Ausperity: Living the High Life on a Low Budget

by Lucy Tobin

We’re all feeling poor. Our wages mightn’t have risen for a long time, but taxes, food, heating, clothes, pets, driving, kids, booze, leaving the house – and paying for the privilege of living there – certainly have. Life costs more – but that doesn’t mean it has to become rubbish. No need for a hairshirt or holiday-less year: treats can stay on the agenda.

This book contains so many money-saving ideas and tips that together they’ll knock thousands off the cost of living. It’s less shiver-me-timbers-I-can’t-afford-the-heating, more ten easy tips to slash your heating bill by a third.

We’re poor, but we don’t need to be bored or boring. This book lays out how to save it – so you can squeeze more value out of your hard-earned cash.

Genres: Nonfiction

224 pages, Paperback

First published December 20, 2012

About the author

After writing her first book - on student life - whilst still a student at Oxford University, journalist Lucy Tobin is now a seasoned author with four books to her name. She is an award-winning reporter, self-confessed money-saving nerd, and personal finance editor of the Evening Standard. Lucy is also a contributor to Radio 4's Broadcasting House, and Women's Hour, BBC TV's Breakfast and Show me the Money, plus Sky News and BBC News 24.
She can also be found in magazines including Grazia, Good Housekeeping, Cosmopolitan and the Sunday Times Magazine, and has written for newspapers including The Independent, Guardian, The Times, The Daily Express and The Daily Telegraph.
Find out more about her latest book, Ausperity, at ausperity.com, on lucytobin.com or Twitter @lucytobin.

Reviews

[Sally · Rating 3 out of 5]

Hmmm. This isn't bad - I think for someone who was new to budgeting/living thriftily it would be amazingly useful. For people who've had to cut back on the spending for a while, most of this isn't new.

But there are some great tips, lots of useful links, and there are quite a few things I'm going to investigate. I think I'd have felt a bit short changed if I'd paid full price for this, but I got it for a quid in the Amazon Kindle sale, so it was definitely worth it!

[Les · Rating 4 out of 5]

Easy to follow book with plenty of useful tips to save money whilst still living a comfortable lifestyle. An interesting read if you find yourself new to money saving but if seasoned in this area, there remain some things that will still enlighten you. Good directory at the rear to steer you in the right direction.

[Mr Andrew Hayden · Rating 3 out of 5]

Useful for beginners

This is a great book of you're new to the ways of thrift. Lots of good tips. However, I expect most sensible people are doing this anyway.

[Damaskcat · Rating 4 out of 5]

The idea behind this book is to help you save money on things you have to buy as well as the luxuries that you really feel you can’t live without. The book is divided into five sections – Spending It; Milking It; Making It; Financial Stuff and Directory. These are fairly obvious headings apart from the second one which is about the day to day expenditure such as food, transport, home etc.

With many of the suggestions in this book you need to be well organised – such as planning ahead to give you time to walk instead of getting the car out or getting off the bus one step earlier than usual. Saving money on supermarket shopping by comparing prices on things you buy all the time may well end up costing you money if you’re travelling to different shops or getting your home delivery from more than one supermarket. In fact getting the best value for money can end up becoming a full time job if you let it.

My feeling is that the book is very much one you can dip into as you feel the need to save money on certain things – or try and make more money. I thought it was very London-centred which means some of the tips are irrelevant for those of us who don’t live in big cities. But there are still some good tips for people who don’t live in the home-counties. I was pleased to see an author suggesting that it is possible – and cheap – to incorporate exercise into your daily life without the expense of a gym membership and the associated time needed to use it. Walking is free and good for you and gets you from place to place.

Where I did think this e-book edition really shows the advantages of e-books is that you can immediately go to any websites mentioned in the text without having to put the book down and switch on the computer. The Directory – which is the last section in the book – provides a handy list of all the useful websites and organisations mentioned in the text. If you didn’t use anything else in the book it would be worth buying for this alone. Overall – with the few reservations I have already mentioned – this is a useful book if you want to make your money go further or even make a bit more for yourself.

[Lisa Bennett · Rating 4 out of 5]

I bought this little book for 99p on a Kindle daily deal. It's full of useful tips on saving money while still being able to enjoy some of life's little luxuries. Not having had a pay rise in almost five years while the cost of living continues to go up, we've all had to learn to get by with less. The Kindle version of this book is currently on Amazon for £1.54, or you could grab a used paperback version for less than a £1. It's not going to hugely change your life, but if you like to save a few pennies here and there, there are tricks a plenty here for all areas of your life.

[Mel · Rating 5 out of 5]

Excellent hints and tips that are easy to integrate into daily life one at a time. It's got me back on track with money saving - something I used to be very interested in, but drifted away from in recent years. Very good at focusing the mind on spending, saving & the future.

[Jaimini Mehta · Rating 2 out of 5]

This is fine for those who are completely new to budgeting but fir those who have always watched their pennies - there is not really any new info or ideas. Probably better of perusing the money saving expert website.

[Carlene Alexander · Rating 4 out of 5]

Wish I'd got a paperback not kindle as there is so much good material eg. Websites to refer back to

[Natasha · Rating 3 out of 5]

Not everything was relevant to me in this book but informative nonetheless. Some common sense here but great to have it all in one book. Worth borrowing from the library.

[Richard Ford]

Far more content than I had expected.