It used to be so simple. Get up, don’t bother to bathe, go to school with a packed lunch, play football until dark and maybe be lucky enough to have your palm crossed with silver so you could afford a sweet ‘10p mix bag’ from old Missus Miggins in the local convenience store, when they were convenient.
But then you reach adulthood, and it all becomes nonsensical.
I spent a day recently doing that middle age thing of going through my expenditure to see how much fat I could trim and what level of my purchases were wasteful and, unsurprisingly, most of it was.
Let’s start with insurance: Along with life insurance, we have the ever-increasing car insurance which, again, got ramped up 80% due, in their words ‘to inflation’, before I threatened to leave and they miraculously found ‘loyalty’ savings, despite them not having a clue as to what that word truly means.
I digress! Life, car, holiday, bike and even pipe insurance has been bought by yours truly and proved to be a massive waste of money on most counts and not even ‘piece of mind’ has been secured as claiming on them is akin to winning the 1% Club as they wriggle out of their responsibilities via the Ts and Cs.
I have recently had to purchase fence materials as storm Edna or Horace or whatever stupid moniker it had, blew them all over.
After concrete posts, gravel boards, panels and 'postcrete'. I also bought corner levelling squares, builders’ lines, tarps and spare posts ‘just in case’ one broke (it didn’t and now sits in pride of place up the side of the summerhouse).
The wastage continues with spare lawnmower blades, angle grinder discs and a gross of toilet rolls, all, ‘just in case’ which is a situation which never arises and, having wasted the money, you forget you have the item and go and repurchase it again later on (hence I have three brand new angle grinders in my possession as I type).
And then I sat and looked at when I could retire and the answer was ‘never’ because I don’t have the savings you see, as life is so expensive.
But the kids, oh the kids, will never likely be able to afford a house as the UK demand for housing is now so high, that prices are squeezed.
The same goes for the job market as I then resign myself to the fact that they will likely live at home, Timothy Lumsden like, until their 50s or until I am gone, then maybe they can afford to buy a place and surround themselves with the needless purchases that show a life of waste, not of need.
