To have frugality fatigue. (Cost of living.)

[KnopkaPixie]

Just that really. To do so well with finances for nearly a month then get an unexpected expense out of left field, pretending that lentil dahl is absolutely delicious, to have signed up to do surveys on YouGov and the rest and have made sod all, can't work any more hours, can't cut costs any more, can't claim anything off the state and to be kicking myself for not saving more when I had the chance. Just a moan really.

I never wanted to be that kind of miserable gît that resents every penny or knows, "The cost of everything but the value of nothing" But that's the way the value brand cookie is not crumbling right now.

Perhaps a bit woo but sometimes I wonder whether a real poverty mindset becomes a self fulfilling prophecy and perhaps a more speculate to accumulate mentality might do me better? Not any manifesting flapdoodle but just an idle thought.

Ahh OP
YouTube is full of these fake frugal living channels.
I watched one with this woman living in the highlands, living in her converted van home.
Said van was fully renovated to a high spec and you could tell no expense had been spared.
It's all for likes and views and most of these people have had a load of capital to get it going. Not true frugal living at all.

Yes , she means well, my life is very different, I don’t drive, disabled by Parkinson’s more at time goes on ( yes I have some monies, apart from my pip, I know I’m very lucky too), I can’t do what I used to.
If I were nearer i could cook for you, or help you a bit, I’m sorry I can’t.
Hopefully some kind friends or family can?

Hugs 💐
Not to sound patronizing but if you live rural,
Could you possibly grow veggies?

I am cackling at this. Clues to who this is, please. I want to watch the Frankenstein recipe being whipped up in a quilted casserole dish.

Jane Batt

@suki1964 I'm with you on that. The idea of retirement keeps me going. One day I won't have mortgage payments or need work clothes.

I want to go into a supermarket and buy a leg of lamb, rather than wincing at the price and buying chicken legs instead. 😂

A week is hardly a comparison, is it?

There are people in absolute poverty, its shocking in this day and age and then there's a huge section of people who think they are poor because they can't buy exactly what they want all the time.

The past 10 years of cheap credit,UPF deliveries, social media,calling debt credit, poor wage growth and inflation has lead to many people on what was once an ok salary getting into huge amounts of debt.

I'm surrounded by them at work.

If I had a pound for everything I heard the word " skint"
What they mean is they can no longer go to Costa 3 times a day, go shopping for stuff to show off on Insta later -unboxing, hauls etc
Deliveroo takeaways every night and the costs of all this on cheap credit are no longer cheap.
They can no longer meet the repayments on that brand new audi.
Their mortgage and rent has sky rocketed, food is 40% more expensive.

It's a complete trap that so many fell for.

Op it is hard and it's the constant thinking about money as well as the lack of options that are so bloody draining. In terms of mantras mine was (and still is) 'everybody fed, nobody dead.'
Totally flippant but it seemed to help when you are eating the same thing again and again as it reframed things. Also custard made from a tiny amount of sugar, own brand custard powder and dried milk every so often as a pudding really helped psychologically as a treat.
Hoping better times are on the horizon for everyone.

Well in the nursery my children attended there were 2 ladies on benefits with no job, both single parents and I know they got 15 hrs free and also their rent paid among other things. And what really grates is I used to work full time and pay £1200 a month for my child to attend while she sat at home all day and couldn’t be expected to take care of her child the whole time! And working is expensive, fuel to get to work, work clothes, parking etc. And every time the child is sick the nursery will not have them so you either take annual leave, or loss of pay or hire someone to watch them at on avg £10 per hour. Honestly it is not worth working at times but one still wants to do better and set a good example for ones children. Also one of these mums was complaining on how she cannot manage every month and she got £2400 pounds in benefits, totally insane!

I’ve never been in her situation, nor am I going about Dahl, trying to be empathetic .

If you get free prescriptions, can your doc not prescribe iron for you?

You can get good own brand coffee ...large jar in Tesccos for £3.
Home Bargains do 8 x pumpkin spice latte for 85p...its very good.
Dhal can be spiced up with roasted chickpeas, a hard boiled egg, fried spinach etc.
Vinted is great and now I prefer second hand to new as fast fashion is destroying the planet. Ditto 2nd hand furniture etc.

But yes...it's rubbish. I get it op. Hard to hear people at work boasting about cruises, house reburbishments etc ( and on our wage too).

