Money! Money! Money!

In my life I have been poor, I have been comfortable but it looks as though I am heading for poor again. All I hear on the news is plans to cut services, increase tax, cut pensions. I never believed I would see fuel at £1.30 a litre and the cost of food is crazy. Every time I do my shop the prices have gone up.

I am lucky to have lived frugally as a child and my mum showed me how to create a meal from nothing. Don't get me wrong, I never went hungry and we always had a decent meal to eat but we didn't have crisps, biscuits, sweets and things like that which people these days see as an essential part of their store cupboard and mum always made food from scratch so no tinned or convenience food, it was far too expensive.

Everything seems to have an expensive price tag and as we move into frugal times the expectations we have created during the comfortable times are still in place. This leads to discontent, a feeling of injustice, anger even.

So now, as you read this try to think of what is important in life...... really important!

• Health for me is important because without it you can't enjoy life to the fullest
• My children through them I have learnt valuable lessons in life
• My husband who is my rock
• My mum who is my mum (enough said)
• My family
• My animals who bring me such joy and sense of purpose
• My friends who give me more support than they ever could realise
• My faculties

I could really go on but you can see in my list that I haven't put anything materialistic in there.

So as we approach Christmas, a time which puts dreadful pressure on us to spend, spend, spend. Shall we just try to readjust our expectations. Look at the real meaning of Christmas. Ok, so you might not be religeous but you can still look beyond the religeous aspect of Christmas and look into the meaning. It is  a celebration of the end of winter and the coming of light..... it is a time to show love and appreciate to those who are important to you and most of all, it is a time to celebrate life.

If somebody is kind enough to give you a gift, don't just accept it. Look deeper into the gift... the fact that the person who has given it actually wanted to gift you, the fact that they have taken the time to produce this gift and wrap it for you. If you are lucky, they may have even MADE the gift for you.


So the message from this blog is... we are living in difficult times and things are set to get worse before they get better. However, you don't need lots of money to be happy, you just need to change your expectations and perceptions and look to what wonderful things you have in your life and be content with them.