No matter how broke I am, I will not compromise on

[NorthEndGal]

Butter
If I only had a few dollars left, I'd still buy butter.
Not margarine, not 20-80 spread, just real pure butter.

Anything else, I'll do without, or by a substitute, etc

What is your "I'm not going without" thing?

Yorkshire tea bag
Yes also to butter, happy to buy block of supermarket own brand.

Coffee beans. And good chocolate, even if I can only buy one small bar.

I can substitute most things but never sweetcorn always has to be green giant!

Pine nuts. I'll always have pine nuts in the cupboard

Being kind because I'm not an arsehole
Paying the rent and council tax because I'm not fucking stupid
Decent cat food (grain free) - because it's not fair on DTwatCat, DTwatCat's guts or whoever has to clean up the house and DTwatCat herself after DTwatCat's Guts have encountered Whiskas.
Lactose free milk - because I genuinely throw up if I drink normal milk and this stuff is the only milk that can go into tea.
Strong Teabags - I drink cheap black coffee rather than Tetley or PG.
Bread - bread maker. It tastes like food, not packaging.
Organic/free range eggs - DP refuses this one. So I don't eat eggs much now.
Outdoor reared pork/bacon/etc - DP doesn't see the point. So I don't eat it now.
Butter - DP is a heathen. So I don't eat the abominations he buys.
Eco friendly cleaning products - DP thinks they're too expensive/doesn't seem to understand that they are different. So I try to get an order in just before he notices we've run out, but don't always time it right.

It feels pretty crap that I can't afford to make all the choices, but DP would probably feel the same way about my wanting stuff he doesn't see the point of. He did find out the hard way what happens to DTwatCat and her guts if he ignores me and buys/feeds her whatever is on offer, though. I took one look at the result, said 'has she been given normal cat food?' and 'you know when I explained she has to have grain free because normal gives her liquid, bloody shits? I didn't say that for fun. I'll go and find her and give her a bath, but you've got what reached the bathroom floor and trailed around the house to deal with. We've got about a week of this until it settles down again'.

Lurpak butter
Branson beans
Helllman's mayo
Cheese
Fairy liquid
Ariel washing powder
No 7 foundation
Simple face wash
Oral B toothpaste

Butter! But also Bread, no point in having nice butter if you don't have lovely bread too

This for me, too.

None of that white polystyrene sliced muck, thank you very much!

Actually, when we were painfully broke we got told off by older people – family and friends, for keeping the internet.

Yet we needed it to job search and even apply, network, access information about work/benefits cheaper products and as we were driving – transport to get places and get thing delivered if we couldn’t things from nearby shops. Plus there are free education sites for the kids.

They seem to see it as a luxury were as we saw it more as a desperately needed utility. Deal we had was landline as well but while landline was fine internet wasn't.

What a strange thread - I think some people's definition of skint is very different from mine!

@bigKiteFlying those people would very quickly find out it's not a luxury now, UC claims depend on it

In the light hearted vein that this was intended - We were pretty hard up when DC were young. Not poverty stricken but hard up enough to only buy second hand clothes/toys, no holidays, shop at the time things were reduced,cut our own hair etc. The one luxury I never let go was my gym membership. It included 90 minutes free childcare a day which gave DC access to a large outside space, other kids and toys we couldn’t afford . It rmaintained my sanity and gave me access to the clubs showers and hair dryers meaning we only needed to turn on the heating at home for an hour every night to give the DC and DH a bath. For about three years I never washed my hair at home!

What SGB said.

Coffee certain brand or no can do!

I’ve moved overseas so some of this has been a genuine issue for us:

Free range eggs (super hard to find here).

Decent coffee (not drinking instant, sorry).

DS gets fruit and veg every day - not negotiable. Can be frozen (nothing wrong with frozen peas), but not processed (we’re in Canada, fruit and veg are v expensive here and people seem to think that jarred “apple sauce” is a fruit and not a high-sugar pudding)

Powdered washing powder (not so much a cost issue since it’s cheaper, just very hard to find here. Liquid isn’t as effective. Most people put bleach in their washing as well, which I will not do).

Mortgage.
Council tax.
Internet.

Why does it always have to turn into competitive poverty on MN? Some people have never been poor, that does not make them bad people. Posters seem to be using 'you've never been poor enough' as some kind of insult.

I don’t think the OP meant this to be an upsetting thread - but I can see how it could come across that way.

If I was truly broke I think I would probably just buy whatever I could/have to in order to feed my family.

But I am surprised by all the Yorkshire Tea aficionados - I think it tastes really tanniny. I drink Twinings now but would just drink whatever was on offer if I had to.

Those carping about the insensitive and middle-class nature of this thread, polite suggestion: don't read or follow it?

For the record, I'm in a position now where yes, I can afford nice coffee and a cleaner etc, and I'm very grateful for it; but I grew up in a family where 'food or heat?' was often a genuine question and everyone worked multiple jobs. As did I while at college and uni. I do not take my current good fortune and position for granted and I have not forgotten that many people aren't as lucky as me. But I won't apologise for joining in with what is obviously meant to be a light-hearted thread.

Why does it always have to turn into competitive poverty on MN?

Because it's insensitive posting stuff like this. I didn't read past the first page as I knew it would upset me, but it's really rubbing people's faces in it when people are talking about 'being skint' and spending the amount money that has to last some people a whole day or even week on a block of butter.
I'm not there now but I have been.

Decent haircuts.
I have curly awkward hair. Cheap haircuts have always looked crap.
I do dye it myself however.

Free range meat. If I can't afford free range I go veggie.

I can and have sacrificed pretty much everything else at some point.

Those carping about the insensitive and middle-class nature of this thread, polite suggestion: don't read or follow it?

Err, no you're alright thanks, I'll continue to both have and express my opinion, despite it not necessarily tallying with yours, I'm still allowed .

purplelass, other people can also not read past the first page. It's really not 'rubbing people's faces in it' when reading the thread is optional.

PhillipeFellope, fine, and so are those of us saying it's light-hearted and no one is trying to upset anyone.

I'm with pigletjohn and the other pps who have said there is clearly a very different definition of 'broke' going on here.

I'm not broke, fwiw, and have only been so in the past in days of travelling or as a uni student. But yeah - being able to choose to spend £ on butter (or whatever) rather than buying the absolute cheapest of the cheap and shitting yourself at the till in case you've added it up wrong isn't broke.

Why does it always have to turn into competitive poverty on MN? Some people have never been poor, that does not make them bad people. Posters seem to be using 'you've never been poor enough' as some kind of insult.

Of course having never been poor doesn't make someone a bad person, I don't think anyone had said that. What had been said is that it seems insensitive and badly worded.