A Slice of Bread and Butter
The voice of The Bread and Butter Thing - with stories from the frontline of the cost of living crisis from one of the UK's leading food charities.
A Slice of Bread and Butter
Making Ends Meet: Kim's Journey Through Pensioner Life
Have you ever wondered how pensioners manage to make ends meet on limited income as living costs continue to rise? Join Mark and Alex as they chat to Kim, a resilient grandmother who should have retired but continues to work as a nanny aged 68. Kim opens up about navigating life and financial hurdles on a tight budget, highlighting the broader issues faced by many who find themselves just above the threshold for financial assistance.
Welcome back to A Slice of Bread and Butter with Alex and Mark from the Bread and Butter Thing. We're a charity that delivers affordable food to the heart of deprived neighbourhoods, to help nourish communities and act as a catalyst for change.
Speaker 2:We provide access to a nutritious, affordable range of food, which means our members can save money on their shopping, feed the families really healthily, as well as access other support too, right in the heart of their communities.
Speaker 1:And this is where we share a slice of life of somebody involved with us and hear about how they connect with us too.
Speaker 2:And that person today, alex, is Kim, and I think you've already met Kim.
Speaker 1:I know Kim, Lovely lady. Yes, we met her at Blickston Station, didn't we? On a very early Monday morning, I think.
Speaker 2:A very, very early Monday morning. Yeah, for BBC Breakfast, but Kim was very kind to invite me back to do a recording for the podcast and she talks about all sorts.
Speaker 3:I'm Kim. I'm a mum and a gran and I look after children, so my life's just all about children, really how many grandkids have you got? I've've got six.
Speaker 2:Six grandkids.
Speaker 3:Two children.
Speaker 2:Varying ages.
Speaker 3:They are varying ages. In fact, I've got two of them are great grandchildren, but I don't really admit to that I'm just granny. Because my oldest grandchild is 20. Wow, and he's got a little one of three and another one that's nearly one. So Amazing. Just had a sleepover with the two youngest ones the other night went quite well. Yeah, they slept 12 hours. I didn't sleep a wink. So you've got one ear open when you've got a baby in the house, you know?
Speaker 2:and uh, I just didn't sleep I remember those days and I don't enjoy those non-sleeping days I made up for it the next night.
Speaker 3:And they're so gorgeous.
Speaker 2:So are you here on your own.
Speaker 3:Yes, I live on my own. I'm divorced and single, so I enjoy the quiet life. I am a state pensioner but I'm not retired because I can't afford to retire. Basically I work with two young children as a nanny. That's kind of coming to an end soon so I'll probably have to take on another family. Because just the cost of living and the increase in all the bills, I'm nearly 68.
Speaker 2:And still working. Yeah, I'm guessing that's because you can't afford to stop.
Speaker 3:I probably could manage, but it would be very hard and it's good to be able to treat my grandchildren, for example, and still have some kind of a life.
Speaker 2:Is the working about money or is the working about not stopping?
Speaker 3:I suppose it's a bit of both. Really. I need some extra income coming in because I do like to see friends and see family as much as I can, but also it is about money, because there's no help for people like me that are just above the pension credit limit. There's just nothing at all we can get. I've got my bus pass. I have got a car, a very old car, which gets me about, but I use my bus pass when I can.
Speaker 2:So have you just lost your winter fuel payment.
Speaker 3:I didn't get it the first year because I wasn't born before the 25th of September. It's the first year I was a pensioner. I didn't get it, Got it last year, which was great. I think I'll frame the letter now because I'll never get it again.
Speaker 2:This is really interesting, because a lot of what we talk about is people just above thresholds of things as well, kim. So how far above the threshold were you?
Speaker 3:Do you know what? I've not worked it out exactly, but I am above the threshold, so there's no way I can get it. I know some people have missed it by a few pence or a few pounds. Even so, when you get no help with anything, I mean we do still get single occupancy council tax, but that's probably going to go next how are you feeling about winter then? Well, I'm not putting my heating on until I really really need to.
Speaker 3:You can see I've got the blankets out already dressing gown will be coming out and you know I'll just resist it as long as I can yeah, I was thinking about your grandkids well, luckily, um the weekend when they stayed over it was actually one of the warmer weekends, a bit like today, so I would have put it on, obviously for the baby especially. But um, for myself I'll resist as long as I can. And you know, you've all heard about those pensioners that get on the bus and go off all day.
Speaker 3:I mean, I'm not going to do that but, they all go to the library in places where it's warm. I know the centre at Sail West does have some facility for that, don't they in that?
