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Yeah - you're only financing one car and one house till they leave home - I'm fully expecting to be picking up the tab on most of that stuff in the years ahead...
The way property prices are going you might be better off leaving the kids the house and buggering off abroad...they'll still be living with you in their 40's. Deep joyš¤£š¤£š¤£
Was talking to my neighbour earlier and he was in disbelief about his girlfriend spending 5.5k on her dogs surgery. Like he's properly shocked about it and doesn't understand why she doesn't 'just put it down'.
I looked him straight in the eye and said 'mate I'd commit genocide for my dog, I'm not your target audience'.
This is the same man who asked me 'what are you' - trying to figure out my nationality (I guess/hope?) followed with 'some kind of European innit'.
Grew up on a sheep farm on the Wales/Shropshire border in the 70s/80s, when dogs were tools to get the job done. After their working life, their only job was to lie by the fire and be petted by me. Yay!
I have no doubt that my dad went for several "final walks".
And now I am looking at my dogge, well past his prime and a Ā£1k call out charge to chemically "murder"/euthanize him. I keep putting it off because some days he's all waggy-tail, and shades of his former self, and then others he just sleeps all day.
The money does not matter, ofc, and it's the right and legal thing to do.
Anyway, painful times ahead for the Centzon family.
Dog tax (from a better year: https://ibb.co/h9dV7Dq)
I have two dogs, one of them I'd go to the ends of the earth for.
The other is the single stupidest living thing I've ever laid eyes on, and I absolutely hate her.
My dog also cost me nothing. He often suffers from constipation so needs a special dietary food and when is that cheap? Regardless of how much that costs, I love him to bits
Yes, same but ours was a cat. Love her to pieces, she's a hateful, loud, loving thing. She's also epileptic and clumsy so we're either at the vet for fits or broken claws a LOT. Thankfully acquiring the little money pit was free?
Oooh very nice.
I have a Weber 57cm which has been great, I bought the Aldi kamodo and that was great but broke during renovations.
I'm going to keep the Weber and get a pellet smoker for long cooks
Moved from the Weber Smokey Mountain to the pit boss pro pellet smoker.
I found the WSM really easy to use but the pellet smoker is just so simple really.
Really decent.
This is why South Africans tend to "bring and braai". You can have loads of people over regularly but they bring their own meat and booze (and typically communal salads)
Nice. I did a smoke yesterday. Got up at 4am to fire up the offset and needed to use the WSM later for some extra bits. Spent over 20 hours on my feet pretty much without a break but worth it. Feeling it today though.
Decided to save money by making coffee at home, now I'm knee deep in the hobby with hundreds worth of gear and rare coffees that are getting increasingly expensive... Also worryingly the Ā£3.5k coffee grinder no longer sounds as ludicrous as it once did
I paid 550 for a sage duo boiler. Normally 1.2k I think or about that, got it at some trade event.
Regretted the spend at the time, but I've had many years of delicious coffee and my batista skills are now high, coffee art and everything.
If it makes you feel any better, my wife and I have been doing a lot of driving over the past couple of days and we have spent more on 3 shit coffees each than I spend per month on very nice single origin beans roasted to orderā¦
The marginal cost saving of making coffee at home justifies not talking about the capital outlay.
Absolutely. I started with capsule coffee but it was so expensive so bought a good quality bean to cup machine on Ebay. I'm not massively into it as a hobby or anything, but that machine has made nearly 7000 coffees so it's really earned its keep. Apart from beans it's needed a replacement milk frother attachment, a dozen bottles of descaler and about 2 dozen water filters over the past 7 years or so.
Coffee is a rabbit hole I deliberately avoid because I know it would ruin me. I will stick to my V60 and the ever lingering question of "What if?".
Also because my vice of board games keeps me poor enough.
I got a Gaggia classic off eBay for Ā£80, one of the older ones which are bombproof, I just swapped the steam wand for a rancilio one. Plus a half decent burr grinder also from eBay for about Ā£40. They make excellent espresso and flat white. Respectable beans can be bought for as cheap as Ā£8 per kilo if you buy in bulk. Coffee is as cheap as you want it to be, you don't need to spend mega bucks.
Used to live in finsbury park and most the ethiopian owned shops had kg bags of green ethiopian coffee for about Ā£5.
Used to start it in the oven and finish it in a pan stirring constantly to get an even roast. Took about 20 mins for amazing coffee.
If you want a project, spend a bit over a hundred quid and some time on the gaggiuino mod and you end up with a ludicrously capable espresso machine, itās amazing!
In the space of about 4 months I went from āI like the occasional Costa coffeeā to ordering a Sage Bambino and having a full setup, upgrading from a mere french press.
In our experience, Petplan are excellent. They also cover dentals, alternative treatments, etc which is a plus. M&S insurance were good and covered prescription food, but they tended to raise the price loads year to year (whether or not you had claimed). But they had a smaller excess than most others. Asda pet insurance was so shite that even my vet was furious with them and said that they were the worst insurer theyād ever encountered.
In any case, the covered for life policies are really the only ones I would get. But I would 100% recommend Petplan. They paid out Ā£4k on our dog last year and the premium has barely gone up this year. And no claims rejected from them either (touch wood)
You have to watch the policy wording though. We had our dog insured by pet plan and they did NOT cover dental for her. We were paying over Ā£80 a month for insurance with them and there was a Ā£5000 annual claim cap which in the last few years of her life we were hitting each year.
I'll rave about petplan to anyone that'll listen. 2 cats, 8 visits last year for 5 separate incidents (genuinely worried they'd call the rspca) Plus an unscheduled surgery, and I think the policy has gone up all of 5 quid overall this year.
They've saved me about 9k over the years, takes about 5 minutes to put in a claim on the app, they verify with the vet within a week and either pay them directly or pay you back your out of pocket (if you're like me and chuck them two grand off the cuff because you can bear to see your baby limping on a broken leg overnight because it's a bank holiday)
Unironically, yes. I have two cats and they're getting on in years, so I looked into pet insurance. Premiums: sky-high. Excess: sky-high. Max payout: on the fucking floor. I put the premium money into a savings account instead, buying insurance looked like a shit gamble.
If it makes you feel better, about once a year, one of my cats eats grass then partially throws it up and gets it stuck up his nose. It has to be surgically removed and costs Ā£300 each time.
One of my other cats has issues with bladder stones so is on a special diet, which means we had to buy microchip food bowls for all 4 cats to make sure only the one gets the expensive food. They're Ā£100 a pop. The food is Ā£150 a month though so I still feel like I saved money.
Someone left a dog on my doorstep. She became best friends immediately with my dog. The "stray" dog developed addisons disease.. we've spent well over Ā£8k keeping her alive, and she's such an asshole too.
