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

Shit you lot have made me cry

We never had spare money as children. I know Mum never bought herself anything she didn't really need and Dad spent hours in the garage mending our ancient car, but there was always good food, heat and light.

As a student I always sent DM a book token because I knew cash went in the house keeping.

DH and I are incredibly lucky, we were the last generation of students to start adult life not in debt. We had £0,00 exactly the day he got his first pay packet and we stopped living only on my postgrad grant.

My DDs wont be in that position and it frightens me.

You buy a black dye to refresh your wardrobe....and consider using an old duvet cover to fashion a new pair of kitchen curtains.

Its like the war ffs!

We'll all be learning how to darn socks and turn collars next!

When you have to steal the toilet roll from work or from a public toilet somewhere because you can't afford to buy your own.

When you almost run out of petrol so have to top up, with the £3 you had put by for milk and bread. The petrol lasts about 2 miles.

Oh sparkle I have done that before

It was probably the lowest point of my life, frankly, Vickity. Haven't been there in years thankfully, but I will never, ever forget those feelings.

sparkle yes it was horrifying for me too.

Yes yes yes to many many of these.

Dreading other people's birthdays where you are expected to get a gift for them.
The sad feeling you get when you're out for a walk with friends and they cheerfully suggest lunch in the pub.
You love clothes but you don't own any. I have 2 bras.

dds birthday and dhs birthday veyr soon let alone dm's - gulp-
bringing my coffee home from work to drink at home
juggling, should i be earning or should i be on X amount of money to claim help for ds to go to college
since if i go over we wont get the help
robbing peter to pay paul.
feeling quite derpessed as it is the middle of the month and 10 days or less now, to pay day - how red can each bank/building society account go

Christmas.

dont mention the C word

sorry

You put the lovely, expensive perfume your friend bought you for Christmas on ebay because you know you'll get thirty quid for it

(If you give a present to someone and they don't enthusiastically rip the cellophane off it, it's quite probable that they are not ungrateful, but just very poor...)

You go without at least one meal a day so your DC doesn't.

You rent a room out in your house to a total nutter stranger because you're desperate!

You find a £20 note in your jacket pocket and suspect one of your mates at work put it there when you weren't looking, because there's no way you'd have 'forgotten' about having £20.

You do a jig, hug each other and dance around madly like DP and I have just done after opening our Tax Credit Summary

You sit in tears because your previously HE child has been accepted into college and that'll mean you won't get tax credits, child benefit or child maintenance for him any more so your income will drop by almost £1000 a month and you're already in the bottom ten percent for income, choosing between heating and food, putting of paying the council tax to pay the rent and borrowing money from your son at uni to help pay for bus fares to work.

when you 6ft, 15 year old Ds flops down on your chair, which is as old as him, and breaks the seat frame, but you can't replace it, so you make the younger kids sit on it because they are the lightest.

When you've been wearing the same glasses for 8 years, even though, you can hardly see any more because you can't afford £500 for the complex prescription that would mean you could see properly.

lardy your post "when the kids ask... are we poor? and you say of course not, how can we be poor when we love you so much?" had me in tears. Then the poor dad who has lost his dcs in an arson attack came on the radio and I was done in. Proper big fat tears. This thread is very emotional.

My eyes were opened the other day on the woman lives in a shed thread at how much some people pay in housing costs, I was really really shocked so my addition to the thread:

you know you're really skint when - you are actually glad to live in one of the most deprived areas of the country as at least it means your rent is cheap!

stressedHEmum why won't you get that anymore? If it's full time education and they are under 19 you still do don't you?

Bored, agree with the rent thing completely. I HATE living here, it's absolutely awful, the most deprived area in Scotland outside of inner city Glasgow. We even have the lowest life expectancy, 14 years less than many other, more affluent, areas. But at least the rent is cheap. The house is a mould ridden, draughty heap of rubbish that basically needs pulled down and rebuilt, but it is a roof over our heads.

Daisy, you do, but only if the course is non advanced. We still got it while he was doing a special course for teens with AS because it was a preparatory course to develop life skills and what not, this is a proper, FE course, so he no longer qualifies.

If it's an FE course he may be able to get some assistance either from the college or the Student Loans company in the form of a loan or a grant. The forms are pretty soul-destroying though

stressedHEmum I finally got glasses after I moved to the US as I couldn't afford them in the UK. My optician tested me and told me to buy my glasses online or at costco as I couldn't afford his prices. My frames were $50 and the lenses were $150. When I went back to him this year he told me (without prompting) to go online and gave me these websites:

www.zennioptical.com/
www.warbyparker.com/
www.glassesunlimited.com
www.39dollarglasses.com/

Coastal contacts also do glasses these days too. For costco don't buy a card but find someone who has one and pay cash when there. My mother was a business member and added me to her account.

You cant afford the 'bogof' offers and realise if you were rich you could live quite cheaply.

Reading this thread and counting my blessings.

No one should have to walk around with holes in their shoes. If you are, and are a size 6 them message me please.

Katespade I get where you are coming from - my parents were poor and I grew up thinking "I won't be like that" but here I am. And as for working evenings, weekends etc on top of full time - I worked 64.25 hours the week before last. On average at the moment I am doing 36 hours a week, but the industry I'm in is seasonal, so it will go down to 20 hours soon. Every single penny of over time I earn i try to squirrel away because I know that I will need it to get through the months that I don't have hours. It's heartbreaking and exhausting and relentless, but it's also almost a trap. It's difficult to see a way out of it.

I'm not having a go I'm just explaining it from my perspective. The reason we are so poor is partly down to the economy at the moment, partly horrendous bad luck and partly bad choices that I have made, albeit for the right reasons.

Oh, I also meant to say that I'm glad I'm not the only one that has taken loo roll from work but I have also taken milk. I try not to think about it because I feel horrendous, but I just keep thinking I will pay him back soon.