La vie économe

Pity Sarah Hall. She wrote a very earnest article about how the cuts of child benefit to couples where one one parent is a stay at home parent and the other earns quite a bit will effect her and her family. Probably she offered or was asked to provide a first-person account of how those who appear quite well-off might feel a little pinch.

Unfortunately for Sarah, her account of what it is like giving up life's little luxuries has made most commenters* roar 'Luxuries? Good god woman! How very dare you expect gratification of any kind.' But I have a little admiration for a woman who has the balls or naivety to admit there is a baby pinch of suffering in giving up Waitrose. Waitrose is AMAZING.

If you take a look you'll see that everyone has a sneer to spare or view on what she ought to be doing differently , and quite a few people are furious that her daughter is still getting ballet lessons (although not jazz).

I'm of the view that ballet lessons for children (or other dance classes) are excellent and should be considered an investment. Provided the kid wants to go, but gives up before they get to the pricier foot-mushing, cotton-wool eating stage. You can easily detect those who had ballet classes as a child from their excellent posture, no matter how un-ballerina like their appearance as adults. Dance requires discipline, stillness and an ability to tolerate off-key piano and humour old people with delusions of grandeur, all of which are fantastic stand-alone skills but priceless as a package. I can't say that I agree with the 'good toes/naughty toes' binary, but you can't have everything in life.

Like Sarah, I'm in that place of having to reign in my spending by trimming the fat off my life. It's not as if I have a massively aspirational lifestyle; I haven't been abroad in five years and I let a room in my home to people who begin as barely more than strangers. I'm not an 100% devotee that stuff can't buy you happiness, more a person who thinks that if you select the stuff judiciously and delay gratification by saving up for it there is a temporary but significant increase in mood associated.

I've been thinking about very cheap things I can do which make me feel rich. One of which has been having flowers in my kitchen. Now the rambling roses have all gone the Co-operative has some cheap but ethical posies which seem to go for at least a fortnight. I've painted my nails. But the real treat is that I've begun to learn French, on the internet, for free. Oui!



*Looks like it's been edited on the site to disallow comments. Probably not a bad thing.