Call out Mr Fixit.. and repair a hole in your finances; ShopTalk HIGH STREET BUYER'S GUIDE.

Byline: Ruki Sayid

AS the recession bites and money gets tight, more and more of us are following granny's thrifty philosophy of make do and mend.

Not since the 1950s have so many Brits started cooking from scratch, using the leftovers and buying second-hand clothes.

But while we are being canny in some areas to save pennies, we are still guilty of letting the pounds slip through our fingers.

A Which? magazine study found that we blow hundreds on replacing appliances which could be repaired for a fraction of the price.

One in three of us would rather buy a new telly than have the current one fixed.

And a fifth would splash out on a washing machine instead of waiting to see if it could be repaired.

Which? found it cost just pounds 55 to repair a Panasonic telly for the common problem of "frame collapse" - when a white line appears across the screen.

But replacing the set would cost pounds 500.

And putting a new door seal into a Siemens washing machine was just pounds 70 compared with a hefty pounds 479 bill to buy a new machine.

Electric ovens are prone to element failure, when the fan works but the appliance won't heat up. To replace the part costs around pounds 73 while a new Hotpoint double oven would set you back pounds 374.

"If your oven or washing machine breaks, don't write it off," says Which?. "Getting it repaired instead could save you hundreds of pounds."

Researchers called almost 900 different repair men across nine regions to calculate the average cost of fixing an oven, TV and washing machine.

This is how they compared...