Shopachronic

My wife was recently reading one of the "Shopaholic" series of chic-lit books. Although not a chick myself, but more of a grumpy old git that sometimes likes to get in touch with his feminine side, I stole it away and read it myself. I was immediately amused, entranced and ensnared in the antics of a fictitious woman who just has to shop!

Now, I know that where women are concerned, shopping is a kind of divine ritual which just has to be done no matter what and no matter what the state of the home finances might be. In the book, the heroine. although in deep financial trouble herself, and ironically is employed as a columnist in a savings magazine, just cannot stop shopping and keeps buying expensive and exotic things even though she doesn't actually need them, but then if they are sold at such a fantastic discount, then you would have to be mad not to buy - I mean you are actually SAVING money if you do!!

I have to admit, that unlike many men, I do actually like shopping. I think its a primeval thing going back to that part in my genetic make-up that sends me out into the wild to hunt and kill and bring back the trophies to a grateful wife and family who are massively impressed by my great dexterity and cunning in acquiring such wonderful things! At least, it might be like that in my mind, but the reality is that I rarely buy myself anything and even when I do I have to justify it to myself. I mean - do I really NEED it? Is it something which will make a possible difference to my life? If its a book, well if its non-fiction does it contain information I could get for nothing off the Internet? Okay, its a book I really want so could I buy it for cheaper as an ebook? Hang on, what about all the books you have already, and you haven't read them yet. So I don't buy it.

Right, never mind anything - I've got some spare cash so I'M DETERMINED TO TREAT MYSELF. How about a new camera? Well, Jessops has just gone under, so can't look there. Never mind, John Lewis is always good - yeah, great, they've got a whole range of real hot quality cameras. Hang on a moment - whats wrong with the  DSLR you already have, not to mention the 12 mega pixel bridge camera, and have you forgotten the 8 mega pixel camera on your smart phone? Okay, forget it, so lets get a movie camera instead. Not so fast.....the voice from within shouts - you already have 1080P on both your cameras and guess what? - 1080P on your smart phone so JUST FORGET IT YOU ARE NOT GETTING IT BECAUSE ITS A COMPLETE WASTE OF MONEY AND YOU ARE JUST SPENDING FOR THE SAKE OF IT!!!!!

This is just not fair, surely theres something I can buy myself - I know - a cappuccino and a muffin in Muffin Break - yeah ecstasy!

Finally, I do end up getting something, but more likely along the lines of a pack of 4 gel pens for £4.60 from Staples. ...or something............................ oh well, lets get the groceries - I don't have to justify not starving!

Personal gods

I had an email from a friend today who read my last posting. He agreed with most of it, but added that most of us have other Gods apart from “the” god (the one who doesn’t exist).

Back in my more gullible “born again” Christian days, we did recognise these other Gods. The chief “gods” were money, food and self. Because these gods were not the true god who we worshipped, we called them false gods. In fact, they are not false at all, and very real.

We have all seen the damage being caused by the worship of money and the current despair that is bringing upon the world. By the way, many people seem to think that the Bible says “money is the root of all evil”. Actually it doesn’t. What it actually says is that “THE LOVE of money is the root of all evil”. This puts a completely different slant on things. Money itself is neutral; it can neither be good or evil. Its how we use it that is the problem, as well as what our attitude is towards it. Are you using money to fund gun running to terrorist groups, or making donations to your local children’s hospice? You get my drift............ It also becomes a problem when we forget that money is actually a means to an end, and not the end in itself. Even so, people can be forgiven for hording their filthy lucre in the present crisis.

We see the results all around us of the “sin” of gluttony. Everywhere you look, you see people impersonating hippos. It’s just too easy to put on loads of weight and become a walking marshmallow with all the cheap, but very tasty, junk food which is all around. Obesity is one of the biggest killers at work in the west today, and kills far more people than, road accidents, wars, acts of terrorism etc…..It also seems so wrong to be switching on the television and seeing so many programmes devoted to food while there are so many people dying of starvation in the world. When I was a child at school, fat kids got made fun of. I guess the reason was because they were relatively rare as compared to today, and so really stood out. The really fat ones which I remember are now dead. Also, while it is no doubt a good thing to work out at the Gym, if we are going to keep in shape then we must eat sensibly. We are all on a diet; it’s just that rather a lot of us are on the wrong diet. Its also an interesting fact that in order to burn off one ounce of fat, you have to, on average, walk 16 miles, so don’t kid yourself that exercise is the whole answer because it isn’t.