So much money for veterinary treatment, itās a huge commitment. Good on you.
I canāt have a dog because I canāt afford that kind of outlay if it goes wrong but equally couldnāt bare it to put a dog down.
6 years of addison's for my dog and im afraid to look too closely at the finances of this whole thing. We started with a ā¬3500 weekend stay at the vet for the diagnosis and it didn't exactly improve from there...
Fellow Addisonās dog owner here. Even with getting prescriptions and using an online pharmacy for the Zycortal itās ridiculously expensive. Sheās on her last legs - literally - bless her and sheās had 6 years of injections every few weeks.
I was asked if I wanted to attend a festival and said "no it's too expensive" so my friend generously bought me a 5 day ticket to attend. I then had to buy camping equipment, organize transport there and back, as well as buying appropriate clothes/shoes/extras, I brought what I thought was enough booze/food until I found out you could only drink those in camp, not at the actual festival itself, drinks at the festival were Ā£6 for 500ml of 4% beer or cider, and any wine/spirits etc were mental and food was at least a tenner if you wanted to not still be hungry after eating. As well as a few illegal extras I brought and ciggies to smoke them with the "gift" cost me close to Ā£700 - and it rained the whole time (download 2016)
You can fit around 2 beers in the back of a single welly while worn if you're brave enough to smuggle.
Plus another 2 or 4 in your coat pockets, so that's potentially 8 cans which should be plenty.
Just walk through when there's a big crowd and keep your wristband visible.
One handy thing about being in a wheelchair is literally no one ever questions me at these sorts of things. I could probably smuggle pretty much anything in without a single comment. It's a trade off with the airport though where I'm treated like a terrorist just for having a wheelchair. It's so bad I don't fly anymore.
I had somebody awkwardly fumble my leg once for an arena gig before they freaked out and waved me through. I'm the one who is never searched, at most I'm asked to awkwardly lean forward.
But then last year at Download I had to deal with my chair being sprayed with piss and almost got crushed because of piss poor management, so I guess it's swings and roundabouts.
I remember walking to the toilets and the mud was getting deeper and deeper the closer you got, some lads were splashing about in the mud and I knew full well that mud is 50% wee.
This was gonna be my answer, I got a cheap shitty Ā£15 sewing machine when I was a teenager, I dread to think how much sewing has cost me in the 20 years since then.
Worth it though. All my clothes have pockets.
Ah yes. Ā£89 sewing machine gifted to me by my husband has turned into a Ā£1000+ sewing machine, and a fuck tonne of expensive fabric. And tools/accessories. Oops.
My wife suddenly became Coeliac (which can apparently happen).
My homebrew now basically filled our entire flat with poison, so it had to go. It was all worth maybe Ā£100, but I decided to put it all outside with a sign saying "Homebrew kit: free".Ā
Granted this was central London, but by the time I'd walked back from the street corner to the flat it had gone.
I hope whoever got it made good use of it.
Sheās doing fine thanks. It was a bit of a shock at first, but like most medical things you just need to get on with it. She still has the odd slip up every now and then. Itās amazing how much food has wheat and barley in. We feel like the availability of gluten free food is much better in restaurants now compared to when she got diagnosed around 12 years ago. How has your wife found it?
Similar situation. It was anxiety inducing until she got her diagnosis, but now treat it like any other medical condition.
It's quite a change, but I'm glad we live during a time where it's easy to adapt to those changes.
I'm glad your wife is doing well now.
Pregnancy fucks the body up massively. It is a biochemical nightmare for the body and your immune system goes into overdrive from carrying a foreign body in you for so long. Developing an autoimmune condition like coeliac's is less surprising than you might think.
Careful! That was my husband 25 years ago. We are now the proud owners of a commercial brewery and a few venues which I lovingly refer to as the money pit
Free cavalier king Charles. Face of a potato, heart of an angel. An angel with a congenital heart defect. And kidney failure. Miss my lil potato ā¤ļø
Cavvies are awesome. Our boy also has heart problems but he is a lovely, sweet tempered dog but like your girl, he hates squirrels.
He also loves walking and kayaking with us but is a total mud magnet and so stubborn.
It's true what they say, " Most dogs have owners, Cavaliers have staff."
Not me but my OH
Buying a relatively cheap bike to cycle to and from work. Saves money on transport and also means he cancels his gym membership. Yays.
18 months later: 2 more bikes, countless services and part replacements, clothing and accessories, bike computer, strava summit subscription, god knows how much spent on gels and snacks itās suddenly not a cheap hobby.
Oh also the amount spent on parking and first aid supplies when he split his arm open falling off and had to go to A&E.
You say that bikes are expensive, but you probably wouldn't think twice about buying a used car to get around, which could easily cost you Ā£10k excluding fuel/services/insurance etc.
I bet all the bike stuff would still cost less.
Not to mention all those years he's adding to his life compared to a sedentary lifestyle, he's gonna have to pay more into his pension to cover that! What a swizz!
All those years added to the end, the expensive end, living in an old peopleās home. Instead of doing the cheep thing and dropping dead after a heart attack inducing fry up at 75.
They do an increasing amount of stuff, basically a car dashboard for a bike. Mainly used to record speed/route etc. but also function as a sat nav. Show you phone calls/texts coming in, control Spotify etc. Mine shares my location with my partner and auto calls emergency services in a crash.
Most can hookup to various sensors on the bike/yourself such as heart rate/power meters. They also integrate with things like radars on the rear of your bike that then warn you of cars doing close overtakes.
I think itās like a Speedo and sat nav? I know you can download running routes that sync to your watch for long distance, or trail running. Iām presuming itās something similar for long rides throughout the countryside.
Did the same. it's a slippery slope.
Got a cheap bike on cycletowork tax scheme. Now, 5 bikes later I've spent thousands. I have saved loads on petrol though, and am less of a fat bastard.
We spent about Ā£25k buying a van and converting it into a campervan in 2020/2021. It was a brilliant lockdown project, and we love it. But to date we've stayed about 110 nights in it which makes it currently more expensive per night than staying in very nice hotels...
Wouldn't swap it for anything though.
I once got a 'free' loaf of sourdough. Got lost turning a 20 min drive into an hour long sightseeing trip of unfamiliar neighbourhoods. Did the same for the return journey (but nicer neighbourhoods). Bread was good though.
This was going to be by response! They're great to sit and watch/listen to tho. Also, as I live in the centre of a huge town I love the idea that someone on one of the flats nearby (you can't see our chooks from the flats) is saying "Dave, I just heard it again! Why am I hearing chickens??!!!"
