Lending money with conditions

[p5oebe]

Dh has been made redundant (bloody brexit) & frantically searching for another job but its really difficult as his work is very specific. I work but low paid & we have a max mortgage that we can only afford with his salary. I also have two pre schoolers at home.

Dm has very kindly offered to tide us over if it comes to that, they are very well off & adore the grandkids & extremely generous with gifts for them etc

The only thing is she has insisted we stop shopping at Waitrose, Boden & our favourite shops basically she is a reverse snob (?) and doesnt miss an opportunity to tell me what a waste Waitrose is. I am very particular about food & what the kids eat. We dont have a freezer or microwave & i find it so much easier to shop fresh somewhere i trust. I spend approx £150 a week for the four of us.
We hardly drink & rarely buy clothes for dh & I but obviously the kids need new clothes regularly. She's basically said i don't want you to waste my money!

Op I shop at waitrose, 4 people - two dc we spend 100 a week and can certainly cut back on that too. I cook mostly from scracth, you need to budget your food better.

Microwaves have been proven to cause cancer

Oh really ....

I'm clearly an older generation than you. My mother was a SAHM, and we always had cooked-from-scratch-meals; we drank water not juice or squash (although we did have a house cow - grew up on a small bit of land, so milk was also plentiful, and home made butter & cream); my mother batch baked fortnightly: cakes & biscuits & bread, which she froze so that we always had something homemade after school; and she made all our clothes.

But we never had processed food. If you only buy the raw ingredients you can buy them from anywhere & be more attentive to price. I think you're being very precious.

PuntCuffin has nailed it

If your DH has been made redundant he will have the time to shop around surely? If jobs in his field are rare, could he be facing long term unemployment? Are your kids in paid childcare? He could be a SAHD? Consider selling your house now, for a sensible but low price, before you end up in destressed circumstances and selling / getting it repossessed at way below what you could otherwise get for it.

In the short term it's worth asking your DM to buy you a cheap freezer so you can bulk cook. It works out so much cheaper and the meals are still as healthy. She'll be able to see the value of where her money is going if she buys it.

I did a spreadsheet the other day costing out what our meals cost - I thought I knew which were the cheap meals, but food prices have changed in ten years. Stir fries are the cheapest meal I make and this lamb stew thing I had in my head as being a 'value' meal was anything BUT. So it's well worth doing a reality check of how much do different meals actually cost. Consider swapping out certain veg for cheap alternatives. Veg patch in the garden if DH is facing long term unemployment? It's amazing how far you can bulk out leek and potato soup made from your own veg.

Living on a budget can be miserable especially if you're not used to it. But that's just how it is. You have to just get on with it.

I thought you were for real until I read this:
ok, she's out of date but who would willing give their kids palm oil confusedconfused

And no, microwaves don't cause cancer. FFS.

HecateAntaia I think you may have hit the nail on the head.

(I stockpile stuff, too, when I can. I know exactly where you are coming from!)

Shop well for less is on BBC tonight. It maybe interesting to watch.

This has got to be a joke.. Else I'm watching an episode of River Cottage or The Good Life playing out on Mumsnet.

Never heard anything like it! Ridiculous!

Good luck in Morrisons op. Last time I was in there I noticed bags of wonky veg - looked like a good deal.

I'm not keen on Primark clothes either but I like H&M, Sainsbury's, Next and the occasional thing in ASDA. I'd really recommend the forums on MoneySavingExpert for tips on budgeting.

*Just curious, but you hint that your DH has been made redundant as a result of Brexit. Is this true? The exit plan hasn't been made formal yet.

I have a friend who's hubby is a scientist (does research). He was given his notice within a couple of days of the Brexit vote, out of a job within a month. A lot of research funding was cancelled almost immediately.*

Precisely. My team at work was more than halved after we lost £millions funding from the EU.

OP you clearly don't want to change. By all means, make sure that your kids are eating fancily-packaged food; just don't start a "DM REFUSED US MONEY AND NOW WE'RE POOR" thread.

OP I thought of you yesterday. Meridian peanut butter is £3 for 454g in Asda. In Waitrose it is £1.99 for 280g.
Shop around. You can still buy all your preferred brands at better prices and have the evidence for your Mum.