Money (Mis)Management

I am a "bear of very little brain" when it comes to finances. My current account always takes me ages to reconcile with my statement. (The bank is always right!) However I do "get" some simple rules which seem to be beyond the financial movers and shakers of the world. I only buy things that I can afford to buy, (and need). I pay off my credit card every month so I am never in debt. I don't waste money or resources. I think about the impact my spending has on the world & try to make informed choices.

So why am I paying the price for the obviously ridiculously profligate decisions made by bankers & city slickers?

• Why does anyone still think that perpetual growth is sustainable, or the way to get us out of the mess they got us into? Simply put, if we don't make anything to sell to someone else, or have marketable skills, we can't grow. Everything else is all smoke & mirrors.
• Why do they think that we can spend them out of trouble, when we have a huge amount of personal debt to pay off? Relying on rampant consumerism was never going to be anything other that short-termist.
• Why has no one been held accountable for the patently negligent decisions made by the banks & financial institutions. I can't think of any other comparable situation, fraud doesn't seem to hash a term to me, where someone wouldn't have ended up in court.
• Why do we continue to pay huge salaries & bonuses to people who obviously simply don't understand the financial con tricks they devised.
• Why do we tolerate a situation where banks are announcing billions of profit, but not even keeping pace with inflation in the interest they pay savers like me? 

I despair.

My parents were "working class". I don't feel I ever went short, but there wasn't much spare cash & we had to have lodgers throughout my teens to pay for me going to Grammar school, staying on in the 6th form & then going to college. Books came from libraries. Most of my clothes were made by my mother. My father had an allotment to make the housekeeping go further. We travelled by bus. Holidays were cheap B&Bs or camping. All meals were cooked from scratch. I worked at the weekends in shops as soon as I was able & worked all through college holidays to pay my way. 

I married as soon as I left college & had a child after a year & a half teaching. I can remember having to have egg & chips on consecutive nights when the housekeeping ran out. Child Allowance kept us going. We moved from council housing when we had saved up enough deposit for a mortgage when my daughter was a toddler. Gradually we both got promotions & moved to better houses. I went back to teaching as soon as my daughter could go to nursery to help financially.

None of this is a sob story. I actually think I am very fortunate in having parents who were willing to make sacrifices for me to get an education. That education made me middle class, with a lifelong profession, & relatively "comfortable" in my middle age. All my life I have worked hard for what I have and it hasn't always been easy.

What seems to me to be missing now is the whole ethic which I grew up with. Everthing is greed, self, rights without responsibilities, short termist, power oriented. "I want it & I want it now, whether I have earned it or can afford it & never mind the impact it has on people less fortunate than me".

It will come back to haunt us if we don't stop & think & change our ways. This is just the beginning. Worse is yet to come. Much worse.