What happened when I tried to live on £65 a week



Hard times: Liz Jones tried to get by on benefits for a week

I am exhausted. I cannot move or think. I look terrible, ugly. I feel completely humiliated. The reason? I have just spent a week trying to live on benefits.



I revealed in the Mail a couple of weeks ago how hopeless I am at living within my means, and that despite a hefty salary I am £150,000 in debt (not including my horrendous, interest-only mortgage; I don't even have a pension).



I am pursued by credit card companies and HM Revenue and Customs men (trust me, they are the Taliban of the money-collecting world, really aggressive and nasty) and Santander bank ('Bloody Spaniard!' I yelled incongruously at one of their operators the other day).



So having realised that, what with the £8.95 toothpaste and the £26,000 bat sanctuary, perhaps I was overdoing the spending, I decided I'd see whether I could survive on far less.



And if I was going to do that, why not go the whole hog and pretend I was unemployed? Now, at the end of my experiment living on the bottom rung of the ladder, I feel very ashamed.



I have a good salary, an education, I am a homeowner. I am also broke, and I am certainly reckless and stupid, but I am not poor.



My week living on the single person's jobseeker's allowance of £64.30 has convinced me there is a great deal of difference between the two.



I was staggered how little I would be expected to live on. And just as I had no idea how much unemployment benefit was, I also had no idea how much anything costs.



At the start of my experiment I could not have told you how much a litre of petrol costs, or a pint of milk, or my broadband service, or a bar of soap. I had never thought about it.



Now, I think about nothing else. I have had to say, out loud, four words I have never uttered before: 'I can't afford it.'

At the start of the week, I sat down and made a list of all the ways I am profligate, so see what I could eradicate in one fell swoop.



Whenever I need a phone number, I automatically dial 118 000. That would have to stop, but I don't have a Phone Book (do they still exist?) and I could no longer afford my broadband package, which is over £100 a month.



My grooming routine, month in, month out, costs £800 every four weeks

I drive a BMW and never use public transport. I always have the central heating on full and walk around in a T-shirt. I frequently order films on Sky Box Office, watch them for five minutes, then change the channel.



The Sky package would have to go, but how on earth do you get Freeview? And how on earth do pensioners cope trying to find out if I can't?



To be honest, giving up all my TV channels became the most difficult sacrifice all week: with no money, I couldn't go out (to the cinema, are you joking?) and telly remained my only solace.



At least when I was growing up there were just three channels that pretty much everyone could afford and talk about the next day.

I spend a huge amount on beauty treatments and products. I reluctantly cancelled all my appointments for the week: hair colour at Jo Hansford in Mayfair, leg and Brazilian wax at Paul Edmonds in Knightsbridge, visit to Space NK to stock up on products, a visit to my oral hygienist on Harley Street.

Leaving the BMW behind: Liz was forced to take a bus for the first time in years

This is my grooming routine, month in, month out, and I have only just added up the cost: £800 every four weeks.



I conjured up the sight of my mum's dressing table, with its sad little pot of Vaseline and flask of Yardley talc, her only beauty products. If she ever wore mascara, an old wand covered in lint, she just let it 'wear off'.



I hadn't realised how spoilt I had become. So I embarked on a poor person's grooming routine. I phoned my local dentist.



'Of course you can join our practice!' the receptionist said cheerily.



As someone who has always enjoyed the services of a private GP, gynaecologist and dentist, I suddenly marvelled at the NHS. I asked for an appointment to see the hygienist, which I learned would only set me back £16.50 instead of my usual £75.

Money puts you in a thoughtless cocoon. It was as if I'd been wearing really dark (designer, obviously) shades and someone had rudely whipped them off

'There must be a snag,' I said suspiciously. 'There is,' the receptionist replied. 'The first available appointment is in February.'



Next, I shaved my legs, something I haven't done since the late Seventies, but which was fine, to be honest. Bereft of Jo Hansford, I set off for my local pharmacy to buy hair dye (oh, the humiliation. My colourist will never forgive me; I now have the sort of jet black hair that would be at home on the head of an old hag).



