Anyone else feeling the pinch a little at the moment?  I know the financial forecast is bleak just now but seriously – everywhere I turn there’s a price hike taking aim and firing at my measly, student-diseased bank balance.  My rent has increased, my fortnightly shop is more expensive and I put petrol in my boyfriend’s car the other week only to be utterly gobsmacked when I realised that £20 no longer buys even a quarter of a Renault Clio tank (and that was before we broke down on the way home from the Lake District and had to pay just shy of £150 to be rescued by the AA).  Friends?  This simply will not do!

I don’t really spend much time talking about personal finance issues on the blog these days, and to be honest, it’s a little bit intentional.  The internet of today is so utterly choked with money saving tips and advice that I’m really not sure I have a huge amount that’s new to add.  Don’t get me wrong – I remain completely devoted to living a beautiful life without breaking the bank, but let’s face it: there are only so many posts I can write about how great making batches of soup is, or which credit cards provide the best interest rate (did I ever even write about that in the first place!?) before I start sounding like a broken record.

Having said that, these barren fiscal times do call for some creative and ultra-frugal thinking.  And in a bid to regain some control amid the frenzy of price hikes, duty rises and spending cuts, I’m going back to the roots of personal finance.  I want to remind myself of the fundamentals of thrift, and ensure that I’m applying them every single day.  And I want anyone else who’s feeling the pinch to join in with me.  To start us off, here are twenty of my all-time favourite thrift-based principles.  Feel free to add some of your own in the comments.  I *really* don’t want to sound like he of the considerable forehead, but let’s face it guys, we’re all in this together…

FOOD

• Be supermarket-savvy and only take advantage of a great offer if you actually want or need to buy the thing in question.  As my very wise father once pointed out to me, a bargain is only a bargain if you were looking for the thing in the first place.
• Eradicate brand snobbery and buy as much value food and drink as you feel comfortable with.  I don’t buy value meat, eggs or dairy (cooped up hens make me feel very sad indeed) but everything else I consider fair game.  My cupboards boast an array of plain white packaging, and mighty proud I am of them too.
• Packed lunches rule the lunchtime roost, and will almost always taste nicer than anything that can be bought pre-made in a shop. Five minutes of preparation before bed and savings of anything up to £4 per day can be ours. One of the oldest, but most effective, tricks in the book.  Kerching!
• Batch cooking is amazing.  Make full use of any freezer space by loading it up with portions of home-cooked goodies: chilli, ratatouille, soup, yada yada yada…nutritious (hopefully), delicious and cheap cheap cheap!
• Skip going out for dinner and host your own version of Come Dine With Me instead.  Put in the effort now and you’ll reap the rewards in free slap-up meals in the coming months.

CLOTHES

• Use your friends’ wardrobes as opposed to buying new clothes.  ’New to you’ is just as effective as buying something, and you’ll get that added glow of cheap chic to boot.  If, however, you really must purchase…
• …always calculate price per wear (remember that?) on new clothes, and don’t break the bank for something you’ll only wear twice.  It’s all about the investment.
• Update your wardrobe on the cheap by shaking up your accessory collection.  Swap with a friend, raid your local charity shops or, if you simply must go high street, dive into the bargain bins.  The right piece of jewellery or a scarf in an eye-catching print will happily do the stylistic work of ten bits of clothing if you let them.

HOME

• Do as much of your laundry at 30 degrees as you can get away with.  No one smells enough to merit absurd temperatures, it’s a fact.
• Home-made birthday cards will excite and delight most people way more than anything Hallmark produces ever could.  Go get your Pritt Stick on!  Now!
• Become a scavenger.  Posh neighbourhoods can be great places to score nice furniture.  Note: only take something if it’s on the pavement and clearly earmarked for the binmen.  Otherwise you’re just thieving, and that’s really not cool.
• Keeping a spending diary or calendar and updating it honestly (that’s right, every single penny you spend) is a fantastic way to seriously monitor your finances and look at areas for potential savings.
• Become a cleaning product cynic and always ask Google whether a dab of humble vinegar will remedy your problem just as well as the £5 bottle of chemicals with the garish label promises to.

