To be so sick of being broke?

@PrincessC0nsuelaBananaHammock Op some high earners come on saying they have nothing left too. It’s the reality of the cost of everything these days .
Someone said to me last year, life now is dyif you have all your bills paid you’re winning .
Sadly this is true . Most don’t have anything left.
Try change your mind set . Your paying all your bills, you have food that you need and heating and your choosing to spend your spare cash on gym , health medication and Netflix etc instead of for a holiday .

Once the debt comes down and the kids contribute things will get easier . You will also stop the monjaro.
Could you do any studying part time to give you a chance or a better paying job further down the line.

Oh piss off. I'm on mounjaro and still only losing 1lb a week on under 1200 calories a day and either walking over 10,000 steps or going to the gym. As someone whose only 5ft2 and suffers with pcos it's incredibly difficult to lose weight. And as I lose weight I'm going to have to reduce my calories even further to be able to maintain it. Do you have any idea what it is like to be only able to eat c.1000 calories a day? And then have judgemental pricks online call me lazy because they are too thick to see beyond the end of their own noses?

We earn a fair bit more than you OP with similar outgoings and struggle to justify / pay for things like netflix and gym and hobbies.

It's truly shit at the moment, we are lucky to be intelligent, well educated people and have both been in our careers for more than 20 years, have reached our peaks without taking on v senior roles that would be hard with DC with SEN, and still very much feeling the pinch. (Should have chosen more lucrative careers!)

I’m in my 60s and know how much harder it gets to manage my weight as we get older but it all comes down to life style choices not quick fixes.

I used to think this - lost weight easily in the 30s post dc but then, in my 40s, it changed and the diets I had done before stopped working. I doubt op has got to this point having never tried a diet. If it was easy then the drug wouldn’t exist. You still have to diet it just supports that. Calling the mum off a disabled child lazy is unnecessary - walk in another’s shoes and all that. Mounjaro is life changing and weights may well help op to improve her circumstances longer term.

Your broadband is really high - we just switched and it’s £25 a month for a year then goes to £35. Dh and I wfh and have 3 teens so it’s high use. When we’re tight on finances we’d choose one streaming service - Netflix or prime - not both. You want what you want whether finances allow or not, and yours currently don’t. There’s easy cut backs. I’m not agreeing with others re mounjaro because I’ve used it myself and it’s life changing but you need to make some sacrifices until the debt is paid off, then you can reevaluate.

Exactly this! It’s just lazy.

Given my multiple health problems (even when a healthy weight) I suspect I would have ended up as T2DM. In any event, people who are not T2DM, do have problems with insulin resistance. That’s one of the reasons some people struggle to lose weight.

And the comment about chocolate was because the person I was responding to suggested that not wanting chocolate was a benefit of using WLI. The point I was making is that I didn’t eat it much before WLI. I am not a dessert person. I don’t like sugary foods, never have….

Do you have the potential to earn above minimum wage? Retrain, apply for promotion, new job?

Insulin resistance is for people with T2DM - it’s one of the symptoms and why those people are prescribed a GLP1 agonist. It makes your body produce more insulin

In those who aren’t diabetic it suppresses appetite

it has nothing to do with chocolate

Yes, the same. I have been monitoring my calorie intake on My Fitness Pal (and Nutracheck before that) for years. Luckily I have a very supportive DH who could see that my diet has not changed over the the 20+ years we have been together. Otherwise I would probably have lost my mind as a result of the “just eat less” brigade…

As for the risks….well my cholesterol is back to a healthy level after 20 years. Yes, I had high cholesterol even when I was a very slim size 8. The seborrheic dermatitis that I have suffered from since I was in my teens has completely gone into remission. It was previously so bad that my dermatologist said that it looked like I had been burned - he knew I hadn’t but that’s how terrible my face was.

My plantar facitiis has also resolved so I can get out of bed without being in terrible pain each morning. And that was another thing that I suffered from at a healthy weight so nothing to do with being overweight. Now, those are the things that I know about. The HUGE reduction in inflammation in my body is likely to have other health benefits. So I will take the “risks”, whatever they may be. By the way, I’m not worried about gallbladder issues because I don’t have one!

Anyway love, you carry on criticising people on the internet trying to improve their health. Hope it makes you feel better about yourself…

So you’re eating the exact same but now losing weight but wasn’t before? Exactly the same? Maybe in a rare case this might happen, but the vast majority are losing as they are eating a lot less, because they have a reduced appetite. Which should save money on food too. I see WLI as a luxury, maybe many don’t, but it would he luxurious for me to lose weight without much hunger (but I already have a pancreas problem so would not risk getting acute pancreatitis for anything as it’s horrific).

Many could lose weight for free and save money but it is hard work. If you can afford the WLI and happy to accept the risks then why not. But when have little spare money it seems a luxurious splurge to me.

