Hi and Welcome to my new blog

I think the title is pretty straight forward and pretty much is what it says on the tin.......I am a broke ass mum. 

Firstly Im a mum, primarily of 2, although if you count my step son its 3......and if you count my man-child of a husband its 4.......oh and we have 2 dogs - so including fur babies and everyone in the house its technically 6 - either way Im a Mum.

Now I know you possibly have two questions.......
Just how ''broke'' are you? and what the hell is an 'elastic chicken'?

Right well an elastic chicken is when you shop and buy one chicken and you make it sssttttrrrreeetttccchhhh over the course of several meals. So you may have a roast on Day 1, for Day 2 you might use darker meat and make a curry, Day 3 when there's smaller bits left maybe adding some to a stir fried rice and finally Day 4 you make soup with the carcass.........ergo Elastic Chicken. 


As for how ''broke'' I am.........I know what your thinking, your clearly on the internet writing a blog though so surely that also means you have a computer and home internet access so you cant really be that broke can you? 

Well sort of. Yes we own a big desktop computer but for half the month my internet connection is normally cut off because we find ourselves between pay days and so my neighbour has let me use her internet code. We are on a new contract with Sky so for £53 a month we get everything.....for a year. After that we will see. Also we got given a free TV with the deal and ours had not long blown up so it seemed a good deal.

My money never gets me to my next payday. 
My husband is lucky if he has wages in his bank 3 days after his payday. 
I bake, grow, forage, home cook, buy cheap and bulk buy to within an inch of my last penny.
Yes I have had days where I've borrowed food from family - never a Foodbank though although I do volunteer with them when I can.
I scour the free / local selling/ freecycle pages daily for deals. 
I work (contractually) 6 hours a week with a High Street catalogue store although I usually work between 9-12 hours. Id love more but we are a small town and not much is available. 
I receive two benefits - Child Benefit and Child Tax Credit - that is all. 
I do lots of free activities with the kids.
We rarely buy new things and the kids have had hand me downs for years since they have older cousins. 
I have about £3K worth of debt which I'm unable to pay off because my living expenses leave very little for me to put towards them

........so yeah - Im pretty broke.......I dont remember the last time on a whim that I was able to do anything with my kids, everything is saved up for, planned and usually its because there is a deal on or some sort of money saving incentive or voucher around it. 

So in a brief nutshell thats my situation and why I have decided to start my blog. So you can all ride this rollercoaster with me and hopefully we can change our situation and circumstances together.