Something for nothing and the art of giving

This is a time of year when a lot of thought goes into giving and receiving.  I find the whole spending thing depressing.

Thinking about shopping in general and the waste of stuff and money got me to thinking about how easy it is  to get many things without money if you are prepared to wait and to share what you have with others.  

Frugal living is not sponging 

 That said, frugality is not about being a sponger, cheating or using others.  It does not mean going to the pub and letting someone else pay for the drinks and the golden rule is always give something back somehow, in some way to somebody.  Simplicity is about is building a sense of community in which people feel okay about borrowing things, sharing and passing on good fortune. 

gift carpet spare room

A good example is the past ‘foraging for clothes’ article on this blog.  I rescued a bag of clothes dumped beside a re-cycling bin.  It was raining heavily; a bank holiday and they would have been ruined long before being collected by the charity. 

I took them home and kept some of the clothes.

We gave the rest in to a charity shop and I donated £10 to the charity who owned the bin.  They got more than the value of the clothes had they been re-cycled, another charity benefitted by being able to sell the clothes and we got some good clothes for only £10. They did not end up in landfill so the Planet benefitted too.

I call that a win-win though am not strictly clear about the legality of it!  I was honest and did not rip anyone off though and my conscience is clear.

Accept things graciously.

Most people enjoy helping others by passing things on.  The bit we all find harder is accepting things when they are offered to us.  By saying no you deprive that person of the satisfaction of helping another and re-homing things that are no longer needed.

So if you say no do it gently and thank the person for thinking of you. It takes courage to offer things to others which is the main reason it does not happen more often. If you don't want something but know someone else who could use it, offer to pass it on. It will encourage that person to offer things to others again and it may have been the first time they plucked up the courage to ask.  

Deal with your ‘gratitude feelings’ about being given things by entering into the spirit and sharing or passing on the surplus. 

gift carpet 2

How long can you keep it going?

The best fun ever is seeing how long you can keep it going.  For example, Jude gives me 6lbs/3kg of rhubarb from her garden.  She has more than she can use and does not want it to be wasted.  I say thanks and make some rhubarb jam and chutney with some of  it and put the rest in the freezer - which is easy as you just chop it up and bung it in a plastic bag.  If you make wine (but only if it is good wine) you could do that too.  Never, ever inflict battery-acid style home made wine on your friends.

• I give some jam to Eric as a thank you for the wood he gave me for the stove. (His old garden furniture and it saved him paying the Council to take it away). 
• I give some chutney to Joanne because I know she likes it and doesn’t make her own.  I would like to get to know her better and it breaks the ice. 
• I leave another jar on Clive’s doorstep and hope he has fun guessing who it is from.
• I invite Jude, Eric, Jude, Joanne and Clive round for a Christmas Eve drink and nibbles 6 months later and tell everyone the jam in the tarts is made from Jude’s rhubarb which chuffs her no end.
• Everyone brought some baking with them (unasked) and I now have a freezer full as no one wants to take it home with them.  I decide to stop buying Kettle Chips and eat pancakes from the freezer saving me £3 a week.  I give some of the baking to the Church for their forthcoming coffee morning although I do not attend that Church.  I find out about their shoe box campaign for Romania as a result and resolve to fill a shoe box next year.   
• There is lots of milk left over from the get together.  I put some in the freezer in small jugs or sterilised plastic milk cartons, as we don’t use much and it is handy for visitors. 
• I make some yoghurt with the rest and give half to a friend.
• We have an almost-free pudding of stewed rhubarb, yoghurt and left over macaroons that someone brought to the get together.  Yum.
• Everyone gets to know one another a bit better and Clive and Jude realise they could give each other lifts to work.  Jude decides to help at the Church coffee mornings now she knows that Joanne goes.

This is how you build community.  Everyone used to do it before going to the shops and going out for dinner (aka spending money) took over as forms of entertainment. Many people still do it of course  (and if that is you well done).