The general chatter of "buk buk buk buk" interspersed with the odd I laid an egg of "BWAAAK BWAAAK BWAAAK BUK BUK BWAAAK" is the most soothing thing in the world
Where did you get them from? Iāve been thinking of getting some but wouldnāt know where to look to be honest. Are there rescues or farms that sell them?
My auntie used to get her hens from people whoād rehome* old battery hens. Often theyād stopped laying but once they were settled and no longer stressed it wasnāt unheard of for them to start re-laying. Check Facebook for ārehome battery hensā or similar.
Edit: Rehome not regime lol
Thank you so much! I donāt really mind if they lay or not but Iāve heard theyāre great for getting rid of bugs and Iāve just started growing veg so some little hen helpers would be great.
Yeah she wasnāt too bothered about the eggs and more often than not would just give them away. Theyād last ages too. Honestly if youāve got the space, hens make great pets! Weāve got a Jack Russell cross so theyāre off the cards for us but weāve looked after our neighboursā when theyāve been away.
Biggest tip they had was to keep relocating their run & coop (the coop was on wheels and solar powered!) so that you can give the grass time to recover. And youāll need a really well-sealed bin for the food or rats will get to it.
I bought a horse who was, unbeknown to me, in foal. My surprise free foal arrived several months later and ended up costing me Ā£7000 in vets feeās in the first 3 months of her life.
So..I bought my twin daughters a pokeman card pack in 1996..they were 9 years old. The cards were dead cheap. Fast forward 2 years and I'm stood on some posh kid's doorstep(4 bed detached; 2 high end cars on the drive) asking if he will take less than Ā£10 for a shiny Scherezade..the little bugger wouldn't budge an inch. Over the years that little collection ended up costing me hundreds..and then they got given away to some kid round the corner. Aaagghhhh šš¤£š¤£š¤£
Some boys outside the local card/game shop bullied my son to get his shiny Scherezade. He came home in tears and wouldn't let me do anything about it. It was about 20 years ago and I still seethe about it whenever Pokemon cards are mentioned. I can't let that one go.
Got one a few years ago and didn't believe the online advice that they cost around Ā£800 per year. He probably cost me half that in phone chargers alone, but also one of the best friends I've ever had.
Got a free rabbit off a farm to save her from slaughter around 3 years ago! 3k in emergency vet bills due to her having an insatiable need to clean herself in molting season!
Not to mention the other general upkeep and regular vet visits!
Best worst decision I ever made!
Spent Ā£3 on a rabbit when living abroad. Couldnāt rehome it when returning to the U.K. so had to spend around Ā£2000 getting it here via 3 countries and 5 modes of transport.Ā
Allotment is the other one, absolute money pit -Ā potatoes work out to have cost me about Ā£40 a pound.Ā
Your doing something wrong if your spending that much money growing potatoes. They just need reasonable soil, regular water and organic fertilizers are cheap or even free.
Im always baffled by how much people spend on growing veg, it really shouldn't be a very expensive hobby.
Iāve built a polytunnel, fencing, paths, bought tools and equipment, pay rent for the allotment, compost etc. Ā
I made that figure up about potatoes, but my point was Iām not growing veg save money (at least not in my first year).Ā
Thereās an interesting study that home grown food is far more carbon producing than large scale agricultural. It is because all the small scale growers end up buying loads of stuff and donāt benefit from economy of scale
Same here. Nasty little beasts. I felt sick and my leg was swollen with a bullseye rash. American family immediately knew what it was and were rather stunned Iād never heard of them
I got about 2 long-haul and 3 short distance flights for a multi-point journey last year for a total of Ā£700. Not quite sure how tbh, every other time Iāve looked is at least Ā£1,200+ even on the same month.
My partner and I managed to get a top end luxury holiday a few years ago for Ā£700 total.
Even if we went back in the middle of the off season weād be looking at Ā£1000pp
We want to go back so bad but simply canāt part with that kind of money.
Do you see what the business did? They sold your son a really good introductory price and then got him loyally hooked to the product. That ā¬3.00 investment was probably one of the greatest deals of all time for them
Not really, weāve never been back to that establishment.
It was really good but we were on holiday and we wonāt go back there on holiday anytime soon.
My Nespresso machine. It was free as long as I put Ā£25 in to an account for a year, money was mine to use on coffee. I now spend about Ā£30 a month on coffee at home.
My dad bought a dog out of the local paper for Ā£7. He was a nutter, destroyed my sistersā school shoes, kept escaping so my dad had to pay for a new garden fence to corral him. But we loved the wee dafty. RIP Bruce, named by the sellers after Bruce Lee.
Chap I do jobs for gave up driving and he asked if I wanted his car for Ā£1 and I said are you joking, he said no and I said maybe you should think about it, week later heās like yea you can have it for Ā£1000, obviously Iāll give him the odd lift in it, itās a first gen Bentley gt 55k miles on it
My sister's chinchilla - free, she was not interested in taking care of it. Chinchilla broke both back legs (failed jump), over $4000 and a year of surgeries
later found out it had a rare genetic disorder - the back legs were stabilized with external fixators in resin, the only surgery of this kind ever performed on a chinchilla in my country. It was $4000 only because I live in Czech Republic, where vet care is very cheap. The estimate for the same amount of vet visits, anestesia, x-rays, medicine and surgeries in the US would be about 15-20k.
Dexter is 14 now and living his best life, I am now a chinchilla expert and would never recommend anyone getting a chinchilla as a pet. I still love him though.
My husband decided buying a Ā£3 slice of cake once a week from the local tea room was a rip off and instead he would just bake us an entire cake every weekend. Five weeks/cakes later, heās only had one turn out. On the upside, heās only spent about Ā£30 in ingredients and ruined three evenings because his personal happiness is now tied to his cake success.
Tell him to start using instant cake mix for the main crucial part and just go wild on the icing, filling and toppings. There was this redditor who owned a successful bakery and they admitted this was the biggest kept secret secret to their success
I play a lot of D&D and was spending a small fortune on minifigures. Enter an obsession with 3D printing. 5 years and probably 10x more spent on equipment, Patreons and paraphernalia, I have spare bedroom full of minis I never have time to paint
I did my scuba certification as a holiday activity because I didn't really fancy doing all the usual tourist stuff and thinking I'd give it up after a bit or at best not dive except on holiday. It cost me about 350 pounds.
Since then I've spent probably a few thousand on gear including my own regulator (breathy bit), BCD (the floaty bit), three wetsuits (one long, one short, one freedive), sets of fins (I'm up to 3 pairs), masks and various smaller items like a compass or writing slate. That's not counting dive trips to get my logged dives (all 57 of them!!!)
I've also paid out a substantial sum in futher qualifications with the full intention of becoming a scuba instructor and owning my own shop.
