What’s the point in being frugal anymore?

[DesolationRow]

I have a fixed low income and am good at cutting my cloth accordingly, I have no debt and free/cheap hobbies and social life.

My average fuel consumption these past few years has been 6500kWh gas and 2000 electricity = around £750 a year. I pay quarterly, always promptly.

On very cold days I put the heating on for an hour early evening. I have reasonable insulation, heavy curtains, I ‘warm the person, not the room’ ie base layer, wool jumpers and socks, fingerless gloves and a hat, hot water bottles and electric blankets. I have an air-fryer and microwave and have two baths a week. My luxury is a small coffee machine and putting the heating on when I have visitors (because my home is definitely too cold for most people to bear!)

So I’m happy and comfortable enough BUT I’ve used an online calculator and my new annual fuel cost will be £2,400 - way, way more than I can afford!

AIBU to think why the fuck should I pay £2,400 to live like this? As I’ve no way of avoiding debt now I might as well heat my home properly and bathe and cook hot meals every day. To me, £3,400 (or £4,400) is as unaffordable as £2,400. My credit rating doesn’t matter and I’m on the ‘priority register’ so think I could avoid being put on a pre-payment meter.

As for the govt helping the elderly and vulnerable, I too am sceptical whether it will be enough. I am disabled and under austerity a lot of financial support has been reduced. One example the financial contribution I have to make towards my care has absolutely rocketed since 2011. I used to have pay £40 a week towards it, it’s now £133. If I put that number into an inflation calculator £40 today would be about £60, not £133. Mind you with how much inflation is soaring it will not be so big, but I bet my contribution will go up again. Councils had to charge more for care as Cameron and Osborne massively cut funding to local councils back in 2011.

I think it's definitely going to be easier for single people. You can eat the same dinner all week from a big spaghetti Bolognese with Lidl minced steak and nobody need know. If you've got a ten year old and goes into school and says 'We have to eat the same food, all the time' or not wash all over, daily - I wonder what school would say; whether they'd adjust their standards of what is acceptable and I wonder if all of us will judge differently about what is good parenting.

I’m sure somebody’s already pointed it out but also that gets written off after six years of completely and utterly ignoring it no we acknowledgement what so ever it’ll sit on your credit file for that six years but as you say so what?

I'm pretty old and I realize you cannot compare today to the 60s. We live in a totally different world reliant on energy for everything and a 24 hour society.

I remember being a child at the time. We had a parkray fire that gave off a lot of heat and also heated the hot water. Mum would put a pan of baked beans on the top which would heat up,. She would also wrap potatoes up in foil and place them in the "ash tray" underneath for a few hours. So even through the blackouts, we were warm, had hot water and were able to eat a hot meal. If we were to have the same thing happen now then the warmth, hot water/food would be impossible for a vast amount of the population, that's the difference between the 70's and now.

Who is "they" - an energy company cannot repossess a home that isn't theirs in the first place.

They can secure the debt against your house though.

If it was a justifiable amount like you couldn’t do it for £1000 but if it got to £20,000 than absolutely they could go to court and get a charge against the property.

Unfortunately there is a legal mechanism for a debtee (creditor) to place a charge on someone's home (a 'charging order') and in certain circs this can lead to a forced sale. Forced sales have been pretty rare, but you never know what's going to happen in a year or two.

It's bloody worrying.

What an incredibly interesting point I hadn’t considered. Had you considered this @DesolationRow ? I mean, I thought about the fact that the reason some people would be scared to rack up energy debt is because the debt could be charged against their home if it got too big. But we could end up in a situation where there’s a whole separate category for energy debts, ie you cannot force-sale for energy debts regardless of amount, you cannot consider energy debts for credit history (or no one would be able to get a private rental and many would be homeless). If that’s the case, then a lot of people will have to make the choice if it’s worth fucking their credit rating for six years. You’d see things like married couples getting “legally” divorced and one of them taking on the energy bill and accompanying energy debt when it’s over £10k, etc.

The government has the option of fixing this now, growing a backbone and putting true affordable caps on both the usage AND the bills. OR they’re going to end up applying a whole lot of insane laws to try to mitigate this debt from making people homeless, etc, later.