Finally there’s self. Just plain selfishness. We can be selfish in many ways, some obvious, and some not so obvious. I am not really bothered about the selfishness which wants to improve one’s lot in life. We all have to have a degree of selfishness in order to survive; otherwise everyone just walks all over us. The kind of selfishness which I find so heinous is the kind where other people are just not considered. Where people call “a spade a spade” without any regard for the feelings of others. Probably the most extreme example of selfishness in living memory was exemplified in the life of the Chinese Leader, Mao Tse-tung. In order to achieve his own selfish ambitions he caused the deaths of some 75 million of his own countrymen, not to mention personally congratulating Pol Pot after the "Year Zero" killing fields massacres and enslaving a whole nation. Indeed, Mao's personal philosophy was that no one else outside of the self matters. For anyone interested in the life of this tyrant, I recommend Jung Chang and Jon Halliday's book "Mao the Unknown Story" published by Jonathan Cape. In fact, just about all forms of criminal activity spring from selfishness of one kind or another. We all, whether we like it or not, have a duty of care to those around us. It starts in our own immediate families and then spreads outwards to the rest of society – and the world. Am I my brother’s keeper???? – Yes you are, and your sisters' as well.

Go in peace.

Money Money Money

As I lazily reclined following a languid session in the sauna at my leisure club the other night, I indolently grabbed from the adjacent lounger the tossed aside financial pages from some paper of a more intellectual standing than “The Star” to update myself a little in the world of finance. Of course, I have a big interest in this sort of thing as one does have to consider one's interests in one's off shore investments, one's formula-1 racing team and the upkeep of one's castles and estates in the Highlands of Scotland.

Of course, like most people who haven't been living on the planet Zarg on the outer fringes of the Zirgon Cluster for the last few months, I do nurture a slight concern about the complete disaster the financial criminals of this evil world have wrought upon us. I do not need to go over the causes of it all, ramble on about sub prime mortgages etc., etc., as I suspect that you, my readers, are well informed anyway. However, I will say a few things which help to illuminate, to me at least, what the problem actually is.

Many years ago I went away on a two week professional selling course. One of the fundamental lessons we were taught was that until something is sold, nothing happens. Or, to put it more succinctly, until something is PAID FOR............nothing happens. It therefore follows that if you set about selling goods and services to people who haven't actually got the money to pay for them, and never will have the money to pay for them, then the end result can only be disaster which then ripples outwards spreading negative knock-on affects in all directions due to the interconnectedness of the economy. This is so basic, and yet it appears to be lost upon the very people we, and the world depend for our survival.

Back in the late 1980's when house prices were rocketing, many of my work mates were jumping on the property band wagon like a bunch of greed crazed demented lemmings. They seemed to be more interested in how the value was going up, than what houses are really about – having somewhere to live.

“My house is making money faster than I am earning it” bragged a colleague. What he didn't have the brains to understand was that the value of anything is purely notional, and based upon what people are prepared to pay for it. He seemed to think the value would just keep going up indefinitely, as if there would be a steadily swelling stream of multi-millionaires, and eventually billionaires, and then trillionaires queuing up behind each other to buy the one bedroom flats at the bottom of the market, without which there would be no property market at all. After not very long when the market collapsed as it so obviously would, my bragging friend became my crying friend as he found himself in a desperate plight straining under the weight of negative equity. I had little sympathy, because there is no such thing as a free lunch and anyone who thinks there is deludes himself.

The nub of all this is that for any economy to work, there have to be tangible products for people to buy - and who can afford them. Unless these products are realistically priced, the illusion of the stable economy will be short lived. Take the example of the pyramid system. This was a scheme people of low intelligence bought into thinking they would become rich when there wasn't actually a product to be sold. On the other hand, we have multi level marketing (MML) businesses which many mistake for pyramid systems. The similarity is superficial. This is because in MML businesses, there is actually a product underpinning it, so if people are prepared to work at it, then there is a reasonable chance a decent amount of stable income can be achieved for a large number of people. Of course, not all MML businesses are the same, and some should be avoided like the plague (did I say Amway???).

It is now time to return to the financial pages I browsed on my lounger. What took my attention was that it was about the banking system. However, it was not about any old banking system, it was about the Islamic banking system. Now, before anyone thinks this offering is about to turn religious, fret not because it isn't. It is, however about morals nonetheless.

