Miss Thrifty

Are you in the UK? If you are, buy tomorrow’s Sunday Telegraph – and get a free hardback cookbook by tip-top Michelin-starred chef Marcus Wareing!

Full details of the offer can be found here. The only catch is that you have to buy the newspaper from a Morrisons supermarket. They’ll be handing out the cookbooks there and then – no faffing around with coupons and postage. (more…)

UPDATE: If you are visiting from MSN Smart Spending, welcome to Miss Thrifty! My passion for fashion knows no bounds, but neither does my craving for saving…  Bargains ahoy!  Please have a look around; if you like what you see, subscribe to my RSS feed. Thanks for stopping by  - Miss T.

Apparently these wedding cakes are taking off in the USA – especially with the economy on its downward swoop. These towering confections are as mouthwatering as they are ornate. But here’s the rub: they aren’t real!

That’s real icing; but the “cakes” within are made from foam. A couple can rent out a cake such as this one for their big day, then return it to the cake rental company when their wedding is done and dusted. I’m not sure if the wedding guests are supposed to know when the cake is fake: it seems kinda cheap to broadcast the fact, but wouldn’t you feel a little uncomfortable if the cake was on a stand or table, with people cooing over it, if you were keeping schtum about it not being real? Maybe that’s just me – but I take my cakes very seriously, I’ll have you know.

So, are you wondering what happens when the “cutting the cake” ceremony rolls around? Well, these cakes all come with one bona fide slice of wedding cake, slotted into a triangle-shaped slot in the polystyrene. So you can cut into your cake with all of the pomp that the occasion calls for – and if you so choose, your guests are none the wiser! The cake is whisked away; backstage another (cheaper) cake is cut into squares that are then brought forth, for your guests to take away with them. Neat, huh? (more…)

One of the shocks about turning grown-up is finding out just how expensive all this stuff is. Window boxes, I could cope with. But since we moved into a house with a bona fide garden, I’ve been regularly horrified by the bank account-draining qualities of spanking new garden gear.

Now I’m sure it doesn’t help that our garden was such a bombsite (complete with trenches, cratered knolls, piles of rubble and broken glass everywhere) when we moved in. The lovely people who used to live here used the back yard as a rubbish dump for ten years; I am told that when the house was finally repossessed, the council sent four skips to clear it all out. Bits of broken plastic toys still float to the surface when it rains – but at least the garden is level now, and has a lawn of sorts. It even has a shed, a composter and one of those rotary washing lines. Believe me, this Pooterish vision of suburban tranquility has involved much in the way of sweat, tears and rushing down the garden centre on a Saturday morning because something just has to be done, damn it. (more…)

Let’s just make this clear: I don’t love all debts. I don’t love yours; you can keep them! But in truth, mine will always have a special place in my heart. This is why.

It’s fair to say that over the past few years, our marital finances have had a rollercoaster ride. The timeline goes roughly like this:

2002 - Student loans finally paid off. Hurrah! At their highest, my student debts amounted to £1,604 exactly. I thought this was the earth! My now-husband graduated about £4,000 in debt. (Note: these sound like paltry figures now, don’t they? They were normal for the UK at this time.)

2002-2005 - Minted & living in London. Fancypants jobs, rented flat, lots of expensive nights out and regular food deliveries from Ocado. Ah, those were the days! But we can’t know what lies just round the corner… (more…)

I must apologise for the extremely late running of Friday Bargains. This is because I was out on the razzle when I should have been posting. It’s all come good though: I was moping around Morrisons at the weekend and… Well, I say “moping”; I cleaned up!

Lots and lots and lots of £1 offers at the mo. Not the rubbish stuff, either: there are plenty of goodies to be had. I picked up everything from fish to potatoes.

Best of all there was a stand of summer bulbs and perennials, for £1 a bag. I picked up bags of lupins, red hot pokers, aquilegia and hollyhocks. I love me a good hollyhock!

Frugal Grandma is currently on a month’s sojourn in Egypt (and is apparently having a very nice time, down amongst the sun loungers) but when she returns I shall be asking her for planting tips.

Every week I get a number of e-mails like this one:

Dear Site Owner,

My name is [name redacted].
We would like to say that your blog is well-written and it contains lots of useful and up-to-date information.
We really got interested in your web resource http://www.miss-thrifty.co.uk and we would like to cooperate with you in future.
Our website is devoted to credit cards and it’s at the top 10 in Google for the keywords ‘credit cards’. (Note: I looked and it isn’t.)
It’s a high traffic site with PR4 and it contains loads of useful financial information presented in news and articles
that highlight the most much-talked-of issues such as credit cards, debt solutions, financial crisis, ways out of it, and many more.
We believe this information can awake interest in your guests as well.
We would like to purchase some links at your site.
We thank in you in advance for your cooperation.
Best regards,
[name redacted].

(Translation, for the uninitiated: (more…)

Just wanted to give a quick shout-out to Frugaller at The Year of Living Frugally.

You see this map above? It’s also in the left-hand sidebar, when you scroll down a bit. This is the World of Personal Finance Bloggers: a chart with bloggers’ names and URLs pinned to their respective locations.

Since July – July, I tell you! – I have ploughed a lonely furrow as the UK’s sole PF blogging representative on this map. A veritable Billy-no-mates; even Bulgaria has two PF blogging reps, for goodness’ sake.

So I’m thrilled to have some tip-top company at last. Hurrah!

If you are a UK-based PF blogger – or indeed, an anywhere-based PF blogger – why not come join us?

Ha! I’m turning into the frugal online version of Arlene Philips.

Yesterday I gave Chiconomise the once over; today I’m turning my gimlet gaze upon the new online venture from Natalie Massenet, the businesswoman behind the super-expensive (and rather splendid) online designer emporium Net-A-Porter. (more…)

Now then. Do you remember when I wrote about Chiconomise at the end of last year? It’s the new online venture from Apprentice winner Michelle Dewberry. I promised to update you after I’d checked it out.

As I noted back then:

Right now the website is just a sign-up page and an About page, and references to “scouring the city” for tips makes me think that it’s going to be predictably London-centric. But I think I’m going to put my e-mail addy down anyway, and give it a whirl.

For the uninitiated: you sign up via the Chiconomise homepage, and receive a free email newsletter every Thursday with a roll of offers and discounts.

Well, I’ve given Chiconomise a whirl and those newsletters have been landing in my inbox, regular as clockwork. And do you know what? I rather like them! (more…)

Okay, two things:

i) Yes, this is my second recent post about Orange. They aren’t paying me (honest, guv!) but they have the Miss Thrifty thumbs up right now. Because I like pizza.

ii) The voucher is here.

From the Guardian: (more…)