Finally Debt Free After 34 Years, But Still Need to Live Frugally

redofromstart

Buy him a hot water bottle for Christmas?

On the bedroom thing, my boys aren't especially tidy but I prefer having a positive relationship with them to having tidy bedrooms, after all they live in it not me. I try to respect boundaries and only help (aka deep clean) if they ask me. DS1 would rather weed the garden or mow the lawn so we sometimes swap jobs when his stuff starts taking over. It's more problematic once you get past the withholding pocket money stage. SS lived in a foot deep collection of stuff. His room, his decision.

beanielou

My DS's room was a pit.
The two rules were washing in machine & crockery in kitchen!

[Deleted User]

Another one here who's a big fan of hot water bottles:j. Cheap to buy, last for years and very comforting. I sometimes use 2 at a time, one at the end of the bed to warm my feet up and the other higher up. Saves arguing with OH about the thickness of the duvet:rotfl:. He'd be happy with the thin summerweight one all year round:eek:

[Deleted User]

HairyHandofDartmoor wrote: »

We've finished the work on my business, for today :T.

But we literally cannot afford to put the heating on at the moment .

Well done on getting more work done on your business when there's so many other demands on your time.T:beer:. Is it getting near to going 'live'? It sounds an exciting time for you. So much for you to look forward to in lots of ways in 2019:j.


I hope you had a nice meal and evening with Stepdad. I bet he's happy to see DS3 again, and vice versa.


Has your volunteering finished for the term or do you have another week to go?


Will you be able to have a bit of heat on Christmas Day? I know it's milder in your area and your neighbours are helping to warm your house up a bit:j but it must still be quite cold inside. I may have mentioned that either me or OH go round sometime each day to my friend's empty house to see that all's well, tweak the curtains etc and try to make the place looked 'lived in', pick up the post etc. Unless it was a day when he felt he should go and cut the grass (all done for the year now though) and rake up leaves I've insisted on doing it because the house is always warm :j:j:j. She's left her timer on so the central heating comes on for an hour and a half first thing in the morning and then late evening to make sure the pipes don't freeze and burst and to just keep the house from getting damp. I do my rounds fairly early in the mornings and when I've done what I'm there to do I just sit in the lounge for a bit and revel in the warmth:j. Would be a pity to 'waste' that heat:rotfl:

Onebrokelady

My girls learnt from an early age to tidy up,if I got the hoover out and they had left small enough things on the floor it went up the hoover never to be seen again DD1 is quite a messy person now she has her own place which is fine because I don't live there but DD2 is tidy like me,neither of us can relax in a mess and she respects that although she lives here it's doesn't give her the right to leave mess everywhere, she also cleans the house and does the washing and ironing if I am at work and she is at home
When her boyfriend lived here I was shocked at how much mess he could create and he just didn't see it as a problem because his mum always picked up and cleaned up after him,I just feel sorry for whoever is unfortunate enough to marry him because they are signing up for a life of cleaning up after him

Onebrokelady

carbootcrazy wrote: »

Thanks, Onebrokelady, I really appreciate you taking the time to explain:T:A


I've read that book recently and already passed it back on to the charity shop where I bought it. I've read a lot of these sort of books and sadly they are totally irrelevant for me:(. I'm always interested in the writers' experiences though and they sow a seed of an idea but there's very little I can adopt in my own situation:(.


I live in a rural area on the edge of a hamlet rather than a village. The nearest PO/tiny village shop is over 4 miles away and there's no bus route nearer than 3 miles away. Even then there are only 2 each way a day and only go to our nearest small market town which is lovely but mainly full of 'posh' shops which I can't afford to shop in. I have a bus pass but there's nothing to use it on:rotfl:. I'm an OAP and starting cycling now for everything is out of the question (even if I forked out on a bike). A car is absolutely essential, sadly, with all the costs that incurs:(.


The writer of that book lives in London and has access to a myriad of free events and activities to make up her social life. I read another similar one where the writer lives in Bristol and had a whale of a time at free activities and events, many of which provided free nibbles and food. Sadly there are absolutely zilch free things to do anywhere near here, apart from going for walks (which we do) and visiting a tiny art gallery (open very occasionally) and the local tiny museum in our nearest small town and which I've been to so many times I could be the official guide:rotfl:. OH and I do drive to our next nearest town (16 miles away) and there are free galleries and such like there which we like to visit. Sadly, everything costs money otherwise:(


Her other ideas of spending only on absolute essentials I already do. To get rid of over £50,000 of debt in 5 and a half years I've already cut back on every single thing and can't see anything further I could do:(. What I want to do next year is start saving money now I don't have to throw every penny at debt repayment and hoped a challenge would make me accountable and really kick me into action. To be honest, I've scrimped for so long I'm suffering from scrimp fatigue:o.. I need a new tack. My car is 17 years old and although well-maintained and looks in excellent condition it can't go on forever. Once it starts letting me down and costing more to keep going than it's value I'll have to say goodbye to it and buy another. I'd probably only get scrap value for it by then and would be starting from scratch. I'd only be buying 2nd-hand as I always have but it would have to be reliable, economical to run and have plenty of life still in it. That's what my savings pot will mainly be for and I want to pull out all the stops to build it up as fast as I can.


I doubt I'm ever going to find that eureka idea by reading books about what young(ish) working city-dwellers do to save oodles of cash. I'll just have to carry on as I am for a bit longer.


