How Can We Save?

[Ed Rooney]

 

We all need a basic functioning kit to capture stuff. But I will need to be more frugal to deal with inflation and live on my small fixed income. 

 

One thing I do is cut my own hair. I have less chance of getting Covid or flu by doing that too. It would be a better idea if I were not such a terrible barber. Should we eat less, drink less, and smoke less? I never smoked, and I don't eat dinner now. Drink less than I drink? Don't get too close to me and say that. A doctor I had in NYC suggested I stop drinking alcohol altogether. I made the appropriate change. I found a new doctor.

[ReeRay]

18 minutes ago, Ed Rooney said:

 

We all need a basic functioning kit to capture stuff. But I will need to be more frugal to deal with inflation and live on my small fixed income. 

 

One thing I do is cut my own hair. I have less chance of getting Covid or flu by doing that too. It would be a better idea if I were not such a terrible barber. Should we eat less, drink less, and smoke less? I never smoked, and I don't eat dinner now. Drink less than I drink? Don't get too close to me and say that. A doctor I had in NYC suggested I stop drinking alcohol altogether. I made the appropriate change. I found a new doctor.

Hair ? Aargh, yes, the good old days !

 

[John Morrison]

I’m a fan of looting (‘urban scrumping’, as I prefer to call it). If I’m collared by a store detective, I just say I’ve changed my medication and I don’t know what I’m doing. Age has its benefits…

[John Mitchell]

Coupons are the answer! 😁

 

Just kidding, most coupons are useless.

 

I don't eat in restaurants as much as I used to. The prices have become ridiculous here. I also buy a lot less clothing.

[Ed Rooney]

Early on, ReeRay, I did the Bruce Willis trim. 

 

John, you sound like you're on your way towards a bank hold-up. 

[Ed Rooney]

 

John in the west, I want to sell my leather A2. But instead on Friday, I bought a puffy winter coat at M&S. 

[John Mitchell]

3 minutes ago, Ed Rooney said:

Early on, ReeRay, I did the Bruce Willis trim. 

 

John, you sound like you're on your way towards a bank hold-up. 

 

I probably couldn't afford the necessary equipment. Also, there's no money in banks any longer. 😉

 

I don't cut my own hair (what's left of it). I just let it keep growing.

[John Morrison]

33 minutes ago, Ed Rooney said:

I bought a puffy winter coat at M&S. 

 

I buy most of my clothes from charity shops (though I demand a discount if anything is heavily blood-stained)...

[geogphotos]

I have reduced my stock photo mileage to hardly anything these days. No longer worth chasing around taking pics when the returns are so low. I do have spurts of enthusiasm when the mood takes me or I feel like going somewhere specific. 

[Mr Standfast]

50% off trousers in M&S this week. Yes I checked, two legs.

[John Mitchell]

1 hour ago, John Morrison said:

 

I buy most of my clothes from charity shops (though I demand a discount if anything is heavily blood-stained)...

 

You sound like a savvy consumer. Have you thought of writing an advice column?

[Ed Rooney]

 

I love my new puffy coat.

 

Let there be snow, let the wind blow, I shall be fine looking puffy, I know. M&S is no longer just the place to get Scottish salmon and saag allo. We can get puffy there.

[NYCat]

Watch out for that wind. I've been blown along like Mary Poppins when I've had my big down coat on.

 

Paulette

[John Mitchell]

1 hour ago, Mr Standfast said:

50% off trousers in M&S this week. Yes I checked, two legs.

 

 For some reason, M&S pulled up stakes and left Vancouver a long time ago. Too bad really. It was quite a good store. I still have a shirt that I bought there. Two sleeves last I looked. 👕

 

"Trousers" -- now there's a word you don't hear often over here. We call them "pants".

 

[sb photos]

3 hours ago, Ed Rooney said:

One thing I do is cut my own hair. I have less chance of getting Covid or flu by doing that too. 

 

My wife has cut my hair for over 40 years, makes a good job of it. I never let her cut it if it's late or if she's tired, not worth the risk. Occasionally I may trim around my ears or at the back on my neck, but when I do my wife accuses me of butchering it, although it looks ok to me. Your right re Covid and flu, although I had my flu jab a few days back and will have my Covid booster this coming Saturday, both better my odds.

[Martin L]

No expensive new Macs, a second hand PC.

No Adobe subscription, free open source software.

Viewed on a £3 monitor from a car boot sale.

Manual budget flash and hand made diffuser from an A4 folder cover and packing material as a macro kit.

15yr old 7d, Tamron/Sigma lenses rather than Canon (ok 1 Canon)

No hair cut, just a pony tail

Me? Tight? Possibly 🤪

 

 

[Jeffrey Isaac Greenberg]

as lifelong penny pincher thru to mature adulthood who

made sure incoming $$ was greater than outgoing $$,
& never committed financial blunders with me growing cache,

I am now "painfully" learning to relax & be more loo$ey goo$ey...

