Biggest scam you didn’t know was a scam

You are so right! I moved from a large 5 bed house to a 3 bed flat when my husband died, and I love it. Getting rid of my excess cr*p when I moved was cathartic. (That said, I would have all the crap again if I could have my husband back).
I keep it clean in that I dust every now and again, and vacuum (🤣) once in a blue moon. I do have a thing about clean and hygienic bathrooms though, so I am still fastidious with those.

you must associate with ummmmm.......challenged people 😀

Golly, your experience is different to mine then.

I don't think the NHS is ever described or expected to be free? Anyone who thinks it is is hard of thinking, not scammed.

I meant to add to this post regarding the scam topic. I should have said Imo it's a scam when people believe the bigger & more prestigious the house the happier you will be. This in turn makes people strive for something that in the bigger picture doesn't make people happier therefore to my mind that's a scam 😁

Small-time scam: fabric softener. Not needed, doesn’t do anything.

Big-time scam: paying to exercise. Yonks ago before we had such sedentary lives we did physical jobs to earn a crust. Now many of us sit at a desk all day and pay someone to facilitate us keeping fit and strong.

Yes, it's a scam. We have more machinery to do work in the house so our standards are higher (well, mine aren't, don't mind a bit of dust and nor did late DH). It's also the double shift, the unpaid, invisible work women do that keeps the capitalist machine working. We should stop doing it.

That the NHS is free. It’s the biggest scam going. It is free at the point of delivery and we all pay for it. When something is “free@ it makes complaints more difficult than they should be. For decades now almost an entire population has put up with sub-optimal standards due to misplaced gratitude. Why should the public be grateful for a service for which they have paid?

the same applies to universal free lunches for children in reception and stage one. It was dreadful when my dc were little and we paid directly. I imagine it’s still dreadful but it’s free so complaints must be difficult.

"Kids are expensive" - no, they are not. Childcare is expensive, kids can cost very little money.

Disagree. Surely the astronomical childcare costs are precisely a prime illustration of kids costing a LOT of money. If you give up work or go very part time to save the costs of nursery, after school club and holiday club then the lost salary is also a huge expense directly resulting from having kids.

I agree that kids don't need constant new stuff and days out and multiple weekly activities but there is still stuff like school uniform, school trips, swimming lessons (essential life skill), birthdays, Christmas, taking them on holiday. It all adds up even if you keep it minimal. I won't go on about driving lessons and uni for older kids as these aren't essential costs but honestly, when you have kids surely it's a duty to help them have a decent start in life/life skills/minimal debt if you can possibly afford it.

I only have two kids. I used to wish I'd had more but now living through the uni years I'm really glad I stopped at two, for the above reasons.

There's the energy scam, while we have a larger population. Just think about the amount of KW that we use now compared to say the 80s/90s. We had 100w bulbs in each room. Now we have low energy devices and get scammed with standing charges.

Water scam, citizens shouldn't have to pay for water as long as we aren't wasteful or polluters.

Packaging scam, we don't want all these plastics, and all plastics can be recycled, if the infrastructure exists, and we have better guidelines and systems in place. But why let companies sell this crap in the first place.

Paint. We are daubing pollutants onto our walls in our home when a bit of lime wash would do and be healthier. Who cleans this pollution up?

Farming and agriculture scam, they pollute the waterways, and the plebs are left to clean it up.

Car scam, most people could use a small electrified vehicles for the majority of journeys, but there is no revenue to be made that way.

Toilet scam, the greenest toilet is probably shitting in a bucket of sawdust and throwing it on a compost pile. But even a task as simple as that has been made overly complicated with mandatory sewerage system rental.

Cleaning product scam, there's something like a brand in America for soda crystals, where it's repackaged into about 10 different products, one for the kitchen, one for the bathroom etc. When all you need is soda crystals. And nothing much else. There's a whole load of hazardous materials filling supermarket isles for no good reason.

Pharmaceutical scam, cheaper to load people up with blood thinners than have them live a healthier lifestyle.

Meat scam, it takes a silly amount of energy to feed and sustain an animal that you then eat. Why grow fields and fields of food for animals when we could just eat those foods or grow alternatives instead? And why subsidise meat and dairy instead of vegetables? Why can I buy a pack of sausages for the price of a pepper and an avocado?

Not a scam but we have been sold a “dream” and that reality just isn’t what we were sold. Bigger more expensive houses take more to clean, more to maintain, we need 2 incomes to service the mortgage and bills, less time so have to hire help which comes with more stress of course, kids in a zillion clubs keeping up with the Jones’ etc etc etc.

the simple life of yesteryear was hard work (my grandmother never owned even a washing machine, only a mangle) but I think people were less stressed despite money being a constant worry (think having to wait for the weekly wage packet to arrive home just to be able to afford to buy a loaf of bread to feed the dc, my mum, a simple bread and jam tea). My mum had one school shirt but my grandmother washed it daily drying on the line or in front of the coal stove then ironing it still damp with a coal heated iron to fully dry! Hard life but happy

When the children left home we downsized from a huge house with multiple bathrooms & land looked after by a gardener,to a top floor flat with a balcony overlooking the sea. We had some wonderful family times in our home but I wouldn't go back now if I was offered it for free. We love our cosy flat with beautiful grounds in a quiet neighbourhood. Large imposing houses are impressive but the work involved & the costs involved, no thanks. Lived it,loved it (at the time) wouldn't go back 😁

@Catza
Car payment plans are definitely a scam - you pay obscene amounts of money for the new car for three years and then you have to give it back

If there’s a scam in PCP, it’s surely that it’s designed to make you take out a new 3 or 4 year deal with a new car, again and again?

The scam of adult education - Open University and other unis preying on the vulnerable older people by advertising all over bus shelters, promising 'a new career in your 50s' if you do a degree. I think this should be banned and actually, not only banned, but looked into for mis-advertising, mis-selling, fraud, etc. Vulnerable people in difficulties are lead to believe that the world of employment will embrace them at 50 if they did a degree. These universities are no better than scammers like Tony Robbins selling courses or lectures of 'How to become a millionaire' by running a business from your bedroom.

I had a uni mate, a fellow student, I was a 20, doing masters, she was 39, doing a PhD (European politics or something similar at the LSE) because some idiot lecturer told her 'she will get a great job in Brussels with that, plus a great life style'. She emerged with her PhD in this idiotic subject at 43, with no work experience apart from baby sitting and dog walking (she had a modest British Council grant to indulge in this folly). Obviously nobody wanted to have anything to do with her, there were plenty of 25-year olds with the same PhDs, plus languages (she had none) and she is now working for a charity, saying daily that it was all a lie, that she wasted her best years on a hollow idea, did not have a relationship/children and she regrets it all massively. Her mum, a down-to-earth seamstress was telling her it was a scam, it was idiotic to embark on a mature student's journey, that she was wasting her life opportunities, but she did not believe her at the time. Now she says she wished she did.

@godmum56Tretinoin