Miss Thrifty

Ben & Jerry’s is half-price at Morrisons right now. It’s £1.80 for one of the larger, 500ml tubs.

Sadly, my local Morrisons didn’t have any ‘Cherry Garcia’ in (sniff), but I went for this sorbet one instead.

The best part? My husband’s away, so I get to eat it all myself. I give thanks to the higher powers that have arranged for this happy conjunction of events.

This hair clipper set from Tesco is only £6.99. It comes with the different sized combs, so that you can select how short you want the hair to be, plus other accoutrements such as scissors and a comb. Not only is a good price - cheaper than a paid-for haircut! - but it saves money in the long run too. Once you have one of these sets, the need to visit the barber flies out the window.

I should add that I don’t cut my own hair with clippers. No no no. I do cut my husband’s hair with one of these sets, and I can honestly say that it is a terrific investment. It takes minutes, and it’s easy to do.

Once upon a time I used to send him out to my own preferred salon in Mayfair, at £55 a pop, to have his follicles tended to by a stylist called Rachel who “understood his hair”. Looking back, I can’t quite believe I insisted on this: not is £55 a very expensive men’s haircut, but my husband and grooming go together like a cat and water. He would have been happier with the clippers all along.

Anyway, this set can be ordered from Tesco’s website and I’d get in quick, as the line is about to be discontinued.

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…)

Here at Thrifty Towers, we’re planning our first vacation in a loooong time. Later this year we’re flying from London to San Francisco. We’re going to hire a car, drive down to Arizona and fly back to the UK from Phoenix. We used to live, work and study in Phoenix, so we’re really excited about catching up with our old chums and dining at our favourite restaurant in the world again.

You’ll be pleased - if not entirely surprised - to note that this operation is to be executed with the requisite lashings of financial chutzpah. My husband, who is self-employed, won a training grant to go to California and embark on a highly-specialised, week-long course there. Not bad, eh? The grant covers his tuition and flights, along with a week’s worth of accommodation and food costs. This has slashed the cost of our holiday.  He’s flying out before me; I’m going to meet him in San Francisco the day after the course ends. Then we’ll fly back together, a week later.  

I tried to book our flights and car hire online, but didn’t get very far. Flying into one airport and out of another, with three different flight dates, meant that I spent an age scribbling prices and codes down on scraps of paper, while tapping my fingers irritably as the various flight sites’ price options loaded. The car hire was a challenge too: a couple of the companies will let you pick up the car in one state and drop it off in another, but with various stipulations and with various additional charges whacked on. I must admit, the prices quoted weren’t particularly attractive either. Not unless we wanted to fly from London to San Francisco via Germany (hello! wrong direction!) and New England.

I hummed and hawed. My husband phoned from work to say he would have a go. Just minutes later, he called back to tell me that the flights and car had all been booked! What’s more, the prices he had found beat my online “bargains” by quite a hefty margin.

His secret? It’s a simple one: (more…)

Growing your own vegetables? If, like me, you are doing battle with legions of horrid garden slugs, rest assured that help is at hand.

Up until now, I’ve always gone for methods of slug control that are purse-friendly, but primitive. If I catch them anywhere near my lollo rosso, the salt scatters and the brick swings. My husband is horrified by my barbaric behaviour - a display of sensitivity that I find somewhat incongruous, coming from an enthusiastic crustacea consumer. The poison pellets kill hedgehogs (much more worthy of preservation, in my opinion), and the gloopy slug deterrent that I squirted around my patio pots was expensive and soon gone.  Pfffffff to that, says Salad Psycho Thrifty.

Now Weezl, over at Weezl’s Weblog, has come up with a garden tip that’s so darned tootin’, (more…)