Put away your purse & become debt-averse

takingcontrolatlast

foxgloves wrote: »

Takingcontrolatlast - When you finally come to the realisation that you HAVE to do it, that you can't make excuses any longer, that's when changes happen. They did for us, anyway.
If you are also a knitter, you may have a yarn stash which which you could maybe raid to knit a couple of little gifts to go in your presents box. I'm busy knitting up my stash rather than buying new yarn & among other projects, I'm now on my 3rd pair of socks - all for my presents box. These will be soft & pretty and will be for my best friend's Christmas goody bag. I'm using a dip-dyed sock yarn in pinks & purples for the ribs, heels & toes and an ombre-style yarn in blues & greys for the main part of the sock. Cost = nil, as both balls of yarn have sat in my stash for over two years doing nothing!
The way you put a gift together & were able to via the cash saved elsewhere, is exactly how it works. All these little things do add up. I can remember turning out my 20p jar & every time I had £10 or £20 in there, bagging them up & trotting off to the bank to pay it off one of our debts. That was my naughty Flexiloan - the 2nd debt I paid off. I worked on getting shot of my everlasting overdraft first, which I'd had since I was 19.
F x

Hi Foxgloves,

Socks sound really ambitious to make but they would make lovely xmas presents - i may have a go actually - thinking chunky wool with a cable pattern - I'll see if there are any online free patterns!

I can sell what i knit but these days you dont get much for all the effort but it is a hobby that relaxes me and I suppose every penny counts and a profit is a profit after all.

I bet you felt a weight off your shoulders when the overdraft was paid off - I know I did when I paid off my first overdraft!

I have my little bag of coins which I do cash in as well - usually at xmas time but I'm concentrating on paying a family loan off at the moment - deadline end of August!

Off to check my stash of wool

Kantankrus_Mare

Reading about how you all budget or how parents handled their money brought back a vivid memory of seeing my Mam and Dad every Friday tea time........sorting out their finances.

They were never flush but we never went short. Things were different to nowadays. Growing up in the seventies was much less demanding on parents i think. We didnt have designer clothes or trainers. I think I had a black pair of plimsolls and thought I had really gone up in the world when I got a white lace up pair. :rotfl:
"Sannies" was what we called them.

Anyhow.......I digress.........Friday teatime, Dad would get his brown wage packet out and Mam would sort it out. Putting into separate piles for various bills or housekeeping. Our pocket money came out of it. They would give a certain amount to my Nanna, who ran a mutual aid for Christmas.
I never really remember them having any debt apart from mortgage. Credit cards were few and far between.

I guess their money management must have been impaired on my brain as even though we get paid differently these days, I still draw out a certain amount of cash weekly and sort my money into different areas.
We have no debt now, apart from the mortgage but having a OH who has different ideas about money and likes to spend means we inevitably ended up with credit cards in our younger years. Not huge amounts, but it went against everything I had been brought up with.
When I joined this site (2005) I started realising what interest we were paying so I kept balance transferring to 0% cards and made a huge effort to get rid of them.
OH still likes to spend and I still have to keep him in check every now and then but I think he dislikes the thought of debt almost as much as me now.

foxgloves

HHoD - Yes, it was defo a good kind of knackered. Always better to feel like that when you've got something to show for it, otherwise I'd think I was going down with something! Was not so pleased this morning to discover that the combination of feeling so tired plus gin last night had caused me to knit four rows of absolute rubbish though......suffice to say shall be frogging that bit of knitting later. Thankfully it's not on the sock I finished & cast off. Can see that the gin kicked in precisely a quarter of the way up the ribbing on the 2nd one, grrrrr!
F

