BEST OF: The Daily Mail’s “Frugalistas”

Today’s Daily Mail carries a piece about so-called “Frugalistas”.  I say so-called because the definitive label doesn’t appear to have been settled on yet. Frugalistas? Recessionistas? Take your pick. I predict that with gloomy headlines rolling off the presses like sausages at a sausage factory, we’ll be seeing these features with increasing regularity.

Anyway, today’s article takes three women “who are meeting the challenges of Britain’s higher prices”, and shares their secrets. Some of them, such as selling one of the family cars and not buying any more designer clothes, are like, duh. Other pointers don’t quite add up: one of the women keeps bees “to make her very own honey” – but isn’t readymade honey a lot cheaper than beekeeping? Another woman claims that she used to spend £70 on groceries every week (just for herself!) but has reduced her food expenses to £20 by growing her own vegetables and having boxes of organic produce delivered. I’m not sure how this works: those boxes are £8-£10 minimum, which leaves very little for the rest of her weekly food.

But head-scratching aside, they had come up with some good ideas, which I have distilled for you as follows:

• To shop for groceries online because “you aren’t tempted to buy food you don’t need”.
• To stop using the tumble dryer. Those things gobble up electricity/cash.  It’s summer: hang it on the line.
• To hold clothes-swapping parties with friends. Yes, I know that these aren’t new, but the parties described in the article are held every month and involve bottles of wine – which sounds good to me. 

 Daily Mail