If you are in the market for a new outfit, be it for work, a wedding or (if you are an optimist) the summer, then by jove you’re in luck. There are some good fashion deals and discounts out there at the moment, from supermarket fashion all the way up to the high end stuff.

Here are five that have caught my eye this week. The discounts range from 20% to 25%, so there are some savings to be made – and some pretty dresses to be had.

20% off everything at Phase Eight

The Phase Eight deals are always popular when I post them here – partly, I think, because everyone is stocking up on pretty dresses for the coming wedding season! Anyway, right now you can get 20% off anything and everything on the Phase Eight website. No code needed – just click through. Expiry date unknown.

20% off 170 Oasis dresses

This one is pretty much what it says on the tin: go to this section of the Oasis website, to get 20% off selected dresses. There are 170 dresses from which to choose, ranging from wedding guest outfits to smartypants workwear. The dresses in the picture above are all discounted Oasis dresses.  At the checkout, enter the code 20MAYDRESS. Expiry date unknown.

20% off orders at Liberty

One for the label mavens! The actual deal is £30 off orders off £150 or more, when you shop at the Liberty website - but let’s face it, if you’re shopping for clothes at Liberty, you’ll be spending more than that. Also, this deal covers everything on the website, not just fashion. At the checkout, enter the code SPRING13. This deal expires 21 May 2013.

24% off everything at Dorothy Perkins

Save 24% on full-price items at Dorothy Perkins. No code needed – just click through here to the DP website. This deal expires today though (Wednesday 22 May 2013), so you’ll have to be quick.

25% off TU Clothing at Sainsburys

I’ve written before now about how I rate the TU clothing range at Sainsburys, particularly the baby clothes. Every now and then they discount everything in-store by 25% – and the latest discount has just rolled around.  There is 25% off everything TU from now until Monday 27 May 2013. You can find your nearest TU stockist here.

 Happy twirling!

Recently, however, my hand was forced:

I dropped a full egg carton while putting the shopping away, and two of the eggs cracked. Grrrr! Dinner was already on the go, but I needed to use up those broken eggs before they turned. Fortunately this gave me the perfect opportunity to bake Grandma’s Wonderful Spice Cake.

I’d been hanging onto this all-American recipe. It was sent in by Miss Thrifty reader Hillary, after she read my post about making your own buttermilk. Hillary is also my friend Jessica’s mom, which is how I know that this cake is a revered family favourite.

What also drew me to this recipe was that it only uses two eggs and, somehow, less butter and sugar than the various Nigella cake recipes that I have been salivating over lately. As cake recipes go, it’s fairly simple – and, like a lot of simple recipes, is utterly moreish. I knew this one wouldn’t stay in the cake tin for long…

I chickened out with the egg white icing, and added freshly squeezed lemon juice to icing sugar instead. for a topping with some bite. But I like the way that this recipe uses up all the egg: no spare gloopy egg white hanging around here.

This was the result:

Thank you Hillary!

The cake was baked and iced at around midnight, when the rest of my household was tucked up in bed, so I hung out on the sofa with a dainty dessert fork, tucking in. This cake tastes just like its name suggests it should: I want to write “warm and warming”, which looks silly on the page, but hopefully you get the idea.

Making Grandma’s Wonderful Spice Cake reminded me how much I enjoyed baking and cakes in general, so I have signed up to the local branch of an organisation called The Clandestine Cake Club. Its members meet at a secret location every month, and everyone brings a homemade cake along. Then everyone TROUGHS. That is my understanding, anyway. I haven’t been to a meeting yet, but the next one is looming and I am planning to take Grandma’s Wonderful Spice Cake along. I shall report back…

Have you taken a look at Compare My Spend yet? It’s the brand spanking new phone app – although you can use it on your computer, too – which analyses your spending habits, compares them to the spending habits of other people like you, and suggests areas for improvement.

I posted about Compare My Spend a couple of weeks ago, and had some good feedback from thrifty readers who loved the concept and were planning to check out this free app.

So the nice people at Compare My Spend have come up with another good idea: a competition, exclusive to Miss Thrifty readers, to win vouchers for the supermarket of your choice:

1st Prize: £40 supermarket voucher

2nd Prize: £20 supermarket voucher

3rd Prize: £10 supermarket voucher

To enter, all you have to do is give Compare My Spend a whirl and leave a comment below, noting how the app has changed your spending habits or priorities, or given you food for thought.

