Really struggling to make ends meet

suki1964

First off your husband needs to put a claim in for ESA if he's not fit to work. This will give an extra £73 a week for 13 weeks until he is assessed and either kept on ESA or told to sign on for JSA

You make the claim over the phone

Then go to one of the benefits calculators and see if you can claim housing benefit, council tax help and WTC

https://www.gov.uk

rach_k

I agree with others that the smoking should stop. Get him to go and get help with quitting - he's more likely to succeed with support. Even if he doesn't quit completely, halving the number of cigarettes would be a good saving. Is he sitting around bored (smoking more?) or is he active? Maybe get him out and about if he can.

I think your food budget is okay. You could probably trim it a little but I'd personally prefer a grumpy husband and nicer food! We currently spend £85/week for four of us and I believe that's about average, and you're spending less than that. Going veggie could save you some money, depending on how you do it. Replacing meat in every meal with a meat substitute like Quorn or a supermarket version might not save you much, depending on the quality of the meat you currently buy. Another option would be to just reduce how often you eat meat or have smaller portions of it. Beans on toast for dinner one night a week isn't a great hardship but can be very cheap, and even if you don't love it, you'll know tomorrow will be something bigger/better.

Would it be possible for you to cycle to and from work? You might be able to pick up a free or cheap bike somewhere like Gumtree or Freecycle. If not in winter, maybe when it warms up a bit and gets lighter in the evenings?

Socajam

I share your pain. I remember in 1989 I had to give up meat because I was so stretched with a 60,000 mortgage, endowment and other bills. By the time I paid everything I had no money left.
I gave up eating meat/chicken, but be careful because you can become anemic.
You could buy mince meat, mince turkey etc and make burgers seasoned with herbs and spices along with a homemade sauce over spaghetti (save some for lunch the next day).
Walk around the supermarkets and look at their cheaper brands. Sometimes they have chicken/meat on sale, even the expiration date is the day you bought it. Buy them and freeze them.
Use the bones from the whole chicken to make soup - or get a couple of salmon head from the fishmonger and make fish soup.
You are going to have to become very creative in cooking in order to save money. Trust me it can be done. Good luck.

NineDeuce

Get another job/more hours..... and you shouldnt be paying to get taxis to work.

How is your other half unable to claim JSA?

Shashwoo

Whilst I know what you're all saying in regards to the smoking part, as a smoker who has tried and failed too many times to guess I will just say this.... It's isn't as easy as saying he needs to quit, I am sure he is aware of that fact.
I smoke roll ups and a 50g pouch of bacci is roughly £20, unless he is a chain smoker that should last him at least 2 weeks. This would help you both, if he doesn't like smoking rollies he wont smoke as much and it will help you money wise.

Samsung_Note2

When I was made redundant we had to look very closely as what we had to cut and it was quit smoking and no booze, phone contract terminated (explained the situation and wasn't a great deal they could do, cost of chasing versus length left).



TV licence - £12.12
Phones - £52 (this could be cheaper but husband is stuck in contract)
Internet - £20
Netflix - £6
Smoking - £40 (this is husbands habit)


Well if you really want to cut costs...that's £130 straight away, yes I know people will wail "oh no..how will we live with out TV or Mobiles".

That's the harsh reality...they are luxuries we all pretty much take for granted, same with smoking.

Get him down the doctors and they can help, I went from a 20G pouch of baccy (which I started smoking as hated it compared to cigs and ended up smoking far more as started to like it) every few days to nothing with the help of zyban from Doctors.

Don't wont to sound rude or its easy...its not,but when you've got nothing spare you need to make some very hard decisions.

veryintrigued

How badly do you want to get out of debt? Bad enough to:

Get a bike and ditch the cabs?
Get rid of your husbands fags.
Increase yours and his income.
Get rid of Netflix - if you cant find something on the 200 odd channels Freeview then its a poor deal. If you cant - do something more productive with your time.
Talk to your mobile providers and explain the issues regarding contract.
Look at the food bill.

Kim_13

Do you watch live TV or use BBC iPlayer? If you can do without them, you can be legally licence free.

It won't help immediately but you can earn vouchers or cash from cashback sites such as TopCashback and Quidco. TopCashback will issue a Love To Shop card which can be spent in Iceland and many other places. There is also a payout bonus for choosing a gift card/certificate option.

This MSE guide may give you some ideas to help bring in some extra: https://www.moneysavingexpert.com/family/make-money

bertiewhite

fergalicious wrote: »

WibblyGirly/anyone else, is this too much for food? I'm not really sure what the average is for 2 people or what it can really go down to?

Blimey, we are currently paying an average of £50/week (ALDI) for 2 people but that's for food and household stuff such as loo roll, washing powder etc. We don't scrimp but then again we don't over-indulge and sometimes we do treat ourselves to a bottle of wine at the weekend or some lamb for Sunday Roast.