Put away your purse & become debt-averse

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  • Evening Foxgloves.

    I love reading your diary. I learn so much and it inspires me to try harder to be less wasteful.

    Please keep posting (if you wish too)
    Outstanding mortgage: £23,181 (December 19)
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  • foxgloves
    foxgloves Posts: 11,027
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    Thanks for your nice comments, Wish. It's sometimes difficult to get my head round, because if anyone had suggested back in the Spendy Years, that I would ever inspire ANYONE in any area remotely connected to financial common sense, I'd have collapsed onto the floor laughing!
    But I did partly decide to start this diary to show that changing even longstanding bad habits is very much possible, providing that the drive to change is there.
    Oooh, I've just noticed the time. I'm going out in 40 minutes & am nowhere near ready.
    F x
    "For each of our actions there are only consequences" (James Lovelock)"For in the true nature of things......every green tree is far more glorious than if it were made of gold & silver" (Martin Luther King Jnr)
  • Baileys_Babe
    Baileys_Babe Posts: 5,558
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    edited 19 October 2019 at 8:00AM
    Congratulations smallchanges on clearing your debt.

    Blackcats I loved your flawed logic, the more I spend the more I save :rotfl:

    Foxgloves I find your writing both entertaining and inspirational.
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  • foxgloves
    foxgloves Posts: 11,027
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    Thanks, Baileys Babe - at least I might have a fledgling readership if I ever manage to get my blimming novel finished!

