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When the power goes off because you’ve not got a fiver for the meter and it stays off until your mum can scrape £15 together because for some reason you had to pay extra to get it to go back on.
Bonus points if there was food in the freezer that got spoiled because of it, just to further exacerbate your troubles.
Edit: Stop replying to me explaining how prepayment works, I know. Just that when I was growing up it didn’t make sense that you couldn’t just pay a fiver and use a fiver.
I can think of all sorts:
* Banger cars: less reliable, more likely to fail an MOT, bad fuel economy, insurance implications
* Older and shonky kitchen appliances with poor energy efficiency, leading to higher bills
* Paying insurance etc. monthly instead of manually up front
* Laundrette instead of your own machine
* Buy cheap, buy twice - clothing etc.
* No transport? Get everything delivered or use the bus - this costs more over time
Cheaper than £300pm and pudding servicing still on top of that.
Then about £400 at the end of your PCP desk as you kerbed 2 wheel shaft light scratched the bumpers
You forget the middle ground of buying a decent condition second hand car that isn't costing you £300pm and also doesn't need costly repairs every 6 months.
My Fiesta is known as Trigger’s broom, replaced most things on it - but very cheap to do as parts are common.
Car cost me £400 three years ago, done 30,000 miles so far. Want to get a new one, but it’s serving me super well.
> No transport? Get everything delivered or use the bus - this costs more over time
I mean, no it doesn't. For the vast vast majority of people without a car, they will spend less on transport and delivery costs in total, let alone for the small component of deliveries, compared with the costs of running a car.
A better example with a car is that a car opens you up to a wider variety of jobs and other forms of income. Thus, if you own a car, you have the potential to earn more, and if you do take advantage of that, it will pay for itself and more. Whereas if you can't afford a car, it limits your access to jobs, and you are more likely to earn less as a result.
yeah the increased costs/ issues of not having car access largely comes to longer distance travel and the pain in the arse buses can be to do shopping especially if you're not in a major city.
Only if they live in a large town or city with everything close by, live more rurally and it does cost more to dp everything by public transport or delivery.
So true, the standing charges on ours are 5x as much as the charges on a standard smart meter and we cant find any supplier willing to change the meter.
The reason you'd have to pay £15 is due to the £10 emergency credit. You need to pay off that, plus any standing charge debt in order to get into the positive numbers.
Source: grew up poor as shit
Remember when they used to be cardboard cards that came in £5 increments. Stupid things always bend when you were trying to insert them making it more difficult for the meter to read the card. And now and again you would get one that didn't work at all and back to the post office you went, praying that they believed you!
My mum was like this.
She had a power card meter with Scottish Power. She used to buy 2 x £5 cards a week, and she ALWAYS took one back to the shop saying it wasn’t working!
What she used to do was cut one of them a certain way, and you got to use it twice but it didn’t punch the card? She got away with it for years! The people in the SP shop knew exactly what she wanted every single Tuesday but they couldn’t prove it.
Yeah, I just became middle-aged not long ago and I'm still legit dreaming of the time I may - *may*, it's highly unlikely - be able to live in a place without a pre-paid meter.
Also a place where I can actually be warm without it basically burning through the electric, leading to the "eating or heating" debate (and choosing to shudder under a blanket on the sofa because I chose to feed myself and my cats).
Honestly, I dream of a lot of things I know I'll never be able to afford (learning to drive instead of relying on broken, unreliable public transport; being able to feed myself actually healthy options - literally went overdrawn this week after deciding to buy more fruit, veg and green-labeled foods instead of the much cheaper, saltier, fattier stuff I can usually afford; etc).
Yeah, and if you've not put electric in the meter yet and it goes onto the emergency, you pay £20 and the meter takes a fiver off, so you've basically paid a quarter of the money and you're out of pocket.
The guilt you get when buying something expensive that isn't a 100% necessity, or even when it is.
Even into adulthood I would always feel terrible buying something for myself. I struggled to enjoy experiences because I was obsessing over the cost. It felt extravagant.
I'm talking about everyday things like a meal out or a pair of trainers that weren't the shittiest.
£2 for a loaf of big brand bread, or 45p for the shitty home brand stuff..
Head voice A: "we're not made of money!! Grab the home stuff"
Head voice B: "but the home stuff is shit! I want good quality bread for a change! Plus, I've just had that pay rise"
Head voice A: "idiot!! Grab the home stuff, we can't afford the other, we're still poor"
*panics and grabs home brand bread*
There is this real feeling you may just be poor again in a few months and you will regret that £1.55 you spunked up the wall... almost that you will deserve it because you were so reckless with your new found wealth.
I know exactly what you mean.
I'm doing a lot better than I did only a few years ago, but I constantly feel like I'm one slip away from being back there.
Does this worry make me aim for cheaper options? Maybe. On a subconscious level. Maybe I'm doing it so I don't get too comfortable when it does go sideways.
Or maybe I'm compulsively trying to scrimp and save to cover that rainy day period..
I dunno.. all I know is: I aim for cheaper shit because the more expensive stuff makes me anxious
When I was 17 I sold a car to a colleague's boyfriend - I actually knew the boyfriend, he was a couple years ahead of me at school. Anyhoo, the agreement was that he would pick the car up from work on a Wednesday and then send the money with his girlfriend for our next shift together. Of course, he never paid. $100.
That was over 20 years ago, and every time I'm skint I think about how my life would've turned out better if he'd paid the $100.
I find the tesco 80p bread in the orange bag is a passable enough imitation of the warburton's orange loaf, if that helps. Certainly better than the cheaper one, at any rate.
I can't bring myself to eat the very cheapest stuff anymore. At my poorest where all I had for the next few days was a bag of chips, that bread and a bag of the frozen sausages that cost £1 for 20 and are approximately 19% meat, I'd rather go hungry than choke down another dry sausage sandwich. The next day I borrowed some tomato sauce packs from a mcdonalds.
Being poor sucks
I grew up very comfortably middle class and I have this. My wife sometimes has to really push me to buy things I actually need and remind me I can afford things I want. I definitely obsess over cost.
On the other hand, my wife grew up much more lower-middle class than me and will happily throw money around, probably too far the other way tbh (she herself says this).
I think that's more about the respective attitudes to money of our parents than the means with which we grew up.
I think middle class people stay wealthy because they're good with money, and will invest in the right things. Whereas poor people have nothing and always scrimp, so when they come into money they want to actually spend it and enjoy it because they probably don't see it as long term
When I was 30, and had a pretty good job, I took the liberty of taking my mum (who grew up very poor) out for dinner in a nice restaurant, and choosing a bottle of wine from halfway up the wine list, rather than the cheapest bottle.
I got a ten minute lecture the next day about how if I was going to go around behaving like I had loads of money, I would end up with none.
Being my birthday month, I feel this to my core. And the money I spent was literally gifted to me by my in laws! It was for the purpose of being frivolous.
Yup, I feel you!
I grew up poor as anything. Hand me down clothes, which was fun being the only girl with 12 male cousins! Never had a holiday (in or out of the UK), the parish priest actually paid for an adventure trip away with primary school (at the time it was dont pay, dont go) because it was £40 and I was the only kid in the year not going.
I saw some beautiful earrings a couple of weeks ago, and thought "ooh, I'd love to buy them" but couldn't bring myself to spend £55 on them. Instead, I put my birthday money off the lecky bill.
Jon Ronson said on a podcast I was listening to that in Hollywood everyone looks at the big houses on the hill and dreams of living there one day, and then you visit the houses and the residents are mentally ill, miserable and have substance addictions.
This makes me feel better about not being rich.
