To ask you how to make £30 last

[tearsandtiaras]

I have £30 to last until Wednesday
Im ok for petrol for work
My DD needs £8-10 on Monday
I have £22 to make meals from tomorrow - Tuesday night and one packed lunch Wednesday

Please help. I have porridge, brown rice , eggs, and a little bit of pasta

https://communitygrocery.org.uk/ilford/ Or similar

Potatoes, carrots,celery , onions, garlic( or whatever veg) herbs if you have, saute in butter or oil, add water and stock cube , bring to boil and simmer for 1/2 hour . Blitz if desired.....large pot nourishing soup.
.

Just to add - I've costed out all the above suggestions I made as follows from Aldi and it came to £13.89 - so lunches could come out of remaining cash.Leftover lentils could be used to make a soup or curry.
greek yogurt - £1.65
honey - 75p
4 pints milk - £1.45
red lentils 1.45
full fat mince 2.69
chopped toms x 2 78p
mature cheddar - 2.69
frozen mixed veg 1kg - 99p
tomato puree - 59p
brown onions1kg - 80p
gluten free pasta x 2 1.50 (from sainsburys)

Someone on tic tok spent £2.50 ish on the "too good to go" and got tons of stuff from Gregg's.

Part of the key to this is to take some of these tips and incorporate them as a general principle. In particular, if you have freezer space, make up a load of daal/veg chilli etc, eat some and freeze some, then at the end of that pay period hopefully you can fall back on it.

Do look up community larders. We have one near me and I've frequently got whole shopping bags of food for a couple of pounds, and this week two shopping bags I split with a neighbor who couldn't get there, free. It can be tricky to get there at the times they open, but ours does sometimes do a Saturday.

I don't have a credit card or any access to credit. Could borrow from a friend but too embarrassed.

If I had a friend that didn’t reach out to me I’d be gutted if they felt they couldn’t ask. Even if just for budgeting tips or a bag of food staples.

Also sign up to money savings expert for lots of help on budgeting.

Ask local green grocer and supermarket if you can have any wilted vegies, bread and fruit.
Buy large can of beans, milk and lentils. If any left over buy minced steak.
Eat..
porridge (with milk and fruit)
Fried rice with eggs
Add lentils, beans and vegies to left over fried rice. Serve on toast.
Toast with anything from pantry - like Marmite
Custard and fruit
Vegetable soup
Thickened mince on toast. (mince browned with canned or other vegies and herbs boiled in saucepan with Gravox to thicken.) Serve with salad and caulslaw or mashed root vegies.
Can your daughter take less money and an apple and snack?
Can your daughter be shouted, with you having to pay back within the week?

Line up to eat at local soup kitchen. (and help sometimes)
Attend church and eat morning tea with them.
Attend a funeral and eat at the wake.

I love a money challenge! I found getting a big frozen chicken and roasting it gives you protein for a few days. Can have it in sandwiches, curries, wraps, pasta with sauces. Get you and the kids together and try and try and make some flatbread (flour and milk). Get frozen veggies and a loaf of bread. Make some basic chocolate cupcakes for treats!

Also if someone invites you out be honest that you are a bit short at the moment. People are incredibly generous if they don’t feel obligated.

I reckon you could have £10 left over!

I'd be chasing up the child's father for child payment soon.
It's unfair to you both that he doesn't contribute while you can hardly make ends meet..

Greggs often has great Too Good to Go bags but OP can't eat wheat.

In fact lots of people are suggesting cheap pasta and bread based meals which won't help her, although will be good for her DD. Ideas like making your own flatbreads are great but your last few pounds is not really the time to be experimenting with new recipes.

I'd double up in terms of meals.

Make a lentil soup and it should cover two lunches each.

I'd probably make a big cottage pie. Bag if frozen milk xed veg, mince or Quorn and add a lot of lentils or oats work too so it goes much further.

That would do you two teas.

Pasta bake. Just buy a jar or cheap pasta sauce or passata. Again I'd expect it to do two meals.

And then probably an omelette, egg fried rice with veg or jacket potato beans and cheese.

Anything yellow stickered like sausages or chicken thighs or stewing beef would work well too. Do you have a slow cooker? A big stew would be warm, filling and relatively healthy.

So

Frozen mixed veg
Potatoes
Mince
Carrots
Lentils
Oats
Pasta
Cheese
Passata or pasta sauce
Milk
Bread

Just a warning that quite often too good to go has quite a lot of bread products in them, it can be Russian roulette. I feel like I am definitely quids in anyway, but it's worth bearing in mind that you might get a duff one full of bread and not much else.