ENTERTAINMENT

• Quit the gym and jog/skip/cycle around your local park or neighbourhood instead.  You’ll see more of the world and save yourself fistfuls of cash.
• Block out all of your Wednesday evenings in favour of the cinema and find someone who wants to take advantage of the Orange 241 deal with you.
• Save cash on books and use the library instead.  Photocopy any pages (recipes, patterns etc) you feel you want to keep permanently.
• Take to the outdoors and, more specifically, the countryside.  The further away you are from the shops, the more physically impossible it becomes to spend money.  And if you work yourself hard enough, you’ll get fit at the same time.

SPIRIT

• Live mindfully and with intention and don’t spend money just for the sake of it.  Always quiz yourself as to whether you really need/want/can afford whatever thing or experience it is.
• Practice giving daily votes of thanks to the universe.  I have found that constantly reminding myself of all the things for which I’m grateful really helps me to want for less and appreciate what I already have more.
• Look at and really see the beauty in life that’s all around you – trees, animals, architecture, other people.  Your eyes are one of the most valuable attributes you have.  And what’s better?  You got ‘em for free.

Image above from Flickr – bies.

Hi friends, and welcome to a little three-part series I’m doing over the course of the next couple of weeks about something I like to call capsule wardrobing.  Here’s the premise:

Imagine your boss/teacher/other half calls and informs you of an unexpected trip to an unknown destination.  The details are few and far between, but you are advised to prepare for formal and informal activities both indoors and out, the latter in a variety of weather conditions.  You can only take one suitcase with you, but you must make sure that you have clothing to cover all eventualities in it.  You have five minutes to pack before your lift arrives to take you to your destination.  What do you do?

Turn to your capsule wardrobe, that’s what.

The capsule wardrobe is a wardrobe that works.  It’s not necessarily a minimalist wardrobe, although it certainly can be if minimalism is your thing.  The idea behind the capsule wardrobe is that our clothes should always be prepared for the unexpected, whether that’s a three-day business trip, an impromtu fortnight of heavy snow or a black-tie ball you’re invited to at short notice.  The capsule wardrobe is one that can take unforseen circumstances in its stride, leaving you free to concentrate on other, much more important things.  It’s organised, it’s accessible and it’s full of clothes that fit, are in good condition and make you feel great, so that in the event that you do find yourself having to pack a suitcase in a rush, you can happily avoid sartorial meltdown.

I’ve split the series into three parts: Part 1 I’ve called Laying the Foundations; Part 2 is Construction and Part 3 is A Word on Shopping.  Please do feel free to join in with any extra ideas you have, or comments you’d like to make – I’m forever on the quest to perfect my own capsule wardrobe, so I genuinely would love to hear your thoughts!

And so to Part 1…

Laying the Foundations

Go to your wardrobe.  Open the doors and look inside.  What’s your first reaction?

My first reaction to my wardrobe is always ‘bloody hell, that’s a lot of stuff’.  Always, without fail.  I make no secret of the fact that I, like many other women (and a sizeable number of men I should add), have a bit of a thing for clothes.  To me, fashion is a form of art, and getting dressed in the morning has never, for as long as I can remember, been something I do without thinking.  I wish it was.  I wish I was content with two pairs of jeans, a handful of jumpers and a pair of sturdy walking boots.  But the fact is, I’m not.  I see what I wear as an expression of my personality, in the same sense as the books I read, the music I listen to and the films I watch.  And try as I might (and Lord I have tried), I simply don’t feel like ‘me’ when I’m not wearing my kind of clothes.  Does that make sense?

But although I have a deep-set appreciation and fondness for clothes, I also have a deep-set hatred for wardrobes that are full to bursting with badly-made, ill-fitting clothes that do nothing other than hog valuable space and make us feel guilty.  Fashion may be a form of art, but it also has a practical purpose to serve, and the wardrobe that doesn’t fulfil that practical function in an effortless way is, to my mind at least, more of a burden than any kind of pleasure.  It also desperately, DESPERATELY needs to be capsulized.

But how do you do it?

