If you have been here a long time, you might remember when I went on ITV Tonight to dispense a masterclass in saving money on energy bills.

Energy-saving is one of my favourite money topics, because once you get past the boring bullet-point lists, a whole new world of thrifty nerdery opens up.

You know those bullet-point lists. You start spotting them everything at this time of year. They go like this:

How to Save Money on Energy Bills: Beginner Level

• Don an extra jumper.
• Insulate your loft.
• Have a shower, not a bath.
• Only boil as much water as you need in your kettle.
• Put off turning on your central heating for as long as you can.
• Turn the light off when you leave a room.
• Unplug all your devices at the wall, because standby mode costs money.

Pah! This is beginner level energy-saving. You can push it much further than that – but how far are you prepared to go?

How to Save Money on Energy Bills: Advanced Level

At this point, in the interests of disclosure, I should point out that my husband has been known to stage interventions, because I can get carried away.

He is happy for me to tack aluminium foil behind the radiators, to reflect heat back into the room instead of into the walls.

My entire family is appreciative of the hearty winter soups and stews I make in my trusty slow cooker, which uses a third of the electricity of the oven.

They don’t even mind when I play the game of ‘How Low Can You Go?’ with the thermostat (probably because they don’t notice; I’m good at that game.)

But my husband drew the line the other year when I wanted to stick bubble wrap on the windows, for extra insulation.

What? You think that’s going too far?

In my defence, it wasn’t all our windows: just a couple of the small, single-glazed ones on the side of the house. We haven’t yet replaced them, since moving into this doer-upper – and up here in the North West, it gets cold and draughty in the winter months.

How to Save Money on Energy Bills: Busting the Myths

What I didn’t know, until npower approached me to collaborate on their latest research project, was that a third of people in the UK “can’t be bothered” to make the effort to lower their bills.

What? What is this madness? I thought everybody did it these days. I accept that tin foil behind the radiator isn’t for everyone, but still… It takes only five minutes to bob onto a comparison site and find the cheapest supplier. It only takes a second to lower the dial on your thermostat by one degree, saving you up to £75 per year. Who wouldn’t do that?

As you can probably tell, the energy company’s research piqued my interest. For example, did you know 43% of the 2,000 people surveyed believe that energy-saving lightbulbs have little to zero impact on bills? Come on, people! The clue is in the name.

That said, it turns out some of the basic energy-saving advice, listed above, may not be up to scratch after all. For example, four in five of us believe showers use less water than baths. However if you have a power shower, as so many people do these days, this might not be true after all. Apparently a power shower can use up to 50 litres more than baths. A water-efficient shower head could save a household up to £195 per year.

Here are nine more energy-saving myths, busted.

1. The Thermostat. Almost half of bill-payers think it’s cheaper to have the heating on low all the time, but having a room thermostat to adjust the temperature can save you up to £150 per year.
2. The Smart Meter. More than half of Brits believe Smart meters use electricity and will add to their bill, but you can save up to £21 by accurately monitoring your energy.
3. The Lightbulbs. Two fifths of us believe energy saving lightbulbs will have little to no impact on our bill despite research revealing savings of up to £35 per year.
4. The Thermostat Again. One in five Brits believe setting the heating to a slightly warmer temperature won’t make a difference to their bill, yet bill-payers could save up to £75 per year by reducing the temperature by just one degree.
5. The Kettle. Almost a fifth of us believe boiling more water than necessary doesn’t use more energy, a myth which could be costing you up to £36 a year.
6. The Computer. 41% of Brits think charging a laptop uses the same amount of energy as a desktop, but you could save up to £17 a year by ditching this clunkier tech.
7. The Standby Mode. One in five Brits don’t think appliances use electricity when in standby mode, a myth which could be costing you up to £30 a year.
8. The Shower. A fifth of the nation don’t think a long shower adds a significant amount more to their water bill, but just one minute less in the shower could save you up to £80.
9. The Washing-Up. One in five of us think a running tap uses less water than a bowl when washing up, but you could save up to £25 on your water bill by investing in a washing up bowl.

Apparently a quarter of us have been given rubbish energy-saving tips or energy-saving advice that doesn’t add up. Are any of the busted-myths above new ones on you?

Something I like is that many of the ideas are quick wins. I do have an old desktop computer kicking around, albeit turned off at the wall. But the only idea I haven’t taken up is the Smart Meter: I read my own meters, and I’m waiting for the next generation of meters (which don’t lose functionality when you switch suppliers) to become more widely available.

As ever, I’m going to see if I can hold out until 1 October before banging the heating on. Who’s with me?

This post was written in collaboration with npower, who have contributed towards this site’s web costs for 2018.

Image credit: Marco Verch; Creative Commons 2.0 licence.

This is a post about the Rockstar Finance Community Fund – but first of all, an update. I’ve been quiet of late, I know. I’ve been juggling parenthood, my full-time job and Christmas: fortunately, I still adore all three. But I’ve also been doing a lot of flitting, spending time in hospitals.

My beloved Frugal Grandad died in November. Frugal Grandad made the occasional appearance here on Miss Thrifty, and I miss him every day. There are some great stories I’d like to share with you – not here, but in future posts – such as the time he insured his underpants. (And claimed on them.) Ah, the 1950s: they did things differently there…

My dad has been in hospital for the past five weeks. He insisted something was wrong; the GP insisted there wasn’t. Then my dad collapsed at home and was rushed to hospital, where he was found to be suffering from a particularly nasty bout of pneumonia. The industrial-strength antibiotics didn’t touch the sides and he wasn’t expected to pull through – but he did. Unfortunately he is still bed-bound: when he fell at home, he fractured vertebrae.

The long and the short of it is, I’ve recently been spending a good deal of time at the bedside of a poorly and grumpy man. My bedside patter alternates between brisk pep talks about doing everything the physiotherapists tell him to, and… well, just trying to cheer him up, really. The doctors are keeping him on the respiratory ward, where he has earned the dubious honour of being there longer than any of the other patients. Good old NHS: I dread to think what the cost of this prolonged stay would be in other countries.

If you are reading this post in the UK, then you know what the weather has been like here over the past few weeks: absolutely awful. The hospital, of course, is like a sauna. My dad has been grumbling about wanting to go home and in reply, I’ve been gesturing towards the window. Snow, hail and sleet have been smashing against the glass, a gale has been howling outside and I have been saying to my father: “Look! Look how awful it is out there. It’s horrible: it’s so cold and icy, I’m dreading the walk from the door to the car park. You would be shivering at home; even if you could go out, you would probably be blown off your scooter. And here you are: tucked up in this toasty ward, with nice HCAs and nurses waiting on you, and hot meals brought to your bed. I know it’s not home, but you are in the best place right now.”

Then I have been travelling back to Greater Manchester, tired, looking forward to my own hot dinner and warm bed. And here’s the other thing: in Manchester right now, homelessness is twice the national average and the difference between the haves and have-nots is starker than ever. In the city and the surrounding suburbs and towns, as in many other areas of the UK, it is impossible to ignore the steep and steady rise in the numbers of rough sleepers. It shifts perceptions. It is difficult not to feel blessed and lucky – and at the same time, angry at the decision-makers who led us here. Here the hostels have waiting lists, many families are accommodated in B+Bs and, despite the weather dropping below freezing, people are still huddled in doorways and living on the banks of the canal.

