How To Walk In High Heels: The Girl's Guide To Everything (49 page)

If you have to make purchases, make the shopping trips budget sensitive. Therapy is always helpful in times of depression, and retail is one of the most effective drugs. Set yourself a challenge to get the perfect thing for under a tenner, and if you fail spring clean and delve deeper in your wardrobe. After all, Sarah Jessica Parker and Jennifer Aniston have made GAP look like couture. If they can do it, why don’t you? Get creative and do some revamping. The same could apply to the kitchen; baked potatoes à la that jar of something that was lurking in the cupboard could be exciting, a dash of mustard will bring spice to your baked beans, as well as numb the taste buds. The possibilities are endless.

Turn off your mobile for a day while you think about this dilemma.

Limit visits to danger zones e.g. Manolo Blahnik, Browns, Dior, Liberty, etc.

In extreme poverty-stricken moments remove credit cards from wallets and replace with donor and library cards.

How to stay rich

There is actually no fool-proof way to do this, other than caution. So perhaps this should also be called
how to invest
. Property is the obvious investment, after art, shoes and rare pieces of vintage. Racehorses have less reliable returns.

Read the financial sections of the broadsheets, they are usually in a fleshy pinky colour. It will also impress fellow commuters on the train.

Or go for the grown-up option, and become a shareholder. Or you could take advantage of the no-tax perk of an ISA. They are tax-exempt special savings accounts where you can store money away in a separate ‘hard to reach’ account that will quietly accumulate interest; brilliant. Alternatively you should either learn how to place bets or, slightly less sexy, invest in a pension. Fewer and fewer of us are saving for when we are older and wiser, but company pension plans are worth considering as an option for your dotage. Both have different elements of risk: there have been major pension scandals in recent years, but the gambling option plays with higher stakes. Play safe; when elderly you are more susceptible to heart attacks.

Banking

Do you have a bank account? You should. Is it the right one for you? If you are to be a big spender, and a serious investor, you really need to upgrade from shaking the coins out of a porcelain piggy bank, and tucking the notes under your mattress. There are not only much easier and safer methods, but looking after your money can make you richer.

It is much harder to rob a bank than pick a pocket; banks also have insurance and security against this. A bank is a bit like a garden – that doesn’t mean that money grows on trees, but your cash, like plants, will grow with regular watering (interest rates) and you can do your own pruning (i.e. draw cash out of an ATM machine).

The most vital things you must look for when joining or assessing a bank (apart from any joining perk or promotion) are:

Does your bank freak out or have flexible overdraft facilities?

How about online banking? Can you understand how to view your account or do you need a maths degree?

Have you seen a branch of preferred bank locally and is their card compatible with cash points near you?

Do you have Switch or Mastercards that you pay off each month and can get cash from holes in the wall?

Do you also get a VISA card, which you pay off in instalments as you can?

Banking may diminish the pleasure and interest rate of a person, but, before you glaze over, it does matter. The protocol might be slightly exasperating but getting the right interest rate is not only interesting, it is vital. An interest rate is the amount, or per cent, that you are charged as a fee when you either borrow or lend your money. When you borrow you ultimately want to find the lowest costing interest rate as this is the figure that you will have to pay back. But when the shoe is on the other foot and you have lent someone some money, or indeed your savings are in a bank, you want to find a nice high interest rate so it can earn some extra for you. Banks get their customers by offering various competitive rates, so you need to shop around.

How to invest and dabble in the city

If you decide to become a real city slicker, fast track your way to becoming a millionaire and get a few bonds, stocks, shares and shoulder pads. Joining the city gang usually takes a sizeable investment, say the equivalent of a five-star weekend break, and the result is some stocks with more mood swings than the most complex of women. Your choice.

Before you invest, talk to a trained professional, or broker, or someone in the biz. High flyers are usually young yuppie boys, who can’t speak in full sentences, work silly hours and generally have to shout all day at work. If that sounds too exhausting you can look online, as well as read the papers to see what the fate of other stocks are. Stocks are, as far as we’re concerned, the same as shares.