Perhaps you were shocked to discover that you outspend your peers in a certain category, or you have determined to cut back on  your spending in a particular area? Perhaps you are thinking about rebooting your budget entirely, or perhaps you were pleased to discover that your lifestyle is relatively frugal? Whatever the outcome, I’d like to hear about it.

The closing date is 5 pm on Monday 27 May 2013, and the competition is open to all UK residents aged 18 or over. The three winners will be selected by the Compare My Spend team.

So what are you waiting for? When you have a few minutes to spare, give Compare My Spend a go and let me know in the comments what you took away from it. I’ll warn you in advance: the results can be striking!

I wish you all the best of luck.

UPDATE: Deadline now extended until 5 pm on Monday 27 May 2013 – so if you haven’t entered already, it isn’t too late. Chop chop!

[Compare My Spend]

Psst! A PiP Studio bedding sale went live on ACHICA this morning, with discounts of up to 45% on PiP Studio bedlinen sets, duvet covers, pillowcases, cushions and more. You can shop the sale here.

The PiP Studio stuff is so pretty. It also has a cult following. Last time ACHICA ran a PiP Studio sale, I posted about it although I wasn’t sure how it would go down – it isn’t the cheapest bedlinen! But it turned out to be super-popular.

If you are new to PiP Studio: it’s like Cath Kidston, but louder and not quite so Enid Blyton.

If you are new to ACHICA: it’s a membership site, offering flash sales and discounts on luxury lifestyle products. You have to sign up to see the prices and to buy.

The latest PiP Studio bedding sale is set to finish in the early hours of the morning on Wednesday 8 April 2013. So you still have time to get in there, but be warned: at the time of writing, on Monday morning, some of the sale items have already sold out.

P.S. If you like the PiP Studio stuff, but it’s still too expensive even when it’s discounted, I’ll say it again: check out the vintage bedding range at BHS! Similar designs, a fraction of the price – and currently on sale.

[ACHICA - PiP Studio Sale]

We were completely spoilt, of course. There is much to be said for good food…

Good beaches…

Good weather…

…And good company!

With days like these, who needs spa breaks?

As you may have seen, the collapsed camera chain Jessops has been taken over by Peter Jones of Dragons’ Den fame. Recently there has been plenty of publicity about some of the closed branches opening up again, but I would like to draw your attention to some good discount deals on the Jessops Photo website.

The relaunched website focuses on photo products, rather than camera products. Think prints, canvas wall art, calendars, photo books and the like.

Right now, if you register on the site you will get a voucher code for 40 free 6″ x 4″ prints, and £10 off a large photo book.

That’s not all: place an order before 6 May 2013, and enter the code REGISTER33 at the checkout for a 33% discount. (The discount doesn’t include delivery, and can’t be used in conjunction with any other offer.)

I’ll be testing this out: I have missed our local Jessops shop since it closed, because I thought that for quality, its one-hour print processing service was better than any of the other places in town. When I wanted to order a bunch of prints for Christmas presents, I looked online for a good service but came unstuck: Snapfish does some great offers but all that photo storage and sharing faff puts me off, and the delivery prices for some of the other sites were exorbitant.

The Jessops delivery charge is a flat fee of £2.25. It isn’t the cheapest – Snapfish delivery charges start at £0.00 for 250+ prints, going up to £1.99 for 51-249 prints – but is a fraction of some of the other services I looked at.

[Jessops Photo]

Image credit: State Library & Archives of Florida.

Marilyn Stowe is the senior partner at Stowe Family Law LLP, is one of the country’s best known divorce lawyers and is also known to viewers as the resident legal expert on ITV This Morning. Her guide to divorce, Divorce & Splitting Up: Advice From a Top Divorce Lawyer has become an Amazon bestseller since being published as a Kindle book earlier this year. 

Why am I telling you about it? Well, should you or a loved one need it, you can get the  Stowe Family Law LLP book FREE from now until 23:59 on Friday 3 May 2013. Divorce is expensive, but this book is filled with tips for saving money and avoiding costly pitfalls. There are also worksheets, FAQs and checklists.