Speaker 2:local library. Yeah, we try to do what we call big brew time through the winter as well, so that we kind of say, well, whilst we're all in there volunteering and we've heated the place, come and have a brew. Obviously it's really timely because it's only just been announced and everybody's talking about the winter fuel payments. What did you feel about that?
Speaker 3:I can't believe they've done this to the pensioners and meanwhile they're handing the train drivers massive pay increases and backdated, so even people that have left are getting it. You know, I mean, you could go on and on about that.
Speaker 2:So I suppose they've got to make some difficult decisions.
Speaker 3:I understand that, but if you only had your state pension, our state pension is less than the 16-year-old's national living wage, isn't it, you know? So why hit the pensioners? I did vote for Labour, but I'm beginning to regret it now. I don't know what would have been better.
Speaker 2:Do you have a circle of friends similar age? Are they all in similar circumstances to you?
Speaker 3:No, not all of them. Some they've had much better pensions. I think I was always badly advised on financial matters but, to be honest, I'm one of those people. I don't worry about money, I just think I'll be all right, something will turn up and whatever, and I don't have a plan. My young nephews told me that you must have a plan. You and I don't have a plan. My young nephew's told me that you must have a plan. Well, I've managed 60-odd years without one so.
Speaker 3:I'm not going to start now, but I don't worry about it because it can't be changed and I manage. We've helped from people like yourself occasionally. I don't go every week because I know there's a lot of people a lot worse off than myself, so I do go very occasionally and, you know, have a top up.
Speaker 2:Tell me what you do with bread and butter and tell me what you get.
Speaker 3:Well, I first heard about it, funnily enough, from Slimming World Group leader at Slimming World said it's not a food bank. Anybody can go along. It's important that you have your fruit and veg and all these sorts of things and you will get some healthy food. You pay 8.50, whatever it is, and you you know you'll get a reasonable amount of food for that which you're not going to get from the shop. So went along to see what it was all about, signed up for it and it's great because there'll always be some treat for the grandchildren, you know. Or if they're staying over. There's a cereal that I perhaps wouldn't eat but they will, and in that way it's really helpful. And of course you do get lots of potatoes and vegetables and things, some essentials. There's always something that you can make a meal of. It might not be what you would choose to go and buy. Sometimes you do get some odd things, but so what's the strangest you've had then?
Speaker 3:well, sometimes you get things like sausage rolls that I wouldn't buy, but you can give those to the kids, can't you? Or one week there was three loaves of bread. I don't have room for three loaves of bread in my freezer, but he said give them to your neighbours, just take them. So that was a good idea. You can always pass things on, can't you? Yeah? But yeah, it's a great service and you know it's a charity, isn't it?
Speaker 2:so even better you just keep saying things about. Well, there's so many people out there worse off than me.
Speaker 3:Well, there are, I know there are.
Speaker 2:There are, but bread and butter is not about crisis, it's not a food bank, it's not about charitable handouts and it's about trying to stretch budgets and help people get by. So we're in this space where everybody feels almost similar to you, but this is for everybody in the community.
Speaker 3:I know, but sometimes I've been there and there's people that haven't registered and you can see that they're standing there hoping somebody will cancel at the last minute or not turn up or whatever, and it's those people that are obviously so much in need that if I don't need it that week, I don't go, because I know that there are much worse off people, as I say, and it can be all ages, young and old, but I think we've definitely got a big crisis in this country with so many people, homeless and children.
Speaker 2:So what do you think is going to happen this winter then?
Speaker 3:Well, as they say, we've all got to tighten our belts, haven't we? I won't starve, I've got food in the cupboard and I can always go to bed and butter thing if I need a good top up. I do go and shop at various shops as well. So I mean, I'm not destitute.
Speaker 2:We talk a lot about social mobility and social decline. So your parents at your age, do you think they were better off or worse off than you are today?
Speaker 3:Well, I think they were worse off because, you know, we never had any money. My mum didn't work. She had six children, so she looked after us and my dad did work.
Speaker 2:We worked very hard what did your dad do?
Speaker 3:he was, um, I think you call it station manager, but he used to go to tesco's, sainsbury's marks when it opened and get bags of food all reduced to 10p with the yellow labels yeah, but he got them really cheap. I think they had a little club that went round, you know, and they'd say get over to the chicken, and if it was somebody's birthday he would have flowers reduced to 10p, a cake or something.
Speaker 3:But generally speaking, you think, I think they were worse off than us, and I've just inherited a bag of my mum's writing. Yeah, and it includes some diaries and I looked at one of the diaries and she used to go to this U3A to like history classes.
Speaker 2:The University of the Third Age.