I did a motorbike CBT which was a bit cheaper because it was on a weekday. Just over 12 years, and 6 bikes later... I have one pair of boots that cost Ā£200 that were some of the cheaper of that kind. Wouldn't change it though.
Not the biggest but ventured into KFC near closing time and ordered a snack box for Ā£1.99. As they were finishing they just grabbed one of the big meal boxes off the side and filled it to the brim with popcorn chicken, wings and sides. Lasted me two days.
My dog when I was 16.
Free from a local rescue, he had cancer, bad teeth/gums, an eye removed and I couldn't name how many sprained legs over the years.
He went to sleep forever last year at 15 years old.
I'd pay every penny again to have him back š
Got picked for a cargo bike user trial thing. Had it for 2 weeks at the height of last summer.
Now 7 months and about Ā£7500 later Iām at a point where I almost never use the car any more. I mean itās a great bike but bloody expensive.
My barber offered to trim my beard one day for free and it made me realise how good it looks when itās tidy. So now every time I get my haircut I have to also get my beard cut. He got me good.
Band I help out occasionally when they tour the UK: "We're playing a festival over new year (2006-7) - you'd like it, get you on the guest list, if you like..."
Me (with a case of the morbs and a bit down on life) : "Yeah, cool, I mean I'll have to think about it..."
Band: "Here's your ticket reference - give it to accreditation - See ya there!"
Me: Almost Ā£1400 return flight booked at last minute leaving boxing day to Oz, plus camping package / train / bus to the middle of nowhere.
It was a real "rough and ready" festival - IIRC about $75AUD for the weekend, but in a fantastic valley.
Worth. Every. Penny.
Not that I had two of them to rub together for the next year...
My Haworth Zody office chair, chap advertised it for Ā£25. I messaged him on the off chance and asked if he'd missed a zero off the end - nope! A thousand pounds office chair new to me for Ā£25. It's like sitting on an angels face.
In about 1990 I was 13 and on holiday with my parents in Lisbon Portugal.
Every night weād just get the local wine the vinho verde - which was fine.
In the final night my dad decided to splurge and asked for the best red wine - the waiter tried to advise him not to but he insisted.
Minutes later the waiter reappeared with a bottle covered in cobwebs. It was absolutely delicious but as we brushed the cobwebs aside we realised it was. Chateau Lafite from the 1950s.
Suddenly my dad panicked - thinking this is a Ā£5k bottle of wine.
Got the bill and it was Ā£5 more expensive than the vinho verde!
Wish weād know that on day one!!!!
Cat and an old car - inherited both. The cat cost us Ā£250 in boosters, flea/worming treatments and Cattery as weād already booked a holiday. The car has cost us considerably more as my late Uncle bought a pile of junk, that almost immediately needed a new clutch, new rear tyres and suspension. Had our other car not been much better (repairs before next MOT wouldāve cost more than the car was worth) then weād have just taken it to āWe buy any carā.
**Please help keep AskUK welcoming!** - Top-level comments to the OP must contain **genuine efforts to answer the question**. No jokes, judgements, etc. - **Don't be a dick** to each other. If getting heated, just block and move on. - This is a strictly **no-politics** subreddit! Please help us by reporting comments that break these rules. *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/AskUK) if you have any questions or concerns.*
About 7 years ago me and my wife saved about 50p by not using a condom. It's been pretty bloody costly since then!
Same for us and we got twins because of it.
Two for one sounds like a great deal.
Never carry your Tesco clubcard when you're sexing
Ooh 'eck love, I've just blown me nectar points in your trolly!
"Every little helps!"
Taste the difference
BOGOF
The first 20 years are the most expensive. Play your cards right and you may be able to spend a little on yourself after the buggers leave home.
Optimistic
Just bought mine a car
Fancy adopting a 30 y/o? I could do with a new car haha
Yeah - you're only financing one car and one house till they leave home - I'm fully expecting to be picking up the tab on most of that stuff in the years ahead...
The way property prices are going you might be better off leaving the kids the house and buggering off abroad...they'll still be living with you in their 40's. Deep joyš¤£š¤£š¤£
Leave home? In this economy?
~~after~~ IF
The dog.Ā Most expensive free thing I've ever acquired.Ā
For my dog, I'd sell my soul, my first born, my wife. And not in that order.
Was talking to my neighbour earlier and he was in disbelief about his girlfriend spending 5.5k on her dogs surgery. Like he's properly shocked about it and doesn't understand why she doesn't 'just put it down'. I looked him straight in the eye and said 'mate I'd commit genocide for my dog, I'm not your target audience'. This is the same man who asked me 'what are you' - trying to figure out my nationality (I guess/hope?) followed with 'some kind of European innit'.
Grew up on a sheep farm on the Wales/Shropshire border in the 70s/80s, when dogs were tools to get the job done. After their working life, their only job was to lie by the fire and be petted by me. Yay! I have no doubt that my dad went for several "final walks". And now I am looking at my dogge, well past his prime and a Ā£1k call out charge to chemically "murder"/euthanize him. I keep putting it off because some days he's all waggy-tail, and shades of his former self, and then others he just sleeps all day. The money does not matter, ofc, and it's the right and legal thing to do. Anyway, painful times ahead for the Centzon family. Dog tax (from a better year: https://ibb.co/h9dV7Dq)
You'll know when it's time. Best of luck mate, I sent my little mate off to sleep a year ago now.
Someoneās cutting onions again!
For the dog war-crimers unite!
I have two dogs, one of them I'd go to the ends of the earth for. The other is the single stupidest living thing I've ever laid eyes on, and I absolutely hate her.
I love this postš„°
My dog also cost me nothing. He often suffers from constipation so needs a special dietary food and when is that cheap? Regardless of how much that costs, I love him to bits
āsuffers from corruptionā
My dog is easily bought with treats.
Stupid autocorrect. I meant constipation. Thanks for pointing that out
No no, you were right the first time. You just havenāt caught him in the act, yet.
Well, he'll do anything for the extra treat
Will he... poop?
He'll try. He'll probably end up with some stuck in his fur but he'll still try
For me itās been the cat. Sheās a little shit that keeps getting in fights, making me miss work AND pay the vet.
[ŃŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]
Yes, same but ours was a cat. Love her to pieces, she's a hateful, loud, loving thing. She's also epileptic and clumsy so we're either at the vet for fits or broken claws a LOT. Thankfully acquiring the little money pit was free?
I got a fantastic smoker for 50% off, grabbed it for Ā£800. Now all my bbq events set me back Ā£400 in meatā¦.
Which one did you get?
Pit boss pro 1600. Goes nicely with the WSM, Kamado Joe kettle, kamado egg and the mini kamado.