The wish to do a little something – anything – to help is what led me to email the American blogger J. Money. J is the founder of a website called Rockstar Finance, which is popular with a lot of money bloggers. Rockstar Finance curates some of the best personal finance blog posts from around the USA and beyond. It also has a Community Fund. Last month, J. Money announced the site was looking for “20 bloggers who can take $100 each and then turn it into some some joy and happiness for someone in their lives who really needs it.”

So I emailed J to ask if the Rockstar Finance Community Fund could cross the pond this Christmas. He shot back: “YES PLEASE!!! We love being international stars!”

Within hours, the $100 had been wired to my account.

I knew what I wanted to do with it. In Stockport, which is my bit of Greater Manchester, there is a great initiative called The Rucksack Project (Facebook group here). It runs every December. You fill a rucksack with items including warm clothes, toiletries, tins of food and a sleeping bag, and take it to a local homeless resource centre called The Wellspring. The rucksacks are then distributed to homeless people and rough sleepers in Stockport and neighbouring boroughs.

I figured that with $100, I could fill more than one rucksack.  However I’d been beaten to it: people round here filled so many rucksacks this year, the project organisers had run out of storage space and were asking would-be donors to hold off until January.

So instead, I topped the $100 up to £100 and donated it to The Wellspring, to help feed people over the Christmas period. The Wellspring is open 365 days a year and the volunteers are amazing. Look at all the Brussels sprouts they had to peel!

For every donation of £5, the volunteers were able to provide someone in need with a full Christmas dinner and a gift. At other times of year, a donation of £100 means The Wellspring can provide a meal service to 150 people once a month.  (If you are in a position to help: the JustGiving page is here.)

Many thanks to J. Money and the Rockstar Finance team, for the $100 and the command to go forth and pierce the gloom. Thank you, you lovely people! With everything else that has been going on, it has been good to break out and do a little something positive.

I’m not sure 2018 will be able to match 2017 for the ups and the downs, but it’s already shaping up to be a busy one. Spring my dad from hospital, blog more, live smarter and survive my son’s sixth birthday at the local trampoline centre. I’m ready… 

A reverse advent calendar is easy to make and it’s a great cause. You will need the following items:

– An empty cardboard box.
– An open wallet: if you are in the UK, around £15 should do – although you can create a reverse advent calendar for as little as £5. See below for details.
– An open heart (awww).

A reverse advent calendar is the opposite of a normal advent calendar. With a normal advent calendar, you open a door each day to see a picture, take out a chocolate or get some other prize. With a reverse advent calendar, you begin with an empty box. Every day for 24 days, you add one item a day. After 24 days when the box is full, you donate it to your local food bank.

Why make a reverse advent calendar?

With food bank use having risen sharply over the past few years, it is a sad truth that our food banks are always in need of donated items from members of the public.

In the UK, you can’t just walk into a food bank and walk out with bags of food: you have to be referred by an approved organisation such as a community mental health team, children’s centre or welfare agency. Foodbank users are there because for whatever reason – suspended or delayed benefits being the most common – they don’t have enough money to feed themselves or their families.

This year alone the Trussell Trust, which runs the biggest number of food banks around the UK, has made up nearly 1.2 million food parcels for people in crisis. It’s a similar situation in the USA, where the Feeding America food bank network distributes 4 billion(!) meals annually.

While all this is going on, have you noticed that adult advent calendars are suddenly a thing? Big bulky things, costing between £30 and £100. So far this year I have seen:

• Cheese advent calendars
• Gin advent calendars
• Cosmetics advent calendars
• Prosecco advent calendars

I’ve also noticed children’s advent calendars becoming increasingly luxurious and expensive: I know we are on countdown until Thrifty Kid discovers this £30 one exists.

Each to their own. I don’t begrudge the cheese fan their 24 little chunks of cellophane-wrapped cheese at inflated prices. However my own thoughts on the subject could be best summed up as: HEAVENS ALIVE! ARE YOU SERIOUS? Stop rinsing us, retailers! Christmas is expensive enough without making a new, needless ‘tradition’ out of this.

What can I say? I’m a terribly worthy tightwad. As are you, I am guessing: that’s why you are here. But it is for these reasons that, when my blogger pal Sara at Debt Camel told a bunch of UK Money Bloggers what a reverse advent calendar was, I loved the idea immediately. So did the others: we have taken it up as a collective UK Money Bloggers Christmas project this year. (You can find more posts about our reverse advent calendars here.)

So: instead of spending money on tat novelty items for yourself, why not spend a fraction of the amount on making Christmas that little bit nicer for people who are struggling right now?

It’s so quick and easy to make a reverse advent calendar. I’ve seen people on Pinterest going all Tony Hart on the idea, and creating beautifully-crafted boxes, but you really don’t have to do that if you don’t have time. An empty, plain cardboard box works just as well. The donations will be split up and food bank users tend to transport their items in carrier bags. What is in the box is what matters most.

When is the best time to start?

This is an excellent question – and one for which I have a slightly pointed answer. The answer is: not December!

Many food banks only open for a couple of days a week, and Christmas Eve falls on a Sunday this year. If you begin filling your reverse advent calendar on 1 December, with the aim of dropping off your donations after 24 December, the supplies won’t get to people until January is under way.

Then again, December is fine – as long as you are aware that your supplies won’t get to people until the following month. That isn’t necessarily a bad thing: apparently donations to food banks peak in December and drop off in January. Your local food bank volunteers won’t mind; they are simply grateful for any supplies you can provide.

However if you are making a reverse advent calendar to help tide people over the Christmas period, the best time to start is the end of October or early November. That way, you can get your box to your local food bank a few weeks before the Christmas break, which leaves plenty of time for its contents to be sorted and distributed.

What should I put in my reverse advent calendar?

At the Trussell Trust, more than 90% of the food is donated by the general public. It is collected and divided into food parcels, each of which will provide at least three days of healthy, balanced meals for individuals and families.

A typical food parcel will include the following:

• Breakfast cereal.
• Packet or tinned soup.
• Pasta.
• Rice.
• Pasta sauce.
• Baked beans.
• Tinned meat.
• Tinned vegetables.
• Tea or coffee.
• Tinned fruit.
• Biscuits.

Non-food items, such as toiletries and feminine hygiene products, are also appreciated.

What did you put in your advent calendar?

Day 1: a six-pack of toilet roll (£2).

Day 2: tin of baked beans (25p).

Day 3: a pack of 20 nappies (£1.38) and a pack of baby wipes (56p). Nappies are expensive, but the supermarket value packs come in at around the £1.40-£1.70 mark and are perfectly serviceable. I didn’t buy the value baby wipes, although they cost 10p less, because the chemicals irritated my babies’ bottoms when they were little. Own-brand sensitive wipes it was.

Day 4: tin of Irish stew (60p).

Day 5: another tin of baked beans (32p), supermarket brand this time.

Day 6: tin of sliced carrots (20p).

Day 7: tin of potatoes (35p).

Day 8: spray bottle of kitchen cleaner (£1).

Day 9: bottle of shampoo (40p).

Day 10: bag of rice (65p).

Day 11: bag of penne pasta (40p).

Day 12: tin of chicken curry (60p).

Day 13: tin of tomatoes (25p).

Day 14: tin of spaghetti in tomato sauce (20p).

Day 15: tin of peas (40p).

Day 16: three bars of soap (50p).

Day 17: small bag of sugar (50p).

Day 18: bottle of washing-up liquid (61p). I went for supermarket own-brand: the value stuff just doesn’t last long.

Day 19: jar of lemon curd (35p).

Day 20: tin of custard (30p) and a packet of strawberry jelly cubes (55p).

Day 21: tin of sardines (50p).

