Used Goods Save You Money, Lose the Fear

I was thinking about this the other day when we had a school fair. I was on the toy stall and lots of children were quite happily paying a few pence for their toys when some one said to me 'oh I don't like these things they make me sad'. Well I found this a little confusing as it was an adult who mentioned it and no one was making her buy anything.  Also why is it sad? The children were all very happy with what they bought but then I suppose they have yet to be conditioned otherwise. Also mountains of debt is much sadder I think, some people would never buy used clothes but are happy to use credit cards for new ones and leave no money for bills.

Also it is quite acceptable to most to buy used cars or houses so why the stigma when it comes to clothes and furniture?  I think a lot of it comes down to making a statement for some people, they think  that by buying second hand they might be suggesting they are not very well off.  Some people find this sort of image very important, the truth of it being that people who are better off are the ones who make careful financial choices.  They are more likely to shop used, pay upfront and seek out a bargain.  They are also less likely to be drawn by the designer label as this is only ever going to drain your finances.

I read an amazing post by Mr Money Moustache about saving ten bucks at a time to become rich (about £5.80) now he is not saying the odd amount, this is about all those little decisions that make up these amounts and then eliminating them.  Nobody says you have to give up everything, but lets face it, if we really want something we will try to obtain it so why is this not the case for most people with savings and independence.  It gets me a little annoyed when people think oh you have this and that so it's ok for you.  Well  no it makes me really mad! We both left school at 16 and have worked ever since and saved, we also live within our means and don't ever go down the designer label route. If we were to find ourselves out of work we would make a job  out of looking for a new one and would cut back  further to tide us over.  We would not wait for it to land in our laps as we never have and it makes me crazy that so many people just take and feel sorry for them selves.  What can you do? What can you sell that you no longer need? Also if you are out of work how many jobs have you applied for today?  If the answer is zero why?  There is stuff out there and yes there may be loads of people chasing those jobs but if you are out of work you should be one of them doing the chasing, all the time! There is also an article on Mr Money Moustache that suggests for every saving you make and permanently erase from your weekly expenditure the less you will need forever!  I think that is something worth considering. 

Used! So what, get over it.

Garden Makeover Update

I posted a few weeks ago about the bottom of my back garden which was in need of some attention.  We had bought the garden seat and my husband had made another piece of seating to go around the tree.  The final job was to sort the fencing and remove the middle fence that divided the top of the garden in half in that area.  We used the fence panel that came on the back of the seat we bought, (it was supposed to be fixed to it but we used it as a fence panel) to match up the fence at the bottom and just painted with stain we already had. My husband used random large rocks we had to make a little wall in front and to make a step down, this was because it was too high to level.

This is how it looks now

This is what the tree seat area looked like at first with the old fence around it on both sides.

This is it now and I would say we are finished. We have lived here for 7 years and everything we have done to the garden has happened a bit at a time.  We have saved up and done each bit when we could.  The fences on the right got replaced a few years ago when the original ones blew down in the wind, decking has been done in different areas over the years and is maintained by my husband, when he sees the stain on offer he buys it and puts it away for when it is needed. Like I said yesterday pots have accumulated over time.

We do not know a lot about gardening but fortunately my husband is good at woodwork and if I have an idea for what would look nice he can usually make something and we try to do it on a budget (remember the tree seat materials were free)

We will spend a lot of time in the garden over the coming months so I think it is worth the time and money.

Gardening and Aldi Planters

It has been so lovely today, some might think too hot but I love the summer and the chance to spend more time outside.  We went to the local Nursery to get some plants and we were really pleased with what we bought.  We had a look in B&Q a couple of weeks ago but they didn't have much on offer that we were prepared to pay their prices for, the Nursery near us was much more reasonable.  We use the same pots every year occasionally adding a new one or if we need to buy a particularly large one to re-pot something.  We also had to wooden planters that my husband spotted in the Aldi the other day, they were reduced from £10 to £5 each and he bought two to go outside the front door.  We also had some bright pink wood stain that we picked up reduced in Asda a few weeks ago so here's  what we did. (Or he did)
My husband assembled the planters which looked good as they were but we wanted them to stand out a bit.

He then painted each one in the shocking pink stain, he said it actually smelled like bubble gum, now I couldn't smell that so I wonder if his mind was playing tricks because it looked like bubble gum?

Next attach the inner bags that line the planters and pot up with two pink Dahlias.

We positioned one each side of the front door to brighten the place up a bit.

The other plants we bought I potted up and positioned them on the back garden. We don't spend on plants a lot, we tend to find each year we will get a couple of things that come back year after year and a few cheap bits for instant colour.  We bought three Dahlias at £2.49 each, a cordiline £11 ( the most extravagant thing but much cheaper than anywhere else).  Also a couple of purple leafy things (ha! I can't remember what they are called) and 6 pertunias for £6.   

We have different areas of purple slate and pebbles on our garden so most of what we plant does go in pots  the reason for this is that we have dogs and found that they wore a race track around the lawn when we had one so that did not look good, also dog wee kills grass. I like the way it looks and we have hedges all the way around us and trees so there is no shortage of greenery.