Speaker 3:Yes, which I'm now a member of. But sometimes she would write in her diary couldn't go to my class today because I didn't have the £1.50 or whatever it cost. And I thought, oh God, we didn't know that, we didn't know she was so struggling.
Speaker 2:So the University of the Third Age is a further education model for pensioners. Is that right?
Speaker 3:Well, it's not just for pensioners, it's for people that are not working full time, probably mostly over 50. It's not just an education thing. They have chat groups and knitting groups and you can start your own if there isn't something that interests you, but they do everything, from archaeology to Arabic or something you know. So I go to Italian which is great.
Speaker 2:Can you speak much Italian now?
Speaker 3:No, but I do enjoy it so kim's fascinating for me.
Speaker 2:Plenty of things to talk about having to work for starters even though she's well above retirement age. That's a challenge.
Speaker 1:I mean, we're hearing this a lot, aren't we, when we're out and about at hubs, pensioners still having to work? It's just a sad state of affairs, and the whole winter fuel the pulling of that funding. There's a lot of opinions about that as that seems pardon the pun A hot topic. I was going to say which is a terrible pun in this instance.
Speaker 2:It's the opposite. Yeah, it's not what we want to hear really, because they're not going to be hot and it's really difficult, isn't it? Because Kim was really upset by it because she and some of her friends have lost the winter fuel payment. And she sent me down a rat hole because when she said that state pension now is less than the national living wage for 16 year olds, I thought, oh, is that true? I suddenly felt like fact checking. When I did fact check, it also made me realize, yes, state pension is less than the 16 year old national living wage, but at the same time, the philosophy behind state pension clearly states that it's to supplement life, it isn't to live on. And that's a really difficult challenge as well, because it was always brought in as something that wasn't necessarily there on its own. There were supposed to be other things with it, and I guess the difficulty is, as the cost of living has gone on and people's lives have got harder, they don't have that other thing to supplement pension. So I can see where Kim's coming from.
Speaker 1:It's so sad because retirement should be a time where, after decades of graft, you can enjoy the simple pleasures and relax, enjoy your grandkids. But that's not happening. They're having to continue to work. And it really got me when she talked about wrapping yourself up and not putting the heating on for herself. But she would put the heating on when her grandkids came around so that they stayed warm. And I think that's where she gets all the joy from at the minute, isn't? It is her grandkids, her six grandkids. They must keep her busy and, hopefully, warm.
Speaker 2:Well, yeah, hopefully, but joking aside, it's clearly hard and I wouldn't say that Kim feels herself as though she's hard done by. But everybody's having to make difficult choices and that feels like the underlying theme at the moment, that as much as everybody is stretched and struggling, they're all still finding ways of coping and surviving, and that level of people having to do that has got more and more so the blankets are coming out. They're only going to heat themselves when the grandkiddies are there. They need to keep working because it's not to feed themselves. But if they feel like they want to act like the grandparent and do what all grandparents have always done and tried to spend money on the grandkids, then she doesn't have that money without working and it kind of carries on from there, because my head starts popping about well, how can she do what she could do for her kids to look after the grandkids, so that her kids could go off and work, because childcare costs are expensive as well, and I remember her saying that on Flexton Station actually.
Speaker 1:Yes, yes, that's it. I remember her saying that she'd always looked after autistic children and the two that she was looking after she'd become very fond of. And obviously her contract's ending, and then where's she going to be Just in time for Christmas as well.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:Which is a whole other subject yeah, I.
Speaker 2:And even though kim's got all of these struggles, she still thinks that she's not to use bread and butter that much, because there are so many other people that are worse off than her that need it more yeah, that is something again that I hear all the time chatting to our members.
Speaker 1:Is it a British thing? There's always somebody worse off that stoic position.
Speaker 2:Don't want to moan yeah, but I think that's being really challenged right now definitely if you'd like to know more about the Bread and Butter Thing and what we get up to, you can find us at Team TBBT on Instagram and Twitter or LinkedIn, or online at breadandbutterthingorg.
Speaker 1:And if you have any feedback or thoughts or ideas on the podcast, you can get in touch with us by popping us an email to podcast at breadandbutterthingorg.
Speaker 2:We're always open to new members at all of our hubs, so if you or someone you know would benefit from our affordable food clubs. You can find your nearest hub on the join us page of the website.
Speaker 1:And please do all those things that podcast always asks you to do Like us, subscribe, leave us a review and share us with your friends and chat about us on social yeah, chat about us, because that's what we like to do.
Speaker 2:We like to have a chat see you next time.
Speaker 1:How did I do?
Speaker 2:yep, you're getting there, don't worry. See you next time bye.