But that was not all: even the four-mile journey became a mission, as I figured someone on benefits would not have a BMW sports car; the insurance alone would be crippling.



I stood vaguely at a bus stop, a two mile walk from my home, hoping no one would see me. Nothing came along and so I walked. The whole way.



I walk the dogs for two hours just for fun, but this sort of traipsing felt altogether different. It took ages and suddenly I understood that when you have no money the simplest task becomes Herculean.



I thought of all the times I had whizzed past a certain old lady, back bent in a dowager's hump, pulling a shopping trolley along the country road near my house that has no path, and found myself wondering why it had never occurred to me to pull alongside and see if she needed a lift.



Money puts you in a thoughtless cocoon. It was as if I'd been wearing really dark (designer, obviously) shades and someone had rudely whipped them off.

Tightening her belt: Having the central heating on full blast all day was now out of the question and the cat needed a cheaper dinner than fresh cod

When it came to buying food, my week on meagre rations brought back long buried memories from my childhood.



My mum, with seven children to feed, thought up all sorts of tricks so we wouldn't realise how poor we were.



She only ever ate bird-sized portions of food herself so we would have enough to go round. If she made a beef stew, she would only give herself the gravy.



Then there was her trick of serving 'half and half': this was milk diluted with water. There was her 'Russian salad', which we had every Friday: boiled rice with peas.



I realised that I might just have to follow her lead for the first time ever. Eschewing my usual box of organic goodies delivered at home by Riverford Organics, I popped to my 'local' (how hollow that word sounds on Exmoor when you don't have a car) Co-op.



They don't like me in this shop because I once wrote they were stupid for never having heard of Illy coffee beans. I wandered round, picking up things, planning meals involving dented tins and big potatoes, wondering how on earth I would bring myself to purchase a bottle of wine that cost below my usual £25 benchmark.



I looked around me at harassed parents in Primark and for the first time I understood why there were in there

I figured my 17 cats would have to stop eating fresh cod and make do with Whiskas.



How women feed children these days, I simply do not know. I balked at the cost of a bottle of fizzy water and was tempted by the cheap cider.



I looked at the teenager at the till and thought how awful I must have seemed a couple of weeks before when I had marched up to her and said 'Why is your wine so cheap? Don't you have anything vaguely expensive?', and I humbly apologised.



I ventured to London for the day, just to see which was the more excruciating: being poor in a city or being poor in a remote rural village, which is where I live.



I figured I couldn't afford to drive to London, given the price of petrol (and they don't even throw in a pump attendant for good measure!), the congestion charge and parking.

Unable to use the internet any more, I phoned First Great Western trains. 'Do you do a reduced fare for the unemployed?' I asked her, feeling brave that I had even said those words.



'No, we don't. The fare is £65.' Only after I insisted she must be wrong did she go away, ask someone for help (all the while keeping me hanging on the phone, running up a bill) and come back with the news: 'If you are unemployed the off-peak fare would be £32.50.'



This fare is part of Labour's New Deal, but to qualify I would have had to have been out of work for six months first.

Big spender: Previously, Liz hasn't given a second thought to splashing the cash on designer clothes and beauty treatments

When I finally got to London, all the shiny, bright, Christmassy shops seemed to mock me as I slunk around. It was as if a whole world was closed to me.



I can see now how so many mums hate this time of year: the intense pressure to buy presents, the feeling you have failed if everything isn't perfect and you haven't spent a fortune on your family.



Even watching TV, seeing all the Christmas commercials where families are warm, rosy-cheeked, surrounded by stuff, made me feel nauseous and panicky knowing I couldn't afford anything.



I looked around me at harassed parents in Primark and for the first time I understood why there were in there. How awful they must have always thought me, banging on in this paper about designer this and high end that.

I can understand, too, why anything organic or Fair Trade is as unattainable as a suite at Claridge's when you are impoverished.



When you have no money, you not only don't think about children in other countries, you don't even think about tomorrow or next week. All your energy is consumed by getting through the day.



