Povs

*notes can't even SPELL husband*

Devoted and faithful.

what are you suggesting flash ... i am unreasonably demanding???????

giggle, now i like that idea of the big slippers at the door. but i like the idea idea of wearing the big slippers thingys and clompin round my house in them more!!

Fray Bentos steam puddings, they last forever also. A Christmas hamper classic!

oh dear me no ... see ... i am not good at this

Cut your own hair, wash it in faery liquid, buy whichever marge etc. is on discount, go on a diet (whether you need to or not), travel by bus, make your own greetings cards. And get writing. Poverty produces better writing, of course. d.beswetherick.

Remember the song? Eat the children!

My daughter and husband + 4 kids are on hards times at the moment and they food shop at Nettos as you can get most thing cheaper than elsewhere and there stuff is not bad, as we all have to eat its the best I could come up with so hope it helps...

aha ... good advice ... d bes ... i dont have my hair cut more than once every two years anyhow and i am planning to be much better off by the time it needs another cut (April 2005) ... where do i get faery liquid? what does it do? ... yes a diet ... ahem ... *puts down muffin from tesco bargain basement* ... i am travelling by bike is that better? ... and i never send greetings cards ... and yes i am writing .... oh see ... i think i am getting better at this already ... *trusses child ready for pot*

thanks jay ... nettos ... i wonder what that is ... is it like waitrose?

today i got a page a day A6 2003/4 diary from WHS half price at £2.74 and i feel very proud of myself ... am i getting the hang of this?

Are you Edina in disguise?

Yes. Yes.

hahahaha ... well i have an atrocious daughter who is very disapproving of me ...

Oh, I've just remembered a sad thing that I do when I'm broke, which is most of the time. I get a cheap bottle of bleach for about 30p and pour about a third of it into one of those bathroom spray squirters and fill the rest of the squirter up with water. It does a perfectly good job at cleaning the bathroom and by the time you've finished all the bleach you've saved about six quid on substances like Mr Muscle or Flash. Not only that but your guests think it *is" Mr Muscle or Flash and so you retain your hygiene kudos. Woo, I'm good at this. d.beswetherick.

bleach? cleaning? kudos? oh my ...

Fish If you are going to cook the child, check their pockets for change first.

And you can boil their bones up to make glue, and use what's left for making Irish Stew.

what do i need glue for? and should i do a car boot sale?

And then you can eat the pot! Sell the glue to local addicts for a few bob and then you can take another child etc etc etc.....

Ah, we might be on to something here. Only have a car boot sale if you have a hide like a rhino. Go armed and practise bolting in to the car within seconds and locking the doors when the wierdies come.

what happens if i do the practising and all that ... and anyway i dont sell anything and instead come back with a set of heated rollers? and dont you need a car to do a car boot sale?

Got two of those... 'I can't believe its not butter' thingies... for the price of one, from Sainsbury's the other day.... hurry! they may still have some left. Am ashamed to say that it does not taste too bad... quite like butter actually!

Netto's is a cheap and nasty version of Aldi's which is a cheap and nasty version of Lidl which is acheap and nasty version of Netto's............i've gone wrong here somewhere.

I dont believe you!

I don't care.

"Go armed and practise bolting in to the car within seconds and locking the doors when the wierdies come." I'm glad i don't go to your car boots Rachel.

Use computer, print up sponsored Swim form, then send your children out to doorstep the elderly while in their school uniform. Make the cause touching, but not to the extent where you actually feel guilty - it is much better to feel that you are depriving the school of a new Language Lab than of taking money from Ugandan children, IMHO.

Using lurpack sparingly is far better than using i cant believe its not butter liberally... all i would use the latter for is oiling my lawnmower, it is VILE.

You can afford a lawnmower?

I nicked it.

My daughter would not!! feed her kids on nasty food and she brought there first when the kids were little and they were short of money then the oldest is now16 you just have to get used to it and know whats good and leave the rest but thats what most shopping is about knowing what you are buying and Nettos has been going for years! long before the others that you mentioned were around so don't lump them altogether. Fish I can't speak about waitrose as we haven't got one round here, again all the best hope the tide changes soon for you and yours...

You could ebay and sell of your worldly possessions... Cooking stuff in large enough quantities that it can be frozen and reheated a week later which is long enough for it to seem a weekly food routine rather than a reheat. (I hate doing this, the sight of frosty bags and boxes of unlabelled stuff in the freezer makes me feel horrid) Public Library usage is always a good one for all sorts of reasons... Get children to take up a sporting hobby that needs no equipment ie bin kicking, window breaking or warehouse burglary... More veg less meat, but buy better meat less often if you see what I mean... Borrow things rather than money, because you can always give the things back whereas money is a different matter... Find the local pound shop, there'll be lots of stuff that isn't wonderful but might do the job for the time being... Get children to move onto Instant Messaging Software, they'll use this instead of the phone... Don't turn away offers of help, if they are well intended. Obviously don't get into some horrible situation where you are sold into white slavery, but if someone means well then take it... [%sig%]

I use Lidl's... its very cheap and it has good imported food, their cheeses are brilliant, and a fraction of the price they are at safeways etc. Even when i used to have cash I used Lidl's... frankly it grieves me to spend £3.00 on imported cheese when I can get it at Lidl's for £1.00. The only grumble I have with Lidl's is that they only have one checkout operator on at a time, and usually it is one who appears to be unable to count past ten without taking his or her socks off. The best way to spin the money out is to go between supermarkets stocking upon special offers, and then buy the fruit and veg from the local market etc.. the only problem with that for me, is that i havent got all day to traipse around doing it, as it takes an age.

