The joy of being a frugalista (tight!)

Careful with your money? Harshly dubbed tight? Not any more, you’re a funky new frugalista.
You’re so stylish, Madonna would kill for just a fraction of your money know-how.
I bet she wishes she had a Home Bargains store close by, stuffed with cut-price toiletries and packs of 18 toilet rolls – yes, I said 18 – for an astonishing £2.99.
Yep, the credit crunch is biting hard. Thanks to the mighty media’s scare stories about rocketing gas and electric bills, plummeting home values and rising fuel and food costs, we’re all cutting back.
Phew! What a relief. I no longer feel guilty for being a frugalista (OK, tight), something I have been all my life.
It all started in 1972 when, clutching my 10p pocket money tightly, I walked to the sweet shop and thought long and hard for half an hour before buying a bag of chocolate tools for 1p each. Mmm... those hammers and spanners tasted good. Whatever happened to chocolate tools?Though just a tubby tot, I knew then that money definitely didn’t grow on trees. I had to make every penny count. When I bought my first house at 21 for £13,000 I felt like I’d borrowed a million. The mortgage seemed huge and it was compared to my measly salary.
My first job paid £40 a week.
Despite the cash shortfall I managed to run a car, though its rickety doors flew open when I rounded a bend, and I never, ever got into debt.
As a student I used thrift shops. I made Amy Whinehouse look like the epitome of chic. As long as I averted my gaze when I passed a mirror, it really didn’t bother me.
As I grew older and started to earn more money, cash pressures eased but that frugal nature never went away.
I’d never go out and blow £300 on a handbag, my mobile phone’s like Del Boy’s brick and I drive a battered Peugeot 106 that rattles when I round a bend. At least the doors don’t fly open!Friends have goaded me over the years, especially a couple who I dub “the princesses”.
One refuses point blank to shop anywhere where they don’t pack your groceries for you. One almost passed out in horror a few years ago when I dragged her into Kwik Save. It was as much as she could do not to vomit.
When we get together they show off their designer buys, Burberry is a favourite make. In fact, I fell off my bar stool when one revealed the purse she’d just bought – for £295.
More money than sense is the phrase that springs to mind as I quickly decide in my head what I would have bought for the same amount of money – a new bathroom suite maybe, or flights for a holiday.
But now, despite their laughter at my expense, their hoots of derision when I confess that my new dress cost a fiver in New Look’s sale, I am in tune with current thinking and they are so 1980s, so bling.
Even the London luvvies are having lessons in how to save cash. I saw one on telly this week being introduced to the delights of Aldi.
Shopping around, she discovered – surprise, surprise – could save hundreds of pounds a year on her groceries. It was a total revelation to her. “Their bacon is incredibly cheap,” she gasped in awe.
It is indeed. Come to Derby, love, and you’ll really bag a bargain. Where have these people been? Bathing in vats of £50 notes?
Now, suddenly, they are realising how incredibly stupid they are. As a fellow frugalista said: “ I hear people whining about being poor and in debt while feeling like they’re too good to lower themselves to ‘that level’ of hard-core frugality. Screw that. Party like it’s 1959 – or 1929 if you’re really on a tight budget. Live on a smaller income, think like our grandparents and great-grandparents. I'd rather clip money-off coupons than be an indentured servant to Mastercard for the rest of my life.”
Me too. Frugal and proud – and oh so fashionable! This credit crunch thing isn’t so bad after all.