It's getting tough out there. Feeling the pinch?

Spendless

Rosa_Damascena said:

Onebrokelady said:

Rosa_Damascena said:

OrkneyStar said:

TheAble said:

OrkneyStar said:

poppy811 said:

Porridge two to three minutes in the microwave. 

For most of us that's fairly straightforward, unfortunately less so for those who cannot afford to use electricity.

But that electricity would cost like 1p. I know times are hard but 1p?

I was thinking of someone with a top up electric meter - if they have used all their credit, and the emergency, and have no access to money to top it up, then they will essentially be without electricity.  We don't have a normal meter and pay by d.d. so for us it would be a very nominal figure to consider, but it doesn't work like that for everyone, sadly.

Some children don't even get a hot meal at home, often eating sandwiches or something else cold for dinner, it's fortunate that some of these will be entitled to a hot school meal, but not all of them. Being able to eat hot food should not be seen as a luxury, having a hot meal has psychological benefits too, especially if you have had a long, hard, tiring day!

Again this is something that just doesn't register as being weird, what's wrong with that? It's unusual for me to eat hot food (beverages yes, not food). I might whizz some Weetabix round in the microwave for a couple of minutes but it's a rarity. 

I eat once a day, might have a sweet snack with my afternoon coffee (this is not a meal) but generally all food is cold / room temp.

Earlier on you posted that you were exhausted,do you not think that living like this is why you are exhausted. You have said you work hard so this amount of food is not going to fuel your body properly. It doesn't matter if it's cold but one meal a day is not enough for an adult to live on and have enough energy to work  

Do you know, you could be onto something. I am exhausted because of heavy work commitments and decided to take the weekend off, but was struggling to exercise earlier without getting puffy - just 12,000 steps carrying a medium load. I also found myself dozing off just now so wondering how I am going to manage next week. 

With all due respect have you had your bloods checked recently? When I was exhausted some years ago I discovered I  had the double whammy of an underactive thyroid and low vitamin D (my levels being described as being on the floor!). If you're working lots of hours you might not be getting enough sunlight to you. It's worth getting checked out.

otb666

@poppy811 stays Its hard enough without us all sticking together.  I was told off by the MSE Team recently for posting about under active thyroid.  You just have to take it on the chin.  No point in cutting off your nose to spite your face.  Messages are easy to misread especially if your are autistic like me But we just all have to struggle on The support on here is invaluable to me and my safe space.

LadyHarriet

ladyholly said:

My mother made most of my dresses when I was a child and they tended to have deep hems so they could be let down. The mark that was left was then disguised with rick rack braid. 

Yes - my mother made all of my clothes, including my primary school uniform, and Gran knitted my jumpers and cardigans most of the way through grammar school. I have fond memories of that rick rack braid and pleaded to have it put on even when the dress or skirt was new LOL!

freyasmum

Onebrokelady said:

ZsaZsa said:

freyasmum said:

Around 25 years ago, my local council ran classes that were aimed at young, single mothers to show them how to cook, budget and look after their children. 

The only people who actually turned up were my mum (a trained chef), my uncle (retired and a keen cook), his wife (hadn't worked outside the home and never liked to cook!), my aunt (former school cook), the owner of the local Chinese restaurant (elderly) and various other older people from the village. 

Years later, my daughters nursery also ran a little class for a few hours for maybe 6 or so weeks? Yet again, barely anyone turned up.

The council can run these things, but it takes people actually turning up.

Maybe the classes were empty because the “young single mothers” didn’t actually need lessons on how to look after their children? 

Exactly, I was a young single mother and I was quite capable of looking after my children which included feeding them healthy food

As was I.

But not everyone is fortunate enough to have the same experience as us, and we need to not negate their potential need for support just because we were capable.

I grew up in a very deprived area and this was a time when the teen pregnancy rate was much higher than it is now, so the council obviously saw a need for such classes. 

freyasmum

We are incredibly thankful to be in a position whereby we have seen prices rising, but we do lead quite a simple life on the whole so it hasn't adversely affected us too much yet. We can still just about live on one wage and the other is squirrelled away into different pots (Starling - though perhaps not for much longer, given the revelation that you can only deposit £1,000 in cash before being charged!) for Christmas, school costs, emergency money, etc. Although I would dearly love to get rid of our very, very pink and very, very flowery bathroom!

We live in the SE so the weather is much warmer than elsewhere in the UK and our utility bills are lower than my family who are in Scotland. 