Its knowing that we will be having a confirmed amount coming in each week and being able to budget to that, rather then having to pare everything to the bone incase Mr S cant work , like Christmas when hes laid off for two weeks - or I cant

Luckily we paid our mortgage of. Whats screwing us the most if fuel costs, heating - we are on oil and have to pay upfront, not as we go and running two cars - we are very rural and he works one direction, I the other

Things are so tight right now that hes flying to England for 3 weeks work. Its going to leave him in agony - but theres a big pay check - about 5 months wages from here

I know what you mean about the Lamb. I always do the Boxing Day sales - the supermarkets for the yellow stickered meat, and two years ago I got lucky - whole legs of lamb - £3 - I lifted four - all I had room in the freezer for. We ate the last one this summer when we had family staying and the left overs is still in the freezer, now to go in the soup pot now the cold weather is here

Yep being frugal takes military precision and planning and its relentless

It is really crap, we were struggling when dds were young. Not that they remember at all, we lived in a studio flat with no heating, mould on the walls so the windows were open and it was snowing outside. DD and I were snuggled up watching her favourite dvds and reading books(no money for Internet or tv license). We used to go to toys r us up the road as it was heated and she could play on the bikes/coupe cars, I cant imagine what they thought of us being there for several hours a few times a week. We alternated toys r us with the 2 libraries in walking distance as they were heated.

I used to make cheap pasta bake - pasta with a tin of tomato soup and that cheap jar parmesan cheese on top. Or rice with baked beans. I couldn't cook so wouldn't have known where to start making a dahl back then.

We are doing better now, still have to account for every pound but if they need or ask for something it doesn't fill me with dread. I do however have flashbacks and worry about having no food so always have meals in the freezer, cupboards so could feed ourselves for a month or so without food shopping if we needed to.

Just to add a little moan, what I find hard is having no-one to share the burden with. I'm the only one responsible, not just for paying but for shopping, finding deals etc. It's exhausting.

Whoever said tinned tomatoes are a pound is incorrect.
Look for savers people...35p for savers tinned tomatoes in Tescos. Scan those isles like crazy.....look for savers brands. I got good at this as a single mum....Aldi is fantastic...weekly shop for 4 including luxury bits...£50. For basic bits it would be even less. You can get savers rice for under 50p....just as good as brands.

Oh for goodness sakes you poverty olympics people can sod off. Someone's always got it worse. Now go tell someone in a village in Bangladesh that at least they're not in a refugee camp in Cox's Bazar with all the Rohingya? I'm sure they'll feel much better about being poor now.

I'm not poor now, OP, but it's just mentally exhausting to be on a tight budget and counting every penny and figuring every decision. Sure, you might be able to find something else that fit into the budget slot besides dal. But you'd have to sit there and calculate every last detail to make it fit in the budget, and sometimes it's just less tiring to make the same dal again, because it's all less work. (These issues, along with time, are why many poor people wind up eating a lot of fast food.)

I am really sympathetic to everyone on this thread. I have been veggie all my life, and so are my family. None of us are iron deficient and we dont take supplements.

You can get iron in leafy green veggies like spinach. The easiest way for a Western diet might be to get a cheap can of canned spinach and put it in omelettes, pasta, sandwiches. There are other greens that have iron like kale and broccoli. Just chuck them in a stir fry.

I hope things improve for you.

So daal... Where do people propose finding the month for the spices required to make it? Not everyone has a fully stocked cupboard and this is why "living on a budget" influencers don't have a clue. When you're bare arsed broke you don't have a bag of flour or a pot of coriander or a bottle of soy sauce laying around. The food bank certainly doesn't provide such things!

This isn't true. The poorest people in the world living on the side of the road in India and Bangladesh manage to make it. It's not a dish made only by influencers!You build up a stock of spices.
They pay for themselves in the long run.

Costs more for a prescription than it does over the counter 😔

That's annoying, I donate spices to food banks all the time. Do they just bin them then?

Flour is very cheap and lasts forever.

Usually you can get away with asking a neighbour for a basic because it sounds normal to have run out of coriander or something partway through cooking.

Not sure if apps like Olio list ingredients as well as meal/food items.

It depends though doesn’t it on what shop U.K. you can get to. Not everyone has a car and if they do petrol costs money. They may not have the money to make ‘bulk buying trips’ and have to shop more frequently.

So in reality people who are really poor end up paying more for things as they end up shopping more locally in the shop they actually have.

^^ This was in response to the saver tinned tomatoes are 38p not £1 post above by the way I seem to have failed to quote it.

I was thinking this as I read through the thread - you have an excellent turn of phrase op, it seems you've retained a sense of humour in difficult times and your posts have brought a warm smile - best wishes, I hope your situation improves soon.