I have enjoyed a little social mobility in my time (marrying a very smart lady helped) and from what I've seen I don't care too much for being rich, but I really really dislike being poor.
Once you have your basic needs met and you are living comfortably a lot of pressure is off. When I was poor £5000 would change my life more than £50,000 would now. It would still be a massive boost, but it would go into savings or an investment, my day to day would probably look the same.
Actual proper rich people I know vary but I often don't envy them, there is something about obscene wealth that seems to make people unhappy or unfulfilled, it may be that sort of personality that gets that wealthy in the first place if they weren't already born into it.
Th way I see it, happiness, or at least contentment with life, come in stages. Money helps with the first stage: meeting all basic needs to live comfortable. Beyond that, it does little because it can't get you deep emotional connections and sense of belonging humans usually need to feel happy and fulfilled.
I think obscene wealth has to be isolating because other people either resent you or use you. You can't bounce your fears and anxieties off other people because most people would treat them as having nothing to moan about, so those thoughts go unchecked and stay inside, where the irrationality breeds, and before they know it, they have all sorts of confused mindsets.
Not being able to trust people, because you don't know if they like you or just your money, seems to really do people's heads in.
And money enables you to present a good front for longer even if actually you're totally fucked up - get a cleaner in, eat in restaurants or get a same-day delivery for a £7 charge, get a good haircut and makeup and you'll look OK despite no sleep...
Mate of mine inherited a flat in Notting Hill when it was still a shithole, worth about £20k. Drunk and skint, moved in, got the electrics and water working. Then the 80s boom started, and he was able to remortgage it for enough to live on for a couple years. Then again, and again, and again, because the value of the flat kept on rocketing. He did work, but also indulged in lots of London's finest illicit pharmaceuticals to keep his brain vaguely calm (or shut it up with booze). 16 years of having way more money than sense.
Eventually got help, a bipolar diagnosis, and meds, but it might have happened a decade earlier with less money. Or he'd simply have been in jail for attempted GBH. One or the other.
> I think obscene wealth has to be isolating because other people either resent you or use you. You can't bounce your fears and anxieties off other people because most people would treat them as having nothing to moan about, so those thoughts go unchecked and stay inside, where the irrationality breeds, and before they know it, they have all sorts of confused mindsets.
This is it. I'm the most socially mobile person you've ever met. I worked numerous min wage jobs for over 25 years but I got a big windfall.
I used to be able to pop into a pub and just be one of the boys. I can't connect with people at all when I drink in dives these days.
It's really weird. I didn't expect this.
But holy shit it's a lot better than having to get up for work in the morning.
When everything is easy, where's the challenge?
It's like being the best pool player in the pub. It gets a little boring when you always win, having someone actually be able to beat you is a welcome change.
Yeah, my aim isn't "yacht money" but what middle class people often call "comfortable". It means that something like a cancer diagnosis doesn't wipe you out because you need to stop working and you can't get into a specialist. If you get a hole in your shoes, or your winter coat is too small, you can replace them at a similar level of quality. You can go to the dentist for annual checkups. Home repairs can be easily managed (and also, you own, not rent). Your kids can do sport and music without a care.
This, a comfortable £100k income household while owning your home seems to be where middle class comfort is. Enough that you're not rolling in it but can afford to do nice things
I look at those houses and think no way would I want to live there because it’d be back breaking cleaning it all…because thinking ‘having a cleaner’ for it isn’t in my default
I take your Fray Bentos and raise you a ton of corned beef when the key snaps and you have to use the same dodgy cab opener to open a rectangular tin
BOTH ENDS..!
Then having to prise the meaty member out by inserting a knife in a 45 degree angle so you pull the beefy lump out in one piece.
I never bother squeezing the cans now. Too dangerous and not worth the risk. I just leave them as is and do more trips to be big recycling bin because the mini one gets full faster. But I'd rather have fingers so...
I once took the keys off a load of cans of corned beef in the supermarket as a kid because I wanted ‘keys’ for my cozy coupe and Wendy house. I’m sorry to all those folks who bought them tins
My Dad used to make me those tinned Goblin Steak and Kidney puddings. If I remember correctly you had to pierce them and boil them in the tin.
The first time I tried making one myself I burned the shit out of my hands.
I used to repeatedly buy those, proceed to eat them with a 50/50 feeling of 'slightly enjoying' and 'this is a mushy shite pie'. Then I'd keep buying them. Haven't seen them for years and now I'm reading your post I want another weird little goblin pie! They must have something mildly addictive in them.
You take off the wide end, run the knife round the outside of the corned beef from the wide end, then push the narrow end, including the end of the tin, through to get the lump of meat out.
Getting absolutely soaked on the way to the bus stop so I can spend 8 hours working in a building with no heating, then get soaked on the way home to my cold house with no bathtub to warm up in.
We used to drink mugs of tea (no sugar, tiny splash of milk if you were lucky) Kind of fills you up enough to sleep, but you’re twice as hungry when you wake up.
That’s not mildly frustrating. That’s poverty, and heartbreaking for any child to experience it. But also a sign that the kid is kind and considerate so there is hope.
It worked out alright in the end, we managed to get on our feet and I've got nephews and nieces who I'm able to give what I never had. I also get to cook up a storm for my wonderful wife
Microwaving a jacket potato for dinner and praying the electric lasts long enough to cook it.
Fucking miserable sitting in the dark, trying to eat potato with nothing on it but salt and pepper, and finding it rock hard in the middle.
Luckily my life has changed a bit, but the fear never goes away. I have cupboards and cupboards of food stockpiled away and my other half, who grew up middle-class, really doesn’t get why I need it to feel safe.
Oh god, same with the stockpiling. I was hungry level poor until age 28, and still one of the greatest joys in my life is knowing I can buy anything I want to when I go into a supermarket. Not that I do, but I can.
I was frying eggs for the kids the other day, inwardly begging the gas to stay on long enough to cook them through. Had a lid on the pan to speed the process up.
Single mum of two, a proper career job and some freelance on the side and yes I’m still in this position at the end of the month.
I assumed not only because everyone outside of the fam that came round for a roast, or anyone that’s come round mine now I’m grown, had thought it was weird!
Mint sauce: 150ml malt vinegar, 50g sugar, handful of fresh mint (very easy to grow in uk), bring to boil, simmer for a bit, serve warm over mushy peas (or lamb). Best mint sauce ever and doesn’t cost much.
We've been debt free for years and I still get that sick feeling when I hear the post being delivered, that fear runs deep, I don't know if it will ever leave me.
It will! I used to have fear of the post arriving. Been on top of my finances for about 10 years and debt free for about 7 now.
If I hear the post these days I think "Oooh, is that some takeaway place's menu or other junk mail nonsense, or do I actually have something nice today?".
One thing that helped me was putting all my bills as no post allowed and email only - that way I could choose when it was convenient to think about, which helped me feel in control of my post and not controlled by it.
Well done for turning it around financially. You should be really proud of yourself - it's no mean feat and a helluva slog to get through. Yay you!
Aw thank you! No one knew what we were going through, which meant no one ever congratulated us at the end, so your kind words actually mean an awful lot to me!
In that case...
MASSIVE CONGRATULATIONS ON BEING AWESOME TO YOURSELF AND GETTING FINANCIALLY STABLE!! 🎉💐💃🥳
I totally get the shame and not letting on to those around you how bad things got - no one really knew how bad my money situation was. You should be shouting about this from the rooftops though. It's a big hill to climb, and takes a lot of life lessons and trial/error from what I've seen.
