Preparedness for when

Frugalsod

Here is something that will help put the whole economic and Greek situation into perspective.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nUWaXZWhnqA

At 34.20 you will see who gets hit by a Greek default. While Germany is the biggest loser at €56 Billion France who is not in good shape would lose €42 Billion which it cannot afford. Italy €37 Billion and Spain €25 Billion. Now all those countries are already destitute so imagine how they would cope. So it looks like the Eurozone is toast and it might even mean the end of the EU. Which might save the UK having to have a referendum on membership. Though considering that the EU was created to stop wars within Europe it might be worth wondering who attacks who first.

moneyistooshorttomention

To me - one of my ways of looking at prepping has been to be aware that, for some years now, wages/salaries are being gradually cut and cut again for many people (courtesy of low or non-existent cost of living rises).

I know I've had very low cost of living rises personally for quite some time and they clearly were inadequate to match actual rises in the cost of living. That being the case - I sat down some time ago and decided what constituted "Normal Standard of Living" and Normal quality of possessions, etc, at that point in time before peoples expectations were able to downgrade any further. I then started to think really long-term about trying to buy the type of possessions that are supposed to be of a pretty permanent nature in good enough quality that they really would last some time. I generally have been working on making sure I had, as far as possible, all the possessions I would need for the rest of my life - so that I could avoid being told to pay a very expensive price (or do without) something that constituted "Normal" at that point in time.

I guess our houses are the biggest example of that. It is the norm to own a house and climb the housing ladder if one decides to. But it doesn't feel like that these days - and people are gradually being expected to downscale their expectations on that. So many of us are aware that we would be unable to get the house we currently have if we had to start again with today's salary levels and house prices. Extrapolate that across the board and its happening to many other aspects of what we expect to have enough money for - courtesy of those pathetic inflationary wage rises.

GreyQueen

I guess that what anyone considers to be normal is highly-subjective, and that the last 30-40 years have seen a level of prosperity for regular working people which would have astounded older generations.

There has been a window in the late 20th-early 21st century when home ownership was achieveable for ordinary people with very ordinary factory and office/ retail type employments. As in, you could take on a mortgage which was a bit of a streeeeetch at the time, in the expectation that annual pay increases would ease the stretch into the comfort zone within a handful of years and eventually into laughably-small payments of a fast-appreciating asset.

Other prosperity-signs such as washing-machines, fridges, freezers etc, are all relatively modern affordables, as in for the past 2-3 generations only. There isn't a god-given right to have any of this stuff, nothing enshrined in any legislation to say that a decent lifestyle must include a personal washing machine, fridge, freezer or what have you.

The thing is, our consumer society in the global west is predicated on many things being affordable to most households. If you go back to the situation where there's only one TV in a largish village or one or two telephones (where my Dad grew up in the 40s-50s), the consumer economy won't thrive. I recall an anecdote in the media from a woman in London who was given a fridge as a wedding present in the 1950s. It was an insanely-expensive present at the time, like giving someone a new car. People in her block of flats used to shyly knock on her door, murmur that they'd heard she had a fridge, and would it be possible to look at it? Because they'd never actually seen one of these wondrous things before.

A bloke a handful of years older than my Dad recalls how shocked he was when he went for his national service and got issued with a pile of clothes inc underpants. His desperately-poor family hadn't been able to run to luxury items such as underpants, these were the first he'd owned.

A lot of people now are coming to realise that they, or their youngish-adult offspring, are on the wrong side of this prosperity curve and that things aren't going to get more prosperous for themselves. And that their adult offspring will struggle to attain the levels of comfort and convenience, these things we style as standard-of-living, that they were able to provide during their upbringing.

I just looked at my 2015 p60 compared with the previous year. My gross income was just £4 higher in a year when I technically received a pay increase. That isn't a typo , I did mean four pounds gained over the whole tax year. And no, it didn't begin to cover the increase on even just my rent, never mind anything else.

moneyistooshorttomention

True that some things are subjective perceptions. We all come from our own personal basis of what we think of as "normal". So = yep my own personal "normal" is that of a family that have been home-owners for several generations now (on my mothers side) and am in the generation of babyboomers. That means having got to young adulthood in the 60s/70s when "things were gonna get better" and that's how the vast majority of us thought of things. So I can definitely trace home ownership on my mothers side of the family back to the late 19th century and I don't know the position before then.

