Oxfam, Perfume and Red Pandas

Charitable Gifts are a bit weird aren't they? How do you give someone a gift, but not give them a gift? Also, it's almost like you are saying to the recipient - you are too much of a consumer and you think about yourself too much, so I am going to be charitable on your behalf. Almost as if you are doing your best to save their soul.



Having said that, I actually think charitable gifts are a good idea in principle. A couple of Christmases ago, I picked up a pamphlet in Oxfam all about charitable gifts, what you could buy, and were it went. I thought it was a great idea for presents for the family, neither mine or Alex's family really want for anything, and I do find the whole buying gifts for distant relations who you don't see from one end of the year to the other, very irritating, and a waste of money. Lets face it, you don't see these people above 10 hours out of a whole year, and haven't got a clue what they like, or have got, and then are expected to produce an amazing present for them, for as little money as possible, and to top it all they are doing the same for you. When you open the gift it's always some weird tat, that you wouldn't touch with a barge pole, and you wonder why you bothered spending all that time, money and deliberation on what you bought them. Any way, I digress.



I thought the charitable gift thing was a great idea, and when Alex came home, I rather enthusiastically explained the concept to him, and didn't he think it was a really good idea? He laughed in my face. After he got up off the floor from a mirth overdose, I asked him, rather irritatedly, what he found so funny? 'Can you see my mum's face when she opens that?' He said, 'she'd be really unimpressed.' I have to admit, that after thinking about it, I had to agree. I bought his mum a gift experience last year of a day to a perfume lab to learn all about how to make perfume and to make some perfume of her own. As she asks for perfume every year, I thought it would be a great idea. Incidentally, I bought my mum the same gift, and she thought it was amazing, and thoroughly enjoyed it. So, when Alex's mum opened her gift certificate, she read it from cover to cover and then looked at me and said, 'so, what is it?' It took me a full fifteen minutes to explain to her what it was, and that no, she didn't have to pay for it, and yes she could take a friend. She looked very dubious, and to this day, I have no idea if she went or not, and I don't want to ask her if she went, because if she didn't, I'd be seriously pissed of that I wasted £50 for nothing. So, this is obviously why a charitable gift would be way over her head, and it's not like she's stupid or anything, she was a teacher for crying out loud, so she must have some modicum of intelligence.



Personally I think charitable gifts are only good if you aren't going to see the recipient in person, or if you know the person really well, and know that they are something they really would appreciate. For some reason, a lot of people really don't like the idea of them. I think they are great, and if someone bought one for me, I think that would pretty great. Most of the presents we receive, aren't things we actually want, or need, and we have to pretend that we really like them so as not to hurt any one's feelings. Having said that, if my in-laws gave me a charitable gift instead of my usual birthday wad of cash, I can't say I'd be particularly impressed with that!



I haven't come across many different types of charitable gifts. Off the top of my head Oxfam is the first that comes to mind, as they were the ones I looked at. I also think other large charities such as Save the Children and Wold Vision do some. There are also charitable gifts such as animal adoption, which is also a great idea, although there is a great deal of variation from one company to another. Funnily enough, my daughter recently asked me if she could adopt a red panda (her favourite animal) using her pocket money which I looked into on her behalf. Most companies just go into adoption for the big selling endangered animals, such as tigers, giant pandas, rhinos, gorillas etc. You can also give money just to help a specific breed rather than an actual animal. For example, I give £2 a month to the WWF towards helping the tigers. Red Panda's aren't a particularly popular animal, so it was quite difficult to find an adoption scheme that not only benefited the pandas, but also my seven year old daughter. Eventually we found that at Chester Zoo (we go here often when we visit my mum), we could set up an adoption scheme that would help the animals, but would also give us some tickets to visit the zoo, and in particular, a special day where she got to meet the red panda keeper and ask any questions she may have. We decided that as it was a gift for her as well as being a donation to charity, that she could ask for it for her birthday, so as charitable gifts go, it's not massive, but for a seven year old girl to want to give part of her own pocket money to charity, I think it's quite amazing.

Snow and Redundancies

My friend Carol got made redundant last week. She is the first of my close friends/relatives to be struck by the recession. Very nicely they have given her a months notice to find another job, but she has worked for the council for about 15 years, and her job is very specialised, so I don't think it will be easy for her.

