What should we include in MSE's new Cost of Living survival guide?

EndFurniturePoverty

Local authority local welfare assistance schemes provide crisis support for food, fuel, furniture and more. We have an LWA finder on our End Furniture Poverty website in the Finding Furniture section. Just type in the name of your local authority and get a link to take to straight to the LWA page on their website - if they still operate a scheme. Our research, also on our website, shows the decline in this support with 32 English local authorities having closed their schemes, but it's still strong in some areas. Plus there's the Scottish Welfare Fund, Welsh Discretionary Assistance Fund, and Discretionary Support Scheme in Northern Ireland.

[Deleted User]

For those who are on their own buy family size food products use what you need then freeze the rest in portion sizes to use at a later date.
Keep sliced bread in the freezer and take out what you need, wrap in a teatowel while it defrosts.
Defrost frozen food in the fridge over night it will cook quicker the next day.

BOGOF deals split them with  family, friend, neighbour and split the cost.

You dont always need to preheat your oven before cooking, if it contains flour and/or eggs, preheat your oven. If it doesn’t, you dont have to.

Siebrie

Streamline your life so that you have to make as few choices as possible during the day, so you have energy left to spend on important choices and decisions.

For instance: have a limited number of clothes and know they fit, and what goes with what (spend an afternoon trying everything on, mixing and matching).

Floss

Perhaps a suggestion that holidays aren't an essential entitlement for everyone.

I've just heard a soundbite on the radio of a mother commenting on the cost of food going up & how she is struggling to pay her bills, feed her kids, go on holiday...

maisie_cat

I've always been a learning addict and believe that knowledge is a key ingredient in being able to deal with what life throws at us.
Information about access to knowledge and skills would be useful, youtube is a fantastic resource for learning how to do things and fix stuff yourself.
Whether it's batch cooking from scratch, replacing expensive ingredients with alternatives, foraging, growing food, making your own beer, preserving a food glut.
Repairing stuff rather than buying new, most appliances have spares available and there are plenty of online resources to identify why, for example, the dishwasher isn't heating, elements are easy to replace..
Learning how to install things, as an example replacing a like for like light fitting is a 10 minute job, but many people pay an electrician to do it for them. 
Financial education for adults, understanding how bills work, it's clear many people do not understand consumption versus payments and as a result cannot forecast their own household budget.

mark_cycling00

Psychologists use the "4 stages of change" model in these circumstances. I'll try to relate cost-of-living crisis to them:
Don't mean this to be critical of anyone or any group, it's a way of finding out what to expect of us and others

1. Denial
People don't accept there will be a crisis for them and don't participate in any action to address it. You'll be surprised how many people are still at this stage; people who say "Good thing I have solar panels" or people who haven't planned any reductions in spending yet to cover higher bills, or people who just think that they are fairly well-off and that the crisis will mostly affect poorer people

2. Anger/Resistance
This is easier to spot. People look for who to blame, who to sack, who to get angry at. Lots of people will be at this stage blaming energy companies, or politicians, or "someone should have done x" arguments. Or talking lots about how it's unfair on them in particular. If you're having lots of discussions about what has gone wrong or who is to blame then you might be at this stage. But if you're angry you've progressed further than those in denial.

3. Acceptance (to an extent)
people now accept there is a problem but don't necessary take the best action. People will search out solutions but can easily lose focus and feel overwhelmed. You may spend a lot of effort trying to solve the cost of living problem through a major change such as installing heat-pumps or lifestyle changes that may not be sustainable (no more car trips to granny!). It's easy to pop back into the anger stage again as you experience these impacts on your life. If you're searching out solutions then congratulations on getting past the anger phase. But try to move on to the final phase

4. "Commitment"
All the resistance, anger and ignoring is over. Think of it as a "rebuilding" phase where people are calmer (although living standards are much lower sadly) You'll be implementing lots of sustainable, small changes. E.g. you've already started making more rice-based meals and less pasta-based meals. At the train station you transfer £3 into your "bills" account instead of buying a coffee, the heating is off 45mins earlier and you watch that last netflix episode in bed etc. However, these things can be tough and quite sad to do and it's easy to slip back into phase 3 and start researching paniced or "magic bullet" solutions again. 

Brambling

With Easter holidays nearly here ideas for cheap days out with children or things they could do at home would be good. 

 We seem to forget most younger children are easily entertained with a picnic in the park eating what you would have fed them for lunch at home, bundle up if cold and let them run around.  I was listening to someone today worried about bill increases on benefits but she annoyed me when said we need a % rise as i can't afford to take my children to Thorpe Park!    

See if your local library has access to a toy library or direct you towards one, some Family and Children centres run them (or did pre-covid)

cdm

Hello, please excuse my ignorance…an earlier poster mentioned TCB. Can you please explain what that is? Many thanks. 

gabisargent

Should you go back to the office to cut costs? 

scrummy-mummy

Alternative ways of heating and cooking. For example, there are appliances like air fryers, halogen cookers, slow cookers that are able to perform the same function/role as cooking on the hob/in the oven and are much cheaper/more efficient.  We now cook a lot of food in our air fryer which is very versatile and a lot quicker.