My frugal hero(ines) 2

Grandma was married to Grandad.  No surprises there!  

Grandad was also an amazing role model for a youngster to grow up with. He had left school as soon as he could (about ten or twelve years old) so that he could contribute to the family purse.  However, he was an intelligent man and made the most of every opportunity.  I think he always wanted to be a farmer but as a youngster he had to work as a joiner.

He was one of three brothers and eventually the three set up in business as farmers.  Farming was not very profitable and indeed it must have been very hard work.  However, Grandad took every opportunity to learn more and more.  Not for him Oxford or Cambridge or even the Open University - his education was in the University of Life.  He could do most simple construction jobs.  He was the cattle man in the farming partnership but he was also involved in the arable side of the business and at lambing time, he did his shifts in the pens.  His regular reading was The Farmers Weekly but he read much wider than that.

Grandad did the most beautiful copperplate and I still have some samples of his handwriting.  He did the admin for the farm, keeping the books, paying the men, and doing the thousand-and-one paperwork jobs which needed to be done.

So how do I see him as a role model for someone aspiring to be frugal?  Well, like most people of his generation he wasted nothing but the special inspiration for me is that he wasted no opportunity.  He had few advantages.  His schooling was curtailed but he learnt many skills, including book-keeping, by whatever means he could.

I think I follow his example most especially when I do MOOCs, Massive Online Open Courses.  Like grandad I do not believe that education comes to an end when the school door closes, rather that is when true education really begins.  I had far more opportunities than grandad did and sadly I wasted some of them but that won't happen again.  I want to be like my grandad.