A Fortnight's Lost Income

This is a story from my past, which taught me that when you have to you can do it! My family of 5 was managing payday to payday, any extra money we had went to the mortgage. It was the day after payday and I had the cash on the table, working out where it would be going. There was a knock at the door and I hid the cash so it wasn't in full view to answer the door. The caller was very involving, and it was an hour or so before I got back to my budgeting task. Unfortunately, I had forgotten where I'd put the money!

The kitchen was turned upside down in the search - it was all the cash we had for the fortnight. After I'd had a good cry, I set about planning how we would eat for the fortnight. We had a freezer with a good amount of frozen meat, and frozen vegetables floating around in the bottom of the chest, there were cans of soup, etc. in the pantry, I would always buy flour in bulk, and oats, powdered milk, sugar, so there was enough of that. The garden produced some fresh greens, so we wouldn't get scurvy. The neighbour had a tree laden with plums and was happy for us to pick them.

We certainly didn't eat as normal (lots of fruit, store bought baked goodies) but I don't think the kids noticed as I went all out baking. I baked our own bread (usually we would buy sliced bread), baked sweet rolls and biscuits, and lots of plum desserts. To this day, I cannot enjoy scones as they remind me of hard times - what I would bake when we had little else.

The next payday came around and we had made it through. So I learnt that:

1. You can do it if you have to.
   

2. Your food stores are a treasure chest for hard times. Try and keep them stocked up.

About 3 months later, I went to cook a casserole and found the money in the casserole pot! I decided to put it in a secret 'hardtimes account' and try to put a little in each fortnight as I never want to manage on nothing again.