BBC Breakfast interview

Caterina

Seconded re. Stuffocation, amazing book and really worth reading!

PasturesNew

I've a theory about owning a table ... it's the thin end of the wedge.

So you buy a table. That's nice.
Ah, chairs... so now you need chairs.
Oooh table cloth. That's nice. Table, chairs, cloth.
Special cloth, for best. Need that.
Oh it's Xmas, better get a Xmas cloth.
Plates... need plates. Need a whole dinner service.
And cutlery - nice cutlery. And some placemats.
Ah, where are they going to go? Ah, a sideboard, yes, get a sideboard.
Now invite people round to dinner to show it all off... so it's a pricey food shop to feed those....
People coming .... probably need something like candlesticks - and they'll expect a drink, so better get some glasses. Two lots of glasses, one for best and one for just regular guests.
Hang on, they're coming, table's laid, food's prepped... need some serving dishes... and serving spoons....
Serviette anyone?

Don't buy a table. Ever.

moneyistooshorttomention

She's not the first one to do this. I have the book lurking around somewhere from the women who first started this - so this author is just "reinventing the wheel" and probably doing much the same as the first one did in the event.

My reaction to both author 1 and copycat author (ie this one) was to start by thinking "It's easier in London - many more free events going on". I managed to have a pretty reasonable social life back in my home city with quite a few free events thrown in (a rather smaller place than London).

Living in some parts of the country though (eg where I am now) = social life is something one has to pay for basically. They simply don't seem to do any free events here. One has to pay to get into everything. No free countryside walks, no free music events, etc, etc. I have finally managed a handful of free events (and a few lined-up) just with the way things have changed in the community in recent months - but, for the first couple of years - there was zilch/nada/nowt.. I think/hope that there will continue to be at least a few free events here regularly - now they've finally started at last.

As PN says - it's one thing if one knows it's only short-term living on that amount of money. But if it is going to go on indefinitely - and you don't know when it will end (or, indeed, if it will ever end) then that is a rather different kettle of fish.

So - indeed she wasnt living in a "damp bedsit in Bradford" as PN pointed out. Nor was she living in a reasonable house - but somewhere more rural.

VfM4meplse

moneyistooshorttomention wrote: »

So - indeed she wasnt living in a "damp bedsit in Bradford" as PN pointed out. Nor was she living in a reasonable house - but somewhere more rural.

Do you mean urban? She took advantage of free stuff in London.

culpepper

Well if her book was written in Bridget Jones style, I would read it LOL
It would be interesting if it had some humour incorporated to take the edge off.
I read the one about living on £1 a day..The author was living in Bristol?? I think and said that as it was a university area, there were numerous free activities.
My daughter lives in London and says you can do quite well lunching on free tasters in the market areas.

[Deleted User]

Well so far this year I have spent under £30. 00 on food and its the 20th January.I have plenty in my cupboards to see me fed and also in the freezer.I am lucky that one day a week I eat at my DDs(I do make her a cake or pudding in exchange although I don't have to ) and one night a week I eat at the pub quiz which costs me £2.00 separately budgeted for apart from my £60.00 per month budget.

Today I will make a vat of leek and potato soup from some bendy leeks that I got reduced to 45p and a couple of potatoes that are just starting to sprout in the veg box This soup will do me for probably about 3-4 days lunches at a cost of about 80p

Breakfast is usually porridge with a splash of milk as I make my porridge with water as my late Mum taught me to.Huge bag of oats cost me 80p before Christmas and will last until probably the end of February as I alternate between them and Aldi's bran flakes or granola.

Dinners are often a veggie chilli or curry or something from my overfull freezer.I am at the moment trying to reduce the freezer so I can defrost it.I make my own cakes and biscuits I don't eat bread at all so no need for sarnies .I can easily live on £15.00 per week and about a third of what I do buy is fruit and veg.

I have read some of the things she has written and I agree she is not really 'roughing' it at all.There is a photo of her riding her bicycle along carrying two long french sticks they probably cost her in London around £1.00 each !! looks very nice but a lot of cash for very little return in nutrients.

I agree lots of people do not have £30.00 per week to spend on food and nothing else let alone £60.00 for two of them.

Go and live with some poor woman who is struggling to feed her family on peanuts and see what real life is about.

I am fortunate I grew up with a frugal Mum and learned very young how to streeetch a shilling until it pinged I have my budget ,not because I cannot afford a larger one, but to use the cash I do have for other things.

