NOT BUYING IT! 2015 - A consumer holiday

AnimalTribe

[QUOTE=JackieO
P.S. perhaps we could post on here if we were going to buy something, and the rest of us could 'talk' you out of it :):)[/QUOTE]

It's a bit out of chronological order I know but I had to miss out a big chunk of posts to keep up with the current posts. I've just gone back to read the ones I missed and I love this idea as I think it would help me resist temptation. With the breadth of knowledge on this thread I'm sure people could help me come up with alternatives to what I was going to purchase.

I used the pages from an old road map to wrap some presents and they looked really good.

PenguinOfDeath

moments_of_sanity wrote: »

Has anyone seen the new PayPal advert? I can't remember the exact words but it's something along the lines of 'PayPal for everything you need and the things you don't', it is lovely to watch these adverts with my eyes open to the clever tactics used by companies to make us part with our money.

Oh, don't get me started on adverts! My current bugbear is the Coop ones...started on the radio, guests round a house – hostess asks if anyone would like anything, cup of tea, mince pie etc..Bloke pipes up 'ooh, do you have any of those little chocolates?' Hostess umms and ahhs and goes 'Yes, of course!' Whilst running off to the nearest Coop to avail herself of the contents of her purse to appease her guests with some miniature mars bars, desperate not to be seen as anything less than 'perfect'.

If that was in my house they would either be told politely that sorry we didn't have any, or be told to bog off and hey should have brought some if they wanted them, depending on who it was!

Now they've started on the TV...people in ordinary situations suddenly stopping and panicking as they've remembered some 'vital' food item they haven't yet bought, but it's OK as our friends at coop will be open to ensure you have everything you could possibly need, (and be eating it until February as you've crammed the cupboard full to bursting for no good reason) – yes the whole festivities will be ruined if you forget the damn bread sauce!! :mad: Argh the amount of times I have ranted about this in the past week!

seriouslyfrugal

HI everyone

hope everyone is OK I go to sewing class once a month and then do 6 all day courses a year and I really enjoy it so it will be continuing into 2015 but I'm at home a lot as I work from home so it's good for social contact I'm also disabled and have depression and anxiety so sewing helps me mange it as it's quite calming

one of the people I know from sewing told me she gets her material from the local scrap store in Southampton it's £15 .00 to join for the year apparently they get stuff from local business that they no longer have use for so that is something I will look into when I've got the stuff down I've already got :rotfl: I'm going to find out more info on 20 th

AnimalTribe

Minimalist wrote: »

Interesting question, Caterina (as a lentil-lover, I did enjoy your story!) And thanks for sharing the link to your blog - I really liked your "rules" and the positive way you’ve framed your plan.

I'm in the middle of stepping off the paid-work treadmill and getting my life back, so this is very pertinent to me at the moment...In the past I've been a terrible workaholic - and I do think it can be a kind of addiction - which has damaged my health and not really contributed all that much to our financial security (I was in a cycle of over-work / over-spending, to sustain and compensate for that unhealthy lifestyle...)

The moral value given to paid work in our society is wrong in my view - particularly where it's linked to the idea that the more a person earns, the greater their value (especially where such people feel that their earnings are due to their own intrinsic merit, rather than the result of their privileged circumstances!). And the more hours worked, the better the contribution - often far from true.

I do think that work - in the sense of undertaking purposeful activity - is beneficial to the person doing it, beyond just the financial reward or the result achieved. Although how many paid jobs today feel very purposeful?

I don’t think there should be this moral distinction between paid work and unpaid activities - things like caring for children, budgeting to maintain a home, or growing vegetables to feed the family. Just because something is rewarding or enjoyable, doesn’t mean it’s not a valuable activity.

And I’m not saying people should be busy all the time - we all need time to relax and reflect - just that the emphasis on the “virtue” of paid work can lead to a dangerous imbalance in life, at the cost of wellbeing and happiness - and excluding those who aren't in employment.

I agree with you wholeheartedly on everything you've said. People with little income/unemployed 'work hard' to make ends meet and those who are ill 'work hard' to keep going. 'Purposeful activity' is a lovely phrase and I hope you don't mind me purloining it.

I too was a workaholic. I was well respected, known to get the job done, and reach an amicable consensus with difficult individuals. As a result I got more work, more of the difficult work, and got to deal with all the difficult people. I thrived on it. One day I realised what a fool I was. People were getting an easy ride and in a lot of cases getting paid far more than me. The best example was 2 project groups. One sat down and planned what they needed to do and ordered all the goods and services they required in good time. Their project delivered on time and on budget. The second project group jumped in to get the job done - they hit difficulty after difficulty, had to order stuff last minute and pay more for it. Since they were so disorganised they had to work late and at weekends thus incurring extra overtime, so they delivered late and over budget. It was the second team who got the bonus. Why? because they had to work late into the evening and were therefore seen by senior management who assumed that their task was more difficult because they were in a constant flurry of activity. The other group (who actually did have a more difficult job) got nothing. Yep, mine was the first group. How do you explain to your staff that it was the disorganised crew (who already got overtime) that got the extra cash.

I'm now purposefully active at home - taking care of the household and keeping costs down. I've much less money, but it's the best thing I've ever done.

Dee2

Afternoon everyone!

