The recession has created a whole new sub-genre of journalism at the Guardian and Observer newspapers (which these days are run out of the same stable). They are excellent titles both, and the natural home of liberal thought in the British press, but my god there's a self-satisfied middle class smugness about the writing at times. Now I may be on dodgy ground here. After all, any journalist is looking for good copy in the events of the day, they have to write their words knowing their readers, and these days they increasingly mine their own lives for material. However...

Suspect 1: Observer magazine, Sunday 1 March, How I learned to live with my frugal husband by Harriet Green (her real name). Harriett writes how she is having to forgo spa treatments and trips to Liberty because husband Jean-Paul is 'frugal'. Instead of taking the kids to Nando's, he's out foraging for nettle leaves and dandelions, reclaiming wood from skips that he can then knit into furniture, and repointing the house with his own excrement. This is a husband who cuts up his apple then saves each pip saying 'each one is a potential tree'. Leaving aside that the correct response is to wrest the knife from his hand and plunge it into his spleen, there are constant reminders that, actually, this couple aren't struggling in any way at all. Jean-Paul grudgingly visits John Frieda to have a haircut, accepts that the 'hugely expensive Paper Denim & Cloth jeans' that Hazza makes him buy are actually better than the ones he's made from old pizza flyers. The overall impression is of an affluent couple playing at poverty ... and isn't it all fun.

Step forward suspect 2: Graham Snowdon in the Guardian 'Money Blog' of Wednesday 4 March, who professes himself 'Dazed and Confused' by 'the heap of neglected bills, bank statements and other correspondence sits festering on my bedside unit. I stare at it hoping it might disappear – or at least get smaller – by sheer force of will, but it refuses to budge'. Graham witters on upon unopened credit card statements, a demand from his optician that he get his eyes tested before they 'release' his contact lenses and then the killing line - which shows that we're talking real poverty, not just your boring northern underclass, never worked, never will, malnourished stuff. Graham has 'two fee statements from my son's nursery'. Graham builds his bills into a Jenga tower and professes himself 'overwhelmed. Where should I start, any suggestions gratefully received'.

Pro bloggers will recognise this canny disingenousness as the come-on to generate user-generated content so beloved of the UK broadsheets. I seed the subject, you write loads of choleric replies, we get free content. We might even run some Adwords down the side to monetise the thing. And Guardian readers, bless 'em, respond in droves. Here's a tip Graham. Pay the bills and stop pretending to be poor.

Suspect 3: Guardian 4 March My Big Green Wedding. Full marks for eco-awareness here, as the Guardian recycles this headline from a similar piece in 2004. Here, five 'ordinary' women talk about how they are going to reduce the cost, carbon footprint, waste and enjoyability of their special day. 'Transport was a green priority and, fortunately, Fishers Farm Park were prepared to supply us with a Shire horse and antique hay wagon. After the wedding I crushed the empty champagne bottles and put them in our kiln to make cheese plates' writes Becci of West Sussex. Great tip Becci, and one people will be copying across Britain. Kristie and Anthony reduced costs and carbon by serving seasonal food 'wild duck, which we captured on site'. I'm off into my own garden with the catapult to 'source' some squirrels and feral cats for the kids' tea. 

'Even the confetti was grown in my garden' writes Caroline Flint bafflingly. I scan my own garden for clues. So that confetti would be ... leaves? grass? dog shit? Let's move on. Melissa and Alastair of North Devon 'use organic caterers who promise entirely biodegradable equipment. The plates will be made of palm leaves, the cutlery of local wood and the glasses of corn starch. We're going to travel to and from the wedding on a horse which will help reduce our footprint. The cider is going to come from Devon's finest breweries. Wood burning fires will provide all the energy we need for the wedding.' Not sure about that last bit Caroline ... I'd check what the guests are inhaling in the toilets to give them that extra little burst of energy needed to carry them through to the early hours. Bewilderingly, Caroline refers to her honeymoon as 'relatively local' (ie not local) as they travel from Northampton to the Lake District, and boasts that 'all the home grown materials also helped keep the costs below £10,000'.

What seems to have escaped our contributors and the Guardian itself, is that to most Britons, recession means fear of unemployment, tough decisions on how to feed the family, horrible uncertainty about the future and the realisation that their pension and savings nest eggs ain't going to hatch. Not marginal decisions on how to spend on luxuries such as £10,000 weddings, children's nurseries and £50 haircuts. Such stuff is not only laughable but weirdly out of tune with the times.

