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

homegrown_life

weezl - I've only ever lurked on this thread, but just wanted to applaud your post. You've definitely got your head screwed on right. Now where's that smily with the head getting screwed on....

I'll keep an eye out for your recipes as would be interested in trying them.

JayJay14

Weezl - if you do delete I'm just glad I was up early enough on a Saturday mornng to read it first.

I couldn't agree more, even though OH and I have been there. My debt entirely being brought about by 'buy now pay later' including the mortgage increase (now owe more on the house that we did when we bought it 11 years ago though luckily still have plenty of equity) and we are in the process of trying to wean ourselves off.

I would love to be a receipe tested please.

Kittikins

Weezl for PM! You've really made me think. Since being on MSE which coincided with becoming a single mum nearly 5 years ago, I've struggled financially and emotionally with money, food and lifestyle.

My friends say that I'm much happier since being divested of my spendaholic ex OH, and my lack of credit card debt, loans or anything other than my ginormous mortgage attest to a lot of that happiness, as I don't fall for the buy now pay back later advertising. I'm ultra conscious that if for any reason I can't work, the buck stops with me and I have bills to pay, so other friends may say that I've become boring, but hey, I have a child, no spare cash to spend £6/hour on a babysitter to go and sit in a bar quaffing wine that I can buy easily 1/5th of the price and sit at home with the same people in comfort!

Where I do have problems though, is with food.....whilst we're vegequarians so at least I don't have the moral and cost issues of buying cheap meat imported around the world when we have plenty of animals in the UK, and I buy mainly dented tins of tomatoes, beans, etc etc, I do too much of the "oooh, look, strawberries in December, we must have some for a treat" shopping and need to break that cycle.

I'd be very interested to hear more - and wherever you set up your musings on the topic, I'll be there like a shot!

In the meantime, it's back to reading the "Sucking Eggs" book I borrowed from the library yesterday, all about how people lived in WW2 and "lessons we can learn from them today". Very interesting and thought-provoking.

ceridwen

weezl74 wrote: »

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.

:rotfl::rotfl::rotfl::rotfl:(thats ceridwen sitting here wiping tears of laughter from her eyes - thinking "attagirl our Weezl - now I know why I thought I'd just pop in on Weezls thread for an update":)).

You'll make an old MSE'er (well "of a certain age") very happy if you do this. I thought this was what you had in mind somewheres along the line when you started out on this road;):).

You go gal - and I shall await any veggie recipes with interest.

(.....sits back...puffing up chest...and rubbing virtual brass medal on it...having only earlier today told a fellow MSE'er "Weezl is a rising star").:rotfl:

You've made a lot of friends on MSE Weezl - I dont anticipate any problem at all in finding even more testers if you want them.

Frugaldom

weezl74 wrote: »

...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!

Weezl - Bring your challenge to 'How Much Have You Saved' boards, there are waaaaaaaay more people needing to survive this debt-ridden society than are ever going to stop and consider if it's fair to have 2 challenges in one thread. Bring it on! :beer: There will be no detraction as we are running complimentary challenges, not competing challenges. My first ever published (elsewhere) grocery-related challenge was to feed a family of 4 for £10 per week and that was back in 1999, so I'm already interested. Maybe you can help some of the Frugalers to shift their debts faster and easier learn to appreciate the difference between wants and needs.

ceridwen

Weezl

I think you should put your Food Challenge on Old Style Board myself.

As its going to be purely and simply food-based only - then it very very obviously belongs on Old Style Board. I think that it will almost certainly remain on Old Style once it starts - rather than getting shifted elsewhere.

If wrong decisions were made and it was shifted - then that wouldnt have been your doing. You would have put it on the correct Board in the first place.

The thing is too - that, even if it did get shifted onto some other Board wrongly, then by that time you will have alerted fellow OS'ers and we will just follow you over (as happened with Nykmedia). Nyk's Challenge clearly belongs on the O.S. Board - but got shifted - but people have followed her over in hordes.

mumtoomany

Hi Weezle and all,
I was inspired by your long post, if more people thought like that the country would be a much better place.

We are fortunate (or maybe wise) we are MF, having bought and lived in a series of badly broken houses, mended them and moved on to the next; have no debt, other than the cash back credit card paid in full each month; and despite being on low income have some rainy day money.

However the area in which we live is overflowing with debt ridden households, I see poverty and deprivation every day in the playground in people who should have a larger disposable income than us.

I would love to test some of your recipies for you (don't know if this is the right place to offer). Lets see if, between us all, we can change British attitudes to money. What a legacy that would be for MSE and Weezle.

Mumtoomany.

Queen-Bee_2

Hello Weezl - think you've hit the nail on the head with much of what you've written this morning. Not long ago in my diary, I described how much happier I am living with less these days... and totally agree about living within one's means.

The UK economy was propped up by consumer spending for years. As yet however, it's not quite clear whether the party's just in hiatus, or whether we're moving towards a new paradigm. I guess only time will tell!!

Happy to test any recipes on offer, especially anything low cost that's also high in protein (I need to up the protein in my diet and am finding this difficult on a budget).
QB

Courgette

Don't delete your post weezl, you're an inspiration! Seriously, I don't use the word lightly :T:T:T

In_Search_Of_Me

now call me naugty but if I copy this even if Weezl delites it she cant delite mine!! So Weezl unless you beg and give ample reason for his to be delited then it stays! Flipping heck though girl that much brain actitity before 8am?!!!
And dear deaders will you all join me in encouraging our lovely, geeky weezl to write a book or website....?!!

weezl74 wrote: »

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?