Day 22: a packet of sanitary towels (25p), a box of tampons (71p) and a packet of incontinence pads (£1.25).

Day 23: biscuit assortment (£1), containing four packets of different biscuits.

Day 24: bag of banana eclairs (70p). Everybody deserves a sweet treat at Christmas, right?

What items are not suitable for a reverse advent calendar?

The following items should be avoided:

• Perishable food.
• Food past its use-by or best-before date.
• Chocolate advent calendars. (There is a sad reason for this, which I have detailed at the bottom of this post.)

How much does a reverse advent calendar cost?

My reverse advent calendar cost £16.78. As you can see from the list of items, the prices varied. The most expensive item I added was a multipack of toilet roll, which cost £2.

However the cheapest items, tinned carrots and tinned spaghetti, cost just 20p each. If your own budget is tight and you don’t have £17 to spare, but you still want to make a reverse advent calendar for your local food bank, you could do so for less than £5 (20p tins x 24 days = £4.80).

How do I find my nearest food bank?

If you are in the UK, you can find your nearest Trussell Trust food bank by using this postcode tool. The website will have also have contact details, so you can arrange to drop your box off.

Not all food banks are run by the Trussell Trust. Your local supermarket is likely to have a poster on its noticeboard, with details of the closest one.

If you are in the USA, there is a similar tool on the Feeding America website.

Both the Trussell Trust and Feeding America recommend that, if you are planning to donate grocery products, you contact your nearest food bank to find out what they are short of at that time. The Trussell Trust also lists these items on the local food bank pages so, even if you know where your nearest food bank is, it’s worth a look.

I enjoyed putting my reverse advent calendar together: I’m delighted that such a small amount of time, effort and expenditure can make such a difference to somebody’s Christmas.

A final note: avoid adding this item to your reverse advent calendar.

This is gloomy but, if you are planning to make a reverse advent calendar, you should know this.

When my fellow money blogger Faith, from Much More With Less, spoke to a volunteer at her local food bank, she discovered that chocolate advent calendars are not recommended items. Apparently, chocolate advent calendars often arrive too late and create unrealistic hopes and expectations about Christmas Day: “for most children getting food bank parcels, there is no pot of gold at the end of the calendar.”

Before you continue: do note that at the time of writing, certain shops and supermarkets will still accept your old one pound coin. I haven’t included this list in the bigger list below, because the amnesty for the old one pound coin is of an extremely limited duration. However here is what you need to know:

Tesco – accepting the old one pound coin until 23 October 2017.

Aldi – accepting the old one pound coin until 30 October 2017.

Iceland – accepting the old one pound coin until 31 October 2017.

Poundland – accepting the old one pound coin until 31 October 2017.

Small shops – it’s worth asking!

Here are five other ways to spend your old pound coins:

1. You can use your old pound coin in supermarket trolleys. 

Certain supermarkets have not upgraded their trolleys, so the round pound coins will still work. Earlier this month, Sainsburys and Tesco both admitted they hadn’t yet modified their trolleys to take the new pound coins, blaming ‘internal logistical problems.’

2. You can donate your old pound coin to the Poppy Appeal.

The Royal British Legion is accepting old one pound coins as donations to its 2017 Poppy Appeal, which runs until 12 November 2017.

Claire Rowcliffe, director of fundraising for the Royal British Legion, has said: “We’d be delighted to turn your out-of-date pounds into poppies, commemorating the fallen while enabling us to offer vital assistance to all members of the Armed Forces community, young and old.”

3. You can donate your old pound coin to Pudsey’s Round Pound Countdown.

Another charity that would be grateful for your old one pound coins in 2017 is Children in Need. It’s called Pudsey’s Round Pound Countdown.

You can no longer spend your old pounds, but we can still collect them and put them to work changing young lives here in the UK.

Millions of round pound coins are still in circulation. We’re challenging the nation to hunt for them in saving jars, piggy banks, coat pockets and down the back of sofas, then put them to good use by donating to BBC Children in Need!

We’re aiming to collect as many as we can before our big Appeal Day on 17th November.

More details here.

4. You can add your old pound coin to your bank, building society or Post Office savings.

It turns out that a lot of high street banks will still accept old one pound coins as deposits into bank accounts. The amount of time for which you’ll be able to do this, however, varies from bank to bank.

According to the Royal Mint, the following banks are still accepting old one pound coins:

• RBS
• NatWest
• Ulster
• HSBC
• Barclays
• Lloyds
• Santander
• Nationwide
• Clydesdale
• Yorkshire Bank
• Halifax
• Bank of Scotland

If you are self-employed: it is worth noting that this policy applies to business accounts as well as personal accounts, but you have to separate the old pound coins from the new ones when you are making a cash deposit.

Also – and unsurprisingly – this offer tends to be open to current customers only. If you are not a customer and you walk through the door waving a bag of old one pound coins and asking to change them up, you will likely be told to get lost.

Lloyds Banking Group, which includes Lloyds, Bank of Scotland and Halifax, has said that in addition to accepting old one pound coins as deposits, it will also change old one pound coins for new one pound coins. Again, this offer is available to their current customers only. No deadline for the expiry of this offer has yet been set.

The list above may not be exhaustive, so if your financial institution of choice isn’t featured, it is worth checking with your bank or building society to see what the deal is. I’d also like to point out that at a lot of the banks listed there, you can open a savings account with as little as £1. So what are you waiting for?

5. You can check to see if your old pound coin is worth any (well, more) money. 

If you are the owner of a rare one pound coin, you can flog it on eBay, sell it on another specialist site or sell it to a dealer – and make a tidy profit.

There is a terrific website called Change Checker, which focuses on the UK coin inventory and collectors’ market. The first thing you should do is take a look at the year engraved on your old one pound coin, and cross-reference it with this diagram:

As you can see, the rarest one pound coin we have is the 2011 Edinburgh design. This was part of the series depicting the UK’s capital cities. The 2011 Edinburgh one pound is the only one coin with a mintage of less than a million. Change Checker compares it to the 1983 Royal Arms shield one pound coin: more than 443 million of those were minted. At the time of writing, 2011 Edinburgh pounds in excellent condition are selling on eBay for up to £95 each.

The next rarest one pound coins are the 2011 Cardiff pound coin and the 2010 London pound coin (selling on eBay for up to £68).

Coin Checker notes:

Another coin to look out for is The Royal Arms £1. Although this is a common design which is regularly ignored, make sure to look out for one with a 2008 date – that’s actually the fourth rarest £1 coin.

At the time of writing, 2008 Royal Arms pound coins in excellent condition are selling on eBay for up to £57 each.

If you have one of these coins and it isn’t in mint or excellent condition, it could still sell on eBay for around £5 – which, let’s face it, is still a handsome profit after eBay fees are paid.

The next rarest one pound coins are the 2014 Thistle, 2013 Daffodil, 2013 Rose and 2014 Flax. The selling values for these seem to range from £1.50 to £15, with much depending on the condition of the coin.

Finally…

If you have read all the way to the bottom and you haven’t found an old pound coin yet, your time is likely to come. Earlier this year, the government estimated there were more than 433 million old pound coins in circulation. Chances are that squirrelled away somewhere, you have one, or two, or three, or four…

I’d gently suggest that if you have found an old one pound coin, the best time to spend it, save it, donate it or cash it in is now. While deadlines have yet to be set for trolleys and bank amnesties, they aren’t going to be around forever. We don’t yet know if charities will be asking for old one pound coins in years to come. Coin values change over time – but they can go down as well as up. I don’t usually say this, but… spend spend spend!