Disclosure time: despite being undivorced, I already know this book well because I do a fair amount of work with Stowe Family Law LLP in my day job. Frankly I am happy to have the opportunity to recommend Divorce & Splitting Up, because it has made quite the splash and helped many readers since it was published in January. (You can read the Amazon reviews here.)

By the way, I don’t know if you know this, but you don’t have to have a Kindle device to read Kindle books. Amazon has developed Kindle reading apps for PCs, iPads and other tablets, iPhones and Android phones. The reading apps are FREE, and you can download them here.  At any one time there is always a good selection of free novels to download. If you love the older classics, you are in luck because they are out of copyright and are all available to download for nothing. 

I can’t fit many books into my small bag, so I use the Kindle for iPhone app a lot when I am out and about.

More about Marilyn Stowe and Stowe Family Law LLP: Marilyn Stowe has more than 30 years’ experience as a family law and is the founder of Stowe Family Law LLP, which is the UK’s largest specialist family law firm. It has offices in Harrogate, Leeds, Hale, London and Wilmslow.

[Amazon.co.uk - Divorce & Splitting Up: Advice From a Top Divorce Lawyer]

If you are trying to save money AND you are a right nosy parker, come closer: I want to show you a fancy new app called Compare My Spend.

It takes your spending habits, then compares them to the average spending habits of other people like you, highlighting areas for improvement. You can also get the background stats for each category, along with tips for spending less.  

Disclosure time: some of those tips were written by me. The very nice financial whizzes behind  Compare My Spend contacted me towards the end of last year and asked if I would contribute. I’m so happy to see that the app is finally finished and is now in the iTunes store, where it is free (hurrah!) and is getting deservedly good reviews. It is a really smart tool – especially if, like me, you are as nosy as Mrs Mangel interested to see how your own finely-tuned budgeting compares to the “norm”.

This free app is like a personal finance version of keeping up with the Joneses – except that you want to be scoring less than your neighbours, instead of more.

The comparison data has been drawn from reams and reams of official government stats, which go into an extraordinary level of detail. However if  you are in possession of a working finger and a working knowledge of how your household budget is split, the app is easy enough to use. Also, if you don’t have a smartphone, you can use the website version of the app. Let’s take a look…

You begin by telling Compare My Spend how old you are, where you live, the size of your income and the size of your family. This information allows the app to compare your expenditure to the average expenditure for people in your position.

Then you tell the app how much you spend in each of its categories, by moving the arrow up and down with your finger. If the arrow stays green, you are spending less than the average in this area; blue, you are smack bang in the middle of “normal”; red, you are spending more than the average and could be making savings somewhere.

You can also press the More Info button for additional information about the category, and UK spending habits.

After you have told the app how much you spend in each of the categories, it brings up your results, along with some pointers and tips for improvement.

Handy, huh?

As you may surmise from the above screengrab, with all its lovely big green bubbles, a frugal lifestyle makes you a total swot at this. But when you are used to living frugally, it’s easy to lose perspective. I was interested to see how far below the norm my spending (or lack of it) fell.

So my average peer spends £318 a month on entertainment and holidays? Really? That’s more than £10 a day!

Ah, that is more like it!

And look at that. SWOT! I can see, at a glance, how my charity shop and eBay habits are – quite literally – paying off.

I didn’t score green in all the categories though.

Before you ask: no, I don’t have a cleaner or an expensive hairdresser habit! This is how much I spend on childcare every month.

The Compare My Spend app provides a fairly silky-smooth user experience. It isn’t perfect, but then I think there are always going to be small niggles because when everyone is different, a one-size solution doesn’t always stretch to fit. For example, my relatively high Professional Services expenditure was flagged up with the advice to shop around for a few quotes for “any work that needs doing”, but sending a child to nursery isn’t really the same as getting a plasterer in!

My other red bubble was for our mortgage: according to Compare My Spend, we are spending more than twice the average amount per month on accommodation. That seems strange, and I don’t know why the Compare My Spend figure was so low: people my age tend to have left home, but rents are rising and of those of us who own property, few have managed to pay their mortgages off. (Update: I discussed this with my husband and he said that this just goes to show what he has been trying to tell me for ages – that my obsession with having a fixed-rate repayment mortgage and paying the damned thing off as soon as possible isn’t shared by most people, who even now are happy to go interest-only. Hmm, interesting!)

