Being the only 'OldStyler' in your friendship group.

freyasmum

Ladies, your stories are truly humbling.

I may have had no money, but (save for a crooked landlord who wouldn't fix the heating :mad: ) I have always had enough heat (whether it be under my duvet with fleecy jammies and a hot water bottle) and I've only (somewhat unfortunately, mind you ) recently slimmed down so I may not have had as much, or enough or the right things, but I've never truly been as hungry as what some of you describe.

Thank you

lessonlearned

Tara.....just wanted to comment on your signature......

Wow.!!!

You are an inspiration.

joggingalong

This is my first post but have been lurking for a while. So many things ring true. Twenty five years ago we lost everything, my husband had a breakdown and I had to keep things together by working all hours given at a temporary job on a pittance. I worked in a large office and there were many people who made fun of my thrifty ways. but there were some who I am still friendly with today and instead of going to the pub would have a sandwich and flask of coffee in the park with me at lunch time. This made my teenage sons know the value of money and at great cost and stretching the budget even further they went and got good professional degrees and are well on the way to rewarding both mentally and financially careers. I was made fun of by the people I worked with saying my child is earning X and has a new car every year why waste time on educatin. I m now retired with a modest pension and this goes quite a long way by my carefully and thrifty habits, and setting my priorities using much of the advice found here What goes around comes around. I don't want to seem smug but at times I felt I couldn't carry on It took a long time and hard work to get where I am today and know that you can be thrifty without being mean and true friends will support you through lean times as well as good times.

Pollycat

We probably have the most disposable income of all our friends group even though we're the only ones who are both retired.
I'm probably the most frugal one in the whole group though.

I don't 'do' fancy coffees and cake.
I throw very little food away, planning menus around using for example a family pack of peppers or mushrooms.
I batch cook.
I buy almost all of my clothes from charity shops - we're on holiday in a couple of weeks time and almost all of mine & OH's clothes that we're taking have come from charity shops. Good quality but £££ cheaper than buying new.
Other friends buy designer clothes.
I don't buy expensive cosmetics and perfume. Avon is fine for me.

I like my jewellery - silver and gold - but I tend to buy second-hand so they do have a good resale value if I ever decided to get rid of anything.
We like our holidays too but will wait for a bargain.

Siebrie

ariarnia wrote: »

That brings back memories - when I was completely brassic (about 10 years ago) I used to keep boxes and a roll of clingfilm in my bag.

I'd wander around the office at around 2 and if a saw a meeting room that had been catered for lunch I'd pop in and 'rescue' any not too manky food - no one ever eats all the fruit or salad/garnish and it used to bulk out my evening meals (or be my evening meals some days).

If they'd overcatered/lots of people had cancelled - there were sometimes entire covered trays of sarnies completely untouched and destined for the bin - I was doing a public service :A

Morning coffee meetings were the best - lots of fruit teas and mini cakes/pastries

I also used to pocket any extra tea bags, sugar, packets of instant coffee, milk pods.

All used to go into bowls at home and let me have a hot drink of an evening.

Those were the days

I still do that. On days when they have overcatered, the leftovers are put in the office kitchen and the Receptionist sends out a message to a few choice colleagues (including me) who get first dibs. Everyone knows the food is in the kitchen, but most colleagues are not interested. In the company I work for, the trainees are paid, and most buy lunch everyday at the little restaurant/sandwich bar downstairs. It's quite a posh company, and I am not .
When there is a large event, I always make sure I bring enough lunch boxes and bags. Whatever I bing home will be part of dinner, tomorrow's lunch for me or dh, part of dds' lunch boxes, snacks, etc.

Leftovers usually are sandwiches, rolls, baguettes, salads, fruit, fruit salads, deserts, pastries, veggie nibbles, but can be as nice as deli meat, specialty cheeses, quiche, etc.

Part of it is moneysaving, part is thinking 'this is nicer than I normally have', and part 'what a waste if they throw all of this away!'

[Deleted User]

Many years ago when the building society rate shot through the roof and OH was out of work as his overseas contract had finished we mananged to get a part-time job each with a friend of ours who had an 'outside' catering company.

So Friday/Saturday nights and often Sundays were taken up with functions in London. We did a bar mitzvah for a young lad in The Glaziers fuction rooms in the City, and at one point my OH and I had to make up 4 dozen champagne cocktails on trays for the guests, about three were actually drunk and the rest went down the sink !!!.
To this day I can remember us both singing in the large kitchen as we were opening bottles of champers 'We're a couple of swells ,we stay at the best hotels ' :):) and we were both stony broke

Great fun doing outside catering and you get to take left-overs home often .

