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

re soup, use a good quality stock as well if you can afford to! and sometimes a splash of worctershire sauce etc, have with bread to fill it out a bit :)

5mad yes ds is lucky to have a library close to home but he has spates where he is in and out of there whether the internet is on or off

i cant honestly understand where all this that i have a lack of empathy for ppl is coming from..and all because i prioritise what is important in my household...believe me i have had to choose between the internet and food....do you honestly think i like it...i fecking loathe it...skype is where i see my children and grandchildren from abroad...i have no money for holidays...doesnt mean i am bitter about it...just sometimes i am left between choices....

yes flump it is the whole grinding downness of it all... and the panic that I cannot top up the cashless catering, and how am I going to do it?? before cashless catering I could always scrape pennies out of the jar/down the back of the sofa, but now I cant because you have to have money in the bank to do it. and yes I know they can take packed lunches, thousands do etc, but its new to them and I dont want them to have to just because their parents are financially fucked.

I use whole spices if poss, they are cheaper and last longer cumin or coriander with carrots or general veg soup is nice. Cinnamon (ground this time) in tomato and lentil soup makes it very sweet, kids like that a lot.

boschy i think packed lunches are more expensive than school dinners..well at least in my household...i get all the stuff in for the next week..come monday morning it has been scoffed...so back to square one again

boschy What is cashless catering? Here we just send dinner money in, so small change is fine.

I am not skint right now - not yet - but I used to give money to a homeless blok from time to time. One day when I was totally skint and waiting for my next pay cheque - had only my travel card to get to work - he took me for a coffee and a fag. He was clearly homeless - holes, tatters etc and I was in decent clean work gear. He loved the waitress's face when he said "I'm paying".

Homeless 'bloke'.

pack ups are cheaper for us £2:20 for two meals at primary and ds1 at high school needs £2:50-£3 for get a decent lunch, so at least £5 a day, i can make pack ups for them and lunch for myself and the little two for less than that.

and with regards to internet access, people shouldnt have to choose between buying food and having internet access that is pretty vital to a good education, esp once they get to high school age. andif you just stopped paying sky you are lucky they didnt take you to court, send the debt collectors round etc. esp if your correspondance to stop certain bits of the package wasnt it writing, they are sticklers for thing slike that.

Packed lunch is def cheaper, we worked out we spend under £1 per packed lunch vs £2.30 for school dinner.

Cost for full week for DS1 is: Bread 50p, salami or cheese £1, Biscuits (big pack to split) £1, 5 pieces fruit £1.50, 5 portions veg (like carrot sticks) £1 max.

5mad no they got their money...just meant i had to wait another 2 months to afford for bt to be put on..would never use them again

We needn't have started this thread, doormat has all the answers to poverty we should just ask her...

"in the end we just told them they werent getting the money as despite several requests they had kept the packages on..." well this makes it sound like you didnt pay doormat :)

I think doormat is a troll, don't feed it.

nervous hmm

cashless catering: thumbprint recognition system so no need to take cash to school for meals (secondary). bloody expensive!! doormat you are right, the buggers eat everything!!

re sky, we told them to fuck off too, and they did. a friend of a friend told us they would do anything to get you back again so they dont want to piss you off too much.

we managed to get internet and phone through plusnet, paying £22 a month - considerably cheaper than what we paid BT and whoever our previous provider was. we did have to pay about £140 up front now which was fine then - wouldnt be now. counts as a business expense for me though, which is good in one way as tax-deductible, on the other hand no bloody good if you cant pay it. I will have a tax bill in due course too - god knows what we will do then.

still, I treated myself to a £2 scratchcard this morning and won £2!!

me a troll lmfao sorry this has made my day...

no mad we told them they werent getting paid...they cut us off...but i paid them begrudgingly lol

boshcy they have tried to introduce that at my boys high school but it doesnt seem to have happened despite them fitting the fingerprint readers and taking all the kids fingerprints etc and so they are still using money! he takes a pack up anyway as the food is expensive, not great quality and he would spend most of his lunch break queing up to get his food!!

re packed lunches, look out for offers on this like big packets of flapjacks, cereal bars etc, ie reduced or 2 for 1, they often have them and these things tend to have a long use by date on them so you can stock up! i refuse to pay full price for cereal bars only ever buy the ones on offer, whichever one it happens to be!

When you are working for such a low wage that you:

• bring up a child as a single parent and have NOT ONE SINGLE HOLIDAY for 16 years
• are amazed when you go to tea at a friend's house and they offer you three different types of ice-cream as a desert
• when you shout at your child for eating all the chocolate bars that were for his lunchbox/loses another jumper/pencil case at school/goes through another pair of shoes
• hide the bread so it will last until payday
• have an empty fridge even at the beginning of the month
• have no haircut for years
• have one pair of shoes at a time
• have a front door lock remains broken for 4 weeks because there is no money to fix it
• dread an appliance breaking down
• dread the utility bills coming in
• cry when opening utility bills
• dread being homeless
• look around you and realise that it will never change
• when it does change (briefly) still operate on the assumption that any extra money is an illusion and will quickly be snatched away
• realise that poverty is soul destroying

am proper lolling at Sky charging someone £200 per month for a package PMSL! as if.

daisy are you really...all the movies/ sports/ kids/ lifestyle/ documentary plus hd and on demand crap with phone and internet was around £200 a month....we never asked for it ..all we asked for in the beginning was the basic/ we thought we were going to pay £30 a month...what fools we were...it fecking crippled us

Jane you have just described my life! Hugs for you.

i just looked on the sky website for the total sky world package which is all the lifestyle, sport movies, documentaries, hd etc etc it is £53 a month and then a bit extra for your phone line. we have a extra package with virgin media, movies, sport etc, phones, broadband and mobile phones and its still only about £70 a month, less some months dependant on usage so i do struggle to see how it coul dhave been £200 a month.

sky are actually buggers for doing what they're asked. we cancelled in writing and they kept hassling us - luckily we had all the proof etc. (so we didnt owe them anything)

jane yes re utility bills they just keep on going up and up...