PLEASE READ BEFORE POSTING

Hello Forumites! However well-intentioned, for the safety of other users we ask that you refrain from seeking or offering medical advice. This includes recommendations for medicines, procedures or over-the-counter remedies. Posts or threads found to be in breach of this rule will be removed.
📨 Have you signed up to the Forum's new Email Digest yet? Get a selection of trending threads sent straight to your inbox daily, weekly or monthly!

Preparedness for when

Options
1142514261428143014314145

Comments

  • ragz_2
    ragz_2 Posts: 3,254 Forumite
    Part of the Furniture 1,000 Posts Name Dropper Combo Breaker
    Back on an old hobbyhorse, I think our youngsters would make a much better go of life today if they were taught housekeeping, budgeting, cookery, needlework, gardening, childcare etc.etc. It must be so difficult to make the right choices if you just don't know what the right choice is!!!

    So very true. I currently have my almost-18-year-old sister living with us while she waits for a place at a YMCA foyer. There is a gap of 10 and a half years between us but it feels like at least a generation. I am trying, while she is here, to teach her as much as I can about living on your own and the skills required. Simple things like planning ahead, like not using all your phone credit in two days or spending your last fiver when you still have buses to catch... along with things like cooking and washing up (yeah apparently that has to be taught, so no idea where I learned it!), keeping staple foods in store, the idea that having a shower rather than a bath (if you must do so every day!) is more economical. She is discovering the benefits of blankets and layers, as I refuse to put the heating on yet...
    DH and I couldn't believe it when we discovered today that she had never heard of rechargeable batteries!

    I am also giving her plenty of childcare practise while she's here, she is constantly amazed at what hard work it seems to be to raise a family and run a home :)
    June Grocery Challenge £493.33/£500 July £/£500
    2 adults, 3 teens
    Progress is easier to acheive than perfection.
  • ragz_2
    ragz_2 Posts: 3,254 Forumite
    Part of the Furniture 1,000 Posts Name Dropper Combo Breaker
    Bedsit_Bob wrote: »
    Not only that mardatha, but if they got fewer presents, instead of being showered with many hundreds of pounds worth of stuff, they might learn to appreciate (and even respect) what they got, a bit more.

    I know a couple, with 3 children, who regularly spend well over £2,000 on Christmas.

    If each child doesn't get at least £500 spent on them, the parents feel they're being mean.

    Oh my goodness! Take a zero off that for my budget per child!
    When I was little we used to choose our present from the toyshop catalogue, a few months before Christmas, budget was usually £15-20 and Mum would pay a few quid off each week when she went to town. Oddly that was 20 years ago and you didn't get any more for your money then, so prices on toys must have fallen, relative to income.

    No, it wasn't me with the charity shop lantern, that was someone else. I just want to know what best to fill ours with as hubby has liquid paraffin but I would rather not use that.

    'Stuff' seemed to cost more when I was little... I remember my secondary school uniform costing at least twice as much more than a week's rent (£25 a week for a caravan in the countryside, no water or electric though!). These days I can buy my kids uniform when I do the weekly food shop and get one whole outfit including shoes, for £25!
    June Grocery Challenge £493.33/£500 July £/£500
    2 adults, 3 teens
    Progress is easier to acheive than perfection.
  • Remind me again ragz.

    Wick width?

    Lantern type?
  • I think these children, who get lots of expensive presents, are being set up for one hell of a disappointment, in the years to come.

    What happens when one, or both, parents lose their job, or they can't get any more 0% cards to shuffle their debts?

    Suddenly, all these expensive gifts are no longer an option.

    It's OK for children who've never had masses of expensive presents (what you haven't had, you don't miss), but for those used to getting the latest phones and electronic gizmos, half a dozen items from £land, is going to be a major culture shock.
  • bluebag
    bluebag Posts: 2,450 Forumite
    1,000 Posts Combo Breaker
    Bedsit_Bob wrote: »
    I think these children, who get lots of expensive presents, are being set up for one hell of a disappointment, in the years to come.

