Do you have the thrift gene?
Jane Thynne uses her savings expertise to see how the rich and famous have devised their own mean machine
It was the news that the Girl Guides were to resurrect their Thrift badge that did it. Thrift is now officially a life skill. In an age of instant obsolescence and conspicuous consumption, when your mobile phone is out of date before you’ve even left the shop, the ethic of make do and mend is back. When I began compiling Tips for Meanies it was intended as an affectionate celebration of the inventive, ingenious virtue of frugality. Yet as I collected my nuggets of thrifty wisdom, I was surprised to discover that thrift is not the preserve of a previous generation, nor is it limited to those who really need to save money. Indeed, it’s often the richest who are most adept at saving and the proof comes in the form of the eternally intriguing figure – the celebrity meanie. Everyone has heard of a celebrity who embodies the combination of wealth and thrift. Perhaps the most legendary was the billionaire John Paul Getty who installed a payphone in the hall of his Tudor mansion, Sutton Place, for the benefit of guests. This attention to economic priorities is followed by Warren Buffett, one time richest man in the world, who still lives in the Omaha house he bought in 1958, and drives himself to work every day. In the UK, some, but not all, members of the Royal family have inherited the thrift gene. One of the most revealing Royal photographs of recent years was that of the Queen and the Duke of Edinburgh having their cornflakes served in humble Tupperware containers. Equally telling were the shots of the Queen greeting dignitaries in a Buckingham Palace Audience Room heated by a two-bar electric heater. The Prince of Wales, one of our most celebrated meanies who gained his reputation for his frugality with the toothpaste tube, is happy to sport a patched jacket. Wardrobe economy also comes easily to Princess Anne, recently seen in a coat which made its debut 29 years ago, and a yellow hat going strong after three decades. Thrift is not, of course, limited to clothes. Cherie Blair snapped up a Winnie the Pooh alarm clock for 99p on eBay. Trawling the internet has netted Mrs Blair some impressive bargains, including digital bathroom scales for £1.64. So what that the former Prime Minister’s wife owns a Grade I-listed house in Buckinghamshire for which she paid a reported £5.75million, as part of a £15million property portfolio? The innate love of a hefty saving trumps all that. She recently collected £10 on eBay for selling a bookplate autographed by her husband. Sometimes, discovering that a celebrity is a closet meanie comes as reassurance. It is consoling to find Diana Fox Carney, wife of the governor of the Bank of England, writing about the joys of reusing gift wrap and excoriating individually wrapped tea bags on her ecoproductsthatwork. com green blog. The idea that the wife of the man in charge of the nation’s money has “actively sought out organic, natural and resource-saving products and tried to limit my overall consumption” is a welcome corrective to the world of bankers’ bonuses. It makes you long to eavesdrop on Mrs Carney’s conversations during those formal banking dinners. Most celebrity meanies are keen to share their wisdom. John Humphrys, the BBC presenter, measures out the number of cups of water he needs before boiling his kettle. “Why would you want to stand around waiting for two pints of water to boil when you want a cup?” he asks. “It’s just idiotic! Stupid! It’s a waste of time, it’s a waste of water and it’s a waste of electricity.” Yet while ingenuity and money-saving go hand in hand, Meanies should be aware of the thin line between thrift and stinginess. A cautionary case is Rod Stewart, who happily lists the many accusations of miserliness against him, including from his son Sean who called him “very cheap” in court, and from fellow rocker Ronnie Wood, who described him as “tighter than two coats of paint”. One of Stewart’s greatest worries while on tour was the cost of international phone calls. In Rod: The Autobiography, Stewart passes on a tip he devised. “The most cunning ruse was to pull a girl who was prepared to take you home to her parents’ house and then avail yourself of the telephonic apparatus for a call to the girlfriend in London at no cost to you personally.” Though admirably thrifty, it is equally hard to empathise with the multimillionaire pop star Sting, who is currently offering holidaymakers the “therapeutic” chance to “roll up your sleeves” and help harvest his olives and grapes in Tuscany for £200 a day. You pay him. For most people, judging by the letters I have received, thrift is more than a virtue, it is a passion. A thrifty mindset is about more than finding unusual uses for loo rolls and silica sachets; it is an attitude to life itself. It may be in fashion, as life-hacking websites and SuperScrimpers television shows attest, but a horror of waste is hard-wired in the DNA. Thrift involves lateral thinking, ingenuity, and a determination to think outside the box. It is Everyman’s way to help both the planet and our pockets. ‘Tips For Meanies: Thrifty Wisdom From The Oldie’ (Vintage £6.99) is available to order from Telegraph Books at £6.99 + £1.95 p&p. Call 0844 871 1515 or visit books. telegraph.co.uk Share your thrift tips on Twitter @TelegraphLife #thrifty