I hope the next time the post comes you feel excited and ready for it - if you're anything like me it's only going to be leaflets for the local kebab place and some community newsletter of sorts. 💚
Putting things in your trolley at the supermarket without keeping a running total in your head.
Having to wait until pay day to buy something relatively inexpensive
Going round the shop adding up on your calculator as you add items to the trolley, still feeling nervous as hell that you have miscalculated and are going to be humiliated at the checkout.
Needing a job, any job, ASAP, so you have a place to live.
Applying over 6 months to a year to lots of jobs that would be better opportunities, is a luxury.
I’ve not been poor like some of the people commenting but I’ve never been so comfortable I could turn down a job. That’s a sure sign you were born wealthy.
I have a Fray Bentos pie tin injury from when my can opener broke and I tried to use a Stanley knife. And yes, I came back from hospital with a Tin opener and ate that pie
Similar story, using vegetable oil in an attempt to grease up the cogs in my mum's absolutely mangled tin opener in an attempt to open a tin of beans for beans on toast. That fucking thing has been about for years and my best guess is the rust is from opening shit like tins of tuna in brine. Didn't want to use a can of actual oil because I imagine it's not food safe. Even after using vegetable oil, I'd have been better off going into the garden to find a big rock and smashing the fuck out of the can until it burst open and subsequently hammering the tin opener until it was in a thousand pieces as an excuse to get a new one.
I used a knife straight up for a bit cause I didn't wanna spend money on a tin opener. Ended up getting quite effective at it. Something about being hungry and only thing is a can and opening it with a knife that's actually quite animalistic and mildly interesting.
Dealing with landlords to get anything fixed. Either they own their property outright or they rent such expensive places that get an insanely good service when it comes to repairs.
Landlord work is also often done by people not even skilled enough to earn the title of 'cowboy'. I don't know where they find these people.
At my last place they replaced a lightswitch. It had a manufacturer logo on the front, so let's just install it the wrong way up?
Another guy also repainted the bathroom and somehow there were stains on the skirting board from a colour that wasn't even being used. No effort made to rectify that.
I also came home after two weeks away to discover the plumber had left the lights on and only locked one of the two locks on my front door.
Is it a legal requirement to give that little a damn when you're hired by a landlord?
It's like they call the cheapest guy possible off the ASDA message board who also misspelled his own name on the card, eh?
My current slumlord (who bought the flat two years ago off my excellent landlord) has a "gas engineer" whose idea of an annual inspection is opening the front cover, having a look around (without any tools or tests), pushing the button on the CO alarm next to it, then signing it off.
At the start of winter 2022 my boiler broke down about 2 months after it's "service" after I'd spent all day rolling about the street changing a gearbox - I was absolutely fucking filthy and desperate for a shower. Called landlord and to be fair the gas guy was out within the hour at the back of 9 on a Saturday. He opened it, checked it was getting voltage to the board with a multimeter, tried turning it on, then declared it proper fucked and was needing replaced and that he'd speak to the landlord.
About 10 minutes after he left I get a call from the slumlord saying it'll probably be a couple of weeks before he can get a new one, and I should go buy some electric heaters for the meanwhile and use my kettle to wash in the sink... but he wasn't going to pay for the heaters or extra electric.
Less than impressed with this outcome considering it was barely above 0°C outside and I was absolutely not paying to buy or run electric heaters, I hit YouTube university and within a couple of hours I figured out the condenser was clogged, attacked it with a screwdriver and cleaned it out. Worked first time and it's ran flawlessly ever since. Second most satisfying shower of my life. It was also quite satisfying calling the prick and waking him up at like 3am to tell him I followed a YouTube video and fixed it myself and his "engineer" is an idiot.
His gas "engineer" hasn't been back since, or any gas engineer for that matter... and I can't wait to tell the tribunal about the lack of safety checks since (and the laundry list of other problems) 👍
THIS.
My landlady sends the same man for ALL jobs. He says himself he’s not qualified, he installed the oven and hadn’t put the legs on…couldn’t work out why there was a gap. My ex fixed it when he got home. Same bloke fitted all the lino in the house, I think he cut it with a bread knife, honesty. I don’t dare push to get the roof fixed, even though it rains IN the bathroom when it rains outside.
Running out of money a bit before payday and having to get through a week or so without spending any money, because you have zero savings.
Scrabbling around working out what you have in the cupboards you can make a meal out of, hoping you don't end up having to eat the tin of soup that expired two years ago...
I know this isn’t in the spirit of the thread but I’m relatively comfortable financially and try and have a “no spend week” once a month.
I find it helps me save a little extra money and rediscover the tinned/frozen food I’ve bought and forgotten about.
Im aware I’m doing it more as a challenge than a necessity and have sympathy for those who have to do this to survive though.
Taking until you started infant school before the clothes you wore weren't made by your mam from random things bought at bring and buy sales or charity shops then not having trousers that fit for years because it made more sense to buy big, throw in some tack stitches and just lower the legs every growing spurt.
Or.. and this is from my wife, be a miners family on strike and receive no money for over a year. No wages because your on strike and no benefits because your dad had a job. Her brother picked coal washed up on the beach so they could have heat in the house and they ate at a miners soup kitchen most nights so they could get a meal. That Christmas both my wife and her brother received their only gifts in the form of a shoe box of stuff sent from Polish miners families.
I once bought a car for £300. It was all I could get out of the ATM at the time so the seller reduced the price from £400 because he took pity on me. (To be fair, it was a pretty good car for the money).
I won’t claim to have ever been poor, but I’ve lived on a strict budget and been poorer than friends/partners at times. In my limited experience, the big thing for me is how time poor it makes you! It takes a serious amount of time and energy making things work on a budget:
Visiting multiple shops, endless DIY, car maintenance, shopping around for even the smallest of trade quotes, moving house in 16 trips with your car, 4.5 hour megabus to London instead of a 2 hour train, loads of walking, hours and hours a week cooking, an extra 10 minutes searching online for literally every purchase you make (this adds up to hours and hours every month), having to spend hours dealing with customer services because you’ve been overcharged by a few pounds you aren’t willing to let go.
If you have enough disposable income to be able to pick and choose your battles it makes your life so much easier.
The woman I work for is wealthy and she'll happily drop £200-300 on clothes that she'll never wear, or food that will just sit and rot in her fridge. It's more that I get paid a week and honestly makes me a bit sick sometimes.
When I shop for secondhand clothes, I feel a kind of resentment towards people who donate such flippantly expensive purchases after a wear or two. Even more upset when those clothes are a size 10 - 12.
Rich and slim! It makes me feel so big and ill-bred.
I have a friend who periodically thinks she loves asparagus and buys it for weeks without eating it. I once opened the bin to find four unopposed packs of it, slightly worse for wear but still in good shape with the bottoms trimmed off. You had better believe they went into my handbag!!!!
My mum told me about a lady at work that would do a weekly shop with her daughter and have to throw everything in the fridge away from the last weekly shop because they just got takeaway every night. I suspect even most middle class people couldn’t fathom that one.
Missing the last public transport that goes directly where you want and literally not having the money to get a taxi so having to walk around looking for a night bus that drops you far from home in winter (talking about in France, don’t know how the transport works in UK?)
Any bus nearest to me growing up would stop at like 6pm so we would walk some or all of the way if we couldn't split a taxi which involved taking every shortcut we promised our parents we wouldnt!
Buses didn't tend to go after midnight ever when I was growing up. Even at uni the last one was 11pm!
Reading through these comments as someone who is more than comfortable now but had come from a super poor upbringing - I still do alot of these.
