Who to support

These days hardly a day goes by without someone asking you for a charity donation. It doesn’t matter whether you’re in town doing your shopping, or on the way to work or just opening your post, there will be some kind of an appeal to your better nature in the form of a request for you to donate to charity. Only this week we had the annual Children in Need extravaganza, which significantly added to the number of times I was asked to put my hand in my pocket for a good cause. Other requests come in the shape of Big Issue sellers, direct mailing appeals to ease human and animal suffering at home and abroad and the secretary at work asking you to sponsor her daughter’s sponsored swim to raise money for a library for disadvantaged children.

All these charities are, in their own unique way, valuable and worthy. Would that I could give generously to them all! One of my favourite charities is the Breast cancer charity which I support because it is a charity which gets women involved in a cause which affects more and more women. We have all heard of the hugely public Kylie Minogue and Caron Keating breast cancers and I doubt there is anyone reading this who hasn’t known of someone close (at least one person, but often more, unfortunately) fighting this disease.

The issue, I guess, in these so called credit crunch times, is which charities do you support and why? How much can you afford to donate? Do you like to have direct debits already set up or do you like to be able to donate on the spur of the moment when the mood takes you? Do you donate to whatever you choose, or do you make sure that any significant other is happy with you sending funds? (This is especially relevant when payments leave a joint bank account on a monthly basis and I heard of one serious falling out when the husband objected to the amount of money being sent each month about which he knew nothing.)

If you have a finite amount set aside for gifting, then how do you make sure that the money is sent to the charity which means the most to you? And it is not just about the donating of money. With the breast cancer charity, the pink ribbons and the ‘Race for Life’ phenomena mean that the charity and the cause becomes bigger and about more than money. If you don’t set aside money for gifting you can consider clothing made specially to raise funds for breast cancer research by companies such as Damart.

It’s about solidarity, of standing up and being counted and of feeling an active part in something that makes a difference. I know countless women who have dedicated hours and hours to these events and feel richer for having done so. Significant numbers of them have become a lot fitter. The few pounds they are poorer for having donated is frankly inconsequential compared to the reward; compared to the knowledge that they have been part of something so positive.

The high street is a thing of the past

My wife only shops online for clothes; the high street has become a thing of the past.
She has her favourite stores listed in her internet browser and an account set up for each of them.

Her details are all stored and the items get charged to her various accounts and gets sent usually next day delivery. She tries them on, and if she doesn’t like them, it’s straight in the returns envelope and it’s deducted off her account without a penny usually leaving her purse.

Sales online is like waving a red rag to a bull, she knows in advance what items she wants from her favourite catalogues and when it gets reduced she pounces.

She uses a cashback site every time she shops to save that little extra few pennies and it all adds up in the long run. She really does have armchair shopping down to a fine art.

Try things on

Women are, without doubt, buying more and more clothes online, but I don’t think there can ever be a substitute for a girlie shopping trip.

Buying clothes online does have its advantages, such as the many, many bargains to be found; the fact that you don’t have to deal with communal changing rooms and that you don’t even have to leave the house!

However, these advantages are far outweighed by the disappointment one faces when that eagerly-awaited package arrives and….. doesn’t fit!! Although using the internet for clothes shopping is convenient up to a point, it no longer seems so convenient when you take into account the fact that you can’t try the clothes on, and you have to wait around for them to arrive and then if they don’t fit, you have to wait around for someone to pick them up so you can return them!!

If you know exactly what size you need and aren’t bothered by the wait, then internet shopping is fine, but for those of us who prefer to ‘try before you buy’, and who see clothes shopping as a social activity, there really is no substitute for a good shopping trip.

Buying online is best!

Buying online has huge advantages to buying in the shops, there is no hassle of driving there (or even worse, getting the bus) only to find there is nothing you want anyway, or such a huge queue it’s not worth the effort. Online, you can browse through the stock, free of pushy sales assistants forcing the store card on you or telling you that top looks great on you when you later realise it really doesn’t. Impulse buys are much easier to avoid when you don’t have to make a snap decision.

There are downsides to online shopping. Shopping at home, alone, misses out on the fun social side of meeting up with friends for a coffee and a look round the shops. Additional postage fees are annoying, even more so when you have to spend up to a certain amount to get free postage (so you end up buying more than you intended to get the discount). The thrill of snapping up a bargain is gone too. It’s also harder to know if clothes will fit, although I have found that my size in a certain few high street shops always fits. Shopping online doesn’t have to mean buying from the shops official website though. Ebay is a great source of bargains, and is fun to bid on.

Engagement ring wisdom

Received wisdom in this case is contrary to common sense.

The choice should be between the nicest ring you can afford, and the best value ring you can find – that you can afford. Let me explain….

Any purchase these days can be made more sensibly by using the internet as your tool of choice. The high street is the final part of any purchase, not the first.

So, if you research well, understand what it is you want (style, size etc) then play off all suppliers against each over until you have what is likely to be the best possible price.

Failing this, the next best thing is to be in Hatton Garden as early as is humanly possible on a Monday morning. Legend has it that Jewish jewellers find it very unlucky to miss the first potential sale of the week – and are therefore more likely to give you a good deal.

This is probably as reliable as the received wisdom (see above). So stick to the Webinet.