Now that the main topic of conversation in Ireland has moved from the price of houses and the weather to the RECESSION I would like to share some thoughts with you on how we have lost the run of ourselves as a nation. Firstly let me say that in this article I am not in any way making light of the people who have lost their jobs and are struggling to pay mortgages and rear children.
This article is not about those people but about those who are still working, still bringing home money and still saying the recession is affecting them.
Well I have news for you people the recession is not hitting you at all.
We have turned into a nation of people who drive our children half a mile to school and then stop at the local petrol station for a take out coffee on the way home instead of going home to our own kitchen and making a coffee.
A nation who are buying ready made sandwiches on the way to work or school instead of making them at home.
A nation who go to the cinema and pay ridiculously high prices for sweets, popcorn etc instead of bringing sweets along with us from the local sweet shop.
A nation who must have three foreign holidays a year instead of a couple of weeks “down the country” in a caravan spending quality time with our families. No we would rather spend hours queuing to go through security at the Airport in case anyone thinks we cannot afford to go abroad.
A nation who buy ready made meals because we have no time to prepare meals. I mean ready peeled vegetables and potatoes. Come on, who can be that busy that they cannot peel a few spuds for the dinner??
A nation of “Keep up with the Jones’es”. New fitted kitchens every four or five years because we are fed up looking at the old one, new cars every two years even though we all know a car depreciates in value so quickly we are losing money as soon as we drive a new car off the forecourt.
Where did the good old days go where we passed clothes down to our friends children, where we swopped maternity clothes, where we babysat for one another? Where we were so proud that we were making our weeks money stretch and were getting the best value for the wages we worked so hard to bring home.
What lessons are we teaching our children about money and value when we just spend, spend, spend, and do not seem to feel the need to budget or wonder how much is owed on our credit cards ? Maybe now is the time to re-look at our lifestyles and spending habits and get back to basics and start enjoying life without being obsessed with material possessions and what money can buy.
As any of our Mothers would have told us – “its far from this we were reared”.