Yes, especially as doing this now will reduce health problems which could be worse for her, not to mention extra pressure on the NHS.

Its not fraud if you are entitled to it. UC look at everything you can't fraud that (unless you wirk cash in hand or something)

My son on pip gets it simply because he doesn't earn anything, and is on pip

I’ve just told you that I am eating the same amount of calories….it’s not just about reducing calories, that’s the point. Insulin resistance is a huge problem for some people. It was for me. And I still feel hungry… don’t eat much chocolate but I never did before WLI…

Anyway, the OP is using WLI to improve her health. Improving health is never a luxury and it’s sad that you think that it is.

Hi OP, it is really hard at the moment. In regards to trying to find a better job, I did free online classes by night, obviously its not that amazing fix and not the big qualifications also bit hard to juggle, but i found having updated workshops or little course certificates on my CV that linked to the role was helpful. It got my foot in the door to employers that put their employees through development programmes and qualifications. I found over the years so many employers stating development but once in the role they never actually did it. So if an employer liked the workshops, they were likely an employer I could grow with.

And in all honesty when I had to stop everything, Prime was the only one I didn't, it was cost effective for us, not because of videos, but free deliveries and ability to get medicine/creams/essentials cheaper than in store.

Unfortunately everything is hard at the moment and tbh many seem to be at each other's throats with very blinkered views on the right way out.

At the end of the day alot of it is luck/circumstance. The right employer saying yes, the right opportunity or an unfortunate illness swaying the balance. But it feels far safer to think we are in control of that than realising we are all a slip, trip or redundancy away from chaos.

These people who said diet’s don’t work are losing on WLI though. And WLI is a diet; you’re consuming less calories, that’s how it works. People find diets often don’t work as they under estimate calories or sometimes your body might need a bigger deficit to actually lose. Diet’s are hard work and involve a lot of will power. WLI takes away that need. In my opinion, that’s a luxury to diet and not feel hungry or fancy some chocolate.

Good points.

Once the Pip comes through they can cover their own food costs plus their own expenses. This will help no end.

In addition can the other youngster up her hours at all or wd it compromise her academic grades?

Can you reduce or cancel any direct debits? Change your supermarket of choice? Buy own brand items only? Shop in the reduced aisles regularly? Buy yellow sticker foods?

I really relate with the OP. It just feels like an endless cycle of almost getting to the point where life is o.k. and then some crap happens. And you get through it, until the next thing. Rinse, lather, repeat. And of course I'm aware (and I'm sure the OP is too) there are people in worse situations, but sometimes a rant into the void is cathertic. The OP is nails though, I'd never be so brave as to write about it on MN 😅

21st century poverty doesn't look like 15th century poverty. People can be impoverished while still watching a bit of TV and they're generally not dying of cholera in watery gutters. This is supposed to be a good thing.

Some people can but diets don’t work for everyone. And some people lose easily on diets and some don’t. I was the former, and then became the latter. Didn’t do anything differently. And I’m not doing anything differently now I am on WLI. Still eating 1200 calories a day, still eating a low fat, balanced diet. What’s the difference? Well I actually lose weight now.

@ProudCat excellent points. You're a teacher. You're at the heart of society, like many others, keeping everything going. I bet you work longer hours than you're actually paid for?

I was born in the late 1960s. I left school at 18 with A Levels. I got my first job as a bar maid. I still have my wage slips. £2.13 ph. My rent (including rates - and water rates) was £17 for a room in a shared house. In other words, I only had to work 8 hours a week to keep a roof over my head.

Now? I have a (more than) full-time reasonably paid job - teacher. My council tax + water costs me more than an entire month's salary every year. My rent and gas / electricity costs me four month's salary every every year. These are basic necessities for a functional first world country, and that's five months of my 12 month salary.

My husband cares for our disabled adult son who has a life limiting and life threatening condition. It's hard work. High emotional cost. This means he's not able to 'maximise' his earnings through other work.

We probably spend about £175 a week on food (various food intolerances - diagnosed by the NHS - and a kid still living at home). That's another four month's salary. So now we're up to nine month's salary, leaving three month's salary for everything else - my transport costs to and from work, prescription charges, vet's bills for our little dog, clothes, opticians, dentist, etc. These are also not 'luxuries' and they swallow up something like two month's salary (mainly transport).

In other words, I work full-time but generally only see one month's wages every year to pay for the 'extras' like phone, TV, a short break away.

Our whole society is built on the lie that if you work hard, then you'll be ok, not scraping by, but ok. A fair days pay for a fair days work. That's how it's meant to operate. And fair doesn't mean just keeping your head above water, it means being able to make positive choices (what can I have?) not negative choices (what do I have to cut back on?).

Workers in this country are being shafted. If you can't see it, that's because you don't want to.