You know your really skint when......

[boilingpoint]

You go to tescos to get a few bits to last the week before payday but you have to put some of it back as you don't have enough money....

You have pasta every single day for dinner...

You cash in the change pot....

Am i alone?

Barbarianmum - I don't mean to be unsympathetic, but I do think poverty that is chosen is very different. I get a bit annoyed sometimes at 1 friend who complains about being poor when both her and her OH chose to reduce their working hours to part time so that they could have more time to themselves - they don't have children.

Not having any money through no choice of your own, is horrible. My sympathies to people here whose life is still like that.

The worst time was when dp's employers changed hands and his pay didn't go into his account, they dicked us about for 2 weeks refusing to give him a cheque, that was very stressful. We managed to buy 6 days shopping for 5 people with £15, I do love tesco value. Milk and more is very good, just had a delivery of bread and cheese today because we are skint until tomorrow.

I used to think we were doing ok, but for the last year I would say we are constantly on the back foot, skint about a week after payday. We still haven't got carpet in the bedroom and we have lived here for 2 years . There is just always something more pressing to pay for.

Also you know you are skint when you are still wearing maternity tops and your child is 2.

"Nice that you can think of your cats in that way Bibi because, well, you know when there are literally no protein-rich foods in the house and the emergency fund is empty..."

- now you come to mention it ZXEightyMum.....never thought of it that way. I obviously have a lot to learn where 'being skint 101' is concerned. :)

Can't believe how many things I've recognised on here that I've also resorted to, what a thread!

Oh yes being reliant on faceless banks/employers/benefit agencies to actually do the job they are paid for/give a shit(ha!).

I reckon if hell is real it will highly resemble a job centre/dss waiting room.

lesley -I totally agree. It is completely different because you still have choice and room to manoeuver.

I'm in exactly that position now with benefits people, and the fucking payroll department at work.
No one is returning calls, and I have to wait for a medical before they decide what money I can have.
I called the Credit people as also advised by Expat, and they were lovely, but said (rightly) that it's hard for them to help me set up a payment plan when I have no idea what money I have coming in.

I'm about to lose my home, but am trying to see it as a positive as I'll be homed by HA and will have less rent to pay and more security.

Pension? That'll be when I die or am so close to death in ill-health that I can't work anymore.

Insurance? Nope, none of that besides content, which is a fiver a month through the HA.

Mortgage? Not a change.

expat I do understand it is not the same - that's why I called it pseudo poverty. I'm not asking for, nor do I need sympathy.

Neverforget, that's what's happened to me.
I have severe asthma. It's treatable, though the treatments aren't working for me but of course there's no cure.
Just over a year ago I was working and things were fine, we didn't have much but we managed.
Now I'm disabled at the age of 33 and will probably never work again.

Thankfully haven't experienced this as an adult. Am totally amazed vy the number of people who steuggle by every day with such resourcefullness.

As a child however, we were very poor,( dad was alcoholic, mum gambler)
Being skint then was :
Using newspaper for toilet roll
Having bath once a fortnight with dettol
Seeing and using toothpaste for the first time age 5 on the day of my sisters communion
Eating sugar sandwiches as both paretns were awol and nothing else to eat
Being so excited when the nuns came round and dropped a food parcel to us kids
(sad)

When you steal toilet rolls out of public toilets because you can't afford to buy them.

When DS is eating his bogies, and you make him share with DD

The absolute heartlifting joy you feel when you discover the child benefit has gone in a few days early due to payment day falling on a bank hol, so you dont have to go from fri-mon with nothing.

It happened not so long ago-I felt like a millionaire.

WOW Never thought when i started this thread there would be so many replies!

Some truely lovely people on here! Lets hope in the future we will look back and laugh at our skint days!

If anyone's desperate for end-of-month groceries there is a free £10 offer on at Milk and More, just had a look after some comments here mentioned the site. Apparently the voucher code is TOMATO and ends 28th May.

www.milkandmore.co.uk/OA_HTML/ibeCZzpHome.jsp?minisite=10040&site=&respid=22372

Barbarian point taken, i understand what you mean.

