De la dette.

25th February 2011 -

Had a good day yesterday :) it was quite warm and so I decided to go to the park with my mum and my nephues for a while, I then walked to my friend Laurens house and spent some time with her and her boyfriend. We then got a lift with her mum where me and Lauren  met our other two friends Carley and Lauren and we went to Pizza Hut for a meal which was only a fiver! Bargain man! And then we walked around the Lakeside shopping center where we went to visit Laurens sister at the bedding shop where she works, there we found some very lovely smelling candles and so I got two of them :) a lavander one and a vanilla one, my dad tried eating them when I got home =/.

Well, I've finished my english essay and so I thought that I would post it on here to see what everyone thinks? It's kinda crap right now so I'm not really happy with it, same as my other piece of coursework I did :( but please let me know what you think..

It was such a memorable moment, standing there staring at it’s glistening beauty. I couldn’t believe how lucky I had become to find something as spectacular as this.. Now I know what your thinking “this must be the moment she fell in love” but your wrong! This is actually the moment I walked into Topshop and saw the pair of earrings I’d been wanting for months, and they were on the sale rack! Don’t pretend like you haven’t done it too! In fact us Brits go to extreme lengths to be able to keep ourselves in flashy clothes and extravagant lifestyles with over six million households in debt every year.

Although it’s not just families that have problems, teenagers are also getting sucked into debt at early ages, usually starting out with student loans, which leads to taking out other loans to pay it off. They then apply for credit cards to be able to pay for luxuries and so they’re seeing a future full of debt. The media has put this idea into peoples head that designer labels and huge houses are a must have at a young age, giving out the message that we should be living for today and not worrying until tomorrow. Now don’t get me wrong, I find shopping just as addictive as trying not to eat a bar of Galaxy chocolate, but there comes a time when you’ve managed to spend £200 between three shops when you have to say to yourself “I think that’s enough for one day”. This doesn’t mean that young people should lock themselves away in their rooms searching online for things they wish they could buy but can’t afford, it just means that it wouldn’t hurt to learn how to budget money from a young age.

Shops make offers so that people get sucked into thinking they are getting a bargain, and in some cases they are, but offers like ‘20% off’ usually happen in clothes shops when the clothes have recently been released into the shops, meaning that they are usually priced 20% higher than the normal selling price, so that when it comes in the sale, it’s actually the normal retail price, you’d be surprised at how many shops do this without us knowing. Although some sales are actually good, there’s been plenty of times that I’ve walked into a shop, seen a top that I’ve been after for months and realised that it’s on that beautiful rack with the sale sign above it. But then again this makes people think that something is worth buying just because it’s in the sale. If you look in your own wardrobe I’m sure you’d come across a top or a pair of jeans that still have the price tag on and has a sticker saying 50% off, but you’ve never worn it. This is because at the time you thought it was a great deal, but over time you’ve realised that the top isn’t really your style or the jeans don’t actually fit you properly. This is because most people walk into shops like Miss Selfridge or H&M and think that just because it’s from a rather high class and expensive shop, that the quality must be good. But actually, if you go into the shops and take a closer look, usually the clothes are old stock that they haven’t been able to sell because nobody wants it, or the products are damaged in some way.

Women are clichéd to be the shoppers of the family, but in fact that seems to be changing. It’s more commonly known for us women to be following our careers more now than ever before, therefore meaning that less men are able to get jobs, and are becoming the spenders, usually shopping for electricals, fancy ingredients and fashionable clothes, and even in some cases becoming the stay at home dad.

Although sometimes getting into debt can’t be helped, and so there are ways to fix this. These include being realistic and budgeting money by making a schedule for repaying debt or putting money aside each week for the future. Not borrowing money also helps, if there’s a party next weekend, instead of buying a new dress especially for the occasion, why not just look at the clothes collecting cobwebs in your own wardrobe, at least then when the electricity bill comes through the door you won’t have to borrow money to pay the bills. Another way to budget your money is if you really feel you need to go shopping, then take a set amount of money with you and leave any credit or bank cards at home, this way you can only spend the amount of money that you have on you.

So you see ladies, we may shop like there’s no tomorrow, we may queue up for hours to hit the January sales, we may also spend hours searching for the right pair of shoes, but at least when it comes to credit cards, loans and paying bills, we now know that the right thing to do is to budget money, be responsible for our payments and be sensible by putting money aside for the future. Well, it beats marrying old, rich guys right?