Lurkalot wrote:
My wife's sister is someone to whom image is very important . When my wife said that she was cleaning her sister's response was that she couldn't do that if the houses were dirty.
There is something to look forward to "post Peak Oil" The end of such nonsensical attitudes. A small tight energy efficient house that is "Paid for" will be the standard and anything beyond ones means will be an embarrassment.
It's not what you are living in but what you own free and clear that counts and I expect people to get much better at the counting shortly.
I fully agree vtsnowedin . It was always important to me to have the house paid for , indeed I wasn't wasteful when I started work and made a point of saving so much so that I was able to buy a house outright when I was in my late twenties. After marrying and moving we had a small mortgage but still made the effort and paid it all off.
I know what you mean about " nonsensical attitudes" . Sometimes my sister in law frustrates the hell of me. She could win medals for moaning and her subjects are many and varied. Why do we only have a small second hand tv, why do I have patches on my working clothes, why is our house so untidy ( actually that's because my wife also sells on e-bay) and she was truly aghast when I put potatoes in the front garden.
Perhaps part of her " problem" is that she works in a bank and so is as I see it part of the system. While I try to avoid debt her job , and as a result her wages, is dependant on selling and increasing debt , getting ever more people to take out loans.
This should really be in the Reducing your need for money thread but while I'm having a little rant about her here's another little story. She has satellite tv and at the weekend we were round there. Searching for something to watch I noticed a programme called Extreme Couponing and said put that on. It's an American programme about people who collect lots of coupons to use in your supermarkets and that episode showed a woman who's bill was reduced from close to $900 to a few cents over $75 . Of course my SIL was dismissive of it all and couldn't see herself " living in such a way" , too much wasting of time and things would go out of date were her arguments.
I'm middle class and I'm finding times very hard at the moment. If things continue as they are I am afraid Chardonnays' pet unicorn will have to make do with non-organic hay.
boisdevie wrote:I'm middle class and I'm finding times very hard at the moment. If things continue as they are I am afraid Chardonnays' pet unicorn will have to make do with non-organic hay.
A good jest but what is your real condition? Are you comfortable with it or worried that the powers that be will soon give you the shaft to preserve their own hides and privileges?
frank_begbie wrote:I though we were better off these days?
This is the big question I wish more people would ask. We have such a strong, ingrained narrative of 'progress', 'growth', things generally getting better, hardly anyone stops to think why it now takes two wages to run a household whereas a generation ago one was usually sufficient. Also, it takes another 3-5 years of education to get a half decent job now than a generation ago. Why are we working harder? That's a pretty rubbish kind of progress - when 'work' is the stuff you generally don't want to do so badly you'll only do it in exchange for thousands of quid a year.
frank_begbie wrote:I though we were better off these days?
This is the big question I wish more people would ask. We have such a strong, ingrained narrative of 'progress', 'growth', things generally getting better, hardly anyone stops to think why it now takes two wages to run a household whereas a generation ago one was usually sufficient. Also, it takes another 3-5 years of education to get a half decent job now than a generation ago. Why are we working harder? That's a pretty rubbish kind of progress - when 'work' is the stuff you generally don't want to do so badly you'll only do it in exchange for thousands of quid a year.
I do think that is hard to quantify. The couple in the fifties were used to hard work having been born in the great depression and both the husband at his job and the wife at home put in a lot more hours of strenuous activity ( and thought it was just what you had to do) in a given day then their grandchildren put in in a week today, bitching about every hour not devoted to surfing the internet. .
frank_begbie wrote:I though we were better off these days?
This is the big question I wish more people would ask. We have such a strong, ingrained narrative of 'progress', 'growth', things generally getting better, hardly anyone stops to think why it now takes two wages to run a household whereas a generation ago one was usually sufficient. Also, it takes another 3-5 years of education to get a half decent job now than a generation ago. Why are we working harder? That's a pretty rubbish kind of progress - when 'work' is the stuff you generally don't want to do so badly you'll only do it in exchange for thousands of quid a year.
I do think that is hard to quantify. The couple in the fifties were used to hard work having been born in the great depression and both the husband at his job and the wife at home put in a lot more hours of strenuous activity ( and thought it was just what you had to do) in a given day then their grandchildren put in in a week today, bitching about every hour not devoted to surfing the internet. .
Since my parents were born in the fifties, that would be two generations ago for me. I imagine we're talking about our economic (and probably cultural and social) peak happening in the 1970s.