    And hi to everyone else too,
    A very pleasant low-key day today. Decided to press on with our planned trip our, despite the greyest of skies & chilly showers. So glad we did. We sat in the cafe with mugs of coffee - I had a scone & the Beloved felt he needed a treacle tart, but all bought from our Personal Spends, so no effect on what has been a pretty tight budget this month. We chatted till the rain stopped - chat is always free..... Oh, unless it's one of those expensive telephone lines for lonely males - watched a TV programme about that industry once, absolutely fascinating......I'm digressing big time again, where was I? Yes, in a cosy cafe watching wildlife in the rain, which then stopped. Coats zipped up & off we went for our autumn walk, not far, we kept stopping to look at things. By lunchtime, the sun was well & truly out, so we enjoyed our picnic & I felt pleased we'd brought it - just sandwiches, crisps & a home made sausage roll & pear muffin from the freezer, but probably about an £18 saving compared to if we'd returned back to the cafe. We really did fritter cash right, left & centre on breakfasts & lunches out back when we were Spendy Baddies. It must have added up to hundreds of £££s over a year & we did once work out we used to spend around an additional £2000 a year on popping out to buy lunch on work days. As we all know, this is the kind of mindless spending where one has nothing to show for it & when we do eat out now, we enjoy it so much more because its a genuine treat, rather than a debt-inducing habit.
    Well, as this afternoon has dropped cooler, I popped out to pick a couple of peppers - can hardly believe I still have ELEVEN more on the plants - mostly green, some red, a very good year for them - I grew a variety called 'Summer salad mix' as I like a variety of colours & they're not too fussy, apart from if it is too cold in Spring.
    I've finished reading my book & am about to start another from the library. We've a film lined up for later & I shall knit while watching that. The end is finally in sight for the gift I'm knitting. I need to do about another 36cms, I think, then I'll just need to sew in all the ends before handwriting some sort of posh label so as to present it nicely - then just one much smaller gift & I'll finally be able to cast on my new winter jumper.
    Enjoy your evenings, all. If anyone's had a cr*ppy day, whatever it is will eventually pass, as is the way of all things.
    Peace,
    F x
    "For each of our actions there are only consequences" (James Lovelock)"For in the true nature of things......every green tree is far more glorious than if it were made of gold & silver" (Martin Luther King Jnr)
  • foxgloves
    foxgloves Posts: 11,027
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    Blackcats - Lol at you missing #Potatogate! No further dumping of unwanted root vegetables has occurred.
    Oh, the ear-piercing reminiscence took me right back. 15? FIFTEEN? Lucky you! I had to wait till I was 16! I couldn't understand why my Mum let me colour my hair from the age of 12 (I think I could have had shares in the 'Toners' & 'Shaders' company between the age of 12 & 13!), but wouldn't let me get my ears pieced. Among the stricter parents, there were some nonsensical, frequently trotted out arguments against ear-piercing, often of the "If God had wanted you to have holes in your ears" , etc, etc, variety, but my Mum's reasoning was even more obtuse - "Why would you pay money to have holes made in your ears then pay more money buying earrings to fill them up again?" You can't argue with that kind of 'logic', can you? Except I did argue, all of the time. It may have been the 70s, but any reason which began 'Because I'm your parent & I say so' was never going to progress past first base of resistance with me.
    I suspect with hindsight that the real reason ear-piercing was forbidden was that when Mum was growing up it was probably considered 'common'. Lots of things I wanted to do fell into this category, & of course it just served to make them much more attractive.
    So at 16, I finally had my ears pierced & then again...... then again, & I shudder to think how much I must have spent on earrings in the following decades. I also made them myself for about 10 years & did craft fairs, sold to friends, etc.
    I had forgotten all about 'Salisburys', Blackcats. Yes, I do remember them. I bought a completely hideous pair of fake gold creole style earrings from there. They were so heavy, it felt like walking around with a hub cap dangling from each lobe!
    I always fancied having a diamond stud in my nose, but I worked with someone years ago who had a horrible infection from hers, so that put me off.
    Earrings, (sighs) - such a pleasant discussion topic after the weird tediosity of Potatogate.......
    F x
    "For each of our actions there are only consequences" (James Lovelock)"For in the true nature of things......every green tree is far more glorious than if it were made of gold & silver" (Martin Luther King Jnr)
  • foxgloves
    foxgloves Posts: 11,027
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    edited 21 October 2019 at 10:34AM
    Dear Diary Readers,
    Quite a lot of rather pleasant sunshine this morning, so I as soon as I'd got some bread dough sorted out, I hot-footed it down to the greenhouse for a couple of hours. I've sown most of my sweetpeas - two very out of date packets I found in that box in Mum's understairs cupboard, which I decided were worth a try, & some I saved myself from this summer's flowers. They like a good root run, so I always save big yoghurt pots & start 2 or 3 seeds off in each. I've also picked all the remaining peppers, composted the plants, potted up a few baby aubretias for spring (Mum's old seeds again) & re-potted & brought inside the last tender plant before the frosts arrive.
    None of these jobs were the ones I intended to do, so I'll get on with those tomorrow & Tuesday if it's dry.
    Mr F is making a big pan of chilli tonight, enough for tomorrow too, & so I am snugged up on the sofa with my book & my knitting. I have a feeling my book will cut into my knitting time quite a lot as it's really intriguing - a legal drama - & I just can't decide which side I'm on! I think I completely believe the victim, then over the next chapter or two, I think I might be coming down more on the side of the alleged perpetrators. I wouldn't be surprised if there is a twist ending waiting & that the true answer is something else.
    On the financial front, I've read a story in the Guardian Money section today about the growing trend for 40 year mortgages! The breakdown of the figures showing the extra interest payable on those, compared with a standard 25 year one was scary. At the same time, as someone who was completely & utterly priced out of the housing market during that crazy house price boom in the 80s, when 'gazumping' became 'a thing', I can understand young people wanting to
    be able to buy a home. I've mentioned before, I'm sure, that when I looked up the rentable value of our very modest 3-bedroom semi, it was around £650 a month. This isn't an expensive area of the country. I was shocked because our mortgage is so much less that that & if we needed to rent this property, we wouldn't actually be able to afford to live here!! Obviously that's a ridiculous & unfair situation for renters, making saving for a reasonable deposit even more difficult. So I can understand younger home buyers being very much drawn in by a 40% mortgage. But the amount of extra interest really did seem eye-watering.
    Had to smile today..... Mr F in a very amorous mood..... don't know what brought that on - He'd only been sawing a massive buddleja down to make room for my new front garden plans. Plenty more large shrubs around which could do with a good pruning if it has that effect on him, lol!
    Wishing you all a nice calm & relaxing Sunday night. Speed through any last little pre-Monday tasks.... packed lunches, loading the washer etc, then maximise a last lovely little bit of bum-in-chair time.
    Cheers all,
    F x
    "For each of our actions there are only consequences" (James Lovelock)"For in the true nature of things......every green tree is far more glorious than if it were made of gold & silver" (Martin Luther King Jnr)
  • Baileys_Babe
    Baileys_Babe Posts: 5,558
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    I read the same article. It really made me stop and think how much extra interest
    If you were young, you need to be to get a 40-year mortgage, and wanted to buy a house, the longer term would bring the monthly cost down resulting in it being more likely you would pass the availability check. Once you had the mortgage you could overpay if finances allow meaning you would save in the long run.