I mention her not only because she got made redundant, but also because her financial situation is very similar to mine. Carol's partner Andy has a very well paid job, but they have a large mortgage as do we, and work to a strict monthly budget. They don't generally go on holiday, as there isn't really any spare money for it. The only differences between us is: They have one child, we have two, Carol works part time, and they are very sensible with their money.

I am more than a little concerned for Carol, and watching how they will cope with the lack of that extra income, will be something I will be doing, with more that a normal amount of interest. I do believe they have some savings, though not much, (we have none) and their situation is not quite as dire as mine and Alex, so I am sure they will be fine.

BUT....

The fact that one of my friends has lost their job as a direct consequence of the recession brings the whole thing a little nearer to home. It makes it a little more real, not just a headline on News At Ten. The recession has definitely entered my life now and not in a way I would have wanted it to.

Closer to home, it has of course been snowing. Walking the kids to school on Monday, I damaged my heel, it is excruciatingly painful to walk on, but if I put an arch support in my shoe, it makes it bearable. I went to the doctors today, and I have 'Plantar Fasciitus'. Google it, I can't explain it myself. I have to do stretching exercises, apply topical anti inflammatory, and wear this thing in my shoe, and it might go in a couple of days, or a couple of years, who knows!

The snow has made everyone under the age of 30 feel very excited. The kids have been building snowmen, and tobogganing in Woodford Park. It's great that they have found a free method of entertainment. I still can't see what all the fuss is about four inches of snow. When I was a child in Derbyshire, we had snow so deep you could touch it from an upstairs window. My Grandad had to cut a tunnel through the snow around the side of the house. Now that's snow.

One more thing I should mention in relation to finances. At the weekend, my children asked their daddy if he would take them swimming. Unfortunately due to spending slightly too much at Christmas he was grossly skint, and I didn't have any money as my bank in their infinite wisdom chose randomly to cancel my bank card without informing me. The kids wanted to go swimming so much, that they both pooled their pocket money so they could go swimming and pay for daddy too. Our children are 7 and 4, and get £1 and 50p a week respectively, for helping around the house. I was very impressed not only at their ingenious nature, but also at their selflessness, as Oscar is free to get in, he paid for Willow, and Willow with more pocket money paid for Daddy, and also had money left over to buy herself and her brother a packet of sweets each afterwards.

See, it's not how much money you have, but what you do with it that counts.

Past Future and Present Poverty

So, you asked me a lovely question, which I will try to answer about finances and in the current climate, what we are doing in the long and short term to combat that.



Well, our mortgage is currently half way through a five year fixed rate term, on a very good rate, so even though my bank, and building society have been trying to convince me to change to them I am going to stick where I am until the term expires. The reason for this is - The rate is so low, currently none of the banks or building societies can offer a rate anywhere near it, so I would basically be a complete dunce if I changed, and the reason why we took out a five year fixed rate is because our budget is so tight anyway, that we needed to know how much we were going to be paying for a length of time, and that it wouldn't be going up any time soon. If we could have squeezed enough out of our budget to take on a ten year fixed rate, we would have done so, but it was a little above our means.



Insurance. We already have every kind of insurance known to man, and even some that aren't. We have had most of these insurance policies since we bought our first house eight years ago, and there were just the two of us. As our family has grown, we have acquired more and bigger policies, to cover our burgeoning family. We do pay out A LOT of money each month in insurance, and I'm not just talking about your common or garden car, house, buildings insurance either. We have insurance in case Alex looses his job, insurance in case Alex gets ill and can't work, insurance in case Alex dies and can't work (?), insurance in case I die etc, etc. Most of it is to cover the mortgage payments, and some of it is to give us an income if there is no-one working. We have all these elaborate forms of insurance for one reason only. We do not have any other back up if there isn't a wage coming in every month. We have no savings to fall back on, in fact there is probably more money in the children's savings accounts than in ours. And there's only a couple of hundred in theirs. Alex's pension account gets a whopping great big £20 a month, so we are going to be living in a one room tenement building huddled round a one bar fire when he retires.



The reason we have the mortgage we have, and all the policies we have is down to our independent financial advisor, who's name is Adrian. We met him while we were buying our first house, as at the time his office was in the estate agents we bought the house from. We have never paid him a penny, he gets paid from the companies we use, so he always looks for the best deals for us. I trust him implicitly. He is a lovely (family) guy, I've met his wife and kids, and he isn't pushy and never gives us the hard sell. Whenever we go to see him, he always finds us various options, and then leaves us to make the final decision.



