NOT BUYING IT! 2015 - A consumer holiday

bexster1975

Ha ha ha! Black cats. I thought it was only me who read parts of that book that way!!

Bexster

Margaret54

Suki do take care of yourself love. My dh collected my medication this morning for me and bought eggs and juice from Lidl on way home, so we have all we need at home except when the milk is running low. I am using my breadmaker again tonight for lovely bread in the morning again. It does taste so delicious and am glad I bought it a few years back. It is a Panasonic SD 254. Kittie how lovely to have bought your fabric much cheaper. I do hope you enjoy making your clothes. I would love to make my own but only made a skirt with the help of a lovely tutor in a sewing class about 5 years ago. The class was £10 which was great and there were only about 6 or 7 of us in the group. I still have the pattern and will have another go at making one with the fabric I bought for the summer I am very relaxed when hand sewing and have been making little things for our dgs who is one now. My dd thinks the things are so lovely but I tell her I am only learning but she loves them cos his Granny made them for him:) Bless her heart there are so many wavy sewing lines

purpleshoes_2

Ive just gone through bank statements to compare what I spent in supermarkets this month to previous. I didnt compare to decembers as I would have bought some xmas presents, there could be some nov xmas present spends too but even so, Ive spent 44.90 this month to date and that includes food for me, cats, the fox my mum feeds too (plus some non debit card spends on the fruit stall).

In November my spends across aldi, iceland, home bargains and B and M was £124.90. So thats a saving of £80 just from visiting supermarkets less often.

Edited to add just checked Octobers and that was even worse at £178.78. So getting food spends down to £50 for a month for me and the cats which is do able is going to make a big difference to my bank balance.

GreyQueen

I've spent £32.14 in January on food, which is a mixture of the supermarkets (mainly YS bargains) and the indy greengrocer. Will have a few more spends before the end of the month, am planning mince of a big pot of chilli (butcher) and eggs from FFoods.

Bought a replacement wristwatch yesterday and had to take it back today. have refund but still haven't managed to buy a watch. Gordon Bennett, but I detest shopping to my very marrow these days..............!

Primrose

I was pondering how weekly/monthly housekeeping costs must have risen over the years, not just from the effects of inflation but from the sheer choice these days and multitude of food and housekeeping products available.


I'm sure my mother's housekeeping budget during the last war was a much smaller proportion of the annual wage - there was very little in the shops to buy, and most of that was rationed so I suppose it was a good way of keeping spending down although I imagine some items were expensive because of the cost of importation with the UK being blockaded for five years and the war brought its own inflation issues.

Some years ago we had a visitor from a Communist Eastern Bloc country stay with us at a time when there were few goods available for purchase in his own country, and food supplies generally were in very short supply. He was totally overwhelmed at the vast choice of grocery products available in British supermarkets. In his own country, if he wanted jam, there would probably be just one variety available, and similarly for cereals, tea and all the basic commodities, if indeed they were available at all. . He thought a Waitrose supermarket we took him to was a store where only the privileged Apparatchiks could visit and purchase from and couldn't believe that such supermarkets were accessible to everybody, regardless of status or income.

We are lucky to have such a wide choice, but as many of us on here are asking, do we really need it all this stuff to feed ourselves? We've all become victims of the Brand advertising campaigns. Those of us who have traded down to the supermarket Own brand products and are finding them just as good are discovering how much we have been duped over the years. All this advertising has to be paid for somehow, and each branded item we buy at higher cost is partly because advertising and promotion costs have been built into the price.

Bobarella

Primrose -I would have thought food costs would have represented a higher proportion of people's budgets than now. Less choice of where to shop. No foreign imports. Etc.

DawnW

Bobarella wrote: »

Primrose -I would have thought food costs would have represented a higher proportion of people's budgets than now. Less choice of where to shop. No foreign imports. Etc.

I can't speak for just after the war, but during the 1970s when I was newly married it was certainly a higher proportion of our earnings. But our income was very low at the time, well below average, particularly when the children came along and I had to give up work - there was no childcare in rural areas then, if you weren't lucky enough to have family support for this, and maternity leave provisions were rare or non existent.

Ches

In the 60's my housekeeping was £5 and the mortgage was £4. Rates were 10s, electric 10s and coal 10s. OH took £2 for himself. £12. 10s pw in total. My housekeeping fed and clothed us and our DS. I think by the time DS2 came along we had a little more to spend as I remember big excitement when OH's wages reached £1000 per year. Child benefit was also paid for the 2nd child.

emslovesmickey

Spent £11.27 today. I was going to take my mum out for a meal. We are both off work this week, and we don't want to spend the entire week stuck in the house (although my crafting does occupy me) but instead I bought us a couple of steaks, some mushrooms, potatoes and salad and had a lovely meal (shared between three as my brother visited too) for a fraction of the price of a restaurant meal.

Been to the doctors today for the routine blood pressure check with the pill and apparently my diastolic pressure is a bit high. I've got to pop in in a couple of weeks to use the machine and test myself so I'm hoping it was just an anomaly.

Also been to the library to get another load of books out today.

eandjsmum

Evening Shipmates


(hugs to Suki- take care)


A NSD here, But Aldi tomorrow.


I have taken loads of pic of all the clutter in the house. I intend to clear it. Lots of it's mine, but not all of it. This evening I have tidied 3 shelves in one of our bookshelves. The trouble is OH is a worse hoarder than I am. I brought A very large box home from work today and I intend to fill it with stuff for the CS. We have piles old books and loads of DVDs that we will never watch
The trouble is that a lot of them are not mine. OH still has piles of his toys at his parents house and that will have to be cleared in the not to distant future. I think he thinks that he can bring them here. oH by the way his parents are hoarders by the way. I think that he has learn't his behaviour from them, but that wasn't the way that I was brought up. When we married my hoarding got worse partly because I was trying to lay claim to my part of the house. I thought, wrongly that if I bought things he would have no where to put his stuff. He doesn't criticise me for this, he just buys more. right now we have a large 2nd hand Record player sitting on the floor of our living room. He brought it on e-bay they must have seen him coming. Now I am going to please myself and start to de-clutter in earnest. May be he may see the errors of his. ways.


On a brighter note spending is vastly down and all excess has been stashed safely away in an ISA.
I am working on cash only from now on. If I haven't got
it I cant spend it.