“WASTE not want not”. I can still clearly hear my mother’s often repeated words ringing in my ears. Of course, I took no notice at the time - teenage kids (boys especially) are not interested in saving money. They have no concept of where the money comes from to pay the bills, nor how difficult it can be to make ends meet.

Today, though, perhaps even more than in the 60s when things in the Isle of Man weren’t exactly prosperous, the penalty for waste hits hard in the pocket.

Everyone is counting the pennies. We are going around our homes switching off lights, turning the central heating down a notch or two, looking for bargains at the supermarket, eating in instead of out and searching charity shops to cut costs in any way we can.

And is it any wonder? In the Isle of Man we are facing probably the highest cost of living of anywhere in Britain. I once heard it said the Island was the most expensive place to live in Europe, ahead of even Switzerland. True or not, it’s not difficult to see why such comparisons are made when you cringe as you open the utility bills and pay at the supermarket check-out.

Electricity, gas, fuel oil and petrol all seem to be miles more expensive than the UK and when I totted up the cost of simply having lights, heating and cooking for my income tax return the reality of it all hit hard.

It’s not rocket science, but we do all seem to take it for granted that we have to accept there are almost unlimited unavoidable costs of getting through every week - phones, rates, car tax, petrol, TV licence, house insurance, car repairs (I could write a book about this one) - and that’s without buying a single item of food or keeping the pets alive!

I’ve also got Sky TV - and have had for many years - but you know what, I’m getting rid of that as well. I’m paying £55 a month and I’m not quite sure why. Yes, I watch a bit of football, some cookery programmes and some documentaries, but do I really need Sky? Not really - I’d rather spend the £55 a month on a meal out - or, better still, use it to help keep the Beach Buddies 4x4 going.

Maybe getting rid of the TV altogether is another possibility? I’m not quite convinced about this one yet, but more and more these days we are happy to have music playing and read a magazine or catch up on e-mails. TV has become over-kill - particularly as far as football is concerned, even though I readily admit to being a big fan of the game and still, for my sins, try to play vets’ football once a week against players sometimes 30 years younger!

But saving under £2 a day on television is only a drop in the ocean compared to the money we are all spending daily on electricity, gas and heating bills. So, switching off the lights, turning down the central heating and using the wood-burning stove is now not so much an option as a necessity for many people.

And it does work. I have seen my eye-watering electricity bills fall slightly and the gas tank lasted longer this last few months than previously (however leaving the hot water tap running in the kitchen for an hour one day this week won’t help!) How much have I saved? Maybe £50 to £60 a month. OK - that’s only around £2 a day. But at least it’s staying in my pocket and not disappearing into the abyss of the utility companies.

Petrol consumption is another story. A friend of mine drives a neat little Italian Fiat about half the size of my car - and she says it does so many miles to the gallon that she only goes to the petrol station once a fortnight. That would save me around £140 a month! Who’s the local Fiat dealer? I’m on my way . . 

How on earth people on low incomes and the elderly on pensions manage to stay warm and keep the wolf from the door is, quite frankly, hard to understand. There must be a lot of people in the Isle of Man struggling to make ends meet. Maybe they aren’t making ends meet. It looks like a tough winter ahead for a lot more people than we might imagine, myself included.

The fear, of course, is that if we all start saving money in this way then the profits of the oil, gas and electricity companies will fall and then they will raise their prices to make up for the shortfall, so we don’t actually save any money at all. Catch 22.

But at least you will be making a contribution to reducing carbon emissions and starting to think differently about how you spend your hard-earned. Who knows - if we all start thinking about how to save energy costs it could lead to any number of innovative ideas we can all share.

My next purchase when I move house is probably going to be a wood-burning stove / cooker which runs the central heating and then I can hopefully get rid of (or dramatically reduce) at least one of the monthly utility bills.

But today these items are not cheap, adding to the Catch 22. Which is surprising, considering the basic function they perform is little different to the ancient cast iron cookers I found in the last two properties I renovated (too far gone to rescue). These sturdy cast iron multi-function cookers can still be found here and there, mostly in farmhouses and country cottages, and they worked perfectly well and kept many a family warm and provided cooking using just logs and peat.

Today, though, we all want hot water, central heating and cooking instantly at the flick of a switch - a trip to the garden twice a day to cut and stock up on logs appears to be beneath most people. Consequently,  we all just pay up and try to work longer hours or find a better job to pay the bills.

There are those who will say, however, that my feeble attempts to save money are pointless. ‘Get yourself another job’ or ‘stop being tight’ are phrases I expect to hear any minute. They expect the economy to pick up again any moment and then we will be back to “the good old days” of spend, spend, spend.

Not me. I’m getting off the lemming path and taking a major diversion. OK - today I’m only saving myself a couple of quid a day (don’t knock it - that’s enough for a decent weekend away by the end of a year). But let’s see where this cost-cutting exercise leads me. I have some cunning plans. Watch this space . . .