General Chat

I'm not sure that half the time children really take in the lessons their parents try to teach them. They have to learn by their own experiences.

Both our kids were brought up with the idea that you worked and saved for anything you wanted and you only have credit cards if you can pay them off in full every month. One child has grown up ultra careful and won't even have a credit card, the other is just the opposite. Responsibility for his children has improved him a bit but money still burns a hole in his pocket.

But you evidently know when to stop.

The crucial factor is debt I think.

Your last line should possibly be "Trust in the Universe but have a bit of self-control."

I am your total opposite, Sharron. I have never saved in my long life (except to put money away for my funeral) and the nearest I have come to penny pinching is boiling an occasional organic chicken carcass for soup. I have always felt that 'something will turn up' if I am running short and the strange thing is that it has. Time and time again the Universe has come up trumps and landed great luck in my life. I have never baked a cake, eaten roadkill, made mince last three meals, eaten quorn, mended a sock, I LOVE good food and if I could afford lobster, would have it every second meal, have three credit cards for emergencies and have very little debt.

\i would get no pleasure at all in scrimping. Trust in the Universe! :-D :-D :-D

As I am sure you have noticed, I am extremely tight!

I wasn't born that way but had a very sensible friend who was bringing up two children alone when I was a young teenager and she showed me the joy of parsimony.

It was an eye- opener as I had rarely had anything new as I watched my mother lurch from crisis to crisis , beset by electricity bills that leaped up unexpectedly on a quarterly basis while she was busily spending the pay packet that was handed over un-opened on a Saturday.

My partner is a financial bus smash and, having been frightened while trying to sort out his financial mess on one occasion, I let him wallow in it and don't get involved.

His problem is, I am sure, due to habits he learned in childhood from parents who were busily buying an identity on the never never.

It came out in conversation recently that he had not ever come across the practice of saving up for things and had certainly never done it himself. The fact that I put a bit of the benefits by every week and had no intention of giving it to him was right out of his orbit as he couldn't understand what I would want the money hanging about for!

Always, if I have wanted something, I have put a bit by to buy it and waited until I had enough, apart from buying the car which was all very carefully calculated to take advantage of scrappage on a heap!
At an age when I was driving that I spent more time under than in or hitch-hiking (where you meet a better class of pervert sometimes!) because I couldn't afford one, he was driving a new car on finance.

The nearest he had ever come to saving up was when he wanted fishing tackle as a child. Rather than have him save and wait, his parents had bought the tackle and had him pay them back weekly from his pocket money.

What sort of a lesson was that?! Isn't it the one that has been shown to far too many children who are now drowning in debt and unable to cope with their debts?

End of essay. Off to count my Shekels now.