Our Lidl doesn't have trollies (probably all been nicked) and everything there is so huge you can only buy one item at a time. But, it is great value and not bad. Cheap Vodka too.

don't buy paper kitchen towels or toilet rolls. you can get an endless supply of free paper napkins from McDonalds without buying anything from them... if you like raspberries, you only have to buy one box from any of the main stores and then you have (potentially) a lifetime's supply for free...why?...because raspberries always go squashy before their sell by date, so you just eat about three-quarters of them, wait till the rest go squashy and you can legitimately go back for a free replacement...you can do this again and again...until they remember you... and of course you should change your credit card every five months so you keep transferring your debt and never have to pay interest on it...but you have to manage this very carefully (see 'Important money question' thread)....

well we dont have a lidl ... or a netto ... or any of those other things ... someone changed the local cinema into a Kwik Save but i dont like anything spelt with a K when it should be a Q or a C for that matter ... its almost as bad as saying Snax ... however i will go in there tomorrow and see ... i have been in before and was alarmed that the checkout operaters seemed to know the price of everything and you had to buy a flimsy carrier ... i have been snuffling about in the bargain buckets at our local tescos and co-op and sainsburys ... hence muffins ... i dont have any kids cute enough for doing scams any more ... they are too busy shaving and smoking ... except for littlefishbone who is so far up the pedestal of virtue she would probably have me arrested for even thinking it ... i will have to borrow some cute kids .... good advice mark but the kids dont get to use the phone anyway as i am online most of the time so nobody can ring me up demanding money ... and i cant ever really be bothered to sell anything ... i would much rather give it away and save the hassle ... and thanks again jay ...

well goat ... what a good idea ... i have a kid who works at maccy d's i will see if he will stuff his trousers ... and marvellous tho the shifting credit card scam sounds ... i am far too badly organised and idle to actually remember to pull anything like that off ... and if i wasnt there is the small matter of the great klaxon of merriment that sounds very loudly if i even stop to wonder about getting a credit card ... its like loud roaring laughter and the gods shouting WHO DOES SHE THINK SHE IS KIDDING?????????

i have to admit i love lidl's. when i lived in farnham in surrey i did most of my shoppin there, but now i have moved to london i dont know where the nearest one is. it also reminds me of berlin, there was a lidis next to the hostle i was stayin in. awwwww memories. Anyways i have found the joy of shoppin at tescos.... there value stuff is class!!! and listern to mark... he knows what hes on about, he has helped me out with this being on the dole thing. i know all the little secrets now :-P and iam not goin to starve. buying lots of bread and pasta is how iam doin... pasta is alway yummy and freeze bread then you have toast when ever you want.

Suspend yourself in a plastic box for a month at a time and get sponsorship. End up a millionairess and do chat shows, write a book about your attempts at pissing in public without appearing to. Scrape tomatoes off the outside of the box between 4am and 5am (when no ones watching) to avoid death from starvation. Sell wardrobe full of designer clothes you won't need whilst starving and wouldn't fit anyway if you survive. Become a member of the royal family so you don't have to pay for anything. On a less serious note, I have a mate who spent a year trying to live as cheaply as possible. It was his intention of writing a survival book for the seriously impecunios. He bought his food from Iceland, but would wait until 30mins before closing on weekend nights when they would reduce stuff they would otherwise have to throw away. He would only ever buy stuff with expired use-by dates from other stores. He never wrote the book on the grounds that biros don't have a use-by date so were never sold at reduced prices!

hey alison ... good advice ... i dont get a chance to freeze bread as my kids will breeze through the kitchen and a loaf is gone in what seems a single inhalation ... and they are now used to saying "what are we having with our pasta tonight mummy?"

wow they like bread as much as i do!!! value bread is about 20p at tescos or something like that. mmmmmmmm think of all the toast you could have for a couple of quid. mmmmmmmmm

oh home made veggie soup is something else i like doin. its yumm and healthy!! and well fillin. all you need is cheap veg, water, veggie stock and lots of pans and stuff to freeze it in. if not veggie puts some cheap chicken in it or something i wouldnt know. mmm that reminds me i still have some:-D something i always end up doin which sounds minging but mixing the things that you have cooked and frozen together. i mixed my veggie soup with some left over curry which there wasnt much of. and put a bit more curry powder in.... taa daa lots of curry!!

lol Alison et al. Well is easy. I have been a student. I have lived in foreign countries. I know about poverty. Beans, bread and cheap Lidl booze. Thats the diet you need. Maybe even go for a treat to a Wilkinsons store. high market I know but you've got to treat yourself.

I would suggest market fruit & veg & Nettos. You can get cheap cleaning stuff if Wilkos is near you. My friend does things like only buttering one side of bread. What about not feeding the kids, thatmhelps an awful lot!

Kwik save and working on the tills that brought back memorys of my days doing just that when I was in my 30s god how time flys they must have been going over 40ys now, in them days you had to call customers Sir and Madom if you were caught not doing it well you just got the sack, bit different today not that I would want that brought back...

I can't be bothered to read 40 replies, so excuse me if someone's said this already, but the cheapest way to eat is probably to go down the market towards closing time, and buy all the cheapest fruit and vegetables you can. Then live off them for the rest of the week. Oh, you might need a vegetarian cookbook. You can try: Veg. casserole, steamed veg. veg. lasagne, stuffed veg., etc etc. Not only is it cheap, its low in fat and highly nutritious! So you'll save money, stay slim and live for ever.

if i were eating nothing but expired veggies i wouldn't want to live past Weds, much less forever....but it's a good suggestion anyway...

Jeez, she'll be breaking wind from Leics to A'dam on your diet, Spag...