Secrets of posh penny-pinchers
From turning off lights to growing your own veg, Debora Robertson explains that shabby certainly is chic when you’re posh and thrifty
In these straitened times, we can all use a few tips on how to live well on a budget. In our hour of need, this month’s society magazine, Tatler, steps up with a celebration of posh frugality, and a round-up of the Sloaniest things to be found in that unexpectedly enticing haven, Poundland.
In the spirit of looking after the pennies so the Picassos will take care of themselves, Tatler suggests stocking up on wool for darning, because “New clothes are terribly vulgar,” and a head torch, “Essential for drunken midnight strolls around your estate, to make sure you don’t trip over the alpacas”. Of course, for the truly thrifty, you could use alpaca wool for darning, after an initial outlay of about £1,000 per beast.
No one can really be surprised. The truly posh have always been parsimonious, sometimes out of necessity (you have to sell a lot of cream teas for that new roof). But there’s often an air of Marieantoinettery about it, a recreational flirting with penury, in a world where shabby certainly is chic and the worst possible crime you can commit is flaunting the vulgarity of the new, the shiny, and the obviously expensive.
In October, some eyebrows were raised when Lady Somerleyton lost an art deco pendant – a fat emerald, surrounded by diamonds – in a Lowestoft supermarket. The shock wasn’t so much that she would wear such sparklers to do the big shop, but that the big shop in question was at Morrisons. But it’s horribly middle-class to fangirl over Waitrose and turn your nose up at those emporia lower down the food chain. Bagging a bargain is as alluring as bagging a brace of pheasants.
What the posh find irresistible about Aldi, Lidl and Poundland is the hunt. When you aren’t forced by necessity to trail about for bargains, there is a certain glee to landing many of the staples of civilised life in such unexpected surroundings. You can stock up on everything from Manuka honey to steak, fizz, smoked salmon and gin (a £10 bottle of Aldi’s own was recently judged one of the best in the world) and still have change for a polo pony. What’s not to love?
Here’s what every truly posh person knows about saving money.
Never throw anything away
It’s imperative to have a drawer, a cupboard, possibly a wing, dedicated to random lengths of string, bits of bubble wrap, old envelopes, lengths of slightly tatty ribbon, jars of paper clips, ironed wrapping paper, and a ball made from decades’ worth of rubber bands. Essentially, all you need to endow any gift you give with the insouciant air of “you shouldn’t have bothered”.
Buy expensive clothes once, wear them to death
Of course it’s fine to run around in grandpa’s moth-eaten cashmere. If holes verge on the indecent, darning is madly fashionable, you can even go on courses. There’s a very chic darning workshop you can sign up for in Turin. Handy for shrouds.
Embrace the cold
When American heiress Nancy Lancaster married into English landed gentry in the Twenties, she was horrified at the near-hogarthian squalor even the finest families lived in. She boggled at our freezing houses and their lack of bathrooms: “Even at big houses, there were only two baths to a floor. You’d see breadlines outside of the doors, with people in their dressing gowns, carrying their sponge bags, waiting for a bath”. While we may have smartened up a bit, there’s still a sense that it’s a sign of weakness to care too much about such things. Even the Queen feels no shame in welcoming the great and the good into the audience room at Buckingham Palace, heated by a two bar electric fire. She is said to wander about switching off lights. For true poshness, eschew central heating, get a jumper, an electric blanket or a hot water bottle, and definitely get dogs – they’re the blue-blooded radiators of choice.
Grow your own
Because, obviously, you have an orchard, a vegetable garden and lovely old retainers (or possibly that sincere but slightly dim cousin) to tend them. If you worked it out, each organic lettuce probably costs a tenner, but it feels thrifty and that’s what counts.
No flash cars
In the country, who cares what you drive, so long as you have some kind of Landrover. This can be falling apart. In town, go everywhere by bike.
Don’t be bothered about food
In a 2014 interview, Baroness Rawlings gave advice on how to run a stately home on a budget. She advised never serving plated food – allowing guests to serve themselves means they get exactly as much as they want so there’s no waste. She also admitted a penchant for Melba toast, to be served on Friday and Saturday nights, with the crusts reserved to make soldiers for eggs. Of course, the Queen, with her handy Tupperware containers of cornflakes and Special K, sets a fine and thrifty breakfast example to us all.