Those of us who commute by car tend to get the shopping from the supermarket near work on the way home.  This means you are not  out and about on foot near home, will not see the notice about the church coffee morning and won't even know it is on.

this phone just needed a new battery

How to give something back

We have great fun thinking how express appreciation.  Sometimes it is just a thank you card.  The fact you have thought to say thanks can build bridges and friendships in surprising ways.

It does not always have to be something given back to the person concerned.  The general concept of generosity, passing on good fortune and not being stingy is the overriding principle here. 

Giving and not getting caught is one of our best forms of entertainment. 

Here are some other ideas.

• The no hoarding principle.  If you don’t need all of it, keep some and pass the rest on. That generosity will come back in surprising ways.

• Each time you get something for nothing, give something back to someone somehow, somewhere. 

• Offer to re-home things you cannot use if you know someone else who would appreciate them.  Always ask if that is okay with the person giving it to you. 

• If something is re-homed make a point of telling the giver where it ended up as it will give them great satisfaction.  Feedback encourages people to re-home or re-cycle in the future.

• Think who would like things before offering and do not burden others with your old junk.  Some things really do need to be re-cycled or thrown away.

Some of the things we have been given.  Most were destined for landfill.

Our son’s 3 piece suite and cooker due to be picked up by the Council one hour later!

Floor covering for the garage

Clothes

A washing up bowl brand new, rescued from a skip

A chest of drawers

A carpet for the spare bedroom

A carpet for our bedroom

The living room carpet in our last house

Towels that did not match someone’s new decor

woodshed from re-claimed timber.

Timber for building a wood shed

Firewood

Buckets

Herbal and fruit teas that no one wanted

A cordless phone that needed a new battery

Children’s clothes

Tea bags being dumped when a wooden holiday chalet was cleared out

Some of the things we have given to others.

A disabled hand rail given to us by someone for re-homing

Jam, chutney, home-made wine

All manner of garden produce including apples rhubarb strawberries potatoes leeks herbs garlic and salad

Plants for gardens including herbs, blackcurrant bushes, raspberry canes, strawberry plants

Children’s clothes

Books

Home cured bacon made from pork we got on special offer ( A future blog topic this)

Kitchen units we inherited in the garage

Seeds for the garden

Hand knitted hats and baby things

where did all the money go?

In the recent and painful economic downturn what I have been wondering is this:  If everybody is harder up, where has all the money gone?

Did it just disappear?  You do hear that a lot of money just moves electronically from one place to another but does not come into existence because it is not taken out of the bank.  In other words, if we all want our actual money at once, we are in trouble because there is not enough to go around.  That is what happens when bank get into difficulties I believe, and also when everyone sells shares on the stock exchange at once.

However, this crisis was apparently all started by companies selling on mortgage debt and that money did presumably exist because someone, somewhere bought a house with it. 

It seems that the number of new millionaires is still increasing, so someone is making money out of all of this.  It is just not the average person on the street.

It hasn’t burned us much as yet and for this we are very very thankful.  A friend of a friend has just come back from Ireland and says that people are going hungry because the cuts in benefits are so severe that benefits are only available for a limited period of time. 

Their homes have been re-possessed and they have nowhere to go and no money at all.

 If anyone out there knows anything about this, please post it on the comments section of this blog.  We are not hearing much about it, but the media did report that people were going hungry in Iceland last year.  How are they doing now?  What about people in the USA?  I noticed a book on Amazon.co.uk (Although it is American I could not find it on Amazon.com) about how to survive whilst living out of your car, if you cannot afford to pay rent and feed yourself.  It was written in the 1990's - the last recession. But how great is that, to survive it and write a book about it.

Car living by Jane Archer

It raises two questions:

1.       What can we all do to help each other when times are tough?

2.      How can we best protect ourselves from future hardship?

A sense of community and getting to know your neighbours is the very best safety valve there is in hard times.  That is how many countries have survived in the past, and it is a win-win situation.  That way we can share skills and resources rather than fight each other.  