Shortly before we our current house, the man who owned the estate agents we bought our first house from died in a car crash. He was a prominent business man in the community as he lived and worked in Woodley and was very well liked. His death shocked everyone, not more so than his wife and baby daughter who he left behind. Adrian (who had been a close friend of his) told us that when he died he left no financial security for his family. He had always laughed at the idea of insurance policies, saying it was for 'anoraks'. Although he had a very well paid job, his wife had to sell the large family home they had just bought, and his cars, as she couldn't afford to live there any more and had to move in with her parents.



If this isn't a shining example of what not to do I don't know what is. I often look at our bank statements and think how better off we would be if all that insurance money we pay out every month was freed up. But then I think of Sean, and more appropriately, his wife and daughter, and it all makes sense.



Currently, we have been spending more time on tweeking the pennies, as really that's all we are able to do. We don't have enough money in the bank to do anything else with. We pay some money each month into savings, but that usually gets used for things like car tax, mot, services etc. The big picture is already looked after mostly, apart from the savings, but that will sort itself out later. The children have savings policies which we can't touch, for when they are older and they go to university or whatever. The current situation with the country's finances will not stay like this forever, although I am quite enjoying the current cut in interest rates. It makes for an interesting time at the till! And our finances will get better. My penny tweeking has reached an all time high I think at the minute, and maybe if I had more hours in the day, it would be even better!

Eating Out and Other Such Dreams

Alex went out last weekend, with a freind and freinds of said freind. He goes out with this crowd a couple of times a year. They go into London (as most of them live in and around the capitol)and have a meal and go out for a drink afterwards. Most of the people are single thirty somethings with a large income and no dependants, so usually, despite living in one of the most expensive cities in the world, they have a fair bit of cash to flash about.

So, what usually happens when they go out for a meal is this - Alex is very frugal with his spending. He may have only one or two alcoholic drinks, and will order from the cheaper end of the menu, and depending on whether he is particularly skint or not he would miss out starters and deserts. Everyone else will be ordering lots of booze, bottles of wine, starters, deserts, and spending loads of cash, then there would be food left over. At the end of the meal the bill would be split equally between everyone, which obviously makes Alex cross, as he is then paying for someone elses food, which we can ill afford to do. Nobody plans ahead and decides before hand that this is what they will all do, it just evolves into this when they have all had a bit too much to drink and can't be bothered to work it all out. Fair enough if you know you've had loads to eat and drink and you know that it would come to a fair bit, but when you have especially been careful because you know you don't have much money, then it is particularly irksome.

This time however, was different. Before hand, Alex didn't seem to want to go, and when I pressed him about it, it turned out that he was reluctant to go because of what usually happened on other occasions. He was supposed to leave home at four p.m. and eventually left around two hours later. I told him that if splitting the bill was what they all normally did then he shouldn't worry about what he had, and instead of choosing what he could afford, he should just choose what he wanted to eat, as it didn't seem to make much of a difference anyway.

As it turned out, everyone seemed to be slightly less frivolous anyway. Possibly to do with the credit crunch, but who can tell? Starters and desserts where ordered but no food was leftover, it seemed that less 'extras' where purchased as part of everyone's meals. Alcohol too seemed to be consumed in less quantity. Even though they where celebrating someones birthday, everyone just shared bottles of wine, instead of buying lots of shorts.

Between seven people the bill with alcohol and tip came to £25 each. A rather reasonable amount of money to spend at a restaurant, but still almost half a weeks worth of food for my family. Not something that we can afford to do on any kind of regular occurance.

Shopping with Rachel and Rebecca

So this receipt is from when Rachel and Rebecca came over and quizzed me for hours, and then took me shopping. (They know how to show a girl a good time.) This is kind of my monthly shop(not weekly, I don't have time to shop every week, and besides I would spend far too much money on stuff I don't need), were I would get all my staples like breakfast cereal, tinned goods, tea, coffee, sugar etc. And then washing goods, and household cleaners. Then there are things like deoderant, shaving, shower gels and shampoos etc. Basically everything that doesn't come from the farmers market, or delivered by a man.

