Rebecca Parkin, an ‘obsessive money saver’, bought her Audi TT car for cash last year
I’m 42 years old and mortgage-free. I’ve also managed to downshift so that I now work only two days a week full-time. It helps, I suppose, that I’m single and don’t have kids. I’ve always been an obsessive money saver but not in a way that’s really tight. I have a nice car and take one or two foreign holidays a year. For me it has always been about keeping my expenses down. The downshift was the result of my low outgoings; I could only afford to do it because I’ve always been careful with money.
The trouble is, if you say you are obsessive about saving money, it can look a bit shonky. Like you’re nutty about everything, that you use both sides of the toilet paper to save money. But it’s not like that. My parents didn’t have a lot of money when we were growing up, and it has just stayed with me. It’s not that I don’t buy what I want or need – I’m just very careful. For example, when I go out to eat with friends, I always find a voucher that we can use.