I had several unpleasant moments in London, one of which occurred when I was ejected from a bendy bus.



(Relatively) sane, intelligent women now think it is absolutely essential, their right, to spend £50 on a candle in order to 'de-stress'

As I discovered in front of a packed bus full of amused passengers, drivers no longer take coins, and there is no conductor.



Everyone laughed at me when I stood at the front, pleading with the driver, telling him I have no idea what an Oyster card is.



There were smaller incidents, as simple as trying to find a reasonably priced cup of coffee ('£3.75 for a soya latte? Are you insane?'). These are the daily indulgences that have become second nature to so many of us, but which, when you have far less than £100 to live on a week, seem like a monstrous waste of money.



The most humiliating incident of the entire week happened when I went to a pawn shop in Islington, having decided I would part company with a string of pearls given to me by my dad when I turned 18.



The nice Indian man inside told me business was booming. I extracted my velvet-lined case from my designer handbag which, having cost £1,000, I was beginning to resent, like an ex-wife hanging around my neck demanding alimony.



He took the necklace away. I felt a lump in my throat. He came back. 'These pearls are not real,' he said. 'They are plastic, maybe worth a pound.'



'Are you sure?' I said.



He pushed them back under the thick security glass. I started to cry.



Not because my dad had bought me plastic pearls, passing them off as real ones. But because my parents had been unable to buy nice things.



And I knew now how hard that must have been, how guilty they would have felt - just like those mothers in Primark trying to eke out the best they could for their children.



A second pivotal moment was when I met a girlfriend for a drink. She asked me to meet her at the Sanderson Hotel, the sort of trendy, loud, super expensive place that is usually as natural to me as a pond to a goldfish, and I didn't have the guts to say no.

She was already sitting at a table waiting for me. In front of her was a drained champagne flute. Before last week, it had never occurred to me to look at the prices on the wine list, but on that day I did.



My head reeled: £9.50 for a glass of champagne. My friend ordered two glasses. The waiter brought nuts. 'No nuts!' I shouted, in case they would cost extra.

At the end of our gossip, my friend stood up to leave. She was off to dinner at an organic pub. I kept hoping she would toss a note on the table as her contribution, but she didn't.



I was left with the bill not just for the drinks we'd had together, but for the one she had downed waiting for me. And I realised this was how I was used to being treated. Because friends and family think I have a lot of money, they always assume I will pick up the tab.



'Ah,' I thought, seriously considering making a run for it, 'so that is why people spend time with me.'



I suddenly wanted back all the expensive gifts I had showered on my friends: the Diptyque candles with a smell dreamed up by John Galliano (my calling card).



Isn't the luxury goods industry clever: even (relatively) sane, intelligent women now think it is absolutely essential, their right, to spend £50 on a candle in order to 'de-stress'.



We have been brainwashed into literally burning money. But if getting by in London with no money can be desperate and humiliating, doing the same in a rural village can be terribly hard.



On Exmoor, the average wage if you can even find a bloody job is under £13,000 and most of the cheaper places to live are snapped up by outsiders like me.



Here, being poor can not only be isolating and almost impossible to escape from, it can be a sentence to a slow, lonely death.



On one of my long walks to find sustenance during my week with almost no money, I thought I'd drop in on a friend to thank her for having taken me to a film in the town hall.



I got lost and stopped at a bungalow to ask for directions. The place looked neglected. Even a couple of the windows were boarded up. I was about to turn and leave when a little old lady opened the front door nervously.

She said she had seen me around the place in my BMW and wondered why I was on foot. I told her.

She started to tell me what it is like to live on a pension and it was as sobering an experience as anything I'd faced all week.



When I totted up my spending, I found I'd got through £265 (not including my train fares), which begs the question: how on earth do people survive on £64.30 a week?



So have these few days changed the way I feel about money enough to affect the way I live?



Let's just say that from now on I'll get by with a tube of Colgate and a few repeats on ITV. Just don't expect me to buy an Oyster card. I hate buses.



