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Post by mossie on Mar 25, 2018 8:33:26 GMT
In my thread "Petticoat Lane", I mentioned that I was mean. Lagatta highlighted this re my trips etc. My meanness is all relative, it comes back to the expression "Live within your means".
Since the days I described then I have always worked within that expression, with the exception of taking out mortgages on homes, and repaying them within the rules laid down by the lenders. And once for the sake of 3 kids Christmas, I ran up a credit card debt which took three months to pay down. Ever since I do not consider spending money unless it is immediately available to me.
There is another old expression, totally forgotten now. "Neither a borrower nor a lender be"
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Post by patricklondon on Mar 25, 2018 9:27:46 GMT
That's not mean, that's thrift (remember the image on the old threepenny bits?). I was brought up the same way. It was partly a hangover from wartime shortage (never throw away something that'll come in useful some day, make do and mend as much as possible - we always kept wrapping paper and string for re-use); and partly just the kind of background we came from anyway - "Money doesn't grow on trees", "Never have more than two things on hire purchase at the same time" and that sort of thing. If only it were still possible for youngsters to not spend more than a third of their income on housing! My blog | My photos | My video clips | My Librivox recordings"too literate to be spam" |
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Post by tod2 on Mar 25, 2018 11:23:31 GMT
Millions of debt-ridden people have to live with the enormous rock weighing them down - and so they should seeing they created it! But! Is it entirely their fault as human beings with a brain?
Yes and no I think. They have a brain but it is not functioning the same way Mossie's and Patrick's brain does. They are weaker and lured into instant gratification or as I have noticed on a certain judges TV program...don't give a hoot. Either way, I have no sympathy.
Just this morning I read about Queen Elizabeth and her frugality. Good on you Ma'm! Pity it did not rub off on your son Charles who carries his whole bedroom around with him whenever he spends a night away from home - At great cost!
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Post by onlyMark on Mar 25, 2018 11:25:11 GMT
Also -
"Were you born in a barn!?"
and .....
"It's like bloody Blackpool illuminations in 'ere!"
plus....
"Stop playing with your food. There's plenty of starving kids in Africa that don't have any."
Nothing whatsoever to do with the above but the others just reminded me of them.
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Post by lagatta on Mar 25, 2018 12:17:09 GMT
Yes, Cholls annoys me because he pretends to be an ecologist but is immensely wasteful - far removed from "bicycle monarchy". By the way, the Dutch royal family are far from poor - their relative frugality stems from the Calvinism that is such a strong cultural influence in that country - even among athiests, Catholics, Muslims and Jews.
I was gently teasing mossie because I view meanness as the "dark side" of frugality, which is of course a positive.
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Post by patricklondon on Mar 25, 2018 13:17:37 GMT
Also - "Were you born in a barn!?" and ..... "It's like bloody Blackpool illuminations in 'ere!" plus.... "Stop playing with your food. There's plenty of starving kids in Africa that don't have any." Nothing whatsoever to do with the above but the others just reminded me of them. In answer to the question "What's for lunch?" - "Bread and pullet". Or if there was something you didn't want to eat "All the more for the rest of us, then". And once the TV came: "You make a better door than you do a window". My blog | My photos | My video clips | My Librivox recordings"too literate to be spam" |
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Post by Kimby on Mar 25, 2018 15:19:16 GMT
Also - "Were you born in a barn!?" and ..... "It's like bloody Blackpool illuminations in 'ere!" plus.... "Stop playing with your food. There's plenty of starving kids in Africa that don't have any." Nothing whatsoever to do with the above but the others just reminded me of them. In answer to the question "What's for lunch?" - "Bread and pullet". Or if there was something you didn't want to eat "All the more for the rest of us, then". And once the TV came: "You make a better door than you do a window". And that reminds me of two of my Austrian grandfather’s expressions: “Are you going to the movies? I see you’re picking your seat.” (If he caught you scratching your rear end.), and “Would you like a teaspoon?” Or “Send me a postcard when you get to the top!” If he caught you with your finger in your nose. |
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Post by fumobici on Mar 25, 2018 18:28:36 GMT
Millions of debt-ridden people have to live with the enormous rock weighing them down - and so they should seeing they created it! But! Is it entirely their fault as human beings with a brain? Yes and no I think. They have a brain but it is not functioning the same way Mossie's and Patrick's brain does. They are weaker and lured into instant gratification or as I have noticed on a certain judges TV program...don't give a hoot. Either way, I have no sympathy. Just this morning I read about Queen Elizabeth and her frugality. Good on you Ma'm! Pity it did not rub off on your son Charles who carries his whole bedroom around with him whenever he spends a night away from home - At great cost! I take almost the diametric opposite viewpoint. I'd like to see a return of strict usury laws, a ban on advertising credit or lending services, and generous personal bankruptcy provisions for those who do get into trouble with debt. It's naive to think that lenders aren't at least equally to blame as borrowers for bad debts. There's nothing sacred about debts resulting from speculative lending for profit, the risk of non-repayment through inadequate vetting of borrowers is the very reason justifying the profits. The lenders hold all the cards as far as information asymmetry going into the bargain; they should be prepared to take a loss when they get it wrong. Through most of human history, debt jubilees are a normal and frequent thing, and the reasons they were done haven't really changed since. If an economy becomes artificially moribund through unpayable debts brought on by injudicious lending, wipe the slate and start over. As for QEII, I don't think frugality is really in play when one has a net worth of £415million. |
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Post by lagatta on Mar 25, 2018 18:58:47 GMT
I tend to agree with yo, fumobici, but I was struggling to find a way to word it that didn't support overconsumption. One of my uncles (perhaps the only surviving one; he is about the same age as mossie and grew up with very little, so very frugal) was talking about all the sad ways poor people get themselves into debt, that aren't really their fault. They might need a car to get to work as public transport is poor, doesn't go to their destination, or run during their shift, so they have a shitty car that always breaks down, and they have no parking spot do wind up with tickets. Those were just a few of his examples.
