Book Review: Little Book Of Big Savings

Posted on December 4 · Comments

I began reading The Little Book of Big Savings by Ellie Kay with high expectations. We’re pretty frugal, but you can never stop learning, and our budget can still do with some massaging. The book claimed to save me $1,200 per month after all. Maybe having high expectations was the problem, because I was pretty disappointed by this book and what it has to offer.

The book looks at twelve key areas of spending and gives a list of tips on how to reduce your spending in each area. It covers:

Housing and Utilities
Transportation
Food
Clothing and Dry Cleaning
Recreation and Entertainment
Vacations
Gifts
Medical, Dental and Insurance
Education
“Everything else”
Charity

There are a lot of saving tips in this book (351 apparently), some of them we already put into practice, a couple of them were useful and I’ll be using them, but many were irrelevant to our situation. Let me tell you why by saying who I think this book is for.

The book is for a modern kind of person (and American – many of the tips like insurance and education are relevant in America only) and who hasn’t tried saving money, and who doesn’t want to forego the modern conveniences and social expectations of today. People will save money if they apply the tips in this book.

The reason I was disappointed was that we’re probably too frugal for this book. Our family income is well below the so called American average of $48,000 per year. In part being frugal is necessity, and in part it’s a lifestyle choice that reflects our underlying values. We’re not just about saving a buck.

My criticisms are this: firstly, on page 2 the author mocked being frugal and specifically people who wash out their plastic zip lock baggies, so I was put off at the very start. Personally, I think that our disposable mindset would be hilarious, if it wasn’t so serious. I mean we spend good money on something to only use it once and throw it away, so we can go out and spend more money purchasing exactly the same thing to use again and so on. I know that I am not the only one who sees the joke (and the serious side) in this disposable mentality.

Secondly, we don’t have air conditioning or a dryer or a dishwasher or a coffee machine, or two cars or car payments or many of the conveniences of modern life, so many of the savings tips just didn’t relate to us. One of the tips in particular got me wondering about how other people live:

“Use cloth napkins and real plates. Yes, it’s less convenient. But it’s cheaper to wash than to buy paper.”

People don’t really eat off paper or plastic plates every night, do they?

Another claim that the book makes, is that it you won’t save money using cloth nappies. Well completely flummoxed, I did some calculations for myself and found that yes, if you buy all modern cloth nappies brand new, wash in hot water and use your dryer every day versus buying the cheapest home brand disposable on the market, then it can cost you more to use cloth – for the first child anyway.

Cloth nappies however, win hands down if you have more than one child and reuse them. On the other hand, we wash in cold, don’t have a dryer, balanced the purchase of nappies between old fashioned 60c each flannel nappies, handmade (hopefully, if I can get motivated) and modern and it will save us thousands by using reusable. I even got kind offers for free second hand nappies, which would have saved us even more. And then there is the whole disposable mentality thing that I’m just not keen on.

When it comes to buying food, I’m sceptical about coupons. I’m only judging by what I’ve seen on the net and what other frugal bloggers buy with coupons as we don’t have them in Australia, but much of what is bought with coupons and what is in our supermarket catalogues, I wouldn’t eat, at least not regularly. Michael Pollan in his book In Defense of Food calls much of the groceries sold “food like substances” and if you look at coupons and catalogue specials and loss leaders, that’s mostly what you’re getting, not real food but crap that’s giving us such lovelies like heart disease and diabetes.

The author’s “savings” sometimes seem a bit dubious as there are no calculations so you can’t really assess their validity. They are based on a lot of assumptions, which I guess is necessary, but kind of makes the “this is what I can save you” promise somewhat (really) inflated.

Finally, there’s a bit of brand name dropping in this book. According to one reviewer on Amazon, Ms Kay is a spokesperson for the company of some of these brands. I don’t know if this is actually true, but the name brand name dropping is annoying anyway. The other thing annoying thing is that she trademarks phrases in her book. She calls her tips the "Cha-Ching Factor™” tips. Ugh! Get real!

I know my critique may be a little harsh. Maybe I just got my back up about the whole baggie washing thing. Maybe it’s because I believe that saving money is about so much more than just saving money. To me, it’s also about relearning that we can’t just continue to destroy our natural environment with excessive consumerism.

The truth is that there are many people who will definitely benefit from The Little Book of Big Savings. Even I benefited from a couple of the tips, despite my negative review. And it can be a stepping stone into more “full on” frugal practices for those who have never thought of saving money before. However, give me The Tightwad Gazette any day. Now excuse me, I have some baggies to wash.

Have you read these posts?

Category: book review · Tags: book review