TFM Radio

The Empire Strikes Back

Who didn’t know that there were strikes on yesterday? I saw the picket lines, I read  the papers, the tweets and saw extensive coverage of it on the television.

I am sure whoever did strike did it for their own reasons and as a self-employed guy with no final salary pension, if anyone does have a final salary pension then lucky them but if I were asked to pay more to receive less and work longer I would be just as angry. The reality is that I will receive a very basic pension as I started paying into mine a little late and that’s my fault but with the economic climate my pension pot will have no doubt been massively reduced.

The ironic thing is though I know four teachers and when the strikes were on yesterday, none of them marched or picketed. They were either at the gym, Christmas shopping and two took advantage with the schools being closed to go and see Arthur Christmas with their children. So while I sympathise with the cause I witnessed so many not out in the cold with a banner and lots of shops reported massive trading figures, so it seemed the whole of the region were not on strike!

The hard reality is that life is tough at the moment, money is sacred and we need to be careful about what we buy. My car finance has just ended and no matter how much I would like a new car and I can afford one, I am not willing to sign the dotted line as I do not feel totally secure, what I have done is decided to double my credit card payments, pay more off any finance I could like on a running machine we bought (and hardly used) on the Argos card. We are working twice as hard to pay off twice as much from store cards to loans and this Christmas it’s going to be a strict plan.

The days where we would put £20 in a card this will be £10 and we will also be asking people who buy our three children a gift at Christmas to consider just cutting back themselves as I do believe we all feel the pinch at this time of year even if the economy was not in crisis.

The reality is we cannot afford to buy the X Box and the fancy TV over 2 years on a catalogue plan, my friend Gary cannot but he has managed to get it half price second hand from the likes of Cash Converters. Be clever and sensible is the rule to live by, it can be a very Merry Christmas, even merrier if we know that we will not get a scary credit card bill in January.

So the strikes, the poor pensions, the lack of money it is here for a while yet, it’s how we all deal with it individually that will make the biggest difference to our lives.

Tags: wayne | waynes blog |