A Great Aunt has discovered that she can save a lot of money by simply forgetting to put stamps on her Christmas cards.

Great Aunt Rosemary, who lives near Leeds, said “Christmas is an expensive time of year and postage stamps are not as cheap as they used to be. You can’t even get two for a pound. I’d much rather be spending my money on more meaningful things, like those different flavours of Baileys that you can only get at Christmas time.”

With an ever-expanding family and lots of old friends dotted around the country, Great Aunt Rosemary told us: “Some of these people I haven’t seen since they were babies, others I don’t expect I’ll ever see again, yet along with many other Brits I am struck every December with this ridiculous compulsion to sit down and write a card to everyone in my address book who hasn’t died yet. That adds up to a lot of money at the Post Office counter.”

The Great Aunt came up with her brilliant money saving scheme quite by accident. “I have to walk past a postbox to get to my local post office and once when I was on my way to buy a stamp for a birthday card I automatically posted the card before I got to the Post Office. At the time I was mortified, but now I think my mistake was pure genius.”

Friends and relatives all over the country are having to travel to a Post Office and pay £2 for the privilege of receiving their cards which simply say “love from Rosemary.”

Great niece Caroline Gough said “I’ve known since Monday that I had something to pick up at the Post Office, but due to my busy work and social life I couldn’t get there until Saturday. That’s six days of anticipating what exciting item might be waiting for me. This has been a huge anti-climax.”

Great Aunt Rosemary said “Dropping all my unstamped cards into the postbox is the most liberating thing I’ve done in a long time. I think I’m going to do this every year.”