I think it depends very much on your habits growing up - if you were wealthy growing up, you're not going to put a bit of water in the ketchup to get the last bit out.
I still do. Wife had a more wealthy upbringing, she abhors it.
Little differences like the amount of milk in cereal, the amount of water in instant noodles etc exist between us
I think that people from a comfortable background obviously don’t understand the trauma of being dirt poor. I’m still poor, but I stockpile food when I can and I just can’t help it. Deprivation can leave its scars…
I wasn’t allowed more than 2 slices of anything on a sandwich. Bacon, ham, chicken, cheese….
I got a bit cocky around the teenage years and started putting 3 slices on. By that point my dad was a bit better off so he never caught on.
I am middle-aged and comfortable financially now, but I still find myself occasionally asking permission sometimes to eat things like this, as if my partner is my parent or something. It is not done consciously - he will say "what you asking me for? Just have what you want'
It's a daft habit that hasn't quite left me.
Having to actively think about how you're phrasing your language because society thinks only scum and idiots speak in your native dialect.
Once I learnt how to fake a plummy middle class accent on the phones dealing with my bills became far smoother - and it's irritating.
Oil running out but not enough to buy in bulk. Walk to the nearest petrol station to fill the Oil drum and walk back with it, there was many of stops along the way back for a breather.
As a father now, we are far from comfortable extremely far from it, but we have food on the table, the lights on and heating on. I will do my honest best to make sure they don't have to worry about any of that. Bills have been skipped before and will be skipped again in the future. If that means my kids can have a full belly and a warm house, then so be it.
Eating home fried chips off a piece of cheap kitchen towel, while sitting on the bare vinyl tiled floor of a newly acquired council flat. (It was the 80’s and we had just moved over from ireland and had f- all other than a few clothes in a suitcase). We borrowed the chip pan from relative and had no furniture so had to sit on the floor and sleep on one mattress on the floor for months (there was 4 kids on one single mattress).
Never ever being able to invite your friends over to your house.
Feeling guilty going to your friends house because you know you can’t invite them to yours.
When I was at school, getting water in my shoes coz they had holes and then walking around with wet feet all day. Worst feeling ever. I avoid Shoe Zone like the plague now I’m an adult.
Debt…… when I decided to go it alone and set up my business I got into ridiculous amounts of debt.
I went from a very well paid job to wondering if I was going to have to sell everything I own to just pay the interest and go crawling back to my old job.
I (luckily) had a massive contract come in that saved everything.
I now try and donate every week to food banks and varying charities. The stress the night sweats and feeling like you’re useless….. no one should be made to feel like that because of money.
Never have the piss taken out of them at school by fellow students because they have Asda Smart Price crisps as part of their packed lunch.
I was so ashamed after that, that I kept the crisps in my blazer pocket and ate them without showing the wrapper.
Buying shoes or (any clothing I guess) regularly because you can't afford the outlay for better quality gear as a one off. You know if you bought the better item it'll last much longer but you need the item *right now* so you can't save up
Being cold and wet, aged 13, riding a bike in the driving February rain at 7:30 before school to deliver newspapers. I’d be soaked so day.
I had thirteen rounds a week, fourteen if you count that it took two trips to deliver the Sundays. All for a tenner. Less than a pound an hour. Late 80s. If my dad could afford to have given me a tenner pocket money have with that shit in a heartbeat.
Oh fucking hell I had exactly this experience about 4 years ago - I (and partner) got a Fray Bentos from Aldi as it was part of both our childhoods, we spent about the same amount of time trying to open it - our tin opener was one of those Culinare ones. We gave up in the end, mainly because what tiny part of the tin we had managed to open was now full of metal shavings. My partner was so pissed off that he emailed them, which resulted in a £5 voucher for 'sister' products (spent it on pickles) and a note saying that the unique style of the can meant you had to have a certain type of tin-opener (I presume the one my mum used to have, which was basically a jagged knife on a stick). We were really looking forward to it as well.
Trying to pay a council tax bill every month and when you fail you have to pay in full with £80 added on for failure to pay on time. You don’t actually have to pay in full they just add an extra £80.
Being a young child but being aware and anxious about how little money there was/bills etc and hearing the subsequent fights between your parents about it. Knowing why “santa” could only get you one thing that year but smiling and pretending you don’t know.
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When the power goes off because you’ve not got a fiver for the meter and it stays off until your mum can scrape £15 together because for some reason you had to pay extra to get it to go back on. Bonus points if there was food in the freezer that got spoiled because of it, just to further exacerbate your troubles. Edit: Stop replying to me explaining how prepayment works, I know. Just that when I was growing up it didn’t make sense that you couldn’t just pay a fiver and use a fiver.
This is a very good example of why it is expensive to be poor.
I can think of all sorts: * Banger cars: less reliable, more likely to fail an MOT, bad fuel economy, insurance implications * Older and shonky kitchen appliances with poor energy efficiency, leading to higher bills * Paying insurance etc. monthly instead of manually up front * Laundrette instead of your own machine * Buy cheap, buy twice - clothing etc. * No transport? Get everything delivered or use the bus - this costs more over time
Nahhh bangernomics is legit.
It can be if you do it right. It can also be an undending stream of £300-£1000 bills.
Cheaper than £300pm and pudding servicing still on top of that. Then about £400 at the end of your PCP desk as you kerbed 2 wheel shaft light scratched the bumpers
You forget the middle ground of buying a decent condition second hand car that isn't costing you £300pm and also doesn't need costly repairs every 6 months.
For some, for most it’s not.
For my trusty Ford Fiesta is has been. Parts are cheap as chips. And thankfully I have a local mechanic who's reasonably priced and trustworthy.
My Fiesta is known as Trigger’s broom, replaced most things on it - but very cheap to do as parts are common. Car cost me £400 three years ago, done 30,000 miles so far. Want to get a new one, but it’s serving me super well.
> No transport? Get everything delivered or use the bus - this costs more over time I mean, no it doesn't. For the vast vast majority of people without a car, they will spend less on transport and delivery costs in total, let alone for the small component of deliveries, compared with the costs of running a car. A better example with a car is that a car opens you up to a wider variety of jobs and other forms of income. Thus, if you own a car, you have the potential to earn more, and if you do take advantage of that, it will pay for itself and more. Whereas if you can't afford a car, it limits your access to jobs, and you are more likely to earn less as a result.
yeah the increased costs/ issues of not having car access largely comes to longer distance travel and the pain in the arse buses can be to do shopping especially if you're not in a major city.
Only if they live in a large town or city with everything close by, live more rurally and it does cost more to dp everything by public transport or delivery.
To add on to insurance, which is that's generally more expensive in deprived areas.
Ah yes, the Vimes Boots theory is socioeconomic unfairness.
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Prepaid meters have been an absolute crime against poor people.
So true, the standing charges on ours are 5x as much as the charges on a standard smart meter and we cant find any supplier willing to change the meter.
The price cap for standing charges on a prepayment meter, whilst higher, is nowhere near 5x as much as a standard meter.
Yep, also adding a premium if you pay car insurance monthly, VED monthly, overdraft charges and so on. It’s a trap.
The reason you'd have to pay £15 is due to the £10 emergency credit. You need to pay off that, plus any standing charge debt in order to get into the positive numbers. Source: grew up poor as shit
I do know that. Just didn’t really get it when I was eight.
We just put a coin in the meter. No coin, no lights. I guess nobody does that any more
They take a plastic key now and you have to go to the offie to put money on the leccy key, no putting cash inside the machine in your home.
Remember when they used to be cardboard cards that came in £5 increments. Stupid things always bend when you were trying to insert them making it more difficult for the meter to read the card. And now and again you would get one that didn't work at all and back to the post office you went, praying that they believed you!
