The cost of living... what can we do?

In Scotland, the Crown only controls mineral rights on the land they manage and gold and silver elsewhere. Coal belongs to the landowner. I know this because my sister-in-law gets paid an annual small fortune for the coal below her large farm in Lanarkshire although it is no longer mined. I think the coal company took out a 199-year lease or something silly like that.

Minerals - Rural - Scotland's property - Crown Estate Scotland

 

always been a wise shopper , always been frugal, and good to have Amish about. Gas prices though are nuts, blaming Joe. but thank goodness I am now retired so other than traveling don't go out daily to work.

 

Cost of living crisis?

Guy turns up to join queue at food bank, in a range rover.

Even Range Rover drivers using foodbanks on Teesside as crisis bites

I'm sure some people really are struggling, but I'm sorry, if you drive an expensive car, and you're skint, just sell the car and buy a cheaper one.

Yes prices have gone up, and that will have pushed a few that were really struggling last year into proper poverty, but for the majority, I'm convinced that proper management of the household finances will mean they can get buy.

A friend of ours was whining that she's struggling the other day. Then her son came round to play with my son, and he brought with him the latest Nintendo handheld games console. My son said he wanted one so I looked it up. It's over 300 quid. Sorry but if you can afford to buy a 300 plus quid toy on a whim, then you're not too skint to eat properly. I have genuine concern for the genuinely broke, but I think a lot of people are just playing to the hype.

 

Perhaps his Landrover was on one of those personal contract lease arrangements. My stepdaughter had one of those and when she split from her husband she couldn't afford to keep it and couldn't afford to terminate it.

 

That kind of thing usually happens when people have been living beyond their means before this lot happened.
Most people these days seem to max out the credit card and get everything they want, (not need), on interest free credit, I get the feeling the sh*t is now hitting the fan in lots of places.

 

Not the cheapest thing to run even if you find a cheap one to buy.

 

If it was a clapped out old range rover I doubt anyone would have called it out as an exception.

I would ask what point the person that made the comment was trying to make. Was he saying that even drivers of expensive cars are now desperate? Or was their point that their customers are so poor that they drive specifically clapped out old range rovers? The latter seems unlikely.

 

My stepdaughter certainly wasn't living beyond her means before it happened. But she was left with two teenage boys to keep and a mortgage to pay when her husband moved out. Despite having an exceptionally well-paid job she had to cut her cloth and the car was too expensive to keep. She had to fork out a hefty sum to buy herself out of the lease contract.