I guess it’s fair to say that most people starting a family and suddenly finding themselves facing mounting bills, have often gone into panic mode.

I know I have.

You are almost certainly having to fork out for the mortgage, council rates, gas and electricity bills, insurance, running the car, repairs and goodness knows what else! And we haven’t even considered the cost of food yet.

After the initial celebrations following the birth of your new arrival, you are suddenly faced with ever more expense as your offspring get older.

Of course they have to be clothed, fed and watered, and naturally they’re going to need toys and books,  but then further down the line, especially after they start school and make friends, you have to consider how you’re going to cater for children’s parties and the like!

Yikes – what do you do? What can you do?

Well my guest today SIOBHAN PIERCE faced exactly these kinds of problems and took steps to try to minimise the ever increasing costs.

Dealing first with the parties she looked at all options to minimise the costs so first off got hold of a few props with which to entertain the kids.

In fact what she came up with proved so popular that when the other mums arrived to collect their offspring at the end of the party, they were so impressed by her efforts that they asked if she could provide the same sort of  entertainment for their children’s parties – and so DOLLY DAY DREAM was born. 

This went on successfully for some years but as all the children got older, it became clear that something had to change so Siobhan decided to pack away her children’s entertainment props and move in a totally different direction.

So Siobhan moved into the corporate world.

Now having retired Siobhan has changed direction again, becoming a public speaker but is also a writer and poet.

A pretty full life, I would suggest!

Anyway you can listen again here to what Siobhan told me today about her incredible experiences:-

In the second hour of today’s programme we took a peak at what the future might hold for us and why you shouldn’t be surprised if in the not too distant future on line purchases made in your name are not made by you, but by your refrigerator or some other gadget you’ve installed!

At first sight this may appear to be a bit of a far fetched notion.

But is it really so far fetched?

The truth is that the ever increasingly complex world resulting from the interconnecting ability of devices in the home is beginning to blur how we live our lives.

Right now there are over 13 billion IoT connected devices and that number is likely to increase to 15 billion by 2028, and by 2030 it’s estimated that 15 to 20% of purchases will be made by machines.

You’d better just hope that the fridge won’t go mad and spend more than you can afford just to buy itself a luxury new motor or some new eye catching shelves.

All being well, I’ll see you again tomorrow – unless I’m replaced by some kind of AI automaton!
Scott