From the Islamic viewpoint, the Western banking system is immoral and corrupt. It is based upon greed and make believe values which exist in the wild imaginations of the greedy, but not in anything tangible giving it stability. Okay, I know I am being incredibly simplistic here and I realise things are a good deal more complex, but the fact is that the Islamic Banking world has barely been scratched by the credit crunch and the attendant financial melt down. The reason for this is that Islamic banking is founded upon ethical principles underpinned by tangible assets, rather than much of the notional make believe which has got us into the mess we find ourselves. I had a conversation about this with a friend recently and he commented that an Islamic bank account might not return as high a level of interest. This might be the case, or it might not, but surely it is better to have a stable economy with lower returns than one which gives you a high return one moment, and destroys your investments and pension funds the next. I am not suggesting we all rush out and open an Islamic bank account, though it might not be a bad idea, but it would appear that our banking system needs to be overhauled and based upon ethical values and tangible assets if we are not to find ourselves falling into the same mess in the future.

Bad Shopping

I was out on the town the other day and something close to miraculous happened. I walked past a book shop without going in. Now what’s miraculous about that? I hear you ask. Well, it’s like this: I am a terminal book addict. I’ve joined book clubs, left them and later rejoined again - just to get the special 500 top sellers for a penny each and you only have to buy 30 books a week for the next twenty years. Yeah, I’m exaggerating – but you get the drift. So why did I walk past the book shop, when I had plenty of browsing time on my hands? The reason is that the penny has finally dropped that I cannot possibly read all the books my habit has already amassed on my creaking bookshelves. I’ve got loads of wonderful books, but I probably won’t live long enough to read them all. I DID buy a book on Amazon a couple of weeks ago (for a fraction of the shop cost), but I can easily justify that one. Its “The Lore of the Land”, a reference book on English folklore by Jennifer Westwood and Jacqueline Simpson. I had two reasons for buying it. One was to do with finding out interesting facts about places before I visit them. Why visit them? – to take photographs which might be sold to a publisher. The other reason was because it has, on page 65, a photograph of “Jeremiah’s Tea House” at Little Abington. I took this photograph and it was my very first photo sale to a publisher, so I thought it would be nice to have the book. The rest, I’m not bothered about, but there’s always got to be a first.

I have become a very bad shopper. I am bad because I hardly buy anything. Because of this, unless it’s very expensive, I can afford to buy pretty much anything I see in the shops I might desire. However, I am constantly having an internal battle as to whether I can really justify spending the money. I don’t just say to myself “that’s too expensive” because I pass up practically all the cheap things as well. I think a lot of it is that I have really become a bit bored with the consumerist pressure to constantly go out and spend money on things I don’t really need, and NEED is really the operative word. I love photography. I do not own the very latest equipment, but it does the job. Yes, I will eventually buy a new camera one day, but as long as my equipment gives me the results I need, then I am a lost cause as far as the camera shops are concerned. I am bored with all the magazines available. I hardly ever buy a magazine at all these days because most of the ones I’ve got I rarely find the time to sit down and read anyway. And as for photography magazines, my knowledge of the subject is so vast they could hardly teach me anything! You see a photomag screaming out about how to do outdoor photography. Well, here’s how you do it: You pick up your camera, step outside your front door and start taking photos. Easy, Eh??

Another thing – you see all these special offers – SAVE this much, no! – SAVE that much. No!! The way to save is not to buy the bloody whatever in the first place. If you are really honest with yourself and analysed all the stuff you buy over a month, let’s say, I bet a lot of the stuff, for many people, wasn’t really necessary. No, the best way to save money is not to spend it. That way, when you DO treat yourself and buy something, it becomes that bit more special and you begin to appreciate things that bit more. I suppose, what I am driving at here is my disdain for this consumer led society we live in, where someone is trying to entice you to buy something at every turn. Buy this, buy that – no – stop – don’t buy anything.

Oh woe – this is not good though. If everyone was like me, all the shops would go out of business. All the breweries would have to close (I drink very little, just the odd binge once in a blue moon). This is the contradictory world we live in. We all want to earn money. To get money we work. The money is generated through sales – of various sorts. If nothing is sold, nothing happens. So, in order for society to thrive, we all need to spend, spend, spend and then there will be lots of jobs for everyone. So, if you are unemployed and reading this, I apologise. It’s probably people like me who are to blame for putting you out of work. Not only am I a bad shopper, I’m also a bad credit card user. You see the credit card people don’t want me to pay off all my debt so they can charge me interest. I don’t play their game – I pay it all off every month, I don’t pay interest. But what I DO do is build up my loyalty points and every now again, I can go out and treat myself – or get the groceries, for free. How bad is that?

