or
Sign in to turn on 1-Click ordering.
 
 
More Buying Choices
37 used & new from £2.74
Have one to sell? Sell yours here
 
   
The Thrift Book: Live Well and Spend Less
 
 
Share your own customer images
Search inside this book

The Thrift Book: Live Well and Spend Less (Paperback)

by India Knight (Author)
3.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (50 customer reviews)
RRP: £14.99
Price: £8.20 & this item Delivered FREE in the UK with Super Saver Delivery. See details and conditions
You Save: £6.79 (45%)
o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o
In stock.
Dispatched from and sold by Amazon.co.uk. Gift-wrap available.

Want guaranteed delivery by Tuesday, November 10? Choose Express delivery at checkout. See Details
28 new from £5.35 9 used from £2.74
Other Editions: RRP: Our Price: Other Offers:
Paperback £7.99 £4.49 21 used & new from £3.08

Frequently Bought Together

The Thrift Book: Live Well and Spend Less + How to Feed Your Whole Family a Healthy Balanced Diet, with Very Little Money and Hardly Any Time, Even If You Have a Tiny Kitchen, Only Three ... - Unless You Count the Garlic Crusher... + Economy Gastronomy: Eat Better and Spend Less
Price For All Three: £24.17

Show availability and shipping details

Customers Who Bought This Item Also Bought

How to Feed Your Whole Family a Healthy Balanced Diet, with Very Little Money and Hardly Any Time, Even If You Have a Tiny Kitchen, Only Three ... - Unless You Count the Garlic Crusher...

How to Feed Your Whole Family a Healthy Balanced Diet, with Very Little Money and Hardly Any Time, Even If You Have a Tiny Kitchen, Only Three ... - Unless You Count the Garlic Crusher...

by Gill Holcombe
4.1 out of 5 stars (111)  £5.98
How I Lived a Year on Just a Pound a Day

How I Lived a Year on Just a Pound a Day

by Kath Kelly
4.2 out of 5 stars (20)  £5.49
The Kitchen Revolution: A Year of Time-and-money-saving Recipes

The Kitchen Revolution: A Year of Time-and-money-saving Recipes

by Rosie Sykes
3.9 out of 5 stars (34)  £16.23
The Wonderful Weekend Book: Reclaiming Life's Simple Pleasures

The Wonderful Weekend Book: Reclaiming Life's Simple Pleasures

by Elspeth Thompson
4.2 out of 5 stars (13)  £9.09
The Shops

The Shops

by India Knight
4.7 out of 5 stars (19)  £5.97
› Explore similar items

Product details

  • Paperback: 272 pages
  • Publisher: Fig Tree; 1st Edition edition (6 Nov 2008)
  • Language English
  • ISBN-10: 1905490372
  • ISBN-13: 978-1905490370
  • Product Dimensions: 21.8 x 15.8 x 3 cm
  • Average Customer Review: 3.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (50 customer reviews)
  • Amazon.co.uk Sales Rank: 12,582 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

    Popular in this category:

    #64 in  Books > Reference > Consumer Guides

    •  Would you like to update product info or give feedback on images?

Product Description

Product Description

Feeling poor because of recession? Feeling guilty because of global warming? Feeling like you’d quite like to tighten your belt, but aren’t quite ready to embrace DIY macramé handbags? No need to panic. Put down the economy mince and buy this book instead – it’s a blueprint for living beautifully while saving money and easing your conscience. India Knight (no slouch when it comes to extravagance) shows you how even a dedicated consumer and child of the more-is-more 1980s can mend her ways, embrace the New Thrift, and find her life – and bank balance - dramatically improved in the process. She will show you: How to make wonderful dinners with very little money; How to grow things; how to make jellies, chutneys and pickles and how to can vegetables and fruit; How to dress on a budget and still look fabulous – and what to do with your mum’s old sewing machine; How to make the most of living in a community, from borrowing preserving pans (that’s right, we’re making jam) to starting a toy-swapping group; How to holiday in new and imaginative ways - with only the merest whisper of a carbon footprint; How to make your own fun, from crafts to making presents, from parties to affordable pampering; and finally...How to manage your money – because, frankly, it's about time we all got a grip. Above all, India Knight will show you that saving money and tightening your belt doesn’t have to feel like a penance – it can be both fun and glamorous (and a great deal more satisfying than buying the latest It-bag). Try it – you have nothing to lose but your overdraft.


