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

peony40

It is certainly worrying.  Me and my OH are now both on a very low fixed income due to health issues so no flexibility apart from reducing consumption of fuel/housekeeping.  Reminds me a lot of the 1970’s when I was a child.  Just done an online shop for this coming Friday and the bread I usually buy has gone up 11p since yesterday!  It hadn’t been on offer yesterday either.

It is good that we have this site to chat with and give comfort, tips and encouragement to each other.

Take care.

KxMx

I know there is a theory to get heat circulating throughout the home, but personally we always keep all internal doors shut throughout the winter, whether the heat is on or not. 

Rosa_Damascena

peony40 said:

It is certainly worrying.  Me and my OH are now both on a very low fixed income due to health issues so no flexibility apart from reducing consumption of fuel/housekeeping.  Reminds me a lot of the 1970’s when I was a child.  Just done an online shop for this coming Friday and the bread I usually buy has gone up 11p since yesterday!  It hadn’t been on offer yesterday either.

It is good that we have this site to chat with and give comfort, tips and encouragement to each other.

Take care.

This is exactly what it reminds me of - times were hard, the cost of living left little disposable income and there was much less of everything before the 80s boom. The babyboomer generation raised their families through all of it, and 2 generations on there is no concept of how tough it actually was.

Rosa_Damascena

Something has just come through on Change.org proposing enough free energy to cover the basics funded through taxing the profits of the utility companies. I think it should be more progressive, and those of us who can pay should, those with nothing should receive more. 

YORKSHIRELASS

Hi all

Well I think you should all be proud of your skills in being frugal and keeping a tight rein on your finances, it's not easy but a lot of people go through life overspending and getting further into debt without having a clue what they can do about it.

Finances are a bit of an issue here because DH is currently only working a few hours a week due to health issues and we have not idea how long this will go on for.  We are lucky because I earn a good wage, but we have quite a lot of credit card debt that before this particular spanner was thrown in the works we were doing well to pay off.

We have an old but very robust central heating system which uses quite a bit of electricity to pump the heating oil around the house, so increasing fuel prices are a double whammy for us.  We have an open file and a wood burner which currently needs repairs so on an evening we light the fire and shut the LR door.  I have a heated banket too which is amazing.

Living in a very rural area we are 20+ miles from the nearest Asda, Tesco or Sainsbury and the local Lidl seems to constantly have supply issues so you never know whether they have empty shelves or not.  I partly work from home and try and have 3 days a week where the car isnt used.  No public transport at all but I cycle to work when the roads are not icy.

Luckily it's mostly just myself and DH and the kids are in their 20s and pretty much self sufficient.  We know this year is going to be very very frugal but neither of us have expensive tastes and have learnt our lesson with the debts so one way or another we will manage.

euronorris

A Too Good To Go bag from Morries is well worth a try:

joedenise

Wow that's a great TGTG box.  My local Morrisons wasn't anywhere near as big as that but it was still worth the money.

Slinky

KxMx said:

EDIT: I was relying on the BBC live reporting via news app which didn't mention Warm Home Discount, apparently it is being expanded. 

I would urge anyone on DD's to change to payment on demand (bills) since at least then you pay for what you actually use and not what the energy company thinks you might use (aka as much as they can get away with). 

The problem with paying your bills on demand is that the companies will usually charge you a higher rate for the priviledge. It's a tradeoff between loaning them some money through the summer months and them selling it to you at a slightly reduced unit rate. If you read your meters every month and provide them with the readings, there's not much excuse for them going OTT with their DDs. 

Slinky

Somebody mentioned slow cookers and how much electricity they use, I found this article:  https://chefspick.co.uk/how-much-electricity-does-a-slow-cooker-use/

Rosa_Damascena

Slinky said:

Somebody mentioned slow cookers and how much electricity they use, I found this article:  https://chefspick.co.uk/how-much-electricity-does-a-slow-cooker-use/

Written in "normal" times so to have it running for 4 hours could cost well over £1 a recipe. I'd rather eat cold food.