Aldi beetroot and lentil, pea, and chickpea pasta are all GF and £1.29 per 500g. They have protein in already so just the pasta and a bit of sauce is a fairly balanced meal. The chickpea one is most like normal pasta but also the one most likely to turn to mush, so for that reason I prefer the beetroot or pea varieties.

Somebody mentioned aldi and Lidl big pots of Greek yoghurt - I did the maths recently and it's still cheaper to buy their cheapest natural yoghurt at 45p for a 500g tub. It's less thick than the Greek stuff but that doesn't matter for lots of things.

Carrots is a veg that I think you get really good bang for buck. 50p ish for a bag in most places, and a few carrot sticks with a meal or grated into a dish gives you a very acceptable way of getting some vitamins and fibre into any meal. Likewise a bunch of spring onions for 50p can jazz up boring rice or pasta and will last until weds if you use one or two at a time.

I like the bags of mixed veg in the freezer section that are around 90p. Can be added to most meals.

Leek and potato soup, cheap filling and tasty.
Brown rice with veg.
Omelette with diced pepper or mushrooms
endless possibilities

Yeah, foodbanks actually are for people who can't make it to the end of the month on the pay they have.

Whilst OP is not quite there yet, she is quite probably one household disaster away from it (dead washing machine/fridge/oven etc).

The days when foodbanks and food parcels were only for those without a single penny, no job and no benefits are long long gone!

The basics of:

Onion
garlic
tinned tomato
lentils
kidney beans
carrots
spuds
pasta
rice

Will do you a soup, or you can add some minced meat and make a cottage pie if you've potato for the top, or chilli over rice or spag bol if you've got some pasta.

Spuds and pasta are cheap and filling and padding out anything with lentils/kidney beans.

Some of these are actually nicer the next day as the flavours have had time to do their thing, so batch cooking a big chilli/cottage pie etc is worth it even if you have to eat the same meal twice (of course if you have freezer space even better) - never as bad to eat it again when it tastes better than first time round!

We had jacket potatoes with a different filling 2 days in a row last week. Cost me £7 for everything. Toast for breakfast? And packed lunches, what does your DD usually have?

Try the app toogoodtogo and see if that can help you

You say that you're not used to having this little money and in a later post you say it's like this every month.

So maybe it's an organisational thing?

If you get to the end of every month and are not used to being short of money then perhaps looking at bulk buying staples such as rice and pasta (pasta for your daughter) and meal planning could help avoid that end of the month surprise. A big bag of rice often works out cheaper per meal than a small one.

Change what you buy, how you shop throughout the month, plan your meals for the entire month and have more budget friendly meals throughout the month so the last few days don't feel like a surprise.

You're working a lot of hours in a high pressure job so I understand the desire to make things easier at home but planning would avoid this end of the month stress for you

When I've had to stretch money I find Heron foods is a good place to go. You can get a lot of food cheaper than other places and they sometimes have very cheap deals.

Hate to suggest this but couldn't you get emergency credit with a new card, or Paypal ?
Can your DD s father or family help.out ?
Bank transfers are quick and easy.
Failing that an advance on your wages or go to your doctors to access a food bank.
I'm concerned by your lack of support
( ex mental health support worker)

Child maintenance are well aware
Of dd father. He is meant to pay £30 a month however doesn't.

This is a classic example of poor financial decision making. You can't afford for her to go out this week. If shes old enough to kick off about that she needs to get a job to pay for stuff like that, the family can't afford it. Not when affording basic food is becoming a question

No thank you to getting in debt or advances on pay as it would all be the same next month.

I could move area but I don't want to upset DD schooling at this time so we stay in this predicament with £1800 pcm rent until she gets her education.

Ifs hard. I earn a substantial amount of money. Yes it is every month I am in this position, not quite this bad though- Christmas was hard.

Thanks to all those who have suggested helpful things.

I couldn't ask for a raise as I work for the council and too embarrassed Im a children's social worker. Unfortunately my rent is too high for my salary so its like this every month. A couple of days I have eaten free food at the office to tide me over.

If you’re a social worker you’ll surely already know about the various places to get free/cheap food - things like community pantries, food banks, food share apps etc. I know I’m constantly referring people to these resources in the community. No reason why a social worker can’t access these resources for themselves if and when needed and no need for embarrassment - we all have times that are tight.

If it’s like this every month though in the longer term it’s worth thinking about how to increase your income. There are lots of options for qualified social workers that pay better than a main grade child protection role and the possibility of picking up out of hours shifts (though I’m guessing you’re already working every hour god sends).

Please can people stop posting about my "poor decision making" in regards to DD.

Read the thread!! I am working a 12 hour day and she will be supervised by a friends parent at an activity on an Inset day.

Some people are really cruel on here!!!