The Frugality #3 content is free, don’t care if it’s drivel, shopping in Sainsbury’s, pretending it’s Lidl

[Polly Pocket]

SO MANY QUESTIONS. Let me but name a few:

- What deadlines could she have other than taking pictures for brand partnerships? Everything else she does is self directed and thus the deadlines
self imposed? OR IS SHE SECRETLY WORKING AS A HIGH LEVEL POLITICAL OPERATIVE AND TRYING TO THROW US OFF THE SCENT WITH THE MATCHSTICKS
- Why does she think posh pot noodles is a remarkable thing? Surely most of us are not cooking gourmet lunches during the working day? OR PERHAPS HER PEERS ALL HAVE CHEFS AND HOUSEKEEPERS TO SHES GOT THE LUNCHTIME FOMO?
- Who is paying for nursery? They’re looking at a bill of at least £2K a month at a very conservative estimate. AINT NO MATCHES THAT CAN PAY FOR THAT OR DO I NOT UNDERSTAND THE MATCH MARKET?
- Why would you paint your bathroom when you have deadlines? Or are the deadlines manufactured to make her feel more relatable? WHY IS SHE PAINTING THE BATHROOM WHEN THE TILES THE TILES SWEET MARY THE TILES?
- I don’t even know what to ask about the living room because I can’t even find the words but what please someone tell me WHAT can they be up to with this rotating nightmare?
- Why am I pondering these questions when I have two packed lunches to make and a brief to write and a toilet to clean AND MY GLASSES TO POLISH?

 

[Polly Pocket]

Noticed in comments when someone asked for hotel recommendations she said “we stay in an apartment”.

imagine if she’d given the honest answer: “we stay in my parents apartment.... because I come from wealth, that’s how I manage to go on holiday after mat leave and live in an expensive house in London while working part time. Because, dear followers, it’s a lie that you can have what I do while doing what I do without some generational wealth behind you. So don’t feel bad if you’ve not managed to make do and mend your way to a house deposit, because the truth is no amount of supposed frugality could ever get you there. As a self proclaimed crusader for the average woman I’m just putting that out there so as not to perpetuate this harmful myth. The end. Love Frugal Alex”

IMAGINE

 

[Banana Pyjamas]

Thread suggestion:
The Frugality #4: Eye spy with my little eye a secret second storey reaching up to the sky.

🥸

 

[Exhaustednurse]

Noticed in comments when someone asked for hotel recommendations she said “we stay in an apartment”.

imagine if she’d given the honest answer: “we stay in my parents apartment.... because I come from wealth, that’s how I manage to go on holiday after mat leave and live in an expensive house in London while working part time. Because, dear followers, it’s a lie that you can have what I do while doing what I do without some generational wealth behind you. So don’t feel bad if you’ve not managed to make do and mend your way to a house deposit, because the truth is no amount of supposed frugality could ever get you there. As a self proclaimed crusader for the average woman I’m just putting that out there so as not to perpetuate this harmful myth. The end. Love Frugal Alex”

IMAGINE

I cannot love this post enough, it sums up Alex and all the other instahuns to perfection. It’s all a shame, and it’s essentially gaslighting women.

When this is called out is met by a response of ‘troll’ or ‘be kind’. There is no kindness from these saleswomen that are pretending to be relatable to sell you things.

I am 15 years older than Alex, work full time as does my DH, my kids are now in school and I’m 27 years into my profession so I am paid well. We are now in a position to afford holidays, house renovations and also the odd meal out.
The idea that she achieves all of the above and more in their existing set up is a joke. Even more a joke that the suggests it’s because she meal plans and buys some second hand baby clothes.

So to those women who look to Alex and think why I am not doing all that. Please believe me when I say I’ve been there, and years when they are very young are tough. Your money goes on childcare, you are knackered and feels like there are little rewards for it all. It will get better, it really does once they are in school.
Please don’t be taken in by scammers like Alex.

 

[elephantopera]

I've lurked so much on Tattle over the past 2 years ish or so, but never posted before, because literally nothing any other "influencer" has posted has ever irritated me quite as much as this glasses debacle. There's some right twats out there, of course, but this feels so... needlessly and disingenously sanctimonious?

