Sorry to just come here and rant when I haven't contributed to the discussion before now. I know I just have the same problems as everyone, but I just want to get them off my chest...
For the past year, I've blown through my budget almost every month, because costs of essentials are rising so quickly that I no longer have any concept of what I can live on. I'm still stuck in my 2019 mindset of "Oh, £30 til next pay day is ok, I can live on that!" only to go to the shop and find that my little routine grocery and toiletry basket is nearly twice as much as it was last year.
I've worked so hard all my life to have the good quality of life they said we could have. I grew up in the 90s/00s and it was always drilled into you that if you worked hard, you could get a good job and be rich. I started life on a shitty council estate with two addict parents, caring for a disabled sister - I worked hard to get into a good university, and I'm quite high-up in my competitive industry... and yet I have to have a cleaning job to even get by. I have a friend who is a lawyer who has to do Deliveroo deliveries to make ends meet. I know so many people my age in supposedly prestigious jobs who live hand to mouth. I don't even drive, I walk everywhere, I don't have Sky or expensive subscription services, I just have Netflix and my £12 a month mobile contract and the regular broadband package. I don't go out boozing more than once every couple of months. I live in a small 1 bed place (rented).
But I'm worried about money all the time. I can physically feel the stress on my body. I can feel all the tightness in my muscles from the worry, I feel much stiffer and heavier than I physically am. And occasionally, when I have money in the bank, it lifts for a few days, so I know it is caused by financial woes.
It's at the point where I need a radical life overhaul. I actually don't want to, I'm perfectly happy being some non-Mumsnetter who buys microwaved dinners and plastic bottles of orange juice. But I'm running out of money too often and too severely. I think I might have to go meat-free and start only having really cheap batch-cooked stuff. I know that doesn't sound drastic, it's how a lot of people live, but it's just the idea itself that I find daunting - I can't even afford to keep getting a cartoon of orange juice at the shop, or randomly buy a sandwich when I'm dashing all over for work. For about 6 months this year, I wore a pair of shoes with holes in, because I couldn't afford any others, and I lost a lot of weight so I spent all that time wearing clothes that swamped me. I'm just about able to buy a few things on Vinted that fit, little at a time. Surviving has become a full-on job.
, and then there is the added pressure of Christmas and the nights drawing in, the endless gloom till spring, etc, etc... My mental health is gonna be in the shitter! 
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