foxgloves

Wish - I like baking stuff too, but my real temptation in the Spendy Years was vintage stuff - I went to loads of antique/collectors fairs & used to love the kitchenalia stalls. I still use a big mixing bowl from one of those, & my flour dredger plus some things which belonged to my grandmas. The vintage 1950s potato masher I bought was absolute rubbish though. It looked quite chic & retro hanging up on the pan rack above my kitchen window but it took ages to do mashed potato & it wasn't great mash either. I later found out from an older friend involved in domestic living history type things, that it wasn't actually a potato masher, but in fact a spinach presser, for getting all the cooking water out of boiled spinach!! This discovery soon became academic when the end fell off rendering it capable neither mashing OR pressing so it went in the bin.
I've picked up some good baking stuff from charity shops, including an eclair tin for 50p.
F

foxgloves

Takingcontrolatlast - Yes, socks do make good presents because people think they are difficult to knit, but once you are used to how to do the heel, they are straightforward. I knit them on commission now & again, or for my sister's annual knitting stall, but mostly I knit them for presents. I mostly use the self-patterning 4-ply sock yarn but I think your idea of knitting chunky ones with cables sounds great & they'd be nice & warm for walkers or for people who don't like slippers.
I'd quite like to knit a hairband for my friend. There are lots of patterns around for these, but I want to put a flower on it, so am waiting till I see a really good pattern for a knitted flower. Most of them are crocheted & I don't do crochet, apart from simple squares. I could do a simple blanket, but couldn't follow a crochet pattern. But I think hair bands would be good little projects for using up odds & ends of yarn & nice for autumn & winter if you don't want to wear a hat. Wrist warmers & fingerless mitts also good for using up odds & ends for the presents box.
F

foxgloves

Kantankrus - Yes, it's interesting thinking back to the 1970s. I think we mostly all wanted to look reasonably fashionable, but I don't remember anyone obsessing over brands. There was a bit of pressure to have roughly the 'right' style of garments.....i.e a maxi-skirt, whatever kind of jeans were in, high wedge heels, pork pie shoes, pierced ears, etc, but that's as far as it went. A lot of older people today recall the 70s as a time where the trade unions brought the country to a standstill, & it's true that there were problems, but this is also often portrayed through a right-wing lens & still used as political propaganda today. The trade unions had in many cases succeeded in getting the wages of ordinary working people increased in many of the big industries, and the 1970s was historically the most socially & economically 'equal' decade. I can recall some kids at my school being poorer than me & some being wealthier, that's true of any era, anywhere, but mostly, my school cohort seemed pretty much similar. The 1980s were very different. The unemployment, for starters. I can remember signing on the dole for the 2 months between graduating & my first job and there were people at the dole office I was at school with who'd left at 16 & hadn't yet had a job apart from temporary casual work. The 1980s really ramped up the pressure to 'have stuff' didn't they? The whole horrible 'greed is good' mantra. Then the 1990s brought the access to all the easy credit to acquire this stuff pretty much regardless of income. The culture we'd all grown up with in the 1970s, where apart from a mortgage, people saved for the things they wanted, just seemed to go out of the window. It certainly did where I was concerned! I've been more than honest about my terrible relationship with money. It was different for the previous generation though. I wonder if, attitudinally, it was something to do with our parents being children in wartime & then living through the period of rationing that followed. In the 1970s, my grandparents & parents would have had so much, compared with what they had earlier, so once they had a nicely furnished house & a car, the need to keep acquiring which really took hold in the 1980s, just wasn't there to the same degree in that generation. My Nana & Mum were rather sniffy about debt. There was a lot less access to it back then, but even catalogue debt was looked down on by them because it encouraged spending your money before you had earned it. I was 29 when my Nana died & she could never believe how I would spend any money I had instantly. I just couldn't physically save anything. It used to burn a hole in my handbag! She used to say 'Spend half, save half' because she'd come of age in the years of the Great Depression & understood that you never knew what misfortune might be just around the corner. A lesson I would have done well to learn.
But yes, Kantankrus, thinking back to the 70s........it feels like a different world financially, & it's not really even that long ago!
Interesting thinking about it all.
F

foxgloves

And hi to everyone else,
Today's frugal activity has mostly centred around me feeling too achy from all yesterday's gardening endeavours to go out as planned, & kitchen-based activity. Firstly, there was sufficient of mr f's fab chilli left over from last night to feed us tonight too, so he's going to make some chunky jacket wedges to go with that. While he was rooting around in the freezer for I know not what, he spotted a container of leftovers & the last garlic flat bread and declared they would do for his packed lunch tomorrow, so that was another frugal meal sorted. I've taken some home baked mini-muffins out of the freezer too for snacks for the next couple of days - they are nicer than they sound.....I used ground ginger & two chopped-up past their best peaches instead of my more usual apple, pear or rhubarb.
Then decided I'd finally get round to trying an oatcake recipe I snipped out of a free magazine a while back. All store cupboard ingredients plus a small amount of butter & cheese. I was really pleased with them! Much nicer than the recipe I've used in the past, just 50 calories each & very portable for work or handbag snacks. Nice to get stuck into a bit of gentle baking after yesterday's knackering veggie garden efforts.
Also pleased to discover I had sufficient Ipsos survey points to cash in for a £10 voucher. I would rather have cash, so I have offered it to mr f at a £2 discount & he's jumped at the chance. Double-win. He gets a £10 voucher for £8. I sell a £10 voucher for an emporium from which I require nothing for £8 cash to spend on something I DO want or to put away in my little secret tin until it's needed.
And now I must sort out last night's knitting nonsense. Knitting & gin do not go together!
Enjoy the rest of the weekend, all.
F x

takingcontrolatlast

foxgloves wrote: »

Takingcontrolatlast - Yes, socks do make good presents because people think they are difficult to knit, but once you are used to how to do the heel, they are straightforward. I knit them on commission now & again, or for my sister's annual knitting stall, but mostly I knit them for presents. I mostly use the self-patterning 4-ply sock yarn but I think your idea of knitting chunky ones with cables sounds great & they'd be nice & warm for walkers or for people who don't like slippers.
I'd quite like to knit a hairband for my friend. There are lots of patterns around for these, but I want to put a flower on it, so am waiting till I see a really good pattern for a knitted flower. Most of them are crocheted & I don't do crochet, apart from simple squares. I could do a simple blanket, but couldn't follow a crochet pattern. But I think hair bands would be good little projects for using up odds & ends of yarn & nice for autumn & winter if you don't want to wear a hat. Wrist warmers & fingerless mitts also good for using up odds & ends for the presents box.
F

Foxgloves - hairbands are all the rage at the moment - especially beaded/pearl ones - just a thought?

Ditto with crochet !

I have made cabled bobble hats in the past for winter - they went down well - I did use merino wool and it was (if I say so myself) a really lovely hat that DD1 still wears! Bit pricey for the wool but the pattern was free

Kantankrus_Mare

Laughing at your "Knitting nonsense" What happened and how many gins did you have???? :rotfl::rotfl:

Blackcats

Interesting to read reminiscences of the 70's. It does seem that life was simpler then - my Mum had a sewing pattern that created midi and maxi skirts and my Nan had a knitting pattern that made polo neck, round neck or cardigans so I had a mix and match home made wardrobe. When I grew out of a jumper it would be unravelled and re-born with a stripe. Ric-rac braid and lace added colour to skirts - I thought it was so pretty. I did have a pair of shop bought purple hot pants with a lilac jumper - I knew for a fact that purple was Donny Osmond's favourite colour so I needed to be ready for when he knocked on my door. I used to get Dr Scholl sandals from the local chemist of all places and they were sooo uncomfortable but not as uncomfortable as the plastic flip flops we tortured our toes with each summer.
I don't remember my parents budgeting but I remember my Nan had tins for rent, tv rental and electric light bill as she labelled it. I think she only had an old age pension from which she had to pay her rent and although she obviously wasn't rich she never seemed poor either.