We should have a 'club' with postcodes and know which families who strugle are local and could help.

It is sad that when some families have to do all the above others dont know what to do with their spare clothes, toys, food. I have worked as nanny for some seriously rich people, they would have a huge food delivery 3 days before they go holidays so on the last day the fridge was full of yummy food waiting to rot and they were asking me if it is ok to put it in the bins and their only worry was that they might get maggots until rubbish collection day. When i said i could give them to a local family they were . They were nice people, just never crossed their mind!!!

I so agree Laquitar

There's always freecycle for getting free stuff like furniture/baby stuff but you need to be able to collect larger items and our local site seems full of people with unrealistic wants and others who reply to every item I offer with "I'll have it, when can I collect it". I'd really rather hand stuff over to someone I know needs it but this is against freecycle's aim to just keep it out of landfill. I just resent a grabber then charging someone in need of a cheap item when I'd rather give it free to the person in need.

Our local charity shop prices have gone up a lot since ebay took off too.

I too had a fairly poor childhood, although my parents were good at covering up the worst facts, I think my dad's parents helped them out with utility bills sometimes. My grandparents paid for our 1 week holiday each year and bought me some dresses so that I didn't spend my whole out of school time in my brother's cast-offs. We lived in the country and got a lot of food for free from nearby fields . I wore the girl I sat next to at school's cast offs and the girl down the road's cast offs too. I couldn't go swimming withy my friend partly because of the admission charge but mostly because I didn't have a costume until I was 8 and school swimming lessons started so I HAD to have one bought for me.

Fortunately by the time I started secondary school finances had improved but I am careful with pennies to this day and buy from ebay/charity shops too, even though I don't need to, the thrifty gene is in my body somewhere.

People with good jobs can still run into trouble after only a couple of months if redundancy strikes and job-hunting proves fruitless. Parents with childcare responsibilities can quickly hit the financial buffers if the other parent runs off with OW/OM and shirks their financial responsibilities for their kids.

I buy nearly all of my clothes from Cancer Research because I wince at paying £20 for a t-shirt from Next, despite being easily available to afford to buy what I want. Plus our CR shop is awesome.

My mum is a disabled (blind), domestic abuse survivior, lone parent who worked full time to keep me. I knew how poor we were so would never ask for anything that required money, once I gave her £20 my GP's had given me for my birthday, she cried but had to take it as I knew we had no money to buy food (I did the shopping/paid the bills, etc).

I am incapable of taking money from anyone for stuff I have going spare, even really expensive stuff. I gave a young couple with a new baby who'se car needs work £500 at the weekend as their only other option was a loan shark . I made them promise never to mention it again. Don't care if I never see it again. It hurt me to see their utter desperation as no car meant no job.

I think if you have been really poor it stays with you forever. I have everything I could conceivably need and more and it feels slightly wrong IYSWIM?

...when it's time to make an insurance claim again....

Not eating more than two slices of toast a day for nearly two weeks when pregnant, while feeding my three year old daughter 'adventure' meals out of the freezer. She thought it was hysterical. I thought I was probably going to harm my baby. Was so scared.

KatieScarlett
I know excatly what you mean.

I am in the same position as you.
We went through some horrible horrible times and are through it and are comfortably off (for now) but I have a feeling I will be so broke again at some point.

This is from my mum's childhood:-

Having to scrump and steal slag from the vicarage next door to heat/cook on.

Making 'coins' out of milk bottle tops to feed the meter.

Having one pair of pants (school gym knickers), one school skirt with a bleach stain on it so you wear it back to front, two bluses your sister threw away because they were stained/ripped and you rescuing them out of the bin/remaking them and one pair of shoes that were too big for your first full time job at 15. Oh and your dad's vest as a nightie.

From my childhood:-

Eating the EU surplus canned beef.

Feeding 3 people (one adult and two teenagers) on £5 a week (1990's)

Everything except school uniform from charity shops/jumble sales(unless you could find good stuff in the lost property sale)

Washing everything by hand even though you had a washing machine as it was too expensive to run.

Money's tight for us at the moment but nothing like it was when I was young/during mum's childhood.