A frugal life is an easy life!

For years we have had the benefits of banks thrust in our faces and seen them take over every aspect of our lives, isn't it time that cash, once again, became king?
"Convenience costs" - I am sure we would all agree, I don't believe that banks can any longer hold the claim that they are our financially frugal friend!

Security:
Wages require a bank account to have them paid into - but did you know, that according the law in England and Wales (Scotland has similar laws) you can request that your employer pays you in cash!
The wage packet was replaced by the wage slip, with money going into bank accounts rather than companies having to pay for security, on payday.
Branches of banks on the high street have become under staffed and many thousands have closed down altogether - yet Natwest are now sending out mobile branches - banks in vans - so how does this equate with the argument that bank transfers offer better security and ultimately save us all money?
Our information:
Data protection laws in the UK are there to protect us all, but seldom do they ever help an individual when banks are clearly at fault.
Months of waiting for reviews of an individual's case - toothless ombudsmen (put in place by the banks themselves) - useless regulations that are never applied unless it stops you from accessing your own account.
When your information is used against you to market goods and services, your information is stored on computers in foreign lands without any of our data protection, when your information is being accessed by call centre staff in countries on the other side of world, again without any data protection laws in place.
How much have you personally, ever been paid for your own banking habits and personal information? I haven't received a penny piece - yet banks (like other businesses) sell on our information for profit!
Convenience:
Direct debits - wonderful things they are, backed by a guarantee that is not worth the paper it is written on!
Banks even make profits from these.
You have a direct debit set up, say to pay for your gas bill every month. Your payments are spread over the year in monthly installments, you are paying in advance most of the year in effect giving your gas company an interest free loan (which is currently being investigated by the Office of Fair Trading) - they put up the monthly amount without 28 days notice in writing (which is the law) which your bank pays out.
You are charged upto £35 for a non payment of a direct debit, which costs the bank around £1 if a letter is sent out to your home, the banks have for years refused to prove that actual cost to them for this process, is the amount they charge the customer.
To get your money back, you spend ages on the telephone (part of the call price is paid to the bank) you may have to write a letter or two, more time and money for you to waste, even after all this you don't always get your money back.
Other bills might not be paid, you might be pushed into an overdraft due to their original error or charges, again this uses up more of your time and money, etc.

The benefits of using cash?
The more frugal people amongst us, are well aware that all is not simply "black and white."

If you buy something from a shop/store, and are asked for your home address, would you give it to the shop? Even when the staff says "it is for your receipt?"
Are you aware that the store then puts you on a mailing list and sends you junk mail, many companies then sell on their "customer lists" to other businesses, making profits on all our information.
Did you know that a till receipt is a contract of sale between a store and its customer? No address is ever needed, as a till receipt is a valid proof of purchase in law.
The issue I am trying to raise here, is that it is not just payments in cash that benefits you, it saves you from marketing in the future, paying in cash saves you in the longer term as well.
Without clubcards for example, Tesco's profit making model would be in tatters, as would every other company who offer these schemes.
Promoted to benefit the customer, giving token discounts (which are added on to prices around the store so they lose nothing) they not only encourage you to return to their store to buy their wares, but they also use this information to market products at you!
Tesco started out hiring a company to set up their clubcards, knowledge is power, so successful was the company, Tesco bought them for millions of pounds!
In the past year, a recession has hit everyone, yet supermarkets continue to make obsene profits as the cost of our staple foods goes through the roof. Tinned goods have shot up in price without reason, even those experts who work in the industries providing the goods cannot explain the price rises.
The supermarkets have stayed typically silent on the issue!

If you pay cash, stores cannot gather information that allows them to provide "footfall drivers" to entice you into their store - it messes their information processes up, which is great for the customer.
Don't use a clubcard or debit/credit card and pay cash, as this hurts the supermarkets/stores:

• they cannot link types of goods sold to areas of people
• they cannot estimate income levels for different surrounding areas
• they cannot link what goods are bought to various income levels
• they cannot target so called incentives to get you into their stores
• they cannot market adverts at your area via television
• they cannot sell your shopping habits/mailing lists on for profits

Look at the bigger picture and safeguard your local businesses.
Paying cash also has other benefits... in my area, a supermarket petrol station is one of the highest prices in the area, they used to be the lowest until they put the local petrol stations out of business, they charge 3p per litre more than their nearest petrol station, and the fuel comes off the same delivery!
Now as a result, we all pay more and have less choice!

When was the last time you negotiated a discount paying with a credit/debit card?
When was the last time a high street business or bank gave you a discount at the checkout?
If you pay cash at your local stores they are often far more competitive in price than you realise and almost always give you a discount.

If I pay my gas monthly in cash at our local garage, I do not have possible bank charges, I am supporting a petrol station (helping it stay in business) I don't have my information sold on, I don't have goods/services directly marketed at me, etc, etc.
For too long people have been pushed towards using banks for the convenience they provide, whilst the individual takes on all the responsibility for any mistakes that occur and risks paying out more money, all ends up.

It is time the people fought back, start using cash where ever you can, rip up their business models and information gathering and start fighting back!

A typical Monday, everything everywhere. It started early - 6am - sprog1 was due at hospital for an outpatients appointment, had bad guts most of the night, very tired.

