A mum-of-12 said she is worried she won't be able to keep her family warm this winter as the cost of living soars. Zoe Sullivan, 44, told how she has given up hope of ever having a family holiday due to her energy bills doubling despite not having the heating on.
Zoe is married to RAF serviceman Ben, 47, who is winding down a 27-year career, meaning they will soon be faced with having to get a mortgage and moving out of military quarters. Zoe said their bills have almost doubled from £240 a month to £400 a month, despite not using the central heating during the summer, and they have two seven-seater cars, one of which is used by Ben to go to work, while she uses the other for shopping.
The family have not had a holiday in years but live near two beaches in Lossiemouth, Moray, so often go for walks and make do with daytrips - but had hoped to be able to take the kids away, although savings for that are now being put into groceries and bills.
The couple have two sets of twins, Charlotte and Isabelle, 14, and Leah and Erin, aged six - and buy branded shampoo for the girls' long hair. Eldest daughter Elisabeth, 17, has a job, but younger kids Olivia, 15, Noah, 12, Eva, ten and Toby, nine, look forward to having a Pepsi Max and a chocolate bar on a Friday and Saturday night as a treat, which Zoe does not want to have to give up.
Baby Florence, aged four months, gets own-brand nappies, and Agnes, aged five, has a milk allergy which makes her a fussy eater and is expensive to accommodate. The couple also have Joseph, aged three, and send six girls to dance lessons, while their oldest son plays football - as well as a cat which costs around a fiver a week.
Zoe fears bills could increase to £600 a month which would be unaffordable, and said the prospect of winter using blankets rather than central heating was scary. She shops at Tesco, Adli, Asda, Home Bargains and B&M to find deals, often in the evenings when items are discounted, and spends £320 a week on groceries, which works out at around £21 per person on food.
The family will soon need to find a five-bedroom home, which Zoe said was daunting, and she and her husband gave up alcohol and neither smoke.
Stay-at-home mum Zoe said: "The jump in price is huge, we don't use any more, it's just the increase in price. We have lived in our house nearly ten years, we used to pay around £200 to £250 a month, there's no way we could afford to pay £600 or £700.
"It is really scary, there doesn't seem to be any help for people. There's no way we can meet these costs, what we would have put into savings is now going into food and bills. I have a budget of £320 a week for everything - food, toiletries, that would probably cover the shopping, some of the kids have lunches at school.
"I always shop around to get the cheapest things I can. We have four teenage girls so that's stuff like their face washes, but we could get through £6 of fruit a day. Fruit and things like that are really expensive, when you find blueberries are £3 and then become £3.50, it's a big price increase.
"I'm at home all day with the little ones, it gets cold in winter in the north of Scotland. We are thinking 'are we going to have to go around in blankets?' There isn't any more money to pay any more bills."
The couple have previously resorted to putting groceries on a credit card but hope to be able to avoid that.
Zoe said it is impossible to avoid using a water heater which runs on gas, and she will have to give up buying Heinz baked beans in favour of own-brand ones unless the situation improves.
She said: "How much deficit are we going to get into if next year it's £6,000 or £7,000? I don't think it was as bad in the 70s. It's all very frightening.
"The kids have never been abroad, I think we always thought 'one day', but the money is being spent on just living. We have got a big garden and we're close to two beaches, rather than going on holiday we have family time.
"Six of the girls do dance lessons and our older boy does football, they are their passions, we don't want to take that away. We have got a cat, luckily he doesn't eat very much."
Zoe declined to say how much their household income is and how much outgoings on activities such as dance lessons was.
The family's weekly shop includes around 20L of milk, eight boxes of cereal, 12 loaves of bread, 10kg of fruit including six punnets of grapes, 24 eggs and four bottles of squash, one packet of nappies and one packet of wipes.
For health and environmental reasons the family don't eat much meat - which is also more economical, and they only have meat twice a week.
Zoe only uses the dishwasher once a day - with the exception of Christmas when she uses it twice.
She uses two airers to dry laundry and tries to minimise how often she uses the tumble dryer - and never puts stuff in straight from the washing machine.
Rather than outings to the cinema, the family have a Netflix subscription, a Sky box, and Disney Plus, which keeps the kids entertained.
She and Ben never have 'date nights', and the kids wear hand-me-down clothes which are washed and vacuum packed.
Zoe said: "We don't eat much meat, we use more veg and things like lentils which is nutritious and much cheaper.
"We wanted to go to the cinema to see Top Gun bit waited for it to come out of Sky and watched it at home.
"We don't go out and do things very often, we don't have date nights because everything we do is as a family.
"I only use the dishwasher once a day, if it's Christmas I use it twice a day.
"I use the tumble dryer as little as possible, we do things like keep the kids' clothes vacuum packed and put away so they can be passed down.
"We do try to make things last as long as possible, I hate throwing things away.
"I have a Tesco Clubcard and Asda rewards card, and I always shop around."
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