Passing On Frugal Thinking

We as a family have just finished watching the BBC documentary ‘The Men Who Made Us Spend‘. If you haven’t seen it, it’s definitely worth having a look at, as it documents many of the PR tricks of the trade that encourage or trick people into buying and spending.

This is something we have been aware of for a long time through reading consumer advocacy magazines like CHOICE or watching comedy shows like ‘The Checkout‘. For us, they were a great ways to raise our awareness of the psychological enticements and tricks used by almost all businesses.

And that got me to thinking about the ways I have trained my brain to try and reduce the influence of these techniques. This is something that was taught to me by my mum, and it is knowledge that I try as much as possible to pass on to my children.
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Derailed by ‘Le Grande Project’

You know, I had a post planned for Christmas. I had it half-written. All I needed was an hour or so to polish it off….and then wham!

We were derailed by ‘Le Grande Project’. You see, we’d been asking the kids, particularly C, ‘what do you want for Christmas?’ for a while now. And received the dreaded shrug. Variations on ‘is there anything you really want?, elicited similar responses….until three days before Christmas. Yes. Three Days. That was when he wrote his letter to Santa. And oh boy, what a letter. Go have a look at it. Go on. It’s no particle accelerator, but – oh boy!
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