AIBU to be sad and shocked by this article?

[LittleDorrit]

Have just been reading this:

www.guardian.co.uk/society/2009/mar/18/child-poverty-labour-eradicate-promise

and I am shocked by the conditions this family is living in, but in particular how little/what sort of food they are able to afford.

It's not so much an AIBU issue, but just wondered whether others in similarly difficult circumstances think this is typical, or whether the mother could try to buy other types of food (e.g. rice, lentils, etc.) or perhaps be able to afford to spend a bigger proportion of her budget on food... £20 is very little.

no £17 on loans - £10 of which she will have absolutely no choice over - it'll be taken from her benefits before she gets the money -

and yes she'll have £48 - £20 of which she spends on her weekly food shop - she's only bought 6 pints of milk there, with 2 young children that's not going to last the week.

The bread won't last her a week either.

So she'll need to top up on bread and milk, and she'll take that out of the £18. So (if she's really tight on the milk and bread usage) £12 left over - she still needs to buy her toiletries, cleaning stuff etc. Even if she uses 99p shop stuff that's still going to be a couple of £'s.

So maybe she's got £8 left for the week.

She could spend it on food - but what if her 5y old wets the bed, or her 3yr old is sick and she needs to do extra washing - she'll need to put extra on her electric. They grow - she needs to buy them new shoes/clothes.

her youngest is £3 cory - so presumably just nappies for nighttime?

And actually I think she is budgetting - if she wasn't she wouldn't be so careful with her spending having set amounts down for everything.

on re reading this article it has actually been written in a very misleading fashion.
they apear to have confused the amounts of money recieved, the £85 is her tax credits and the £51 is her income support (from which the £10 loan would have already been deducted as she would normally recieve £60)so the amount she recieves is £136 - and the £10 loan has already been paid. she pays £5.5 for her tv lic - making it cost her £286 - which is £150 more than it really costs, she also recieves aprox £35 child benefit, so the weekly amount she has is £171. the only mention they have made of child benefits is that she uses that money to buy ingredients to make lasagne or stew.
if you add up all her outgoings (including the incorrect tv licence) it still leaves over £100. i am not saying that this is a fortune or that you can live a life of luxury on this amount but it is enough to buy proper food for her kids. this is not an atack on the girl herself, i'm sure its a tough job looking after 2 kids on your own, but it is at best sloppy reporting by the guardian and looks as though it has been written to make her situation look worse than it actually is.

PT you forgot the the £10 loan she is paying to the council. Which would only leave her with £38 for food, cleaning produce, soaps, sanitary products, baby wipes, the extra leccy for her washer or a laundrette , plasters, calpol, toothpaste, toothbrushes, hair bobbles for when her daughter takes her out and leaves them all at school, pens and paper for her courses, milk, eggs, sugar, tea, coffee...............

Fair enough she wouldn't have to buy all of these things each week, but they still need paying for somewhere along the the line

nancy - the cash easy payments for the TV licence do cost more than if you pay monthly, quartlery or in full - a lot more.

And also - yes she's only cooking "fresh" stuff once a month - but she is buying fruit - bananas and apples. So it's not like she's not making any effort to feed them "good" food.

faq - even with the £5.5 for tv licence the amounts they have given are not correct, they have conveniently not mentioned how much child benefit she gets, or that the £10 loan from the social fund ahd already been taken so need not be accounted for again.

I can't help thinking quite seriously that she is doing way better than I would have done at her age.
When things are very tough it is exhausting and maintaining enthusism and discipline throughout that would certainly have challenged me back then.
NOW I would make better decisions than she is. But all those years ago and without half the personal resources that I had back then I doubt it.
I was living in a bed sit and ran out of money before patyday more times than I can remember. admittedly I didn't have her rersponsibilities but I think I would just want to lie down a lot tbh

well given they've screwed up on that - who knows what else they've failed to mention that she has to pay for

pag - indeed - and to be fair to her - she's set herself a budget with her money, it's not like she's just going into the supermarket and spending however much she feels like spending and then worrying about the bills afterwards. She's got it all set out, she's got her list which she checks off to make sure she's paid stuff.

I think she's doing well, she's reducing her debts (and if the article is to believed not adding to them by taking out expensive credit to get "things" for her house), she's trying to get her education sorted. her children are fed (ok maybe not to some peoples standards - but she's not buying microwave meals and crisps instead of fruit iykwim), she's not (according to the quotes on the article) whinging that she doesn't get enough money.

i don't think they screwed up faq, i think the article is purposfully written in a misleading way, she is at least £45 per week better off than they have said, but then saying she only has £65 per week to feed her kids is not really a story is it?

How sad, I feel really sorry for her. She is doing well with the start she had.

And how sad that there are people picking apart her "budget" to complain about what she is spending her money on. Poor lass is doing the best she can.

Perhaps SGM and anyone else who has ideas about how to help people like her could start a new thread, so that anyone who would like to help, knows how.

And then there's things like (looks round my kitchen) good sharp knife for food preparation (filleting fish for example), utensils, needles and thread for repairing clothes and patching....

Making do and mending, and making things from scratch, and repairing what you have, and all of those things require a basic "kit" of stuff that she might not have.

And also the knowledge of how to sew, how to cook, what to cook, how long things can last for, how best to store food, recipes, best ways of laundering clothes cheaply. All things that might once have been taught by parents or schools, but which aren't necessarily taught any more. Being caught in a trap where you have little money coming in is I think much harder to manage these days with less family support nearby and the lack of basic skills/knowledge of how to access and implement those basic skills.