I absolutely refuse to sit in a cold house. I won't put 30 jumpers and 12 pairs of socks on to stay warm in my own home. I can't afford takeaways anymore, or to eat out so if I've got to stay in then I'm going to be warm! Our income isn't high- hubby is on benefits due to his health and needs to be warm anyway, but I'd rather go without something else than be cold. Its bad enough visiting someone else who has no heating on, I'm certainly not coming home to a cold house. We have pre payment meters and, although they're slightly more expensive, at least you know how much you're using and we're not going to get a huge bill every 3 months.
This country is going backwards- we'll all be sitting around candles before long....

Seems like you've come to the realisation on your own that printing money is borrowing from the future...

That happens with council tax debt, in theory they can put you in prison but let’s be honest it’s only those that refuse to pay rather than those that can’t pay that end up in that scenario that council tax debt doesn’t count against your credit rating so frankly it’s the absolute last one I pay. I dragged one for a previous property out for nearly 3 1/2 years.

Never reply on anything that is the way it is now if it's in the gift of the government to change it. Bearing in mind they already removed the six year limit for student loans. And poll tax. (And the limit doesn't apply to money owed to the taxman anyway).

It would take a single act of parliament - or possible a stroke of Jacob Rees Moggs fountain pen - to scrap any idea of debts expiring.

What would you do if you were in power, and wanted to stay in power and get richer ? You certainly wouldn't be pissing about helping snowflakes would you ? Of course not. You'd be looking to see how much more you can make out of the situation. Believe me, there are champagne corks popping all over that foreign land we call "the ruling classes" at the moment. I bet they can't believe their luck.

Meanwhile, form a queue to vote for your next Tory government. You know you're going to anyway. And if you don't, they do, as there is no other explanation for their behaviour.

God how utterly depressing.

I only hope we get independence soon. A pretty shit snp government is still better than more of the tories.

There is absolutely no reason why we should, in a country with such a high GDP, have any of us dying of cold or hunger, or going into lifelong debt or destitution.
This is down to mismanagement by government, of privatisation by the Tories and their relaxed attitudes to "the market", letting the huge companies get away with obscene profits.

In France, bills are going up by 4%. We can demand similar too. There's no reason why we need to accept such terrible standards of living.
I hope there's a general election called soon - and when it is, please, please remember this and vote tactically in your area to get the Conservatives out of power. Literally any other mainstream party would be an improvement on this.

Exactly this. YANBU at all!

I know what you mean OP. I think a lot of people are thinking that once you get as fckd as this and you can’t even afford to pay the gas/electric even if you use the bare minimum, that you may as well be hanged for a sheep as a lamb. 🤷🏻‍♀️

I’m on a prepayment meter which suddenly switched itself off in august 2021. I’ve been getting free electric ever since. Still have to pay for gas but I’ve been buying second hand electric radiators at car boot sales and plan to use them instead of the central heating, unless it’s super cold and the pipes are in danger of freezing. It will be like the Bahamas in my house, and I will share the love with any friends who want to come over and use my appliances and sit in the warm!

@ITalktotheTrees
For those of us who lived through the "3 day week" and "Winter of Discontent" under James Callaghan, this situation holds no fears
Ordinary Britons were ordered to limit heating to one room and to keep non-essential lights switched off
We survived

Some did, some didn't.

The 3 day week was under Edward Heaths Tory Govt for starters and whilst there were power cuts, we could afford the pub or fish n chips, the "winter of discontent" wasn't that bad.

We are also not facing a few months of v high energy costs but 2 or more years of super high prices.

I'm with the OP, for many owing your energy company 1k or 5k is immaterial and the huge problem for the Govt, unless they have a windfall tax and probably a wealth tax too, is there will be no money to help those just over UC benefit levels and they make up a huge proportion of the workforce.

Truss seems determined to stick with tax cuts as her main weapon of choice.

Council tax will slap an attachment of earnings order on you within weeks if you don’t pay!

At least debtors prison would be warm.

@BoffinMum I agree completely.

The Great Depression 2 is on our doorsteps and that never ends well. I fully expect a massive stock market crash in the next few weeks that will usher it in. There are no good tools left in the central banks armoury anymore. Raise interest rates or debauch the currency choose your poison.

The three day week was Ted Heath, wasn't it?