I'm just back from a trip to the shops. I had a wander into N*xt and was genuinely taken by surprise how I felt about the stuff in there. Over the years I must have bought a ton of stuff from there, but today it just looked so cheap and tacky - and yet in monetary terms its far from it. I was looking at the knitwear and wondered how many wears each item would get before being tossed into the charity bag. Not many. Nothing looked like it would be bought and cherished, it was very much throw away fashion. Oh my - the scales are falling from my eyes!

Big shout out to Animal Tribe and her road map wrapping paper - yay! :

moments_of_sanity

PenguinOfDeath wrote: »

Oh, don't get me started on adverts! My current bugbear is the Coop ones...started on the radio, guests round a house – hostess asks if anyone would like anything, cup of tea, mince pie etc..Bloke pipes up 'ooh, do you have any of those little chocolates?' Hostess umms and ahhs and goes 'Yes, of course!' Whilst running off to the nearest Coop to avail herself of the contents of her purse to appease her guests with some miniature mars bars, desperate not to be seen as anything less than 'perfect'.

If that was in my house they would either be told politely that sorry we didn't have any, or be told to bog off and hey should have brought some if they wanted them, depending on who it was!

Now they've started on the TV...people in ordinary situations suddenly stopping and panicking as they've remembered some 'vital' food item they haven't yet bought, but it's OK as our friends at coop will be open to ensure you have everything you could possibly need, (and be eating it until February as you've crammed the cupboard full to bursting for no good reason) – yes the whole festivities will be ruined if you forget the damn bread sauce!! :mad: Argh the amount of times I have ranted about this in the past week!

I know the advert and exactly how it makes you feel! Why on earth would Ginger Nuts be an important part of Christmas :mad:

This thread has really made me stop and think since it started and I certainly see it through different eyes! I have never been a big spender but have made silly purchases in the past, no more for me, everything I would like to buy will be carefully considered and I will leave it for a minimum of a week before purchasing so that I can think about it and see if I really need it.

There is a new advert for a folding Morphy Richards 'Chef' type accessory (much like a Kenwood Chef), in my cupboard I have a 1960's Kenwood Chef that I brought back from my late MIl's house when we emptied it, yes, it's big and heavy but it works absolutely perfectly, so much so that when my Aunt cleared out her Mum's house she found an identical one which I have liberated and is currently in my loft waiting for it's new home, which will hopefully be either of my girls (when they finally leave home)! A new 2014 edition would set you back a couple of hundred at least :eek:

fiftyeighter_2

I have been very busy de- cluttering my wardrobes and kitchen cupboards.
Oh dear how on earth have I ended up with 4 yes 4 lge mixing bowls.
Kept 2 and re- cycled 2. Well I've ended up with 3 dustbin sacks of clothes, quilts, sheets, pillows and numerous other things for the local charity shop.
Then 2 lge boxes of all sorts of kitchen wear. Still trying to fathom out how I have 5 salt & pepper pots.
You should see my cupboards now, sooo tidy. Really pleased with the results. Hope everyone has a good weekend.

GreyQueen

Dee2 wrote: »

Afternoon everyone!

I'm just back from a trip to the shops. I had a wander into N*xt and was genuinely taken by surprise how I felt about the stuff in there. Over the years I must have bought a ton of stuff from there, but today it just looked so cheap and tacky - and yet in monetary terms its far from it. I was looking at the knitwear and wondered how many wears each item would get before being tossed into the charity bag. Not many. Nothing looked like it would be bought and cherished, it was very much throw away fashion. Oh my - the scales are falling from my eyes!

Big shout out to Animal Tribe and her road map wrapping paper - yay! :

I've done that with old road maps, it's excellent.

A few years ago, I wandered into N*xt in the January sales, just to see what all the fuss was about. Was looking at clothes, some of which were reduced to only a couple of quid.

What a bunch of miserable rags they were, new clothes looking only fit for textile reclamation. After several minutes of browsing, I had a LBM when I realised that I wouldn't want any of this if you gave it to me free. Heck, I would need a bribe to take it for free, it was that bad.

I do have a pair of N*xt curtains and a matching cushion purchased this year; £4 curtains at bootsale and £2.50 cushion at chazzer. They're attractive and do the job and I shouldn't need to think about replacing them for a decade or more.

My parents have been married half a century and Mum has bought precisely one pair of new curtains for their home in all that time, all the others were secondhand.

Have been to the shops for fruit and veg (£1) and was pleased to find a book I've been lloking for at 50p. Not in the library, this title, I have checked. Have started reading it already and then it can be re-donated.

A donation bag has gone to the Hoxfam today, as part of the ongoing programme of thinning out the possessions here at the homestead. Every little helps.

Primrose

Apparently In 1912 in New York a woman called August Belmont, set up the society for the Prevention of Useless Giving, with members known as SPUGs (pictured), chiefly to encourage women workers not to pay into funds to buy presents for those ‘higher up’. In the words of Belmont ‘a SPUG is a woman who has vowed never again in all her life to give any Christmas gift that is not offered with a whole heart'.

I haven't had time to plough through the whole article yet, but sounds a good idea to me !

Butterfly_Brain

This is thought provoking and quite scary

http://www.treehugger.com/health/another-reason-stop-buying-antibacterial-soap-will-it-finally-be-banned.html

Another reason to go natural for everything.

In fact I am going to do this for my hair:

http://www.treehugger.com/organic-beauty/no-shampoo-experiment-six-months-later.html