some words

'This is the dawning of the age of austerity'

or

'How I learned to stop worrying and embrace hedonistic purchasing'

An interesting conversation with Al yesterday, and I think he too may be writing some words about it over in this direction in the next few days.

Recently N and I have been looking into the possibility of having a bit of building work done. This has led to meetings with suited folk about mortgages and what-have-you. Following on from these discussions I sat down and worked out all our outgoings and tried to gauge whether we could absorb the cost of what we were hoping to do.

I'm not a big fan of money, I don't know why this is. I guess that it is something to do with my parents and their take on things and what I absorbed of that growing up. I generally have the view that I'm lucky to have a job, and that it pays enough to cover the bills. As long as we're not in debt, and that we're fed and warm then I feel that I don't need to look into money matters too much. I think N is similar, she never bothers to open her pay slips and never looks at our statements or online banking. I generally only look online about once or twice a month. We don't have any credit cards, don't use the overdraft so we're lucky, and grateful to be in that kind of situation. But on the other side of the equation; we don't save anything really and when you actually sit down and look at all them outgoings...well it's a bit reckless.

So I took a serious look at the ways i spend cash in 'non-essential' ways- cd's, magazines, coffee, newspapers i never get to sit down to read. I made a decision to cut it out. I had got into the habit of buying cd's that I never really listened to all that much. When I was younger I used to really look forward to music coming out by certain bands. And from the day of release onwards I would obsessively listen to it and read every credit and 'thank you' on the booklet. These days I just flick through and have the music as background listening in the kitchen. Right. From now on I'm going to listen to the music i have more and stop all this music mag-led purchasing.

And for a couple of weeks that was what I did. Days off from work I made a real effort to just sit tight at home and avoid leaking money from my pockets....

....It's pretty miserable. So the conversation we were having yesterday was about the idea that really its irrelevant what you buy. Could be cd's, could be trainers, could be man bags. The money you're spending is the thing. Is it the cost of buying happiness? 

I need a bigger cd tower.