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Smart Spending with Jane Furnival
| Jane shares some secrets on how to save money |
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Jane Furnival
When it comes to advice and budgeting Jane Furnival’s knowledge and expertise has no boundary. Having presented financial shows on the BBC and written her book ‘Smart Spenders’. Jane shares her thoughts, ideas and even reveals her secret for making a cracking elderflower cordial…on the cheap!
Transcript of the Interview with Jane Furnival:
Jane Furnival When it comes to advice and budgeting Jane Furnival’s knowledge and expertise has no boundary. Having presented financial shows on the BBC and written her book ‘Smart Spenders’. Jane shares her thoughts, ideas and even reveals her secret for making a cracking elderflower cordial…on the cheap! www.jane-furnival.co.uk
This is me I am Jane Furnival. I presented BBC 1 Smart Spenders, and yes this is me on the front cover, as everybody always goes -is that really you? Yes it is! It’s just an old picture. This book as it says on the back could be the best investment of your life. It covers every single method that I know and I know a good deal for saving you money. Ways of making money on the side, aside from your regular job- if you look after children or anything. There is everything you can possible think of in this book.
1) You know that you are spending too much when you stop opening your post because you don't want to read the bills. I have known people not opened things for six months or more. When your coming home from shopping and your transferring all your purchases to one carrier bag to hide the pair of shoes you have got for instance from your friends or family. When you are scanning magazines adverts for 0% offers when you are applying for new credit cards. I will tell you another important thing, people sometimes use shopping to give them a buzz or lift out of depression or as an escape mechanism. If you feel a sense of joy or almost like escapism when you go into a shopping mall-then you have a problem.
2) I would say sooner rather than later but it depends on the help. About 40% of people go through any form of debt counselling service. By getting the budget planner they go away and they help themselves- they don’t go back. I would imagine that there are several stages of being in big trouble. Well the most important one is really admitting that you have a problem- when you can’t see your way to getting enough money together to buy food or something like that. Most people have a typical debt- a debt counselling service will deal with £47,000.
3) The important thing is not to scan the back of cheap tabloid papers and for these things that promise an easy solution to your debts. We are not a counselling service or whatever you think they are going to lend you money at super low rates, well it’s not true! You shouldn’t have to pay for counselling, there are debt services where they take loads and loads of money up front. I have actually been around the offices and it is absolutely chilling the way they behave. They will ask you for several thousands of pounds- where are you meant to get that you are already up to your eyes. Then they will take possession of all your bills and then say they will send everything to us by registered post, well I pointed out that registered post is expensive and recorded delivery is much cheaper, but of course they are not really interested in saving you the money. What you should do is go to your local CAB, where they have trained Debt Councillors, look up debt advice in the Yellow pages or somewhere on the net. There is a really good service called the CCCS and they are fantastic- anywhere like that. If you can’t really stomach getting advice from somebody else, there are things you can do for yourself- one is my web site jane-furnival.co.uk. You will find a budget planner that you can download. What you can also do is actually put your situation to credit card companies yourself. You can write it all out- this is how much I have got coming in, this is how much I need to spend on basics and this is how much I can afford to pay you back -they will not want you to commit suicide they will come up with a solution. Do not let yourself be talked into paying back more, so say these are the total of my debts and this how much I can afford to pay you- they’ll freeze everything, but at least you won’t be in worse trouble. Another really important thing that I have learnt that where there are five debts there’s always another 2 or 3 on the side. Store cards there are the most pernicious thing. It really should be illegal to charge 30% APR on stuff and I don’t know why they get away with it, because if someone knocked on your door and said I’m going to charge you this amount they will be up in court. Now the thing to do with store cards is a pay them off, but stick them in a lump of ice in your freezer. What I do is get a little tin that will help, like a mackerel or sardine tin or something and then put water in. I cover the card in cling film because I don’t want to break the law by destroying it and I put it in the freezer. The reason I say a tin and not any other package it is because you cannot stick it in the microwave to quickly defrost it, when you are in the grip of lust for whatever it is you want- a new handbag or whatever you have seen. Keep it in the freezer, I have had women after a month say thank you for doing that, now I will cut it up and that’s the end of that. Once you know you have got that line of credit it’s just an invitation to go do what you think of as free shopping ‘cos after all it’s not real money… is it? It’s the bank of fairy land money and Santa Clause is gonna come down the chimney and in some mysterious way it will be alright- but it’s not.
