Remember that scene in the original Star Wars where Luke, Leia, Han Solo and Chewy are being squeeeeezed in the trash compactor? That’s what the economy is doing right now: gasoline, heating, food, health care, and everything else is costing more while wages don’t even keep up with inflation.
Fortunately, I’ve had a chance to hone my frugality skills over the last few years as we tried to homeschool our daughter on a one teacher income. Oh yeah, and we paid off a student loan and moved from Alaska….
I think it’s time we shared our best tips with each other.
Go below for the fall frugal fest…
The absolute best source I found for saving money was the Tightwad Gazette, by Amy Dacyczyn. Do not go buy the series, get them from your library. Use interlibrary loan if you must; they are out there.
The number one savings tip I gleaned from her was the concept of a price book. Keep a small notebook with a page for each item you commonly use. Over the next couple months, write down the prices for these items each time you go the store. By that point you should have a good basis for deciding what is a real sale, and what is a pseudo-sale. When you find an amazing buy, stock up! Use the space under the bed for that case of pineapple. Fill the freezer with the $1.50/ pound London broil. (Yes, I am proud of that one.) This technique does require that you have enough cash to cover a good sale, but the savings over time make it worthwhile.
One of Amy’s best points is to do the actual calculations to determine whether an activity is worth your time. For example, washing your own car may save you $5.00, but take you a 1.5 hours, making your wage
$3.33/ hour. On the other hand, cooking at home may yield a “wage” of $10.00/ hour. Do the math.
I really am concerned about the economy, our pension plans which we will pay into but probably not receive, paying for college, declining wages and the while inflationary caboodle. It seems to me that this is the time to play it close to home, and start saving for any scary things coming our way.
So please share your tips, recipes and concerns. Let’s be ready for anything. (And yes, my grandparents never did really recover from the Great Depression.)
One great thing is all the public services we have around like
the library and interlibrary loan
bike trails
miles of hiking trails
When I began paying more attention to our budget, all sorts of discretionary expenses went by the wayside. But what stuck out most was books. We read a lot, but buying books makes very little sense unless you plan to re-read or lend the titles.
We now have an agreed-upon protocol:
We use interlibrary loan so much that the reference librarians gave me my own pad of forms.
I think books would be our biggest expense if we didn’t have this option. Out of the 300 or so we’ve gone through in the last 6 months, maybe 3 were purchased.
Library! It’s a great way to save on cash BUT it’s also great to support the library. Librarians have become our freedom fighters. 🙂
Also, we chew through books. We could no longer afford to keep up with the supply and demand in this house ALSO we needed to simplify our lives (due to remodeling to sell) and we donated a crudload of books to hospice and a child who was bedridden…. and because Bush and our Country is so fucked up – this small girl didn’t have health care nor appropriate and timely treatment. Danni lovingly gave so many wonderful books to this girl. I tear up every time I think of it.
Anyways – the library! Don’t find too many Republicans in there either. 🙂
I spend a lot on clothes, when I buy them. I don’t buy many clothes, as I have a great deal of trouble finding things I like. So when I do find something, I don’t worry much about the price.
Ironically, I have gotten quite a bit of good clothing for free.
Not owning a car basically halves my expenses. I live in a city where most trips can be managed by bike. I happily pay the extra price of shopping at a local store rather than a chain or a big box. Unfortunately, these are inexorably disappearing.
Going vegetarian cut my food bill at least in half. I wasn’t forced to this; it was something I came to gradually. I don’t miss meat at all–well, hardly at all. The smell of a good charcoal grill has for me two contradictory effects: Vivid and pleasant memories of when I used to love and crave that stuff, and disgust near to nausea at the unspeakable stench of burning flesh. 😀
A year ago I was living without cash for weeks at a time. Not pleasant admittedly, but if food and a place to stay can be managed, it is amazing how little you can get by with in other areas. At least, for a while.
I use an Excel spreadsheet. About once a week, I enter the info from my receipts and it calculates high/low and median prices on each item, shows me how often I buy and where I consistently get the best prices.
After a couple of months in Lynchburg, I stopped shopping at one grocery chain entirely because even with their discount card I always paid more at their stores. Lately, I’ve been buying a lot of items at Target because they’re cheaper than the other grocery chain here.
When it comes to fresh produce, no one beats the farmer’s market. This week I got organic potatoes, onions and squash for 25 cents a pound! Free-range eggs for $1.25/doz! If you can buy direct, you not only save money, you get a better product.
This is a great topic for discussion, Sandblaster!
Thanks- and I love your Excel idea. I’m going to have to see if mine is new enough to do that- we mostly do budgeting and graphs with ours.
We have a “scratch and dent” grocery near us. Usually, we shop there first for things like cereal, lunch snacks, and frozen or canned stuff, and then drive up the street to the regular store for whatever else we need. Generally, the stuff is about half the supermarket price, and saves me between $20-30 bucks each time we go.
I’ve also become an ace at combining car trips to save gas; it takes me about 2 weeks to go through a tank, and that’s with driving 45 minutes to the city and back for class once a week.