Image credits: William Warby & TaxRebate.org.uk (CC by 2.0.); Change Checker/288 Group Ltd. 

Our guest bedroom didn’t always look like this. When we moved into this house, it became clear that decorating ideas needed to come thick and fast. The guest bedroom walls had chunks out of them and were painted lilac. The thin blue carpet was threadbare in places, and stained with drips and drops of lilac paint. The faded floral curtains were mounted on a wonky, plastic curtain-pole. I bought a double bed, but was startled to discover the prices of brand new headboards and resolved to find one in a charity shop (I never found one). The only other furniture was an wobbly IKEA wardrobe left by the previous owner. This was our guest bedroom – and it was so utterly unwelcoming, I found myself apologising whenever guests came to stay.

Our house is a 1960s semi, with square rooms and long, high windows.  Right now these 1960s houses are often regarded as a tired style, but I’m a vintage girl at heart. When it comes to style and design, I’ll take mid-century modern over current fashions any day.  When decorating the guest bedroom, I knew I wanted to go for a mid-century theme. Also, while I was on a tight budget – as in, statutory-maternity-leave tight – I wanted to make the room as comfortable and welcoming as possible. Basically, I wanted it to be all-round lovely. So although I scrimped on budget, I wasn’t prepared to scrimp on quality.

Welcome to the guest bedroom as it looks now. Let’s take a look inside…

So that’s limited edition Graham & Brown wallpaper, a stupidly-posh Schreiber bedhead (RRP £449) and a set of G-Plan bedroom furniture.  See, I said I wouldn’t scrimp on quality! The cost for that lot? A little over £600, including the wallpaper paste.

Now I don’t want to show off too much here. I did make two purchases for this bedroom that, while heavily discounted, were still jeffing expensive. (That Schreiber bedhead was one; the carpet was another). I’ll come to those at the end.

Plaster & Paint

I was lucky to have people to help – and VERY lucky to have people in the family with plastering knowhow. When I was in the later stages of pregnancy and it was uncomfortable to move, let alone decorate (my son was born weighing 10lb, which explained a lot…) , my mum and stepdad came to visit from Essex, 250 miles away. They emptied out the guest bedroom and plastered it.

Then, when the plaster dried and my parents-in-law came to stay and meet the new baby, they did the washcoat (half white paint, half water) on the walls and ceiling. Heroes, all of them.

My husband painted the walls. Then my mum and stepdad came back and painted the skirting-boards and radiator a gleaming white. Honestly, I am spoiled.

In the guest bedroom, we papered two walls and painted the other two a pale, soft grey. I know grey paint is all the rage at the moment, but I’m not sold: a lot of the time, the grey-painted rooms look dingy to me. It took a while to find a shade that was soft and light, and which helped open up this modest-sized room.

My chosen shade: Grey Lace from the Crown Paints Period Collection. You can get it at Homebase for £15.99 for 750ml, but that’s dear. Paint Direct does a better deal on this paint: £22.99 for a 2.5 litre pot, plus £3.49 delivery.

Bedroom Accessories

I didn’t feel the need to buy many accessories for the room: it isn’t a big guest bedroom, and that wallpaper is busy.  I looked high and low for a candlewick bedspread, eventually finding one in the House of Bath catalogue. I suppose that made sense: House of Bath caters to an elderly demographic, and the market for old-fashioned bedcovers is narrow these days. I love this peach candlewick bedspread: it’s garish but distinctive. It’s also good quality and hardwearing: my toddler, with his chocolatey paws, has seen it into the washing machine and tumble dryer on a number of occasions now. This bedspread retails at £69.95 on the House of Bath website, but I picked it up for £34.95 when a half-price sale was on. If you register on the House of Bath website, you will get an email when the next sale launches: you will also get a 10% off code on your birthday, and (at the time of writing) 20% off your first order.

The pink glassware came from a charity shop in Frinton on-sea: £5 for the set. I didn’t notice at the time, but one of the glass candlesticks has lost its top: if you look carefully, you can see that it has been carefully filed and buffed to a smooth finish. I have kept it: clearly, somebody treasured their pink glass.

Vintage Wallpaper

A few years ago, when it was the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee and there was a Royal Wedding and British memorabilia was everywhere, I won a roll of beautiful wallpaper in an online competition. It was limited edition Graham & Brown wallpaper called Jubilee Design, and it was awesome. The wallpaper was illustrated with pictures of 1950s ladies in New Look dresses, with Big Ben and Tower Bridge in the background.

I had a problem: a single roll of wallpaper doesn’t stretch far. Not unless your wall is very, very small. But I loved it and I wanted to find a use for it, so I hoarded it.

When we moved into this house and wanted to decorate the guest bedroom, I knew the wallpaper would be perfect… and I wondered, given the time that had passed, if I could find old rolls being sold cheaply.

I lucked out on the first go: when I checked the Graham & Brown website, the wallpaper was still there – on clearance. It had been reduced to £10 a roll. I bought two rolls for £20, with an extra £4 shipping. So I ended up with three rolls of tip-top designer wallpaper for £24. What can I say? Sometimes, unreasonable hoarding pays off!

The Jubilee Design wallpaper is no longer available on Graham & Brown’s UK website, although it is still sold on the US website for $35 a roll. I found an amazing wallpaper on WallpaperDirect, with illustrations of ladies in vintage fashions, but it is £165 a roll (glurk).

G-Plan Furniture

How I love mid-century G-Plan furniture. The trouble is, it has soared in popularity and now everybody loves it. Even my local charity shop, when they have old G-Plan furniture donated, ship it straight off to waiting customers in China. The vintage emporium near me used to have a entire floor dedicated to furniture, with lots of G-Plan – but it was all so expensive. The going rate for a wardrobe was £175-£225 – and I wanted a matching set of furniture for the bedroom.

I needed a Plan C. I found it on Shpock, the app billed as a virtual car boot sale. It’s a little like Gumtree, with people in your area offering their preloved items for sale – but with plenty of pictures.

On Shpock, I found a set of E. Gomme bedroom furniture – wardrobe, chest of drawers and dressing table – going for just £80.

I negotiated the price down to £70 (something else you can do on Shpock) and we went and fetched it. This furniture was 50 years old and and had clearly been loved and used for a lot of that time. The finish was worn away in places, and the set was in need of some TLC. But it was solid, sturdy, fully functional – and a great find. The original receipts were dated 1955 and 1957, from furniture stores in Bradford: biro handwriting on yellowed, crumbling paper.

Here is the stamp of authenticity, on the inside of one of the wardrobe doors:

This is an early G-Plan stamp: the ‘EG’ is for the traditional British furniture manufacture E. Gomme, which began producing the first G-Plan furniture in the 1950s. This bedroom suite is from the ‘Brandon’ range, which was extremely popular. Something else I like about this furniture set is that because it is so sturdy and ubiquitous, there are lots of G-Plan Brandon items still around. If we want to buy matching items at any point in the future, they shouldn’t be too difficult to find. I’ll have to look hard to find bargains as good as these though.

My husband renovated the wardrobe and the chest of drawers as a wedding anniversary present (it helps to have a woodworker in the family). He took off all the handles, sanded everything down and refinished it all. He did an amazing job: I love it.

The wood is oak and I like the small details of the design: the edging and the way the grain on the side strip above is at right-angles to the grain of the wooden doors, for example.

There isn’t enough room in our guest bedroom for the dressing table. It’s prettier than the drawers but to be honest, we needed the storage. Right now the dressing table is still out in our garage. My original plan, at the time of purchase, was that we could renovate it and sell it on for more than we paid for the three-piece set. Free G-Plan: wouldn’t that be great?

