The Daily Telegraph - Saturday - Money
Helena Morrissey ‘Why I scrimp and save’
From darning socks to spending spreadsheets – my family’s days of extravagance are gone
With mortgage arrears at a seven-year high and record numbers of people resorting to food banks, many British families are struggling to cover the cost of essentials. Others are more fortunate, but still have to tighten our belts; only the super-rich are immune from the cost of living crisis gripping the nation.
With a large number of children, many fixed outgoings, and no end in sight to the country’s “stagflation” malaise, my family has become increasingly creative to live within our means. Our money mindset has shifted: how can we make things last longer, avoid waste and ensure we don’t overpay for anything? We want to live as well as we can, for less.
My financially irresponsible student days ( and resulting overdraft) taught me the hard way that realistic budgeting is vital. Those big bills – food, heating, electricity, taxes, transport, mortgage or rent payments and, in our case, school and university fees – all need to be paid for, and a spreadsheet helps avoid nasty surprises. I update it monthly to have the best chance of averting or coping with any looming shortfall. We then leave no stone unturned in our collective efforts to save on discretionary spending. Some hacks are obvious. I regularly go through online bank statements, checking all those direct debits are for services we are actually using – and need. Subscriptions are easy to sign up to, but often hard to cancel. I’ll persevere through all the methods companies use to keep us paying – search “how to cancel” if you hit a brick wall. Someone somewhere will have worked it out and triumphantly shared their success. Small amounts add up; that £6.99 monthly charge for Quizlet, which my daughter no longer uses post-GCSEs equates to £152 of pretax annual income.
DIY is another source of savings – these days, I do most of the family’s haircuts (no training, but years of practice), my husband Richard has set up a low- cost home “gym” (some kettlebells and a yoga mat), and our two employed daughters who live at home (to save rent) take the previous night’s leftovers for lunch. I pick flowers from the garden to brighten up the house, contrasting with our peak days of extravagance when weekly arrangements were delivered by a florist.
Mostly, we try to cut back rather than cut out – the savings still mount up while those (small) indulgences are appreciated more. Our weekly Sunday night takeaways are now fortnightly. We did have a two-week summer holiday, but rented a house and self-catered, with a few meals out and picnics on the beach.
I now space out my own hair appointments every eight weeks (previously six, meaning two fewer visits a year) and keep the costs down by having highlights every other time. No one seems to have noticed or perhaps they’re too polite to say anything.
I still go to Pilates classes – which I think are important for my mental as well as physical well-being – but buy the most cost-effective bulk package. And having indulged in too many designer clothes over three decades working in the City, my 2023 new year’s resolution was to buy no new clothes at all. So far so good; if the retail urge becomes strong, I make do with a new lipstick.
I haven’t tried renting outfits yet, but my six daughters and I are similarly sized and ring the changes by sharing (or raiding) each other’s wardrobes. They like to “thrift”, at charity shops and online for “pre-loved” bargains. We’ve been clearing out our existing wardrobes, making sure we don’t forget what we already own, and donating barely-worn pieces to those same charity shops. Richard has gone through his vast book collection and is selling those that someone else might enjoy through Amazon.
We’re also embracing “make do and mend”. I stitch moth holes, hems and missing buttons and take items that don’t quite fit or need more expert repairs to a local tailor, who works miracles. Our “dry clean only” clothes used to be cleaned too frequently; it’s better for clothes, the environment and our wallets to use wet wipes for small marks, a stain removal spray for larger ones, and only fully dryclean occasionally.
In a world where everyone wears trainers and heel bars are becoming scarce, I’ve tracked down an amazing cobbler in Camden, the Classic Shoe Repair Company. They restore shabby heels to as-good-as-new, and stitch handles back onto much-loved handbags.
Richard is playing a big role in driving our food bill down, mainly through careful shopping. Minimal waste, clever recipes and good-value foods like tinned wild red salmon – delicious, nutritious and a bargain compared with many other sources of protein. We also eat a lot of eggs. He makes yoghurt and almond milk each week, which he enjoys doing and says saves a lot. And, after many years of resistance due to “hassle” and data tracking concerns, Richard has finally downloaded the Tesco Clubcard app to make even more savings.
But some of our money-saving efforts have been unsuccessful; the replanted vegetable garden has, to date, produced one plate of carrots, three courgettes, two cucumbers and a single bowl of strawberries. It’s fun trying to grow our own, but not something we can rely on. And my attempt to take up knitting again has been pathetic – so far, just one romper suit for my latest grandchild, born in June.
Having saved several hundreds of pounds over the past few months, we recently had a significant setback: the fridge, freezer and dishwasher all packed up in the same week. We know we are still among the luckiest ones – but that spreadsheet now has a large “contingency” item.
‘Mostly, we try to cut back rather than cut out – and those (small) indulgences are appreciated more’