    We have been lucky, our mortgage rates have always been relatively low, my parents and most of their generation never had a rate as low as the most we have ever paid.

    If the rates went back to the highest my parents had for a significant period of the 40 year mortgage, the total cost would be astronomical.
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  • foxgloves
    foxgloves Posts: 11,027
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    Bailey'sBabe, Yes, I remember there were some absolutely scary interest rates in the 1980s. I went back to University to study for my MA in 1987. It was only a year's course, but during that time, the housing market went crazy. At the time I started the course in early October, my plans were to graduate, find my first professional post, then buy my first house. When I graduated in the following July, I was lucky to find work almost straight away, starting in early August. But by then, apart from small dilapidated flats in risky areas of the city centre, there was absolutely nothing left in my price range. 100% mortgages were routinely available then, but the standard 3 x my salary would no longer stretch to one of the small turn of the century terraced houses which the previous year were perfectly affordable. I remember you'd go & look in estate agent's windows & pretty much every 'for sale' property would already have a 'sold' sticker across it. That's how the gazumping practice began.....there'd be so many people wanting to view each property, that the less scrupulous would renege on the price they'd agreed with one person because somebody else said they'd pay more. At the same time - those of us on here who remember the Thatcher years - interest rates soared. At one point, they hit around 16%. Anyone who has bought a house in the last 20 or so years won't remember this. By the time I could afford to buy my first little house, the rate had fallen back considerably, but it still rose fairly frequently. I clearly remember receiving regular letters from the building society saying the interest rate was increasing another 0.50%. It sounds like a very small sum, & it was reasonably small in monetary terms, as I had a small mortgage, but a few weeks later, you'd receive another one, then another one a few months after that, so with all of those translating into bigger payments, they did all add up.
    I do think those of us who lived through those big interest rates in the 80s & all the frequent little rises in the 90s (not so little on a bigger family house, of course) never forget that mortgage rates can rise as well as fall. I think many will have been lulled into a sense of security by the non-moving rates the more recent stagnant economy has brought. Of course stable mortgage interest rates help massively with budgeting & affordability but I think if things were to start going that way again, it would come as a nasty shock to many.
    Anyway......here I am pontificating about a period of horrible mortgage rates, when I am supposed to be having an early lunch to maximise digging & planting time this afternoon!
    Nice chatting to you Bailey'sBabe & hi to all who follow..........
    F x
    "For each of our actions there are only consequences" (James Lovelock)"For in the true nature of things......every green tree is far more glorious than if it were made of gold & silver" (Martin Luther King Jnr)
  • Sweet pea sowing time :). I found a tin with some sweet pea seeds inside, unfortunately not clear which variety, but they look and smell so great I'm not bothered. On my to do list for this week :).
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  • Foxgloves I can't believe the solicitors (well actually given some dealings I've had with them I can ;)) still haven't resolved the estate after the house has been sold. It must be so frustrating for you and your sister. Have they given you a guide on resolution timescales?

    Your garden sounds lovely and idyllic as always.
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