Once we came home with a large tray of fresh cream cakes which we brought home late on a Sunday night so the girls took boxes of them to school the next day to hand to their friends.

A wedding that we catered for in Romford we were given the left over cooked beef joint, and it was huge, and there I was at 3 00 a.m. slicing and wrapping slices of best Aberdeen angus beef to freeze, it kept us in meat for about a month :):) Still including our wages and often tips a weekends work would net us both enough to pay our mortgage that month, bloomimg long 12 hour shifts but it kept us afloat

VJsmum

I, too, probably have the biggest disposable income of my friendship group but am definitely the most thrifty. I firmly believe it comes from childhood (or something drastic happening later). We had no money, really at all, when i was growing up. How my mum managed to feed us, i really don't know.

Later, as a student in a sandwich year of my degree, i could only eat at times cos of the tips from my bar job, that i managed to stretch until some pay came in. you don't forget that, ever.

I am not especially mean, but i am frugal and i detest waste.

My brother calls me tight cos i take the train instead of a taxi - train is free for me (OH works for the railways), the taxi trip would be £20!

We do like and have nice holidays and meals out, but don't have designer anything and I am in the process of painting our pine furniture rather than buy new.

I am a (later life) PhD student and definitely will have a bigger income than any of the others, yet i seem to be the one who makes coffee in the kitchen and takes in HM soup or salad - all the others i've seen buy everything. Madness....

jackyann

Some wonderful stories here.
I lived for awhile in a London commuter area, and it seemed to me that I was 'out of step'. The children's infant school introduced a uniform, and I & one other parent went in to ask about knitting patterns for the jumpers & cardigans - there weren't any, you were just supposed to buy ready made.
Funny thing is, that years later, one of our kids' friends told me that she knew we were 'posh' because we shopped at markets instead of supermarkets, I made my own clothes and we had camping holidays!

Lynplatinum

Hiya

So much of what has been said on here resonates with me. I worked at a University for many years amongst the admin staff and as I climbed the ladder the recently rich tried to look down their noses at me for being careful.

As, Mrs Lurcherwalker and Fuddle have implied it takes a brain and thinking and so I found a solution.

There was this delightful old proffessor whom I worked for who had had the most miserable and impoverished childhood in Ireland where often his 7 siblings and he didnt eat for several days. He found the conspicuous consumerism very hard to deal with - the food wasted from meetings - the heat wasted by warming corridors - the flash clothes and fashion. His specialism was Environmental Science. He introduced me to this mind set (he was way ahead of his time BTW):

I do not wish to give the polluting, tax avoiding, large corporations any more of my hard earned money than I have to. I prefer to live my life in a way that preserves the environment for future generations rather than in a self centred, competitive, sheep- like way. I am not stupid and will not be suckered in by advertising or peer pressure. If others are that foolish - then that is their look out, although I will tactfully whisper hints in their ears. I will never be rude about other people's choices, but I ask that they respect mine.

In practical terms it means: taking your own coffee/lunches (explaining, if asked, that you prefer it); working out how much your meal cost putting it down on the table in cash and walking out (explaining, if asked, that you had assumed, since others had eaten much more, that is what would be fair); when complimented on clothes saying 'It's just a little shop I know!' and leaving it at that.

Being kind to those foolish ones and realising you are the smart one. Being assertive not aggressive.

And years later, when you are able (like several of us on here), through OS frugal ways, able to retire early, look at the spenders - still angrily grafting away (still in debt) and thank MSE (or in my case the kindly Irish Proffessor) for being pointed in the right direction. :A

They will say 'arent you lucky!' Yep - some of it is luck. Some of it good habits aquired over time.
Stick to your guns. Put your chin up. you are doing the right thing.

monnagran

Lyn: Spot on!

The most useful things my 1950's Grammar School taught me, along with the Latin, Sciences etc, were lessons in things like Civic Responsibility and Life Skills. I think that they were ahead of their time.

I was taught all about the tricks that advertisers use and to this day look for the 'weasel' words, (could, would, should, may.)
I also learned about the dangers of linking sets of statistics. The example that sticks in my mind was - "In a six month period the birth rate rose sharply. In the same period there was an unusual increase in ice cream consumption. Therefore the more ice cream you eat, the more likely you are to become pregnant."

Perhaps if children were given such lessons today there would be fewer gullible people pouring their money into the coffers of greedy, big companies and corporations.

Just a thought before I am fully awake.

x