Something similar happened to me years ago, and it will come as no surprise to many that it was caused by my then companion running up huge bills on my phone and doing other dodgy things. As far as I know I have no debt now, but that could always change due to unpredictables.
My uncle actually got scammed by a younger second cousin whom he had hired for a consultancy firm, and wound up falsely accused of business fraud. That is all cleared up now, as is his name, but it was hellish.
Yes, the biblical jubilee was a wonderful invention, and similar things exist in other cultures.
-----
I could well see Groucho Marx spouting Kimby's grandfather's expressions, though his family came from other parts of the Germanic-speaking world: father Alsatian, mother a Berliner.
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Post by mich64 on Mar 25, 2018 19:25:57 GMT
I take almost the diametric opposite viewpoint. I'd like to see a return of strict usury laws, a ban on advertising credit or lending services, and generous personal bankruptcy provisions for those who do get into trouble with debt. It's naive to think that lenders aren't at least equally to blame as borrowers for bad debts. There's nothing sacred about debts resulting from speculative lending for profit, the risk of non-repayment through inadequate vetting of borrowers is the very reason justifying the profits. The lenders hold all the cards as far as information asymmetry going into the bargain; they should be prepared to take a loss when they get it wrong. I agree with you Fumobici and I also think it is far to easy for people to borrow. We have helped 5 family members financially in the past few years because their debt became overwhelming. Some of them do take blame for overspending and some had unexpected hardships, employment and marital difficulties. We also talk with some of our nieces and nephews about retirement planning since fewer and fewer employers are offering pensions or retirement benefits. I also believe there is no doubt that people give in to instant gratification. We did so last year by taking two vacations and it took planning to pay off the credit card debt we took on to accomplish this. We did have a plan on the overspending and a plan of how to pay it all before the end of the year, which we did, however, I do recognize the risk. Our Municipality also brought it up at a council meeting on how to limit Pay Day loan companies by perhaps limiting how many can operate in our city. I am not sure how successful they will be with that, but I understand the reasoning. |
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Post by kerouac2 on Mar 25, 2018 20:04:35 GMT
I was raised in extreme frugality, for which I am extremely grateful. I have always considered the money in the bank to be a "rainy day" fund because in my early days of independence, I was often wiped out by necessary expenses that I had forgotten. For example in France, the electric bill arrives only once every three months (although now you can pay monthly if you prefer) and when I was in my early twenties I would forget about it until it suddenly appeared. This could force me to eat pasta every day for two or three weeks.
In later years, I now find that I have "too much" money in the bank, but I have difficulty spending it due to so many years of being a skinflint.
I remember having a spendthift friend in the past who was constantly writing cheques that bounced, and he was always furious when it happened. He explained to me that the whole point of banks was to give you extra money when you didn't have any. What a lovely fantasy. I saw him recently after a ten or fifteen year hiatus and he seems to be cured now, especially since he is the chief financial officer of a high school.
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Post by Kimby on Mar 25, 2018 21:54:18 GMT
We are skinflints, too. We don’t have cable TV or a landline phone/DSL internet, we keep our cars for decades, have lived in the same house for 32 years, and have no kids to spend money on. Or, will it to. We are debt-free, retired, and just realizing that we can start spending some money now.
We just made our first “rash” purchase: we upgraded our Verizon internet account to “Beyond Unlimited”, up from 6 GB of data per month. But we did it mainly because Windows 10 updates are chewing through so much data, that we keep having to buy more each month.
Still waiting for a big splurge.
