Preparedness for when

nuatha

jk0 wrote: »

It's a good question. I think if I was a resident of another Eurozone country, I would go and spend any Greek Euro notes asap, just in case they do.

I did, I have a handful of Dutch and German, sufficient to cover a couple of weeks in the Netherlands if need be (family in Den Hague).

moneyistooshorttomention wrote: »

Been googling re Sweden and it looks like its the nearest there is to a cashless society - but still does use cash and will in fact be printing more banknotes at some point this year.

Add the fact that the Swedes are a more democratic and law-abiding society than many (including ours.....:() and I don't see Britain going cashless for quite some time - if ever.

I'm not sure that being more democratic makes a difference. It would be far easier to make North Korea a cashless society.
The Swedes clear cheques faster than anyone else, in general the government has listened to peoples complaints about the banking system and acted on them. Whereas it seems that the UK government does what the banks want, irrespective of the wishes of the people.

GreyQueen

MrsLurcherwalker wrote: »

Should that be CANCELLOR? after all she's the one who can shoot straight.....lovely thought eh GQ?

Worra laugh. They wouldn't like a plain-speaking and bliddy-minded wumman like me from a carncil estate, getting reality all over them. Particularly when I derailed the gravy train, put them all up in hostels during term time and limited their holibobs and pay to NMW and statutory minimums. Oooh, the very thought is so tempting........

Reckon they'd be measuring me for a pine overcoat within the month. :rotfl::rotfl::rotfl:

Coins can have a certain intrinsic value. The pre-euro coinage of Italy is a case in point. Some of it was excellent quality stainless steel, whose metal value was much higher than its face value. And, even pre the launch of the Euro, the canny Swiss were buying it to turn into watches.

I have heard a rumour that there will be new-style £20 notes next year, which will mean some of us will have to un-stuff our mattresses and re-stuff with the new ones. Life; it's one darned chore after another.

My bank once sent me (unasked for) a contactless debit card. I walked into my branch and asked to speak to someone. When asked the purpose of my visit, I said it was about this contactless card and the floorwalker immediately asked if I wanted it changed for the ordinary non-contactless kind? Obviously not the first disgruntled customer with the same mission. I have a non-contactless one and aim to keep it that way.

This breaking of the link between notes and coins and money concerns me greatly. It's far too easy to spend money without comprehending what you are doing, until it's too late and you're in debt. Deliberately forking over your last fiver or handful of coins is much more mindful.

Which is why, of course, it's to be discouraged, as we're all supposed to be good little debt slaves. I owe my soul to the company store.

'Sides, the card payers are a right pain in the arris when you get stuck behind them in the queue. It's slow and inefficient, fer crying out loud.

mardatha

That's one of my pet hates GQ. Being stuck behind somebody paying with a card. Then they canny find the right card, then it isn't accepted cos they forgot their pin, etc etc. More than once I've dumped the basket and walked out.

daz378

my housing association, called at 9.30 am to (unannounced) asked me to choose tiles and flooring for new bathroom and kitchen, said she would have to put me down as a bit of hoarder because i had a well stocked larder , admittedly i will have to move it before work starts , but what i have in my cupboards is nowt to do with my housing association, might just have been a turn of phrase..... is it worth complaining

GreyQueen

I'd complain if I were you, daz. First off, it's unprofessional to make unannounced visits to tenants. Secondly, it's not her business if your larder is 'well-stocked' or contains just two pot noodles and a bottle of ketchup. She can think what she likes but she needs to keep her trap shut in your home.

The only issue that a landlord should have with quantity and type of a tenant's possessions is if they consititute a risk to health, safety or the reasonable maintenance of the home.

nuatha

GreyQueen wrote: »

This breaking of the link between notes and coins and money concerns me greatly. It's far too easy to spend money without comprehending what you are doing, until it's too late and you're in debt. Deliberately forking over your last fiver or handful of coins is much more mindful.

