The Edcawber Principle

edinburgher

I blame the snow

rtandon27

gallygirl wrote: »

Well we're all proper cheery on here, aren't we :rotfl:.

edinburgher wrote: »

I blame the snow

:rotfl::rotfl::rotfl:

...don't forget the full moon...

...all the crazies come out on the full moon...

:rotfl::rotfl::rotfl::D

Karmacat

Yep, all the crazies are out [STRIKE]here[/STRIKE] there isn't it terrible

edinburgher

ZTD wrote: »

Gack! _pale_

Raw beans and roasters...

I fear that our cozy catastrophe has become positively leisurely!

"Rum thing, this apocalypse. I'm enjoying the freshly roasted coffee and those delicious biscotti from the artisan bakery, but I just can't enjoy myself without that lovely Jersey cream we used to get!" :rotfl:

Frabjous snow day :j

Boss suggested that working from home could cover, erm, a multitude of things and I read between the lines accordingly

Walked to the local supermarket and fought my way through the crowds to buy one of the last loaves of bread... and Fair Trade chocolate and fresh pizzas

Then went for a play in the snow with Mrs E and DD, helped push a man in a 4x4 up a hill and then made snow angels.

After that? Home for a nap and giving some thought to early housework for the weekend :beer:

£73.86 paid off credit cards (one DD and one TT).

smallholdingsister

Sounds like you got full value from your snow day.

ZTD

themadvix wrote: »

I'm not in the least a 'prepper' by the way, but I do like to know how to do things myself! (So in that respect I guess I am, just not so much the hoard of tinned food kind.)

If tinned food is the sign of a prepper, then preppers are well served by the student population...

gallygirl wrote: »

Well we're all proper cheery on here, aren't we :rotfl:.

Absolutely! So when the Met Office made their prediction of "The Beast from the East", less kind souls than myself merely mocked their previous prediction, while I started singing...

Cheery R us. And hopefully not going bust...

edinburgher wrote: »

I fear that our cozy catastrophe has become positively leisurely!

"Rum thing, this apocalypse. I'm enjoying the freshly roasted coffee and those delicious biscotti from the artisan bakery, but I just can't enjoy myself without that lovely Jersey cream we used to get!" :rotfl:

The rise of artisanal bread is of great interest to me, because I'm old enough to remember what it used to be called. It used to be called "bread".

There seems to be a relatively modern trend where good things in the past which were common and taken for granted, become rare, so need special titles. As a non-bread example: "Common Sense"...

Karmacat

edinburgher wrote: »

I fear that our cozy catastrophe has become positively leisurely!

"Rum thing, this apocalypse. I'm enjoying the freshly roasted coffee and those delicious biscotti from the artisan bakery, but I just can't enjoy myself without that lovely Jersey cream we used to get!" :rotfl:

Frabjous snow day :j

Boss suggested that working from home could cover, erm, a multitude of things and I read between the lines accordingly

Walked to the local supermarket and fought my way through the crowds to buy one of the last loaves of bread... and Fair Trade chocolate and fresh pizzas

Then went for a play in the snow with Mrs E and DD, helped push a man in a 4x4 up a hill and then made snow angels.

After that? Home for a nap and giving some thought to early housework for the weekend :beer:

£73.86 paid off credit cards (one DD and one TT).

:j:j:j

I was going to insert quote /unquote at various points, but it would have been :j:j:j each time, so I didn't :rotfl:

Suffolk_lass

Did I miss something? I know I haven't been paying attention but was there an alien invasion and I was too busy on conference calls all day (from home)? It's like that film with someone laughing slightly manically in all the wrong places on here today

AlexLK

Just catching up after an eventful couple of days...

PositiveBalance wrote: »

I think this is true if you look back over a long period of time (a hundred years or more) but if you are looking at the shorter term i.e. Baby Boomers onward, it's hard not to feel that those of us who won't get final salary pensions after paying tuition fees and struggling to save up a large deposit for a house against a background of, on average, lower wages due to globalisation etc. don't have it harder than a few generations back.

