Miss Thrifty

Over at his Losing Face blog, James continues to document his life without cash. If you are unfamiliar with his story: James “gave up” on cash for a drunken bet. More than eighteen months later, armed with his trusty Visa card, he is still going strong – and the dare has become a way of life.

From what I can gather, the PR bods at Visa were practically beside themselves when they found out about him. (more…)

As the proud owner of the 24-year-old Thriftymobile (above), I was naturally interested – nay, excited – when the UK Government announced a “cash-for-scrap” car scheme in the recent Budget. The scheme aims to plump up the wilting auto sales industry; in a nutshell, cars aged 10 years or more can be traded in by their owners, who will then receive a £2,000 discount off the price of a new car. Of that sum, £1,000 is contributed by the government; the other £1,000 is contributed by the car company.

Much as I love the Thriftymobile, a £2,000 discount is not to be sniffed at. However, the first seeds of doubt were sowed in my mind when car ads began appearing in the newspapers, touting the new initiative.

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Serena Cowdy is a writer for the friendly WalletPop site, which provides up-to-the-minute personal finance news, advice and tools for people who manage their families’ money.

If I was running a rip-offs award ceremony, Michael O’Leary would get the Lifetime Achievement Award. The Ryanair boss is famous for his publicity stunts and for leading the Advertising Standards Authority a merry dance.

He’s now decided to charge travelers just for… well, just for turning up really. And he recently caused much fist-shaking and vein-popping when he announced he was considering charging customers £1 ‘to spend a penny’ on board his flights. Hilarious.

Anyway, this bad boy budget mogul got me thinking. He seems to revel in the glow of public vitriol – but there are some weird, sneaky and downright despicable rip-offs that many people don’t even know about.

Get ready, Miss Thrifty fans - it’s time to write that strongly-worded letter…

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In a couple of posts last autumn, I wrote about the challenges of trying to remortgage when you are, well, anyone right now. I found that as the weeks passed, lenders’ demands of their mortgage customers became increasingly unrealistic.

Firstdirect wouldn’t lend to us because there are three people listed on our mortgage. Abbey, our current provider, would only offer us a new fixed rate deal with an interest rate of 6.99 per cent, plus a £724 arrangement fee. (Erm, no thanks.) Right now only those with lots and lots and lots of equity in their homes are able to claw the few fixed rate deals that remain.

In the end we decided to sit it out and allow our mortgage to slip onto the standard variable rate once our fixed rate expired last month. This has turned out to be an interesting move: back then (September 2008) Abbey’s SVR was 7.04 per cent. Now it’s 4.51%. In real terms, our monthly mortgage payments have fallen by nearly £200. (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…)

Welcome to The 157th Festival of Frugality: The Queen’s Speech Edition!  And a special welcome to all first-time visitors to the Miss Thrifty blog. If you would like to stick around, please feel free to put your feet up: some of the most popular posts include thrifty household tips, my beloved Thriftymobile and a hotlist of Frugal Twitter Users. For regular updates in your RSS reader, whack the big orange button to your right.

With the Festival on the other side of the pond this week and Christmas looming, I thought I’d go for a quintessentially British theme. As you may know, we take the seasonal festivities very, very seriously over here; Christmas Day is centred upon a vast lunchtime banquet at which we all wear paper crowns, eat until we pop and try to keep the flaming Christmas pudding from setting the curtains ablaze. After that it’s copious quantities of sherry and telly until bedtime. The day after Christmas Day is a public holiday, to give everyone time to recover.   

So there is plenty to choose from when it comes to selecting a theme. I was going to go with The 157th Festival of Frugality: The Alka-Seltzer Edition, but on reflection felt that this would provide an unfortunate impression of the scenes of carnage Dickensian delights for which the British Christmas is renowned.

