Tuesday April 26th, 2005
Watched ‘Skint’ on BBC1 for the first time last night. Sadly didn’t manage to catch all of this fly on the wall documentary series about people with serious money problems. The focus was on ‘cash converters’ - a modern version of a pawn shop.
It was eye opening. I freely admit that my MoneySaving focus is saving cash for those people ‘in the system’ not for those who are outside it. It did make me think ‘is there anything I can do?’ Yet it’s tough - getting the best deals, buying the best bargains, reducing your expenditure and being a savvy consumer is fine for people with some form of cash flow.
Yet once you’re outside of the system and have nothing coming in…. many of those techniques aren’t particularly helpful. Even at a raw level this website is self-evidentally only there to help those who are on the internet. All the others are information disenfranchised, even if they could use that info in the first place.
All this set me pondering. Currently there’s a site charity fund, which is becoming quite substantial, see the About Us section. I’ve often said I’d like to set up a specific charity to help. The two ideas I’ve previously mulled are ‘a debt education charity for children’ and ‘a helpline of helplines - a one stop shop which directs anyone to the right non-profit agency to help them’.
Any more ideas would be welcome. Just put them in the ‘This Site and Suggestions’ part of the Chat Forum.