Especially those banks which suddenly decide to allow an overdrawn transaction despite an agreement which prohibits such actions. (I had a customer bounce a cheque on me, the bank fee for the bounced cheque wiped out my cleared balance, the charge for the bank letter took me over drawn, not knowing this I spent £40 on that card, by the time the outstanding cheques had cleared I had £700 in bank charges for being overdrawn. If the bank had honoured their contract and bounced the £40 payment, the whole mess would have been avoided).

moneyistooshorttomention

daz378 wrote: »

my housing association, called at 9.30 am to (unannounced) asked me to choose tiles and flooring for new bathroom and kitchen, said she would have to put me down as a bit of hoarder because i had a well stocked larder , admittedly i will have to move it before work starts , but what i have in my cupboards is nowt to do with my housing association, might just have been a turn of phrase..... is it worth complaining

When I was in rented accommodation the law was that 24 hours notice had to be given by the landlord before turning up - I found that out because of the tendency of my landlords to just turn up out of the blue when I was in the private sector.

When I moved to housing association property - they were actually pretty good landlords and I couldn't fault them in any way and they never turned up once without an invitation in the years I had to live there (and yet were there - very promptly - if I invited them). I didn't have a scrap of trouble with them and, in fact, they basically bent over backwards to be helpful to the tenants.

So to just turn up out of the blue (without that legally demanded 24 hours) isn't on and is also rather stupid from their pov (ie because how would they know you would be in/not busy/etc?).

As for making a personal comment - I trust it was just a joke? Surely? In your position (and if I didn't think it was a joke) I would be writing in a letter to them officially complaining that:

a. They had turned up without the requisite minimum 24 hours notice.
b. They had made a personal comment and one that was inaccurate at that (ie keeping well-stocked cupboards is hardly a sign of a hoarder)

and finishing with words to the effect of "looking forward to receiving adequate notice in future. Also looking forward to any erroneous notes on my file to the effect of being a hoarder being removed".

dandy-candy

I just read this about an egg shortage in the USA and thought it might be of interest to some of you

http://uk.reuters.com/article/2015/05/22/us-health-birdflu-egg-shortages-idUKKBN0O70AY20150522

I hadn't even thought of the vaccine angle!

thriftwizard

I'm horrified on your behalf, daz378! She's totally out of order and a complaint is absolutely called for. If you had random stuff piled up to the ceiling and nowhere to move it to before the work begins, maybe a gentle encouraging remark might have been helpful. But well-stocked cupboards - well, what the heck else are cupboards for? Protecting the walls?

As someone who from time to time - and in my own opinion, inaccurately - gets labelled a hoarder, I sometimes wonder whether society-at-large can actually see any difference between someone who isn't a minimalist (as we are all encouraged to be, because it keeps us buying stuff & throwing other stuff out, thus greasing the wheels of the economy) and a genuine hoarder, who doesn't throw anything out, no matter how useless? That there is a BIG difference between a well-stocked food cupboard and piles of old newspapers teetering dangerously along the narrow corridors left between piles of stuff? That actually, buying non-perishable goods when they are on a good offer, and storing them even under the bed, is a better investment than money in the bank?

Even if you were actually a hoarder, a remark like that is out of order; hoarding is a mental health issue, often a physical symptom of someone having undergone huge stress and loss, and not likely to be helped in any way at all by casual judgemental remarks.

GreyQueen

Well said, thriftwizard.

In my job, we encounter reports of proper hoarded homes. I've seen horrendous reports and photies. A well-stocked cupboard is not a hoard, and daz has several times mentioned in passing that he rotates his food supplies, so it's not a case that there are rusting cans of OOD food sitting around, or the place is heaving with insects and running with rodents.

The definition of hoarding is, I believe, if the rooms cannot be used for their intended purpose. If you have 18 months' worth of newspapers living permanantly in your bathtub and cannot clean yourself, if you sleep on your sofa because your bedroom is floor-to-ceiling with Stuff, if a year's worth of trash is piled over every surface in the kitchen, including the cooker top, then you're hoarding, and may need sensitive support and professional assistance.

Hoarding is not having more possessions in total, or more possessions of a certain category, than the onlooker thinks is proper. Heck, I have over one hundred bars of soap. Apart from a few unwrapped and lying neatly in a basket in my airing cupboard, the soap-hoard is contained in one modest shopping bag in the bottom of the airing cupboard.

Righty, have been waiting in for a gas engineer who has now been and gone, so I shall go to my allotment for a few hours. Catch ya laters, GQ xx