However I underestimated just how much I would like this furniture. I’m even thinking that when we renovate our own bedroom (which is pink and flowery and AWFUL right now – but that’s for another post), we could move the G-Plan furniture in there, dressing table and all, and find a couple of bedside tables in the Brandon style. Hmm, we shall see. Don’t be too surprised if you see this big ole’ wardrobe and these drawers popping up on another post here in the future…

Sadly the lock to the wardrobe door is missing. I wish we had it: Thrifty Kid likes to hide in this wardrobe. It’s so spacious, he likes to pretend he’s in Narnia. When he comes out it’s like a bomb has gone off in there.

If you like G-Plan furniture in the Brandon style, keep an eye out in charity shops because it does pop up there. Another good place to look is this little corner of eBay: because lots of Brandon G-Plan was made, I guarantee you that you will find the wardrobe, drawers, dressing table and more there.

Carpet and Curtains

The carpet is a Milan Saxony Plain Carpet in Anthracite, from Carpetright. It’s hardwearing, but feels thick and plush underfoot. It also comes with a lifetime stain warranty, which is handy when you have two small children.

This was one of my big spends, but even so, I think it has provided good value for money. At the time of writing, you can kit out a room the size of our guest bedroom with this carpet for less than £300. That price includes the door bar, grippers and underlay.

The curtains are Chenille Grey Lined Pencil Pleat curtains from Dunelm, which sell for £45. I still need to take them up – like a lot of 1960s houses, ours has short windows – but I’m very pleased with them. They are readymade, ready-lined – and the lining is so thick, these velvety curtains are like blackout blinds.

The Headboard

I’ve left my splurge until last: well-made headboards are crazy expensive! This Schreiber Portisham double headboard was £270 from Homebase. That was the sale price, when Homebase was clearing all its Schreiber stock last year: the full price was £449. It is solid, very neat and fits into the room perfectly but I am not going to pretend that, even as a clearance buy, this was a thrifty purchase. The Schreiber brand rights belong to Sainsburys and, if you like this style of furniture, you can still find some Schreiber items on the Argos website, which is also Sainsburys-owned.

If you are feeling confident – well, more confident than I was – you can make your own tufted headboard. There are lots of tutorials on Pinterest.

This guest bedroom was put together, piece by piece, over the course of about a year. The walls came first and everything else followed. The room still isn’t complete: I’m looking for a picture to hang on the big blank grey wall facing the bed, plus a new light fixture. But I like it, decorating like this.  You can save up and buy the right things, at the right prices, when they happen to come along. It’s the DIY version of Slow Food.

Featured products: where to find them

Paint: Grey Lace from the Crown Paints Period Collection, from PaintDirect, £22.99 for a 2.5 litre pot.

Bedspread: peach candlewick bedspread from House of Bath, £69 (but wait for the next sale).

G-Plan Brandon furniture: here are the latest listings on eBay.

Carpet: Milan Saxony Plain Carpet in Anthracite, from Carpetright, £284.

Curtains: Chenille Grey Lined Pencil Pleat curtains from Dunelm, £45.

Screiber furniture: Argos.

This time 10 years ago, we were buying a house: our first home, in North Yorkshire. The floors were bare boards, the walls were covered in yellow vinyl wallpaper, and the gas and electricity were on pre-pay meters (on a frozen January night when all the newsagents were closed, I discovered this the hard way). The garden, used by the previous occupants as a landfill site, was devoid of lawn and covered in knee-high brambles.

We had saved a 10% mortgage deposit and bought our red-brick terrace at the top of the market, just before the credit crunch came whomping on house prices and equity. When we sold up two years ago to move to Greater Manchester, the house prices in the local area had just drifted their way back up to pre-crunch levels so despite all the home improvements, we made little on the sale.

Were these trials and tribulations? Pah! Not at all. They meant nothing: instead, I was (and am) grateful, relieved and rather amazed that we’d managed to claw our way onto the housing ladder in the first place.

As it turns out, our house-buying timing was beaut: a week after we moved in, banks began tightening lending requirements and pulling fixed-rate repayment deals left, right and centre. While we made little when we sold up, we had built up a good chunk of equity via mortgage payments and when possible, overpayments.

It was difficult enough to be buying a house back then; it’s even tougher now. The economy is looking dodge, mortgage lenders want would-be customers to walk through fire – and on top of it all, increases in the cost of living make the prospect of saving a mortgage deposit seem more daunting than ever.

Something I have learned, however, is that while the prospect of saving for a mortgage deposit can be daunting, the truth is that unless you are set on buying in London or somewhere else with crazy prices, it can be done. Drastic lifestyle changes, budget makeovers and the sourcing of extra streams of income may be required, but it can be done. In my case, we moved up north, where you could – and still do – get a lot more bang for your buck. I lived extremely frugally, to pack away as much of my salary as possible. I did a lot of eBay selling, reselling and more besides. We got there.

Gleeson Homes, a housebuilder with a strong base here in the North of England, approached me to make some short videos about my tips and ideas for saving for a deposit. It was an interesting company with which to collaborate: Gleeson specialises in low-cost homes for first-time buyers on modest incomes. In a Guardian profile, which you can read here, the chief executive describes the typical customers as “a Sheffield bus driver and his shopworker wife on a combined income of £34,000 a year.” (See what I mean about bang for your buck? Move north. Come join us!)

If you are currently saving for a mortgage deposit, or know somebody who is, you can find all six videos playlisted on my YouTube channel. I have copied partial transcriptions below. There are a number of tips here and, although they won’t all be suitable for everyone, there are plenty of tips to go around.

1. It’s all about mindset.

When you begin to save for your first house, you will be told that you need to save vast sums of money, that it’s going to take you forever, that you’re going to need to overhaul your lifestyle… Actually, that’s not always true. Thanks to homebuilder schemes and government assistance schemes, such as Help to Buy, the sums you need to save and the amount of time you need to save for can be less than you would expect. For example, it could take just 6 to 12 months to save the amount you need for that first deposit.

Attitude is all important. You need to fix that budget. Work out how much you intend to bring home every month on top of your regular pay packet. I’m of the opinion that if you are in full-time work, you should be able to bring home an extra £200 to £500 per month.

2. Cut those household expenses

If you are looking to slash your monthly outgoings, the quickest and easiest way to do this is to take a good look at your monthly household expenses: what you are spending on utility bills and what you are spending at the supermarket every month.

Every three months, have a look at the direct debits and standing orders that are coming out. Never let them auto-renew. When a contract nears its end, shop around, get a cheaper deal. I bet you will find something that is less money and more value.

Secondly, supermarket shopping. I’m a very careful shopper: I shop right at the end of the week on a Sunday, an hour before closing. That’s when you get the best whoopsies: those yellow stickers with the steep discounts. The discounts get steeper and steeper as the day comes to a close.

I shop from the bottom shelf where items are cheaper. When shopping for fresh produce, I look at the back of the shelf where the best-before dates tend to be far lengthier.

Finally, if you haven’t done so already, I would recommend that you invest in a slow-cooker. It’s a secret weapon if you are looking to save money on your household expenses. Firstly, it uses less electricity than the regular cooker. Secondly, you will get back home from work every day to a delicious cooked dinner ready and waiting for you. So, none of those expensive last minute dashes to the supermarket on your way back from work, or worse, takeaways.