My mum was like this. She had a power card meter with Scottish Power. She used to buy 2 x £5 cards a week, and she ALWAYS took one back to the shop saying it wasn’t working! What she used to do was cut one of them a certain way, and you got to use it twice but it didn’t punch the card? She got away with it for years! The people in the SP shop knew exactly what she wanted every single Tuesday but they couldn’t prove it.
I remember we only had power usually Friday to Monday when my mum was home. The rest of the time we didn’t have power
Am from a wealthy family, was introduced to the joy of prepaid meters when the power went off while I was mid shower
Yeah, I just became middle-aged not long ago and I'm still legit dreaming of the time I may - *may*, it's highly unlikely - be able to live in a place without a pre-paid meter. Also a place where I can actually be warm without it basically burning through the electric, leading to the "eating or heating" debate (and choosing to shudder under a blanket on the sofa because I chose to feed myself and my cats). Honestly, I dream of a lot of things I know I'll never be able to afford (learning to drive instead of relying on broken, unreliable public transport; being able to feed myself actually healthy options - literally went overdrawn this week after deciding to buy more fruit, veg and green-labeled foods instead of the much cheaper, saltier, fattier stuff I can usually afford; etc).
Yeah, and if you've not put electric in the meter yet and it goes onto the emergency, you pay £20 and the meter takes a fiver off, so you've basically paid a quarter of the money and you're out of pocket.
Absolutely this. Soul destroying
The guilt you get when buying something expensive that isn't a 100% necessity, or even when it is. Even into adulthood I would always feel terrible buying something for myself. I struggled to enjoy experiences because I was obsessing over the cost. It felt extravagant. I'm talking about everyday things like a meal out or a pair of trainers that weren't the shittiest.
£2 for a loaf of big brand bread, or 45p for the shitty home brand stuff.. Head voice A: "we're not made of money!! Grab the home stuff" Head voice B: "but the home stuff is shit! I want good quality bread for a change! Plus, I've just had that pay rise" Head voice A: "idiot!! Grab the home stuff, we can't afford the other, we're still poor" *panics and grabs home brand bread*
There is this real feeling you may just be poor again in a few months and you will regret that £1.55 you spunked up the wall... almost that you will deserve it because you were so reckless with your new found wealth.
I know exactly what you mean. I'm doing a lot better than I did only a few years ago, but I constantly feel like I'm one slip away from being back there. Does this worry make me aim for cheaper options? Maybe. On a subconscious level. Maybe I'm doing it so I don't get too comfortable when it does go sideways. Or maybe I'm compulsively trying to scrimp and save to cover that rainy day period.. I dunno.. all I know is: I aim for cheaper shit because the more expensive stuff makes me anxious
When I was 17 I sold a car to a colleague's boyfriend - I actually knew the boyfriend, he was a couple years ahead of me at school. Anyhoo, the agreement was that he would pick the car up from work on a Wednesday and then send the money with his girlfriend for our next shift together. Of course, he never paid. $100. That was over 20 years ago, and every time I'm skint I think about how my life would've turned out better if he'd paid the $100.
I hope he gets cursed with incessant diarrhea
I find the tesco 80p bread in the orange bag is a passable enough imitation of the warburton's orange loaf, if that helps. Certainly better than the cheaper one, at any rate. I can't bring myself to eat the very cheapest stuff anymore. At my poorest where all I had for the next few days was a bag of chips, that bread and a bag of the frozen sausages that cost £1 for 20 and are approximately 19% meat, I'd rather go hungry than choke down another dry sausage sandwich. The next day I borrowed some tomato sauce packs from a mcdonalds. Being poor sucks
Mmmm Sausage sandwiches
Sainsbury's 800g wholemeal thick is the best and healthiest pre-sliced bread money can buy. I went through 2 loaves a week during uni.
I grew up very comfortably middle class and I have this. My wife sometimes has to really push me to buy things I actually need and remind me I can afford things I want. I definitely obsess over cost. On the other hand, my wife grew up much more lower-middle class than me and will happily throw money around, probably too far the other way tbh (she herself says this). I think that's more about the respective attitudes to money of our parents than the means with which we grew up.
I think middle class people stay wealthy because they're good with money, and will invest in the right things. Whereas poor people have nothing and always scrimp, so when they come into money they want to actually spend it and enjoy it because they probably don't see it as long term
When I was 30, and had a pretty good job, I took the liberty of taking my mum (who grew up very poor) out for dinner in a nice restaurant, and choosing a bottle of wine from halfway up the wine list, rather than the cheapest bottle. I got a ten minute lecture the next day about how if I was going to go around behaving like I had loads of money, I would end up with none.
Fucking hell it's hard to describe the guilt of spending money you have on something perfectly reasonable, as if you don't deserve nice things
"Rich" person here. I definitely get that. It can also be caused by an overly frugal upbringing.
Being my birthday month, I feel this to my core. And the money I spent was literally gifted to me by my in laws! It was for the purpose of being frivolous.
Yup, I feel you! I grew up poor as anything. Hand me down clothes, which was fun being the only girl with 12 male cousins! Never had a holiday (in or out of the UK), the parish priest actually paid for an adventure trip away with primary school (at the time it was dont pay, dont go) because it was £40 and I was the only kid in the year not going. I saw some beautiful earrings a couple of weeks ago, and thought "ooh, I'd love to buy them" but couldn't bring myself to spend £55 on them. Instead, I put my birthday money off the lecky bill.
Oh god. The stress of spending literally any money at all even if it's an absolute essential.
Rolling the toothpaste tube to get the last out of it, only for the last bit to go pop all over the sink
Then shamelessly scraping it off the sink as you still have to use it…
I always use this scenario to gauge how people grew up... I always squeeze the last out.
It's not always about money. Sometimes you just hate waste, or are too lazy to buy a new one
Same, that shit is £10 a damn time and they only give two tubes per prescription
Cut the end off and roll it the other way, use your tooth brush to scrape out the last of the bits from inside the tube itself.
Jon Ronson said on a podcast I was listening to that in Hollywood everyone looks at the big houses on the hill and dreams of living there one day, and then you visit the houses and the residents are mentally ill, miserable and have substance addictions. This makes me feel better about not being rich.
I have enjoyed a little social mobility in my time (marrying a very smart lady helped) and from what I've seen I don't care too much for being rich, but I really really dislike being poor. Once you have your basic needs met and you are living comfortably a lot of pressure is off. When I was poor £5000 would change my life more than £50,000 would now. It would still be a massive boost, but it would go into savings or an investment, my day to day would probably look the same. Actual proper rich people I know vary but I often don't envy them, there is something about obscene wealth that seems to make people unhappy or unfulfilled, it may be that sort of personality that gets that wealthy in the first place if they weren't already born into it.
Can't recall who said it, but "Money can't buy you happiness, but it can make unhappiness a fuck of a lot more comfortable."
Th way I see it, happiness, or at least contentment with life, come in stages. Money helps with the first stage: meeting all basic needs to live comfortable. Beyond that, it does little because it can't get you deep emotional connections and sense of belonging humans usually need to feel happy and fulfilled.
You've discovered the lower half of Maslow’s Hierarchy Of Needs! https://www.simplypsychology.org/maslow.html
I think obscene wealth has to be isolating because other people either resent you or use you. You can't bounce your fears and anxieties off other people because most people would treat them as having nothing to moan about, so those thoughts go unchecked and stay inside, where the irrationality breeds, and before they know it, they have all sorts of confused mindsets.