I wish your daughter the very best of luck and success with her challenge:beer:. She has a brilliant goal in view and lots of energy and opportunities to reach it:j. I'm envious:o. Please keep us posted about how she gets on. I hope to start a diary of my own on here in January, initially to document progress through my own 'challenge' . Will have to see if it's a 'goer'.


Sorry to have rabbited on, HH. I got a bit carried away:o:o:o

I can see why this idea wouldn't work for you Carboot, luckily DD is young and walks everywhere anyway and we live in a city so have access to everything we need within walking or a bus journeys distance,she isn't one for going on lots of nights out so that's not a problem but she does tend to buy gadgets such as the fitbit she bought ( which has now been sent back )

She also like nice stationary and journals so would not be able to waste money on these and she reads a lot so spends quite a lot on books,she has read over 100 books since the beginning of the summer ,she is planning on using the library more for her book fix,it helps that she is busy with uni until the summer then she will pick up bank shifts at work,she likes walking so will do that and when the weather is warmer,there are also quite a lot of free things going on where we live so she can do those if she wants
I'm really interested to see how she gets on,I would love to do it too but I really don't think I could do it to be honest

[Deleted User]

Onebrokelady wrote: »

My girls learnt from an early age to tidy up,if I got the hoover out and they had left small enough things on the floor it went up the hoover never to be seen again DD1 is quite a messy person now she has her own place which is fine because I don't live there but DD2 is tidy like me,neither of us can relax in a mess and she respects that although she lives here it's doesn't give her the right to leave mess everywhere, she also cleans the house and does the washing and ironing if I am at work and she is at home
When her boyfriend lived here I was shocked at how much mess he could create and he just didn't see it as a problem because his mum always picked up and cleaned up after him,I just feel sorry for whoever is unfortunate enough to marry him because they are signing up for a life of cleaning up after him

My brother was waited on hand and foot by Mum. When he got married he had a massive shock when his wife, who also had a career and worked even longer hours than he did expected him to take care of his fair share of the chores. He was never messy though, Mum insisted on tidiness from us,(sometimes to the extreme IMO:eek:) but he couldn't cook the most basic food, clean things like the bath after he'd used it, or even wash up properly. He used to put the best drinking glasses in the same bowl of water with heavy casserole dishes for instance :eek:. I know everything can go in together in a dishwasher but in a small washing up bowl things need to be done in sequence as it's just the same small amount of water. He certainly couldn't iron anything. My SIL put her foot down about doing his ironing (he needed a fresh shirt every day for work and then another if he went anywhere socially in the evening) but he soon learned how to do it after a reprimand from his superior at work that he looked sloppy:rotfl:.

[Deleted User]

Onebrokelady wrote: »

I can see why this idea wouldn't work for you Carboot, luckily DD is young and walks everywhere anyway and we live in a city so have access to everything we need within walking or a bus journeys distance,she isn't one for going on lots of nights out so that's not a problem but she does tend to buy gadgets such as the fitbit she bought ( which has now been sent back )

She also like nice stationary and journals so would not be able to waste money on these and she reads a lot so spends quite a lot on books,she has read over 100 books since the beginning of the summer ,she is planning on using the library more for her book fix,it helps that she is busy with uni until the summer then she will pick up bank shifts at work,she likes walking so will do that and when the weather is warmer,there are also quite a lot of free things going on where we live so she can do those if she wants
I'm really interested to see how she gets on,I would love to do it too but I really don't think I could do it to be honest

Thanks for that:T. The challenge sounds ideal for your daughter given her location and age. I hope she does really well with it:beer:. Even if she can't complete it in full she'll have saved a fair amount by the time it ends as that sort of thing really concentrates the mind with regard to what we spend our money on.


As for her loving stationery, journals and books, that's me to a T:o. The hardest part of being in so much debt and not having anything spare was not being able to indulge on these things:(. I discovered the benefits of the mobile library though as even visiting the 'real' library involves a 14 mile round car drive. You can have up to 30 books out at any one time and there are audiobooks and other things but I haven't bothered with any of them so far. They will order in anything in the county catalogue free of charge (ordered on the website) and bring it on the van when it next visits our nearest village. I've pre-ordered new releases by authors I like and been the first person to be issued with them, usually hardback too which was a luxury in itself. I never read anything twice and pass what I read on to charity shops anyway so borrowing them from the library was great as I could read and then return them so no books cluttering up the place:j



I also pick up books at charity shops like HH does but it still involves spending money and often the choice in our nearest small town's poor selection of very small charity shops is pretty dire:(

WannabeFree

Hope you have a good day HH

x

elizabethhull

carbootcrazy wrote: »

I never read anything twice (

I know you've mentioned this before, CBC, but I find it really puzzling. After all, one listens to the same piece of music more than once, and if it's a song, most people delight in knowing it well enough to sing along. There is a special pleasure in knowing where a story is going as it frees one from the narrative to notice anything you've missed the first time round. As an example, if I'd only read 'Northanger Abbey' when I was 12, and never again, I would not have read it AFTER proper gothic fiction and appreciated the humour in it.
Classics bear many re-readings, although what one might call 'airport fiction' doesn't !

My friend and I were discussing Pilgrim's Progress last week, which I first read over 40 years ago and I was remembering the bit (turns out it's in part 2 ) where a character crosses the river to the Holy Land and goes over singing, but none could tell what words she sang. Such a beautiful image. I remember a lot of the story, whereas she ONLY reads for the beauty of the phraseology - makes for quite spirited discussions !!

And I would happily take Three Men in a Boat to a desert island as it cracks me up every time !!

Ah well, we're all different.

Happy Monday, all !