My parents' generation can remember when it was so much worse than my (baby boomer) Norm. My father knew what it was like to live in Council housing and come home from "service" abroad wondering if he would be coming back to the same house or his parents would have been moved. My mother knew what it was like to know she was growing up in her own (ie her parents) house and to look at the very much better standard of living her older siblings had had than she got - and wondering if her home would be bombed out of existence. My mother definitely got very frustrated at seeing her own older siblings had had some things we would still regard as luxury - but it was very different for her.

Ditto - within my own personal family - and I understand my mothers' frustrations - as I can see my younger/thicker brother having a better standard of living than me (ie basically because he got married). So my own brothers Norms are obviously different to mine (can I have his holidays and level of house please? wah....). Correction = but I wouldn't want the level of health he regards as normal = as its appalling. So, I'll take my lower standard of living - but my own level of health as being an overall better situation.

The point I am making being that, whatever our own personal perceptions of "Normal" are then its as well to prepare for not being "forced backwards" by things like inadequate/non-existent cost of living rises.

jk0

Penny-Wise wrote: »

I think we actually have one of these at the back of the garage. I'd forgotten about it.

That's good to know.

Maybe go and check the gas bottle on the bathroom scales. My (full) 15kg Calor bottle weighs 30kg, so presumably that's 15kg of gas and 15kg for the bottle.

mardatha

You would be better with a multi fuel burner - you can have a stainles stell chimney thing put in with it, through any outside wall.
GQ you must be wrong lol - our beloved Fuhrer has told us that wages are higher than ever and we are booming...

GreyQueen

mardatha wrote: »

You would be better with a multi fuel burner - you can have a stainles stell chimney thing put in with it, through any outside wall.
GQ you must be wrong lol - our beloved Fuhrer has told us that wages are higher than ever and we are booming...

:rotfl:Mardy, you are forgetting that I'm one of these highly-paid local government workers livin' large on the taxpayers' shilling. One day, if our Fuhrer ever lets me, I may even retire in my late sixties and live even larger on my gold-plated local government pension, currently predicted to be £24 a week.

Gold plating will be a lot thinner in the future, I'm guessing.:p

Anyway, my p60 came from the heart of grubbyment darkness itself, the [STRIKE]Castle of Doom[/STRIKE] err HMRC, so it's gotta be right, yes?!

moneyistooshorttomention

...and speaking of retirement and I didn't know that there is currently a review of State pensions underway. Have gathered there is and that review body is due to make its report in May 2017.

Instant calculation on my part personally being "whew...that establishes for sure my State Pension will turn up on time x years y months later than 60" and no further personal attacks due on when it starts.

But.....those due to start receiving their State Pension May 2017 onwards look likely to be in for an unpleasant shock as to when it starts...:(

Frugalsod

mardatha wrote: »

GQ you must be wrong lol - our beloved Fuhrer has told us that wages are higher than ever and we are booming...

And in GQ's case £4 higher.

[Deleted User]

Hi PENNY-WISE have you ever considered a woodburner stove, they can be installed with the metal chimney out through the wall and mounted on the outer wall of the house. The stainless steel pipes that are the chimney ARE expensive but it would give you one warm room home your home and if you found a stove with cooking plates would give you the means to make hot meals in power outs/emergency situations. A woodstove would also give ambient warmth to the rest of the house, we find we don't run the central heating at all these days, only the boiler twice a day to heat water. You do become accustomed to running the house cooler and we're as insulated as it's possible to be.

The other alternative is to consider an outdoor woodburner/field kitchen, we have an OZPIG which is a pot bellied outdoor woodburner to cook on, runs with any scrap wood you can scavenge and cooks a fine meal.

Even in damp and beautiful wales you might look at investing in solar showers, cheap as chips from places that sell camping equipment and then you'd have warm water for washing you, dishes, clothes on days when you had sunshine.

It's never ever too late to join the party pet, even if disaster strikes today you're streets ahead of most of the population for being aware of the sense in being prepared, just in case!!!