I help to fund one of my grandsons through Uni at the moment and as a family I pay for our holiday house in August for all seven of us and the two dogs plus the hamster to have two weeks holiday on the IoW. DD gets the food and entertainment and I get the house rent I am happy to do that as for DD having a family of four lads a holiday would be hard to achieve .

So my weekly budget is limited and anything left over gets swept into the holiday fund for treats for us all.

katecheshire

I think we could live quite well on £60 per week for groceries and toiletries! Her husband was paying the other £30. Plus all their bills were covered The bit that annoyed me was when she went for a NY walk with friends and they ended up having a roast dinner in a pub while she drank water. Surely you can budget for treats without being a martyr even if you have to live on soup for a few days. Living like that for a year is not that hard (and many have to live like that all the time) if you have the benefit of a nice warm house!) It would be better to show that you can live reasonably well for less - even if you do want to buy meat or the occasional bottle of wine. It was very sensible to pay extra off the mortgage but they could obviously afford to do that.

PasturesNew

Maybe I should write a book: Own your own house, live alone, don't live in a city .... and still cover everything on a single person's JSA of £72/week.

Having said that .... who would actually KNOW ... if I were really eating out lots of times and being fed at friends? It'd be easy to show a cheese sandwich "Poor me, this is lunch today" when in fact I was off down the all you can eat carvery with £5 in my hand ... before stopping off at a friend's house to use their pool for the afternoon??

"I went and watched while friends ate chicken and I drank water...." or "... and they promised not to grass me up as they paid and I tucked in"

Nobody is actually in a position to really know what goes on.

Pollycat

JackieO wrote: »

Well so far this year I have spent under £30. 00 on food and its the 20th January.I have plenty in my cupboards to see me fed and also in the freezer.I am lucky that one day a week I eat at my DDs(I do make her a cake or pudding in exchange although I don't have to ) and one night a week I eat at the pub quiz which costs me £2.00 separately budgeted for apart from my £60.00 per month budget.

Today I will make a vat of leek and potato soup from some bendy leeks that I got reduced to 45p and a couple of potatoes that are just starting to sprout in the veg box This soup will do me for probably about 3-4 days lunches at a cost of about 80p

Breakfast is usually porridge with a splash of milk as I make my porridge with water as my late Mum taught me to.Huge bag of oats cost me 80p before Christmas and will last until probably the end of February as I alternate between them and Aldi's bran flakes or granola.

Dinners are often a veggie chilli or curry or something from my overfull freezer.I am at the moment trying to reduce the freezer so I can defrost it.I make my own cakes and biscuits I don't eat bread at all so no need for sarnies .I can easily live on £15.00 per week and about a third of what I do buy is fruit and veg.

I have read some of the things she has written and I agree she is not really 'roughing' it at all.There is a photo of her riding her bicycle along carrying two long french sticks they probably cost her in London around £1.00 each !! looks very nice but a lot of cash for very little return in nutrients.

I agree lots of people do not have £30.00 per week to spend on food and nothing else let alone £60.00 for two of them.

Go and live with some poor woman who is struggling to feed her family on peanuts and see what real life is about.

I am fortunate I grew up with a frugal Mum and learned very young how to streeetch a shilling until it pinged I have my budget ,not because I cannot afford a larger one, but to use the cash I do have for other things.

I help to fund one of my grandsons through Uni at the moment and as a family I pay for our holiday house in August for all seven of us and the two dogs plus the hamster to have two weeks holiday on the IoW. DD gets the food and entertainment and I get the house rent I am happy to do that as for DD having a family of four lads a holiday would be hard to achieve .

So my weekly budget is limited and anything left over gets swept into the holiday fund for treats for us all.

JackieO
I think if I were on a very limited budget (which luckily we're not), I'd be following your example rather than Ms Mcgagh.

Caterina

Still, she has done as well as she could, given where she is at. I wish I had been more money minded when I was younger and had a career, instead I was frittering money left right and centre and so was DH, when we both worked full time. We weren't even rich! Then the kids came and then the recession, and there was our turning point, together with me being made redundant while pregnant with twins.

One day DH and I had a quick ballpark calculation of how much we had spent on average by eating out, having weekends away etc... and we realised that we could have probably paid a good half of our mortgage if we had been more money-savvy.

So as I said in my earlier posts, she might not be us, we are now seasoned OSers, but she is doing something that might inspire others in her position, generation and peer group, so it cannot be a bad thing, even if she does not meet our standards, but who would? We've done it for decades now! Me too, I would have JackieO as a mentor and financial adviser anytime over Ms McGagh, but one of her peers, fresh from the city, would look at her book and it might just make them stop and think that maybe there's another way. I wish I had come across her stuff when I was splashing away recklessly.