Strange to think that, a year ago, we were sitting in our house in Bridgwater, waiting anxiously to get the house sale and purchase to click together before the financial world realized it had just died but wasn’t buried yet. A month later we were sitting safely here, thanking our lucky stars that the deal was done.
Goodness knows how long we’d have to hang around if we were trying to sell and buy today. We’ve no plans that way, thank heaven, but if we did we’d stick with it, and get through the process no matter how long it might take. We’ve done it before in bad times. I feel very deeply for those poor souls who are in the same situation now.
According to a spate of experts airing their opinions recently, we came out of recession some while ago, and they’re trying to drum up trade, encouraging people and business to forge ahead with more debt, sorry ‘investment’. Perverse creatures that we Brits are we seem to be turning a deaf ear to such blandishments, and keeping on with the task of pulling out of debt as fast as we can, and keeping as far away from ‘investments’ as possible, so there’s hope for us all even now.
I cleared all my debts some years back, and pulled my savings away from the stock market soon after, shifting the funds into secure government bonds. I don’t get a lot of interest that way, but at least I can get my hands on the capital quickly and without fuss if I should need to.
My own, non-expert view is to stay away from the stock market for a good while yet and to be content with a much reduced investment income. It’s better than losing the lot to incompetent banks and greedy investment managers. I’ll look at the situation again when the FTSE hits 6000 in a year or two. Or three.
My father used to say “neither a borrower nor a lender be”. I have to admit it, he was right. Such a life has little excitement in it; in compensation, it has little danger, either.
I shall do my bit to see Britain through of course, paying my taxes without too much complaint, and going out now and again to spend cash to help the wheels keep turning. It’ll be real cash, though, just like my father used to spend.
And it’ll be a rare month indeed when I don’t salt a little away against future need. Like the squirrels and dormice, I have no intention of facing winter and hard times without my modest cache of nuts and seeds.
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in the hedgerow
secret rustlings–
squirrels saving nuts
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