Of course, we are lucky to have a benefits system and free health care and so on. BUt it clearly isn't helping not necessarily the woman in the article, but more potently, her children to find their way out of poverty.

but it's not £65 just for food is it? It's £65 to cover everything else that they haven't mentioned in the article.

I have a £15 "budget" each week for top-ups (milk, bread, etc), I try to make sure I have a few £'s set aside each week for "unexpected" things too (as there naturally are in life) - lightbuls (need to buy 2 news for the kitchen actually - just reminded myself), things breaking/needing replacing, clothes/shoes for the boys.

shesells I think you're right, Louise seems to be doing the best she can with what she can (PT your maths are a fiver out!) given that no one, let alone her teenage mum has passed on any cooking, budgeting skills etc.

Pooka,I think homestart can help with those types of things. When I was homeless I met a young mum of 2. We both eventually got rehoused ,and we stayed in touch. She is on same money as louise and is the same age......but she was brought up on a farm, and she's taught me a thing or two!! So you're right .. Slot of it is down to skills and knowing how to do stuff. My friend is brill.....we help each other out loads,and we have a joint toolbox, it floats between our two houses. And my sewing kit is often used by her. Wonder if louise has friends in similiar position.

Alright so say she did have £65 per week to feed the kids for arguments sake.

She lives on an estate where her only options for shopping and feeding her kids well are Morrisons and Iceland.

My shopping bill for me and the dds comes in at about £40 per week if I do well, and that is only because as stated above I know that it is cheaper to buy meat/fish/fruit/veg elsewhere. So that £40 is only on milk, eggs, cheese, flour, cornflour, cereal, porridge, cleaning stuff, soaps/shampoos etc, toilet roll, kitchen roll, food bags, juice, out of season fruit and veg, beans, spagehtti, pasta, pasta sauces.

Most fresh things I buy else where. So in reality, even knowing where to shop cheaply my weekly shopping bill 'eating well' is about £60-70.

Is it just me (sorry, haven't read the whole thread) who doesn't think the room looks untidy at all? OK, it's basic but I can't see much more than a child-sized table (which in view of the lack of dining table is great for the children) and a few toys. When my two were that age we had wall-to-wall toys most of the time.

www.mumsnet.com/Talk/am_i_being_unreasonable/724391-To-want-to-help-people-less-well-off-than-me?rnd =1237466204066

Sorry, I'm rubbish at links but can start getting practical now - I think eveyone agrees child poverty is unacceptable in this country. Lets move on from the navel gazing, picking apart of 'Louise's' budget and the questionable quality of the journalism.

I haven't read the whole thread, so excuse me if i'm parrotting something already said,

I personally think she is doing incredibly well. I have known people in that same situation who have spent their money on fashionable clothes, jewellery, trainers, hair cuts etc, then gone to the council, friends, family etc to ask them for a loan because they can't pay the electric bill, or buy food. Which i think is appalling.

I know that many of you (posts i've read) have suggested she should get lentils because they are cheap, i wouldn't have a clue how to cook lentils! And i doubt she has ever been taught to cook. Plus the big sacks of potatoes and cheap washing powder (for example) how many of you would like to try and get them home on a little buggy?

I am sure she is doing the best that she can, knowing what she knows. I am also sure many of you have been there, and i think that anyone who can bring their children up like this deserve some kind of support (i don't mean just financially).

My father brought me up by himself at the age of 19, i think he did an amazing job, and we were lucky that my grandma and aunt were on hand to help. We often just had egg and chips for dinner, but he did the best that he could and that was perfectly adequate.

I'm sorry for rambling, its a topic quite close to my heart

SGM - hope you don't mind, I copied your list over to the new thread I just started. its still in AIBU as no other topic seemed appropriate!

no, ye said the £10 was taken directly from her benefits so i've deducted it there

faq, i make 4 litres of milk last the week with 2 small kids, sometimes we have to get an extra but rarely. you're right though, she'd probably need more bread.

i'm guessing from the way it's written that the money she gets monthly goes on all the random stuff like clothes and shoes and bits and bobs as she only spends a small amount on fresh food

seashells, i do agree with you 100%, the key to all this is educating people. i survived alot better on this sort of money not because we were getting more or were luckier, but because i do things like buy cheap meat at butchers, meal plan, cook from scratch and can work out the real cost of things.... the value products might seem cheap but often aren't as they're poorer quality and don't last. i know buying in bulk will save me money in the long run and i know of at least 10 dishes of the top of my head that i could buy for the price of that pizza or the hot dogs that would be more filling and far more nutritius(sp!).

all of these are basic skills that could be taught easily at very little cost to the government but would make the lives of kids like these much better

Ok so to be slightly controversial once more... isn't it the case though that many people feed their kids with what we might see as a crap diet not so much through ignorance, but because that's what they prefer?

There may be lots of people on low incomes who would dearly love to learn new housekeeping skills and I'm more then happy for the taxpayer to fund that, it's a great idea.

But I have met countless people over the years who think that vegetables etc are weird food for weird people, and who would take offence at being told otherwise.

My sister has one friend who thinks that bread is for snobs, and won't buy it for her DD because she thinks it's silly - she'll buy her 'normal food' like crisps etc.

As Jamie Oliver etc have proved, you can lead people to the water of healthy low cost cooking, but you can't always make them drink.

If all healthy fresh food was suddenly made widely available and half price, people would still buy crap.

[applaudes morris]

see, therin lies my issue with this article, the presumption that her poor children eat horrible food because mommy is poor.

yes their lives suck because she's poor... but they eat horrible food because that's what she uses her money to buy... and as morris says, is that because she doesn't know better or because she likes pizza and hotdogs and doesn't want to buy better food