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

JOANNESAPHINE

Been lurking and reading all of this thread and have loved it so far. Lost my job in July, teaching assistant and posts have been cut to the bone where I worked. No luck job hunting two interviews so far for dinner lady and Asda but nothing as yet and not much around, would be happy with 10 hours. Husband in public sector, police, shortly will have to travel further to work at a cost to us of £100 a month, is losing an allowance in his wages another hundred, will have to put another 2% in pension when already putting in 11% and will lose tax credits come April. Have budgeted for my loss of £320 a month but need to get seriously OS to do the rest! No debts apart from mortgage and then just the usual household bills as have been getting ready for this and paid off any credit we did have. Would love to join in your thread as it seems so relevant to me and you all seem so nice. x

LannyLee

<<Hugs>> Crickett - hope your dad feels better soon

LannyLee

JOANNESAPHINE wrote: »

Been lurking and reading all of this thread and have loved it so far. Lost my job in July, teaching assistant and posts have been cut to the bone where I worked. No luck job hunting two interviews so far for dinner lady and Asda but nothing as yet and not much around, would be happy with 10 hours. Husband in public sector, police, shortly will have to travel further to work at a cost to us of £100 a month, is losing an allowance in his wages another hundred, will have to put another 2% in pension when already putting in 11% and will lose tax credits come April. Have budgeted for my loss of £320 a month but need to get seriously OS to do the rest! No debts apart from mortgage and then just the usual household bills as have been getting ready for this and paid off any credit we did have. Would love to join in your thread as it seems so relevant to me and you all seem so nice. x

Welcome JOANNESAPHINE!

parsonswife8

northwest1965 wrote: »

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00s1lc8
Heres the link for the edible garden programme. it was very good.

OH has just phoned from his Mums, he called into see her with the stepkids. He's bringing me a carrier bag of apples back and a 1lb of blackberries:T

I watched two of these programmes this afternoon and really enjoyed them. I did see some of them on telly, but missed a few.
:T:T


Edited to add:- Welcome Joannesaphine.

northwest1965

Welcome JOANNESAPHINE.

Just off to watch The Great British Bake Off, I love these sort of programmes.

BB1984

Hi everyone, hope you've all had a good day. Glad to hear good news of your cat and Dad, Lindy-Loo and Crickett respectively, was thinking of you last night.

My OH arrived home late last night, armed with gifts! They were leaving presents from his colleagues as it was his last day at work, and one of them was particularly exciting! It's a book called "Grow your own, Eat your own" by Bob Flowerdew. Don't know if any of you have seen it, and I've only had a quick look so far, but it looks fantastic. It's all about how to cope with gluts of fruit and veg, and talks through how to bottle,pickle, smoke, jam, jelly, dry (and a million other storage methods!) all kinds of things. I'll enjoy reading that from cover to cover, and hopefully will be brave enough to try some of the methods, because all I've ever done with fruit and veg is freeze it.

So if anyone has any questions about the above, I'm your girl - I'll consult my (sorry, OH's) book!

Oh - someone on here mentioned about M&S's sausages being really nice, and great value when they're on 3 for £10. Well, I was passing M&S today and thought I'd check out their offers....and the sausages were there! They had double 8-packs (i.e. 16 sausages) on 3 for £10, those were the 93% meat ones. And they also had 20-packs of 78% meat ones on 3 for £10. I bought one pack of the 93% and 2 packs of the 73%, so that was 56 sausages for £10, or less than 18p each - bargain!

They also had their Oakham chicken thighs on 2 packs for £5 - 650g packs I think they were. I bought two that had 4 thighs in each, but they're huge so would only need one each. Not super-cheap, but I try to only buy higher-welfare meat so I'm happy with that. M&S are expensive, but when they have offers on, they can be quite good value IMO.

Stopped in at Lidl on our way home and bought some flour. Bread flour was 60p for 1.5kg and plain/SR flour was 42p. Can't remember what it was last time I bought it. Got 3 bread flour and one each of plain and SR, but that was all we could carry as we were walking and already had about 5 kilos of meat....!

BB

ceridwen

Primrose wrote: »

jamanda - well done on passing your garden produce over. It's difficult to do this without embarrassing people, especially if they're proud about their poverty. Another ruse, if needed, is to claim you're going on a diet and are removing all the tempting things like biscuits, chocolates and snacks from your cupboard and ask her if she can find a use for them, rather than you throwing them into the dustbin. But then you'll have to be jolly sure you don't start munching a KitKat in her presence!

...and yet another one is to take in ready-made (by you) breads/pies/etc and claim that you made a load for a social communal meal and you'd "overdone it" and were "looking for a good home" for the surplus;):D

Gigervamp

Bob Flowerdew (very apt name for a gardener!) is good. I remember watching him on Gardeners World back when Geoff Hamilton presented it. He's also on the Gardeners Question Time panel on Radio 4. He gardens organically too.

Great present your OH got there BB!

ceridwen

starsandmoon wrote: »

I can appeal against it but dont think I will get anywhere. One person I work with will have a drop in salary of £8,000!! I can start the appeal process in Oct. Like you say though it will affect my pension. Luckily Im good with money and do a lot of OS anyway, cook from scratch etc. The director could end up redundant as I work in equalities which I think will be cut a lot.

Ah!! Errr...any chance of shifting sideways into another Department?

kidcat

Glad your dad prognosis good crickett. Hope all continues well.

Someone asked about the country vicar program, I saw almost to the end and he had given up and ended up using money to pay his car insurance and MOT. Havent seen the full series but was not altogether comfortable with the idea that he chose to live without money and basically survived by handouts from his parishioners. To me that meant that others were paying to support him and his whims - but thats just my take on it.

Stocking up has started here as I bought extra flour and some bits this week ready, am aiming to have a really good store in case of bad weather, last year we couldnt get the car out of drive for over a week but didnt run out of anything (except bananas - DS6 eats several a day and cant be without) so despatched DH nd Ds12 on sledge to Asda!!! My mum was stunned we were still well stocked when it was all over.