I absolutely loved Alex's fashion posts. I loved that she combined more expensive pieces with high street fashion; in the past, I've had so much inspiration from her. I still wear outfits inspired by her previous posts. She had (and still does) have a really great eye for timeless style, for me.

For the past year or so, it's just been... awful. Absolute shite. She's never been THAT frugal. That house, the absolute crap she buys... nothing is frugal. That's alright, I guess. We can all aspire to being better with money. I can appreciate skimping a bit on Everyday Essentials vs branded items (a no brainer, really) to eventually afford a one-off nice purchase. Still, it's not revolutionary, and not really what she does now. It's all gifted, isn't it? I suppose that's why she's stepped away from The Frugality Insta (which is fair enough, if you want to move away from that MO - but own it! Commit to it! Don't call it 'maternity' when you're rabidly posting about glasses on your other account) ... but to spend a holiday in your family's apartment abroad, for example, and still preach frugality is a bit of a kick in the teeth, to be honest. To moan about being able to take your kids abroad and about restaurants and hunting down chips and bread... Come on!

Anyway, the original complaint: the glasses. I've worn glasses since I was about seven years old, and the only time I've ever felt shit for wearing them was when another seven-year old called me four eyes. That was over 20 years ago. I love my glasses - I love that they're a fashion accessory for me, and I love the way they feel and look on my face, and I love that when I get a new pair, people notice. They say, I love your glasses. No one post-adolescence has ever made me feel like shit for wearing glases. I've had a lot to feel a bit shit about (influencers having basically free holidays in their parents' apartments and moaning about how they didn't feel relaxed after it, for example...), but wearing glasses isn't it. In fact, the only person who really seems bothered about Alex wearing glasses, is Alex.

I'm not sure what planet Alex is living on that she feels like she has to take her glasses off to look pretty or accepted or whatever, but maybe she needs to get new friends? Or new peers? Or maybe she's just angling for laser eye surgery. Who knows! I unfollowed her today, after perservering for a while in the futile hope that she'd post something in the ilk of her OG high street fashion inspo. There are loads of mums who post great post-partum fashion and Mum fashion and what-have-you, and none of them seem to be quite so hard done by. I can't sit through crap photos of any old woman wearing glasses, using her convoluted rules for what's acceptable for women wearing glasses in media (apparently if you're a "nerd" or in science, you can't wear them because that's what the media and society expects of you???).

I dunno, man. Maybe just finish tiling your bloody garden before rallying against the non-glasses plebian masses?

 

[BatteredVeg]

Her kitchen extension blog is funny to read in hindsight. We couldn’t afford a side return as it was double the cost so we just did a small kitchen extension we saved on the kitchen by having a free IKEA consultation and then did it ourselves with diy kitchens. We couldn’t afford underfloor heating so we got a radiator we couldn’t afford Crittal windows so we got aluminium ones they didn’t “prioritise us” so I won’t tell you where they came from .

No wonder it took 5 months though - I always wondered why their builders were so slow with such a small extension and now we know why - there was twice the amount of work involved!

 

[Greencatfysh]

A chic weekly meal planner?! Oh fuck OFFFFFFF!

Soo chic

New thread suggestion - The Frugality #4 Can’t afford much, we’re oh so poor, but we did manage to add to our house an extra floor

 

[PineappleQueen19]

I thought she cancelled Amazon Prime to take a stand against their non payment of tax and to support the high street / small business. Good to know morals can be parked to one side when there’s a tv show to catch.

