What's the deal with penny pinching?

If you're worried about falling house prices, rising oil prices and a global banking system buckling under the strain of a chronic credit squeeze, you might be able to take some comfort by hanging a dead bird in your garden and setting aside some space in your fridge for tights, candles and nail polish.

Dead birds swinging silently from your trees scare the bejaysus out of their more alive cousins, while tights, candles and nail polish left overnight in your fridge last longer. These are just some of the top tips contained in Jim and Irma Mustoe's Penny Pincher's Guide Revisited which was published last week.

While some of the money-saving suggestions in the book "are meant to be fun", says Irma Mustoe, and sound like they've come straight from the pages of Viz, their mission is deadly serious. "When people buy the book, they will see that there is a lot more to it," she insists.

She believes the Mustoe reuse-and-recycle philosophy, as it is outlined in the book, is both environmentally responsible and may even hold the key to personal fulfilment. She tells PriceWatch, almost wearily, that she's not stingy, mean, miserly, tight-fisted or money-grubbing and that her family leads "a very full life", despite their great reluctance to shop or spend money unnecessarily. She believes buying designer clothes, make-up, cakes, biscuits or sweets or almost anything else you can think of is the height of foolishness, when she can make many of the things herself for less.

"We aren't mean at all, although sometimes you have to be if you want to get by," she says. "If you are made redundant, as John was once, then you better learn pretty quickly how to be mean and know exactly what you can afford and how to make the money you have go as far as it possibly can," she says.

Irma was born in 1940 in a Savannah farmhouse with no electricity and no running water, while her husband grew up in equally austere wartime Britain. They met in the early 1960s on a US college campus, and when they married, they made a decision which could have been taken directly from the script of The Good Life.

They resolved to use as few chemicals as possible in their day-to-day lives, to grow and make their own food and clothes, and to recycle whenever they could. In the 1970s and 1980s, living the dream, they raised their three children on a small organic farm in England.

It wasn't until the first edition of the Penny Pincher's Guide was released in 1995 that the couple came to public prominence. The book was minor publishing sensation and on the back of it, they began publishing a Penny Pincher's magazine, the ongoing success of which encouraged their publishers to suggest a revised and updated edition of the book.

"People always want to know how they can save money, and we think we can help them. Global thinking has changed, and now more people are coming round to the idea that maybe we should slow down the relentless production and look at ways we can use the resources that we have," she says.

Their greatest extravagance seems to be books (second hand, of course), and when pressed, Irma struggles to think of any other luxury she is prepared to treat herself with. Even the couple's holidays are frugal. They just hop into their 10-year-old diesel estate (always buy an estate - it saves on delivery charges) and drive in one direction for a few days before turning round and driving home again.

"Certainly the lifestyle we lead is alternative, but we are not skinflints. We are always looking for the best value, not the cheapest thing. Sometimes you have to spend money to get something that is good value. And we have no problem with that at all. We are prepared to spend money on tools such as cooking utensils and even computers, because, in the long run, good quality equipment can save you money."

She accepts that for some people it is "too much work", but for them, it is just how they live and how they've always lived.

It must have been hard, PriceWatch suggests, for the Mustoe's three children, growing up in 1970s England, to have been denied all but the most basic of essentials and refused the toys and clothes their peers would have taken for granted. "We didn't buy them things which were not essential, and they always knew that we wouldn't. They knew that if they wanted a pair of trendy trainers or something they would have to save up and buy them out of their own money.

"I don't think parents should let their children dictate what is bought. By saying no to them, it teaches them a valuable lesson in how to say no to themselves, and, really, that is the secret - saying no to yourself and reminding yourself that most of the time you really don't need most of these things."

MAKING CENTS: TEN TOP TIPS

The best bird-scarer is free, biodegradable and very quiet. First, obtain a dead bird. Attach one leg to a branch with a piece of string, letting the wings and head hang down to flap gently in the breeze.

For a cheap mouthwash, use one tablespoon of vinegar in a glass of water.

Honey is antiseptic. Spread a little over shaving nicks.

Never go to the supermarket on an empty stomach - hungry shoppers tend to fill their trolleys with expensive sweets and snacks.

Save a small fortune by giving up smoking and chewing beeswax instead of expensive nicotine gums.

Egg white makes an excellent glue for paper.

Buy anti-freeze in the summer. As temperatures drop, the price goes up.

You can reuse coffee grounds by baking them for half an hour or so in a moderate oven while something else is baking.

Use an old calendar page as a pretty piece of wrapping paper.

Save quizzes or riddles from papers and magazines and store them for using in Christmas crackers.