However, I am aware how quickly things can change. My husband became very ill over Christmas last year which led to him having to take some time off work unpaid, although we were able to cope in the short term and thankfully he recovered quickly, I know that things could have been very different.
Legal & General recently conducted research that found that people in the UK could be on the breadline in as little as 29 days and shockingly for families such as my own this reduces to just 14 days. Although in this country we do have the safety net of state benefits, even with these many families would struggle to meet their bills and have to make sacrifices.
They have created an 'at a glance' infographic and a Deadline to the Breadline calculator so that you can look at what you spend and work out how long you would have until your money ran out if something was to prevent the breadwinner of you household from working.
I've had a think about the luxuries that I could live without if the worst happened and I've come up with the following three things:
Eating out
Both my husband and I share a love of food and if we are lucky enough to get a willing babysitter then we love nothing more that treating ourselves to a meal out at one of our favourite restaurants. Being a penny pincher at heart, I of course search the web for vouchers and offers before we go out, but even with these discounts, eating out is a luxury we would have to forfeit if we were living on the breadline. I would just have to work on my culinary skills and get more creative in the kitchen instead.
Buying New Books
One of the things that I treat both myself and my family to most often is a new books. If the children have had an achievement they get to choose a new book to add to their ever growing collection. My husband I both have our favourite authors and as soon as they announce their latest book we pre-order it on amazon. If our finances took a turn for the worst this is something that would have to stop although I would never let money get in the way of our family's love of reading we would go back to using the library more and and buying books from car boot sales and charity shops.
Subscription TV Services
I love a good TV show, as huge comic book fans my husband and I enjoy watching the latest series of Arrow and The Flash and we are eagerly awaiting the return of Game of Thrones this month. We currently have both Talk Talk TV and amazon Prime which are great for watching our favourite shows and so handy when we want to pop a movie on for the family to snuggle up to. This would be a hard one to lose but it is a luxury that I would be able to live without... as long as nobody shared any GOT spoilers!
What luxuries would you give up if you were close to the breadline?
This is a collaborative post
It's a difficult one, but meals out would have to go, together with the odd trip to the pub, but that's our only real luxuries, I don't really buy non-essentials and we only have Freeview already!
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