Anything to save a penny

Descending from a good dollop of strong Scottish stock, my husband-to-be is notoriously tight-fisted.
To put it in context, this is a bloke who thinks nothing of blowing $200 on a good night out, but won't let me have a bath more than once a week because of the difference the extra bit of hot water will make to our quarterly power bill.
Too miserable to spend the 80 cents it will cost him to replace the expired light bulb in the hallway, he has taken to putting the house's functioning bulbs on a limited-use rota system.
Without a word of a lie, when in Spain for a holiday, he once rang me reverse charge when I was living in Ireland to book him his next night's accommodation because he couldn't justify paying the one euro the phone company was going to charge him to place the call himself.
And don't even get me started on the hours I have spent hobbling from Sydney's Five Dock to Balmain - and back - on foot because the $4.00 in fuel it would cost us to take the car could be put to "much better use".
But while I like to think I am at a stage of life where I no longer have to watch every penny, even I was appalled when we recently received a $300 maintenance bill from the management of our inner city car park. We are not talking about an entire car park building, mind, but just a single, solitary car space.
As said husband-to-be correctly pointed out, it must be one hell of a broom to justify charging three hundred bucks for sweeping a five by three metres squared piece of concrete!
Anyway, all this talk about value for money got me thinking about the impending trade fair Fashion Exposed - or more specifically the trend seminars it plans on staging, in conjunction with Ragtrader, during its three-day Melbourne instalment next month.
Aimed at value-adding to the attendee experience, Australian Exhibition & Conferences (AEC) - the organisers of the fair - have managed to put together a none-too-shabby list of guest speakers to present a series of seminars covering everything from home fashion to colour direction.
Brought to Australia via her association with Victorian gal Fashion Forecast Services' Sharon Rae, the principal of Jenkins UK, Jo Anne Jenkins, headlines the event with other speakers including Tony Bannister from Scout, Dominic Beirne from Fashion Group International and Chris Stone from Chris Stone Designs.
Without wanting to be too gushing, the calibre of the panel is such that you would normally have to part with several hundred dollars just to get them to turn up. But as a bit of a service to industry, visitors to Fashion Exposed get to not only see them, but as an added bonus hear them, all for the bargain price of around $44 a pop.
But this is not the only deal to be had at the event.
Perennial volunteer Carol Hanlon - the highly motivated manager of the Textile Clothing Footwear Resource Centre WA (TCFWA) - is also planning on staging a number of forums and workshops during the fair.
Part of Hanlon's self-driven TCF Business Skills project, she plans on covering toBut the best bit as far as you and I are concerned is the fact these forums will be free for event attendees.
And I reckon that's value for money in anyone's language.