Christmas Hampers and Respect for Your Earnings

Some people here in the UK join Christmas hamper schemes. Now as far as I can make out this means they pay a company a certain amount of money each month and at Christmas they get a hamper filled with goodies and some store vouchers. Apparently people who subscribe to these types of schemes are the poorer amongst us. Recently one such company went under. They didn’t ring fence the funds and so al of these people have lost the money they paid over the year. The company has been slated in the press for taking these poor people’s money and now, a loan company is targeting those affected and offering them loans for up to 177% interest.

The reaction of the public to this whole thing has largely been on the victims’ side. I beg to differ. Some of the figures being bandied around, that some of these people have been paying each month tells me they are most certainly not poor. The fact that they would regularly pay a company large sums of money in return for a hamper of goods you could get from most supermarkets and some vouchers tells me at best, they are incredibly uninformed of modern ways re: finances and at worst they are stupid.

People who work for a living, and work hard for a living must respect the fruits of their labours. They must respect them enough the give a flying fart what they do with their hard earned cash. Lord knows that after the taxman has finished with you there’s not much left, so why would you hand over any part of your earnings to a company that is not regulated as a financial institution, in exchange for a hamper?

Unless I’ve got it all terribly wrong, a hamper and some goods from high street shops could be purchased if these people had put their money into a savings account. Why did they choose to give their money to anyone else but a bank?

People, like I said above, respect your hard work and its fruits enough to pay attention to who you give your money to and what you get in return and most importantly, for the level of risk in relation to your potential earnings. Start being a lot smarter.