If you buy shares you become a shareholder; but before you think of turning up at a board meeting and giving the company a redesign, starting with a trip to Habitat for the reception area, remember that you probably own 0.00005 per cent and are a mere blip on the radar. Pharmaceutical companies usually have steady growth, as people will always need curing and medicine, but
all
shares are très volatile, and you will need nerves of steel as well as shares in the stuff, so just go with what your broker and your brain tell you.

Remember: the higher the risk, the higher the gains – as well as the greater the carnage if it crashes.

When buying shares you have to appoint either your bank manager or a broker to haggle and keep an eye on things for you. You do
not
deal with it yourself, you simply sign the cheque and buckle up for the roller-coaster ride.

Note: if the ride’s too much for you, ask your broker, nicely, to let you get off – as near to the top as possible.

How to fill in a tax form

Dreary but necessary. With any luck you are working for a company where the PAYE and tax thing is automatically deducted as part of your wage each month; you can’t miss what you never had. But if you are freelance, part-time or fall into the category where you have to pay your own tax, you have to complete a self-assessment tax return form.

The adverts do not lie, really, so it is much better to do it sooner rather than later.

Do not let talk of remuneration or chargeable gains throw you. If the first page is enough to make you weep, take a tissue, and don’t worry. Date of commencement means start date and date of cessation is the date you finish. Basically some train-spotter has sat up with a thesaurus, picking the world’s most obscure words for very simple tasks; calmly decode. With allowances, relief and assets being investments, rest assured this form stresses everyone out, and this is the only time EVER that you will be asked for the name and situation of your domicile rather than something straightforward like your address.

The absolute easiest way is to fill in your self-assessment form online and send it electronically (via email). That way you have a computer to help you with the calculations, and if you use it each year it saves the details and knows which bits to skip to save you unnecessary pain.

The WHICH or INTUIT packages are approved by the Inland Revenue, and help you fill in the boxes. They will also let you start and come back to it, and save it in the process. Once done, simply email it off – the computer having checked it is complete. You can, of course, do a form by hand, but if you do you have to find the correct pen, have neat, legible handwriting as well as navigate all the attacks they are launching on you.

For more information you can go to
www.inlandrevenue.gov.uk
. To calculate how much you have to pay in the UK you can use
www.taxcalc.com
.

You have to make the first tax payment by 31 January, so that ruins Christmas, and then the second one is due by 31 July, a nice sting before the summer break; so if at all possible get on a payroll where all you have to do is work 9–5.

‘If income tax is the price we have to pay to keep the government on its feet, alimony is the price we have to pay for sweeping a woman off hers,’ said Groucho Marx. By all means marry for love, but the tax breaks are a definite bonus. And you can nominate your other half to do the form.

How to spend nothing

‘I don’t care too much for money, for money can’t buy me love’
the Beatles

There is another way to save money – other than shopping on a shoestring – and that is to spend nothing at all.

It sounds very very clichéd, but it’s true, there are many things that you can do without spending a single penny.

Climb to the top of a hill, and take in the view.

Paddle in the sea and build sandcastles.

Play ‘Pooh Sticks’.

Watch the clouds change and make shapes.

Sit in a park, and play designer label I Spy.

Watch a spider weave a web.

Feel the wind blow in your hair.

Kick the autumn leaves and collect conkers, or build a snowman.

Visit galleries or museums.

Enjoy a live music concert, courtesy of the buskers.

Laugh till your face and stomach hurt.

Acknowledgments

Once upon a break down, I was in Paris, my computer had crashed, I couldn’t check my emails, and my hotel room had been burgled . . .

