Feeling the pandemic pinch? Welcome to the ... Nouveau u Pauvre

No cappuccinos. Dyeing your own hair. And ditching the Zara habit. LINDA KELSEY heralds the new breed of women who are counting the pennies - and proud of it

As I stroll past pavement cafes on my morning walk — the ones I never used to think twice about stopping at for a cappuccino and slice of cake — I do a small calculation: £5.50 for coffee and a hunk of lemon drizzle or 36p for a Nespresso pod back home and hold the cake (which is a habit I’m better off without).

Gosh, £5.14 saved and it’s still only 9am. how much more might I not spend by the end of the day in my new world of life watching the pennies?

Vast numbers of us have been hit economically by Covid-19 — and even the lucky few who haven’t been are worrying about what’s going to come next, and, how, even if they do emerge relatively unscathed from the winter ahead, they will pay for the inevitable tax rises.

so even for the still-comfortable, there has been a shift in attitude; a move to embrace the idea of saving rather than spending. It’s almost become a badge of honour to be the nouveau pauvre.

While I do feel somewhat wistful about my extravagant, pre-Covid lifestyle, I have to say that posh pauperdom seems to be garnering a certain cachet among the middle classes. If the nouveau riche were notorious — and got sneered at — for flashing the cash, the nouveau pauvre are proving equally upfront about their diminished status. There’s even an element of competition about it.

Take my pal Jenny, who decided to let her roots grow out during lockdown and has now determined never to go back to colouring her hair again.

Certainly there’s the relief of not having to spend hours and fortunes at the hairdresser every three weeks, but there’s a show- offy element, too. she reckons she’s saved £1,500 per annum on roots and highlights alone — a sum she’s magnanimously donating to her furloughed daughter.

I decided to match her savings by getting my partner to home-dye my hair and asking my brother-in-law, a retired businessman who happens to be a dab hand with the scissors, to cut it for me.

‘so who are you donating it to?’ she asked, smugly. ‘ The leaky roof,’ I countered, thus gaining some brownie points because I couldn’t actually afford to give away the money saved.

I’m not oblivious to the real poverty inflicted by lockdown on those who were already stretched to the max. To be nouveau pauvre is merely a blow to our status, not a genuine affliction. The

fact that I own a Nespresso machine — and my own home — is proof enough that I remain one of the privileged few. It’s not exactly being on the breadline when you can still afford to buy your sourdough loaf every day, fresh from the bakery.

On the other hand, as I’ve discovered, it’s a wake-up call for those of us who have never had to count the pennies until now.

It was a week before lockdown when my partner, an osteopath, took the decision to stop working. What he was most worried about was catching the virus from a patient and then passing it on to other patients or to me, as I am on the ‘vulnerable’ spectrum.

Although in his 60s, he had no intention of retiring for a good many years, partly because he so enjoys his work, but also because he doesn’t yet have a sufficient pension pot for retirement.

As a freelance already drawing my pension and with some savings, my income was less affected by less work. But his went straight to zero. It was time for a big rethink. Looking at fixed costs — gas, electricity, insurance, the car, all the usual stuff — there was little I could do. But I noted my variable costs, other than for food, were entirely extraneous, rather than essential, and cost me about the same amount.

Being a Zara-holic, for example, is more expensive than you might think. Just because you can buy a pretty blouse for £ 25 doesn’t mean that doesn’t soon mount up when you’re buying stuff there

every week. I was shocked to discover I was spending probably a grand a year at Zara alone. And that’s before counting up all the other, rather more expensive, fashion stores I buy from.

After going through my cupboards, I had to admit that, except for some holey socks and frayed underwear replacements, I could live off the clothes I’ve got for the next three years without looking like a tramp.

While some have simply swapped shopping in person for shopping online — turning ordering on Amazon into almost a full-time occupation — I’ve banned myself from buying more than one item a

fortnight. Instead of compulsively purchasing new books, I am working my way through the still-unread ones on my bookshelves. I’ve even started rereading some old favourites.

Pre- lockdown, we thought nothing of spending £ 35 on Sunday brunch out — an overpriced breakfast which boiled down to little more than scrambled eggs and roasted tomatoes and a couple of cups of coffee each in a trendy location.

Dinner at a good restaurant could easily cost £80 for two, and rarely did a week go by without us going to one. the theatre, my big weakness, every couple of weeks, was costing me at least £1,500 a year. ubers were less a luxury than a convenience. We had already booked holidays to Canada and Spain this summer. Both cancelled.

At £50 a session, we could no longer afford the weekly personal Pilates trainer. Or the cleaner. And I had to ditch the manis and pedis and regular facials.

All these had to go in any case because of lockdown. What’s happened now, though, is that the changes that were enforced by lockdown have become entrenched. to the point where I’m finding it harder and harder to spend on anything other than real essentials. A kind of financial paralysis has set in.

What I’ve come to appreciate is that while indiscriminate spending is fun when you have money to burn, living without those luxuries doesn’t reduce the quality of your life. Once you stop relying on the fripperies and the pricey pastimes, which are at best distractions, what’s important comes sharply into focus.

When I was mourning the closure of theatres, I found myself leafing nostalgically through all the programmes I’d collected over the past two years and I realised I’d enjoyed fewer than half the plays I’d seen. If I do go back to the theatre at some point in the future, I’ll certainly have learned to pick my plays more carefully. GOING

to restaurants was always less about the food than enjoying the company of friends. those friends haven’t gone away — they can come round to my place instead.

the pricey steaks on the barbecue and the champagne just because there’s always something to celebrate, even if it’s only a tuesday, may no longer be on offer, but I’m making delicious aubergine curries and home-baking cakes instead. So far no one has complained.

A lot of my entertaining in the past owed a lot to pricey ingredients of the kind suggested by fashionable cookbooks. Like fresh crab pasta as a starter or wild salmon rather than farmed.

But being a generous hostess, I’m discovering, is about the effort you put in — not the rarity of the mushrooms or the vintage of the wine.

With the easing of lockdown, seeing more of family is what has made my heart soar and what makes the lifting of restrictions feel so precious. It’s certainly not the returned possibility of a weekend break at a luxury country retreat or a Michelinstarred dining experience.

these days, to get my culture fix, I go online. I do virtual reality tours of galleries; I attend fascinating online lectures.

I’ve splurged precisely three times on non- essentials: a pedicure because a back injury means I can’t reach my talonedtoes; a dental hygiene treatment because bright teeth and a big smile are one of my few remaining physical assets as I age; and a half-price dress in the Rixo sale (though I felt sick with guilt as I unwrapped it).

I’m fully aware that the economy must be saved. Eat Out to Help Out was a great idea of dishy Rishi’s, even if I didn’t make use of it. We need our theatres not to be dark because culture matters and our theatre is the best in the world. Shops need to be bought from because they create jobs across manufacturing, distribution and retail, and people need jobs.

But I may not be the woman to get the economy back on its feet. Even as my partner has returned to part-time work and, like lockdown, our financial straits are somewhat easing, I seem to have become not just poor, but parsimonious.

As a fully paid-up member of the nouveau pauvre, I’m finding, to my surprise, that life with less loot is no less fulfilling.