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.

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

I’ve already spoken about how well and truly spoiled I was over my birthday weekend, but I thought I’d share a couple of presents I received, just because a) they are very ‘me’ and b) they seriously kick some thrifty ass…

A fellow tea-loving friend (this is the friend who gives amazing presents – remember the tea cup ring and the heart tent from Friday Five a while back?) gave me one of these eco-cups from Urban Outfitters.  It’s *amazing*.  You basically make your own hot beverage at home and then take it out with you, saving you money on buying take-out from a coffee shop.  Or if you do frequent a shop, you can take it with you and have your drink made in your own cup, sometimes for a discount, thus saving you some cash, and also giving the planet some light relief, one cardboard take-out cup at a time.  This will be perfect for frosty Winter walks into uni next year – it’s almost enough to make me want to start studying!

This is one of the cutest home-made cards I’ve ever been given, from another friend.  You maybe can’t see it that well in a photo, but the ‘icing’ is actually a piece of white fabric that’s been folded in such a way that it looks like perfectly piped buttercream – isn’t that incredible?  The case is made from some perforated paper, finished with a cute little ribbon and a splash of glitter.  And don’t overlook the strawberry on top!  This is the kind of card that brings a flutter to my heart.  I absolutely love it.

But this has to be the fairest gift of all.  It’s a re-make of the Aardvark Manifesto from the Keep Calm Gallery (if you haven’t visited the KCG yet, please do – it’s great), which I told Laurence I loved *months* ago, but then promptly forgot all about (you can see the original here).  He has actually constructed the entire thing himself, using similar fonts to the original, but tweaking some of the sayings so as to make it more personal to me.  So ‘play board games’ has replaced ‘play the kazoo’ and ‘read books and sew’ appears in lieu of ‘choose handmade’.  I am absolutely blown away by the time and the effort that he has put into this, all born of a desire to do something a little bit different and not to sell out and buy the original.  This gift epitomises my reasons for writing this blog – it’s about having a good life, not sacrificing the things you value and love, but doing that in a way that is kind to other people, to the planet, and to yourself.  It’s also about making the best possible use of your own skills wherever you can.  Needless to say I’ll be hanging my personalised manifesto in a very prominent place at home!

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.

The dress above (picture of which I pinched from the t’internet) is from Oasis. Cute, huh? To my surprise, and amazement, I found one in a charity shop on Saturday morning for a measly fiver. It was priced so cheaply because it was damaged – I’ve no idea what the previous owner was trying to do with it, but it had several holes around the waistband, a few frayed edges and it generally looked a bit shabby. I knew I’d have a bit of work to do to spruce it up, but at the time I thought a little hand stitching around the waist and a nice chunky belt to cover up any flaws would be all that was needed.

I got it home, tried it on and realised, to my profound dismay, that I had grossly underestimated the size of me in comparison with the size of the dress (hate it when that happens!). There was NO WAY this thing was zipping up – I would have had to get rid of both boobs and probably a few ribs as well before it would go anywhere. And forget about breathing after that! I was mad, especially because I almost never take anything away from a shop without trying it on first – Saturday was a freak exception which I put down to there being a crazy person with half the stock of the charity shop in the changing room - I couldn’t be bothered to wait.

In my dismal state I put the dress in a corner and settled down in my rocking chair to sulk for a while, whereupon I was suddenly slapped in the face by a colossal desire to be destructive. Before I knew it I was attacking this preppy pink delight with my sewing scissors, hacking the skirt from the waist, severing hundreds of tiny, and extremely tight, stitches and discarding reams of raspberry coloured thread left, right and centre…

A mess, granted.  But there were better times to come.  I quickly made a black waistband from three random scraps of elastic I had in my sewing box, gathered the newly hacked bottom half at the top, and then sewed the one to the other, exercising lots of patience so as to get as straight a line as I could.  Similar to the 20 minute skirt from a few weeks back…

Ta Da! Nice right? And it fits! I could happily eat three loaded platefuls of carbs in this thing and not feel constricted at all! I’m going to attempt this on Friday at the local Italian…

Oh, and I’ve still got this bit…

I’m not sure what to do with it though – it’s far too pretty to throw away, but if it’s ever to fit me it will need serious expansion work at the back. All suggestions welcome!