The frugality

[GossipMongoose]

Some of these couples baffle me why doesn’t one of them get a regular job?

Pride? They don’t want to take a ‘lesser’ job. They don’t want to be seen as ‘failing’ at self employment.
Denial? They are in denial about how deep the financial hole they are in is.
Unwillingness to work for anyone having been self employed for so long?
No one will employ them?

OR, it’s all smoke and mirrors and they are financially fine; savings, bank of mum & dad, the business being more successful than she lets on? It’s all just a pantomime for relatability points.

 

[Mustard]

I read her blog post and found it extremely non-relatable. She got another job straight away. Hard to believe she was earning £16k a year in 2008. She must have had help from
her parents in that case. Not sure how you could survive on that salary for long.

 

[Boutros-Boutros Ghali]

I read her blog post and found it extremely non-relatable. She got another job straight away. Hard to believe she was earning £16k a year in 2008. She must have had help from
her parents in that case. Not sure how you could survive on that salary for long.

I thought that too, her experiences 12 years ago will be in no way relatable to people being made redundant now in the middle of a pandemic. Just felt like she couldn’t be arsed to produce new content and just recycled an old article, which she does quite often

 

[Chocolate2008]

Pride? They don’t want to take a ‘lesser’ job. They don’t want to be seen as ‘failing’ at self employment.
Denial? They are in denial about how deep the financial hole they are in is.
Unwillingness to work for anyone having been self employed for so long?
No one will employ them?

OR, it’s all smoke and mirrors and they are financially fine; savings, bank of mum & dad, the business being more successful than she lets on? It’s all just a pantomime for relatability points.

I don’t know. I haven’t read a lot of her stuff in great detail but it’s seems their only income is her blog etc. & she might do some styling on the side. Her husband doesn’t work at all. By her account she’s never had a highly paid job which she could have savings from.
Yet they have a massive house in a decent part of London & a child in nursery.
How did they get a mortgage? I think she has mentioned that her parents helped, it must have been substantial.
why does she rent office space when she has a lovely study?
Maybe her blog should be titled how to work as little as possible & still afford a nice life. I really don’t mean that in a bitchy way.

 

[Dizzy]

They'll 100% be getting help from parents. Her parents have run a successful locksmith in London for years and years and her sister has a similarly huge, beautiful house (which I think is) in London. Renovating houses anywhere but especially in London is expensive and remortgaging is difficult these days unless you have oceans of equity. Their salaries, the price of the house and the cost of renovating just doesn't add up to simply remortgaging. And I should say, that's absolutely fine. My parents helped me and I will do the same for my children but I don't think she's being transparent and if you invite people into your finances then you should be.

 

[Chocolate2008]

They'll 100% be getting help from parents. Her parents have run a successful locksmith in London for years and years and her sister has a similarly huge, beautiful house (which I think is) in London. Renovating houses anywhere but especially in London is expensive and remortgaging is difficult these days unless you have oceans of equity. Their salaries, the price of the house and the cost of renovating just doesn't add up to simply remortgaging. And I should say, that's absolutely fine. My parents helped me and I will do the same for my children but I don't think she's being transparent and if you invite people into your finances then you should be.

I think it’s fine too, except as you say she’s making an income by putting it out there that you can have these things if you are careful with your money. That’s my perception of her blog anyway. That isn’t the case.
Having £2 in your account suggests the opposite of being frugal.

 

[Debarkle]

Yeah either the blog must make much more money than I could imagine or it’s massive help from parents. (Which I definitely believe there was for the original deposit).
Chris working with her makes me anxious about having all those eggs in one basket!

I don’t know how but affiliate links and Adsense etc must be very profitable!

The £2 in her account is probably just “fun” money. If you were properly frugal you’d make coffee/tea at home.

I’ve still no idea what she’s doing with her insta accounts. She posts stuff on that I think should be on the Frugality but then I look at the Frugality and there’s stuff that should be posted on her personal one?

