Feeding 1 adult and 2 children off barely nothing?

kittiwoz

I agree that you should cancel the TV package if you are not locked in. It seems a bit daft to be shelling out on those sort of lifestyle extras when you are worrying about keeping the kids fed. You may want to consider cancelling the phone contract too if possible. Yes you need a phone, but you can get PAYG sim cards very cheap, and the tariffs are increasingly good value, particularly if you don't use the phone that much or use data. It may be that you chose a monthly contract because you do use mobile broadband and talk on the phone a lot but since you have broadband at home maybe that is something you could cut back.

immie

I hope things look up for you soon OP
Do you have any old university textbooks you can sell? Anything you don't immediately need that you could sell? However small, a bundle of toiletries can get £10 on ebay after fees and postage.
Do you have a smartphone? If it's worth say £100 you can sell it and buy a £15 basic phone for now. That'll give you £85 to tide you over
Definitely ask for a loan from student support, if they can't help, talk to someone higher up, at my uni they had a 'principal's fund' etc.
If things get really hard, I would personally consider borrowing, overdraft, credit card, family and friends, anything...

gizmo111

As I have said before on this thread the OP has a social worker for the children who would be able to sort out a cash payment weekly of arounf £47 until benefits are sorted. Nothing to panic about if used sensibly.

[Deleted User]

If its for a week, I would try value/smartprice porridge, and you could add some tinned smartprice fruit in it. Buy the largest milk you can afford as I find that it can go past its sell buy date and is still ok to use. Eggs from A**I are £1.35 for 15, and buying wholemeal bread and smartprice beans (or any cheap beans from any supermarket) will give you a tea at night with protein. For carbohydrates I would try pasta or rice, you can get 1kg bags of pastafor 99p If you have time to shop in the evening as suggested you may be able to get reduced fruit/veg and make batches of soup. Also you could buy a cheap chicken and cook this up and stretch it, and use some with the pasta. Whilst using the oven you can make Yorkshires cheap with cheap flour and the,eggs and milk you have already, and if your bread is going past its best chuck in a bread pudding whilst the oven is on. Add tinned fruit afterwards to it to add flavour. There is a recipe for bread pudding which you can do in the microwave too. I hope this helps. As for juice buy the cheapest cordial and stretch it by diluting it more than suggested. Cheap teabags can be reused if neccessary or coffee for you too. Edited just to add you can also get cheap toiletries from supermarkets too.

plum2002

For the mobile, I switched to Tescos PAYG, I put £10 on a month, and get £20 of free credit. The free credit gets used up first, and i rarely use up 'my' £10 worth