We don't have Foxtel because, as I tell people, we don't have time to watch it. This is a lie - the real reason being that we're trying to budget for our wedding and can't justify spending the money. When we pass out nightly on the sofa, Kassya sleeping like an angel and I, mouth open and drooling in commercial quantities into my T-shirt with the remote clasped limply in my hand, we are at least snoozing serenely through free-to-air programs. If I'd paid to watch them I'd feel cheated.

The budget is in its infancy and is proving more difficult to implement than expected. It was embarked on when a friend of Scottish extraction, who has been known to recycle teabags and who was horrified to hear that I bought groceries in a whim, insisted we budget and look for "specials".

As a result, our pantry now contains 30 cans of Coke, which unfortunately we don't drink, while the cupboard in the bathroom bulges with 20 rolls of toilet paper and sufficient boxes of tissues to last the entire city through next winter. All of these items were "on special" and thus had to be purchased. The bulk buying of foodstuffs has been similarly successful and we now have enough sugar to last a year. It's a shame I stopped using it in 2002.

The freezer is now crammed with steak and chicken, all bought at never-to-be-repeated prices. Each evening we remind ourselves to remove something for the next day's dinner to allow it to defrost. Each morning we forget to do this and thus have to buy even more food to ward off starvation. If we keep saving money at our present speed, we've estimated that we should be bankrupt by June.

I have also cast a critical eye over bottle shop prices. I flirted briefly and dangerously with the thought of buying cask wine. Remembering the disturbing intemperance this had caused during a previous, ill-fated drive to cut costs, I wisely desisted. On that occasion, while expenditure on wine had halved, consumption had roughly doubled. I was saving money but I couldn't remember how it was happening.

Instead of casks, I have taken to buying "cleanskins", which is a bottle shop version of Russian roulette. As the bottle is unlabelled, it may contain a quite reasonable vintage, which if it carried a brand would cost twice as much. Alternately, it could taste like cat's urine. The impact of the latter on the palate is difficult to describe. Suffice to say that it causes a constriction of the sphincter so sudden as to be almost audible.

So it was when a bloke from Telstra rang and told me it would be cheaper for us to use broadband than our dial-up Internet connection, I agreed. And then when the same bloke offered me an unbeatable deal if I would download and install it myself, I said okay.

   "Is it easy to do?" I asked.
   "Simple," he said.

If he'd said that for idiots it could be quite challenging and could take up to half a day to effect, I would have given my decision more consideration. I am now on first-name terms with every person working on the Telstra help-for-drongos hotline and made so many calls to it on my mobile that when the bill comes next month, we'll have to sell our computer to pay for it.