broke...

[jits]

Every once in a while my financial situation gets bad enough so that I'm not just broke, I _feel_ really broke. I look in my wallet and think "OK, how am I going to make that last until next pay day?" I look at the petrol gauge on the car, the bills that are due soon, and the bank balance all together, and it starts to stress me out a bit

Comments

[bruiseblue]

Even with two incomes, sometimes one finds herself in that situation. And I can't even picture having my credit cards or especially student loans paid off.

This is why I keep a near massive pantry stocked, all the time - if all else fails, there's soup and pasta and juice in the house. I grew up poor - and now that I know what was going on back then, I know that the last week of every month, mom was scraping the cupboards to feed us. I didn't know, and now I feel kind of bad at how I carried on when she forced us to eat oatmeal and dry pasta for a week. But I survived, with minimal damage. I get really anxious when the pantry runs low, and I have trouble saving money or otherwise planning for the future.

What with the wedding, honeymoon, three business trips this summer and two HUGEly expensive ones in Octobe and January, I can't even think about big debt repayment until February.

We'll be poor together - I can send you some great cheap recipes. But only if your little guy likes pasta. I don't inflict oatmeal on ANYBODY.

[jits]

I know what you mean. My pantry is pretty good, but I feel like I should keep 20 litres of petrol in the shed, and an emergency $20 somewhere.

We do like pasta. My problem isn't that I don't know how to cook cheap food - I can switch some meals to vegetarian, and use pasta and home made tomato sauce, and lots of rice and potatoes. It's that having decent food would be one of the last things I'd cut if things were tight. Part of it is because I have to watch my cholesterol - so it's the olive margarine rather than regular margarine etc. But part of it is that nice food is a big priority to me - I live off hummus, normally bought, but sometimes homemade. I buy fresh bread every second day. So there's savings, but I only want to make some of them.

I'm a middle-class lifestyle stuck with a 'not-quite-middle-class-income-for-a-whole-household' income. I really just need to subject myself to three months of abject poverty. I could pay $1000 off my credit card that way.

[bruiseblue]

I feel the same way - so usually we have three really nice meals per week (with fish or meat), three cheapie ones (vegetarian, with rice and beans or pasta etc.), and one dinner out. Seems to work, without making me feel like I'm eating oatmeal every day

[jits]

I'm very big on tomato soup - costs about $5 to make, tastes good, and with bread and garlic butter stretches out to several meals. Throw some leftover bits of chicken and a little chilli (less for Alex, more for me), and a salad, and it's a good meal.

Veges unfortunately, just aren't incredibly cheap where I live, and we have a weekend market which I go to sometimes, but while it's good stuff, there's no "ohmigod that's so cheap!" deals. Next summer I'll have my vege garden together and that will make things much cheaper. Lettuce, broccoli, carrots, silverbeet, maybe rhubard. And I'm kinda sick of winter already, so it'll be something to look forward to.

Part of the problem is just that I eat so much food. I eat half a loaf of bread at lunch no problems, so it's not a cheap experience.

I love lunch! It's my favourite meal of the day. I suspect if I didn't love fresh bread and lunch so much, I'd be more scrawny! (I used to be scrawny, but I think it's a thing of the past!)