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Post by kerouac2 on Mar 25, 2018 22:58:13 GMT
My next big splurge will almost certainly be my cargo ship trip, which will cost 5 times more than flying to the destination.
However, I have a non-splurge major expense coming up -- the replacement of the roof on my building, of which my share will be about 15,000 euros. To spend even more money, I am going to get a new window cut into the roof when they do it. On top of that, the replacement of the roof will almost certainly destroy the ceiling of my upstairs room, so I will have to pay to get that redone as well. Thank god I saved so much money in the past.
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Post by lagatta on Mar 25, 2018 23:41:43 GMT
I do hope you can put in some kind of railing around your upper room - and do you have a railing on your stairs? One of my cousins has a very similar old house and she did that. Suppose I suffer too much from vertigo in my dotage. I've lived in quite a few quirky and precarious places.
À part ça, seems like a wise investment.
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Post by questa on Mar 26, 2018 5:17:43 GMT
I was brought up to be frugal as well. My parents would save for something rather go into debt for it, but my maternal grandparents were mean to the point of stingy misers.
"Many a mickle makes a muckle" she would say, nodding wisely as if she had just discovered the principle.
"Listen to your grandmother, Girl" he would add, "You have to turn every thruppence over 3 times before you spend it." I lived with them for a year then went out into the world where you could buy a transistor radio for a small sum each week. I couldn't do it...It took me only a month saving and I paid CASH.
Much later doing the 'single mum, part time worker' bit, my boys and I practiced turning thruppences and saving mickles. With fruit trees, veges, chickens and a good op-shop we made it through tough times. When one lad wanted to go camping on a school project, he raised the mickles by taking over the local Avon round. The other son bought a racing bike with money from neighbourhood recycling.
When they moved out I found I had enough muckles to go traveling.. Old habits die hard...I find I go for the cheaper accommodation, street food eateries and turn every rupiah over 3 times before I spend it.
I know to save those mickles so that there will be enough muckles to enjoy myself.
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Post by mickthecactus on Mar 26, 2018 6:48:38 GMT
Gosh. Aren’t you all perfect.
Wish I could join your club.
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Post by kerouac2 on Mar 26, 2018 7:13:01 GMT
We are preparing our stand up comedy show. Every joke starts with "My family was so poor that..."
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Post by onlyMark on Mar 26, 2018 8:13:21 GMT
The start should be, "When I were a lad.........." and "Tha's lucky......"
Mr Micawber -
"Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure nineteen [pounds] nineteen [shillings] and six [pence], result happiness. Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure twenty pounds ought and six, result misery."
We were once so poor we only had our one plane and one yacht to go on holiday.
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Post by cheerypeabrain on Mar 26, 2018 9:12:10 GMT
I am absolutely useless...my parents raised 6 children on one-not very generous- wage. We didn't have things that other children had BUT we had things nobody else did...my parents made everything from scratch. I had a cot for my dolls, Dad made the cot and Mum made the bedding and clothes for the dolls. Dad made carts, toy caravans and dolls houses for us. We also had telescopes in the garden...quite unusual for a city estate. No car, no holidays, I'd never 'eaten out' when I left home at 18, Mum made all my clothes aside from underwear. We had good shoes tho...I was dreadfully embarrassed and hated not being fashionable for most of my teens until I got myself a weekend job and bought my own clothes  We never had pocket money or savings, and consequently when I left home I hadn't a clue how to budget, or make my money last...so it didn't. We had a couple of loans over the years for cars, and our mortgage but all were paid back in a timely manner. I am a bit loose with my cash but we don't have credit cards or any loans now we're both retired... As an adult we struggled just like everybody else. If I have money I tend to spend it. My beloved has always said that I waste money and that he only buys things that we need (nonsense btw) he refuses to accept responsibility for our spending "look,at this!" He will shout waving the bank statement at me "you spent £96 last Wednesday" I will point out that he was present at the time...in Asda or Sainsburys buying groceries  I am slightly more in control of myself now. I slaved away for years for the NHS working crappy hours and being constantly tired...Don't see why I shouldn't enjoy myself a bit now I'm retired. |
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Post by onlyMark on Mar 26, 2018 9:37:40 GMT
Now I'm getting a pension and not having a need to spend it, every time I look at my bank account I always think, "Damn....what can I spend that on?"
By the way, the only thing we will leave our kids is anything we've not had chance to spend.
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Post by mich64 on Mar 26, 2018 15:56:37 GMT
As a child, when I occasionally asked for something special, my dad would say now times that by 5 because I would have to get your brother and sisters one too. Even though I had no children, I never forgot it and it did help me to think before I buy. We have always shared one car, our boat is 42 years old and our credit cards are usually kept with no balance owing.