3. Get over your FOMO

One of the easiest ways to haemorrhage cash is on lots of nights out with your friends. So you need to get over your FOMO (‘Fear of Missing Out’). What you will find, perhaps to your surprise, is that a lot of the time you aren’t really missing out on much at all! Instead, make a night out into a special occasion.

Secondly, gyms. Lots of us love going to the gym. But if you don’t feel that you are getting good value for money from your gym membership, consider one of the free alternatives instead: running, running apps, such as Couch to 5K, or my personal favorite, the Green Gym. This is where keep fit meets conservation projects around the UK: planting trees, sowing meadows and more. Apparently the Green Gym can burn up to a third more calories than an aerobics class.

Finally, holidays. We all love hot, sunny overseas holidays but, if the pound continues to flounder, there are cheaper options. Stay within the UK. This doesn’t have to mean camping or caravanning, if these aren’t your things. You can have a quirky adventure, such as barn hopping in the Lake District. For £10 a night, stay in a farmer’s barn: it’s an interesting way to tour that region. Or draw upon homestay networks, such as Airbnb. There’s an option out there for everyone.

4. Sell that clutter

If you are looking to make extra income on the side, purge your personal belongings and sell off your unwanted junk. However it’s a mistake to think that this process begins and ends with eBay. As wonderful as eBay is, I have found other great sites and apps out there, where I get good prices.

For books, CDs and DVDs, I use sites like Ziffit, webuybooks, and musicMagpie. Fashion? The app Depop is great for selling fashion items. If you have lots of supermarket and high street clothes, try selling them in job lots on local Facebook selling pages.

Don’t forget good old car boot sales. If it’s not car booting season, check out an app called Shpock, which stands for Shop in my Pocket. It’s a virtual car boot sale. You can advertise your belongings on there for free. And if you’re in the market for a bargain, it’s also a good place to go hunting.

5. Find your side hustle

Side hustle: making some extra cash on the side. A side hustle will help you reach your house saving deposit target faster. Side hustle is an American term. It means additional stream of income. So if you have several side hustles, you have several streams of income. So far so good, but do you know how to find a side hustle? How do you know which side hustle is right for you?

It’s simple. You need to draw upon your available time, your skills and your expertise. For example, there are sites out there like upwork.com where people are seeking to purchase time, skills, expertise on a project basis or by the hour. Virtual PA, for example, bookkeeping, graphic design.

Another example of a side hustle is blogging. Blogging is my side hustle. That’s how I make my extra cash on the side, and it’s a great way to do it. If you need get started, but there are lots of free guides out there.

Finally, if you have found that by purging your belongings by selling your things online, that you have a knack for this and you have a knack for getting really good prices, why not make that your side hustle? You can pick up items at car boot sales and jumble sales for a fraction of the price for which you then sell them. There’s a side hustle out there for everybody.

6. Maximise those savings

Finally, if you are looking to to maximize your savings towards that deposit for your first home, there are some really good assistance schemes out there to help you get there faster. For example, the Help to Buy: Equity Loan. This is when you are buying a new-build home from a Help to Buy registered home builder and you have 5% of your deposit saved. The Government will contribute an additional 20%.

Another one is the Help to Buy: ISA. This is when you save the money for your deposit within a specific type of ISA account and the Government will top it up by 25%. As you can imagine, however, these schemes do come with lots of terms and conditions attached, so do check them out thoroughly online to ensure that you are eligible.

If you are saving to buy your first home: good luck. Keep saving, keep boosting those savings – and keep going. You will do it. 

The videos in this post were produced in collaboration with Gleeson Homes.

If there is one thing I love, it is flinging myself head-first into a sale and emerging with an AMAZING bargain. Every year, it’s a challenge. So far this year, I have picked up a kitchen clock from Habitat (reduced by 70%) and some smart work tops from Hobbs, reduced from £££ to less than £20 each.

Over the years, I have honed a sales shopping strategy that works well for me. BBC Watchdog recently approached me to share some of my sales-shopping secrets with their views on Watchdog on Three (the online version of the programme, which broadcasts while the BBC1 version is off-air). It was good fun: a small camera crew came to Manchester city centre when I was at work, and we spent my lunch hour filming shoppers’ reactions to my tips and pointers:

You can view the three-minute clip here on the BBC3 website.

In the frame above, that’s me on the left: making a case for haggling with sales assistants in high street stores. Are you bolshy enough to give it a go? More details below, along with four more of my favourite tips and ploys for cleaning up at the January sales.

1. Budget BEFORE you splash the cash – not after.

It’s January. Everything is rubbish, including your bank balance. For the sweet love of Jesus, don’t go out shopping in the sales before you have been through your finances and worked out what you have to spend. I’m not asking you to draw up spreadsheets; all you need is one number.

Once you have that number, be hardcore. Don’t go over that number. If you find some amazingly unmissable bargains and want to bung them on your credit card, fine – but only if you know for sure that you can pay that balance in full as soon as your next pay cheque arrives.

If you know what you are looking for in the sales and you can draw up a sales shopping list, great. If you don’t, that’s fine but set a solid objective instead. For example: this year my clothes #salesgoals are smart tops for work, in black or navy.

2. Your smartphone is your wingman.

I first wrote about this trick in the post, How to get money off at Currys at PC World EVERY TIME. In short: I never venture out to the sales without my trusty smartphone to help me secure the best deals.

All you need is a good connection, the website of the store in which you are shopping, and a little chutzpah.

These days, most high street retailers have shopping websites with online exclusives, discount codes and all the same products they have in-store. So when you find the item you want in the store, look it up online. Is it more expensive to buy the item in-store rather than online? For example, is there an online exclusive or an applicable voucher code?

When the online version is cheaper, I show my phone to the sales assistant and ask them to match the price – they often do. If they don’t: well, in certain stores such as PC World, I have been known to stay online and arrange to Reserve The Item For Collection, at the store I am standing in…

On other occasions, I have found cheaper prices online simply because the price tags in the store aren’t up to date. A lot of the time, the freshly-discounted price will ring up at the till anyway – but it goes to show that a quick check online can show you which items have the best discounts and bargains. It’s handy for me because I tend to swoop in and buy when the sale prices hit rock bottom.

3. Haggle!

If you are new to haggling, you can find my quick and easy beginner’s guide here: Become an expert haggler. In short, two qualities – FRONT and PERSISTENCE – will get you everywhere. The second quality is deliciously British; the first doesn’t tend to come so naturally. Here are some of my tried and tested opening lines:

• If I buy [NUMBER OF] items, what discount can you do?
• I shop here regularly and saw this was on sale last week, but wasn’t able to make it here in time. Would you do a ‘latebird’ offer?
• Ouch! Is that the best price you can do? I’m sure I saw this cheaper in [COMPETITOR STORE].
• I’m rather taken with [PRODUCT], but my budget is only £X. Could you do it for £Y? That would really make my day.

It’s always worth asking: the worst sales assistants can say is no, and the end of sale season can afford them some additional room for manoeuvre.

4. Look out for old Christmas stock.

For rock-bottom prices, head to discount stores to pick up items for pennies. Right now you can find the end of the Christmas sale in Poundland, with items ranging from 5p-25p. In my experience, you’ll find the next steepest markdowns in large supermarkets: cards, gift wrap, ribbons and tags, cut down to bog all and gathering dust in the corners of discount aisles and shelves.

Stock up now for next Christmas: it may seem like an age away, but you know it will be here before we can blink twice…

5. Know your consumer rights.

We have all seen the signs in shops, spelling it out: if you want a refund on an item purchased in the sale, you are out of luck. But is this really the case?

