Fed up of worrying about money.

Park (and the like) hampers are not an economical way of saving for Christmas. Just as catalogue shopping is invariably more expensive with less choice.
Plus there is a risk factor - a company can go bust and then you are left with nothing.
Surely a savings account -post office or building society perhaps, then you could go shopping for what you want and take advantage of the special offers?

Skweek1, Bopeep14 , maggie57 , tillybelle

Horrible sad tales from you all., I wish I could win the lottery and help you all, because you all sound completely desperate.

BoPeep, it does strike me that you should be paid for that amount of childcare, in your circumstances? It is a full time+ job!

Surely OP's children should realise what is happening.
It must be blindingly obvious. Why have they not already discussed this issue with their parents, from the parents point of view and discovering ways of alleviating their parent's problems.

Or they are just monumentally selfish and as long as they get the childcare, do not bother to think beyond that.

Are you a person who worries about most things including money.
If you are with debt problems which are seriously large you need professional advice if you think you cannot sort this out with your debtors.
You need to prepare a budget showing your income and expenditure to see how you are placed.
If credit card expenditure is your downfall cut the cards up and don't buy anything you cannot afford.
I am sure your family would not want you to get into debt to purchase presents for your grandchildren.

i am on a very limited income.
So, I keep a list, which I update as necessary. This shows ALL of my monthly outgoings, including such things as insurances, petrol (averaged), supermarket shopping, water and energy costs, and also includes an amount for pressies for children & g.children for birthdays and christmas. As long as this amount remains slightly less than my monthly incomings then I am okay.
I do all shopping on credit card, and this is paid in full by DD every month. Whenever I use it, I keep a running total for that month, so I can see exactly what is needing to be paid and is also useful for checking against the computer invoice for that month.
I only have a small amount of savings, but these are used if the need to replace any items in the home become apparent. I allow a maximum total of £50 each year per g.child for their birthdays and xmas and also the same amount for each of my adult children -which they get at xmas.
I do not like holidays, so do not bother with those, although do like the occasional day coach trip. At present I am still able to run my small car. Fortunately I have no housing costs.
Do think it is important to know exactly what is being spent all the time. Need to be very careful of running up credit card costs, which is a very expensive way of purchasing anything.