The retired couple
Jean and Tony, pensioners, Kent.

Video transcript

Jean: Hello, I'm Jean and this is my husband Tony and we live in the Orpington area.

Tony: We've been married now for 48 years and still talk to each other. We've lived in St Mary Cray in Orpington which is in Kent and we've been here for 36 years.

Jean: We have two children; a son and a daughter and we have four grandchildren. Unfortunately they don't live very near us but we do see them occasionally which is really nice.

Tony: We are retired now; I'm 75 and Jean is a little bit younger than me.

Tony and Jean go to the shops sequence

Tony: Well life is what you make it, so we do our utmost to make sure we get out, which we do.

Jean: Most place we meet people is on the bus. You get to know people quite well and the more you talk to people, the more people talk to you.

Tony: We're both involved with Age Concern and other organizations so that we're quite active and as general, we would say that we're surviving.

Jean: We're having to watch what we spend. We are, we just think, we used to go out shopping and just buy what I need and that was alright but now I have to make a list and think, shall I buy that this week or leave it? So I have to watch the pennies now.

Tony: Well basically everything over time has gone up and unfortunately our pensions haven't gone up at the same rate and that's gone on for quite a considerable number of years. But now with this Credit Crunch thing we are finding that its getting sharper and sharper so we're spending more time in doing our groceries and the like; looking for items that are 'buy one get one free', '30% extra'...

Jean: I do worry about my grandchildren, my daughters and my sons and the grandchildren's future because it doesn't look very safe at the moment but they're all quite sensible people and they work really hard.

Tony and Jean go to the the branch in Orpington

Tony: We've been with Lloyds now for what are we, 36 years- that's with the Orpington branch. We've got a Current Account down there and also our mortgage which is an interest-only one but unfortunately we didn't put it as a tracker because at that time when we had it arranged it wasn't thought of to be a good idea. At least we know what we've got to find and how much we're paying and that helps a great deal. My biggest concern for the future is that it is the unknown. At the moment we're struggling. Some months you have a few quid left but not many and I mean only a few; you're down to about 20 quid leeway. We're having to plan our lives literally day-by-day to keep within the boundaries that we've now got.