4) If a friend says ‘oh go on go u deserve it!’ you must not think oh yes I do, actually you should say what have I done for that? Do I deserve it? She’s playing a kind of game with you. Money, emotions, passion and power are all bound up together and a lot of the art of saving money is to recognise the games that you play and the games that your friends or partners play. One of the stupider one’s is ‘you deserve it’ because it means if she says that to you, you have to say that to her when she wants to buy something that she clearly doesn’t deserve in some way. It’s like if you work late what do you deserve? You deserve that you finished your work, congratulations and a good night’s sleep-you don’t deserve a crystal chandelier or a huge bottle of champagne or something like that. I observe people playing with each other with money; it is Princess and Rescuer scenario. I dealt with this while doing the BBC series Smart Spenders. I dealt with a couple who got themselves into a dreadful pickle, because she felt she only had to ask and his role was to deliver until his credit cards exploded. We got into the stage, I don’t think we talked about this on camera, but he bought a whacking great engagement ring. He’d already gone bust once and this ring cost something like 4 - 5000 quid, she then went to the loo and took it off to wash her hands and lost it. He went and told the insurers they said that’s fine and gave them the money, but they have to spend it at a certain shop- ‘Ooh no, I don’t like any of those rings’, says Princess. She hops on a plane to the States to go off and chooses a ring, when she gets to the airport Princess has lost her ticket- so what does she do? She goes and buys another ticket to the States, ‘cos Princess can’t wait to get that plane for her wonderful ring. She gets over to the states she chooses herself not a ring but a stone for a couple of grand more than he paid for, she phones him up catches him in a moment and she says, ‘oh darling this will make me so happy’ . He replies, ‘oh yes u have it’ secretly losing sleep thinking how the hell am I going to afford this on my £18,000 salary. She comes back with a whacking great diamond, so I said listen hunny when you get married you wont care about your engagement ring ,it wont be important than the wedding band. Also if you walk around Harrow with a whacking great ring like that on your finger -how long will it take before your targeted? The result of it all was they had the hugest row; I had to sit outside in a car with the other production staff for at least 3 quarters of an hour while they screamed at each other. He was in tears saying that he thought she wouldn’t love him if he didn’t provide all this stuff, she was saying she had no idea how little he earned. The whole of that relationship re -balanced as a result of that interference much more healthily. She then agreed that she would get a job she would cut down all of her extraneous expenses -no manicures, she even had two ladies to cook the meals and leave them meals as if they lived in a grand house, when in fact they lived in a two up two down- she had masseuses and all sorts of things going on for her, but they are rebalanced and I bet you they are a lot happier.
5) I would imagine it’s the majority of debt. I think also programmes like The Osbournes and magazines that show celebs in their kind of opulent tacky lifestyles-gold taps and pink frufrus everywhere. It contributes towards the idea that they actually deserve very luxurious consumerist things- I don’t believe in that at all. I think you should have one or two really good quality things, and you should buy once and buy to last, but not go out and entertain yourself ‘cos shopping is not entertainment. You need to kind of break the habit and not think I’m at a loose end I’ll go up the mall because shops are machines for seducing you into buying stuff. It’s really hard to go into a shop and only come out with the one thing you want unless… this is another really good tip! Take a really crusty old uncle or your granddad or someone who hates shopping. Take a man who hates shopping not a new man who likes shopping, because if they came for a pair of fluffy bed socks they’ll go out with fluffy bed socks or roll of string or whatever it is they have gone in for. Another very good idea is take a toddler, because you can’t really shop convincingly with a toddler, so borrow a toddler. Take a dog that is always a good ‘cos it’s really, really hard to leave a dog outside a shop for long- either all of these sorts of strategies you can adopt. Another very good technique is if you have to shop swap shopping lists with a friend. So I might say, rite I need this and this, so here’s my food and here’s my budget 50 quid or whatever. It’s almost a game to see how cheap you can shop for. That way you’re not tempted to fritter. I have divided people into fritters and squanderers or bingers- some people will blow 800 quid and then they’ll actually boast about it and you think how long is it gonna take you to earn that money. A friend of mine calls it living ‘high boasting’ as if they stand around at BBq’s drinking beer boasting to each other about how much they’ve spent on ridiculous things, but anyway those are some techniques you can use. Guys, remember men actually fritter more than women in petrol service stations shops. This is a fact; it’s bolstered up by research. They stop and think I’ll have a CD, DVD, a magazine and a packet of nuts- by the time they’ve gone away… I believe the average motorway not motor, but all of the normal petrol stations for a guy is something like 38 quid extra, not including the petrol. It is a huge sum of money to spend just casually and it’s gone you’ve got nothing to show for it. So be disciplined about it.
