dishusbandmata

When I was growing up, my Dad ran a very successful business and Mum worked at home; okay I would have said a stay-at-home Mum, but I have never been comfortable using that phrase to describe Mum because it somewhat has a way of conjuring a mental picture of a woman who is home all day doing nothing or watching TV - well just throw in a few chores. Okay back to Mum. The phrase just doesn’t suit her. She had nine kids to bring up, two or more extended family per time living with her, and several others dropping in to visit, or spend a few days or weeks (yeah weeks) unannounced. Dad gave us money to buy lunch and if we needed anything else, we saved from our lunch money. My father got to know we saved and blew his top; “why are you saving?” he wanted to know, “ is it to pay rent or pay your school fees ?” He told us never to save , that if he gives us money for anything the money should be used for the purpose it was given.  He told us we were his responsibility and if we needed...

I don’t know about you, but I’ve never thought of myself as one to waste money. I mean, I’m a self proclaimed bargain hunter. But when does it stop being about spending wisely, and starts being about trying to stop yourself from buying everything you don’t need? Any one else know what I mean? The problem is I find those “sale” prices. EVERY TIME! And then I end up feeling pressured, by myself no less, into buying everything. Towards the end of 2018, I realized something had to change. Because I had new responsibilities, like paying rent for the house I’d just moved in to, I ended up being more conscious of my spending. Like I mentioned earlier, I have always thought of myself as someone who’s quite good with money. Maybe it was because I didn’t really have much to spend those times as opposed to now. But it was a shock to my system when I began to take stock of my finance at the end of 2018. This was prompted by a post on here in December called Realistic Stock Taking (i...

 I enjoyed the car ride to our shopping destinations and loved window shopping, I just did not understand why mum was sometimes grumpy whilst shopping.   Most of the time she did not want you tagging along but at the slightest opportunity, we would happily grab our shoes and sit in the front seat of the car looking out of the window and dreaming about being able to go out by ourselves. The only time you were allowed to chip in is when you go out Christmas clothes shopping.   “Which colour do you prefer”?   At many stops she would say ‘wait for me in the car’, there was one year we waited in the car even for Christmas clothes shopping and to make matters worse, we ended up not seeing the Christmas clothes till Christmas morning (heavens, there was one year they did not even fit – big enough to grow into so we wore them later in the year)!   On the flip side, we had great times sneaking into our parent room going to the wardrobe, and taking a sneak peek the...

There is a   Family Tradition that holds every last day of the Year in my birth home. The day   is usually filled with prayers of Thanksgiving   for the ending year & requests for the coming year. It is one tradition that we(my brothers and I) somehow did not grumble much   about, because   though it meant being without food for most of the day,iit also meant   doing   the   least possible house work while remaining indoors . I cannot remember when it started but it has always been and ever before the era of mobile phones, myself and my siblings   all had to be   present physically   to participate. But over the years after relocating, I had not   conventionally participated in it for over a decade     and   so had some of my siblings who had gone ahead to have their own homes. So I was surprised when an idea popped into my mind last year. I quickly swung into action     making me to send ...