1 mortgage, 2 babies, 3 years to be MF, 4 goodness sake!- weezl's diary

Pippajo

That would be a great idea. Lots of books out there but by people who have the theory not the practice. You have lived it and shown it can be done.

BigMummaF

If it were me:-I'd have to be very careful that I didn't lapse into the 'I've got time to spare' frame of thinking & thereby lose focus completely IYKWIM I was always the one who had every intention of getting my homework done as soon as I could, but inevitably ended up burning the midnight>2am>4:53am :eek: on one occasion [but pleeeeeeze don't tell my mum ] oil when it was due the next day. Things are pretty much still like that with me now & I guess it will always be so....
In the grand scheme of things, eight weeks is not that long really & others have so rightly said, there's little point in making your life so difficult that you miss what you have already. I was of the opinion that two babies were not that different to having just the one but I was wrong. My first was a placid, easy-going bundle who appreciated a cuddle but was also happy to have some 'solo' time; the second was a bluddin nightmare in comparison who neither wanted to be nursed or left to cry but just being able to sit & watch them sleeping or to glory in their latest achievements, meant so much more than a tidy spreadsheet ever could :A

But then you're better at this ms-ing than I am :rotfl:

Sian_the_Green

Hey all, Weezl, I think you are pretty remarkable in your challenges and I don't think those two months will be that much of a difference... Why not allow yourself 2 easier months with your little family

I am currently half way through having some patch testing and my patches for nickel has come up massively already. Just having a read about nickel in food; better hope you never develop it weezl, whole grains, lentils, canned food! eek, am hoping they don't suggest a low nickel diet, not sure I have enough will power!

boredofbeingathome

Sian_the_Green wrote: »

Hey all, Weezl, I think you are pretty remarkable in your challenges and I don't think those two months will be that much of a difference... Why not allow yourself 2 easier months with your little family

I am currently half way through having some patch testing and my patches for nickel has come up massively already. Just having a read about nickel in food; better hope you never develop it weezl, whole grains, lentils, canned food! eek, am hoping they don't suggest a low nickel diet, not sure I have enough will power!

That's interesting Sian- i have read a bit about them and wonder about things like that. Hope it works out ok for you.

Fire_Fox

I have popped by to be inspired to greater frugalism, but no Weezl? :huh:

THRIFTY_GIRL

Fire_Fox wrote: »

I have popped by to be inspired to greater frugalism, but no Weezl? :huh:

I wonder if little Weezl has arrived early?:think:

weezl74

Fire_Fox wrote: »

I have popped by to be inspired to greater frugalism, but no Weezl? :huh:

Hey fire fox I went looking for you else where earlier, I asked for your advice/consultation on Mark's thread on old-style

THRIFTY_GIRL wrote: »

I wonder if little Weezl has arrived early?:think:

:eek: eek no I'm not ready! Hiya TG


Well since you've asked so nicely, a mini update:

Mortgage now at £64,800, when I met MSE in Oct 2007 it was £123,600 :j


I've been still being frugal, just a lot of it is very grocery challengish, and I sometimes feel that too much of that on a MFW board might be a bit off topic. But then I know I can't start a new diary/challenge on Old-style cos they all go on 'how much have you saved' now. And since Nykmedia's challenge is there, it seems a bit wrong to be there too, cos that challenge is fab and I don't want to detract! I'm torn!

In brief I'll describe what I'm up to....

I'm still very fascinated by the idea of subsistence living. I read quite a bit about it IRL. It is a very untrendy topic in Britain and the USA since approx the 50s.

This is because wartime austerity prompted the governments to ask questions about how cheaply you could feed a family without incurring any long term health detriments.

A lot of expert time and money went into this.

My personal belief (controversy warning) is that if we in the UK had continued to be thoughtful at a top leadership/governmental about the meaning of subsistence then our overseas aid would not have been so immorally and embarrassingly ill-thought through in the 80s for example with Ethiopia.

I'm aware these are strong words.

I shall try to justify them.

Bob geldof and Bono raised multi millions of pounds to 'feed the world' in 1985 :j:j:j Amazing achievement.

And what did we do?

We dropped food parcels from the sky by helicopter onto farmland in ethiopia. AFAIK we did this at a time when crucial sowing and irrigation for the next years crops definitely needed to be done-more than ever before.

The ethiopian farmers had 2 choices. To listen for the sounds of planes all day, knowing that of the 50 families near you whose children were dying only one parcel would drop and spend your whole day waiting waiting and running for even a rumour of a whisper of a plane. But maybe you'd be lucky, it'd land on your farm, and your family would live.

Or you could carry on sowing and irrigating while they died.

Unsurprisingly, no-one farmed.

And the next year the famine was worse than the year that sir Bob and Sir Bono had inspired us all to dig deep. But our government could not easily explain this to us, and Sirs Bob and Bono could no longer inspire us to dig deep because we now had compassion fatigue....

pauses for some breakfast- Kester is hungry (ironic given what I'm posting about!) back in a min xxx

weezl74

This ignorant governmental response was in my view caused by a horrible, scary insidious belief system, that is still (and more so) prevalent in society today and not being challenged. It caused a second huge ignored famine in Ethiopia. I also feel it is doing large unreported damage here NOW in the UK.


