Social media, the newspapers and the rest are full of stories about punishing pensioners, financially that is. So that would be us then. Taking money from our savings accounts, taking away our heating allowances, increasing our taxes, getting rid of our triple lock arrangements, blah, blah. If we weren’t in the habit of ignoring, as far as is possible, all this depressing noise along with the news generally, it might get you down.
As a general conclusion it doesn’t make us inclined to continue to save money for that rainy day. Quite the opposite I am much inclined to look for ways of spending money but the fact that we haven’t been on holiday / done any travelling for a number of years, nor can we motivate ourselves to buy a new car although that may change if our son in OZ makes good on his threat to ship my Land Rover over to him ( a story in itself), apart from one or two musical items (another story to be told at some point), well we haven’t really got much to splash the cash on. He’s even stopped asking me for money now he has a better-paid job. Who’d have thought it?
So imagine my amazement last week when we were watching Grand Designs Australia and this particular programme was about this bloke building a property (as they all are) but in this one he was building a big house on his parent’s farm. He was waxing lyrical about the pleasure he was getting from building on the creek bed where he used to play as a child and how he was ensuring family continuity and all that sort of stuff. You will see where I am going with this if you read on.
Maybe it’s my age but thoughts of continuity ((I’ve called it leaving a legacy elsewhere in these blogs) are quite attractive as an idea these days. It’s not exactly fool-proof as a way of prolonging one’s life, but it has something going for it. But maybe I’ve got too much time on my hands already -maybe.
Anyway it started me thinking about my own childhood home, left to me when my mother died 10 years ago. Despite a couple of attempts to sell it we still own it. Now I’m not thinking of knocking it down and building a posh house in its place. We don’t have that much money, nor would it be allowed. But the idea that was sparked by the programme was to do with the garden of this house.
This garden is big and was my grandfather’s pride and joy (see out of window in photo above). He even moved his family (my mother as a child included) across the street into the same size house but with a much bigger garden. And he built two large greenhouses which are nearly still there. This ‘pride and joy’ is currently an overgrown shambles. We’ve had a couple of attempts to restore it to its former glory but with very little success.
So now to the point of this ramble. What about if we spent some of that money we have in the bank, just waiting for the government to steal it away, in having this over-grown wilderness properly landscaped and planted. True it wouldn’t be like it was because, as was the fashion /necessity in those days, it was all planted with vegetables and fruit trees, but the thought would be there. Hmm.
Would it be money wasted and the people who eventually bought the house, would tear it all up or would it add value to the property and at the least our children would benefit by the value- added, as well as not having our money stolen by the government. Hmm, again, a trick decision.