My electrics blew out the other week. Completely.

The timing couldn’t have been worse, it was a busy Monday morning between important meetings and not only could I not get back online to attend said meetings, but nor could I boil the kettle to make myself a coffee with which to mentally deal with this drama.

Preliminary scoping of the problem suggested that only an emergency electrician could help me out here, so I got onto Google, did a few searches, deployed what I thought was a decent enough amount of due diligence and contacted the first one on my admittedly rushed list of contender soon-to-be superheroes.

He arrived 45 minutes later than promised and diagnosed the problem within seconds of pointing a technical looking thingy at my fuse box:

“Well, I’ve taken a look, and it looks quite a simple fix…”

My heart rose.

“…But it’ll basically cost you your left lung and a million pounds. So if you’re happy to just agree to all that right now and send over a 20% deposit along with all your remaining bags of Wotsits, I can get you back online within minutes, Ms Damselindistress”.

My heart sank.

I needed time to think.

So I thought about it.

And I thought that if that’s what it needed, if that was the only thing that would help me to carry on doing my essential tasks, then that’s what I’d just have to do, and worry about the cost later. I started to think about all the things I could sell to help fund this.

But then I observed a funny feeling inside, and considered the idea that this was all a bit quick and that this man might be a bit of a con artist.

And that he needed to leave immediately.

I channelled my inner Peggy Mitchell from Eastenders:

“GET OUT MA FLAT!”

Now clearly, it didn’t happen that way (although in hindsight I wish it had, as that would have been far more entertaining). In reality, it consisted of a sheepish call to my Dad for a second opinion and then politely, but also very socially awkwardly, asking the man to leave so that I could “process this”, and apologising for calling him out to effectively do nothing. So British of me.

“That’s fair enough, Mrs Kemzel. But everyone else is going to tell you the same thing. And they will charge you much more than we do.”

He left and – long story short – a more reputable electrician came a few days later and pretty much resolved the matter within minutes for a fraction of the initial quote. One 32nd of it, to be exact (I calculated it!). I then realised for certain, that I had been duped by the original guy. He had realised my knowledge of electrics barely extended beyond “switch it off and on again”, and tried to take advantage of that, to my – literal – expense. He created a problem that didn’t exist and threw jargon at me that he knew I wouldn’t understand enough to question, and I almost fell for it.

So what’s the point of this admittedly pretty boring story? Well, for one thing, it’s a lesson in realising that just because somebody might appear to be wearing the right badges and holding the right equipment, it doesn’t always make them trustworthy, or even right. It’s both hard and depressing to accept that there might be people out there with intentions that profit from the naivety of others, but it happens more often than we realise, and can have devastating, life-long impacts on vulnerable people.

I also thought more about our reliance on electricity and digital connection. There was a point during this encounter when I had my banking app open ready to depart with a considerable sum of money, not because I wanted to, but because I felt I needed to. And that’s a feeling that pretty much summarises most of our financial outgoings – bills, MOTs, boiler services, groceries (and I’m not talking about the fun stuff there, but the blendinthebackground omnipresents like celery and stock cubes) – all really boring stuff that doesn’t exactly excite us but is stuff we feel we need to pay out for because if we didn’t life would be a lot harder and we wouldn’t function.

Most of us sacrifice a lot of the stuff we want in order to pay for what we need. It’s a very lucky minority who don’t need to do that.

But I’d also argue that sometimes, we do actually need some of the things we want. We might be able to function without treating ourselves, but this life is too short and challenging to persistently do that without reprieve.

Being content and enjoying the limited time we have is also a need. Probably – definitely – the most important one of all, but when it comes to using money to buy things that can help us do this, it’s often the one we prioritise least, because we don’t get sent intimidating letters and our homes won’t fall down if we don’t do it.

I’m obviously not recommending that we all start spending our money irresponsibly, as that just makes things trickier in the long run, but I do think that sometimes we need to be as quick to consider handing over our cash for things that simply bring joy as we do for the more boring things that just support basic functionality.

Both because we want to, and because actually, sometimes we need to.

And if you still can’t convince yourself that it’s perfectly okay to treat yourself once in a while despite these tough economic times, then just pretend there’s a dodgy electrician in your home telling you that you should, and that if you don’t do it, your heart won’t function.