 

[Boutros-Boutros Ghali]

They'll 100% be getting help from parents. Her parents have run a successful locksmith in London for years and years and her sister has a similarly huge, beautiful house (which I think is) in London. Renovating houses anywhere but especially in London is expensive and remortgaging is difficult these days unless you have oceans of equity. Their salaries, the price of the house and the cost of renovating just doesn't add up to simply remortgaging. And I should say, that's absolutely fine. My parents helped me and I will do the same for my children but I don't think she's being transparent and if you invite people into your finances then you should be.

Agree, I got help from my Dad to buy in London and I’ll always be very grateful and also very aware of how lucky that makes me. But I’m always honest about how I managed it.

 

[Greencatfysh]

Is she eating a salad with silver leaf on it??

 

[Smallwomble]

Is she eating a salad with silver leaf on it??

At first glance I thought it was bits of tin foil!

 

[Venuslurker]

How gross that someone sent her a coffee voucher after her fako "£2 in the bank account" story.

 

[Imah]

The lack of awareness with the £2 comment really leaves a dirty taste in my mouth. I do actually quite like Alex but it’s insensitive particularly at the moment (tongue in cheek or not) to be saying things like that when there are people literally on that bread line with no idea when their next meal is coming and their power to be turned off at any second. Having £2 in the bank because you renovated a kitchen is no comparison

 

[Readinginks]

Some of these couples baffle me why doesn’t one of them get a regular job?

Because it’s easier like this. Pretending they are regular folks with £2 in the bank and living day by day, but surely it’s not that bad if that’s what they choose. Plus, I am not sure how skilled they are. To get a better paying regular job over £30k you do need certain qualifications, skills and work experience, which they seem to lack outside their industry.

I read her blog post and found it extremely non-relatable. She got another job straight away. Hard to believe she was earning £16k a year in 2008. She must have had help from
her parents in that case. Not sure how you could survive on that salary for long.

If she was earning £16k in 2008 and got sacked that means their first flat was not bought with help from parents but basically bought entirely by parents for them.

 

[Chocolate2008]

I read her “My relationship with money” post. She mentions her parents helped her with uni fees & allowed her to live rent free. No mention of more substantial help I think she may have mentioned it elsewhere at some stage. I used to really enjoy her content, now it just feels disingenuous.

She says she’s inherited her parents working clsss graft but doesn’t appear to work a lot & her husband doesn’t work at all.

it more & more feels like 1) she’s not being transparent and 2) she is sort of looking to be celebrated for her earnings, look at me not being greedy type thing or something.

£30 pa for two adults in a big house with presumably large heating bills, plus two children. Her mortgage must be very low in which case she had a lot of help. That’s fair enough until she attempts to portray it as we only spend £40 a week to save up for bigger things which gives the impression that this is how she got to where she is & neglects to mention the bank of mum & dad.

 

[Exhaustednurse]

She also refuses to acknowledge that by being gifted a huge amount of things means she saves far more money than other people

I mentioned this on a post once but was deleted

 

[Dizzy]

Some of these couples baffle me why doesn’t one of them get a regular job?

Don't be silly, real jobs are for peasants.

 

[BlairWaldorf86]

I’m sure it was £35k each that she once wrote they took out of the business each year. But £70k for a couple living where they do is still very low. And putting a kitchen renovation partly on a credit card is just dumb (unless she neglects to mention it’s paid off in full every month)

 

[Greencatfysh]

Gaaad that leopard dress with the shaggy hair is just a terrible look!

 

[NP]

Gaaad that leopard dress with the shaggy hair is just a terrible look!

And ruffling her hair while awkwardly glancing at the camera.

 

[Readinginks]

She mentioned their windows are leaking, the entire house needs reroofing and there’s a room with holes in the wall where you can see through on the street. And then instead of prioritising any of these works they do the over the top complicated impractical kitchen, spend thousands of pounds and working hours on that tacky hallway and all of that on a second mortgage or credit cards. How does this make any sense? Not to mention they had a mouse or a rat in the house when Peggy was still crawling yet priorities were F&B paint and loo wallpaper design.