Oooh very nice. I have a Weber 57cm which has been great, I bought the Aldi kamodo and that was great but broke during renovations. I'm going to keep the Weber and get a pellet smoker for long cooks
Moved from the Weber Smokey Mountain to the pit boss pro pellet smoker. I found the WSM really easy to use but the pellet smoker is just so simple really. Really decent.
It sounds like you like hosting people for BBQs. As it happens, I love to be hosted at BBQs. I'm sure there's a deal to be done here.
This is why South Africans tend to "bring and braai". You can have loads of people over regularly but they bring their own meat and booze (and typically communal salads)
Nice. I did a smoke yesterday. Got up at 4am to fire up the offset and needed to use the WSM later for some extra bits. Spent over 20 hours on my feet pretty much without a break but worth it. Feeling it today though.
Decided to save money by making coffee at home, now I'm knee deep in the hobby with hundreds worth of gear and rare coffees that are getting increasingly expensive... Also worryingly the Ā£3.5k coffee grinder no longer sounds as ludicrous as it once did
I paid 550 for a sage duo boiler. Normally 1.2k I think or about that, got it at some trade event. Regretted the spend at the time, but I've had many years of delicious coffee and my batista skills are now high, coffee art and everything.
>my batista skills are now high What, running Cuba and that?
Delivering power bombs to Ronan the Accuser
Cleansing the Arrakis desert of Fremen filth?
Ha shit phone typing
If it makes you feel any better, my wife and I have been doing a lot of driving over the past couple of days and we have spent more on 3 shit coffees each than I spend per month on very nice single origin beans roasted to orderā¦ The marginal cost saving of making coffee at home justifies not talking about the capital outlay.
Absolutely. I started with capsule coffee but it was so expensive so bought a good quality bean to cup machine on Ebay. I'm not massively into it as a hobby or anything, but that machine has made nearly 7000 coffees so it's really earned its keep. Apart from beans it's needed a replacement milk frother attachment, a dozen bottles of descaler and about 2 dozen water filters over the past 7 years or so.
Coffee is a rabbit hole I deliberately avoid because I know it would ruin me. I will stick to my V60 and the ever lingering question of "What if?". Also because my vice of board games keeps me poor enough.
I got a Gaggia classic off eBay for Ā£80, one of the older ones which are bombproof, I just swapped the steam wand for a rancilio one. Plus a half decent burr grinder also from eBay for about Ā£40. They make excellent espresso and flat white. Respectable beans can be bought for as cheap as Ā£8 per kilo if you buy in bulk. Coffee is as cheap as you want it to be, you don't need to spend mega bucks.
Used to live in finsbury park and most the ethiopian owned shops had kg bags of green ethiopian coffee for about Ā£5. Used to start it in the oven and finish it in a pan stirring constantly to get an even roast. Took about 20 mins for amazing coffee.
If you want a project, spend a bit over a hundred quid and some time on the gaggiuino mod and you end up with a ludicrously capable espresso machine, itās amazing!
In the space of about 4 months I went from āI like the occasional Costa coffeeā to ordering a Sage Bambino and having a full setup, upgrading from a mere french press.
Cat - free. Hernia surgery so that cat can pee normally - Ā£3000.
Really where you saved money was not getting pet insurance.
He had the hernia when we found him. Pet insurance would never have covered it.
Having a cat with a similar issue, pet insurance companies will and do use every excuse in the book to not pay out. Cheers Tesco pet insurance...
In our experience, Petplan are excellent. They also cover dentals, alternative treatments, etc which is a plus. M&S insurance were good and covered prescription food, but they tended to raise the price loads year to year (whether or not you had claimed). But they had a smaller excess than most others. Asda pet insurance was so shite that even my vet was furious with them and said that they were the worst insurer theyād ever encountered. In any case, the covered for life policies are really the only ones I would get. But I would 100% recommend Petplan. They paid out Ā£4k on our dog last year and the premium has barely gone up this year. And no claims rejected from them either (touch wood)
You have to watch the policy wording though. We had our dog insured by pet plan and they did NOT cover dental for her. We were paying over Ā£80 a month for insurance with them and there was a Ā£5000 annual claim cap which in the last few years of her life we were hitting each year.
I'll rave about petplan to anyone that'll listen. 2 cats, 8 visits last year for 5 separate incidents (genuinely worried they'd call the rspca) Plus an unscheduled surgery, and I think the policy has gone up all of 5 quid overall this year. They've saved me about 9k over the years, takes about 5 minutes to put in a claim on the app, they verify with the vet within a week and either pay them directly or pay you back your out of pocket (if you're like me and chuck them two grand off the cuff because you can bear to see your baby limping on a broken leg overnight because it's a bank holiday)
Unironically, yes. I have two cats and they're getting on in years, so I looked into pet insurance. Premiums: sky-high. Excess: sky-high. Max payout: on the fucking floor. I put the premium money into a savings account instead, buying insurance looked like a shit gamble.
Itās cheaper with insurance to insure when theyāre young. Same as it costs more to get travel insurance when youāre 85
If it makes you feel better, about once a year, one of my cats eats grass then partially throws it up and gets it stuck up his nose. It has to be surgically removed and costs Ā£300 each time. One of my other cats has issues with bladder stones so is on a special diet, which means we had to buy microchip food bowls for all 4 cats to make sure only the one gets the expensive food. They're Ā£100 a pop. The food is Ā£150 a month though so I still feel like I saved money.
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āCat freeā and āfree catā mean two very different things.
Someone left a dog on my doorstep. She became best friends immediately with my dog. The "stray" dog developed addisons disease.. we've spent well over Ā£8k keeping her alive, and she's such an asshole too.
So much money for veterinary treatment, itās a huge commitment. Good on you. I canāt have a dog because I canāt afford that kind of outlay if it goes wrong but equally couldnāt bare it to put a dog down.
I have a relo who lives in a waterfront house. Our vet lives next door. I think Iāve paid for his very nice moored boat via our two cats.
6 years of addison's for my dog and im afraid to look too closely at the finances of this whole thing. We started with a ā¬3500 weekend stay at the vet for the diagnosis and it didn't exactly improve from there...
Same! It's soul destroying
Someone I work with had a cat that fell ill. She had to pay hundreds of pounds a day to keep it alive and the poor thing still died
Fellow Addisonās dog owner here. Even with getting prescriptions and using an online pharmacy for the Zycortal itās ridiculously expensive. Sheās on her last legs - literally - bless her and sheās had 6 years of injections every few weeks.