5 January 2009
On the fifth day of my year of living frugally (the aim, you'll remember, is to save £10,000 during 2009) I turn my attention to the lovely, lovely free stuff at freecycle.org. There is no such thing as a free lunch, as we're often told, everything has its cost. But a couple of things here. First, I'm not after lunch and second there's a lot more ways to measure costs than the purely financial. In this case, the cost of getting my secondhand sewing machine from the Elephant and Castle to East Dulwich is my getting into the car and going to get the thing ... plus I put my back out in the process. These are prices I'm happy to pay. There's more than one way to measure benefits too - I get the massive boost of getting something for nothing and feeling I've slightly reduced my carbon footprint rather than increasing it.

The sewing machine's not for me by the way, it's for the wife. Who swears she is going to make curtains, tablecloths and perhaps even run me up a suit. (Perhaps not). So assuming she ever gets it out of the box, there are further savings in store. But for now I'm happy to have saved the £50 which was the price of the cheapest alternative online.

Day 5: saved £50: yearly saving so far £538

4 January 2009
Feeling very good about saving several hundred pounds yesterday merely by switching my fuel bills to online tariffs and paying by direct debit, but there's more. Last year, in an attempt to cosy up the house, we had the coal-effect gas fire (very 1970s) removed and a real fire put back in. My naive assumption that we could simply chuck some wood in there and start burning was quickly dispelled by our very efficient, if rather glum, chimney sweep. Not only must the chimney be cleared but a little hood put on top, lest homeless ravens attempt to build nests in there. Then there was a dinky metal windmill to increase the draw of the chimney. Finally, I had to have a hole drilled in my wall to install an extractor, lest their be a dangerous build up of gases and we all suffocate while enjoying 'Ant and Dec's Saturday Takeaway'.

"You're joking," I said. "This is a rickety Victorian semi. When the wind blows the curtains move. Even the floors let in a draught." The sooty-faced gloomster was unmoved. Several hundred pounds later I could light my fire safe in the knowledge that my children could watch Sky safe from physical, if not moral and spiritual, pollution. As I found out though, solid fuel ain't cheap. You burn bags of logs, coal and kindling each week, especially in winters like this one, and an open fire isn't very efficient either - 90 per cent of the heat goes up the chimney not into the room.

So a dream for later in the year is to buy one of those sealed, solid fuel burners, which are hyper efficient. But in the meantime, I have found a regular source of wood, in the skips of East Dulwich. Myself and Rennie minor go out in the van and pillage. Today we found a marvellous stash of tongue and groove (excellent for kindling), old rafter beams and oak worktops (lovely burners). The boy was very excited and asked if he could use the chainsaw once we got it home. As he's only seven, I think this unwise. But anyway, I consider this green (I'm a big reduce and re-use guy, but very sceptical about much recycling) and we got around £30 worth of firewood at a rough reckoning. The skip-waste of East Dulwich won't have to be shipped off to landfill in Essex or China and we're keeping things local. And I love using that chainsaw.

Day 4: saved £30 on firewood: yearly saving so far £488

3 January 2009
Okay, so I'm trying to save £10,000 in a year, with the added discipline of saving something different every single day. I'm well aware that by December I may be getting a little desperate for ideas - I'll probably be prising ear wax from the kids to make festive candles. But in this first month I reckon I can rack up some big ticket savings. I'm thinking insurance, energy, the car, the mortgage ... I should be able to chalk up some hundred pound plus numbers before I get into the nickels and dimes. Don't get me wrong, I love the little stuff, and I get extraordinary satisfaction from saving £1.80 on my daily paper and going to the library instead - just call me cheap.

But today I tackled the energy issue, and it WASN'T as straightforward as I'd hoped. My assumption was I'd be able to tart my account around to one of the big suppliers (Npower, E.on, EDF and the rest) and they'd be able to knock 10 per cent or so off my bills. After all, their spotty salesmen are always knocking at my door telling me they can slash my energy bills. No such luck. The problem is, it's just too bloody complicated at the moment. The energy market is in a complete state of flux, with dozens of different tariffs. If you are with Npower in London you could easily be paying a different tariff to a customer in Scotland. Added to the confusion is that prices ARE likely to drop in the coming months. Wholesale prices are down by around half from last year, when all anyone talked about was that commodities were the new gold. (Remember oil at $140 a barrel?)

