Re: I don't....

I guess you and I are in the minority here. I don't have Sky or pay TV, I don't have a window cleaner, I don't go down the pub, I shop in Aldi, I haven't bought any clothes for several years at least.

I do have a mobile phone, but I don't have a landline so it is my only phone as it is cheaper. My car is ten years old, and it's not a Jag.

I also still write down everything I spend so that I can see if there are any worrying trends. And I could never spend money just for the sake of it.

But my indulgence is travel. And I am more than happy to live a relatively frugal life (which is perfectly comfortable) at home in order to finance more travelling.

Re: I don't....

Absolutely right. Either a lot of money was made or inherited to enable someone to do that.
I paid off my mortgage as quickly as I could, but I couldn't do that AND save for my retirement if I was giving up work at 48!And I was in a reasonably well paid profession for two thirds of my working life.

Re: I don't....

I paid for my house at the ripe old age of 59 1/2 and I retired at 60. I have a certain amount of sympathy with Realist's point of view, we do tend to be slaves to a wage packet in our society.

Re: I don't....

I have inherited nothing. I worked from age 18-19 till 48 non-stop. I was paid averagely for my IT skills throughout that period and indeed my salary was pretty much flat-lined from 2003 along with lots of other people in my situation.

Everyone has choices about what they spend their money on and everyone has their own priorities about what is important. I've come across numerous couples in the past 30yrs who say they are struggling with money and yet who at the same time had the latest camcorders and Plasma TVs and then later on iPhones, iPads and iPods etc.

These people are not awake. They are slaves to a system that dupes them via the media in all its forms. If you understand debt you know that NOTHING is more important than paying if off as quickly as you humanly can. You MUST go without, in order to reduce and eradicate the debt. Then and only then can you cater for wants and desires.

The illusion that most people are in is that they believe it's ok to have lots of things on finance because they see that they can afford a given monthly payment. They look no further than those monthly payments when in fact they should be looking at the total amount that will be repaid.

The same kind of people get routinely ripped off every time they buy a car. They have no idea of the simple maths of how much the car deal will have you repaying in TOTAL. So they end up paying way more than the car is worth and 2-3 years later find they've lost a ton of money so they walk into yet another bad car deal that presents itself as something that will settle the old finance and give them a nice new car. It's a death spiral that eventually catches up with them. In the end, they just have to work their nuts off all their life to make up for their terrible buying decisions.

Re: I don't....

Don't really matter what you spend on what, provided you are still breathing.

Re: I don't....

I can't figure out why I feel sorry for Realist......

Re: I don't....

Assertions of certainty?

Re: I don't....

Guessing because you're caught in the trap and so the things I bring to the table here seem outlandish and crazy to you. I feel sorry for a great deal of the other posters here. I see people in chains of their own making and blissfully unaware of the "spell" that creates the illusionary world they live in.

Re: I don't....

very much so but it was all to serve a purpose, making such savings has enabled me to buy a nice property which I'll be moving in to soon and I have another to sell so it's all been worthwhile!

Re: I don't....

I retired at 46 and am now 70.
We own our house and have done for the last 30 years.
We live carefully, if not exactly frugally, and have everything we need.
I worked from age 15 until age 46 when redundancy forced my early 'retirement,' my wife also made redundant a couple of years after me, both of us had good well paid jobs and were able to draw our generous occupational pensions early.