    What happens when one, or both, parents lose their job, or they can't get any more 0% cards to shuffle their debts?

    Suddenly, all these expensive gifts are no longer an option.

    It's OK for children who've never had masses of expensive presents (what you haven't had, you don't miss), but for those used to getting the latest phones and electronic gizmos, half a dozen items from £land, is going to be a major culture shock.

    I forsee strops of epic proportions and much wailing and gnashing of teeth.

    I never ever asked mine what they wanted and still don't.

    They get what Santa brings and it's a surprise, sometimes the elves have worked hard and sometimes the elves have had a lot more work to do and they get less.

    For 20 odd years they have loved the surprises Santa brings and still do
  • VJsmum
    VJsmum Posts: 6,999 Forumite
    Part of the Furniture 1,000 Posts Name Dropper Photogenic
    GreyQueen wrote: »
    :) Hi.

    Don't coal merchants deliver coal anymore? Admittedly our family haven't had coal since the 1970s but we always used to have "the coalman" deliver it.

    My Mum has a mischieveous sense of humour and one day the coalman came around and just shot the usual quantity into the bunker without asking if/ or how much she wanted.

    She told him she didn't actually want any and let him stew for a few seconds whilst he contemplated shovelling that all back into the sacks before having mercy and telling him she was only teasing.

    One thing the folks used to do back in the 60s and 70s when we were using coal was to buy it even in the summer, as if they left it all to the winter quarter we wouldn't have enough money to pay for it, esp as a labourer like my Dad was back in those days couldn't get the overtime with the shorter daylight.

    We used to have a coal man - his name was Mr Coleman:p

    My kids have been known to get a laptop, phone or x box for Christmas / birthday (not all at once and not every year). I expect there would be disappointment if they were replaced by something much cheaper but they would be far more concerned about the cause of the drop in our finances and its long lasting effects, than any loss on their part.
    I wanna be in the room where it happens
  • jk0
    jk0 Posts: 3,479 Forumite
    Eighth Anniversary 1,000 Posts Name Dropper
    edited 13 October 2013 at 11:42PM
    Did anyone see that news item about the American couple both born in 1986?

    They found their 5 year old was spending so long on his iPad, (I know) that they decided to restrict their household technology to stuff made before 1986.

    Now they have cassettes, vcr, ordinary TV (no sky or cable) and no computers.

    The kids are perfectly happy. I think I might do the same if I ever have children. I bought my ex's little boy a Viewmaster
    https://www.google.co.uk/search?q=Viewmaster&rls=com.microsoft:en-gb:IE-Address&rlz=1I7GGLL_en-GB&tbm=isch&tbo=u&source=univ&sa=X&ei=XRNbUu_kMuuT0QWV7oG4BA&ved=0CF4QsAQ&biw=1156&bih=528&dpr=1

    with a set of his favourite Toy Story pictures for it. Every week I would buy him a new set of films, and we had great fun looking at them.

    Sadly my ex discarded it when we split up. What a cow, eh?

    Edit: Turns out it was a Canadian family: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c7pqPpa3qiM
  • It's really interesting reading this thread. My DH has just found temp work after being out of work for 18 months and I have just been made redundant and am on ESA at the moment. We don't have any debt other than the mortgage, which is £200 per month but we don't waste money either as we can't afford to on one wage.

    My DD's are 16 & 17 and they say they are considered 'poor' at school as we couldn't afford for them to do DofE Gold at over £500, we don't put the heating on if we are a bit chilly, we shop at Aldi and are very careful with our money. The girls get pocket money each month from their Dad's maintenance payment but that has to buy them magazines, hair dye, make up, expensive clothing or shoes (they like converse shoes at £45 a pair :eek:). We have caravan holidays as we own our own so don't go abroad although we have been to America 3 times, France once and Spain once. DH owns a 61 plate car that he bought outright with some inheritance he got, I own my 54 plate smart car outright and we live in a 4 bed semi. I think we are doing really well with what we have and what we can provide, my girls also think they have a lovely life and don't resent not being able to 'afford' the same things their friends have.