You can’t build a capsule wardrobe unless you have some idea of what you already have.  In a nutshell, this means that you’re going to have to take everything out of your wardrobe, and I mean everything.  All those tops that are screwed up into little balls and stuffed at the back; all of the broken shoes that have found their way to the bottom and all of the underwear that’s escaped down the back of your chest of drawers and is now languishing, unworn and forgotten about.  If the idea of completely gutting your wardrobe in one fell swoop makes you feel even moderately queasy, spread the task out over the course of a few evenings.  With the UK weather scene being what it currently is, there’s never been a better time for Brits to block out a few evenings during the week for tackling big projects like this one.  Put some good music on, get some snacks and a tea supply together and enjoy yourself.  You can also split the work up into sections: dresses and skirts one night, for example, accessories and shoes another.

Once you’ve emptied your wardrobe, or the part of it you’re working on, lay your clothes out in a place where you can see them.  The bed is a good place for this, as are the living room floor and the kitchen table.  Make sure the lighting is decent - you don’t want poor visibility talking you into making bad decisions.  Now comes the fun part: deciding what to keep and what to throw away.  This can be a difficult process, so here are some tips I came up with to try and make it a bit easier:

• Look for ways to save things.  If you don’t like the colour of something, consider dyeing it.  If you dislike the buttons, consider lopping them off and sewing new ones on.  You can also change hemlines, add piping, lace or ribbons.  A whole world of possibilities awakens when you open your eyes to alterations, and the good news is that you don’t have to be a sewing goddess to do a decent job.
• Don’t keep what you won’t wear.  If you haven’t worn something for over a year, what are the chances you’re ever going to put it on again?  Be realistic, and try to remember that the test of the capsule wardrobe is wearability.  Things you don’t wear fail that standard, so take the plunge and get rid.
• Having said that, if in doubt, err on the side of caution.  Don’t work yourself up into a frenzy of ruthlessness and discard absolutely everything you’re unsure about.  What’s trash to you one day might well be treasure another, so take your time, and only get rid of something if you’re absolutely sure you want to.
• Don’t be bullied by your wardrobe.  So something cost a fortune and you’re determined not to let it get away despite the fact that it repulses you and you’d rather never see it again.  My advice in this situation is to get rid, and get rid fast.  We’ve all made unwise purchasing decisions in the past.  The best thing to do is to learn from our mistakes and resolve not to do it again, not to put the thing back in the wardrobe because we’re scared of admitting we wasted our money.  And the chances are, if an item genuinely is worth a bit of cash, someone on eBay will be interested in buying it from you.
• Don’t give in to emotional pressure.  Of course your best friend might be offended if you get rid of the bracelet she gave you, but does her temporary irritation really outweigh your having to carry the thing, whatever it is, around with you until the world implodes?  The short answer is no.  Tell your loved ones you’re on a mission to downsize your life, and remind them that getting rid of their material gifts doesn’t mean you love or appreciate them any less.  It might also discourage them from buying you more crap in the future, which will save them money.  Remind them of that as well, and everyone’s a winner.

As you work your way through your clothing collection, make a note of anything you think is missing.  This will come in handy when you come to build your capsule wardrobe at stage 2.  Pay particular attention to essentials and practicalities – base layers such as vests and tights and useful items such as jeans and plain cardigans.  The key to the capsule wardrobe is layering, so the greater your quotient of mix and match basics, the more effective your capsule wardrobe will be.  Keep a note also of anything that needs repaired or dry-cleaned (my nemesis is always broken-heeled shoes).  The idea behind the capsule wardrobe is that everything in it is ready to be worn at short notice, so all those pesky repairs you’ve been putting off for months really need to be sorted pre-capsulizing.

Once you’ve fought your way through your wardrobe and decided what to keep and what to shed, you’ve completed Stage 1 – Congratulations!  Now you’re ready for Stage 2 - constructing your capsule wardrobe.  Join me next week to find out how…

Image above from Flickr – purplemattfish.

