Frogs

I'm sorry I haven't been around much but I have had a few days of eating frogs.  I am sure you all know that if you have to eat a frog, the best thing to do is to eat it early in the day so that for the rest of the day you know that the worst thing you have to do today has already been done. You didn't know that?  Well, you do now.

I keep chipping away at the Room of Shame and will take you back in there soon, but of rather more urgency has been doing a little financial re-organising.  This was provoked by the closure of the only bank in our little town.  I've long done most of my banking on-line but have always used one of the Big Four banks (even though I knew I could get a better deal elsewhere) because I felt that it was worth supporting banks which provide a service in rural areas.  Well, they have changed their policy on that one so I decided to go for the better deal.

Never one to do things by halves this provoked a full scale money makeover.  So far I have changed my broadband/TV/telephone package, my car insurance,my energy tariff, my current account and my credit card.  None of these has been easy, largely because of my personal inefficiency, and the whole procedure has taken rather a lot of energy so blogging is taking a back seat

Taking Myself In Hand

This post is actually a wrist-slap for me.

Back at the beginning of the year I resolved to finish the year with fewer messy places than I started with and at first I did well.  I sorted drawers and cupboards and even (more-or-less) sorted The Room Of Doom.

The Room of Shame

But other parts have not gone so well.  Back in July I decided that the sewing room / dining room/ spare bedroom had to be tackled and I pitched in with great enthusiasm.  But it didn't last and this is the latest view of what I have decided to call the Room of Shame.  

This cannot go on.  I need to get it sorted so that Louise can come and do her stuff with the cleaning.  I have bits towards several Christmas presents somewhere in that mess and if I don't find them soon I am going to have to do some unnecessary spending to buy other presents.

But the most important reason is that there are just two months left of this year and they are not ikely to be the least busy months of the year.  I want to get to the end of the year with that resolution intact and well advanced.

So my wrists are now well slapped.  Watch this space!

Frugal hero(ines) 6

No prizes for guessing the last frugal heroine in this short series - Mother.

Sometimes I resented the frugality of the fifties, the decade in which I spent my childhood.  One economy which I really resented was "sides to middling".  If a sheet from their double bed got worn out the two sides would be joined together, the worn out middle bit would be cut away and the new sides hemmed to form a "new" single sheet - very economical.  The trouble was that the French seam used to join the old sides was right up the middle of my bed and not very comfortable.  I longed for new sheets (but I liked the super-soft hankies made from the remains of the worn out middles).

Christmas was a time of more extravagance but the phrase "stocking filler" was not to arrive in our language for many years.  We had a single present from our parents and maybe something small from the various aunts and uncles.  Selfish little horrors that we were we took it for granted that adults didn't get presents - I think we believed they had everything they could possibly want anyway.  However, I remember that as a small child I was not allowed to unwrap my presents until a grown-up had removed all the sellotape for me - the paper had to be saved for next year.

Mother never went out to work but she worked very hard at home.  She made all clothes for my sister and me and she even learnt shirt making but I think she decided that making shirts for my father was not successful.  However she would unpick the collars and cuffs from his worn work shirts and "turn" them, extending the life of the garment considerably.  She was always knitting or darning, unless the garden needed her attention.

In many ways I had quite a privileged childhood.  My father was a white collar worker, mother was always at home when I got home from school and I was always loved and cared for.  I had properly fitting shoes (always bought new, even if quite a lot of clothes were had-me-downs from various cousins) and I could always go on any school trip.  In retrospect I know that much of that security came from Mother's hard work.

But Mother often said No to demands from my sister and me.  No new sheets, no ripping off wrapping paper, no cheap clothes from the shops.  I suspect that sometimes I sulked and was "a little Madam" in the face of many noes, but because of her constancy in making everything last there I was aware of no hardship and there was no debt.

Thanks, Mummy.

Frugal hero(ines) 5

This post is a little different from the first four in the series in that it is about a partnership of two people.  Those two were my parents and they had a partnership which lasted fifty five years.

My parents had a very united front when it came to finance.  It was a partnership in which he earned and she spent!  That sounds a bit like a bad situation comedy but the simple fact was that she had day-to-day responsibility for making sure bills got paid, food was bought and the family was kept warm and clean.  They had a joint bank account into which his salary was paid but both could draw cheques on it.

Major financial decisions were taken jointly.  When my shoes needed repairing for example, Mother would send me to the cobbler, but new shoes couldn't be bought until Father was also in on the decision.  

I am not suggesting that their budgetting strategy would suit everyone, far from it.  What I am saying though is that household finance should be discussed and discussed frequently.  When I was conducting marriages regularly I always used to raise the subject and was often horrified about how little couples had discussed money beyond the cost of the wedding.  

This partnership makes my parents financial heroes for me because right from my childhood I have known that good budgetting means getting everyone on board and communicating,  however the details are sorted.

Sorry!

No posts for a few days.  Life and all that.  But it's all nice!

You and your money

People who read blogs with the word "frugally" in the title will, I assume, have an interest in how to make the money last longer than the month.  We have our ways of making clothes last longer, economising on energy, cooking economically and the rest.  Undergirding all that though there has to be some sort of a budget.

Next week the Open University is offering a MOOC (Massive Open On-line Course) called You and Your Money.  It lasts for four weeks.   I've done it before but I'm doing it again because I think I have more to learn.

Quite apart from showing how to create a household budget it explores the financial services industry, explains the basics of debt and interest, compares forms of lending and generally demystifies money.

Of all the MOOCs I have done, this is the one which has had the most impact on me.  It is taught in a fun way with videos, quizzes and practical tasks as well as reading and on-line discussion

Frugal hero(ines) 4

Down a generation for my next hero.  Grandad and Grandma's son-in-law.  In other words, my Father.

My sixty fourth birthday is approaching and my Father would now have been over a hundred years old so for some of my readers he is old enough to have been their grandfather or even great grandfather - maybe even great great grandfather but that makes me feel very old myself.  He was born just after the outbreak of the Great War and was the eldest child of a family of eight.

My paternal grandparents are not as vivid in my memory as my maternal ones but they must have been truly devoted parents.  Their youngest child had severe epilepsy which was regarded with great suspicion in those days.  They were urged to commit him to an institution but grandma was adamant that she was the best person to care for him which she did until he died aged fourteen (quite a while before I was born).   Of the remaining seven three went to Grammar School which was impressive for a steelworks labourer's family in those days.  My father was one of the lucky three.

Daddy left school when he was about seventeen and became an apprentice on the steel works but he was a hard working man and he steadily worked his way up to become general manager of those same works.  His salary was good and I didn't understand for years why we always lived in rented houses.

The reason?  He still took a lot of responsibility for his parents and younger siblings and he bought the house in which my grandmother lived until she was well into her eighties.  He would not commit to a mortgage on a second house until the first was paid off.  

He abhorred debt.  If you could not pay for something you didn't have it.  You saved a cushion for emergencies and you planned your spending.  

So the frugal example of my Father was two fold.  First and obviously, you do not get into debt.  I didn't always take this to heart when I was younger but these days I like a good night's sleep.  The second thing might not seem so much frugality as ethics but it is this: you take your financial responsibilities seriously.  Daddy was grateful for the sacrifices his parents had made and after making sure that my mother and sister and I were OK, he continued to help them until their deaths