 

[Polly Pocket]

What Alex says: “We’re prepping for a shoot today, we’ve been location scouting and wardrobe is all prepped. My cameraman is booked for the day and the edit suite is ready to go. It’s pretty stressful hitting the one on-air deadline but if anyone can do It, it’s me and my crack team”

what actually happened “Chris filmed me fiddling around with a couple of blazers in the secret spare room of extension shame but it took him 22 takes because he smoked a massive spliff at breakfast then I dropped my potnoodle down the front of the £15.99 H&M blazer. Chris is going to spend the next 7 days editing the 10 second thing because he doesn’t actually know how to edit but I like to make him feel useful. When I did that free course on how to run a successful business down at Wood Green library that time they said I need to make a schedule and stick to it so that’s a bit stressful really because Chris is stoned and I’ve got Pot Noodle and bathroom paint on that Blazer I got gifted in 1984 but I gota get that content up because the schedule told me to so that’s a bit stressful isn’t it. That’s a deadline so I’ll tell them about my deadline and maybe they’ll feel sorry for me and buy me a coffee”.

The End

 

[Polly Pocket]

The way she talks about re-wearing clothes (UM HELLO HOW IS THIS EVEN A THING UNLESS YOU’RE A REAL LIFE PRINCESS OR MADONNA) and using up leftover spices (UM HELLO SPICES AREN’T LEFTOVERS YOU JOKER THE’YRE JUST A THING THAT PERMENANTLY INHABIT ADULTS CUPBOARDS) makes me feel like she’s a cyborg pretending to be a human but who hasn’t quite been programmed right. Or maybe just a massive narcissist who thinks the utter mundane movements of her mundane life are somehow unique and thus newsworthy. Madness.

 

[MeWithTheHair]

Right then. First stab at a new thread title?! (No real idea how this works sorry but there is a little nudge there suggesting it’s time to figure one out!)

I’m visually tired, so look at these glasses, can’t tidy or tile coz we sit on our arses.

 

[Chocolate2008]

Oh this ‘I give you free content, aren’t I a fucking saint’ bollocks triggers the living shit out of me. It’s your choice to dick about on Instagram all day, YOIR CHOICE.

With you. The buy me a coffee things has sent me over the edge! The irony - here’s my tips to save money, now buy me a coffee while I tell you how I got Prime again for free. I choose to not buy you a coffee thank you therefore saving money as you are already paid from ads that I have watched & affiliate links for what you do which at the moment includes babies eating & your husband doing DIY badly. She has balls of steel.

I think somebody said earlier on this thread that her tips on Whistable included restaurants her followers recommended that she didn’t actually go to. Definitely not paying for that, though I have zero doubt she would attempt to justify that by saying oh I used my platform to compile them etc etc.

My core problem with Alex is that it’s all about her - she wants the ads, the cheap veg box in LIDL, the free Prime, but she also wants her followers to cough up for “coffee” instead of saving their money when she is already well compensated for what she does. It comes across as selfish & grabby. My impression whether rightly or wrongly that it’s become easy money, there is a sense of entitlement & complacency. The hidden extension, the latest - the pricey baby bibs while on holiday in her parents apartment probably sharing a beer for the “free” tapas because it wouldn’t occur to her to think about anyone else’s business.

 

[jaymie]

Her moaning is tedious. Just stay at home next time. She sounded like those tourists that moan about customer service in a foreign country well done, you are Lily Pebbles #2

 

[heretoreaditall2019]

They do have a very good standard of life IMO.

Sorry I can’t think of how to articulate this but I think it’s from my own privileges / prejudices and I don’t mean to offend.

We’re in the opposite situation to them, high income but no intergenerational wealth behind us so our day to day lifestyle is better but we had to pay for our house & have to actually consider things like ROI on extensions because it’s all our money / equity / debt, not a subject the #reno mamas ever bring up. I just find it perplexing to see a couple with such immense privilege living like ragamuffins in a property they’ve probably got an amazing LTV on (because they can’t / won’t have gotten the mortgage needed on their salaries, as she’s disclosed). The same probably applies to the private educations they likely had, I continue to be amazed at how mediocre (yet loud!) they all are. She’ll read this as a WC chip on my shoulder and maybe it is - I just find the whole spectacle of posh Insta grot absolutely bizarre.

ETA - I unfollowed her when she was going on about mortgage holidays, cos I thought yeah that’s fine for you because your parents can probably repay the couple of hundred thousand capital remaining on your mortgage in a heart beat, missing a few grand in payments also means nothing to you, for those of us who actually pay 100% for our houses it’s kicking the shit can down the road and a ticking time bomb! I hate unregulated personal finance SM but particularly from those that don’t disclose their huge privileges!