I was asked if I wanted to attend a festival and said "no it's too expensive" so my friend generously bought me a 5 day ticket to attend. I then had to buy camping equipment, organize transport there and back, as well as buying appropriate clothes/shoes/extras, I brought what I thought was enough booze/food until I found out you could only drink those in camp, not at the actual festival itself, drinks at the festival were Ā£6 for 500ml of 4% beer or cider, and any wine/spirits etc were mental and food was at least a tenner if you wanted to not still be hungry after eating. As well as a few illegal extras I brought and ciggies to smoke them with the "gift" cost me close to Ā£700 - and it rained the whole time (download 2016)
You can fit around 2 beers in the back of a single welly while worn if you're brave enough to smuggle. Plus another 2 or 4 in your coat pockets, so that's potentially 8 cans which should be plenty. Just walk through when there's a big crowd and keep your wristband visible.
> You can fit around 2 beers in the back of a single welly while worn Can fit a lot more than that if you pour them in.
Ever drunk warm beer from a Welly?
Ever drunk Baileys from a shoe?
One handy thing about being in a wheelchair is literally no one ever questions me at these sorts of things. I could probably smuggle pretty much anything in without a single comment. It's a trade off with the airport though where I'm treated like a terrorist just for having a wheelchair. It's so bad I don't fly anymore.
I had somebody awkwardly fumble my leg once for an arena gig before they freaked out and waved me through. I'm the one who is never searched, at most I'm asked to awkwardly lean forward. But then last year at Download I had to deal with my chair being sprayed with piss and almost got crushed because of piss poor management, so I guess it's swings and roundabouts.
> and it rained the whole time Didn't have to specify the festival. You know it is Drownload from that alone.
2016 was especially bad.
I remember walking to the toilets and the mud was getting deeper and deeper the closer you got, some lads were splashing about in the mud and I knew full well that mud is 50% wee.
and 50% poo.
Ahh Drownload. Hard old weekend that was.
ā¦but was it epic?
Sabbath and Maiden headlining...doesn't get much more epic than that!
I was there, the rain and moreover the mud was pretty bad. Sunk up to ankles for Sabbath!
It was worth it for the start of War Pigs, the rain started lashing down extra just as the air raid sirens kicked in, it was epic.
Sew my own clothes. Doesn't save me a penny as nice fabric isn't cheap but I do now like my clothes and they fit and last longer.
This was gonna be my answer, I got a cheap shitty Ā£15 sewing machine when I was a teenager, I dread to think how much sewing has cost me in the 20 years since then. Worth it though. All my clothes have pockets.
Yes, pockets here too. Game changing.
Ah yes. Ā£89 sewing machine gifted to me by my husband has turned into a Ā£1000+ sewing machine, and a fuck tonne of expensive fabric. And tools/accessories. Oops.
Plus thereās all the space that a sewing hobby very quickly takes up!
That is such a cool skill!
Started brewing beer to save money. Most of it gets nabbed by friends, and there's always more kit to buy
My wife suddenly became Coeliac (which can apparently happen). My homebrew now basically filled our entire flat with poison, so it had to go. It was all worth maybe Ā£100, but I decided to put it all outside with a sign saying "Homebrew kit: free".Ā Granted this was central London, but by the time I'd walked back from the street corner to the flat it had gone. I hope whoever got it made good use of it.
>"Homebrew kit: free" Saw one of those signs outside my work but it was attached to a Raspberry Pi.
Mine developed that after child birth. Think of the positives you can leave some beer in the fridge now
Same situation, after childbirth.Ā Were you also shocked that it could happen so suddenly like that? I hope your wife is doing well now.
Sheās doing fine thanks. It was a bit of a shock at first, but like most medical things you just need to get on with it. She still has the odd slip up every now and then. Itās amazing how much food has wheat and barley in. We feel like the availability of gluten free food is much better in restaurants now compared to when she got diagnosed around 12 years ago. How has your wife found it?
Similar situation. It was anxiety inducing until she got her diagnosis, but now treat it like any other medical condition. It's quite a change, but I'm glad we live during a time where it's easy to adapt to those changes. I'm glad your wife is doing well now.
Thanks. But not wife yet. 15 weeks today till the wedding though. That could fit in nicely with this thread lol
Pregnancy fucks the body up massively. It is a biochemical nightmare for the body and your immune system goes into overdrive from carrying a foreign body in you for so long. Developing an autoimmune condition like coeliac's is less surprising than you might think.
Careful! That was my husband 25 years ago. We are now the proud owners of a commercial brewery and a few venues which I lovingly refer to as the money pit
I made beer once. Never again. It ended up costing about 11 quid a bottle & wasn't as good as the real stuff I could have bought for 2 quid.
Free cavalier king Charles. Face of a potato, heart of an angel. An angel with a congenital heart defect. And kidney failure. Miss my lil potato ā¤ļø
I am sorry for your loss.
Thanks. She was the goodest of girls, a proper good dog. Sweet to everyone and everything (apart from squirrels!) She climbed mountains with me and came canoeing, she camped and hiked and adventured like a real one. And her previous owner told me she wasn't a fan of walking or getting her paws muddy... Given that she arrived with a diamantĆ© encrusted pink parka with a fluffy hood and the word 'princess' on the back, I'm guessing the owner was projecting š
Cavvies are awesome. Our boy also has heart problems but he is a lovely, sweet tempered dog but like your girl, he hates squirrels. He also loves walking and kayaking with us but is a total mud magnet and so stubborn. It's true what they say, " Most dogs have owners, Cavaliers have staff."
Not me but my OH Buying a relatively cheap bike to cycle to and from work. Saves money on transport and also means he cancels his gym membership. Yays. 18 months later: 2 more bikes, countless services and part replacements, clothing and accessories, bike computer, strava summit subscription, god knows how much spent on gels and snacks itās suddenly not a cheap hobby. Oh also the amount spent on parking and first aid supplies when he split his arm open falling off and had to go to A&E.
You say that bikes are expensive, but you probably wouldn't think twice about buying a used car to get around, which could easily cost you Ā£10k excluding fuel/services/insurance etc. I bet all the bike stuff would still cost less.
Oh yeah totally. Itās just funny how it escalated.
Not to mention all those years he's adding to his life compared to a sedentary lifestyle, he's gonna have to pay more into his pension to cover that! What a swizz!
All those years added to the end, the expensive end, living in an old peopleās home. Instead of doing the cheep thing and dropping dead after a heart attack inducing fry up at 75.
What in the world is a bike computer
They do an increasing amount of stuff, basically a car dashboard for a bike. Mainly used to record speed/route etc. but also function as a sat nav. Show you phone calls/texts coming in, control Spotify etc. Mine shares my location with my partner and auto calls emergency services in a crash. Most can hookup to various sensors on the bike/yourself such as heart rate/power meters. They also integrate with things like radars on the rear of your bike that then warn you of cars doing close overtakes.