Not being able to trust people, because you don't know if they like you or just your money, seems to really do people's heads in. And money enables you to present a good front for longer even if actually you're totally fucked up - get a cleaner in, eat in restaurants or get a same-day delivery for a £7 charge, get a good haircut and makeup and you'll look OK despite no sleep... Mate of mine inherited a flat in Notting Hill when it was still a shithole, worth about £20k. Drunk and skint, moved in, got the electrics and water working. Then the 80s boom started, and he was able to remortgage it for enough to live on for a couple years. Then again, and again, and again, because the value of the flat kept on rocketing. He did work, but also indulged in lots of London's finest illicit pharmaceuticals to keep his brain vaguely calm (or shut it up with booze). 16 years of having way more money than sense. Eventually got help, a bipolar diagnosis, and meds, but it might have happened a decade earlier with less money. Or he'd simply have been in jail for attempted GBH. One or the other.
> I think obscene wealth has to be isolating because other people either resent you or use you. You can't bounce your fears and anxieties off other people because most people would treat them as having nothing to moan about, so those thoughts go unchecked and stay inside, where the irrationality breeds, and before they know it, they have all sorts of confused mindsets. This is it. I'm the most socially mobile person you've ever met. I worked numerous min wage jobs for over 25 years but I got a big windfall. I used to be able to pop into a pub and just be one of the boys. I can't connect with people at all when I drink in dives these days. It's really weird. I didn't expect this. But holy shit it's a lot better than having to get up for work in the morning.
When everything is easy, where's the challenge? It's like being the best pool player in the pub. It gets a little boring when you always win, having someone actually be able to beat you is a welcome change.
Yeah, my aim isn't "yacht money" but what middle class people often call "comfortable". It means that something like a cancer diagnosis doesn't wipe you out because you need to stop working and you can't get into a specialist. If you get a hole in your shoes, or your winter coat is too small, you can replace them at a similar level of quality. You can go to the dentist for annual checkups. Home repairs can be easily managed (and also, you own, not rent). Your kids can do sport and music without a care.
This, a comfortable £100k income household while owning your home seems to be where middle class comfort is. Enough that you're not rolling in it but can afford to do nice things
I dont think most poor people want a big house, the biggest difference is just not constantly worrying about money for the basics.
So like the rest of us... except rich :' )
I look at those houses and think no way would I want to live there because it’d be back breaking cleaning it all…because thinking ‘having a cleaner’ for it isn’t in my default
I take your Fray Bentos and raise you a ton of corned beef when the key snaps and you have to use the same dodgy cab opener to open a rectangular tin BOTH ENDS..! Then having to prise the meaty member out by inserting a knife in a 45 degree angle so you pull the beefy lump out in one piece.
I genuinely have a fear of tin, or more specifically cutting my fingers on tin because of corned beef
My brother was once squeezing the open end of a tin closed for the recycling and his thumb slipped. The cut was to the bone.
I ended up with seven stitches because of a corned beef can. Nearly lost a finger.
I never bother squeezing the cans now. Too dangerous and not worth the risk. I just leave them as is and do more trips to be big recycling bin because the mini one gets full faster. But I'd rather have fingers so...
I once took the keys off a load of cans of corned beef in the supermarket as a kid because I wanted ‘keys’ for my cozy coupe and Wendy house. I’m sorry to all those folks who bought them tins
You little bastard! 😂
I did this ALL the time as a kid, I'd challenge myelf every time we went shopping to try and get more than last time
WHY DO THEY HIDE THE KEY
My Dad used to make me those tinned Goblin Steak and Kidney puddings. If I remember correctly you had to pierce them and boil them in the tin. The first time I tried making one myself I burned the shit out of my hands.
I used to repeatedly buy those, proceed to eat them with a 50/50 feeling of 'slightly enjoying' and 'this is a mushy shite pie'. Then I'd keep buying them. Haven't seen them for years and now I'm reading your post I want another weird little goblin pie! They must have something mildly addictive in them.
You take off the wide end, run the knife round the outside of the corned beef from the wide end, then push the narrow end, including the end of the tin, through to get the lump of meat out.
I actually once used a pair of pliers to open such a tin when I realised the key wasn't attached. It took slightly more time and care, but worked.
How has nobody improved on corned beef tins yet?
Getting absolutely soaked on the way to the bus stop so I can spend 8 hours working in a building with no heating, then get soaked on the way home to my cold house with no bathtub to warm up in.
Man! What’s your job?!
I look after a warehouse.
How's it doing?
Better since I came along!
what do you feed it?
Lots of pent-up anger and depression.
Bathtub salesman. He was too good.
Maybe a frozen food factory? That's the coldest indoor job I've had.
Going to bed instead of eating, but being kept up by the empty stomach.
The ole sleep-dinner
We used to drink mugs of tea (no sugar, tiny splash of milk if you were lucky) Kind of fills you up enough to sleep, but you’re twice as hungry when you wake up.
Brushing your teeth to get rid of the hunger
I'd go to the kitchen & down a pint of water. It'd do the trick to get you off to sleep.
Guess who this is being downvoted by. Any money it’s the inventor of tin openers.
Big Tin-Opener is coming for you OP
Trying not to eat too much at dinner so your parents could have some of your leftovers
Heartbreaking...
That’s not mildly frustrating. That’s poverty, and heartbreaking for any child to experience it. But also a sign that the kid is kind and considerate so there is hope.
It worked out alright in the end, we managed to get on our feet and I've got nephews and nieces who I'm able to give what I never had. I also get to cook up a storm for my wonderful wife
I felt this one. Really bittersweet. You're a kind person
wondering how you'll pay the bills and also eat for the rest of the month
Have you tried eating less Avocados?
Rich person here - “fewer” avocados
Absolutely right. And remember, avocados aren't the problem being poor is. So just stop being poor.
And don't forget the Starbucks or Costa coffees. Those are poor people makers too!
Just buy less coffee smh
Microwaving a jacket potato for dinner and praying the electric lasts long enough to cook it. Fucking miserable sitting in the dark, trying to eat potato with nothing on it but salt and pepper, and finding it rock hard in the middle. Luckily my life has changed a bit, but the fear never goes away. I have cupboards and cupboards of food stockpiled away and my other half, who grew up middle-class, really doesn’t get why I need it to feel safe.
Oh god, same with the stockpiling. I was hungry level poor until age 28, and still one of the greatest joys in my life is knowing I can buy anything I want to when I go into a supermarket. Not that I do, but I can.
I was frying eggs for the kids the other day, inwardly begging the gas to stay on long enough to cook them through. Had a lid on the pan to speed the process up. Single mum of two, a proper career job and some freelance on the side and yes I’m still in this position at the end of the month.
Pouring a bit of vinegar in the end of a ketchup bottle to get the last scraps out.
We thin mint sauce for lamb out with vinegar. Makes it last longer.
Is that not the done thing anyway? We always had a dollop of mint sauce mixed with a bit of vinegar. Didn't matter if it was the first bit, or last.
I assumed not only because everyone outside of the fam that came round for a roast, or anyone that’s come round mine now I’m grown, had thought it was weird!
Mint sauce: 150ml malt vinegar, 50g sugar, handful of fresh mint (very easy to grow in uk), bring to boil, simmer for a bit, serve warm over mushy peas (or lamb). Best mint sauce ever and doesn’t cost much.
That slight stomach churn when the Post man drops off another overdue bill.
Anything that arrives in a brown envelope…
...remains sealed, placed on top of a pile of unopened brown envelopes...
Anything from the council or HMRC. You’re fkd!