The main issue here is talking about one generation and its good but ultimately unsustainable fortune.

How are the things 'given' to the baby boomer generation being funded? Have those things ultimately led to debt for both the country and business?

PositiveBalance wrote: »

I imagine it is, in general. Having said that, in your particular case, you are looking at you parents financial situation at the end of their working life, perhaps not seeing some of the struggles it took to get there. You are only in your thirties - there is still lots of time for you to get there (or further), which seems entirely plausible given your recent change in attitude to money, your new career, your ability to buy and sell niche items of value for a pretty penny or two on the side and even your other ways of making a living if pushed, such as your private music tuition. If you keep going in the direction you are currently facing, things could end up financially very rosy for you, Alex.

Just don't start getting a major pen habit on the side!

Also, in other areas you seem to be far ahead of your parents; your relatonship with Master LK appears to be fabulous, over all. Some of the stories you have told about your own childhood have been quite sad to hear, from an outsider's perspective. All that matters cannot be counted, and sometimes all that can be counted isn't the what matters most.

Perhaps you should spend some time thinking about what *YOU* really want in life - what, if you were at the pearly gates was read out to you as your life would make you proud - and aim for that? Stop measuring your worth in comparison to your parents financial worth - yes, they made some money and paid for you to go to a nice school, but they have made some pretty hefty mistakes on way, too (your father seems to have realised it recently) and figure out what counts for YOU and live your life by that! :T

*Hands thread back to Ed* Sorry Ed!

Thank you for the compliment, PositiveBalance.

Re. finances: ultimately, however I do, I'm not going to be 'self made'.

Interesting thoughts about finding what I want in life and think that applies to everyone. At the moment the thing which would make me most proud is being told I managed to provide my son with the skills to build a life he would be happy with. Secondly, I'd like to be able to look back and find I did all I could to make my marriage work, even better if Mrs. K. and I had grew old together and managed to spend more time together. Also have a few selfish things I would like to have said I've owned.

edinburgher wrote: »

Alex - I don't disagree with you - the quality of life that we take for granted nowadays far surpasses that of a few generations previous.

As, however, we're in the lucky position of being able to enjoy warm homes, nutritious food and absence of war, the mind naturally wanders to some of the higher order needs.

When it comes to financial prosperity, opportunities for meaningful self-development and the horizons we look towards, I worry that the options may actually be reduced for future generations because of the huge amount of capital they'll have to invest in providing for these basics needs that I've already mentioned.

Maybe I've been reading too many post-apocalyptic novels, but I can't help but feel that crippling housing costs + "peak" everything are going to make the future world a much less abundant one than the one we knew.

I cannot argue with those points, Ed.

I do wonder what will happen to the property market over the long term (say 20-25 years) and if we are going to see a situation where prices either fall or average incomes rise whilst property markets stay static, or perhaps a shift away from the majority of houses being owner occupied to the majority being rented. If so, I can see much greater regulation becoming more commonplace and a lot of corporate investment in the housing sector.

themadvix wrote: »

I think the peak everything situation is more of a worry than rising costs. I've not been reading (post-)apocalyptic novels but I can see that the world we know isn't going to last for much longer. Skills and knowledge of how to do things for yourself (and sadly Alex, that doesn't extend to servicing old cars (unless you can get them to run on locally produced waste cooking oil), even though I fully agree that that's an important skill!) with local resources are going to become more important, possibly even than having a good stash of cash. That sounds very doom and gloom-y, but it's not intended to - I just think that it'll be a new challenge (and one which the people on here will be better equipped to deal with than the majority of the population).

Mad Vix, I'm not so convinced about the world we know ending anytime soon. However, I also happen to think the more skills you can learn and the more produce you can procure locally benefits both yourself and your local economy.

AlexLK

On another note, heard the snow is so bad near you that people have been stuck on the motorway for 2 days? :eek: