Do you think OS people are happier than non-OS people?

comeandgo

Sorry, I have to ask , what does OS mean?

[Deleted User]

Old Style as in 'like in the past' as much as you can in 2020.

helensbiggestfan

Pollyanna.  

I agree with you about "painting on the face" and getting suited and booted.  I learned very early in life that by "dressing up and showing up" I could achieve more and get what I wanted.......jobs, money, healthcare, boyfriends.😂  

The fact is, whether we like it or not, we live in a "lookist society" where appearance does matter, where we are judged by how we look and the messages our clothes and demeanour (speech, body language etc) send out.  I learned that in order to be taken seriously I needed to take my appearance seriously, to make an effort to look good, even when I was skint. I simply couldn't afford to let being poor be an excuse. 

I speak from real life experience. I was born with an unfortunate birthmark on my face. As I child I quickly learned to spot the horror and pity I noticed in people's eyes.  I fought back.  I used clothes, hair and  make up and glamour as my weapons of choice.  It was a very kindly aunt who took me under her wing and taught me how to do this.  

She had a saying - "if you need to do battle then you need to wear armour".  Whenever she had to do battle she would get dolled up, full make up, fur wrap, and always a striking hat.  Her children used to say "mums getting ready to go out and slay dragons". 😂. 

She was a great teacher and mentor. She was also very thrifty and creative. She taught me most of my practical skills. From her I learned to be proud and stand on my own two feet and I have never forgotten her lessons on the importance of presentation. I wore my armour with pride and fought my own particular dragon.  

BTW. The birthmark eventually became cancerous and was removed in 2006 when I was 55. The surgeon did a brilliant job and I now have just a faint white scar which is practically undetectable. But I still love to dress up.  It's an important part of what makes me, well me. 😂

Goldiegirl

I think its impossible to categorise people's happiness by the lifestyle they lead.
There's going to be happy and miserable people everywhere.

I think the key is to find what makes YOU happy, and then live accordingly and not compare yourself to others. That includes wishing for things that you perceive other people have, or on the other hand, thinking your individual lifestyle is superior to others.  Just do your own think, and don't look over your shoulder at everyone else.

For myself, we have always lived fairly modestly on a day to day basis, so we can save money for travel and holidays, which we love. Now that we are retired, we find we can continue our travels, due to money saved during our working lives and careful use of our pensions.

I'm not one for make up, but I do like clothes and handbags. I buy during the sales and get the best quality that I can, so they last me for ages.  I buy second hand sometimes, mainly evening dresses for cruises.
We seem to have found the right combination in our lives to make us happy - the holidays make us very happy, and we do it because we love it, and while we are still healthy to do it - it has nothing to do with what other people think of us, or us feeling like we've got to be like other people !

Things go in cycles. I normally read a book a week, but this year I'm only on my third book. I think this is due to getting a new iPad late last year, so I find myself more likely to play word games and jigsaws on the iPad, rather than picking up a book to read. We also got Netflix at the same time, so I'm watching more TV now, as well. But no doubt, my reading habits will re-assert themselves art a later date.

I can understand why the OP hasn't really felt like doing much recently, but, be kind to yourself, and one day I'm sure you'll find yourself doing some of your old activities again. 

buildersdaughter

I agree that living simply is not necessarily 'poverty tourism', and I don't think PasturesNew meant it as a criticism. As other posters have said,there are many different reasons for living simply.
My own journey began in childhood, then through bringing up 4 children - not in poverty by any stretch, but needing to be careful (which has stood them in good stead)
By the time we retired, inheritance, public service pensions and children with good jobs, meant that our income was comfortable. The habit of being thrifty was strong, and we wanted to make sure that our savings would cover future problems. Our hobbies help us to make all sorts of things from scratch, and mend things.
We made a careful decision that we would continue to spend thriftily, but that our focus would be on our money doing good as far as possible. We would buy as ethically and locally as possible, we would support the causes we believed in. Our money is saved with Credit Unions, the Charity Bank and some ethical investments.
This means for instance, that for a wedding later in the year, we won't buy new clothes but will wear the good ones we have had for some years. I make most of my own clothes. We will travel by train, not fly (although that would be cheaper!) and we will make a nice short holiday of the trip. We can pay for all of our children to stay in a hotel with us, because we have saved enough to afford such occasional luxuries. This also means that they don't have to spend their holiday budget on a family wedding.
We are grateful that we can afford to do this and give a decent gift. I am not doing this to be a 'poverty tourist' but because it suits us and the way we like to live.

