You know you're truly skint when...

[ratflavouredjelly]

I've decided to humour myself and start this thread laughs hysterically. Anyone care to join me with their stories. Maybe we can out skint each other...

So, you know you're truly skint when:
Shopping in charity shops are no longer ironic.
The middle of the month arrives and you panic about feeding the family.
You can not afford the petrol to work.
You're growing your own veg but cannot stretch to compost to enrich the soil.
DS and DD's shoes are too tight (something you never thought you would allow to happen)
Your bra is too tight, buying a new one is out of the question, so you just 'get used' to the pain.
Yadda harumph harumph

I'm a tall size 20, Marvellous. I'll take anything I can get. Can you PM me as I can't on my phone.

Ok not sure if this will help but possibly worth a thought. When tesco etc do a £5 off when you spend £40 deal, we have bought £30.10 worth of food ( carefully checked with online shopping) and £10 of kids clothes, total bill £40.10, used the £5 off voucher so paid £35.10, then taken the clothes back for a refund the week later, but they dont worry about the discount so you get £30.10 food for £25.10. Sorry for detail, hope it makes sense

You know you're skint when for weeks on end you eat porridge oats mixed with water, not cooked as you can't afford to top up the electricity key.
When you consider a bit of iceberg lettuce dipped in cold water a special treat.
That is how I survived my student days. I had a lot of stomach problems during those days, only now I have realised it was my diet that caused them. Not IBS as I then suspected :)

• when you make a meal for yourself and toddler out of one portion of pizza base mix, a teaspoon of tomato purée and a few other scraps because there is nothing else

• when you justify buying new trainers because you can see your socks clearly through the toes of your current ones

• when you turn down a party invite for your child because you can't afford the transport let alone a present

• when you read this thread feeling grateful for what you do have, but also feeling horribly jealous that anyone on here actually has a car at all even if they can't run it anymore

I know how you feel fuzzpig I will never be able to afford a car, last time i insured myself, earlier this year it was £4000 i wasn't driving a racing car either!

fuzzpig jealousy is a hard one isn't it, it so natural but I hate feeling it. I do feel it though, I went to my sister's this weekend and she has a lot of money, it is hard sometimes.

You realise that even though your not enjoying it you have to continue breastfeeding your DD. Fortunately these days are getting rarer but sometimes it's how I feel!

I needed to clean the hob. Stainless steel - bought when the cash was plentiful. I had super cheap vinegar left over from ds homework experiment so lashed it on the hob. This was about 9pm. Cue ds being lured down the stairs by the smell of vinegar. Put him right in the mood for chippy chips. Had neither the money nor the inclination to go to the chippy but thank the lord for the couple of packs of mcains at the very bottom of the freezer which yielded about 15 chips for ds. He felt like a king & I was one relieved mum.

pullup I know what you mean re: envy.

It can be a tough one.

I dont envy my sis her life (my bil is a pig) and I am not sure she is happy (he has left her more than once with 2 young dc) BUT she can buy whatever she wants whenever she wants and she just has no idea how it is for most people as bil earns stupid money

I told her about freecycle but bil didnt want "strangers" coming to their (3 storey 5 bed) house so all their old (i.e. hardly used, almost new) stuff gets taken to the tip

When we moved my toddlers bed broke and I knew sis had got 2 old double beds and bases in her garage. I asked if I could have one til we could get ds1 another. She said "yes" and then asked me for £50 for it. For something that would have only ended up at the skip anyway

She and bil spend £££££ every month (I am not exaggerating) on new furniture, toys for the dc, clothes for their dc, they book villas for 4 weeks at a time and only last week she spent £250 on an iron. An iron!!!!!

She sometimes gives me clothes for the dc BUT they are the remnants...i.e. the leftovers that bil's sisters dont want

I love it when I find stuff at the bottom of the freezer I have forgotten about!

Badvoc, my sisters also really well off. Both her and her dh earn six figure salaries. He saved up for 6 months to buy a boat. Not a dinghy, not an inflatable boat or a rowing boat, but a 36' 6 berth yacht that would take me sixty years to save for. They have so many holidays i've lost count, so far this year there's been the two week skiing trip in the Easter holidays, three long weekends in Cornwall/Vienna/Suffolk. Last week they went for a weeken break to a country house they hired with some friends, it cost £1000 for the weekend, before they bought food. How the other half live eh?

Mind you, she is pretty generous with clothes her girls grow out of. Can't fault her on that, but I do laugh when she says she has no money, and in the next breath tells me her weekly food shop is £180 for four of them. She doesn't believe me when I say I feed us four for £80 a week including dd's nappies. I told her I'd do her shopping for her.... For a fee of course

I'd save her a fortune!

hf Ah, you see twatbadger my bil will only go to Lanzarote. Every holiday (so on average 3 x times per year) I am sure my sis would like to go somewhere else but she doesnt get any much say.

My sis - and again I promise I am not exaggerating! - goes shopping every day...asda, sainsbos, tescos, toysrus, NEXT etc and that doesnt include online shops. Its just mad! I guess for her shopping is a leisure activity?

They both get new (or almost new) cars about every 4 months...I naver know which car bil will be driving when I see him (which he rare due to his twatbadgeryness)

I do smile when sis says "I am going to asda for a couple of bits" and my mum tells me later she filled a trolley and spent over £150

They can afford it, so thats not an issue but I avoid discussions about anything to do with money as I get really angry/sad/upset at their attitude at times.

You gaze longingly in charity shop windows dreaming of the day you can afford to buy something.

You see MOT, car tax and insurance as luxuries you can't afford so you drive to your shit job without them. True story.