Getting to know the neighbours is not always easy and someone has to make the first move.  I had fun leaving tubs of strawberries on our neighbours’ doorsteps and it broke the ice. 

We put a bench in our front garden too because in summer people are outside more.  Getting involved or just starting something locally works too.  It doesn’t need a committee if it doesn’t hold any money, so just do it.

Living frugally (but that doesn’t mean depriving yourself, being mean or doing it at other peoples’ expense) has been the secret of our wellbeing for many years.   

When I first started on the simplicity path – on my own at the very start, but hubby quickly got the plot when the credit card debt disappeared – I came across a book called ‘How To Feed Your Family on £4 a Day’ by Bernadine Lawrence.  

An Inspiration!

I had it out of the library and renewed it many times.   I took it back briefly as I could only renew it a certain number of times but when I went to get it back a few weeks later it had been got rid of!

I had been unable to get hold of it again until last week when I found a second hand copy on Amazon.co.uk. (it is not available on Amazon.com) It has been re-printed twice and became ‘How to Feed Your Family on £5 a Day’ in the second edition.

The food is all costed out and amazingly little has gone up in price since the 1990’s except the water cress. 

The recipes are good basic healthy food but the reason I love this book is because it is inspirational.  Bernadine went from having a good job, to being in a high rise flat with four children and on benefits.  Her strategy enabled them to live well despite having little money.

She fed 2 adults and 4 children very well for £5 a day. 

I actually hadn’t thought it until now but we fed ourselves for that much quite easily when we were paying off the mortgage and were highly motivated – admittedly we had 3 children rather than 4. 

In recent years I have found the bills creeping up again and am now back on focus with the grocery bill, and have challenged myself to reduce spending whilst not compromising on quality, so watch this space.

It is not the amount we spend each week that we focus on but the overall average over the course of a year.  This is because if we find something cheap we tend to stock up on it.  In some months we have  a lot more garden produce than others.  So far I have spent more and not less but watch this space.

We do not have a big garden and it is vertically challenged (the main part of the garden is almost as high as the roof of the house.)  It was mostly subsoil when we moved in because the top layer had been removed to reduce the height of the hill behind the house. 

The front garden now has some vegetables in it as well as the small poly tunnel and veg beds we have at the back.   For the front we choose food plants that look pleasing such as runner beans with their nice flowers, rhubarb and strawberries placed in amongst the other plants.  Think of a lawn as a green desert, and increase the size of the borders to grow salad crops.

This is a place to share your own inspiration about saving money and managing on less, so feel free to add your own ideas. 

We will be starting our courses on ‘simple living in an urban setting this year' so watch this space. They aim to help people get ahead whether or not they are in debt and - well - it certainly changed our lives for the better so why not learn from someone who has done it?
If you have enough savings to last for a year and no mortgage you can sleep at night without fear.   It can be done!

What is Downshifting?

How it All Began..

my name is Janet and I have been meaning to do this for a while.

'Downshifting' is what we call it when you learn how to live on less money without having less fun.
It means getting out of debt, having a more meaningful way of life and living outside the groove.
In other words, thinking what you really want out of life and then setting about getting it.
To us it does not mean moving to a house in the country - bad move this financially speaking. It does not mean depriving ourselves yet it does not mean earning lots of money at the expense of our freedom.
It does mean thinking what we really do want and focusing on how to get it. Not in a frantic dream-and-it-will-happen life coachy sense, though. I am talking about working with what you already have here, to make it work for you instead of the other way around.

Sometimes it is hard, just because being your real self makes you stand out. It makes others curious and they ask you questions. They want some of what you have. (That may, however be mainly because I just cannot resist talking about it - hence this blog... )

So here is some of our story.
We have been downshifting for 15 years now. It has become a way of life, entertainment, making friends and most of all a passion for a life style we would not change.