GreyQueen

My take on it is exactly as others have said; you can find happy and unhappy people in all lifestyles. I grew up in a poor but careful household, the earliest years in homes with not heating beyond a fire in one room and plumbing being limited to a single cold tap -  biucket privy and tin bath and all that jazz. I smile wryly when someone has a meltdown because their shower is broken and they can't get clean and it's a disaster wah wah wah. My income places me in the lowest 10% of wage earners and half of that is taken by two essential bills (rent and council tax). I live nattily on the rest, due to being unphased by buying nearly everything 2nd hand and insourcing many activities such as cutting my own hair. I have observed that many people go on unthinkingly on the hamster wheel of work and consumerism until catastropic life events such as bereavement, serious health issues in themselves or others, or just an epiphany about the grand futility of many things we do........ I genuinely don't care what other people do with their money and their time, and hope they don't care what I do (or don't do) with mine. And now I shall toddle off to eat some YS food for brekkie. Not just any old YS  food, this is M&S YS food, lol.

thriftmonster

I think several people have put it better than me, particularly Mrs L, but for me OS is who I am naturally, and there is great joy for me in being able to be that way all the time, now nsdh isn't around. I know lots of people find me old fashioned/ odd (take your pick) but it suits me.
Again I'm one who likes travel and clothes (and knitting wool ) but again the clothes are good quality and from sales/ charity shops. Having lost 3 stone over the last couple of years, buying clothes has been a bit of a necessity. I am careful with money and now have my housekeeping/ weekly spend in cash rather than using my card as I find I am much more thoughtful about where it goes - but again this makes me a bit of an oddity at work (although they're very nice to me  ) 
I also love the OS forum as it gives me great pleasure to know I'm not alone.

PipneyJane

VJsmum said:

PasturesNew said:

It's a question of wealth.  Some are "poverty tourists", doing the old style thing "for fun", but they could drop it in a heartbeat and fly off on a holiday if somebody asked them to.  They enjoy it as it's a choice. 

or 'we' do it because we have known true poverty, we still don't see the point in paying more than we need to but realise that flying off on holiday is something within our gift.  I do enjoy it as a choice, but can afford (and love) to go on holiday.  I see nothing wrong with that.  It's not either / or.  FOr example, last week I bought two leather sofas from our local hospice furniture shop (£100 each) to replace the 15 year old one that had literally fallen to bits; a side table off facebook market place for £10; two new with tags pairs of walking trousers from a different chazzer for £7 each (expensive for a chazzer, but they are new); a summer shirt for £3 from the same place and a book from the NT bookshop at our local stately home for £1.   I also booked a holiday for the 4 of us to Croatia, because I can and we need some family time.

I also know some very un-OS people who are very happy...

Can I second what @VJsmum said?  And explain a bit more. I’m an immigrant so the only money I have had, I have had to earn myself.  I met my ex-husband after I’d been here a year and he kept me broke until I divorced him 9 years later.  He was a failed Yuppy and his attitude to money was “What was his was his and what was mine was his to spend”.   He never contributed a penny to our living costs.  For years, I lived in my overdraft, bouncing along the bottom of it for at least two weeks of every month.  I’ve written elsewhere about the February where I had £20 to spend on groceries to feed us both for the entire month - that was ALL the money I had that month.  I put myself through college and paid for his Masters’ degree.  I made my own clothes, because I sure-as-hell couldn’t afford to buy any but £20 would buy me a pattern and 3 metres of pure wool fabric from remnant shop around the corner from work, which was enough for a suit.  I never had a holiday, never went to a concert, never had savings, always picked up the tab...