 

[PineappleQueen19]

‘Free content’ oh just fuck off.

The ‘I give you free content so the paid content supports that’ argument is utterly ridiculous and totally about face. You aren’t providing anything for free, it’s a model whereby your audience supplies you with views and follower counts which you then use to secure lucrative paid contracts (that just happen to provide you with an extremely comfortable lifestyle). This idea that influencers are providing a benevolent service to us is total bullshit.

 

[MeWithTheHair]

Literally just finally signed up on here after years of just casually reading whenever Instagram left me wondering if anyone else noticed various insane levels of hypocrisy etc, but this John Lewis everyday ad situation is beyond ridiculous for Alex - a puffer coat when she never stops singing the praises of her beloved leopard one from gap or wherever, about how she never needs another as it’s so great and timeless… AND SLIPPERS when she spent weeks on some insane long boring slipper hunt?! Of all the things she could have chosen from her next greedy haul in this ‘ongoing relationship’ or campaign or whatever she wants to call it. ARGH! Ok I feel better now. Hi!

 

[Exhaustednurse]

Thank you for saying this. Before I discovered Tattle I would look up to these mummy influencers and think I was doing it all wrong, because we feel completely broke, spending all our money on childcare, the house a half-finished mess, and with no family help (financial or otherwise). I'd look and feel like shit, then see their feeds and feel ten times worse that I wasn't being 'savvy' enough to afford the lifestyle, outfits, homes and lovely holidays they have. It was only when I realised how many of them have family wealth to fall back on that I felt totally manipulated and that I'd been comparing myself to people with incredible and unattainable privileges.

This is how they make women feel and it’s so bloody wrong. All this, ‘women supporting women’ crap which is code for ‘don’t you dare call us out on our sales techniques that deliberately focused on making you feel like you are not achieving.

Those years when both of kids were in nursery were so bleak. All of my wage covering childcare costs, the ongoing paradigm of work v home, and very few rewards. I can recall in that period our house needing so much work, we’d not had a holiday in years, and having a takeaway would stretch us! So bloody tough

hang on in there, the money gets easier and personally my opportunities at work grew after I was 40

keep going. You are doing just brilliantly.

 

[snarksnark]

God, the meme on her Stories that the only people who unpack the day they get back are serial killers, immediately followed by a tribute to Sabina Nessa is unfortunate in the extreme.

 

[Boutros-Boutros Ghali]

Didn’t she say they planned to take some time off (despite just having finished an extended maternity leave and apparently being so broke they were begging for people to buy them a coffee) and also mentioned needing a holiday. Her folks have a place in Spain so think put 2 and 2 together.
I often wonder about the people that bought them ‘coffees’ wonder if they’d walk past someone living on the streets and drop them a few quid….unlikely as you’d hear the diatribe about them spending it on drink and drugs, yet they’ll happily give it to an influencer living a faux poor life, in a 750k house, to spend on £25 paper placemats and £70 candles…what a world we live in

 

[AutumnDays]

I’d take all these frugal dinners with a large grain of salt! The dinner cost more than 37p because at some point she bought the other ingredients. what else did she eat that day and what was the cost breakdown? A person who was really frugal and creative would be able to get a few dinners out of the cost of the takeaway Alex had the next night. So one dinner costing ’37p’ (as if!), and a takeaway dinner the next night costing say £10 is the same as someone spending £5 both nights. How much do they spend on lunches and dinners and more importantly are they eating plenty of fruit and veg, etc. Buying crap quality food and then spending money on crap for the house is not being clever or something to aspire to.

And all her nonsense about using up leftovers - calling a block of cheese leftovers is ridiculous - you buy a block of cheese and use until it’s used up, it’s a fridge staple - in sandwiches, in salads, in recipes, to snack on, part of a lunch plate, etc. No-one buys a block of cheese, uses in a recipe and throws the remainder out- but Alex seems to think she’s being so creative using the ’leftover’ cheese.