A Comedy of Expenses

There seems to be some mysterious force at work in my life, which I have not quite got to grips with. I know it is there because I experience its effects regularly. It’s a bit like Newton's Third Law of Motion which states that for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction. There is also a third law of finances, which I have discovered and runs parallel to Newton's Law. It states: "For every saving there is an equal, opposite, and unforeseen expense". I'm not sure what the first two financial laws are, but I'm sure that if I sit in the bath and think about it for long enough (topping up the hot water from time to time - of course), like Archimedes, I'll have my own "Eureka" moment. In fact, looking over my past and present fiscal affairs, it would be fair to say that the third law could be amended to read: "For every saving, there is a GREATER, opposite and unforeseen expense". This then, is McAdam's Third Law of Finances.

Most people on a reasonable (or even not so reasonable) income have a monster lurking outside their house which has the potential to wreak havoc with their finances, and a lot of other aspects of their lives besides. This particular beast has an antenna which is tuned into to its owners perception of his or her own financial wellbeing and is programmed to respond to McAdam's Third Law of Finances. The monster, of which I speak, is, of course, the car. Allow me to explain………

Being a particularly frugal (tight) sort of person, I tend to look after my loot. I have a system of saving which provides a cash boost to our current account every few months. I would tell you what that system is, but then that’s my business and its secret! Anyway, the upshot was that at the beginning of the month we found ourselves with an extra few hundred pounds in our account (our = me and my wife). This gives one a nice warm and comfortable inner glow, which is all the better at this miserable time of the year, not long after Christmas.

Then………….it all started to go wrong. I should have known. I should have expected it, because it is the story of my life.

Each working day, I go home for lunch and let Sally the boxer into her run to relieve herself. I’d had a particularly busy morning and was feeling somewhat tired so I relaxed back into my recliner and shut my eyes for a few minutes – as you do. Unfortunately, the few minutes turned into about half an hour. I awoke with a start and staggered out to the car to head back to the funny farm, not wishing to be late. I turned the key. The starter motor rotated. That’s all. No engine bursting into life. No power. No traction. No hope. I rang my rescue service, who were very quickly on the scene. He couldn’t get the car started for love nor money. Next, the rescue low-loader appeared and my car and I were transported to the friendly garage who look after my car the other side of Cambridge. It turned out the security system was at fault, and it needed a new one. That cost me nearly £300.

A few days later I booked my car in for a six monthly service. This should only have been a relatively cheap one. I say relatively because anyone of sound mind ought to know there is no such thing as “cheap” where car maintenance is concerned. Even so, I wasn’t particularly fussed – it was planned after all. No such luck. I was sat at my desk. The phone rang. I was told the brake pads and disks were worn right down. Only a few hundred miles of wear left at the most. What was I supposed to do – scrap the car?? Another £200 or so on top of the bill. Picking up the car, I pretended the bill for a little over £400 was good value. Like I’ve got money to burn. Ha Ha.

A couple of days later I had to re-tax the car. £180. Wonderful – but expected, so mustn’t complain.

The following weekend, my wife and I took our annual jaunt out to “Focus on Imaging” at the NEC. This is the country's premier photography show for professionals and keen amateurs. I had been looking forward to it. Nothing was going to spoil the day. Driving back, I was feeling a bit tired. Rather than falling asleep at the wheel and killing myself, my wife, and whoever I ran into, I decided to stop and have a caffeine infusion. I pulled off the A14 and parked up at a theme pub on the outskirts of Kettering. I had a nice rest, shutting my poor weary eyes a while, and when feeling well rested, we got back into the car. Looking around, there were no other cars around, and nothing but empty, unobstructed car parking space around me – I thought. Wrong! Reversing back, I applied a bit of right lock to bring myself to face in the correct direction to move off. The next thing I heard was scraping and graunching. Braking quickly, I brought the car to a sudden halt and then straightened up back into the parking slot. My wife got out and inspected what I thought would just be a bit of a scratch. The alarm in her voice made it clear I was deluded. It was a dirty great dent going right in on the passenger’s side wing just behind the headlight. This was caused by a short concrete bollard set into the tarmac beside my parking slot, and just below the driver’s line of sight. £495 repair bill. Ker-ching!!!! It wasn’t worth having it done on the insurance. I have a huge excess and it wasn’t worth the no claims loss. No, I don’t have protected no claims. Don’t ask!

And, oh yes – I nearly forgot. My car insurance is now due. All donations gratefully received.