Among other fiscal challenges, we face the effects of conflict, climate change, dick — waver tariffs and other budget shitstorms. How are we possibly going to save up enough to emigrate to Mars? We must tighten our belts.
Mr Micawber said, ‘Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure nineteen pounds, nineteen and six, result happiness. Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure twenty pounds ought and six, result misery.’
Money can be such a misery, banks resort to the trick of calling it by other names — credit cards, stocks and shares, the ever-so-pretty sounding hedge fund…
Let’s consider the Apple store. Apple knows we are more likely pay out for something that has been left out for us to play with. Hence the lay out of their stores. Leaving aside the prettiness resulting from the executive order to keep all screens tilted at the same angle, all items are plugged in, showing those so colourful screens, with a full range of apps installed. We play, and are then more tempted to pay. So successful — and imitated — is this sales ploy, governors of certain American states have warned Christmas shoppers not to handle goods. ‘Stores let you touch, just to tempt you, folks. So, let’s us go right back to not-squeezing so much as an orange, let alone anything else on display. Have Yourselves a debt free Little Christmas.’
Or something.
Apart from a brief and not particularly serious episode of debt from overbuying opera CDs, I’ve kept myself cheap to run. Renting what estate-agents would call post-bijoux bedsits; taking taxis only when the walk to and/or from a gig would exceed two hours; ever comforted by my favourite line of poetry: Buy one, Get one Free with its loving couplet: Reduced for quick sale. I buy all my fruit and vegetables from the market late Saturday afternoons when the stallholders are packing up and will sell items off cheap. When entering a supermarket I make straight for the Reduced for Quick Sale bin, and then will go up and down the shelves squinting to make the orange special offer stickers sing out to me. As Rosa, on the delicatessen counter at the nearest unfeasibly large Tesco’s commented, I’m ‘Up and down the aisles like a demented hamster.’
I never go shopping without a shopping list. And if I’m tempted to buy anything that isn’t on the list, I finish putting everything that is in my trolley, and then decide if I really still want that (dreaded) impulse item.
If I do, I’m really getting things wrong.
c1981 my mother (of all people) said: ‘Shops try to inveigle you into impulse buying. Look at all those useless things down the in and out shop put out so as to be directly in your eyeline.’
Thankfully my student credit card was declined when I tried to buy that train set for my Muswell Hill student digs. Or that ironing-board cover (I didn’t have an iron, let alone an ironing board). Ditto the first of a complete set of Ten Commandments toast stamps.
Imagine if I’d bought all the way to Thou shalt not covet thy neighbour’s house, Thou shalt not covet thy neighbour’s wife, nor his manservant, nor his maidservant, nor his ox, nor his ass, nor any thing that is thy neighbour’s?
I would have needed to buy a new, emperor-plus size, toaster.
Let alone a bigger loaf tin. (I make my own bread, you see.)
Anyway, all the silly and sillier stuff will be displayed directly in your eyeline. Or in the German store Aldi, in rows of tubs down the centre of the store, like a vast fairground Tombola stall.
What is your recourse?
Don’t look at it all.
Ah — all very well for me to say that.
As I just did…
However…
Shops colour their Special Display signs red. Red for DANGER!!!…that you might regret not buying something you don’t remotely need. We fear missing out much more than we enjoy acquiring.
Recourse?
Repaint the signs magenta. Magenta being the colour of harmony and balance.
Then there’s the piped music. Slow when they need you to linger — thus in boutiques, art galleries or book shops they play Chopin Nocturnes, Satie’s Gymnopedies, ambient chillout. Fast when they need you shipped in and shipped out of there sharpish — in supermarkets, sex shops and Starbucks they play the Lone Ranger, the Looney Tunes “That’s all Folks!” outro, or a sped up TikTok sample of an AI baritone singing what sounds like, Amber Coated New Wine/Miroshine Don’t Got to/Tam O’Shanter lurid toe/Baby Toilet Matter.
Your recourse? Accompany yourself on the accordion around the aisles singing, Mairzy doats and dozy doats and liddle lamzy divey/A kiddley divey too, wouldn’t you?
Never fails.
There.
I have advised. I have given value. I have solved issues.
No?
Well, let’s take heart. Even the fabulously wealthy have money misery. In the late nineteen fifties opera diva Maria Callas rehearsed for a performance on Granada at Eight wearing half a million dollars of her own diamonds. I know, right — all that caratage just for a run-through?
In the green room she was introduced to the TV company’s chief executive, Sidney Bernstein.
‘Oh, thank God, you’re here!’ she said, grabbing his hand.
He blanched. ‘My dear Madame Callas — why? Were we remiss? Was something not quite to your liking? Did somebody offend you?’
She clucked at him. ‘No, my dear. I just must please have a discount on one of your new colour televisions.’
For the good of all, by the by, I think the fabulously wealthy should be given a choice.
Be taxed fairly or end up like the Princess De Lamballe, in bleeding chunks on our proletariat spikes.
#finance#budget#budgeting#tariffs#fiscal#financial#money#cheques#borrowing#impulsebuy#impulsebuying#banks#bank#howtobudget#moneymatters#debt#solvency#apple#applestore
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