I’d like to direct to the guidance published by the Government and last updated in September 2016. These extracts are taken directly from a GOV.UK webpage titled Accepting returns and giving refunds: the law. It is written for retailers and business-owners, and is admirably easy to follow. Here we go:

Customers have exactly the same rights to refunds when they buy items in a sale as when they buy them at full price.

Capiche? It couldn’t be any more clear, could it? So shop with confidence – and if any retailer tries to tell you otherwise, or fob you off with a credit note, click the link above and wave your smartphone in their direction (another good reason why your smartphone is your sales wingman). The webpage has a picture of the Crown on top and is stamped GOV.UK; you can’t get much more authoritative than that.

That said, it is important to note that there are certain circumstances when a retailer isn’t obliged to offer a refund. These are as follows:

You don’t have to refund a customer if they:

knew an item was faulty when they bought it
damaged an item by trying to repair it themselves or getting someone else to do it (though they may still have the right to a repair, replacement or partial refund)
no longer want an item (eg because it’s the wrong size or colour) unless they bought it without seeing it
You have to offer a refund for certain items only if they’re faulty, such as:

personalised items and custom-made items, eg curtains
perishable items, eg frozen food or flowers
newspapers and magazines
unwrapped CDs, DVDs and computer software

As for goods purchased in a sale online:

Online, mail and telephone order customers have the right to cancel their order for a limited time even if the goods aren’t faulty. Sales of this kind are known as ‘distance selling’.

You must offer a refund to customers if they’ve told you within 14 days of receiving their goods that they want to cancel. They have another 14 days to return the goods once they’ve told you.

You must refund the customer within 14 days of receiving the goods back. They don’t have to provide a reason.

Right now is my favourite time for sale-shopping: it’s the final week of January, when the markdowns go berserk before the sales end. So if you are currently bargain-hunting, I hope these pointers help you to get even more money off. If you have tips and ideas of your own, I’d love to hear about them and share them: please comment below or chew my ear on Twitter.

And if you have a friend or loved one who likes to shop in the sales, or who is hunting for money off something big right now, please do share this post with them. At the risk of sounding like a certain supermarket: every little helps, right?

Let’s all save some money!

Image credit: IMLSDCC (CC BY 2.0). 

Now, I get lots of emails from PRs asking if I’ll review their clients’ products on the Miss Thrifty Blog. I almost always say no, because the products are too expensive, or they aren’t my thing (although you can’t blame the PR for female incontinence pads for trying). Also, I dislike clutter: if I don’t need an item or it doesn’t spark joy, I have no place for it.

Nevertheless, my kitchen seems to be permanently under siege from the latest “must-have” electronics and devices. I don’t want any of them. For goodness’ sake: I don’t even own a toaster or a microwave! I wouldn’t use them: I prefer the grill and the oven. The only gadgets I keep on the worktop are my beloved 1970s slow cooker and my Panasonic bread-maker, both of which get heavy use.

This time, however, I have made an exception. When a lovely PR lady called Sofie contacted me about the Lidl Hot Air Fryer, I was interested on a few counts. Firstly, the Lidl Hot Air Fryer is considerably cheaper than a lot of the other hot air fryers out there.

Secondly, I’d never used one or eaten food made in one, so I wanted to check it out. Until this arrived, my most hi-tech gadget was my bread-maker, which doesn’t exactly push the envelope. Hot air fryers have only been around for a few years, but suddenly they seem to be everywhere.

Thirdly, it’s healthier than frying in oil – and less smelly (the reason why I binned our old deep fat fryer). They resemble a deep fat fryer in appearance, with a detachable basket, but cook food by circulating super-hot air around it.

Lastly, one of the features of hot air fryers is that they cook food from fresh and frozen very quickly. That’s quite a draw if, like my husband and I, you work full-time with a household to feed in the evenings.

Also, I figured that once I’d tested and written about the hot air fryer, I could always send my review model onto somebody who loves kitchen gadgets more than I do…

…Well, that isn’t going to happen. It’s staying out on the worktop, alongside the slow cooker and bread-maker. I think my husband has used the hot air fryer more frequently in the past couple of weeks than he has used our slow cooker in the past couple of years (admittedly, I hog that damned beautiful slow cooker).

Weekend Lunch

Pictured above is a quick lunch I made using the Lidl Hot Air Fryer at the weekend: chicken and vegetables. I rubbed the chicken with some salt, pepper and soy sauce, then cooked them in the hot air fryer for 20 minutes at 180 degrees. The digital display features chicken legs as one of its preset options (along with frozen chips, fish fingers, steaks, sausages, muffins and more), so I jabbed the menu button until a little chicken drumstick lit up on screen, then pressed the start button. It was that simple. Twenty minutes later, the fryer beeped and the chicken was cooked perfectly.

Next I loaded the fryer basket with a few handfuls of chopped courgettes, pepper and tomatoes, added some chopped herbs, crushed garlic and a drizzle of olive oil, stirred it all up then set the temperature at 200 degrees, the timer for 15 minutes and pressed start again. The air-fried vegetables were cooked through but still crunchy on the inside – just how I like them.

Result: a weekend lunch cooked in little over half an hour, with little effort and minimal brain-power.

What I Don’t Like

The Lidl Hot Air Fryer isn’t perfect. I don’t know what its longevity is (perhaps I’ll report back in a year or so?) but my main gripe is that you can cook only one dish or side dish at a time. This is stating the obvious and it isn’t the fryer’s fault: just like a deep fat fryer, it comes with one basket. But it means that, invariably, you will double up on energy costs by end using the hot air fryer alongside your oven, rather than as an oven replacement. Even with the lunch above, I kept the chicken warm in a preheated oven while frying the vegetables.

The energy consumption isn’t amazing. I haven’t yet had the opportunity to test the energy consumption for this model, but from what I can gather from researching online, conventional ovens are more energy-efficient than hot air fryers.

What I Do Like

• You can cook meat from frozen in a hot air fryer. I buy much of our meat from the freezer aisle, because it’s cheaper, but safe defrosting can be a pain. For example, if I forget to take the pork chops out of the freezer the night before, I have to rejig my meal planning or spend time the next morning defrosting the meat in cold water. With a hot air fryer, I can just bung them in: out of the freezer into the frying basket.
• Tasty leftovers. We had some leftover pizza last week. Normally I’d reheat it in the oven and the crust would be hard and dry. Other people reheat pizza in the microwave, and it comes out soggy. But when I chucked our leftover pizza slices into the hot air fryer for a few minutes, they came out fresh, crispy and tasty.
• The hot air fryer takes up relatively little space on the worktop, but you can fit a lot of food in the basket.
• The exterior remains cool to the touch when the hot air fryer is in operation, which gives me peace of mind with my four-year-old running around the place.
• The hot air fryer comes with a decent manual, which includes a rundown of the cooking times and temperatures for a wide range of foods, from homemade chips to quiche.
• You don’t burn food. Incinerated dinners become a thing of the past: the hot air fryer cooks with precision and turns off when the timer reaches zero.
• It takes a lot of the stress and effort out of cooking early weekday dinners for tired and emotional children. Frozen fish fingers take 10 minutes max. Vegetables take 15.
• As with a conventional oven, you can keep food warm by setting a low temperature.

All in all, it’s a keeper.

Two final points: the Lidl Hot Air Fryer is a Silvercrest model, and one of the attractions is its price point: £59.99. This is a snip compared to other models of hot air fryer, which retail at £200 and above. 

