Identified: the 'austerity mother' cutting back on helicopter flights and Bond Street

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/newsbysector/mediatechnologyandtelecoms/digital-media/8266828/Identified-the-austerity-mother-cutting-back-on-helicopter-flights-and-Bond-Street.html

Identified: the 'austerity mother' cutting back on helicopter flights  
and Bond Street

In straitened economic times every family might welcome a little  
advice on how to cut down on household bills.


The mystery blogger has been unmasked as Lisa Unwin (above), wife of  
Ashley Unwin, the head of PricewaterhouseCoopers' consulting business
By John Bingham, Laura Roberts, Kerry Cunningham 9:25PM GMT 18 Jan 2011
But readers of the anonymous blog “Austerity Mum” - which charts one  
middle-aged housewife’s attempts to rein in spending - might have  
reason to suspect that the author had a different idea of hardship to  
many families.

Musing on how to cut the cost of family holidays she suggests forgoing  
private helicopter flights or cancelling that half-term break in the  
Maldives in favour of returning to your weekend home in the French Alps.
The closest her family comes to the wartime notion of make do and mend  
is for the husband to have his designer Berluti shoes resoled - at a  
specialist cobblers on Bond Street, she reveals.
Since it first appeared in August the site has become an internet hit,  
as much for the author’s digs at the expensive tastes of her husband -  
whom she nicknames the Chief Spending Officer - as self mocking  
remarks about her own “unfettered” expenditure.
But now the mystery blogger has been unmasked as the wife of Ashley  
Unwin, the head of PricewaterhouseCoopers' £200 million-a-year  
consulting business.
A former communications director at the accountants Deloitte, Lisa  
Unwin, 44, began the blog after realising cutbacks were needed when  
the couple purchased a sprawling Georgian house in east London which  
she admits cost “squillions”.
She openly admits her two children - nicknamed the “diva-in-waiting”  
and the “smallest man with the biggest attitude” - have come to  
believe it is normal “to have a seat that turns into a bed if you're  
on a flight for more than three hours”.
Her husband, meanwhile, has come to expect only handmade shirts. “Not  
even Prada is good enough any more, can't recall why,” she reveals.
Attempting to rein in the family budget, she ponders switching from  
Waitrose to Asda, but never quite manages the move while her mother’s  
advice to travel third class instead of first is rejected out of hand.
“Unless you live in India I don't think this is an option,” she  
declares. “And going economy with BA is totally impractical because  
the luggage allowance jut does not add up.”
Suggestions to “buy a lawnmower and sack the gardener” or wash the  
family car by hand are dismissed as “totally cruel in these austere  
times”.
Claiming she would “love” to go back to work, she bemoans how the cost  
of childcare makes it impractical.
“It would need to be something that I could do between the hours of 10  
and two - well, actually 11 and two three days a week to enable me to  
go the gym,” she concludes.
But in a move which she likened to “axing Ark Royal” she announced  
last autumn that she had cancelled the October break to the Maldives,  
although admitted she was pondering a cheaper option in Morocco.
"I even cancelled the helicopter transfer from Nice to our hotel in  
Ramatuelle [near St-Tropez] this Friday," she added in passing.
"Then reinstated it, then cancelled again ... watch this space.”
Her attempts to rein in her husband’s preference for £80 bottles of  
Aftershave from Liberty or expensive shoes also met stiff resistance.
“My suggestion about going to Clarks and changing shoes once a month  
did not go down so well,” she wrote.
Mr Unwin is understood to be acutely embarrassed by the disclosures  
and she has now agreed to take down the blog.
Speaking from their imposing current home in east London - the new  
property is still being renovated - Mrs Unwin admitted that she had  
underestimated the reach of the internet.
"It doesn't look good does it?” she said.
“My husband has quite a big job at PwC, it was never meant to be taken  
literally.
“It was intended to be tongue in cheek.
“I don't work any more and I used to be in communications, I took a  
creative writing course and I just wanted to write .. I'll have to  
find another way to write."

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