Most of our spare income goes to the maintenance and upkeep of our home and our annual holiday. My husband will retire in 3 1/2 years and we have planned our finances for that date. I admit to be being a bit obsessive about staying with the plan, but our 2 week holiday each year makes it all worth it for many reasons.
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Post by kerouac2 on Mar 26, 2018 17:14:49 GMT
I never asked Santa Claus for anything that I didn't think my parents could afford. So I never had a bicycle as much as I would have liked to have one.
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Post by lagatta on Mar 26, 2018 17:19:42 GMT
I guess firefighters retire earlier than most other public workers because their job is so strenuous and they have to be in top shape. 3 1/2 years will come round faster than you may think.
You have a beautiful house with that lake view. Will you ever get another dog?
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Post by whatagain on Mar 26, 2018 19:29:48 GMT
I was raised frugally too but our situation rapidly improved, so we ended up rich I guess but spending with reason.
Now I have another problem as by all means (hihi) I should consider myself rich (or at least I'm married to a rich lady) but cannot really spend.
I like to stay in 'normality' : I stay in reasonably priced hotels even on expenses, I don't buy a lot of stuff etc.
We never borrowed for things like holidays or such trivial(?) things. However when Robin was ill, we overspent (when he felt good, we would go on small trips etc) and we worked less, so we ended up with a situation where we would have had a debt if our parents hadn't had - both - the good idea to give us money.
Now there are things that I consider are not spending money : books for one.
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Post by questa on Mar 27, 2018 12:54:00 GMT
Gosh. Aren’t you all perfect. Wish I could join your club. Now, Now Mr Cactus,don't get all prickly with us.  |
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Post by mich64 on Mar 27, 2018 14:49:38 GMT
I guess firefighters retire earlier than most other public workers because their job is so strenuous and they have to be in top shape. 3 1/2 years will come round faster than you may think. You have a beautiful house with that lake view. Will you ever get another dog? Yes Legatta, you are correct, firefighters here have a mandatory retirement age of 60. His birthday is this Friday and he was joking about our ages and how fast time has gone by. We have been together since we were 15 and 16 and now approaching retirement but like you say it will come faster than we think! I do not think we will get another dog but we enjoy dog sitting which I think is better for us since our plans are to hopefully spend a few winter months away in the future. Just a few minutes before logging on I was looking over the lake watching a neighbour skiing back to his place and he had to go back out to convince his dog that play time was over. (Tried editing to fix my mess with the quote feature, but could not fix it.  |
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Post by patricklondon on Mar 28, 2018 14:28:54 GMT
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Post by mich64 on Mar 28, 2018 17:23:04 GMT
Thank you Patrick. I will try that.
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Post by tod2 on Mar 29, 2018 7:37:55 GMT
As for QEII, I don't think frugality is really in play when one has a net worth of £415million. Exactly! She could afford the most comfortable heating system there is but prefers her little bar heaters - which may I add, are huge on electricity consumption so maybe she is not being so frugal after all?!  It must be darn hard to spend spend spend on themselves when a person has won the lottery worth millions. Could take years to get used to. I really don't like seeing family and friends that have not one, but several wardrobes and cupboards filled to the rafters with clothes and a zillion pairs of shoes. Keeps the High Street in business I guess.... About leaving the kids an inheritance - all I can say is we are happy our son is in the family business and earning his keep. My grandsons are getting the best education money can buy( paid for by grandad) and will also inherit a nice little nest egg in their Trust Funds. It makes us happy to know our family will be financially secure when we are long gone. Into our 70's now, we still show up for duty in the business but maybe not on time any longer... |
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Post by rikita on Apr 27, 2018 8:34:17 GMT
i think we also had very little money when i was little, but then, everyone had little money so i suppose it was normal. we had a big house and garden (my dad and my uncle inherited it from an old lady they helped out a lot, and build the second half of the house themselves later on), so when i was a bit older, some of my friends thought we were rich. this wasn't the case, but i think when i was a teenager we were doing okay, as both of my parents had secure jobs, while unemployment was high in our area ...
i had some debts sometimes due to student loans (university is free, here, but you can get loans for your cost of living), unexpected electricity bills, and mr. r. brought some debt along when we got married (he said it was his - but really, if you have shared finances, it's both of yours) ... always tried to pay back as fast as possible, in some cases with help (mom lent me the money to pay back the student loans at once, as you got a "discount" then, and i could pay her back without interest. usually avoid ever spending more than i have, and like to have a small extra amount for emergencies, but we do spend most of our money, for me the main thing is travel, our skiing and climbing trips, etc. - in a way, we live above our means, which we can only do because we pay very little rent, and if we got a different (bigger) place, the increase in rent would be so much, i am not sure how we'd manage - i like being able to travel and go to restaurants occasionally or buying some nicer food ... unless our situation changes, we won't leave anything to a., and we aren't doing anything for "later", either ...
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