By Elizabeth Broughton

Last updated 13:48, Tuesday, 07 October 2008

SARAH and Gary Lightfoot are a newly married couple living in Currock. They have twin sons, Ollie and Liam, who are two-and-a-half years old.

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Called to account: Sarah and Gary Lightfoot and twins Ollie and Liam, two, have a number of accounts to help them keep track of their spending

Sarah, 25, works part-time as a receptionist in a beauty salon while 32-year-old Gary works in Railway Maintenance for Coyle. Their major outgoings are nursery fees for the twins and bills, and they’re also trying to save up for a deposit for a house.

Sarah spoke to the News and Star about the impact the credit crunch was having on all areas of her life:

I’m saving for everything now,” she said.

“Whereas before we just had savings, now everything’s saved separately. We’ve savings for Christmas in one place, a deposit for a house in another.

“We’ve got a bills account which my wage goes into, along with half of Gary’s wage and our tax credits.

“The direct debits for all our bills go straight out of the account, but whereas there always used to be enough we now have to check all the time that there’s enough money to pay them. There’s nothing left over in that account at the end of the month now, so we only have Gary’s wage and after his diesel to get to work every day, we’re not left with much.”

She said they used to go to the supermarket and “just throw things in the trolley” but now she religiously checks the price of everything.

“We used to go to Asda for everything, but now we shop around to make sure we’re getting the best deal,” she added.

“Things like birthday cards I would pay £2 a time for but now I know I can get them cheaper so I do.

“We can’t afford to go out for meals much anymore, whereas we used to go out together and with friends about four times a month.

“There’s little things that we didn’t have to think about before as well – we’re going to a wedding this week and that would never have been an issue because we would’ve had the money.

“Now we have to think whether we’ve the money for diesel to get there, and what we can spend on a present and buying a new outfit.”

Child care costs Sarah £8 an hour – but she only earns £6 an hour when working, so effectively loses £2 for every hour worked.

“In April the boys will be entitled to free pre-school hours so that will make a huge difference and the nursery bill will come right down,” Sarah said.

“I go to work because I enjoy it – I need a break from looking after the children – but I do work a 16-hour week for nothing at the moment.

“In terms of holidays, we’ve not gone abroad since we had the kids because it’s too much like hard work, but I don’t think we’d be able to afford it even if we wanted to.

“We wanted to do a few things this year that we’ve not been able to though. We have been away, we went to a log cabin in the Lakes which was nice, but we weren’t able to do everything we wanted to do when we were there.

“We used to buy Christmas presents on credit cards, but now we will be saving up with the credit union and just buying what we’ve got the money for. It’s not like we can put everything on store cards and pay later and pay twice as much, because we can’t afford to do that. It’s probably a good thing that we’re more careful and can only spend what we have.

“We can’t afford to get into debt now.”

EBroughton@cngroup.co.uk