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

narabanekeater

Muffin Man if we can be of any help with stretching meals or your money please post were very friendly

charlies-aunt

Muffin Man - thats awful! Do they think you can live on fresh air?

Don't shoot me but I work at a JCP & customers frequently request crisis loans - they are not processed at the JCP as all payments are processed and approved by 'Decision Makers' at the Benefit Delivery Centre. They do check up when other benefits (like child tax credit and child benefit) are being paid and seem not to pay crisis loans if the application date is very close in date to your next ctc/chb payment date. However, each 'Decision maker' is an individual so its luck of the draw who looks at your application.

Is it possible to speak to a JCP advisor & ask them to chase things up for you? JCP don't deal with payments as such but its shocking that you have been messed about for such a long time. Consider making a written complaint as these are usually very effective at getting things moving.
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D&DD

I'm so sad to hear some of you are having such a tough time of it..been there and its flippin hard work!

Sammy if you can grab a few more of those sausages they can be snipped and used as mini sausage toads or split and used for sausage rolls as snacks too

Narab so sorry to hear pup's still not home,hope things improve soon for you.

I've had a lovely day being puppykissed and slobbered to death :rotfl:
and have fallen in love

muffin_man_7

narabanekeater Thank you for your kindness
charlies-aunt you made my laugh nope wont be shooting anyone thanks for caring the problem is i get told one thing then something else and now again i've been told something different hopefully it will be sorted soon but i would like to say if you get an appointment for medical assesment PLEASE MAKE SURE YOU GO i couldn't go as my daughter had a tummy bug and had been poorly in early hours of morning i phoned to explain i couldn't make it and had no one to stay with my daughter that day and was told i'd get a letter in post to fill it in and send it back i'm still waiting so on thursday i phoned again and this time was asked why i'd waited so long to get in touch i only got letter saying money stopped at end of last week it was dated 16 august and i've not been able to get in touch cos ive been poorly that didnt seem to matter i've got an appointment to see someone who is going to help me get it all sorted i hope will let you know tuesday hope its sorted before payments need to go out of bank virtually empty on one account i use for D/DS AND OTHER ONE OVER DRAUGHT NEARLY ON LIMIT AS LONG AS I'VE NOT FORGOTTEN ANY SPEND RECENTLY

Hippeechiq

Oh muffin man that's a shocking state of affairs :grouphug:

It's the people that bleed and abuse the system for all it's worth (and get away with it) that makes is so hard for those who are in genuine need of financial help.

Everyone should be made to go cap in hand once in their lives, just to see how demoralising and humiliating it is for people, especially people who, through no fault of their own are physically or mentally disabled, or, who through no fault of their own have been made redundant, just so they can truly experience what it's like to be treated like scum.

Decent people wouldn't put themselves through that unless they absolutely had to, that's for sure.

Mr Cameron and his like, should be forced to live on benefits for 2 months, and see how they fair....1 month with the money, and 1 month having the money stopped (for the slightest possible reason) and living in/with the utter chaos that brings. Find out what it's like to try to feed, clothe and keep warm his family and a new baby on nowt!!

Kitcaboodle

Hi all!

I've just finished reading through the thread & thought I'd introduce myself, as I think OS is probably my natural home on these boards. I grew up with a mum who was very much the good-life, self-sufficient type, being arty-crafty, growing her own, making her own wine, etc. and I would like to follow in her footsteps.

I dream of a cottage in a country town, with a garden and a pantry. Unfortunately I'm currently stuck in a small, garden-less flat in a city, right by a main road! Oh well, one day...!

I'm a new mum (DS is nearly 4 months old now) and am just starting to get the opportunity to occasionally check the internet again and do a couple of things a day that aren't solely-relating to either him or me eating, sleeping, washing or dealing with basic bodily functions!

DH and I are OK financially at the moment but the future is uncertain. I'm on maternity leave from a fixed term Contract that ends roughly when my maternity leave does & DH is waiting for the Government to decide whether or not his department will exist in future. Hopefully he should find out more in the next month or so. It doesn't make sense for both of us to work now, as one of us would be working just to pay for child care. So, I'm going to be a stay-at-home mum for now.

Given the uncertainty of what the future holds for us financially, we've very much gone baby on a budget for most things. I am breastfeeding DS (though I'm having to supplement a bottle of formula in the evenings, as he's a hungry little bunny!) We're using cloth both for cost and eco reasons. At the moment we're using muslins as nappies as he is on the smaller side of average - but he's just getting big enough for terry nappies and prefolds now.

I'm just hoping we can dry the nappies fast enough in our small flat in the winter to keep up with him, he pees for England and gets through much more than the 12 nappies a day average that they say new babies use! He'd cost us a fortune in disposables. Thankfully we only use them if we're going out (cloth is a bit too bulky to lug around with me for changes).

I live in Essex, where it seems to be the norm to spend a fortune on a new baby (a woman at work on the same pay-grade as me said she spent around £2,500 when her daughter was born! I don't know what her husband does but I would baulk at the idea of spending anything like that much!) I think we've spent around £600 and £300 of that was gifts from friends and family or vouchers we had from our wedding (which we also did on a budget, probably under £1,000 including everything bar the honeymoon, which we haven't had yet! We did our own buffet and I made my own dress, even though I had practically zero dressmaking experience at the time!)

