WHY are you old style?......

lostinrates

It's a choice to live the way we do, but a necessity to be frugal to do it.

We have a decent household income, and choices on how we spend it, but there have been times we have not had that luxury. We saved for longer than 'necessary' to buy our first home, but bought a home we will never outgrow. It's a wreck and while buying it was ok repairing it is a bigger stretch.

quintwins

We don't do the lotto either but when you see the adds for a rollover and we say wow what would you do with all that money.

We have a good balance, we are old style while still having luxurys and treats, so i really think nothing would change, i would still dry my clothes indoors/on the line to save on elec, and my cupboards would still be full of value brands and i would still cook from scratch , just because you can pay more for things doesn't mean you should unless they are better quality, value food is fine and tumble drying acually damages your clothes even if it is easier.


If i won the lottery i'd prob hire a cleaner tho.

VJsmum

jeanniebeanie wrote: »

Both!
Being frugal on a day to day basis is a necessity because it allows me to indulge my extravagances in other areas!

^^^^ this

And because I grew up in a household with very little money and I saw what my poor old mum had to go through to feed and clothe us. I admit to being afraid of going back to that so I am frugal through choice, interest, environmentalism and ... yes, fear. But it does allow us nice holidays which is our big indulgence (and often at odds with the environmentalism).

Pink.

I'm frugal by choice, it's the way I was brought up, and I hate waste of any kind. We have a couple of older threads that should interest you:

you have a £5 million lottery win, now how Old Style are you?

WHY are you old style?......

I'll add this thread to one of those links later.

Pink

mummybearx

I can do all those things without a lotto win, but I'd still have to be at work 6 days a week :rotfl:

Alison_Funnell

Both. Monetary necessity and ethical choice. IE If I had more I would still do it.

bossymoo

Mine is choice, really. However, there is an element of, the more frugal I am the more security we have and the more we have for our future. It's a balance between living for now and not making things hard for your family in years to come.

sparrer

Frugal by habit, so you could say both. My mother never spent on anything that was more than a necessity, then because like most people when we were bringing up a family we had to watch the pennies so I had a good training. Nowadays whatever I save with my frugality I can spend on family, holidays and achieving whatever I can on my bucket list.

I do the Health Lottery, not the national one (so I know my money is going to a real cause not some of the carp the Nat Lottery gives to), so will never win £5m, but if I did the family would have it and I would continue exactly as I do now.

bluebag

Need to, sadly. Every time we seem to get a bit better off something comes along and chucks a spanner in the works. Not that I've ever been that well off anyway.

I can beat myself up sometimes when I see freinds that have everything, posh house, new cars, holidays in Mexico, latest fashion, false nails and tan well you know what I mean.

But I don''t owe anybody anything. I suppose a lot of the above is often on the never never, don't know reallly and maybe I'm just jealous and jumping to conclusions.

Need to get off the pity pot now and go to the shops for the weeks butty stuff.

thriftwizard

I became frugal by necessity; we had 5 small children, couldn't afford childcare for that lot & didn't have room for a nanny. OH was & still is in "ordinary" job and we had a big mortgage to support. But I continue to be frugal by choice; I don't technically need to be any more, as the mortgage is just about paid off (with a nominal sum remaining to keep our credit rating up) to the astonishment of our bank, but it's fun, it's better for the environment & I actually like living this way.

Before kids, I did have a well-paid and interesting job that could well have become a high-flying career, and my family thought (still think!) that I was quite mad to give it all up; we should just have upped the mortgage, moved to somewhere bigger & employed a nanny. But I wanted to bring my own kids up & I'm much happier being self-employed now, even if my income is pocket money by their standards! And in the meantime, my line of work has mostly been exported to India and the few I know who have stayed in the ratrace spend most of their time looking anxiously over their shoulders, all too aware that their jobs may be the next to be "outsourced". Curiously they don't seem to be any better off than we are, but their cars are shinier, they have had some much more exotic holidays & they own far more gadgets than we do.

We've been very lucky that OH's job has been stable & he enjoys it; mind you, I suspect he'd continue turning up even if they stopped paying him. But in the early days, it was downright scary sometimes, and there were certainly nights when I cried myself to sleep, wondering how to juggle the finances to pay the bills, afford school trips & feed everyone.

Now, however, it's not by necessity that I carry on gardening, making & mending, cooking from scratch & borrowing books from the library. It's because I don't see the point in spending money I don't have to which would be better spent on other things, like the trip to Chile we're saving up for next spring; DS3 is studying out there. It's the chance of a lifetime to see somewhere a bit off the beaten track, and I've earned my ticket money already! (This would have seemed totally impossible 15 years ago, BTW) And also because whilst I may not be living the high life amongst the bright lights & glittering prizes, I know where my food comes from & what's in it, I know no child has been damaged in the making of my clothes, and I'm so much happier getting scratched in a hedgerow scrumping blackberries than ever I was administering a budget of half a million pounds that I wouldn't swap it for the world.

So for all of you who are struggling to see frugal living as an interesting challenge, keep on keeping on; one day there will be light at the end of the tunnel. And you may discover, like me, that you actually rather like not being in the bright lights all the time.