The Courier & Advertiser (Fife Edition)
I may be Scottish and tight but the idea of a ‘pre-spend’ needs to be handbagged
I wasn’t incurring debt for the right reasons
Having been somewhat preoccupied lately with the notion of conspicuous consumption, you can imagine that I was fascinated to learn only days ago of a whole new concept in that line: the “pre-spend”.
This is apparently a thing in the arcane world of upmarket shopping, designed to demonstrate your bona fides and presumably your ability to pay for future, more expensive purchases. Airy-fairy credit ratings obviously don’t cut it any more. Where is that Martin Lewis when you need him?
It works, I think, on the principle that before you get to buy the big, pricey item you have set your heart on, you have to fork out as much (or as close to it as possible) on a range of other items from the same maker/emporium. I’m sure that’s not what “paying it forward” is meant to mean, but this is apparently a way to establish your spending power as part of a general “purchase profile” and to “build luxury relationships”. Which kind of smacks of marrying for money and status where the pre-nup is paid in advance. Not where I come from, matey, but there you go. It’s kind of a “jam tomorrow” approach which has worked terribly well for Megan Markle, hasn’t it?
In my case, getting any kind of actual spend (let alone a pre-spend) out of me in the first place is like getting a whelk out of a shell, but the idea of having to justify my intentions by putting down a kind of deposit on something that isn’t a house or a car is just not right, as far as I’m concerned.
Exclusive and upscale handbags are apparently regarded as the premier objects of desire in this kind of universe. Cue the response of my inner Lady Bracknell. I have one handbag. It was a present and it came from TK Maxx. You can tell the kind of circles I move in and the type of view (dim does not quite begin to cover it) that I might just be taking of this kind of idiotic behaviour.
It’s a kind of credit where credit is due for those with more money than sense. I have little time for this sort of argument, partly because I was once told I could not take out a loan with a particular company because I had no debt. Apart from the mortgage shortfall from hell back in the days before that shady partnership Truss & Kwarteng Ltd (and boy, were they limited) queered that particular pitch even more thoroughly, I had in the past had loans and debts. Which, because I am Scottish and tight, I had paid off in full and on time which you would think might be a recommendation to any right-thinking finance house with an eye on getting a return on its money. But no.
Obviously, apart from the bricks and mortar within which I still currently dwell (I may be indecisive, but once my mind is made up, it is made up to last), I wasn’t taking out loans and incurring debt for the right reasons and the right things to give me the kind of cred necessary in such a difficult market. Nary a designer handbag to be seen. But you are, you should understand, reading the words of a woman who was eventually allowed to take out a four-figure bank loan to get her cat’s thyroid zapped.
Then again, the pre-spend thing might just explain some of the thinking of the aforementioned less than tight-laced Truss. You spend it first (even if you haven’t got it) to establish the “fact” that you can spend, then you plan to spend even more of what you haven’t got in order to pay for what you couldn’t afford in the first place. Makes about as much sense as what actually happened, which is frankly rather terrifying.
So we can all give three hearty British cheers at the news that La Liz has decided against trying to be prime minister again. As she didn’t manage to be much of one when she actually was one, I suspect few will be battering down her door begging her to serve another 49 days. As sell-by dates go, it’s a more manageable and realistic deadline for productive time in office than Ten Years To Save The West.
Although she does warn, darkly, that it is “never wise to rule anything out in politics”. Except relevant qualifications and basic ability to do the job, mayhap...
On the other hand, and with the sound and healthy principles of recycling ever at the forefront of my thinking, I spy a potential new political coalition. Maybe now that First Minister Humza Yousaf has announced that he is taking back his ball and has binned the vexed SNP accord with the Scottish Greens (and with it, one assumes, his own leadership prospects), Ms Truss could think about a possible plant-based link-up with that longerlasting and environmentally friendly lettuce again, that little gem with which her name and reign will forever be inextricably linked.
Green shoots? Putting the stock into laughing stock? You heard it here first...