We don't smoke, I couldn't tell you the last time we had a drink, and we don't have sky tv, the latest phones every year or anything. We are capable of doing things ourselves - we extended our driveway last year, using blocks from our neighbours who were having their own drive replaced (I don't particularly recommend going this far - it was HARD work cleaning up however many hundred paving blocks and shovelling the hard core or whatever!) It's not what everyone would enjoy, but we are happy and find an enormous sense of satisfaction in doing things ourselves.

Days out for us are to the local theme park to use our annual passes (£50 for the children, which I think is very reasonable for a year) and we only pay for parking on the day. Or to the local RHS garden, of which we are members (courtesy of tesco clubcard). Or one of the many other parks around us. They almost exclusively feature some sort of picnic, though sometimes we will spring for some chips and eat them while walking along the seafront. We can stop at farmfoods or McDonalds on the way home for an ice cream.

With regards grocery shopping, we purchase reduced meat when we see it and then portion it and freeze it. I then look in the fridge and cupboard and see what we have that needs using up, we then go to our local farmshop which has really good deals on fruit and veg - we got just under 3kg of blueberries this week for £3.99 (would have been over £17 at aldi prices), and I also got 5kg of peppers for £1. Some of the peppers went into homemade kebabs, and fajitas, the rest will go into a soup and another dish for tomorrow. And JackieO - I took note that they do indeed have Cyprus potatoes, at £1.50/lb.

Anyway, if we manage to pick up any bargains, I make a meal plan around these and whatever is in the fridge that needs using up. Then we make a list and go to Aldi.

We don't often have takeaways, I tend to make 'fakeaways'. I also tend to bake the fancier things things like strawberry tarts, jam and cream doughnuts or brioche buns, rather than buying them. It's cheaper and I love to bake. 

I have noticed an odd thing though where cadburys have priced themselves out of making me want to pay £x for a bit of chocolate.. though I'm ok to pay more for some hotel chocolate as a treat?! Work that out! 

freyasmum

I also meant to add, and it is only a small thing, but it is better than nothing. 

If you have a garden, try to use a little of it for growing food. If you don't have a garden, then a sunny windowsill is more than adequate to provide a small crop of cut and come again lettuce leaves, or pea shoots (use the bags of dried peas that you'd normally use for cooking). You can even grow some tomatoes in a hanging basket. Or strawberries.

I promise that it is not as difficult as we are sometimes led to believe - I only started properly last year and am now taking cuttings from plants to multiply what we have. I also successfully over wintered a cutting of one of our summer bedding plants, so I've not had to buy new this year, but that's another thing.

Wilko has a fab 50% off sale on seeds at the end of the summer season - a pack of spring onion seeds (450 count) was 38p and grew happily over winter.

Gardeners are amongst the most generous people -  and they're almost always happy to give a division or cutting of a plant.

Doom_and_Gloom

Just got our first full bill on the new rates for electricity and even though for over 2 weeks (when OH wasn't here) I was mostly using cheap rate and very little electric during day rate, which is obvious on the bill, I still want to cry. Nearly £115 for 42 days. I know our next bill will be worse as the OH uses quite a bit more day rate so the time without him before helped keep this bill lower. 

To know the rates will go up again in October makes me very anxious. How they expect people on limited income to pay these increases I don't know.

I will squirrel away all the money we can in the mean time because as things are going it isn't going to be possible soon. 

Tahlullah.H

This is awful for you.  I hope you manage to get to a point where you feel in control of your usage and therefore bills.

I think it is this very scenario why I am not sending readings to my supplier.  They can bill me when they are ready and I will deal with then aftermath at that point.  Why worry before the event, worrying twice won't help.  But, I think I will pay my £150 from the Council into my electricity bill today in order to mitigate some of the impact.  After all, that's what it is for.

skogar

Yes - definitely agree about the standing charges - I wasn't sure quite how it worked for the prepay meters (too long since I've had one) but of course not all the charges would be toward cooking / there would be lighting, heating and water heating up as well. Even if you look at only electric you would be looking at 45p a day (27p for gas). Sorry - I've now caught up on the threads and forgot who made the point, but yes if you factor in standing charges then that is a lot of the budget gone. The rise in standing charges is dreadful because you can't reduce them by cutting consumption so they will be a higher proportion of a small bill than a large one. If we assume electric only and make him pay the standing charges he's down to a weekly budget of £3.15 for food and any electric used to heat it up! Think we'll be even more interested to see how he manages that! ;-)

skogar

To clarify (those are the normal tarif standing charges not the prepay ones).