That relationship ended in 1998.  I was £6k in credit card debt - over a third of my salary - and determined to never live like that again.  I felt like I’d spent years watching life from the sidelines, rather than living and enjoying it.   I tracked every penny.  I got my professional qualifications and changed jobs, in order to earn more money.  I met my husband, who is just as frugal as I am.  I bought a flat and a new, reliable car.  We saved and bought our house.  We got married.  We’ve travelled both within the UK and abroad (Egypt, Canada, America, France, Spain, New Zealand, Germany, home to Australia, the Netherlands).  We’ve both been made redundant twice and, each time, picked up the pieces and found new jobs.  I am not a tourist in frugal living - living this way has enabled me to do the things I enjoy and to have savings in the bank.  My “money to live off” - the allowance I pay myself - hasn’t changed in 15 years; everything beyond that is saved or invested.  We’re overpaying our mortgage and run a surplus on our joint “bills account”.  I have savings accounts for everything: holidays; a car maintenance/replacement fund; clothes; haircuts; house maintenance; the garden; Christmas and birthday presents; an emergency fund...

Which brings me to this last week.  The company where I work announced that they’re putting my division up for sale.  We’re right at the start of the process; it’ll probably take a year.   Several members of the team I sit with when I’m in head office are devastated, frightened for their jobs and worried that they’ll end up unemployed, struggling to make every penny do the work of 20, without reserves to fall back on.  

Twenty years ago, that would have been me.

- Pip

[Deleted User]

It's sometimes about lifestyle choices and sometimes forced on us to live frugally.  Humble beginnings when you are cold and hungry tend to make you very cautious in adult life and we both buy in to the same philosophy of what the Swedish call 'Lagom' which translates as 'enough/sufficient/no more than you need'.  I don't value material things, I DO like to be comfortable, fed and warm but I don't understand 'keeping up with the Jonses' in any way.  We have a comfy homey home, we have a nice life by our standards but the most exciting we get these days is coffee out on a Sunday morning as our treat.  If the means to do that disappeared tomorrow I wouldn't bat an eyelid because it's nice but not crucial.  I think in older years life is in some ways more immediate because you don't know how much of your own life is still left and the idea of frittering away even a second of it on unnecessary (to us) things is a waste of valuable time in which to LIVE.  We like to walk, we do most days but we walk round the lake and the arboretum, we're blessed with multitudes of footpaths in this area too, we like to read and use the library which we're lucky to still have, we grow the allotment, I love to cook, I even like housework (sad I know) but the biggest of lifes pleasures is time with the family and the grandchildren and even that doesn't involve taking them out to expensive places, they like us to play with them so we do because we love it too.  We're off when the ground dries to garden DD1s plot and dig her veg patch, we're family and it's the biggest gift in life and both daughters and their families have the same philosophy in life as we do and so the frugal life continues.....

LameWolf

PipneyJane there's nothing like a good-for-nothing ex-husband to make you appreciate a wonderful man when you find one, is there? Your ex has some parallels with mine - if there was a tenner in my purse, he'd swipe it to buy cigarettes. I got to the point of hiding money just so I could keep us fed (and I used to skip meals myself, which probably goes some way to explaining why I struggle to eat nowadays).

I finally ditched the toerag, and the man I'm married to now couldn't be more different. He was rubbish with money when I met him, but he willingly let me "take him in hand" re his finances, and he now readily embraces the fact that I am debt-phobic, and we don't ever buy anything we haven't the money for.

Life ain't a bed of roses - for one thing we both have life-altering illnesses, and are each others' sole carers, but we prop each other up as best we can; pootle along as we wish, and s*d what the neighbours think!