Downshifting is about choice and getting what you want out of life.
15 years ago we had an average income, a mortgage and some credit card debt. We worked full time yet there was never quite enough money left at the end of the month although we would not have said we were extravagant.

Today we have no mortgage, no debt and work part time. We have just worked it out that we could retire and live off our savings if we really wanted to.

All of that was done on an average or less than average middle class income. We are not in the 'executive' class, and have not had any kind of promoted posts except for long enough to discover we didn't like it. That is not to boast, rather to illustrate that changing what you do and how you think can make a difference.

The most obvious solution if you don't have enough money is to earn more. And yet it seems that if people do earn more, somehow their expenses go up and they still don't have quite enough. Whatever their income level research shows that they still think life would get better if they had about 15-30% more money. Research also shows that once we have about £15,000 (or the equivalent in your currency if you live elsewhere) per person per year to live on, more money does not make us happier. In other words it is enough. Interestingly this figure does not go up in line with inflation. That is because inflation figures include consumer goods, buying a bigger house etc.

• As downshifters here is what inflation means to us: We already have a house and do not need a bigger one. (In fact as you will see on this blog in the future, once we had de-cluttered we got a smaller house because we didn't need to store all that stuff) . Therefore rising house prices don't concern us.
• We paid our mortgage off 12 years early so rising interest rates do not increase our outgoings, only our savings.
• Rising prices of goods do not generally affect us. the price of good plain food that you cook yourself has actually gone down over the years. When Bernadine Lawrence wrote her book 'How to Feed Your Family on £5 a day' in 1978,(whilst living on State benefits with 4 kids) bread, milk, most vegetables, fruit, pulses and meat were more expensive than they are today. Watercress was cheaper because you could buy in by the bunch instead of ready washed in a supermarket bag.
  Almost everything else costs less.
• As we buy almost all consumer goods second hand, the increase in the price of new ones does not affect us. the second hand price has not changed much over the years. Even the price of new ones does not change much if you stick to the plain one rather than the new-with-extra-features one. We bought what was effectively the same washing machine twice at 10 year intervals and it cost £10 less for the replacement.
• Many consumer goods such as TV's fridges etc can actually be got down the car boot sale or for free on 'freeble' which has online groups around the UK to re-distribute unwanted goods. If people buy the newest model or get one that matches their new kitchen they often just get rid of the old one.
• Inflation does put the Council Tax up. Income Tax or your equivalent Tax on earned income is a percentage. Council Tax which we pay on our property for local services is not and just goes up as much as the Council thinks it should so far as I can see. the council tax we pay today (£141 per month) is more than I earned per month in 1978 (£132).
• Fuel bills, household and for vehicles affect us. You can combat that to some extent by energy saving measures but not completely.
• If inflation goes down our cash savings earn less interest. However as our lifestyle is mainly inflation proof, this does not matter as much as it seems, and looking after money to get the best rates available makes a big difference.

The real secret of getting ahead with money is not how much you earn but how you spend it. We now earn a lot less than we used to but have a lot more money to spare!

So how much did our Christmas dinner cost? about 50p. but get this: we had pheasant that was a gift from a friend and sat outside round a roaring fire, surrounded by 6 inches of snow. (That had not been the plan, but being snowed in we could not visit my sister as intended.) And of course the pheasant went on to be pheasant and butternut squash curry the following day and then stock for soup.

That fire was so warm I sat out there for hours knitting...(hot water bottle covers seeing as you ask.)

And how much did our new year's eve dinner cost? about 70p for 4 of us. We had king prawn and chicken paella. Thanks, Asda for 5 packets of king prawns and one packet of chicken reduced to 5p each.

So read on and see how we got out of debt and ended up with savings, no mortgage, a great social life and able to work part time.

And this blog will not all be about money.

If you are broke and cannot see a way out, there is hope but you have to put the work in.