6) You get small things not big things. You buy yourself chocolate, a magazine those kinds of small treats. Not a pair of shoes or a tool- gentleman! I do know you got tools- go into the garage and start your projects please.
7) Jane’s golden rules when your supermarket shopping is look high and low for bargains- I don’t mean go all round the shop turning everything upside down. I mean physically look up and look down because you probably don’t know that manufacturers pay supermarkets to place their products at the eye line- where you are just going to zip along the shelf and those are the most expensive things on the whole. Never pull things off the very end of the aisles because that’s where the very expensive things are. There are the treats, the little things; you think you might deserve- the things that look like managers specials, the DVD players. You don’t really need at all the bubble bath skin care, the book on cooking that you’re never really going to use, all those things just ignore those. The next thing is put it in a bag yourself, don’t just pick up these so called selected things, as if the others stuff wasn’t selected. In fact, I’m a Greek fan of going to these wonderful Greek and Turkish places and getting potatoes by the sack and what not, rather then know the little food centres. Now don’t when your buying things like biscuits don’t buy the newest variant, the newest flavour because there’s quite a difference between Rivita at 69p a packet and the next flavour up with the special seeds at 82 or 83p and the next flavour that’s got special kind of feel good herbs or something like that. Then suddenly your into £1.20, your not really gonna get a 50p’s worth buzz from getting the most expensive new flavour so just stick to the must basic things. Remember as well things like toothpaste that comes in a pump and soap that comes in liquid form are much, much more expensive than stuff that you just have to squeeze and soap that is in a bar. There are basic tricks like that when your buying frozen foods, always pull from the back of the frozen food area rather from the front because that’s got the longest sell by date. You’ll find it will last better and don’t forget really basic things, I mean I picked up spaghetti for 16p a packet the other day. My favourite supermarket is Iceland because everything tends to be a pound there anyway, and you just think blimey! How can they do it for that? It’s a bit rough and ready, but I just like it as a shop tremendously and its got quite good anti GM food polices and things like that. Try not to be snobby, I’ve known people to be snobby about supermarkets- I impress my friends buy shopping at Sainsbury! How sad is that! That’s the only thing you’ve got to impress your friends with. I can’t believe it! I have had people that I have taken to try and save them money to market stalls to buy meat. They have actually said to me quick, do this quickly I don’t want anybody to see me shopping for food at a market when I normally go to some up market supermarket, and again you just think- my God! I don’t believe that your self image can be bound up with where you’re seen buying meat- unbelievable isn’t it.
8) Yes, but I don’t think that one should pursue saving money at the expensive of every other value in life. I mean, I would always buy food and fruit and outdoor reared pork. I would never buy Danish bacon because I’ve actually toured at a pork farm and heard about the difference in welfare standards. There’s stuff I just wouldn’t do. One game I play with myself; maybe I’m sad too, is I love to go round a supermarket and get only things that are marked down. I’ve had checkout staff remark to me, ‘God I’ve never seen anybody pick up so many things as you have done’. Try not to buy microwave meals or chiller meals they are a massive, massive waste of money. You can make considerably more of that item at home. After all what are you gonna be doing with the time-sitting in front of the tele lolling about? Talking to your friend? Texting a friend? I make our own breaded chicken nugget things and there so much healthier, they are fun for the kids to help me make and they save absolutely pounds. It’s amazing how little nutritional and monetary value you can get from some of these meals, where you can get a lot if you make it by yourself- just by raw ingredients.
