Family with £62k earnings utilizing Klarna for meals store as price of dwelling bites

A mum-of-five with a £62k household income has been forced to turn to Klarna to manage her family’s food shopping bills amidst the high cost of living. Despite cooking all of their meals, she still struggles to make ends meet.

Laura Caine, 40, is finding it tough to make ends meet with her £1k-a-month Universal Credit and her hubby Martin’s £50k salary as a games programmer. With five kids aged between 18 and nine, the cost of keeping everyone fed is hitting hard, leading them to rely on the buy-now-pay-later service for their groceries.

Recently, Laura has had to use Klarna for her food shops because she “can’t afford” the total cost in one go. Both Laura and Martin have hit their credit limits after their energy bill doubled from £200 to a whopping £450 per month.

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While some find paying off debt interest-free over a short term manageable, missing payments on these schemes can lead to additional fees.

Laura, hailing from Fife, Scotland but now residing in Huddersfield, West Yorkshire, shared: “I’ve seen the struggles of so many families – I’ve been to food banks with mums and dads with their kids, waiting and wondering what they will be getting, it’s awful.

“The way I shop now, if I have £35 to spend for the week, I could get a £105 shop using Klarna and that’s £105 worth of food in your cupboards and pay £35 per month back for three months.”

Laura also mentioned how this method allows her to treat her children: “If I do it this way it means I can take my kids to places once a month like museums or a train ride somewhere.”

Laura’s found herself in a tight spot and has turned to Klarna to manage her food shopping bills, though she wouldn’t recommend others follow suit. She explained: “The last shop I did I spent £1,050 and am paying £350 back each month.

“The same shop used to be £500 pre-covid which just shows how much costs have gone up but it will last me a month and a half, which is not bad for a family of seven.”

Her grocery haul is packed with fresh fruit and veg. “I’ll get 10 packets of carrots at 65p a bag and prep them and put in the freezer,” Laura shared.

“Potatoes I’ll get 10 bags and keep them in our cellar. I buy fresh meat and freeze it as well as flour and butter as I make giant tray bake cakes in the big tray for the oven, I also get crisps and squash.”

Before turning to Klarna, Laura had to rely on food banks and also wholesalers for bulk buys like loo roll and flour for homemade bread.

Laura went on to say: “Last year my benefits switched to Universal Credit – whereas before I was on tax credits and it has given me a cash flow problem.

“Instead of getting paid once per week I got paid once per month, which made things even more challenging, which is why I’ve had to start using Klarna.

“It just means if an emergency pops up like having to pay for an MOT or gas bill – even though it is more money, in the long run it allows me to make ends meet.”

Dodging the food bank queue has become a priority for Laura. “When money eventually came in, I decided how can I make sure that we don’t go to food banks anymore try and get food that would last longer,” she said.

“So I found Klarna that’s how I ended up starting to use it, I don’t recommend it to people who can’t afford it. I know it’s not the ideal thing, but with the cost-of-living crisis, I’m having to use it.”

Laura even cooks all meals from scratch and freezes prepped vegetables to ensure nothing is wasted. “I’ve got big freezers, I homeschool my five kids and always make sure there are three meals a day. I don’t want to get into the rut of using food banks again.

“My mum was poor back in the eighties and nineties and we had to live off sugar sandwiches and chips and I feel if I go I am taking someone else’s slot who might need it more.”

“She mum used to get paid on a Monday and by Thursday she had no money left or food and then my grandma would have to help her out.”

Laura cooks all her kids’ meals from scratch and makes “stews, soups, roast dinners, home made pizzas, cakes and cookies.

“For lunch time I usually make sandwiches with meat that I’ve cooked or sometimes cooked meat I’ve already bought,” she said.

Laura claims most people don’t appreciate just how much food is required to feed a big family. “With seven people in the house having three meals a day that’s 588 meals a month,” she said.

Laura’s got a point, folks. She’s been chatting about the cost-of-living nightmare that’s still giving families a right headache, saying it’s hitting them “every bit as badly”.

She’s all about thinking of the kiddos and the oldies, stressing, “It’s our next generation – we need to feed them, they’re going to be tired, they need to step up, kids need to be fed and the older generation is also struggling,”.

She is calling for the bigwigs in government to step up their game: “People need to be helped out much more by the government.”

But she isn’t just talking she’s doing her bit too, nabbing food on the brink at her local Tesco and dishing it out to the elderly who are having a tough time getting grub.

“If there’s a small Tesco with food going off reduced stickers you can take it from there,” she tells them. And when it comes to how rough things are?

Laura didn’t mince her words: “It’s hell right now not just for my family but for many other families as well.”