While I was pregnant, I made two pairs of my own maternity trousers at home using some jeans I already had, some t-shirts from a charity shop & some broad elastic. There are some good how-to's online & I was not impressed by the quality of trousers for sale in the shops and the prices they were charging for them.

I also made my own breast pads from an old flannel sheet, some old towels and some fabric off a broken Poundland umbrella! They've been great. I made flannel wipes for DS and cut out fleece wipes and fleece liners for his nappies from a fleece blanket I bought in the sale for less than the fabric would be at the local market.

I'm quite happy to shop for bargains for him on e-bay or in local charity shops. The way I see it, saving where we can lets us spend more on the more important things. For example, we bought a second-hand travel cot on e-bay (we don't have space for a cot-bed) and then bought a new sprung mattress for it. The mattress is the bit he actually sleeps on, so that's the bit that counts!

I'm 38 this year and I've only had one permanent job since graduating, the rest have all been temporary or fixed term (one temp job was for 4 1/2 years!) So, I'm good at saving in the good times to cover the lean times. DH isn't quite such a natural, he lived with his parents until we got together, so he had got rather lazy about his finances to a degree that made me rather worried! However, credit where credit is due, when I put my foot down and made it clear that running up debt was a deal-breaker when it came to our relationship (I'm pretty much phobic about debt!) - he got on top of things, managed to pay off his debts and is now ahead of the game ready for my income to stop once my maternity pay ends.

I don't have as much time to cook these days as I'd like to but I love baking and I often make large batches of pasta bake or lentil/bean stews. Unfortunately we have one of the smallest freezers on the market (50cm wide!) as it's all we have room for. So, freezing batches of stuff is out. It's full of frozen veg, potato waffles & bean burgers for when I don't have time to cook properly! We also don't have enough room to bulk-buy or stock up on stuff.

So yes, that is where I'm coming from. I look forward to reading the various handy tips on here and hopefully sharing a few of my own! (I'm already grateful for the one about making your own buttermilk substitute, as I want to have a go at soda bread and the recipe I saw on TV called for it!)

katholicos

Kitcaboodle, welcome to the thread. It sounds like you will fit in here just fine :-)

lambanana

Wow Kitcaboodle sounds like you're doing loads already, I can't understand why or how some people spend so much on babies but I suppose it's all the matching sets of everythings and travel systems that cost more than my first car did! I hope your DH's job is safe.

narabanekeater

Kitcaboodle- welcome
I found my nappies dried really well on a airer during the winter inside. Im assuming you do have central heating so they will dry off with the heat im sure. Still no puppy news and im feeling quite emotional over the situation so im off for an early night. Sweet dreams all xx

sammy_kaye18

Hi All

Well it looks possible that will be ok with bill paying if I cant get to my £180 but might ring JobCentre tomorrow and tell a little white lie (that I've lost my card etc) and that I cant use the account its in now so it needs changing otherwise we are really stuck. Fingers crossed if I can get the £180 moved then we will be better off for the month.

Have been sat yesterday looking at ways to heat proof my flat - we have put in for a house but lately there has only been one or two houses in our bidding book and we have about 100 points so need to be realistic and see how I can save money here this winter.

Hoping to find a nice red rug to go on the TV end of living room, ben has taken to lying on the floor next to holly when shes on her playmat and on laminate hes either freezing or uncomfortable so would like a rug for him to lay/cuddle on and it will obviously be under hollys playmat too - currently she has a fleece folded up under it.

My sister moved in properly with my mother yesterday so she is getting rid of all her furniture so she is sending me a big pine chest of draws and two bedside tables, so then Ben can have the white chest of 5 draws from my bedroom and then Owen can have Bens plastic ones to store his bike parts etc in. Abby also found some old heavy long red velvet curtains that my nan had in her bay window so shes sending me those as I have a huge window in my living room that's single glazed and bloody freezing in winter so they will go there - just need to find smaller curtain pole holders though as ours stick out about 4/5 inches so they leave a big gap. Then spoke to my mum and she said she had the same set of curtains and did I want them for my second window (I have a huge window then a smaller more normal window) so I said yes and the excess will hang down the back of the sofa - we have no raidators under windows in living room. Its a long rectangle with raidator at each end but one is an outside wall so will put foil behind that one and all other external wall ones.

Apart from that I broke up the sausages yesterday so I have 3 x 6 portions - might make some sausage rolls with some of them as Benji loves sausage rolls and they can go in his lunch box.

Also got a pack of 2 gammon steaks for £1 from coop so Owen had one last night and have frozen the other one. I think come pay day I might see about getting a few more and breaking them into separate packs. Least then I can use them in a variety of things - pasta/cooked on its own/Owen likes it in omelettes etc.

Ah well, chin up - today is another day (albeit bladdy freezing in south wales this morning! :eek:) and today I plan to chill, get minimal basic cleaning done and then might make flapjacks or a cake with my boy (although we will inevitably argue over who gets to lick the spoon! and boyfriend will go nuts that Im poisoning our child!) .