Truth is, the power companies have been as miserly as the petrol companies in reducing prices, but that's likely to change over the next months - firstly because prices generally take a scandalously long time to feed through to the consumer, but secondly because the general slowdown in the world economy is reducing demand for power, and thus its price. So my decision was to do nothing for now. BUT there are savings. To my shame we were still paying quarterly by post for energy and moving my Npower tariff to direct debit got me a 10 per cent saving. I also moved to the company's online tariff and this got me a further 10 per cent off.

A 20 per cent saving on the heinous fuel bills for this drafty Victorian pile, is a biggie, £300 a year in fact. Now that does give me a warm glow. And I'll be going back in search of a cheaper tariff later in the year ... it's up to you to keep my business Npower!

Day 3: saved £300 on fuel: yearly saving so far £758

2 January 2009
Flushed with success at my first day's saving - £456, or 4.56% of my yearly target of £10,000, I relate my triumph to the wife. 'But of course you're going to have to do that every day now aren't you ... or you'll feel like you've failed.' Is this what you call tough love? Hard motivation? She may, in her unique way be trying to raise my game, but I think a reality check is needed here. My quest is to save £10,000 over the year, with a combination of little tweaks and grand gestures.

Yesterday's was the grand gesture, today I go for the little tweak. I am due in the pub at noon to watch the football with my brother in law and a few friends. I'm not drinking anyway as it's January and would normally take the car. I think carbon footprint, problems with parking ... expense! I reckon I can save a couple of quid by taking the bus. Bus, schmus, I haul the fold-up Brompton bike from under the stairs and try to remember how to unfold it. This was the bike I bought for £500 three years ago to 'save me money' and which has seen so little daylight that I swear it blinks when I get it out the front door. You know the way the newspapers calculate the price of big money football failures with the old 'three million pounds a goal' routine? (Liverpool fans just need to think about Robbie Keane here). Well these guys have nothing on the cost of each journey on my Brompton - it would have been cheaper to have a cab on standby.

Finally got the thing together, and only missed the first five minutes. It's free (I've not yet got into the madness of costing the calories that I'll have to put back into my body to pay for the exercise) and I'm getting my day's exercise too. Now that gives me an idea for tomorrow's saver.

Day 2: saved £2 on bus fare: yearly saving so far £458

1 January 2009
The last year has been tough, we all know that. And, having already lived been a working grown-up during a couple of recessions, I can say this is the worst yet. Of course, the more you have the more you have to lose, and this one has been a stinker. Lucrative freelance work disappearing; first-hand experience as an online retailer (holidays and travel) of people keeping their cash in their pockets; and an estate agent who managed one of my properties going down the swannee and taking £1500 of my cash with them.

Okay, so enough of the sob stories. The bottom line is that money in the Rennie household is not quite so plentiful as it once was. This made me think. Though I lecture other people on how to save and, most especially, how not to waste money, am I really walking the walk here. I reckon I've got into some lazy habits. So this is the task. Every single day for a year I'm going to do something to save money. My aim is to save £10,000 by the end of the year. I'm going to do it either by cancelling something that's currently costing me, replacing something with a cheaper good or service, or finding a new way to make cash.

A few ground rules. I can't simply cancel my morning paper and use that one for every day bar Christmas (they don't publish papers on Christmas Day, I know, I used to work on them). I can't say 'I fancy buying those £100 shoes ... No, I don't. There, I just saved £100'. And I can't simply take a job (and in any case I will never work for anyone, ever again). As my wife kindly pointed out to me just today 'Nobody would give you a job. At your age, and with your background, you are now unemployable'. Thanks Jane. So genuine savings.

And we begin today by cancelling that daily paper (it's the Financial Times by the way). That has immediately saved me £456 (I already got a reduced rate as a subscriber if you're wondering). I do NEED to read the FT everyday of course, but that's fine - I have all the papers I need in the local library, which I already pay for via my grossly overpriced Council Tax, the rest of which Southwark Council seem to spend on 'parking attendants' to ensure that I and my neighbours can't park anywhere in South East London. I shall be in the library at 8am tomorrow, with the rest of the old folk seeking a free, warm place in which to while away the endless days.

Day 1: saved £456: yearly saving so far £456