When people make their ‘thank yous’ I too find it nauseating, Oscar moments being among the absolute classics, but many things can’t happen without an awful lot of help, advice and luck, and as I sat down to write this, I realised, to my horror, we were heading for a Gwyneth moment. Here goes . . . I called Bella Freud, who called Ed Victor, and miraculously the great Wizard of Oz of literary agents took me on. St Grainne Fox was assigned to look after me and I have to thank her not only for her friendship, but for holding my hand throughout, and finding the right publishers to marry me off to in a flash. Enter stage left Jocasta Brownlee, my fabulous Editor and, really, the bubbles in the Champagne. It is thanks to her effervescent enthusiasm I was lucky enough to have the support of the great Hodder and Stoughton behind me, especially Alice Wright and Antigone Konstaninidou who made the book look so beautiful, and Emma Longhurst who did all the PR, and made it a book impossible to miss. To Briar and Morag for selling it internationally. They all made every trip to their office, complete with panoramic view, like a school outing, the good sort, even if I did miss Kiefer Sutherland.

Now, I know it is a cliché, but I really do have to thank my mother, for teaching me her literary chic and inspiring me with an amazing sense of style, and my father for being Super Daddy and knowing how to do EVERYTHING – including driving over to Paris to change a light bulb. Then there are my brothers, Oliver and Jeremy, who grew up knowing that Manolo Blahnik was a GOD, and what a scart lead was, thank goodness, and then Coco, my cat, yes, since you ask, named after Chanel, she ate half the proofs at a crucial moment and told me to stop working so hard, quite right.

Then there are my friends, Sarah, Tessa, Lainey, Amy, Emma, Niki, Posh Natalie, Charlotte, Samira, Elisabeth, Robin, Mesh, darling Jake and Thakoon who still called me even though I lost my sense of humour oh way back. My soothing email penpals Ben, Mary, Tor, faithful Romilly, Floraine, Katie Knickers, DARLING Michael, Doug plus Robert and Sean (the only photographers who you can ever trust with a close up or should hang out with at showtime). My fairy godmother Mrs B, who looked after me with tea and sympathy in Claridges, and of course all the wonderful people who helped me with my book, either anonymously, or in full bordered glory. Did I know how to play poker? Anything about politics? How to apply make-up? Turn on my computer? Hell no, but luckily they did, and I am so grateful they took the time to explain it slowly and simply to me, several times.

John Galliano inspired the idea for the book, and so much else. He makes everything seem Technicolor and possible, and to whom I will be forever devoted. Manolo Blahnik for being a true gentleman and making everyone tall, slim, elegant and beautiful, even on bad hair days. Stephen Jones, for being so encouraging, Val Garland who ignored my flu, told me I looked gorgeous, and subtly gave me some Touche Éclat, Sam McKnight, who bought me cough medicine, Steven and Bill for being Steven and Bill, Alex, Sam and Alexisloo, and Kate Betts, the greatest Editor in Chief of them all, who told me to be a writer and booked me in at the Costes Hotel. To Gisele, Stella and Jacquetta, who give me hope that I do not have the largest phone bill in the land, and dispel the myth that fashion people are *itches, they are not, and to Duncan, Anne, Leslie, Jelka, Elizabeth, Sara and Helena and all the PRs I tortured and stalked in pursuit of my quotes.

Finally I have to say a thank you to all the magazines who have let me write for them, to Lucy, Natalie, Dolly and Abi, and all the amazing shows I have seen, invited or not, and for those who have let me do it my way.

I am now satisfied I have mentioned most people that I might ever have come into contact with, and thanked all those who have made this possible. Thank you to all who buy the book, hold their head high, and walk into the unknown in their Blahniks . . .

Camilla Morton was attending fashion shows long before she was invited. She studied fashion at St Martins and spent her final year working at
Vogue
. She then moved to Paris to polish her look rather than her French and worked for John Galliano at Christian Dior. She now lives in London and has written about fashion for
The Times
, the
Telegraph
Magazine,
Harpers Bazaar
and
TIME
, and is a contributing editor to
Harpers and Queen
.