Your uniform for work is your best outfit :(

When you miss your friends because you can't afford to invite them over; it's hard enough feeding your young children never mind other grown ups.

And when anyone does pop round, you can't actually see them because most of the lights have gone (six months ago actually) but your budget doesn't stretch to replacement bulbs.

When you stop using one bathroom because the shower has developed an extra spray function but you can't afford a plumber to fix it.

You keep a bucket beneath the sink - and have done for several months - for same non-plumber-affordance reasons.

You seriously consider pushing your car to work as a viable option.

When party invites make your heart sink because it's either a no or a struggle to rummage up a gift.

In tears at this thread.

I lived through a long period like this and am so so grateful that our luck changed. Have posted on the "I have an x" thread as I have masses that I can post off to someone who needs it.

I remember the kindness that I was shown, it really helped me through it- hope I can repay that to someone else.

I also hope to God that if any of my friends were ever in the shit financially like this, they would say "sorry I can't afford to do that" because we could rearrange to something cheaper/nearer/at mine at the drop of a hat.

Sending un-mnetty hugs and shoulder slaps to all those that feel like they need one!

Just had a read of this and feel for everyone, I sincerely hope times will get easier soon. Definitely think a permanent board on here where we can give away things to those who need them would be great. Makes me feel very guilty for having moaned about being broke, when realistically I'm not.

I wanted to offer my perspective, as a child who grew up in a Very Skint household - single mum, four DCs to take care of, non-maintenance paying dad :(
My childhood was literally blissful. I didn't really think of us as being poor, but looking back we were. I remember one winter it was so cold in the mornings but my mum couldn't afford to heat the rooms, (plus we had crappy draughty windows) so we would come and get dressed in the kitchen next to the cooker where our porridge was being made! Mum used to walk us miles to our favourite parks because the bus was too expensive, with a packed lunch etc. It seemed like an adventure, and we just knew not to ask for extras like ice creams and stuff. I think what made us so happy was that my mum always made loads of time to read to us, to take us out all the time to free places like museums and parks or letting us have our friends over to play so we didn't miss the things we had to go without. So all of you worrying about your DCs feeling deprived, please try not to. When I grew up and got perspective on how well I was brought up on very few resources, I have nothing but admiration and respect for my mum. Yours will feel the same for you. I realise that doesn't change the shit reality of not being able to afford the things you want to give them but thought I should share.

Buying a bargain pack of the palest flesh coloured tights for work, so that if I got a ladder I could firstly wear them for the rest of the day without it being TOO obvious, then cut the laddered leg off and get rid (well, cut it up into bands so I could use it for hairbobbles ). When another pair eventually got a ladder I would do the same with that one and then put the remaining good "pairs" on.

I think I made one pack of five pairs last about 6 months that way.

@MizK

Just had a read of this and feel for everyone, I sincerely hope times will get easier soon. Definitely think a permanent board on here where we can give away things to those who need them would be great.

Hello. Just reminding all you folks that every Mumsnet Local site has a Nearly New board where you can 'advertise' stuff you're happy to give away to another Mumsnetter who lives near you. Do please use it.

Phone in sick to work because you haven't got the cash for a train ticket to work, thereby loosing a full day's wages for the want of £7.

Making 2 kilos of chicken necks last a week.

Been there, it is brutal. The lack of money makes you weep and hurt.

You tell the PIL that DH doesnt want to have a party for his 50th birthday (because we cant afford it).

You tell the PIL that we're not going on holiday (for the 4th year in a row) because 'there's nowhere nicer to be than here when the weather's good'.

You always leave the phone on answerphone and tell the PIL its because we've been getting 'funny calls' (yeah, that'll be people wanting money)

etc etc etc.

We are trapped; big house that is too expensive to run but too falling down to sell for decent money. If we did sell we would not get another mortgage (both self-employed, dramatically fallen incomes, terrible credit rating). The equity we would get would not be enough to buy mortgage-free - can't move areas, GCSEs and Alevels for next 4 or 5 years and elderly mother lives down the road - can't leave her. We could rent - but we have a dog and 3 cats as well as 2 children (not to mention chickens and rabbits, but they are the least of my worries tbh). If we end up losing the house we would not be homeless because my mum would take us in.

How did we get here? Debts, basically due to DH funding the business he and partner set up - meanwhile I supported us all and we managed for a while til the economy got worse.

We keep looking for a way out, or at least a way to keep our heads above water. PIL are loaded and spend their whole time telling us about their next little holiday/meal out/etc. It makes me want to spit actually - they have no concept of how we live.

Basically we do nothing but work, and it still isnt enough... but I know there are so many people who have it worse, we've got a way to go til we reach rockbottom but I can see it coming.

Boschy- perhaps it is time to be straight with the PIL, they may believe your cover ups and have no idea how bad things are. What is the worst that could happen? They would know you are skint so even if they didn't help you could stop feeling like you have to lie.

oh and can I just add, the SHAME? we dont see some of our oldest friends (who are seriously loaded) because we are ashamed; we cant talk about the same things anymore; we dont live in their world anymore. And I dont want to be the object of their pity...

ach scorpion - they would think we'd made our beds and must lie in them. Which is of course quite true. But empathy has never been their strong point...

In this day and age you would think people would be more empathetic. It can happen to anyone.

When I started reading this thread I had to wipe away a few tears. Now I have finished reading I don't feel sad, I feel bloody angry.

Angry that people are living like this in the 7th richest country in the world.

Why are you not angry? When are working class people going to demand a fairer share, that this broken economic system doesn't work. When are working class people finally going to realise that THEY are the wealth creators, we create the profits for our employers, they choose to line their own pockets and pay less than a living wage, they choose not to invest in real jobs and in doing so create unemployment and underemployment.