Got to the hospital just in time for his appointment, 7.30am, sat down and waited with sprog1 until he was finally called at 50 minutes late. On the way home, looking at all the traffic jams - over 2 miles long - going the other way (how many hours do people waste sat in traffic each week?) as the rat race continued it's winding tail over the hills.
Got back to hoover towers, sprog1 texted me to say he was taken to yet another waiting room (where he would stay for another 2 hours!) in my infinate wisdom, I decided to try some toast... a bad idea.
I ended up missing work and going back to bed!

Mother nature has a brilliant way of telling the body to stop, it aint clever nor pretty, but very effective!

After a few hours sleep I was woken up with the message sprog1 was ready to be picked up. More water was drunk and I nipped off to get him. He came out fine with a little patch on his wound, which gradually increased in pain as we got nearer to home. As you would expect from a 21 year old... it is amazing how pain increases the closer to someone sympathetic they get!
Pain killers taken and a quick bite to eat and he's straight to bed.
Sprog2 (The almost 10 week old) has been in a good mood today, sleeping for a couple of hours at a time.
There's a bit of a discussion in our house about feeding - Hoover is getting worried about feeding more and more, I just keep making the point that as sprog2 is getting bigger and taking more milk, it will take hoover a bit of time to catch up with producing extra.
I am not sure she agrees with me... we shall see.

Things still to do today:
Two payment protection (PPI) refund letters to write - one for us, one for a friend of the site.
Write out an official letter to a car dealership.
Go to our nearest post office and tax a car.
Put another load of washing and drying in.
Then we can rest up for the day me thinks.... oh and total amount spent today: £1.80 for hospital parking.

It is clear that everyone in the world would like to go "green" but why does everything concerned with "saving the planet" "protecting the environment" or "going green" always cost the people more money?

In the past few years, windfarms have sprung up all over the UK, offshore wave technology is creating energy and hydro electricity is growing in popularity, yet our energy bills continue to grow by a far higher percentage than our income.
Appliances for the home also shoot up in price.
A tumble dryer that has a hose hung out of the window, costs over £100 less than a condenser dryer with an A class energy rating.
This same condenser dryer also allows more water to be saved and put back into the "system" - reducing the need for more rain water.
A 5 litre vessel (every 2 drying cycles) is poured back into the water system, yet my water bills increased by 19% at their last "review" - national inflation was just 1.7% at the same time!

I pay electricity and gas by card meter, paying for energy in advance, yet I am charged a higher rate and "standing charges" that direct debit customers do not have to pay, even though both types of payment require the same - once per month - attention and direct debit customers do not pay in advance.

Did you know that the entire "climate change" argument, is about how to improve just 2% of the Earth's problems - the other 98% is natural and we can do nothing about it whatsoever! (Ask the scientists themselves!)

Exactly how are we all being encouraged and helped to use more energy saving, "green" methods in our daily lives?
Solar panels? - these have increased in price over the past 5 years, grants to install them have also been cut.
Energy efficient light bulbs? - you might have received some "free" bulbs? As a taxpayer, it is you that have paid over the odds for these bulbs. Have you seen the prices of them shoot up in the supermarkets?
The companies giving away "free" bulbs, are given grants by the government, who do you suppose fund the government? Of course, it is us, the public!
To dispose of these bulbs requires specialist methods, causing more damage to the environment than conventional bulbs that have been in our homes for decades.
Drive our cars less? - Most people now cannot walk to work, I'd even guess the majority of people cannot get a bus to work, due to working times, distances, no routes going to industrial estates, etc. So how does charging record taxes on petrol/diesel help those who have no choice but to use their cars?

The arguments for going "green" may well be strong, the evidence of "climate change" is, I believe, shakey at best, but all the measures the public have taken so far, have brought no savings, no improvement, etc, and have cost them heavily in their pockets.

Perhaps if we actually saw just one of these measures benefit us personally, we would be more inclined to believe the whole argument?

A woman has had her penalty notice fine of £75 for feeding ducks in the park with her son, dropped, by a local council.
Originally, the lady was fined for feeding the ducks in a "non designated area."

At first Sandwell Council defended the issuing of the penalty ticket, but back tracked when they suddenly decided to take "a common sense approach" - but only because "warning signs in the area are being sorted out."

Designated area - if a park with ducks isn't a designated area, what is?

It gets worse - in the future, all feeding of ducks at this particular park, will be banned!

You can pay your hard earned cash to bird charities and the powers that be can give away your taxes to help animals and birds, etc, yet when it comes to giving ducks/geese, etc, some old bread when attempting to show your children some compassion towards animals, in their natural environment, you are banned and fined for doing so?

In our house, we rarely use the fire. It has to be minus 10 outside and ice cold in the house before it gets turned on.
So, when we started the building work (which still needs plastering) I decided we should have a real coal fire.
Heating and water would still be in place via a new boiler (our current Baxi Potterton back boiler is almost 30 years old and still going strong) but with the option of long, dark winter evenings, being in front a snugg coal fire!

Well today, the plans for the new boiler and radiators have been put in place. It may take a few months to get the blokes out to physically do the work, but once it is in place, then the real fire will follow close behind.

We already have the hearth marble base and a fantastic wood fire mantelpiece, from a frugal job I did for a neighbour (who had a friend that wanted rid of the mantelpiece and base) so just the workings of the real coal fire to get, then it is up to the chimney sweep to prepare it all... I can't wait!
Small sacks of smoke free coal are only around £4 here, picked up from our nearby farms and are in plentiful supply.