Overall, this app comes with a wholehearted recommendation from me: not only is it free, but if you want to review your monthly spending or just see how well you are doing, it’s quite addictive…

[www.CompareMySpend.co.uk]

Following the exciting news that Miss Thrifty readers had nabbed no fewer than three of the 10 prizes on offer in the recent MoneySupermarket competition, the Thrifties’ bid for world domination continues apace…

Checking in on the Facebook page at the weekend, I was delighted to discover that a Miss Thrifty reader has made it to the final of this year’s Nectar Savvy Family competition.

If you aren’t familiar with this annual competition: well, it’s a good one. The winner gets EasyJet flights, a £500 Sainsburys gift card, £500 from BP to spend on fuel, £500 to spend on eBay, a 32″ flatscreen TV and more besides. They make you work for that prize, though: entrants had to submit a 500-word entry setting out why their family was the savviest when it comes to saving money. Eight finalist families have now been selected, and are blogging on the Nectar site about their money-saving chutzpah and thrifty derring-do. The competition closes on Sunday 28 April, after which Nectar’s judging panel will select the overall winner.

Julie Abell and her family have made it through to the final eight: worth a round of applause, that, because it is no mean feat! Julie is currently blogging like billy-o, about all the ways in which the Abells make their money go further. The picture above is taken from her latest post, which sets out how to make no-sew bunting in a few easy steps. Other posts cover everything from bog roll to cheap holidays.

If you would like to cheer her on, Julie would be extremely grateful for a comment or two. You can find all her Savvy Family blog posts here.

Good luck, Julie!

[Nectar Savvy Family - The Abell Family]

UPDATE: this flash sale has now been extended, and is running until 5pm on Sunday 21 April 2013.

The sale includes their classic satchels (from £86 £43)…

…their various shoulder bags (these barrel bags are reduced from £50 to £25 – bargain!)…

…the buttery leather duffle bag that I have been coveting for a while now (£145 reduced to £72.50)…

…and even their leather iPad cases (£45 reduced to £22.50).

I am the proud owner of a Zatchels satchel – bought at a very unthrifty full price! It was a Christmas present from my husband a couple of Christmases ago, and was something of a lavish surprise: I didn’t even know that he knew how much I was lusting after one. It turns out that he’d found the page open on my computer, after I’d left it on standby, and a lightbulb went on over his head.

This satchel goes everywhere with me: I wear it non-stop. It has turned out to be a good investment. As you can see, despite daily use it is still in excellent nick: the straps are a little curly, but that’s about it. The leather is so thick and sturdy, it is barely even dinged. This is the smallest size satchel (11″): perfect for me because I don’t have much to carry around (wallet, phone, a couple of bits of make-up, tissues, keys), but it would be on the small side for those of you who cram more than that into your bags. The next sizes up would be fine, though.

Three important things to note:

1. At the time of writing, the  Zatchels site is down after being besieged by bag-loving bargain hunters. Apparently the tech team are working on it, and I hope that by the time you read this, the site issues have been resolved. If it’s slow or you have trouble getting on, keep trying.

2. As lovely as the Zatchels bags are, if you want one but can’t afford one this time around, even at half-price, all is not lost. I recommend that you follow Zatchels on Facebook: they do frequent giveaways there.

3. Last week when I posted about the 24-hour BHS flash sale, Miss Thrifty reader Dee commented to complain that by the time she had received the daily email and run her morning errands, she was too late to take advantage of the deals. Flash sales like this are often run at short notice, so my reasoning is that even if only some of you get to hear about it in time, it’s worth posting about. But if you come to this one too late, I’m sorry: I know that with it being the weekend, some of you won’t receive or check the email until the sale is done and dusted. I am currently in the process of moving email subscriptions to another service, which will allow me to issue BREAKING DEAL-type alerts – if you want them, of  course! If this would be of interest, please let me know in the comments.

UPDATE: this flash sale has now been extended, and is running until 5pm on Sunday 21 April 2013.

[www.zatchels.com]