From the Author

Thrift is a book for anyone who's ever been a disaster with money and who'd quite like that to stop. It's for anyone who feels the need to tighten their belt and hunker down until the storm is over, but doesn't want to stop having fun or living graciously. It isn't a book called How To Be Tight, so anyone interested in gathering up all their elastic bands to turn into a marvellous rubber ball for the children's Christmas present might do better elsewhere. Nor is it a book called How To Be A New Puritan - my tips for having cheapo fun don't involve wearing a hair shirt and lying with your face turned to the wall, contemplating the sinfulness of shopping. Thrift is a book about all sorts of small (and some big) ways of saving money without feeling like your life's gone down the dumper, with precise advice (websites and so on) and recommendations. If you liked The Shops, I think you'll like this one: we're talking saving rather than spending, but the ethos is the same - it's about finding joy in small things, except this time around the small things are likely to be home-made or extraordinarily cheap.
See all Product Description
Inside This Book (Learn More)
Browse Sample Pages
Front Cover | Copyright | Table of Contents | Excerpt | Index | Back Cover
Search inside this book:

Tags Customers Associate with This Product

 (What's this?)
Click on a tag to find related items, discussions, and people.
 
(13)
(10)
(8)
(4)
(4)
(3)
(2)
(2)
(2)
(1)
(1)
See all 17 tags...

Your tags: Add your first tag
 
See most popular tags
 

Customer Reviews

50 Reviews
5 star:
 (22)
4 star:
 (9)
3 star:
 (9)
2 star:
 (7)
1 star:
 (3)
 
 
 
 
 
Average Customer Review
3.8 out of 5 stars (50 customer reviews)
 
 
 
 
Share your thoughts with other customers:
Most Helpful Customer Reviews

 
236 of 245 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars Patronising and disappointing, 24 Nov 2008
By J. Williams (UK) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   
As a big fan of India Knight and someone who is actively trying to cut back I was delighted when I saw she had written this book. Having read it though I have to say I am quite disappointed. It's written in her usual entertaining style but the content consists mainly of patronising rubbish backed up by endless lists of websites which anyone good at Googling could have put together. It's also clearly aimed at townies/Londoners which is highly annoying for the rest of us. The suggestions for saving money seem to be split into three categories - a) things lots of people already do because they don't have much choice like taking a packed lunch to work or holidaying in the UK, b) 'trendy' ideas that people have actually been doing for years like making jam or handing down clothes and c) 'investment buying' such as the suggestion that you buy one Diane von Furstenberg wrap dress instead of 10 Primark tops which is all very well is you have £200 up front but that's not the case for most of us. She claims to advocate thrifty living but every chapter is packed with references to 'good' food (why do writers/chefs insist on referring to everything in this annoying way? - 'some good olive oil', 'some good bread' etc) and how you should buy organic/natural whether it's food or beauty products. She also contradicts herself, in one chapter suggesting we shop at Lidl because it's cheap then in the next advocating M&S (definitely not cheap) because of their environmentally friendly fishing policies. Most of the tips are common sense such as planning your shopping list and the stuff about joining the WI and knitting scarves for friends are just bandwagon jumping. This could have been a really good and useful book if she'd looked more at why we like spending money so much (10 Primark tops = 10 shopping 'hits') instead of churning out patronising junk and other people's ideas in the hope of cashing in on the current economic climate.
Comment Comments (6) | Permalink | Was this review helpful to you? Yes No (Report this)



 
68 of 71 people found the following review helpful:
2.0 out of 5 stars Beautifully written but..., 21 Nov 2008
By SWH (UK) - See all my reviews
Written by the wonderful India Knight,so i was looking forward to this book.Yes, it does have her usual humour and lovely language but I cant help feeling that she was more at home in The Shops- her incomparable book on where to buy almost anything.Funnily enough that tome has saved me from numerous expensive mistakes by directing me to the best place each time for quality and style.Sadly the Thrift book doesnt have the same infectious enthusiasm.It seems a bit rushed and lightweight- most of us know how to bake cakes or make jam.I can balance my chequebook because i have always had to! Its not a novelty for most of us. My childen have always worn handmedowns alongside their new clothes and we have swapped toys etc. Holidays in UK are the norm.I felt close to being patronised in parts of this book

Bandwagon? maybe. Well written- yes.
Comment Comment | Permalink | Was this review helpful to you? Yes No (Report this)



 
47 of 51 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars Economy drive meets green rant!, 8 Nov 2008
By RSM (Herts, UK.) - See all my reviews
  
I've got mixed feelings about this book. There's a very impressive list of websites that'll definitely help you in your economy drive (such as cooking club networks, online newspapers to save you buying the daily, and car share groups). And there's also a very good chapter on 'Community' suggesting pooling expensive purchases such as lawnmowers, or 'produce swapping' - offloading your jams and preseves for someone elses veggies.

