My plans for this winter are literally probably just to heat the only like during the day, just to heat the room I'm in using a fan heater. Then once my daughter comes home from school in the evening, just to put the heating on for a few hours, I normally have the heating on for an hour, then it's off for an hour or two and then it's back on. It going for an hour. And that's how I sort of keep it going until we go to bed. Just to limit the amount of gas that we use. We're on a prepayment meter and the costs are ridiculous and all that. Most of the time we run in and off the emergency credit. You put money on the meter to pay off the emergency and it just takes for the emergency and the debt, you just end up in this big circle of constantly running on the emergency gas. So, yeah, I'm just going to hopefully get through this winter by using an electric fan heater as and when.

This means that there would be a high risk of getting into debt, reviewing your grocery shopping list to ensure that we don't buy what we can survive without, more second hand clothes/shoes shopping. No money to do fun things (ice cream, cinema, etc).

I'd have to stop his swimming lessons, and carry on buying reduced foods and freezing them. I'd probably end up falling in debt as I might end up having to choose paying a bill over food, I know it's coming.

I have been enjoying the warm weather recently, despite complaining that I could not afford an ice cream, but now the temperature has dropped its reminded me that the long cold winter months are fast approaching. Some people seem to be thinking the cost of living crisis is over but for millions of families it's certainly not. There will be no warm home for myself and my daughter again this year, as there is simply no way I can afford the cost of heating while living on legacy benefits alone. In supermarkets the price of food is still high and package sizes are also dropping. I mainly survive on food that does not require cooking now as I am constantly having to make cutbacks wherever possible to avoid ending up in dept. Legacy benefits do not increase with other benefits so every year and every price increase is putting more strain on the money we do receive to survive on.

I don't think it is over. Very little has been done to support people through that. Salaries are still the same. Prices for essentials have gone up. More people are in debt.

Not even started to become over – how on earth are people saying that it is? If anything, for me, it's getting harder. I am trying to find a new place to live because my landlord is selling and like half of my town we're struggling. I don't earn or know anyone who earns 35x the rent!

Food is still massively over priced and still not able to buy a decent amount, just barely scraping by. Energy may have gone down but is still going to be extremely hard after the snow starts to come and its causing anxiety and panic, clothes are still so expensive that school uniform is still being brought due to how expensive it is and the fact we don't have enough to get it because we have no help.

Bills are still rising and debts still are outstanding for everyone I know! It's nowhere near over, if anything, it's got a small bit worse because not enough help has been given in the first place, and if the media is saying it's over then there's no way we will be ok. Inflation may be dropping but interest rates are still constantly going up and up, yet benefits are going down or being made harder to acquire when in need. We're all still skipping meals and going without so how is it over? The media should be ashamed and the government need to help not slip it under the rug.

Money has always been hard. My husband has a gambling issue which started a few years ago and I didn’t know he didn’t pay the bills and blew 2 wages! It nearly destroyed us. And to this day still repaying back. It’s a struggle. Everything costs so much as it is and when I’m trying to pay something back they want a large amount that I just can’t do. I completely understand why people choose to ignore debts at times, as it feels you have no choice.

He still goes off the rails at times but luckily not as bad as it used to be. They say there is all this help out there but, for me, I’m not a confident person on the phone and I can’t understand what’s said to me. But pretty much everything you have to do over the phone. There needs to be other ways of doing these things for people that have anxiety issues.

I am looking forward to going back to work and for Christmas. I am looking to try and pay off my debts and face my fears.

My future planning is very bleak, really. I've been in debt for more than 25 years, getting deeper every year. There's no realistic chance of me escaping that, I will die in debt. Statistics are pretty clear that my expected lifespan, as a woman living in poverty, is dropping. I don't save, firstly because I can't afford to, and secondly because having savings is never a guarantee they'll actually be safe, and because they might affect a future benefit claim. I have a BR pension from when I worked for the railway for 5 years, I intend to take that money out, as cash, soon as permitted. All I can leave my kids is firm instructions to tell any bailiffs that there are multiple debtors, and that I owned nothing of any value.

I can't plan anything going forward. I can't even plan to make ends meet in the current month I'm in. So I just can't see a future. I don't know what it's going to bring. Just more debt. More of the same.

Quite simply I have no real plans for the future and no way of being able to make plans. Living like we do as a single parent family is tough. We live from week to week, trying to keep enough money to pay monthly bills ect. and wondering what food we may be able to buy depending on the prices when we arrive at the shop. Fortunately I am not in debt to anyone and am trying my hardest to keep it that way, but with the world the way it is and the economy in the state it is in we just worry all the time about when the next increase in one of the bills or cost of shopping is going to be. We are struggling to stay warm, clothed and fed properly. There is simply no more cutbacks to make to an already very simple and basic lifestyle. Meaning there is just no point in making any future plans just to make myself feel worse when I can't acheive them.

I am a lone parent with 2 kids on UC, and I am in full-time work. I know I am luckier than some. What I have to do to plan is daily budgeting.

The biggest change for me was when someone suggested using cash for my food shopping. I always thought paying by card kept everything accounted for and so was the easiest way to budget.

But I've been using a cash budget for my food since the beginning of this year and I don't go over. I really don't know how this happens, but at the end of the week I find I have £1-£2 left. Not much, but I haven't gone over.

However, that doesn't help with the long term planning, which I cannot do. I set myself a plan 3yrs ago to get out of debt. This was when petrol was low, and the energy and food interest-rates hadn't hit so high. I learnt to cook really good, cheap meals. Or I'd have cereal as a main meal. It was doable and I could pay-off more debt than the interest.

Or so I thought. Uniform, school trips, living up to supporting my daughters as much as their mother (who is on a much higher wage than me) have left me, 3yrs later, with the same amount of debt. I'm not swimming anywhere I am just treading water. It's not the worst, but it is getting harder and I feel more and more deflated each week.