America's real estate crisis is perhaps even more acute than Britain's. Overly aggressive loan practices, especially in warm-weather states such as Nevada and Florida, have burned banks and buyers alike, and now those places are saddled with a glut of homes, many either in foreclosure or being offered as "short sales" (at a loss) by their owners.

Sounds like a great climate for the pound-wielding holiday home purchaser to jump in and mine the bargains, right? Get out your contract-signing fountain pen, right?

Yes, there are steals to be had, but you can also get burned.

Nothing, it seems, can defeat that sinking feeling you get while watching the receipt slowly scroll out of the till at the supermarket. Yes, prices can be high, but let's be realistic. They're not Scandinavia high, and sometimes it takes an outsider's viewpoint to be able to see the positives. As a writer who lives in America but comes to Britain several times a year, I can tell you that you're passing some good deals on the stores' aisles every single day.

I'm not talking about stuff you can't get easily in America, like double cream and laundry detergent capsules and Coke made with real sugar. Those are cultural differences. I'm talking about everyday items where, all things being equal, they cost less here. For me, walking through the average Sainsbury's can be an exercise in envy. I wish I had daily access to these solid everyday values:

I love watching Alan Sugar fire people. But I just don't get his masterplan. Ben is a buffoon whose very presence often seems to sabotage tasks, but he is still hanging on. From what I can tell, Sir Alan is a lot quicker with the razor in the boardroom than he is on his chin, and his main motivator seems to be keeping the most obnoxious candidate in the game to assure continued high ratings and more coverage from Britain's numerous frothing TV critics. That's good business, too, but since he's being coy about it, it doesn't make for good lessons for the viewers.

As fascinated as I am by Sir Alan's habit of invariably ignoring most of the evidence collected outside the boardroom - Nick and Margaret seem to be given monologues solely to give the old guy water breaks - I can't help but compare his show to the American original, with which I am more familiar. It stars another business magnate famous for having bad hair on a different part of his head.

Last autumn, the press was atwitter about the newest revelation in car sales: Buy One Get One Free (BoGoF) sales. British dealers were so desperate to make deals, the stories went, that they were willing to sell customers a second car (usually of markedly lesser value) for only £1.

The canniest among us took that opportunity a step further. If British dealers are offering promises like that, what could someone get for their money in America, where the pound goes further? You won't have too much trouble making sure the car is roadworthy for British streets, and the left-hand drive structure usually doesn't pose too much of a problem for expats who bring their cars from the Continent.

No, the sticky parts of this arrangement are in the financial particulars.

When times were better, I used to tell American tourists to use London as the base for their international vacations. The UK's diverse society supports a wealth of steady traffic to points all over the globe, and that steady traffic means that there are usually seats going cheap. Particularly for Commonwealth or post-Empire countries, it was often cheaper for an American to fly from New York and catch the cheap charter flight from London than it was to fly directly from their own city.

These days, that's changed. So how can you benefit?

Want to irritate an American? Start talking about how badly the pound is doing. As poorly as the British might think their currency is doing, it's still murdering the dollar - it's just murdering it a little more gently these days. Americans still pay $6 for a single cash ticket on the London Underground, so they're not going to be moved by sob stories about how well the Euro is doing.

But the condition of the pound doesn't mean you have to stay in the UK all ear, because there are still some great value deals to be had in the US. To find them, you simply have to look at the same places that Americans are now looking for their domestic vacation deals. If it's a bargain for them, it'll be a steal for you.

During my extended stays in Britain, I've come to love some of your daytime TV shows. Alistair Appleton has evolved into a my idea of a financial planner. And if there's any one sound that makes me realize the day is slipping through my fingers, it's the voice of David Dickinson.

But although the airways both at home in the US and in Britain are clogged with shows that purport to teach you how to make money and change your surroundings, British shows are different. They're purer. They're often about making money out of what you already have. American ones, perhaps true to the national stereotype, tend to be about makeovers.