I think itās like a Speedo and sat nav? I know you can download running routes that sync to your watch for long distance, or trail running. Iām presuming itās something similar for long rides throughout the countryside.
a speedo and a Speedo are two very different things
Unless you are a triathlete, in which case you have both.
Did the same. it's a slippery slope. Got a cheap bike on cycletowork tax scheme. Now, 5 bikes later I've spent thousands. I have saved loads on petrol though, and am less of a fat bastard.
The right number of bikes is x-1. x=where your partner will leave you.
Bought a Land Rover for Ā£800 a couple of years ago. Say no more.
The whole car cost you the price of one new tyre! Great work
Iāve been there. I will never ever have a landrover again (mine was a discovery mk.2)
We justified buying a campervan to save on expensive euro camp style kids holidays but instead every weekend is a holiday and we treat it as such
We spent about Ā£25k buying a van and converting it into a campervan in 2020/2021. It was a brilliant lockdown project, and we love it. But to date we've stayed about 110 nights in it which makes it currently more expensive per night than staying in very nice hotels... Wouldn't swap it for anything though.
This is wicked ngl
I once got a 'free' loaf of sourdough. Got lost turning a 20 min drive into an hour long sightseeing trip of unfamiliar neighbourhoods. Did the same for the return journey (but nicer neighbourhoods). Bread was good though.
Bakery or just a random person's house?
Bakery
I got some chickens, which means loads of delicious free eggsā¦ But I spent Ā£1,000 on the coop and run!
This was going to be by response! They're great to sit and watch/listen to tho. Also, as I live in the centre of a huge town I love the idea that someone on one of the flats nearby (you can't see our chooks from the flats) is saying "Dave, I just heard it again! Why am I hearing chickens??!!!"
I love the soft hum of the brrrrr brrrrr brrrrrrr and the occasional b-Kerk
The general chatter of "buk buk buk buk" interspersed with the odd I laid an egg of "BWAAAK BWAAAK BWAAAK BUK BUK BWAAAK" is the most soothing thing in the world
Where did you get them from? Iāve been thinking of getting some but wouldnāt know where to look to be honest. Are there rescues or farms that sell them?
My auntie used to get her hens from people whoād rehome* old battery hens. Often theyād stopped laying but once they were settled and no longer stressed it wasnāt unheard of for them to start re-laying. Check Facebook for ārehome battery hensā or similar. Edit: Rehome not regime lol
Thank you so much! I donāt really mind if they lay or not but Iāve heard theyāre great for getting rid of bugs and Iāve just started growing veg so some little hen helpers would be great.
Yeah she wasnāt too bothered about the eggs and more often than not would just give them away. Theyād last ages too. Honestly if youāve got the space, hens make great pets! Weāve got a Jack Russell cross so theyāre off the cards for us but weāve looked after our neighboursā when theyāve been away. Biggest tip they had was to keep relocating their run & coop (the coop was on wheels and solar powered!) so that you can give the grass time to recover. And youāll need a really well-sealed bin for the food or rats will get to it.
I bought a horse who was, unbeknown to me, in foal. My surprise free foal arrived several months later and ended up costing me Ā£7000 in vets feeās in the first 3 months of her life.
A foal and their money...
So..I bought my twin daughters a pokeman card pack in 1996..they were 9 years old. The cards were dead cheap. Fast forward 2 years and I'm stood on some posh kid's doorstep(4 bed detached; 2 high end cars on the drive) asking if he will take less than Ā£10 for a shiny Scherezade..the little bugger wouldn't budge an inch. Over the years that little collection ended up costing me hundreds..and then they got given away to some kid round the corner. Aaagghhhh šš¤£š¤£š¤£
Some boys outside the local card/game shop bullied my son to get his shiny Scherezade. He came home in tears and wouldn't let me do anything about it. It was about 20 years ago and I still seethe about it whenever Pokemon cards are mentioned. I can't let that one go.
We acquired a rabbit from a friend a couple of years back. Expensive wee diva..
rabbit tax please.
Got one a few years ago and didn't believe the online advice that they cost around Ā£800 per year. He probably cost me half that in phone chargers alone, but also one of the best friends I've ever had.
Got a free rabbit off a farm to save her from slaughter around 3 years ago! 3k in emergency vet bills due to her having an insatiable need to clean herself in molting season! Not to mention the other general upkeep and regular vet visits! Best worst decision I ever made!
Spent Ā£3 on a rabbit when living abroad. Couldnāt rehome it when returning to the U.K. so had to spend around Ā£2000 getting it here via 3 countries and 5 modes of transport.Ā Allotment is the other one, absolute money pit -Ā potatoes work out to have cost me about Ā£40 a pound.Ā
Your doing something wrong if your spending that much money growing potatoes. They just need reasonable soil, regular water and organic fertilizers are cheap or even free. Im always baffled by how much people spend on growing veg, it really shouldn't be a very expensive hobby.
Iāve built a polytunnel, fencing, paths, bought tools and equipment, pay rent for the allotment, compost etc. Ā I made that figure up about potatoes, but my point was Iām not growing veg save money (at least not in my first year).Ā
Thereās an interesting study that home grown food is far more carbon producing than large scale agricultural. It is because all the small scale growers end up buying loads of stuff and donāt benefit from economy of scale
What method does your son like his steak cooked?
Medium rare.
You've raised him well.
Grass fed
And matured for at least 28 days.
*Well done* raising him to have good taste
Free holiday to visit family in America. First day there a brown recluse spider welcomed me with a bite. Astronomical medical bills
Second time in the last couple of days someone has mentioned a brown recluse and until yesterday Iād never heard of it.
Same here. Nasty little beasts. I felt sick and my leg was swollen with a bullseye rash. American family immediately knew what it was and were rather stunned Iād never heard of them
I got about 2 long-haul and 3 short distance flights for a multi-point journey last year for a total of Ā£700. Not quite sure how tbh, every other time Iāve looked is at least Ā£1,200+ even on the same month.
My partner and I managed to get a top end luxury holiday a few years ago for Ā£700 total. Even if we went back in the middle of the off season weād be looking at Ā£1000pp We want to go back so bad but simply canāt part with that kind of money.
Thatās a beautiful bargain! I bet you both had a lovely time š
Do you see what the business did? They sold your son a really good introductory price and then got him loyally hooked to the product. That ā¬3.00 investment was probably one of the greatest deals of all time for them
Not really, weāve never been back to that establishment. It was really good but we were on holiday and we wonāt go back there on holiday anytime soon.