Instead, I have plumped for another fine British Christmas tradition. (more…)

I’ve been thinking about writing a will for a while now. It’s not like we have much to give away, but we own a house, we don’t want to make things difficult for anyone left behind, and reading c jane’s and Nie Nie’s blogs brings home the truth that anything can happen, at any time.

Ashley at Wide Open Wallet has been writing about her will recently, and this has finally inspired me to action.

To anyone who hasn’t made a will before, I will say this: it’s a lot quicker and easier than you think it will be! My husband and I went to a very sweet solicitor on Monday, to go through the finer points. Wills for the pair of us are only going to cost £100, which is less than I was expecting. We took along the forms that our solicitor gave us to fill out with details of any pensions and stocks (ha ha ha), who we wanted as our executors and guardians of children, plus details of any legacies that we wanted to leave.

Filling out these forms makes one very morbidly-minded. We chose one of our in-laws as the first executor, on the grounds of his Teutonic efficiency. But then fell to thinking, what if he dies? So we added my brother as the second executor, just in case. (more…)

Today is a traumatic day in the Thrifty household. Our statements from our energy provider, Southern Electric, have arrived.

I have been able to scrrrrrrrrrrape my jaw from the floor and regain my composure – but it has not been a pretty episode. We knew our gas and electricity bills were going up – UK energy companies have all shuffled their tariffs skywards over the past couple of months – but we didn’t expect that the rises would be quite so steep.

We do everything by the Thrifty Book: we found the cheapest tariff using uSwitch, and we pay a fixed monthly direct debit, which qualifies us for a 5 per cent discount. We live in a brick mid-terraced house with small rooms, so our usage isn’t that high. For the past year-and-a-bit, we have been paying:

£21 ($39) a month for electricity

£25 ($46) a month for gas

Southern Electric has now written to us to let us know that from this day forth, we will be paying: (more…)

(After several minutes of faffing with the bank’s labyrinthine telephone triage system, plus a few minutes confirming mortgage account number, mother’s maiden name etc. ad infinitum.)

CALL CENTRE EMPLOYEE: So how can we help you today? 

MISS THRIFTY: Well, our two-year fixed rate mortgage deal runs out in the next few months, and we’re hoping to get something else in place. So I’d like to find out about what you have on offer right now.

CCE: Well, when your fixed rate runs out in February you’ll automatically go onto our standard variable rate. That’s 7.09% right now. So you would be paying around £868 a month.

MISS THRIFTY: Yuck.

CCE: Oh, but you don’t have to stay on that rate! We have lots of mortgage products available to existing customers such as yourself.

MISS THRIFTY: Really? Are they fixed rate?

CCE: Hmmm. Well, we have a few fixed rate products.

MISS THRIFTY: That’s reassuring. When I checked your website, all the fixed rate deals were demanding 75% loan-to-value. Our loan-to-value will be 80%.

CCE: Ah… (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! I update my blog daily with all the latest frugal tips and red hot discounts. Please have a look around; if you like what you see, subscribe to my RSS feed. Thanks for stopping by  - Miss T.

Now this isn’t the first time I’ve mentioned this behemoth of the frugal motoring world, so I thought that proper introductions were in order. Please allow me to present to you…

(drumroll)…

The Thriftymobile!

It’s a Mazda 323 and it rolled off the production line in 1985 – so it’s only a few years younger than I am.

You may think look it looks like a little ol’ banger (and what’s more, it’s teeny-tiny by US standards). But trust me: this humble motor is one of the best financial decisions I have ever made.

Here’s why:

1.   It didn’t cost me anything to buy. Back before Chernobyl and the Oprah Winfrey Show, when this 323 was at the cutting edge of automobile technology, the car was bought brand new by my 77-year-old great-grandmother. Twenty-odd years later, she couldn’t drive it any longer and it began to pass down the family. It came into my hands in 2005, after I finally passed my driving test.

2.   Despite its age, the car was in pristine condition. When we climbed into it, it smelled new. Don’t believe me? Here’s the odometer now: (more…)