9) You can try becoming a member of a focus group for market research. So you might go to someone’s house and you might get fed or watered for doing it. You can get paid though, I have to say a £100 a session that’s a bit just to give your impression or your feelings about baked beans or tell them how you behave in certain situations. What kind of holidays you like- that kind of thing. Very nice money if you get on to somebody’s list -they’ll phone you up or if you can actually hold checklist and interview people in the streets and earn about £8 an hour. You’ll need woolly vest and gloves ‘cos you’re going to be standing in the cold. Now, if you promise you won’t buy anything while you’re doing this; my friend has taken up mystery shopping. She says she gets about £10 a visit and she gets to go around places she’d go anyway. You’ll have to report on the tidiness of the shop and how they are, whether they were polite to you. You can be a very difficult customer, I once had a go at doing it and I had to break a bottle of olive oil on the floor and report on how quickly they came to do it and whether they were nice to me. I have to say they always were. There’s another things you might by able to do if your lucky there’s a company called adwraps.co.uk and they’ll even give you a free car- it says here in my book! They will pay you between £66- £200 a month to wrap your car in, which they point out protects you against body damage. You have to ask if your suitable because when I phoned up about this, it depends who they have got wanting to advertise, which town. If you have a got a ghost frightnights.co.uk may pay to rent your place for parties. Another really easy thing is you can actually rent the bedroom that your teenager occupies to your teenager, and then you can get the first £4250 tax free -under the rent a room scheme. It’s perfectly legal and I kid you not. What a friend of mine does, which I’ve being trying to get into is rent your house out as a location and people get from about £400 to about £10,000. One old lady rents out her late husband’s garage which is absolutely immaculate and full of junk and people absolutely love it. You can try your local council or try thefilmcouncil.org.uk. There are various local places as well around the country so if you try your council they’ll probably tell you about it. If you got any land or a workshop or a barn or a garage or anything you can rent that out. You could even become and artist model, I don’t mean like a supermodel, but if you contact your local college of art or college of further education its £11 an hour nude or £8 clothed.Clean easy, I always thought they were always good 21% commission. Avon is very secretive these days –you have to pay them £15 as a joining subscription and you have to sell a minimum of £68 of goods to receive commission –well I don’t know. The gift experience; soft toys, novelties, photo albums, candles, jewellery etc -initial £180 worth of stock and that is deducted apparently from your commission, and that is 205 of all sales. And remember once you start earning money, you can start with your tax return claiming anything that you had to spend out, like your transport costs, stationary, phone bill all sorts of other things. There is a really nice book by Jasmine Birtles called ‘A Bit On The Side- 500 ways to boost your incomes’ and she gives you absolutely loads of ideas there. As a dreadful warning try ‘the book of crap jobs’, which is hilarious, especially the woman who became a sex line lady and that is the funniest story I have ever read.
10) Alright this I am very proud to tell you is my elderflower cordial that I make homemade. It is really, really easy, in fact when you smell, there is a slightly sweet sour smell about elderflowers. You just snip them off stick them in a saucepan. I don’t know if you can see that is elderflower cordial in the making with some lemons and a bag of sugar. I have actually added lemon geranium leaf as well, which is my own special little twiddle and then you just leave them in the fridge for five days. Then at the end of that get a dish cloth or something a bit porous, just stick everything through it to strain it. Everybody laughs at me, but I save every bottle. This is part of my vast collection of bottles I save. If you want to do something a bit fancy you can make elderflower champagne, which I am afraid is not alcoholic. You need some vinegar for that, a little bit of white wine vinegar and a few less lemons, cold water and one day to stand it. Then you bottle it and leave it for three weeks. I am not going to open it, because it would probably go off with a massive bang, but I will sample some of my elderflower cordial-I haven’t really had a chance to enjoy it this year yet. I made it with brown sugar. Oooh It has got a lovely bouquet, it’s really unique, and it is much nicer then what you would buy in the shop. I have to tell you I am saving a fortune making soft drinks, do you know how much soft drinks a family gets through? Well, there is five of us, if we drank half a bottle of cordial or squash or something a week £2.99 for organic cordial in Waitrose, 40p a bottle. I have worked out I am saving nearly £70 a year; £70 just for a little bit of trouble and a few days having a very full fridge.
11) Now Mr Clumsy, I don’t know if you’re responsible for these eggs, but I have just picked them up and do you know you are saving me money. If I went down to the supermarket and bought free range organic eggs it would be about 26p. I have worked out that with you and your girls, I’ve got seven hens, that is 1.5 p per egg and I get six eggs a day, which makes it great! I can also give them to friends and everybody is delighted.
12) It is really easy, you get your chickens, a bit of hay or straw but I also economise by mulching up paper in a machine- I squiggle it down. Then you need a bit of hen feed, which is about £10 for a huge sack-you use your scraps as well. It takes me about two minutes a day to clean them out. I just clean out the worse of the hen poo and that is it. They are very friendly and lovely, you have to be aware though they do get into my vegetable patch. They ate all my chard and they are naughty. I will tell you the other thing they did; they got into the kitchen and ate my son’s sunflower that he was growing for school and the root off the kitchen window sill.
