Nice people thread part 8 - worth the wait

lostinrates

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fc123 wrote: »

oh poor old horse. Maybe it will get warmer before she has to go so she gets a bit of warm sun on her back.
The worst bit is, I confess, I can only see in my minds eye Special Girl and Old horse.....I feel really bad as I can't recall the others.

Haha, they others might feature in the future. Racer boy is a pita enough to feature daily in my posts. Today, for example, he was convinced the gate was an evil horse eating monster:rotfl:

neverdespairgirl

No central heating here in rural Kent, either. It's nippy. My mother's cursing herself because the oil's run out. I think the oil is a stupid system as installed here, it costs a fortune, and the only way of telling how much oil is in the tank involves climbing ladders and dipping the tank. My darling Mama says she's not feeling much like doing that (fair enough).

I can't see why the stupid thing doesn't have a gauge, it doesn't need to be high-tech.

I've been bearing logs into the hall, and keeping the stoves in the sitting and dining rooms alight, so the downstairs is fairly warm-ish. There's a heater in the kitchen, and I put 3 hot water bottles in my mother's bed an hour before she retired, so that she would be OK.

Isaac thinks it's fun.

There is hot water, as there's an immersion tank too. Well, 2 of them, I think.

lostinrates

neverdespairgirl wrote: »

No central heating here in rural Kent, either. It's nippy. My mother's cursing herself because the oil's run out. I think the oil is a stupid system as installed here, it costs a fortune, and the only way of telling how much oil is in the tank involves climbing ladders and dipping the tank. My darling Mama says she's not feeling much like doing that (fair enough).

I can't see why the stupid thing doesn't have a gauge, it doesn't need to be high-tech.

I've been bearing logs into the hall, and keeping the stoves in the sitting and dining rooms alight, so the downstairs is fairly warm-ish. There's a heater in the kitchen, and I put 3 hot water bottles in my mother's bed an hour before she retired, so that she would be OK.

Isaac thinks it's fun.

There is hot water, as there's an immersion tank too. Well, 2 of them, I think.

Most oil tanks do have a gauge. Also now you get electronic ones that can even be heckled by your oil supplier so you never run out I think. We had the next model down at last house, so you could check inside the house intel of going outside.

Spirit_2

michaels wrote: »

I think there are a lot of influencers in this country who do not realise how much better off they are than average as they just don't see how many people there are who live in those dull and slightly intimidating bits of towns and cities that are not destinations to visit.

.

I am in danger of straying in to the territory of the rest of the board but in recent weeks as I have followed the Cyprus story of financial meltdown. It has felt like I have a see saw of views I hold and can talk myself in and out of a variety of stances . The two main ones being :

1)I have felt a bit bullish as I have read about govt spending way above its revenues on a bloated public sector, unrealistic supplier margins in the private sector, the scary level of leverage for mortgage holders, 'lower level' jobs filled by eastern europeans as they are a cheaper available workforce. Then I got to the property boom fuelled by an influx of Russian money and the dodgy title deeds. I haven't even got to bankers .

It all seemed immoral with a strong 'greed motive' behind it deserving of the ultimate banker "Germany" holding them to account.

2)Then I read of the orderly and dignified behaviour of Cypriots at banks and of those who are not wealthy but will suffer a haircut to their life savings and I am appalled at the injustice of it for them.

Have NP got a tidy solution where only those that 'grew fat' suffer or have Cyprus come up with the best that can be done?

Spirit_2

fc123 wrote: »

OH likes to cuddle to keep warm but I find it hard to sleep with him slumped all over me snoring and grunting. I wait until he's asleep and push him off as he gets all offended + upset if I shove him off when he is still awake.:o

Mr S likes to sleep with me in his arms however it means his arm is across me. The weight of his arm restricts my breathing. I politely ask him to move it. Then he falls asleep and puts his arm across me again. Repeat frequently throughout the night.

He may just be after the insurance.

Spirit_2

neverdespairgirl wrote: »

I can't see why the stupid thing doesn't have a gauge, it doesn't need to be high-tech.

.

There is a gauge that is retro fitted. It is called a watchman.

Ours had a plug in receiver bit in the house so you could read the level in the tank without going near it.

We are currently using the dipping method though as we had a tree felled and a branch neatly sliced the watchman off the tank.

Must get a new one as it was useful.

neverdespairgirl

lostinrates wrote: »

Most oil tanks do have a gauge. Also now you get electronic ones that can even be heckled by your oil supplier so you never run out I think. We had the next model down at last house, so you could check inside the house intel of going outside.

It did have a gadget thing that was supposed to be radioed by the tank when it was low-ish, or something like that.

Damn thing never worked.

CKhalvashi

lostinrates wrote: »

Nice people, can I ask a favour?

Its a bit random but I am suffering inspiration failure today. It helps that there are few jazz aficionados here for this one and a mixed age group.

I wonder of you could let me know two things...any particular jazz standard you might recognise and know two or three words to, or the name of, and also what you think might be a favourite song (of any genre) in a demographic of say, fifty or sixty year olds plus.....

It doesn't matter that the two seem disparate. It makes sense to what I am doing ATM.


Edit, one of your absolute favourite any genre tunes might help too......I have told dh I will help transcribe, and as I find transcribing music even harder than typing written language it's gonna take me ages.

I'll edit this post in the morning. I'm posting to remind myself to do it for you.

You're after jazz music LiR? My English isn't good enough to understand it

Watch this space!

CK

LydiaJ

fc123 wrote: »

I helped someone out recently who said they were stressing about bills and income etc.

