Frugalocracy vs Debtocracy

As my salary grew, I resolved that so should that percentage. For if I could live on the smaller salary before, then surely every penny of the pay rise could go straight into savings? These days, I even pay into that holy grail - a pension.

I spend 75 per cent of my wages on bills, food and sundry living costs, while excluding her mortgage payments of $4,000 a month (compared to my £600 a month rent on an east London flat), Deschanel saves 75 per cent of hers.

But it's all relative - when you earn enough to be able to spend $2,000 a month on clothes and $500 a month on eating out and still have $68,500 to stash in the bank, saving must be easy. For the rest of us it's a monthly struggle - one that I'm hoping will be worth it. Jasmine Gardner

For a girl who is so often typecast, in real life, it seems, Zooey Deschanel plays against character. The queen of kook has been exposed as a savvy saver, one of this new breed of so-called "frugalcrats". Apparently Carey Mulligan and Mark Zuckerberg may also qualify.

While I'm not remotely surprised that 32-year-old Deschanel has a $3 million nest egg, I can't quite believe that in non-celebrity circles high-flying turbo-savers are on the rise. But then again I would say that, hailing from another, more densely populated tribe: the debtocracy.

Unlike Deschanel, who spends less than a quarter of her salary, I plough 25 per cent of mine into debts, as I have done for the past four years.

And by the time I'm 32 (two years, seven months and counting) unlike Deschanel I won't have saved enough for a Hollywood Hills home - but I should be debt-free. Well, excluding my student loan, but who counts that?

I say should, because I honestly don't know - and that is the point: I am no good with money.

One of my earliest memories is of my father taking me to our local bank to open a savings account. Even as a child I would blow all my pocket money on sweets and magazines - and the £10 opening balance never grew by much.

At 16 I got a job at Topshop, where an added benefit was a 25 staff discount. However, at 18 the staff discount card turned into a staff credit card - marking the beginning of my decline: spend now, worry later.

When I started a degree a year later I thought little of the £12,000 student loan I was running up over its course, or the £2,500 chunk I had eaten out of my first overdraft. That's not to mention a couple of credit and store cards I had also accumulated.

I was confident that once I started my career I would be able to pay it all back with ease. So much so that to pursue that career I moved to London and took out an £8,000 loan to complete a postgraduate degree and then borrowed more to help with living costs. I can't quite bring myself to tot up the total in print.

Of course, the moment I started my first job after the course the reality of meeting repayments while earning little more than the national minimum wage finally hit.

A quarter of your salary is a lot to lose when it barely covers the basic cost of living in London, and it soon became an office joke that I had "given up meat to get into journalism".

My boyfriend, who I met around the same time, only later discovered - to his mortification - that the three £20 rounds of drinks on our first date meant I had to live off noodles for the following week.

Fortunately, as the years have passed my salary has risen, and that crucial 25 per cent I pay back each month has made significantly more impact on the debt.

But rather than use it as an opportunity to increase my repayments, I feel that as long as my repayments, rent and bills are covered I can justify morning coffees from Costa, weekday lunches from Pret and new clothes. I'm no spendthrift, but sensible budgeting I simply can't do.

I know that if I lived more frugally I'd pay my debts back faster and escape some of the interest, so I'm trying - but old habits are hard to break.

In the spirit of solidarity with austerity Britain, for now I'm sticking (or stuck) with the UK masses - who between us have run up personal debt of £1.451 trillion.

And I'm reassuring myself, with a glance at the size of my current debts, that economically I'm closer to Britain than, say, Greece. There might be hope for me yet. Kara Dolman