A forgotten Golden Era virtue, Thrift

[LizzieMaine]

Living in a small but well-kept house is thrifty. Living in more house than you can afford or reasonably maintain is not.

 

[Chas]

I'm in a thrifty state of mind, these days. Making a lot of stews, staying out of restaurants. It's good.

 

[Baron Kurtz]

A sales tax of 20% tends to make one thrifty. (Well, it's a value added tax, but we won't split hairs - same difference to the consumer - as it's a mostly US board, i'll stick to sales tax for clarity).

Add that to the 23% income tax and 10% National Insurance, and fully 53% of your salary is going back to Government, and that's at the lowest tax bracket!!. Unless of course you're rich enough to be "non domiciled for tax purposes", but we won't go down that route on this forum.

Anyhow, not everything is subject to sales tax. In protest at the most recent hike, i've decided to have as far as possible (there's no way i'll be able to cut out the bottle) a sales tax-free year. Children's clothes for socks and underwear (i'm fortunate enough to be able to fit into 16 year old's clothing), basic foodstuffs, cut out all processed candies, cakes etc. I have a list of all the sales-tax-free items - this includes all charity/thrift shop purchases, books, and magazines - and as far as possible will be sticking to it. My concession to myself for the bottle is only to buy beer, whiskey etc. that's marked down at least 20%, negating the sales tax. All my major household purchases were made before the hike came into effect, which is cheating a bit, but well, i saved 2.5% on each pound spent.

It's going to be a tough slog … Interesting findings from the first week: chocolate chip cookies are not subject to sales tax. Chocolate covered chocolate chip cookies are subject to sales tax. Mental.

bk