13) I can’t tell you the difference in taste, looks and appearance. I went on a train a couple of weeks ago and I looked at the scramble eggs and just thought oh dear! It is sad. I forgotten these eggs are much yellowier, the yolk is bigger and fresher. They cook in a different way; they are handled in a different way. Everything about them is fresher, like when your entertaining. I will go outside and I will pull out a salad and immediately serve it and everybody goes wow! It is a different experience. Being on occasions being short of potatoes for a dinner party and I have actually gone outside and dug them out, while people are sitting at the table. It just makes all the difference to have all your own stuff. It is not only saving money, it is a quality of life, it’s the satisfaction, it is the fact that there are no chemicals; it’s the fun of it and the fun for children. It is also the recycling, because the chicken poo goes straight in to the compost with the paper that I have shredded and everything else and that goes on the vegetables.
14) Over there, there is potatoes, a lot of them- raspberries, blueberries, parsnips, there would be the chard but the chickens had it. The tomatoes you can see the chickens had a go at. There is loads and loads of rocket there, which is incredibly useful. Courgettes, more potatoes, some borage there, there are some newly planted various things here-mainly lettuce and stuff. I find I run out. Over there, there is lettuce as well, there is beetroot over there and there are loads and loads of peas and stuff. I have run out of broad beans now. I am going to check my courgettes… here we are… what is nice about these is that you can get the courgette flower as well. That is only a little baby one, but I will pick it for the camera and you can batter those or you can use them in a salad, quite tasty and nice-a bit peppery. Very nice, there is a rather misshapen one that is rather pretty as well-we’ll have that one. So there are two little courgettes.
15) Yeah, but what else are you going to be doing lying in front of the tele- going to the supermarket? I can’t stand buying food in supermarkets! It is the epitome of boredom to me as well as the money you can spend there. One very good tip is don’t go supermarket shopping, if you can avoid it, ‘cos they are just machines for milking you of money.
16) I have worked out that if you buy a mixed salad from Waitrose (organic salad) £1.99 for a packet of 500g that is one thing. A packet of seeds is at the most £1.20 and usually cheaper for a mix lettuce or something, which means if you eat salad for half the year-your saving something like £300 –it’s a lot of money.
Clean easy, I always thought they were always good 21% commission. Avon is very secretive these days –you have to pay them £15 as a joining subscription and you have to sell a minimum of £68 of goods to receive commission –well I don’t know. The gift experience; soft toys, novelties, photo albums, candles, jewellery etc -initial £180 worth of stock and that is deducted apparently from your commission, and that is 205 of all sales. And remember once you start earning money, you can start with your tax return claiming anything that you had to spend out, like your transport costs, stationary, phone bill all sorts of other things. There is a really nice book by Jasmine Birtles called ‘A Bit On The Side- 500 ways to boost your incomes’ and she gives you absolutely loads of ideas there. As a dreadful warning try ‘the book of crap jobs’, which is hilarious, especially the woman who became a sex line lady and that is the funniest story I have ever read.
17) Alright this I am very proud to tell you is my elderflower cordial that I make homemade. It is really, really easy, in fact when you smell, there is a slightly sweet sour smell about elderflowers. You just snip them off stick them in a saucepan. I don’t know if you can see that is elderflower cordial in the making with some lemons and a bag of sugar. I have actually added lemon geranium leaf as well, which is my own special little twiddle and then you just leave them in the fridge for five days. Then at the end of that get a dish cloth or something a bit porous, just stick everything through it to strain it. Everybody laughs at me, but I save every bottle. This is part of my vast collection of bottles I save. If you want to do something a bit fancy you can make elderflower champagne, which I am afraid is not alcoholic. You need some vinegar for that, a little bit of white wine vinegar and a few less lemons, cold water and one day to stand it. Then you bottle it and leave it for three weeks. I am not going to open it, because it would probably go off with a massive bang, but I will sample some of my elderflower cordial-I haven’t really had a chance to enjoy it this year yet. I made it with brown sugar. Oooh It has got a lovely bouquet, it’s really unique, and it is much nicer then what you would buy in the shop. I have to tell you I am saving a fortune making soft drinks, do you know how much soft drinks a family gets through? Well, there is five of us, if we drank half a bottle of cordial or squash or something a week £2.99 for organic cordial in Waitrose, 40p a bottle. I have worked out I am saving nearly £70 a year; £70 just for a little bit of trouble and a few days having a very full fridge.
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IVA Video Guides: Smart Spending with Jane Furnival
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Charles & Co - the Debt Help Specialists |
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