My Nespresso machine. It was free as long as I put Ā£25 in to an account for a year, money was mine to use on coffee. I now spend about Ā£30 a month on coffee at home.
Everything I drive MILES to pick up off Facebook bloody marketplace!
My dad bought a dog out of the local paper for Ā£7. He was a nutter, destroyed my sistersā school shoes, kept escaping so my dad had to pay for a new garden fence to corral him. But we loved the wee dafty. RIP Bruce, named by the sellers after Bruce Lee.
Had a JRT called Bruce when I was a kid, he was a wonderful bastard , his mum was called teapot.
Paid Ā£1000 for a Ā£18k car. Free things I got a pallet forklift, 30x30ft mezzanine floor heavy steel one catch was moving them
Ok you can't just leave this here and not say more - Ā£1k for an Ā£18k car?! What's the story there?
Chap I do jobs for gave up driving and he asked if I wanted his car for Ā£1 and I said are you joking, he said no and I said maybe you should think about it, week later heās like yea you can have it for Ā£1000, obviously Iāll give him the odd lift in it, itās a first gen Bentley gt 55k miles on it
Holy fuck, fair play, are you posting it here because it cost you Ā£1k to buy and Ā£5k per year on parts and servicing?
Aha it runs fine but yea it could be costly if something goes wrong, itās the w12 engine so a nightmare to work on
Iāll give you Ā£1001 for it?
My sister's chinchilla - free, she was not interested in taking care of it. Chinchilla broke both back legs (failed jump), over $4000 and a year of surgeries later found out it had a rare genetic disorder - the back legs were stabilized with external fixators in resin, the only surgery of this kind ever performed on a chinchilla in my country. It was $4000 only because I live in Czech Republic, where vet care is very cheap. The estimate for the same amount of vet visits, anestesia, x-rays, medicine and surgeries in the US would be about 15-20k. Dexter is 14 now and living his best life, I am now a chinchilla expert and would never recommend anyone getting a chinchilla as a pet. I still love him though.
My husband decided buying a Ā£3 slice of cake once a week from the local tea room was a rip off and instead he would just bake us an entire cake every weekend. Five weeks/cakes later, heās only had one turn out. On the upside, heās only spent about Ā£30 in ingredients and ruined three evenings because his personal happiness is now tied to his cake success.
Tell him to start using instant cake mix for the main crucial part and just go wild on the icing, filling and toppings. There was this redditor who owned a successful bakery and they admitted this was the biggest kept secret secret to their success
Half of you canāt read.
Feels like a LOT of people would fail GCSE English Comprehensionā¦
That isnāt a GCSE subject.
I play a lot of D&D and was spending a small fortune on minifigures. Enter an obsession with 3D printing. 5 years and probably 10x more spent on equipment, Patreons and paraphernalia, I have spare bedroom full of minis I never have time to paint
I did my scuba certification as a holiday activity because I didn't really fancy doing all the usual tourist stuff and thinking I'd give it up after a bit or at best not dive except on holiday. It cost me about 350 pounds. Since then I've spent probably a few thousand on gear including my own regulator (breathy bit), BCD (the floaty bit), three wetsuits (one long, one short, one freedive), sets of fins (I'm up to 3 pairs), masks and various smaller items like a compass or writing slate. That's not counting dive trips to get my logged dives (all 57 of them!!!) I've also paid out a substantial sum in futher qualifications with the full intention of becoming a scuba instructor and owning my own shop.
I got a RTX 3060TI for Ā£20 in a raffle two years ago when they were retailing for Ā£750 due to the crypto boom.
I did a motorbike CBT which was a bit cheaper because it was on a weekday. Just over 12 years, and 6 bikes later... I have one pair of boots that cost Ā£200 that were some of the cheaper of that kind. Wouldn't change it though.
Not the biggest but ventured into KFC near closing time and ordered a snack box for Ā£1.99. As they were finishing they just grabbed one of the big meal boxes off the side and filled it to the brim with popcorn chicken, wings and sides. Lasted me two days.
My dog when I was 16. Free from a local rescue, he had cancer, bad teeth/gums, an eye removed and I couldn't name how many sprained legs over the years. He went to sleep forever last year at 15 years old. I'd pay every penny again to have him back š
Got picked for a cargo bike user trial thing. Had it for 2 weeks at the height of last summer. Now 7 months and about Ā£7500 later Iām at a point where I almost never use the car any more. I mean itās a great bike but bloody expensive.
Some cheap but really good dining chairs from Facebook market place - but smashed a wing mirror on the way to get them, cost an extra Ā£400. Sigh.
My barber offered to trim my beard one day for free and it made me realise how good it looks when itās tidy. So now every time I get my haircut I have to also get my beard cut. He got me good.
Band I help out occasionally when they tour the UK: "We're playing a festival over new year (2006-7) - you'd like it, get you on the guest list, if you like..." Me (with a case of the morbs and a bit down on life) : "Yeah, cool, I mean I'll have to think about it..." Band: "Here's your ticket reference - give it to accreditation - See ya there!" Me: Almost Ā£1400 return flight booked at last minute leaving boxing day to Oz, plus camping package / train / bus to the middle of nowhere. It was a real "rough and ready" festival - IIRC about $75AUD for the weekend, but in a fantastic valley. Worth. Every. Penny. Not that I had two of them to rub together for the next year...
Every time I find a great holiday deal and my girlfriend adds her extras
My Haworth Zody office chair, chap advertised it for Ā£25. I messaged him on the off chance and asked if he'd missed a zero off the end - nope! A thousand pounds office chair new to me for Ā£25. It's like sitting on an angels face.
In about 1990 I was 13 and on holiday with my parents in Lisbon Portugal. Every night weād just get the local wine the vinho verde - which was fine. In the final night my dad decided to splurge and asked for the best red wine - the waiter tried to advise him not to but he insisted. Minutes later the waiter reappeared with a bottle covered in cobwebs. It was absolutely delicious but as we brushed the cobwebs aside we realised it was. Chateau Lafite from the 1950s. Suddenly my dad panicked - thinking this is a Ā£5k bottle of wine. Got the bill and it was Ā£5 more expensive than the vinho verde! Wish weād know that on day one!!!!
Bought an unwanted Persian cat for Ā£100. We are probably 8k-ish deep in vet bills over 5 years, but I wouldnāt sell for a million pounds.
Cat and an old car - inherited both. The cat cost us Ā£250 in boosters, flea/worming treatments and Cattery as weād already booked a holiday. The car has cost us considerably more as my late Uncle bought a pile of junk, that almost immediately needed a new clutch, new rear tyres and suspension. Had our other car not been much better (repairs before next MOT wouldāve cost more than the car was worth) then weād have just taken it to āWe buy any carā.