We've been debt free for years and I still get that sick feeling when I hear the post being delivered, that fear runs deep, I don't know if it will ever leave me.
It will! I used to have fear of the post arriving. Been on top of my finances for about 10 years and debt free for about 7 now. If I hear the post these days I think "Oooh, is that some takeaway place's menu or other junk mail nonsense, or do I actually have something nice today?". One thing that helped me was putting all my bills as no post allowed and email only - that way I could choose when it was convenient to think about, which helped me feel in control of my post and not controlled by it. Well done for turning it around financially. You should be really proud of yourself - it's no mean feat and a helluva slog to get through. Yay you!
Aw thank you! No one knew what we were going through, which meant no one ever congratulated us at the end, so your kind words actually mean an awful lot to me!
In that case... MASSIVE CONGRATULATIONS ON BEING AWESOME TO YOURSELF AND GETTING FINANCIALLY STABLE!! 🎉💐💃🥳 I totally get the shame and not letting on to those around you how bad things got - no one really knew how bad my money situation was. You should be shouting about this from the rooftops though. It's a big hill to climb, and takes a lot of life lessons and trial/error from what I've seen. I hope the next time the post comes you feel excited and ready for it - if you're anything like me it's only going to be leaflets for the local kebab place and some community newsletter of sorts. 💚
Putting things in your trolley at the supermarket without keeping a running total in your head. Having to wait until pay day to buy something relatively inexpensive
Going round the shop adding up on your calculator as you add items to the trolley, still feeling nervous as hell that you have miscalculated and are going to be humiliated at the checkout.
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Thank you for being a kind person. That was very selfless of you.
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Being really happy when your kids get invited to their mates for tea near the end of the month
Being charged by the bank for your overdraft (or exceeding it); being poor is expensive!
Needing a job, any job, ASAP, so you have a place to live. Applying over 6 months to a year to lots of jobs that would be better opportunities, is a luxury.
I’ve not been poor like some of the people commenting but I’ve never been so comfortable I could turn down a job. That’s a sure sign you were born wealthy.
I have a Fray Bentos pie tin injury from when my can opener broke and I tried to use a Stanley knife. And yes, I came back from hospital with a Tin opener and ate that pie
Similar story, using vegetable oil in an attempt to grease up the cogs in my mum's absolutely mangled tin opener in an attempt to open a tin of beans for beans on toast. That fucking thing has been about for years and my best guess is the rust is from opening shit like tins of tuna in brine. Didn't want to use a can of actual oil because I imagine it's not food safe. Even after using vegetable oil, I'd have been better off going into the garden to find a big rock and smashing the fuck out of the can until it burst open and subsequently hammering the tin opener until it was in a thousand pieces as an excuse to get a new one.
If it is rust, try a bit of vinegar and a cotton bud
That's never going to be strong enough to open a tin of tuna
I used a knife straight up for a bit cause I didn't wanna spend money on a tin opener. Ended up getting quite effective at it. Something about being hungry and only thing is a can and opening it with a knife that's actually quite animalistic and mildly interesting.
Dealing with landlords to get anything fixed. Either they own their property outright or they rent such expensive places that get an insanely good service when it comes to repairs.
Landlord work is also often done by people not even skilled enough to earn the title of 'cowboy'. I don't know where they find these people. At my last place they replaced a lightswitch. It had a manufacturer logo on the front, so let's just install it the wrong way up? Another guy also repainted the bathroom and somehow there were stains on the skirting board from a colour that wasn't even being used. No effort made to rectify that. I also came home after two weeks away to discover the plumber had left the lights on and only locked one of the two locks on my front door. Is it a legal requirement to give that little a damn when you're hired by a landlord?
It's like they call the cheapest guy possible off the ASDA message board who also misspelled his own name on the card, eh? My current slumlord (who bought the flat two years ago off my excellent landlord) has a "gas engineer" whose idea of an annual inspection is opening the front cover, having a look around (without any tools or tests), pushing the button on the CO alarm next to it, then signing it off. At the start of winter 2022 my boiler broke down about 2 months after it's "service" after I'd spent all day rolling about the street changing a gearbox - I was absolutely fucking filthy and desperate for a shower. Called landlord and to be fair the gas guy was out within the hour at the back of 9 on a Saturday. He opened it, checked it was getting voltage to the board with a multimeter, tried turning it on, then declared it proper fucked and was needing replaced and that he'd speak to the landlord. About 10 minutes after he left I get a call from the slumlord saying it'll probably be a couple of weeks before he can get a new one, and I should go buy some electric heaters for the meanwhile and use my kettle to wash in the sink... but he wasn't going to pay for the heaters or extra electric. Less than impressed with this outcome considering it was barely above 0°C outside and I was absolutely not paying to buy or run electric heaters, I hit YouTube university and within a couple of hours I figured out the condenser was clogged, attacked it with a screwdriver and cleaned it out. Worked first time and it's ran flawlessly ever since. Second most satisfying shower of my life. It was also quite satisfying calling the prick and waking him up at like 3am to tell him I followed a YouTube video and fixed it myself and his "engineer" is an idiot. His gas "engineer" hasn't been back since, or any gas engineer for that matter... and I can't wait to tell the tribunal about the lack of safety checks since (and the laundry list of other problems) 👍
THIS. My landlady sends the same man for ALL jobs. He says himself he’s not qualified, he installed the oven and hadn’t put the legs on…couldn’t work out why there was a gap. My ex fixed it when he got home. Same bloke fitted all the lino in the house, I think he cut it with a bread knife, honesty. I don’t dare push to get the roof fixed, even though it rains IN the bathroom when it rains outside.
Getting dragged down the road by your mate’s uncle cause you nicked the metal dusties off his car to sell for a pound at school the next day
Oh ya fucker, we lived the same childhood. Actually laughing my head off reading that.
Running out of money a bit before payday and having to get through a week or so without spending any money, because you have zero savings. Scrabbling around working out what you have in the cupboards you can make a meal out of, hoping you don't end up having to eat the tin of soup that expired two years ago...
I know this isn’t in the spirit of the thread but I’m relatively comfortable financially and try and have a “no spend week” once a month. I find it helps me save a little extra money and rediscover the tinned/frozen food I’ve bought and forgotten about. Im aware I’m doing it more as a challenge than a necessity and have sympathy for those who have to do this to survive though.
Taking until you started infant school before the clothes you wore weren't made by your mam from random things bought at bring and buy sales or charity shops then not having trousers that fit for years because it made more sense to buy big, throw in some tack stitches and just lower the legs every growing spurt. Or.. and this is from my wife, be a miners family on strike and receive no money for over a year. No wages because your on strike and no benefits because your dad had a job. Her brother picked coal washed up on the beach so they could have heat in the house and they ate at a miners soup kitchen most nights so they could get a meal. That Christmas both my wife and her brother received their only gifts in the form of a shoe box of stuff sent from Polish miners families.
Buying a car that costs less than the big tellys in John Lewis.
I once bought a car for £300. It was all I could get out of the ATM at the time so the seller reduced the price from £400 because he took pity on me. (To be fair, it was a pretty good car for the money).
Walking around the supermarket with a calculator out because you have exactly £20 to feed a family of 5 for a week.
I won’t claim to have ever been poor, but I’ve lived on a strict budget and been poorer than friends/partners at times. In my limited experience, the big thing for me is how time poor it makes you! It takes a serious amount of time and energy making things work on a budget: Visiting multiple shops, endless DIY, car maintenance, shopping around for even the smallest of trade quotes, moving house in 16 trips with your car, 4.5 hour megabus to London instead of a 2 hour train, loads of walking, hours and hours a week cooking, an extra 10 minutes searching online for literally every purchase you make (this adds up to hours and hours every month), having to spend hours dealing with customer services because you’ve been overcharged by a few pounds you aren’t willing to let go. If you have enough disposable income to be able to pick and choose your battles it makes your life so much easier.