Like all Lidl offers, however, the availability of the Silvercrest Hot Air Fryer is temporary and limited. At the time of writing they have already been in stores for a week, so if you want to buy one, don’t hang about. You can find your nearest store here. If you miss the offer, these hot air fryers do come back into stock periodically, so keep your eye out.

That said, I have also noticed that lots of hot air fryers have had their prices slashed recently. The Amazon page features deals and discounts galore. If you miss out on the Lidl offer or want to shop around, it’s definitely worth checking out. 

It turns out I’m not the only one with pensions on the brain – or am I? A new study has found that almost half the UK population has an “ostrich mentality” when it comes to saving for the future.

The Skipton Building Society Retirement Tracker, which monitors the retirement savings behaviours of more than 6,000 people up and down the country, has revealed that 48% of us have our heads in the sand when it comes to the dreaded ‘P’ word (pensions), with retirement savings that are either meagre or non-existent.

Skipton Building Society asked me to team up with them to help raise awareness of the dire state of the nation’s retirement savings, and this is a campaign of which I am proud to be a part. Heck, I’ll shout from the rooftops about it! As regular readers will know, retirement is a subject close to my heart: I am currently taking (somewhat overdue) steps to boost my own pension pot.

I must admit, that 48% statistic made me gulp. With no private pension plan and no savings, that is a lot of Ostriches who, if their savings behaviours do not change, will be throwing themselves upon the mercy of the State Pension when they reach retirement. As I have written previously, this is a dangerous game: not only is the State Pension modest but, as hundreds of thousands of women born in the 1950s have discovered to their horror, governments can move the goalposts and change the eligibility criteria according to their whims.

What saver are you?

The Ostriches are one of five groups of retirement savers identified by the Skipton Building Society Retirement Tracker. The crème de la crème are the Wise Owls.  Members of this group tend to have a “more sophisticated portfolio with a broad range of investments and savings.” Nearly half (47%) are saving to fund retirement through a Cash ISA, more than a third (37%) through a personal pension and almost a third (32%) through investments in stocks and shares.

Are you a Wise Owl? The five groups of retirement savers break down as follows:

Ostrich Mentality (48% of the sample)

·         Not saving for retirement or their savings are falling short

·         The majority have nothing saved to supplement the State Pension

Savings Snails (18% of the sample)

·         Saving the minimum they can afford

·         More than a third (35%) believe their retirement savings will be less than they need by the time they retire

·         At the same time, they have no set target for retirement savings

·         The majority have nothing saved to supplement the State Pension

Money Moles (21% of the sample)

·         No set target for retirement savings

·         They have at least one of the following: company pension, cash ISA, habit of making mortgage overpayments

Squirrel Savers (6% of the sample)

·         Have a set target for retirement savings

·         On track to meet or exceed that target

·         May have taken financial advice

·         Majority (72%) of this group are relying heavily upon company pension schemes to fund retirement

·         Their portfolios may not be as “sophisticated” as those of Wise Owls

Wise Owls (6% of the sample)

·         Have a set target for retirement savings

·         On track to meet or exceed that target

·         Have sought professional finance advice

·         Possess a sophisticated portfolio that includes one of the following: personal pension, investments, stocks and shares

Could this be your New Year’s Resolution?

What jumps out at you about the lists above? What strikes me is that only a third of savers (Money Moles, Squirrel Savers and Wise Owls) are anywhere near having their acts together when it comes to funding retirement. In fact, the Retirement Tracker research shows that more than half (51%) of those who have yet to retire, have nothing saved at all.

With Christmas and the New Year coming up, I’d like to suggest something: for a New Year’s Resolution in 2017, how about ‘branding up’ your retirement savings plan?

We talk about branding down at the supermarket, to save money: opting for a supermarket own-brand in place of a premium brand product, or a value brand item in place of the supermarket own-brand equivalent. What about ‘branding up’ to save money for retirement?

Here is the challenge: determine which type of saver you are, as above. If you emerge as anything other than a Wise Owl, make the resolution to shift yourself to the next level up by the end of the year.

At the beginning of 2016 I was a Savings Snail: saving a minimal amount via a workplace pension scheme, with the uncomfortable feeling that it wasn’t enough. Fast forward to the end of 2016 and I am now a Money Mole, with larger contributions and better savings plans in place, but no fixed targets.  Instead, I’m throwing what I can at it. My resolution for 2017 is to become an organised Squirrel Saver, on track to meet or exceed a fixed savings target.

I’m going to shift to the next level. What about you? Can you do it too? Why be a Snail or an Ostrich, when you can be a canny Squirrel or a clever old Owl?

This post was produced in association with Skipton Building Society. A payment for this post, made on Skipton Building Society’s behalf, is helping to fund the running costs of the Miss Thrifty Blog.   

Image credits: Seattle Municipal Archives. All used under a Creative Commons licence. 

This is how I wrap my presents every year: I like how it looks, and I also like saving money on Christmas wrapping paper.

When you tot up the costs of Christmas gift-buying, it is easy to forget to include the costs of Christmas gift-wrapping. It adds up though, the cost of the shiny sparkly wrapping paper and ribbon and gift tags and so on. In my experience, this additional cost is felt all the more acutely when your £2.99 roll of shiny sparkly stuff turns out to be roughly £2.89 of gift-wrap roll insert, with enough paper to wrap no more than a few gifts. And let’s not mention that year you thought you’d cleaned up in the discount store, with an armful of bargain-basement Christmas wrapping paper, only to find once you got home that it was so thin, you could see the presents through it…

Instead, this is what I do. Every year I go to the Post Office and I buy a 6-metre long roll of brown parcel wrap.

It’s cheap. Take a look here on the Post Office website: at the time of writing, a 6-metre roll of brown parcel paper is just 65p. I’ve linked to the Post Office website because if you have a lot of gifts to wrap, you can go all out here: at the time of writing, the website also sells 35-metre rolls for £3.49. I am tempted to invest: a 35-metre roll would last me for many Christmases to come…

Brown paper rolls are also available from supermarkets such as Tesco (here) and Asda (here), but tend to be more expensive: around the £2.00 – £2.50 mark.

It’s strong. After all, it is made for wrapping parcels. Brown parcel wrap is sturdy: it doesn’t tear easily and, in my experience, it is easier to wrap presents neatly using thick brown paper than it is using low-end gift-wrap, which can be flimsy and fragile.

It’s long – oh so long! To put it into context: that single 6-metre roll of brown parcel wraps as many presents as one of the 3-packs of 2-metre roll sold in shops up and down the UK. Parcel paper has no cardboard insert so, although it looks like a small roll, it goes on and on…

Then I make it look pretty. This is easy to do, even if you aren’t a crafty type. First, I wrap the presents. Next, Thrifty Kid and I stamp the paper with gold ink, or whatever else he has knocking around in his craft set.

If you need to buy a suitable stamp, by the way, there are a a couple of thrifty options. At this time of year, craft magazines often have them as freebies on the covers. If you don’t want to splash out on a craft mag, you can make a stamp for free: find a pencil with an unused rubber on the end, and use that to make polka dot patterns.

Finally, tie with string or ribbon. In the picture above, I’ve used a ball of string. Other years, I have used free ribbons, collecting them in a pot throughout the year. (It always surprises me how the jar is full by the end of the year, with slips and lengths of ribbon from gifts, delivery boxes and so on.)

One last thing I like about brown paper gift wrap? Zero waste. All the paper and string offcuts can go straight into the composter.

What’s not to love, eh?

Here’s some parcel paper-wrapped Christmas presents from a previous year when we made most of our Christmas presents, which you can read about here.