[gvallee]

2 hours ago, Mr Standfast said:

50% off trousers in M&S this week. Yes I checked, two legs.

🤣

[John Mitchell]

16 minutes ago, Martin L said:

No expensive new Macs, a second hand PC.

No Adobe subscription, free open source software.

Viewed on a £3 monitor from a car boot sale.

Manual budget flash and hand made diffuser from an A4 folder cover and packing material as a macro kit.

15yr old 7d, Tamron/Sigma lenses rather than Canon (ok 1 Canon)

No hair cut, just a pony tail

Me? Tight? Possibly 🤪

 

 

 

Same here. Used lenses. Basic cameras. Budget android phone. Refurbished PC and a cheap chromebook.

 

Me tight? Definitely. 🙃

[Martin L]

23 minutes ago, John Mitchell said:

 

Same here. Used lenses. Basic cameras. Budget android phone. Refurbished PC and a cheap chromebook.

 

Me tight? Definitely. 🙃

Want to share a beer, John, two straws?

[shearwater]

My camera and my macbook are from 2009. And still running quite smoothly. So they have to last some time more.

Although I live in Spain, there are a lot of english expat where I live, so there are a bunch of charity shops in the area. My wife loves them and I found new clothing every now and then in my closet that I haven't seen in my life. So no more new cloth shopping, which I detest.

Unfortunately I can't find second hand cameras, lenses or any kind of useful photo equipment in this charity shops (only old crap digital compact cameras). Well, I'm lying a little bit...my wife found a great, heavy and sturdy Swaroski tripod (which actually is a Manfrotto) which I use for product photography  

Edited October 3, 2023 by shearwater

[zxzoomy]

My conclusion relates to what you are saying, Ed, but you may not see it at first. I tell you the truth about me. 

 

I've been on a gluten free diet for months and lost 14 kilos. I was fat at 79 kilos and 166 cm at Xmas. I still want to get into 28 inch waist pants but that may be a forlorn hope. I have kept many clothes from the past so I save when I can wear them again. Charity shop clothes lose the shop odour if left alone for years. 

 

Six days ago I returned from Bangkok which I have visited many times in the last decade after my English boyfriend died in 2009 of alcoholism. I am a loner with few sexual needs but I pay many handsome young men in Asia, aged 20 to 34, to sleep with me, as I get lonely in the nights.

 

In Thailand (and to a degree in Greater Manchester) I see hundreds of shuttered shops, office skyscrapers, apartment blocks etc. In Asia many people lived close together in family groups and the vaccinations were much later than in the UK. Many died. Mnay died in every country and that has economic effects. Fewer apartments are needed, for example.

 

I think the third world war began 9 years ago when Putin invaded Crimea, the first time the boundaries of Europe had been changed by military means since WW2. 

 

The yield on the US ten year bond has just gone to a new high. The 40 year downtrend in US interest rates has ended. In the last 5 weeks US oil has gone from 69 to 90. 

 

The US stock market is having an October crash, so kind of normal. But commodities are going up, not down. A first class stamp in the UK has gone up 47% since March this year. I sell on Ebay UK so I know the price of stamps. The central banks in the West have put inflation up with QE, Covid subsidies, the war (Putin) etc. 

 

Please Google: 'Carrington Effect, sunspots, 1859 NASA' and look only for scientific research to read (not media like AFP or the Express) and make your own mind up. 

 

It may be fine. But do you see the weather, where you are, getting stranger today, not in 20 years. 

 

My uncle, Alfred Gregory, was in the Black Watch in the Highland Regiment during WW2 for 6 years and was in charge of still photos as a member of the first successful Everest Expedition in 1953, led by Colonel John Hunt. My father, who died in in 1953, was in the Manchester Regiment. My maternal grandfather, who ran a grocers shop in Blackburn, Lancashire, and was a passionate photographer with glass plates, was missing, presumed dead, in 1918 in WW1.

 

I am saying it may be a time to hunker down and try to forecast the future both for us old ones ( I am 71) and the young ones and the families that we love, to try to make the best decisions. I have never married or been a member of a political party. Please consider what I say. It is fine to say I am crazy. No excuses just do it!   Love Want Do!

[zxzoomy]

 

[John Mitchell]

5 hours ago, Martin L said:

Want to share a beer, John, two straws?

 

Sure thing. But why not get just one straw and cut it in half... 🥤

[Ed Rooney]

 

What you need, zxzoomy, is a puffy coat.

[Mr Standfast]

33 minutes ago, Ed Rooney said:

 

What you need, zxzoomy, is a puffy coat.

Sadly, full price! Yes I looked!