are you tightening your belt

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are you tightening your belt
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Mrs Fiddlesticks

Joined: 02 Nov 2004
Posts: 10460

Posted: Wed May 21, 08 2:03 pm Post subject: are you tightening your belt
Following on from Sean's thread about what we think will happen to mortgage rates etc. With all the talk of credit crunch and belt tightening are you changing habits, reducing spending or in anyway altering your ways in response to the situation? or is it business as usual? Or do you think this is media hype and there is no 'crisis'?

Green Man

Joined: 23 Jul 2006
Posts: 5272
Location: Rural Scotland.

Posted: Wed May 21, 08 2:15 pm Post subject:
Our pampered U.K. population has been living unsustainably in this country for too long. It was always going to be a bumpy landing. It really hasn't happened yet. Wait till a big bank (your bank) shuts its doors.

Northern_Lad

Joined: 13 Dec 2004
Posts: 14210
Location: Somewhere

Posted: Wed May 21, 08 2:18 pm Post subject:

Cho-ku-ri wrote:

Our pampered U.K. population has been living unsustainably in this country for too long. It was always going to be a bumpy landing. It really hasn't happened yet. Wait till a big bank (your bank) shuts its doors.

Right, so now we're aware of the sky falling in around us, what should we do?

I've not changed my ways much, but I'm doing a different set of things to those I was doing last year so it's hard to compare.

The big banks will not fail. They may struggle; they may call in loans; they may reduce lending; they might even get bought by another institution, but they will not fail.

RichardW

Joined: 24 Aug 2006
Posts: 8443
Location: Llyn Peninsular North Wales

Posted: Wed May 21, 08 2:21 pm Post subject:

Cutting back (IE less extravigante)
reducing usage (IE less fuel, less elec)
looking for cheaper deals (better priced fuel & elec, CHEAPER FOOD I know but cut your cloth ect)
reduce borrowings
move borrowings to cheaper deals
go out less & more economicaly
stop eating out (ok did that big time 4 years a go so less of a reduction now)
make pack ups if going on a trip not using service stations ect
no magazines
few papers
burn more logs & less oil

Justme

Green Man

Joined: 23 Jul 2006
Posts: 5272
Location: Rural Scotland.

Posted: Wed May 21, 08 2:23 pm Post subject:
Either get debt free, or get into as much dept as you possibly can.

bernie-woman

Joined: 28 Oct 2004
Posts: 7824
Location: shropshire

Posted: Wed May 21, 08 2:24 pm Post subject:

It is definitely not a media hype - my workload as a debt caseworker has doubled and we are still not meeting demand (and rather annoyingly the banks are still lending irresponsibly even after all the talk of the credit squeeze) - I was in court yesterday with a couple going bankrupt and they were telling me at the court that there is now an 8 week waiting list to go bankrupt (it was 2 weeks a year ago) and instead of doing two a day they are doing three a day now.

We haven't changed anything but then again we don't have much debt - only the mortgage and we are overpaying on that whilst rates are low - have noticed the difference at the petrol pumps but can't reduce the use of the car anymore and also the price of food and we already grow our own etc.. - saw one of these lists on how to reduce the food cost in your household and rather smugly we identified we were doing all of them

marigold

Joined: 02 Sep 2005
Posts: 12458
Location: West Sussex

Posted: Wed May 21, 08 2:27 pm Post subject:
At the moment I'm mostly just taking more notice of what I spend on food and shifting some of my savings to safer places. Might be able to get back into the property market towards the end of the year or early next year, but first I have to decide whether to stay hereabouts or make a big scary move...

Barefoot Andrew
Downsizer Moderator

Joined: 21 Mar 2007
Posts: 22780
Location: In the 17th century

Posted: Wed May 21, 08 2:31 pm Post subject:
I'm not cutting back at all - almost the opposite in fact. My financial affairs are much healthier than they were last year so I'm allocating more funds to real food, lifestyle, etc etc. A.

vegplot

Joined: 19 Apr 2007
Posts: 21301
Location: Bethesda, Gwynedd

Posted: Wed May 21, 08 2:37 pm Post subject:

We have no mortage or debt (thankfully) but I do worry about our staff if a big crunch affects our business.

Our personal issues are we haven't built the house yet nor have we got up to speed with growing veg. When the house is built we will significantly reduce our dependancy on mains services.

We eat out once a week (cheaply) but we really should be much less reliance on supermarkets.

We're cycling to work when we can about 3 days a week which helps.

Mrs Fiddlesticks

Joined: 02 Nov 2004
Posts: 10460

Posted: Wed May 21, 08 2:40 pm Post subject:
I'm alot more aware of where money goes. Things like the Owl are making me aware of the electrickery we use. I'm trying to watch things like food wastage and we aim to get a wood-burning stove in here before next winter to cut down our bills further. These aren't actually in response to the credit crunch but to longer term green aims of ours.

AnnaD

Joined: 12 Jun 2007
Posts: 2777
Location: Edinburgh

Posted: Wed May 21, 08 2:53 pm Post subject:
We have decided to really make an effort to spend less money. We are going to eat more healthily which means no takeaways and we'll be cutting down a lot on meat as well. I'm trying to save as much money as possible while I can as well. We've given up even thinking of getting a mortgage and will concentrate on saving money for other future plans we have instead.

thos

Joined: 08 Mar 2005
Posts: 1139
Location: Jauche, Duchy of Brabant (Bourgogne-ci) and Charolles, Duchy of Burgundy (Bourgogne-ça)

Posted: Wed May 21, 08 3:06 pm Post subject:

There has been a new report published in Belgium https://www.rtbf.be/info/belganews/BELGANEWS23992811_5

88% of Belgians have reduced their expenditure:
44% on leasure
36% on clothing.

But 27% have increased expenditure on food.

29% have reduced savings, 12% have increased.

Globally, the Belgians save 13% of their income in a savings account (i.e. not counting mortgages). Any idea on the UK savings figures?

We haven't really made any changes. We live quite frugally, pay a lot off our mortgage and put a fair bit aside.

cab

Joined: 01 Nov 2004
Posts: 32429

Posted: Wed May 21, 08 3:06 pm Post subject:
Don't have a great deal of belt tightening to do. Most of the time we're frugal to the point of being miserly.

lottie

Joined: 11 Aug 2005
Posts: 5059
Location: ceredigion

Posted: Wed May 21, 08 3:19 pm Post subject:
We've cut back on everything but the expensive to tax/fuel pickup---we don't drive it much but we need it for stuff we carry and I traded in my cheap to run KA for it as when my knee got worse I needed something higher to get out of and leg room for driving so I don't feel guilty.

Vic

Joined: 16 Feb 2005
Posts: 387
Location: Sherborne, Dorset

Posted: Wed May 21, 08 3:30 pm Post subject:

I'm being a bit contrary here - I've just got a new job which means I've got financial security (instead of wondering if I'll get paid at the end of the month, every month), and we've just finished saving enough cash to pay for our extension (and yes, it has a large contingency fund built in). So, for the first time in about two years, I'm actually able to go shopping or out for a meal without worrying about spending too much!

But yes, our mortgage is quite low and because we've saved to pay for the extension, we're not adding anything on to it; we get a lot of food from the lottie; we're also lookign to buy a woodburner to save on fuel costs; neither of us are into gizmos or fancy technology so we don't generally buy much, or have any credit card debts; and we're only having two weeks holiday in Scotland this year. Though with the increase in petrol prices it might well be cheaper to fly up there than drive (if I was brave I'd raise that on the thread about fuel prices...)

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