Here's the bad logic: Give a man a fish- you feed him for a day.
Here's the good logic: Teach a man to fish, you feed him for life.

Nice easy mantra isn't it? We've seen it on the T-shirt of every fair-trade eco warrior friend we've ever had. We've worn it ourselves.

Here's the slightly more chilling version: Give a man a fish, 11 months later you've killed every last peron within 60 kilometers of his farm.

Alright weezl, you've made your point! Where are you going with this and what on earth has it got to do with MSE, the UK now and subsistence?

Alright. Gulp, sticks neck out:

Give a man a bank loan/credit card/mortgage extension to consolidate and afford that nice new sofa. And you feed him for a day/few months/year.(But you strap a debt milstone around his neck that he can't shift unless he borrows more and weighs down his neck more)

Teach him to live within his means, and you feed him for life.

The problem in the UK right now is that no-one in leadership thinks we need to be thinking about and researching subsistence. We aren't a poor country right?

Think again chutney! The average person's non-mortgage debt in the UK is circa £10000 and it's rising.

The average homeowner in the UK purchasing after 1995 has a debt now that their asset (house) is barely worth the amount outstanding on. Further, they will never again be able to borrow at a nice low interest rate because their equity isn't large enough. Sad times.

The thing is, you can easily show on telly a famine, and stir people's hearts. You find some very emaciated Ethiopian children in a hot dry place, you film them crying and too exhausted to brush flies of their faces. You play 'search for the hero inside yourself' as an inspirational background music track. You sit back, you've got yourself a disaster appeal. Simples!;)

Let's try to make a filmclip to show the impoverishedness in the uk! Here's Bob Smith and his lovely wife Shirley, let's film their famine, their poverty!:T:T:T:T

Oh hang on, they and their children are not skinny, there are no flies. Their semi detached in Redditch is not surrounded by parched looking earth with wilted grass. (Bob's proud of his garden actually, he just gave Mr B and Q £500 on his 17.2% apr credit card to redesign it ) but we don't film that bit. Cos we can't.

Can't film the fact either that at some deep level Bob knows he's going to pay 5 times over for that £500 quid garden. Or that sometimes it wakes him in the night. And it's probably sustaining the smoking and drinking which will end his life early. And which cost him an extra 50 to 100 quid a month. That he can't now give back quickly enough to Mr B and Q... And so it goes on.

I could continue but I've said too much already. And I've probably lost pals by my outspokenness.:o:)


But let me just say:

It's not Bob and Shirley Smith's fault and there's not a lot they can do. Except live within their means. But no-one in leadership has invested money in teaching them how. So they don't.:( If you are a Bob or a Shirley, I'm not against you. I'm on your side and I think you've been let down.

They also live in a society where these messages are allowed and advocated:

Want a lovely new sofa for £3000? Have it now! Pay for it over the next 4 years :beer::beer::beer:

Buy one, get one free-Yay! and now eat it twice as fast, develop a taste for it you didn't have before and develop a lifetime brand alleigance to a food stuff you could make yourself for 1/10th the cost.:j:j:j

Don't impose a tight budget on your families food consumption! We live in the UK! Noone needs here to scrimp! Our children need 9 portions of fresh fruit and vegetables every day, and they must be fruits indigenous to another country, eaten out of season, so they will cost £2.50 for a snack of a slice of melon cut into little cubes:D. Don't buy then a 6p apple! It says smartprice on the label! How can you treat your kids this way?:eek::mad:

Shouts into a void: Wake up Uk, wake up! Before it's too late.

So that was the background to the challenge. I hope you skipped it unless you are a sucker for punishment:o I hope if you read it that you are not offended at my passion about this. I know I have spoken vehemently, I shall probably delete the whole thing later.

So let's try to do something useful about it eh Weezl?

So I sit and I think these thoughts and I think, what can I do? I aint no Gordon Brown. I aint no Darling in charge of the budget. (apart from in my house to my lovely DH:rotfl:)

I've got friends on MSE. I've got a computer. I've got a brain. I've got a rudimentary knowledge of nutrition. I can live on 50p a day if I need to and put my mind to it.

What I'd dearly love to create is a resource. With meal plans and recipes and costings. For a 'normal' family of 4 (2 adults 2 teens). And I’d like it to prove itself to be healthy, and I’d like it to not be too much of a break away from what people normally eat. Because these are the objections and fears that most normal people have when you try to help them to live within their means.

So I’ve been asking for volunteer recipe testers and so far 15 lovely MSEers have stepped up to the plate. And I’m more grateful than I can say. Thanks:A. I hope there are more who might spare the time and the cash to test a frugal recipe. Let me know if you do.

Erm…… so I think that counts as the longest ever answer to what have you been up to Weezl, anything frugal to report?

gallygirl

weezl74 wrote: »

Teach him to live within his means, and you feed him for life.

Wonderful post Weezl, that quote says it all :T

weezl74 wrote: »

Erm…… so I think that counts as the longest ever answer to what have you been up to Weezl, anything frugal to report?

:rotfl::rotfl::rotfl::rotfl::rotfl:

Wonderful passion Weezl, keep up the good work :T

knithappens

weezl - I am 100% in agreement with you

( also cant wait to test some recipes)