General Chat

Due to my ongoing parsimony and the fact that OH has started to learn it as well, we now have slightly more than the price of a bag of chips in the bank, an entirely new experience for him.

Anyway, because interest rates are nothing to write home about, we decided to buy a few premium bonds (remember them?).

Of course, there is always the chance of winning a million with them and we set about dreaming of what we would do with it. We could not think of anything although I did get up to two hundred pounds with my fantasy.

Parsimony runs deep, I can tell you!

There's always the trips to eclectic places!

But I agree - if you've always been careful to live within a budget, its hard to break the habit.

The trouble is, while not sniffing at a million, it's not quite the same impact as it was say ten years ago is it?
You're right though most people if suddenly given a bag of money would find it hard to break a lifetimes habit...we're not all Viv Nicholson!

Money means a lot to me especially when I don't have much.

I don't have much either,Dermot, but I can't think of much that I want to spend it on.

I can use it lol. Frugal is how I live and I would still be that, but a new home somewhere other than here would be top of the list, and it wouldn't be 'fancy' so there'd be more than enough to help the people I'd like to help, return to some places I'd like to see again.

That would be another dilemma. I want to live here. I have lived here since I was eleven when we moved half a mile (we aspired to a council house) but I don't like the concept of buying social housing because I want another poor family to be able to live here when I am dead and I have nobody to leave a house to. OH does but they are nothing to do with me.

I would want to live here but not buy it so I would be depriving somebody deserving of a house.

Before you lose too much sleep over this Sharron the odds of winning a million are???

Must be prepared though.

I once had 'an amount' in an ISA, and a similar 'amount' in Premium Bonds.
It terms of 'interest' (ie interest on the ISA compared to winning on the Premium Bonds) - the Premium Bonds won hands down!
I only needed one £25 win in a year for the Bonds to win - and I got three! :-D

True...maybe a sage on here can advise you better....

We used to buy lottery tickets all the time, using the same numbers for years.

Every now and again I would dream what I would do if we won a large sum.

I decided that the following fit in with most of our usual careful spending ideas (not necessarily in the order below!!) ....................

make donations to our favourite charities

give daughter a large enough sum to allow her to finally build that extension she's talked about ever since they bought the house. That would giver them much more room, and we could send her all that "stuff" that she's left here because she had nowhere to put it, plus we could downsize our belongings by offloading them onto her (items she's always said she wants) :-D

give our nieces and nephew gifts of money.

look at possibly helping some friends who are living on small pensions.

have 1 or 2 more trips, one to Australia and possibly one to the UK

invest whatever is left, and then re-write our wills to direct more money to the charities.

About as indulgent as my ideas.