Just like every other avid thrifter out there, I’m always on the alert for new ways to experiment with frugal ideas and practices, my long-term goal being the realisation of my ridiculously over-ambitious design for life.  FYI, my design for life currently includes living in a custom-built and entirely energy efficient home with solar panels, my own windmill, a cluster of chickens and a black and white dappled cow named Jeeves whom I milk every day with my own fair hands.  Oh, and I get to read, write, bake cakes and eat soup.  All the time.

For now though, while I’m confined to a tenement flat in the centre of Edinburgh, chickens and cows aren’t really all that practicable.  And my student budget isn’t likely to be too happy if I start ripping up the building and having floor to ceiling insulation installed.  Even if it will pay for itself by way of cheap energy bills.  No, the road to realising my vision is a very long one, with many an inconvenient obstacle in the way.  Better, I think, to start with something a little more manageable and work my way up slowly.  Enter amateur horticultural experimentation, or rather, learning how to grow vegetables.  On a minor scale.  Think more along the lines of window boxes than fields and you’re there.

You’re all well aware (or you should be, given that I’ve bashed on about it for months now) of my love for farm box schemes.  Having my own little crate of nature delivered straight to the door has given every second Thursday a totally new meaning for me, and I’m still rushing home like a kid so I can see what’s arrived.  But as wonderful as all that is, I often do wish that I wasn’t having to rely on someone else to grow my bounty for me.  I want to do it myself!  I want to get my hands dirty with the planting, I want to lovingly watching my garden grow and then, the best bit, I want to harvest my own crops while jumping around like an idiot.  That’s what it’s all about man.  True self-sufficiency!

Unfortunately, any attempts at gardening on my part in the past have proved remarkably disastrous.  The only thing I’ve ever managed to grow successfully was a sunflower for a school competition when I was about eight.  I’m also remarkably good at neglecting the few plants and flowers I do have – despite the fact that I walk past them every day it almost never occurs to me to water them.  Strange that my attitude should be such, because I’m not generally the forgetful type (if you except replying to text messages – horrendously forgetful when it comes to that).  No, it must be something about plants themselves.  Maybe I should switch to cacti.

Anyway, digressing as usual.  I might live in the middle of a city, I might have absolutely no garden space and no chance of getting my name anywhere near the top of one of Edinburgh’s mile-long allotment waiting lists, and I might be horrifically incompetent at anything even remotely green-fingered.  But that doesn’t mean I can’t try.  So (drumroll please) I’m going to plant myself a wee herb window box.  Toot toot!  I have tried this before and it did all end in tears, but I got those seeds free with a magazine so I’ve no one to blame but myself.  I’m not expecting it to be easy, and I do foresee a whole lot of huffing, puffing and a good bit of swearing.  But still.  If I can’t care for a few shoots of coriander I can kiss a fond goodbye to my chickens and cow plan.  And let’s not even think about children!

Progress report in due course!

Image above from Flickr – steve.wilde.

This is the cardigan I dyed at the weekend.

It used to be white.

I now anticipate sunny autumnal days when I look at it.

Plain and boring white buttons off…

…exciting, sailor-esque buttons, taken from an ancient skirt, on.

Instant new look (of course I’ll use the white buttons for something else).

Result!

Happy Tuesday x

A few weeks ago I posted about the trip my boyfriend and I are taking to the States in August. We’ve since spent A LOT of time planning and discussing it; working out which route to take, the best places to stay and the cheapest car rental deals. So given the fact that we’re on a budget, I thought I’d share a few thoughts on my experience of travel planning thus far, and how I think it can be done with money-saving credentials in mind…

Make a spreadsheet

It sounds geeky, it looks geeky, it is geeky. But making a spreadsheet to keep track of your plans is also really, really helpful. Because we’re taking flights/hiring cars/staying in many different hostels/motels/campsites we simply have to be ultra-organised, there’s no getting round it. There’ll be nothing worse than a last minute panic that we’ve forgotton a vital reference number or we don’t know what the remaining balance to be paid for hostel X is – it’s simply not worth the stress. So we’ve created a little (or not so little, try freakishly detailed) spreadsheet where we’re keeping all of our information. As a little plug for Google, I’d highly recommend using their documents function for this – they’re so handy, and can be set up so as to allow both Laurence and I to view and edit them at the same time. And because everything is kept online, we don’t need to worry about being at a particular computer in order to access it. Ah the internet, genius, isn’t it?