I must say, it is rather bizarre going to the supermarket being flanked by two young ladies. It's not the fact that to an outsider we seem so dim, it obviously takes three of us to push a trolley around the supermarket, but the seemingly unsupermarket like questions that we seem to be discussing, that raises an eyebrow or two. But hey, I've never been the shy and retiring type, so it doesn't much bother me.

Anyway, you know what I bought, and why. You were there, but here's the receipt to remind you. Oh by the way, anytime you fancy babysitting, let me know. You where both very good at occupying small ginger children. Although we have yet to test you on the slightly larger variety.

Receipts Four

26th Sept had a bit of a hankering for pastry. Bought myself some courgettes and creme fraiche (see receipt) and took them home. Fried up the courgette with some chicken, a bit of garlic, and added a little lemon zest and fresh parsley. Squidge it all together with some creme fraiche. Roll out puff pastry nice and thin. Slop courgette/chicken mix down the centre of pastry. Cut ribbons in sides of pastry and curl over courgette/chicken mix, meeting in middle. Egg wash over top. Bang in oven. Cook till nice and golden brown. Feed to husband with new potatoes and broccoli. Makes two chicken breasts go further. Two meals for two people, rather than one. Pastry is dirt cheap. Get's you loads of brownie points with husband. Job Done.

Tip:- Use low fat creme fraiche in cooking. I use it in everything I need a creamy addition for. (Soup, curry, etc.) For some reason, the full fat stuff goes really runny when it warms up. The low fat stuff stays thick. And there's less fat, so you can feel self righteous, or just have twice as much.

A Handy Jack.

So, I told you about my car crash, but did I tell you about the gas leak?





No? Ok, here goes. Bear in mind that my husband is virtually on the other side of the planet, being smoozed by loads of Chinese business men and women, life in Haddon Drive continues its roller coaster journey with great vigour.





I woke up early on Monday morning for a change, and decided to have a shower before the children woke up. When I came out of the bathroom I could smell gas upstairs, so I knew it must be pretty bad downstairs. After opening every possible window I could, I then started to panic a bit. What do I do now? Alex isn't here, I can't ring the gas board, we don't have any money to get them involved. Maybe I should just switch it off and Alex will sort it out when he gets back. The kids were eating their breakfast by this time, complaining that they were very cold, and why were the windows open? I couldn't leave the gas off all week, they would freeze, and have no hot food. Then I thought I could ring Frank (Alex's dad) as he would know what to do. The phone rang and rang, then it went to answer phone. Shit. Now what do I do? I put the phone down without leaving a message. I need to speak to someone now, not later.



Then it dawned on me, what if he was still in Spain? Alex had told me the week before that his mum and dad had taken Nonna to their apartment in Spain for a holiday. I had no idea if they where back yet. I didn't know what to do. Ordinarily I would phone the gas board and let them sort it out, and then stump up the cash afterwards. But we have no way of doing that. How can you get someone to do some work for you that you have no way to pay them for. I don't have any credit cards, nothing for emergencies, no stash of cash in my mattress or nest egg for a rainy day in the bank. I suppose if the worst comes to the worst, I could phone my mum but what could she do? She's 200 miles away, and to be perfectly honest, I wouldn't want my dad to know that I can't look after myself at the age of 37.



Luckily, with all this running through my mind, only a couple of short (although that's not what it felt like) minutes later, the phone rang. It was Frank. Thank God. I was so relieved I burst into tears, and started sobbing hysterically down the phone to him. He said he would send Jack round to have a look and told me to switch it off. It all seemed so very simple now. Within a couple of minutes it was all sorted out. As it happened, Jack couldn't come over until the next day so we had a very cold day and night, but he came the next morning and fixed it in no time. A very simple problem. A connection behind the cooker had come loose.



I felt like a bit of a moron. I had got hysterical over such a small thing, but the fact of the matter is, that when something like this happens, it is the amount of readies that you have in your pocket that colours how you deal with things. If I had a credit card, or a wad of cash in the bank, would I have stressed so much? I doubt it. I would have done what everybody else does, and in fact what my neighbour did only a few weeks ago when they had a gas leak, phone the gas board, let them do their thing, then moan about how much it costs afterwards. Luckily, and I really do mean it, I have a fantastic father-in-law that is a builder and has an army of workers of all descriptions at his beck and call to do his bidding. Actually, I only need the one. His name is Jack, he is Polish and he fixes everything. If I wasn't married (and neither was Jack) I would marry him.