Letter: Short of money? Spend wisely (From Lancashire Telegraph)

Life is always about living to your means, however much/little you have to live on.

If you can't manage this basic task then you will struggle.

I think in broad terms a great many people fall into two types: spenders or savers. Sometimes a spender has what I believe is referred to as an ‘lbm’ – light-bulb moment – and they change polarity.

There are times when it’s possible to live within your means, times when it’s exceedingly hard to do so; and periods when it’s impossible to balance income and expenditure.

The increase in the popularity of the National Lottery seems a paradox during hard times but when people are struggling to make ends meet the allure of winning a large amount of the Lottery is bound to be appealing.

Unfortunately, all one has to do is to look at the statistics in relation to the prizes to realise that ‘It’s unlikely to be you’. The problem here is that people seem to be unable, or choose to ignore, two probabilities. The probability of someone winning the Jackpot is exceedingly high, but the probability of you winning the Jackpot is exceedingly low.

In addition I wonder just how many Lottery players are locked-in through selecting the same numbers each week and dare not cease playing in case the week after ‘their’ number come up.

Mind you, the Lottery has funded a third of the cost of the Olympics and I believe that the operator, Camelot, makes a healthy contribution to teachers’ pensions in Ontario.

It’s ironic. Here in the UK public-sector pensions are being re-modelled on the basis of pay more and get less while the operator of the National Lottery is now in the hands of a Canadian public-sector pension fund. Me thinks the Canadians are far smarter than the leaders of our political parties, and our trade unions.

Living within your means (or Basic Economics) needs to be a big part of the national cirriculum. As does Domestic science, learning about nutrition and how to make nourishing, cheap meals from raw ingredients from the market from scratch, and not opening packets and tins at a whim. I'm sure they were on the agenda when I went to school in the late 60's, early 70's.

Yes but what about my rights? what about my entitlements? Why should I save when others can spend? What would Jezza say?