Talk to people

People. They really can be fountains of knowledge. Who’d have thought it?! Since we decided to do this trip we’ve been telling everyone and his uncle about it, including family members, friends, blog readers and fellow tweeters. And we’ve actually managed to amass lots of useful information and advice in doing so. A guy I lived with last year who has done a similar trip before has imparted lots of handy hints and tips; followers of this blog have generously offered up advice on all sorts of things and Twitter has been a really useful resource too. In fact, it was the response to a throwaway tweet from Laurence that led us to a car rental company that has proved significantly cheaper than any of those churned up by a Google search. It’s good to talk!

Read LOTS

It’s such an obvious point, but there really is no better way to soak up information about the places you’re visiting and the things you might do once you’re there than to get reading. I’ve been using a mixture of resources for my pre-trip reading, borrowing a few books from the library as well as seeking out a number of good websites. The internet is rammed full of travel literature, some of which can be extremely useful, and some of which can be absolute dross. My favourite sites are Wikitravel, Trip Advisor (thanks Kat!) and Lonely Planet, which has lots of useful forum posts, normally written by people who know what they’re talking about, but sometimes written by people who a) don’t seem to have a clue and b) think they have some divine right to tell you how you should be planning your trip. Ignore the latter, make use of the former, and all will be well and good!

Consider emergency cash

I’m possibly being overly cynical about it, but having made so many different bookings (hostels, day trips, car hire, flights), the chances that one of them might fall through at the last minute seem pretty high. So we’ve decided to take some extra dollars with us, by way of an emergency fund, to cover unexpected costs such as pricey motels or extra gas we hadn’t accounted for. I guess it also just makes sense to be a bit generous with our financial estimations – holidays have a habit of always costing more money than you think they might at the start (or perhaps that’s just me being overly optimistic when I set my budgets!). If all goes to plan, we’ll bring the money back (or we might blow it on an extravagant meal in LA on our last night), but if something goes wrong along the way, we won’t be stuck for options.

Plan ahead

Travelling is an expensive business, even if you throw everything you’ve ever learned about thrift at it. I’m trying to do as much planning and saving as I can at the moment so as to minimise the inevitable assault on my savings in a few weeks’ time. Practically speaking, I’ve sold a few things on Ebay, I’m collecting jumble for a carboot sale at the end of the month, and I’ve also instigated quite a strict weekly budget to keep daily outlays to a minimum. As for actually buying things for the holiday, I’ve started early, and second-hand. I don’t need much, but nothing fills me with angst more than the thought of a manic last-dash rush along Princes Street the day before we go, when the thrill of pre-holiday excitement can lead to perilous impulse purchases, making the return to home (and the bump back to earth), all the more painful. I won’t be able to do that this year anyway – I’m finishing my job FOREVER on the Friday, going to a wedding on the Saturday and flying at 08.20 on the Sunday – no time to shop, hurrah!

Keep the dream in mind

Finally, as with all things, planning a trip can become very stressful, very easily. When you’re reading terrible reviews of a million different hostels, flight search engines are shredding your patience, and your bank balance, and you can’t see the wood from the trees, it’s often incredibly easy to forget why on earth you decided to put yourself through it. I’ve found that it pays to take five minutes out in these situations, make some tea or grab a cold beer, sit down and just think about the big picture, and what you’re most excited about. In my case, I think about my first glimpse of the Empire State Building, or a huge slice of Manhattan pizza, or dipping my toes in the crystal clear surf of an LA beach. As soon as I reflect on it in this way, the stress clouds of planning and preparing scuttle away to reveal my reasons for going, clear as they were on the day we first had the idea. No one ever said dream-chasing was fun, or easy. It can be difficult, draining and intensely frustrating at times as well. But I’m quickly discovering that that’s par for the course. It’s also one good reason why it’s so bloody satisfying when you finally catch them!

Image above from Flickr – Paraflyer.