Miss Thrifty

Now, you may think that I have been as quiet as a dormouse this week, but I humbly refute such an allegation. It has been one of those rollercoaster weeks, filled with Stuff and Happenings.

It began relatively inconspicuously, when my mother - like a harbinger of Personal Finance Eventing - telephoned to complain that I had blogged about my DIY wedding cake without crediting her own role in this most protracted of patisserie sagas. I explained that I am planning to write about this at greater length at some point. I also promised that the instalment that takes place the day before the wedding, in which she pitches up at my flat, discovers that I have made a terrible mess of the fondant icing, and calmly sets to work with the icing bag and fluted nozzles (while I dissolve into a teary, syrupy blob in a corner of the galley kitchen), will be prominent.

My mother only found out about this blog relatively recently but, complaints aside, she is a useful reader to have on board. Every time a link breaks, she is on it like a hawk; if the server goes down, she’s on the blower immediately.  It is like having my very own Blog Inspector. Read the rest of this entry →

Many of this blog’s visitors arrive via Google. Many of the search queries that lead people here are in the form of questions. The answers, I haz them…

why are the tesco voucher codes not working

Because you have the caps lock on. Either that, or your codes have expired; go here for the latest ones.

why do wedding cakes cost so much?

Because, dear heart, they’re a bitch to make. Think about it: you bake several cakes, faff arround with dowelling supports and then spend a gazillion years on the icing and decoration. Even then, it’s not over: you have to take the damned thing apart, get it to the venue and assemble it again without breaking or toppling anything. When I got married I decided to make my own wedding cake and save money. Four tiers and several sugar rose cascades later, the painful and protracted experience was seared upon my soul.

how to make a fake wedding cake

Ah, so I’ve put you off making a bona fide wedding cake. Read the rest of this entry →

I have a bad feeling about the mortgage market. Yes, yes: I know there is a lot of talk right now about budding recoveries, attractive deals and unmissable rates, but I am not comfortable.

As you may recall, I have (or had) a devilish Mortgage Masterplan. We came off our fixed-rate deal in February and since then, I’ve been making overpayments to the tune of £500 per month. If this overpayment could be maintained, we could pay off the entire mortgage in ten years. Since that is unlikely, the real-life plan has been to pay off a hefty chunk of capital before the interest rates go skywards again.

Since then I’ve been getting itchy feet. There is still some equity in the property, which is a good start. However, I have become nervous about what we will do if/when the rates shoot up and we’re suddenly scrambling for a nice, tidy mortgage solution. We both run our own companies, which probably puts us on some kind of bank auto-blacklist. Read the rest of this entry →

The Coolest Gadgets site has launched a competition to win a television. It’s no ordinary telly, either: it’s one of those state-of-the-art, bells-and-whistles jobs.

The LG LF7700 has a 42″ screen (i.e. it’s huge) and retails at £850. According to this review, it is swish in appearance and has an integrated Freesat HD tuner. What do you mean, you don’t know what an integrated Freesat HD tuner is? It means that you can get high-definition Freeview telly via a satellite dish, as any fule kno.

It also comes with an intelligent sensor, which adjusts the picture according to light conditions. I guess that means that you don’t have to close the curtains when the sun starts shining during Saturday Kitchen. Sweet.

If you would like to give this hulking mass of liquid crystal a good home, you have to piece together a word published letter by letter over the next few days, and enter it into the Coolest Gadgets prize draw. The competition is open to UK residents, and the prize must be delivered to a UK address. Good luck!

Coolest Gadgets: Win A Television Competition.

Last month I found bags of grilled, frozen aubergine slices in the freezer section at Asda. £2.20 for 500g. Thought I’d give them a whirl. I do like aubergines, but they usually go at £1 a pop in fresh produce and I’m always in a race against time to cook and eat them before they go brown and soggy. Also, I hate fannying around with the salt and the muslin when I go to prepare them.

Sadly, after the frozen aubergines had been sitting in my deep freeze for a few weeks, I realised that I didn’t really know what to do with them.  They were featured as a Delia “Cheat” ingredient last year, but that was for a meaty moussaka - and I don’t eat meat. Also, I read a couple of Delia-themed reviews in which people claimed that the aubergine slices were dry and flavourless. Hmmm: maybe not such frugal food after all?

So I asked the nice ladies over at Cookware Essentials if they would help me out with a suitable (and frugal!) recipe. They duly obliged, with an aubergine, tomato and pasta dish. I tinkered with it some more, and I’m pleased with the result:

Read the rest of this entry →

This is not a spreadsheet. This is a Miss Thrifty-endorsed, frugal fashion spreadsheet. If you click on the image above to get a better look… well, don’t say I didn’t warn you!

It comes courtesy of Miss Thrifty reader Maddy, who explains: Read the rest of this entry →

I love to keep my supermarket bills low: £60 to £90 a month, for two people, all in. As I’ve mentioned before now, one of my most effective ploys is to do my frugal food shopping at the end of the day, in the hour before the store closes.

Here are seven reasons why, courtesy of the bakery section at Morrisons yesterday:

1. Steak and ale pie. Reduced to 9p (15 cents).

Read the rest of this entry →

This is one of those posts in which I say “stuff it”, and cast all modesty aside. Media intelligence company Cision has published a list of the Top Ten UK Personal Finance Blogs - and I’ve made the cut! I’m pretty chuffed.

Here’s the list in full:

THE TOP TEN UK PERSONAL FINANCE BLOGS

With the UK in a deepening recession, it is no surprise that blog readers are in favour of money saving tips. Our Top 10 Personal Finance list indicates the keen interest in personal stories through this recession, with FruGal, Recessionista and Miss Thrifty all offering their own accounts of life on a budget while offering useful advice.

Combining visitor, search and social metrics with in-house expertise, Cision identifies the most read, most discussed and most influential names in the UK personal finance blogosphere.

Read the rest of this entry →

Kathryn Vercillo is a writer for Promotionalcodes.org.uk, which gives away free discount code deals and also publishes a blog.

Summer is upon us. It’s a great season for spending more time with the family. Many people use this downtime to explore their own towns and to enjoy events in the area that they normally don’t get to visit. Unfortunately, this can lead people to spend more money in the summer than the do during other times of the year.

Follow these tips for reducing summer activity costs:

1. Make a summer activity budget. Knowing how much money you actually can afford to spend will allow you to get the summer off to a good financial start and to keep it that way.
2. Create a calendar of free events. Find out when all of the free events are in your area and build your summer activities around those. This may include music in the park, outdoor movie nights, street festivals, farmers’ markets and free admission days for museums. Read the rest of this entry →

Ah, I remember when I picked up a Ballantyne cashmere top and a fitted, 1970s velvet jacket for mere pennies. I even bought my 1920s wedding dress from eBay, for around £25. The influx of buyers means that those salad days are long gone, but the increased traffic to eBay has had another, wholly delightful result.

There aren’t just more buyers; there are lots more sellers too. It means that if you press the right buttons (quite literally, in this case), you can dig out some super-spesh bargains in seconds. And this is what I do:

When I’m searching for items these days, I rarely search using brand names. Honourable exceptions, as detailed in a previous post about buying fashion on eBay, are a few labels including Tristan Webber, Boudicca, Elspeth Gibson and Ben de Lisi.

The rest of the time, this box is my friend: Read the rest of this entry →