For Lee Putnam, lockdowns have had a silver lining: he no longer spends three hours a day in the car commuting from Chertsey to Uxbridge. He spends the extra time with his girlfriend and son; he used the money saved so far to buy a pizza oven.
“I started making pizza and I loved it,” says Putnam, 33. In a normal year, he might not have spent £400 on an Ooni gas-fired oven, but this is not a normal year.
While the economy shrank by a record amount in 2020, with an estimated one in 20 people now unemployed; for those who have kept their jobs, there’s been an upside.
Money that’s normally frittered away on daily expenses has been saved, invested or spent on big ticket items such as home improvements, art or pizza ovens.
The spike in people buying hot tubs has even caused a spate of thefts from back gardens, with insurance company Aviva warning yesterday that new owners should lock up their hot tubs when not in use.
At the start of last year, Amisa Saari-Stout and her husband Callum were renting a flat in west London. They dreamt of buying a home one day, but could only…