I know they got stuck with the ex's debt after a split and I know they have high outgoings (but through choice) so I said to do the budget planner on here as it includes everything....as it's the little things that all add up.

We did it together and it was scary as they don't have what I would consider a wizzy flash lifestyle at all yet 101k was the spend and I know they spend more than that as the holiday estimate was way under.

We cut 2k pcm straight away getting rid of cr*p. Even they were shocked.

The thing is that all this lifestyle stuff is relative. We are all living in abject poverty by the standards of the billionaire jet-set, and in unimaginable wealth and luxury from the POV of the global poor. Your friend is spending more than £8k a month on average. To me, that seems huge. I'm sure that to others, it seems paltry. In objective terms, it is a lot more than median for this country.

I know that if money is a struggle, then a strict budget is the best way to get things back under control and/or to keep them that way. I understand that it's been a life-saver for lots of people, including some people whose income is quite a lot higher than mine, as well as those who genuninely only just have enough to get by. I get it that that sort of budgeting works beautifully for many. I'm happy for them to live that way, but I wouldn't want to do it myself. "Take care of the pennies and the pounds will take care of themselves" has never appealed to me because I don't want to have to think about taking care of the pennies.

As someone who has the luxury of being comfortably above the breadline, I prefer to take care of the pounds, so that I can be extravagant with the pennies if I feel like it. My strategy is to eliminate or greatly reduce some discretionary big ticket items compared with typical expenditure for my income level and my social peer group. I mean things like never paying more than a few hundred a year for holidays for the whole family, for example, continuing to use an ancient CRT TV that came to me second-hand, and buying a car that's 5 years old or so and keeping it for several more years. This then gives me the feeling of affluence because bills are not a struggle, and if I occasionally feel like splashing out on something a little out of the ordinary (or if I unexpectedly have to replace my washing machine etc) I do not have to worry about which bit of the budget to take it from, or borrow money to fund it.

In this way, an annual expenditure that's very much less than your friend's is enough to make me feel that I am very comfortably off and have everything I need, and pretty much everything I significantly want, too.

I'm trying hard to write this in a way that's merely contributing to the discussion and not coming across as smug. I don't think I'm a better person than those who manage their money with different priorities from mine. I just find my method works for me. And of course, I'm well aware that LNE's life insurance money, my provincial location and the fact that I bought my house with a loan from my dad (even though it's at interest) rather than a commercial mortgage mean that my "mortgage" costs are rather less than what a quick google tells me is the UK average, although not colossally so. So I'm not trying to imply that everyone ought to be able to do things my way, or even that those who are so able ought to do so.

I just found that fc's comments about her friend crystallised some ideas that have been wafting round rather amorphously in my brain for ages, and thought they might be pertinent to the discussion. If it's all too dangerously on topic for the NPT, then I apologise.

Generali

Spirit wrote: »

I am in danger of straying in to the territory of the rest of the board but in recent weeks as I have followed the Cyprus story of financial meltdown. It has felt like I have a see saw of views I hold and can talk myself in and out of a variety of stances . The two main ones being :

1)I have felt a bit bullish as I have read about govt spending way above its revenues on a bloated public sector, unrealistic supplier margins in the private sector, the scary level of leverage for mortgage holders, 'lower level' jobs filled by eastern europeans as they are a cheaper available workforce. Then I got to the property boom fuelled by an influx of Russian money and the dodgy title deeds. I haven't even got to bankers .

It all seemed immoral with a strong 'greed motive' behind it deserving of the ultimate banker "Germany" holding them to account.

2)Then I read of the orderly and dignified behaviour of Cypriots at banks and of those who are not wealthy but will suffer a haircut to their life savings and I am appalled at the injustice of it for them.

Have NP got a tidy solution where only those that 'grew fat' suffer or have Cyprus come up with the best that can be done?

I'll keep it factual:
1. People saved various amounts of money with Cypriot banks.
2. Despite there being a Government guarantee, the reality was that there was too much money on deposit to be able to guarantee it. The guarantee was worthless although given anyway.
3. As Cypriot banks were so successful/reckless at attracting deposits, there was far more money on deposit than could be borrowed by Cypriots.
4. A lot of excess deposits were lent overseas. Much of that to the Greek Government and Greek businesses.
5. Those borrowers are now bust and the guarantee has been shown to be worthless.
6. Someone has to take a loss. The Cypriot Government promised to take the loss but can't.

So who should take the loss? I leave that for you to decide. The options however are:
1. Foreign taxpayers
2. Savers
3. Someone else

The people that made money are:
1. Bank execs and workers (to some extent)
2. Bank shareholders (I don't know much about the ownership structure but probably a mix of widows & orphans and pension funds mostly)
3. Savers (interest rates were very high)
4. Cypriot taxpayers (some tax was paid on the savings and associated stuff like shell companies)
5. Defaulting debtors who have enjoyed the money and now aren't paying it back.

That's really the conundrum in a nutshell, AIUI at least. There are probably more exciting ways to look at this but that's the money trail.

In many ways the original solution was probably the best IMHO. Everyone loses a little bit. They're all in it together to coin a phrase. Perhaps a little addendum could have been attached so that contracted asset purchases against funds held in savings accounts would have part of the purchase price deferred, just to ease some of the pain.

IMHO there were no good decisions to be made, just a series of bad ones. The mistakes already happened. It's a bit like having put your mortgage on a horse that's coming last: youve made the bad decisions already so where do you go from here?