Never buy new cars for personal use (get enough new ones from company or get chauffeured). Cannot see value as they depreciate the moment you leave the forecourt and many a times you keep having to take back to get rid of niggly things (so have been told by many who do) before you start enjoying the car.

Do like to visit top hotels and restaurants - however do get concerned with what is classed as fine dining nowadays. Traditional hotels and similar establishments are of preference. They can also useful to catch up with people who have the ability to affect our daily lives. Family also tend to enjoy it as they probably would never visit such places and thus provided them with a useful memory.

Tend to fly business class - cannot stand around waiting to board or exit. Also the leg room, attentive service, lounges, private space etc are worth it. On the rare occasions I have used trains, did not feel much point in traveling first class (though do expect it to be provided).

However on foreign personal visits, was taught by parents to use public transport as it is considered safest and open whereas private ones can lead you down the alley and ransom you. In other words if you were to get mugged or attacked, being in public has its advantages. Work travel is different in that a security detail is attached with chains of command and often that security can be military.

Medical treatment - although private medical care is a welcome and can save time, I always ensure that any practitioner treating me has an NHS background (for reassurance) and that they have not been thrown out for anything undue. Similarly there are a lot of things which involve a lot of bureaucracy and the threat of libel repercussions lead to practitioners unwilling to carry out a procedure in the UK - here with sufficient due diligence going abroad can be a useful option.

As for brands etc - could not give two hoots - whatever I purchase needs to be of good quality. As an old acquaintance once pointed out, a pair of jeans are still a pair of jeans whatever logo or tag they have on the rear end.

Shopping - will shop wherever I see fit, be it fresh vegetables from an open market supplied by a local producer or the farm yard itself (where the farmer just has an unmanned yard and tin box for you to leave your monies - eat your heart out unmanned amazon stores ), the discount retailers like Aldi and Lidl, for things like milk and eggs, Waitrose or M&S for their meals, Iceland for their novel items or the local butcher or fishmonger for a nice cut of Salmon. It all needs to fit my tastes and my definition of value and my understanding of quality.

Fuel in Cars - To me diesel is diesel and petrol is petrol, hence I will just fill up with the cheapest lot and if possible at the cheapest pump (have recently taken out a Costco membership for this). I do not really get all this supreme, power and other labels attached to fuel. I get the difference between a nice cut of steak but for fuel to move a car form A - B - is it not the same as giving a mule enough food to give them the energy to carry you from A - B or do they need the finest range so the mule does not squirm.

I've always been very allergic to car depreciation, although I do have a small extravagance, I treat my Focus to the highest octane petrol.

Separated at birth...

You’re right to not necessarily expect what you pay for.

When I was very young, I worked a year for a very reputable London wholesale and retail wine-merchants. Most of their retail business was supplying expensive wine to wealthy customers with accounts, and supplying lower quality altar wine to churches, cathedrals, monasteries, and convents.

The wine was bottled from casks then kept in bins, mostly unlabelled until required. They had a huge stock of labels, both their own, and from the producers and agents.

I noticed that when an order was placed, there was never a stock shortage. I learned that was because their range of wines was only limited by their range of labels.

When an order was received, the cellar manager had bottles suitably labelled. Magically, different wines at different prices could come from the same bin/cask. If necessary, more than one wine would be mixed. That normally only happened if two similar wines were ordered together so couldn’t taste exactly the same, but occasionally there was no stock of a required wine so had to be created from what they had.

By all accounts, their wine was considered to be of a very high quality and there were never complaints. It was a great place to work, and would have loved to have stayed, but the stingy building society manager wasn’t impressed with my salary when I applied for a mortgage for my first house at 23.

So I had to move on, having learnt never to invest in wine without seriously expert knowledge. It's an industry like no other.

I found that article a little uncomfortable to read because both I, and my wife, lost the knack of spending as much as we could (some might say should) a long time ago. Buying stuff just bores me like nothing else.

We know we can’t take it with us, but when my wife’s artist sister died recently, she left her entire estate to Save the Children, and that seemed to be a perfect solution for the problem of having too much money. She had everything she wanted in her lifetime and her wealth is now being spent on those who have too little.

PS. I know I shouldn’t, but I do like new cars, it’s something about the smell and never having to suffer garages doing dodgy repairs. My excuse is that I keep them a long time – which also avoids the boring task of having to buy so often. (I know how repairs should be done after spending an oil-covered youth rebuilding old cars and motorbikes, but now too lazy to do repairs myself.)

I find it interesting reading these posts, how everybody here is relatively frugal, maybe one little extravagance, but thats about it. Maybe the reason we have to money to have a portfolio? My car is a 1996 Volvo estate. I dont swap it because I still enjoy driving it, so why waste money on a newer car? I dont do holidays, but I like to go out for the occasional meal with a friend. My one luxury which I guess I could live without, but dont want to is my truck, a 56 plate Mitsubishi L200. Yes I could have brought newer, but to me it's plenty good enough for driving through foot deep mud in farm gateways. (Still sorry I sold my old 1987 Landrover 90 though!)