Im sorry but I don't think you could even get a Great Dane in the back of a Ka - especially if rigor mortis had set in - :rotfl::rotfl:Whoops did I say that out loud! That thread should have a health warning - btw don't eat jelly babies when you read it either!

So what would be an appropriate outfit for marching on number 10

a) wellies and a pith helmet
b) all black and a balaclava

just want to know so I can get organised?

Packed lunch of course and can someone check on budget ways to get to London on said date. Dont put your butties in a back pack if we are going with the balaclava look.

And yes I really do take the situation seriously but a bit of fun is sometimes necessary.

lauren_1

I have a lot of support for emergency workers, nurses, doctors, police, fire service, army etc etc these are the front line who really help keep the country from falling apart yet these are taken for granted the most and unfortunately if they went on strike there would be chaos!

I am sick of seeing my local post office depo splashed across my local rags front page, they striked 5 times last year, my old childhood next door neighbour is a postman and he gets more per hour than i used to on the nurse bank and twice what a HCA would be paid.

Gigervamp

On a lighter note this shaggy dog story has got to be the funniest thread I have ever read on this site. Do not read while imbibing liquid. You may choke.

I could barely read that through the tears of laughter! Thanks for posting the link Charis.

Hardup_Hester

Count me in for a trip to Number 10, I'm also renowned for my 'assertive' nature.