A pensioner has spoken of the drastic measures she is taking to get through the cost of living crisis - spending entire days on the bus and feeding herself with food about to go out of date. Linda Foster, 73, said she made a good living for her and her children before she retired.
Now she is considering selling her car to pay the bills - and says she can't afford petrol anyway. She also goes to bed early and watches TV just to cut her spending.
Linda found herself unable to heat her home in the winter, and unable to buy the food she wants in the summer. She told LincolnshireLive: "All the food has gone up tremendously and when you live on a pension you've got to take that into consideration.
"It's getting to the point now where you used to be able to move down a level in food, down to the supersavers, but now you're at the bottom level. You can't move down any lower.
"I don't buy any propriety brands anymore. I buy the supermarkets' own or even lower than that."
Linda says she is buying the 'yellow sticker' food "all the time." She added: "I've always been a canny shopper, but I have to be more canny now. "
She is now worried about the next rise in energy bills coming in October. Linda said: "I'm not only worried about the incoming increase in bills, I'm worried about the state of the government.
"How can a government, that are at sixes and sevens, run the country correctly? How can they stop this increase, increase, increase all the time?
"I know they are supposed to be giving us money, but then are you borrowing money from other countries? We'll be in a recession before we know where we are.
"Then people will start losing their jobs and things will get even worse. So, it is a worrying time."
She already found herself unable to afford heating last winter. Linda said: "On cold nights, I'll turn the heating off and go to bed and lie and watch television in bed.
"In the winter I'll go and lie in bed to watch tele in the afternoon rather than put the heating on. Sometimes I'll go out for the whole day [on the bus].
"I'll get the bus to Boston, Lincoln, Mablethorpe. Lincoln's two hours on the way there and two hours on the way back, so you're spending a lot of the day out."
Linda says she is already saving for more expenditure in December, saying: "The way things are, how am I going to afford to give my grandchildren Christmas presents and birthday presents and things like that? I'm already starting to save up for Christmas so I can give them all a present."
Linda says she is also considering selling her car, as petrol costs so much, she doesn't see the point of keeping it.
"I lived in a family where there wasn't much money, but I think it's sad that I've managed to pull myself up," she said. "I own this house, I brought my children up properly and I think it's sad I'm going to have to live the way I lived when I was a child when there was no money about for anything."