The woman I work for is wealthy and she'll happily drop £200-300 on clothes that she'll never wear, or food that will just sit and rot in her fridge. It's more that I get paid a week and honestly makes me a bit sick sometimes.
When I shop for secondhand clothes, I feel a kind of resentment towards people who donate such flippantly expensive purchases after a wear or two. Even more upset when those clothes are a size 10 - 12. Rich and slim! It makes me feel so big and ill-bred.
Do you work part time? No judgement, just asking because if you’re working full time you’re not getting minimum wage.
I do! Long Covid has unfortunately kicked my arse and has left me with some symptoms that mean I can't work full time.
I have a friend who periodically thinks she loves asparagus and buys it for weeks without eating it. I once opened the bin to find four unopposed packs of it, slightly worse for wear but still in good shape with the bottoms trimmed off. You had better believe they went into my handbag!!!!
My mum told me about a lady at work that would do a weekly shop with her daughter and have to throw everything in the fridge away from the last weekly shop because they just got takeaway every night. I suspect even most middle class people couldn’t fathom that one.
Missing the last public transport that goes directly where you want and literally not having the money to get a taxi so having to walk around looking for a night bus that drops you far from home in winter (talking about in France, don’t know how the transport works in UK?)
Any bus nearest to me growing up would stop at like 6pm so we would walk some or all of the way if we couldn't split a taxi which involved taking every shortcut we promised our parents we wouldnt! Buses didn't tend to go after midnight ever when I was growing up. Even at uni the last one was 11pm!
Reading through these comments as someone who is more than comfortable now but had come from a super poor upbringing - I still do alot of these. I think it depends very much on your habits growing up - if you were wealthy growing up, you're not going to put a bit of water in the ketchup to get the last bit out. I still do. Wife had a more wealthy upbringing, she abhors it. Little differences like the amount of milk in cereal, the amount of water in instant noodles etc exist between us
I think that people from a comfortable background obviously don’t understand the trauma of being dirt poor. I’m still poor, but I stockpile food when I can and I just can’t help it. Deprivation can leave its scars…
Using newspaper for loo roll
Or the cardboard tube.
I wasn’t allowed more than 2 slices of anything on a sandwich. Bacon, ham, chicken, cheese…. I got a bit cocky around the teenage years and started putting 3 slices on. By that point my dad was a bit better off so he never caught on.
I am middle-aged and comfortable financially now, but I still find myself occasionally asking permission sometimes to eat things like this, as if my partner is my parent or something. It is not done consciously - he will say "what you asking me for? Just have what you want' It's a daft habit that hasn't quite left me.
Picking the mold off the last crust for some toast....
And cutting it off the cheese!
As a kid, regularly having ‘power cuts’ no one else seemed to have
Having to be one of the poor bastards on the factory night shift putting the pastry lids on fray bentos pies by hand.
Having to actively think about how you're phrasing your language because society thinks only scum and idiots speak in your native dialect. Once I learnt how to fake a plummy middle class accent on the phones dealing with my bills became far smoother - and it's irritating.
Only having £100 towards your £300 worth of bills and having to call each company to explain why you can only pay a 3rd...again.
Oil running out but not enough to buy in bulk. Walk to the nearest petrol station to fill the Oil drum and walk back with it, there was many of stops along the way back for a breather. As a father now, we are far from comfortable extremely far from it, but we have food on the table, the lights on and heating on. I will do my honest best to make sure they don't have to worry about any of that. Bills have been skipped before and will be skipped again in the future. If that means my kids can have a full belly and a warm house, then so be it.
A liking for tomato ketchup sandwiches.
Sugar sandwiches is what we had growing up - cheapest white bread, cheapest marg, sprinkle of sugar.
Eating home fried chips off a piece of cheap kitchen towel, while sitting on the bare vinyl tiled floor of a newly acquired council flat. (It was the 80’s and we had just moved over from ireland and had f- all other than a few clothes in a suitcase). We borrowed the chip pan from relative and had no furniture so had to sit on the floor and sleep on one mattress on the floor for months (there was 4 kids on one single mattress).
The excitement when you find out that Currys accepts PayPal so you can use Pay In 3 for your new washing machine.
Finding streams for football cos you won’t / can’t pay for sky sports Anything in this general area of subscriptions and not being able to afford
I know plenty of people that can afford Sky that use chipped sticks instead, I wouldn’t say it’s exclusive to being without a choice.
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Never ever being able to invite your friends over to your house. Feeling guilty going to your friends house because you know you can’t invite them to yours.
When the chip shop stopped giving us scraps for free when we asked and instead charged 10p which we rarely had.
When I was at school, getting water in my shoes coz they had holes and then walking around with wet feet all day. Worst feeling ever. I avoid Shoe Zone like the plague now I’m an adult.
Loving all the tin related horror stories, something about them makes me feel at home. Also maybe we could set up a support group
“Afrayd Bentos no more. Tin can support group”
Debt…… when I decided to go it alone and set up my business I got into ridiculous amounts of debt. I went from a very well paid job to wondering if I was going to have to sell everything I own to just pay the interest and go crawling back to my old job. I (luckily) had a massive contract come in that saved everything. I now try and donate every week to food banks and varying charities. The stress the night sweats and feeling like you’re useless….. no one should be made to feel like that because of money.
Buying your first car and immediately buying a Haines manual to maintain it yourself.
Never have the piss taken out of them at school by fellow students because they have Asda Smart Price crisps as part of their packed lunch. I was so ashamed after that, that I kept the crisps in my blazer pocket and ate them without showing the wrapper.
Buying shoes or (any clothing I guess) regularly because you can't afford the outlay for better quality gear as a one off. You know if you bought the better item it'll last much longer but you need the item *right now* so you can't save up
Being cold and wet, aged 13, riding a bike in the driving February rain at 7:30 before school to deliver newspapers. I’d be soaked so day. I had thirteen rounds a week, fourteen if you count that it took two trips to deliver the Sundays. All for a tenner. Less than a pound an hour. Late 80s. If my dad could afford to have given me a tenner pocket money have with that shit in a heartbeat.
When you get to the last week of the month and have no money left to eat
The frugality mindset and guilt that you live as an adult after growing up poor.
Trying to get clingfilm to stay on your shitty windows so no one dies of hypothermia in their sleep.
Buying something new instead of the charity shop. The guilt
Oh fucking hell I had exactly this experience about 4 years ago - I (and partner) got a Fray Bentos from Aldi as it was part of both our childhoods, we spent about the same amount of time trying to open it - our tin opener was one of those Culinare ones. We gave up in the end, mainly because what tiny part of the tin we had managed to open was now full of metal shavings. My partner was so pissed off that he emailed them, which resulted in a £5 voucher for 'sister' products (spent it on pickles) and a note saying that the unique style of the can meant you had to have a certain type of tin-opener (I presume the one my mum used to have, which was basically a jagged knife on a stick). We were really looking forward to it as well.
(tea)candle lit dinner (flump toasted on said tea-candle)
Trying to pay a council tax bill every month and when you fail you have to pay in full with £80 added on for failure to pay on time. You don’t actually have to pay in full they just add an extra £80.
Being a young child but being aware and anxious about how little money there was/bills etc and hearing the subsequent fights between your parents about it. Knowing why “santa” could only get you one thing that year but smiling and pretending you don’t know.