Jayne Dowle: I’m happy to find a cure for my Frugal Fatigue

And it’s definitely channelling the current trends in clever thinking, from the likes of economist Lord Richard Layard, one of the prime movers behind Action for Happiness, and Nobel Prize-winning Joseph Stiglitz, who came up with the idea of creating a Happiness Index as a way of measuring well-being without relying on economic performance.

Well, I tried to do my bit on Sunday. I got up at 6.30am and went to the car-boot market to see if I could find any household items to a) save some cash, b) save the planet, and c) help me feel smug in a Kirstie Allsopp kind of way. I came home with a Bratz doll for Lizzie, and two wrestling figures for Jack. This is called missing the point.

Then I spent two hours painting things green for the cricket club Jack has joined. I do hope this stint of volunteering will go down on my Big Society audit, Mr Cameron, and contribute just a tiny bit to the nation’s greater sum of happiness. And then I attempted to scrub the paint off my arms and headed for the shops. Proper shops. Shops with clothes and shoes and hand-bags. Not shops where I have to bend down and squint at the price labels to work out whether it’s cheaper to buy supermarket-own-brand coffee or splash out and invest in two jars of the proper stuff on a BOGOF.

After a totally tedious trawl around several supermarkets on Saturday morning, I reached the conclusion that there is only so much a girl can take. What is life if full of care, we can only stand and stare at the freezer cabinet totting up the price of pizza? My arms ached from the painting, but that was as nothing compared to the bad case of Frugal Fatigue that suddenly overcame me. The only cure was a dose of self-indulgence.

Oh, I know that the latest figures from the British Retail Consortium show that the High Street has suffered its worst sales on record. But have you ever watched one of those disaster movies where an awful virus descends on the world so that everything is destroyed and mankind can start all over again? Well, we’ve got it. It’s called Frugal Fatigue. A new syndrome discovered in America – where else? – Frugal Fatigue is in danger of becoming more contagious than swine flu. Researchers have discovered that more than a quarter of Americans are admitting to spending more than they did a year ago on random purchases, saving less and hammering their credit cards.

And wouldn’t you know, yet more figures out this week suggest that despite the poor overall performance of the High Street, shoppers are returning. Footfall in town centres rose by 7.8 per cent in March compared with previous months. I’m no economist, but this suggests to me that we have a rather more complex consumer picture here than politicians might imagine. Austerity is having an interesting side-effect; we haven’t stopped shopping, we’re just shopping around, stalking the bargains, and treating ourselves to smaller items which might not add up to much, but will cheer us up no end.

So if anybody is interested in measuring my happiness, they might like to know that an hour and a half in Meadowhall updating mine and the kids’ spring/summer wardrobes has done wonders for my chronic case of Frugal Fatigue. I only went in three shops, and without naming names, all of them are renowned for cheap thrills. My modest spree is not going to transform the economy overnight, but every little helps, as some annoying television ad for a certain supermarket reminds us.

And may I suggest, if it really is the feel-good factor that David Cameron is after, then he should stop banging on about us “all being in this together” and mournfully attempting to prove his point by hanging about in budget airline departure lounges. A bit of conspicuous consumerism never hurt anyone, as long as politicians don’t have the temerity to nag us about the need to make essential cutbacks while their wives dolly about in designer frocks.

However much we scrimp and save, it’s never going to pay off the national debt, is it? Not while ever politicians are capable of making such spectacular mis-calculations as the tuition fees debacle. So isn’t it time to stop beating ourselves up? Face it, with the exception of Simon Cowell, we’re all going to end up poor. So forgive me if I sound mad and wildly irresponsible, but if we allow ourselves a little treat now and again, at least we’ll be poor and happy.