But there are also a lot of very facile and unoriginal suggestions and observations, i.e making your own cards will be cheaper than buying them, or that dried pasta is cheaper than an M&S ready meal (no, really?!). Also there are very few 'worked examples' - a couple of recipes for popcorn and fairy cakes, but relatively few illustrations of many of the suggestions, most of which seem to be thoughtlessly tossed out as space fillers.

Furthermore, the author seems to have had something of a 'green epiphany' and a lot of space is taken up with rants about the evils of bottled water, and nasty chemicals used by the big beauty brands, which doesn't have a whole lot to do with thrift. As a scientist, I also found the 'natural is best' mantra on every page somewhat annoying and misleading.

To end on a slightly more positive note, the author has a great writing style - witty and engaging - but although I loved 'The Shops' and almost always find myself agreeing with her columns, I really did think 'Thrift' was decidedly average.
Comment Comment | Permalink | Was this review helpful to you? Yes No (Report this)


Share your thoughts with other customers: Create your own review
 
 
 
Most Recent Customer Reviews

1.0 out of 5 stars Be thrifty and don't waste your money on this book
India Knight must have a very good agent to convince Penguin Books to indulge her by publishing The Thrift Book. Read more
Published 8 days ago by Paul Elswood

3.0 out of 5 stars Cheap Living for Sloane Rangers
I'm writing my own book on thrift and interested to know what others say. Ms Knight has a slightly different idea of thrift from myself. Read more
Published 11 days ago by Seamus Enright

5.0 out of 5 stars How to do the credit crunch with class
Bought for a friend who's a recovering shopaholic who's found some of the tips genuinely useful. She enjoys India Knight's writing style and has even gone on to buy the Idiot... Read more
Published 24 days ago by Karen S

3.0 out of 5 stars Not India's best, but not all bad.
I love India Knight's writing, adored The Shops, and was really pleased to get this book as a gift. But my feelings are mixed. Read more
Published 1 month ago by Schiehallion 1977

2.0 out of 5 stars Save a fiver - don't buy this book!
I hate giving negative reviews - especially when it's writers I admire, like India Knight. However, needs must. Read more
Published 2 months ago by A. I. McCulloch

3.0 out of 5 stars Great Read!
First of all, I really enjoyed reading this book. It's kind of reminded me to go back to some money-saving habits I'd dropped over the years like yogurt making, card making etc... Read more
Published 2 months ago by V. Ashdown

5.0 out of 5 stars Just the thing for the credit crunch
Not only did I find this book to be enjoyable to read it had loads of suggestions for being creative in these straightened times . Read more
Published 3 months ago by J9

5.0 out of 5 stars Fab Reading
I have just finished reading this book and thought it was fab. Its witty, got great ideas and i couldn't put it down. Bargain
Published 3 months ago by Janeywoo

5.0 out of 5 stars Fabulous!
Love India Knight and love this book. I read The Shops and I find her funny, witty and clever. This book is really about living well, within your means and spending money... Read more
Published 4 months ago by Storm in a tea-cup

4.0 out of 5 stars life on a budget
I found this a very informative and interesting book with lots of hints I would never have thought of. The internet sites quoted make it even more up to the minute.
Published 4 months ago by christina

Only search this product's reviews


Customer Discussions

This product's forum
Discussion Replies Latest Post
my best credit crunch tip... 1 August 2009
› See all discussions...  
Start a new discussion
Topic:
First post:
Prompts for sign-in
 

   

Listmania!

Create a Listmania! list

Look for similar items by category

Look for similar items by subject







i.e., each product must be in subject 1 AND subject 2 AND ...

Feedback

Ad

Your Recent History

 (What's this?)

After viewing product detail pages or search results, look here to find an easy way to navigate back to pages you are interested in.