    The above seems like a luxury lifestyle to me and my family but to their friends we are considered the poor relations, when did life become so material and what you have define you as a person?
  • Cheapskate
    Cheapskate Posts: 1,767 Forumite
    Part of the Furniture 1,000 Posts Name Dropper Photogenic
    bluebag wrote: »
    I forsee strops of epic proportions and much wailing and gnashing of teeth.

    I never ever asked mine what they wanted and still don't.

    They get what Santa brings and it's a surprise, sometimes the elves have worked hard and sometimes the elves have had a lot more work to do and they get less.

    For 20 odd years they have loved the surprises Santa brings and still do

    My eldest is 27, eldest of 5, the youngest almost 4, and we've never asked what they wanted (DH and I brought up the same), and they've never been disappointed in anything they've been given, and we've never spent a lot, at the moment about £15-20 for birthdays and £40-50 max at Christmas, often less.

    It's still a mystery how some presents appear in this house, some are from aunties, etc, some just appear overnight, kids not fazed at all, and never query anything! St Nicholas has always visited on 6th December, as he visited me and my sisters, as a precursor to Christmas, and we always tell the kids his story, quite apt in austere times!

    A xo
    July 2024 GC £0.00/£400
    NSD July 2024 /31
  • Bedsit_Bob wrote: »
    I think these children, who get lots of expensive presents, are being set up for one hell of a disappointment, in the years to come.

    What happens when one, or both, parents lose their job, or they can't get any more 0% cards to shuffle their debts?

    Suddenly, all these expensive gifts are no longer an option.

    It's OK for children who've never had masses of expensive presents (what you haven't had, you don't miss), but for those used to getting the latest phones and electronic gizmos, half a dozen items from £land, is going to be a major culture shock.

    But you see, I wonder if that is such a bad thing.
    I don't mind adjusting to 'lesser' times. We can't afford to go on a family holliday anymore now, but at least I have wonderful memories of hollidays we did get to enjoy in the past.

    I think children can be made aware of the rise and fall of economics. Okay, the got a smartphone for christmas last year for example, and this year they will have to settle for far less, but they will at least have the memories (and the smartphone which will last longer than one year hopefully) of better times, and therefore maybe hope for the future that things might improve again.

    We were desperately hard up when I was growing up, and I sure DID miss what I didn't have. Because I saw my friends and others around me going on hollidays and getting wonderful 'stuff'. And that was hard.

    I also don't agree with the statement that children won't appreciate what they get if they always get loads. I think there might be some yes,but if you communicate with your children and make them aware, there is no reason why they should become stuck up little ttick in the muds with no appreciation for the value of things.

    And getting a culture shock when things turn around and they have to adjust to a poorer way of life, well, thats not the end of the world is it? They will cope. Maybe we should give our youngsters a little more credit? ;-)

    I think the late teens/early 20's now are facing the biggest adjustments. they are the ones who are about to set out on their own, and many of them don't even know what boiling water looks like. Because they have not been taught. They have some wising up and catching up to do. But they will do it I'm sure.

    The younger lot will adjust more easily I think, with the parents stepping up and realising they must teach their kids some of these basic skills again.
This discussion has been closed.
Meet your Ambassadors

🚀 Getting Started

Hi new member!

Our Getting Started Guide will help you get the most out of the Forum

Categories

  • All Categories
  • 351K Banking & Borrowing
  • 253.1K Reduce Debt & Boost Income
  • 453.6K Spending & Discounts
  • 244K Work, Benefits & Business
  • 599K Mortgages, Homes & Bills
  • 177K Life & Family
  • 257.4K Travel & Transport
  • 1.5M Hobbies & Leisure
  • 16.1K Discuss & Feedback
  • 37.6K Read-Only Boards

Is this how you want to be seen?

We see you are using a default avatar. It takes only a few seconds to pick a picture.