Credit Crunch

Teacher beats credit crunch and lives on £1 a day!

An interesting story on how to survive the credit crunch surfaced this week with news about teacher Kath Kelly who lived on just £1 a day for a year as part of a bet with friends. They bet that she couldn’t do it but she proved them wrong by literally living on £1 a day for a year!

Ms Kelly, 47, used every trick in the book to live as cheaply as possible and ate at free buffets, shopped at jumble sales and retrieved food discarded by supermarkets and restaurants.

She also picked fruit from bushes and trees and picked up a total of £117 in loose change that she’d found dropped in the street. She even managed to get a free trip to France by hitchhiking through the Channel Tunnel but this isn’t something we’d recommend anyone does of course.

As her rent and bills were already paid for the year, her £1 a day budget had to pay for transport, food, clothing and socialising. The teacher soon learned how to spot a bargain and regularly shopped at supermarkets only at closing time in order to buy reduced items.

She also sought out market researchers in the street to see if they had any free samples on offer. She got rid of her mobile phone and even biked to the homes of anyone she wanted to speak to! Ms Kelly used her local library for free ‘net access and regularly attended public lectures for the free buffet.

By the end of the year Ms Kelly had also found love with 38-year-old Bruce Taylor, manager of one of the farms she worked on as a volunteer. The couple now live together in Bruton, Somerset, and Ms Kelly has penned a book about her year of living on just £1 a day, called, not surprisingly,  How I Lived On Just A Pound A Day.

She now grows her own fruit and veg, and says the whole experience has changed her attitude to money as well as her outlook on life.

“I’m a lot more sensible with my money now and live a completely different lifestyle” she told press recently.

Maybe her story will inspire us all to try living on a £1 a day!