And Kohl’s has great sales on kids’ clothes, usually I can get stuff for 70% off.
I want a “scratch and dent” store! What I do in lieu of that is combine my shopping to just get the loss leaders from the grocery and drugstores, which are all in a quarter mile of each other.
Clothes are tricky for us. The adults mostly make do, but we have a daughter who seems to grow a full inch a week. She doesn’t have a ton of outfits, but they are clean and in good condition. Yesterday I bought her a new coat and she’s been preening like a magpie.
That’s one good point about getting things rarely- the appreciation is heartfelt. I’ve seen girls at the mall go home in a snit after receiving hundreds of dollars of things, while mine is so delighted with a fake fur jacket!
I think that “things” may be like the best art- you need a little space between them.
I love Goodwill for clothes. Especially if you live in a relatively wealthy area. My kids are the types who absolutely will NOT wear anything with a label so it’s easier for me than if they were overly concerned with image. But I have noticed at the Goodwill I shop at there are tons of Old Navy, Gap, Tommy Hilfiger, Hollister, Delias, etc.
Also, Goodwill has hardback books for a dollar, paperbacks for 50 cents. It’s amazing how new some of the books are. My favorite find was one day someone had obviously purged their home library of a ton of coffee table sized gardening books. I got 9 of them for 9 dollars plus tax.
That last item explaining why I chose “birth control” as our area of greatest savings!
I found that Goodwill is actually the BEST place to shop for my teenage daughters– in addition to being the cheapest. One only wants to wear long skirts and plain green blouses– hard if not impossible to find in a fashion store, easy to find among the “old lady” clothes at Goodwill. The other girl is into creating her own style, and she is much more concerned with having something “new” (to her, at least). So if she gets tired of something in a few months, I feel good about redonating it, because we only paid a few dollars for it in the first place.
Costco– a good liberal employer and donor– really saves the big bucks on bulk purchases. Although we don’t have tons of storage space, we just stack up the cases of tomato sauce, green beans, macaroni, drink boxes, etc. I’m doing most of our shopping there now, and saving a lot.
We all take our lunch to work and school (most every day, any way), and that saves a lot.
Although we often pay for entertainment events, there are also many free concerts, plays, activities here in Austin, year-round. They can be just as much fun as the expensive stuff. Go to the matinee showings if you do go to a movie. Noisier but cheaper.
We’re not nearly as frugal as we could be, but the equation always balances between time and money. If we have time, but no money, we’ll always find ways to save. More money than time means we’ll spend more for convenience.
I was wondering who chose that! I love the idea of Costco, even though there isn’t one nearby.
Thanks for the laugh.
I always thought it would be easier to do thrift shops with a girl, because the clothes aren’t already worn out. We also have a community consignment sale twice a year, which is like the mother of all yard sales in terms of kids clothes and household stuff. Still we have enough, but not excess.
And besides, we all usually have a couple of favorite outfits that keep going through the wash and the other stuff, not so much. Glad I don’t need a whole office wardrobe abd dry cleaning…
For us the entire family is into movies and books and music. We would starve to death if we lived near a Barnes and Noble type place LOL…
So we now support the library as stated above.
But the movies… we MUST and DID attend the Star Wars movies. It’s tradition… but we no longer attend too many theatre showings… it’s just too damn expensive with a family of four. I can by the DVD with special edition crap much cheaper than attending a theatre with crappy sound and sticky floors and people with large heads.
So we usually buy “must have and must see all the time movies”. But now we buy them “previoulsy viewed” instead of new. Most stores give you great deals if one is scratched or something.
Also we use a mail order DVD rental. Greencine for us instead of Netflix. No late fees and such and we don’t feel the need to go out and buy the latest movie.
Mine: I’m not leaving my unlimited $9.95 Netzero dial up internet until they pry my cold dead hand from the mouse. (or until they stop offering it, whichever comes sooner) Also, a basic cable plan. (Yeah, I know, but with a 6 year old it’s hard to go completely without it. Especially when he gets up at 6:00 Saturday morning and Daddy would like to sleep for just a few more minutes.)
Excellent diary. I posted something similar before Xmas last year to help folks out who were worried about not having anough to spend on presents.
I am a thrifty person by nature but even moreso now because I live on disability. I’m the neighbourhood’s “trash fairy”. I rescue usable stuff on trash day and either use it, find a good home for it or sell it. I live in the burbs and you wouldn’t believe what some people throw out.
I’m also very big on garage sales and thrift stores. I very rarely buy anything new. I find a lot of good things through my local Freecycle group. We also have liquidation outlets in the city that sell goods from businesses that have gone bankrupt etc. Auctions are another good resource.
I could go on…and if I think of anything else, I’ll add it. Thanks for this. 🙂
One more thing: never pay more than 50 cents for a used paperback book!
I like your term “trash fairy” I just wrote the other day about the amazing finds, to be had in other people’s throwaways.
My biggest finds, rolex watch, diamond ring…
But I found plenty of other things, lots of quilts, sleeping bags, which I washed and handed out to homeless friends…clothes are a biggie too, but I would say you can find just about anything you could ever think of, in good condition, if not brand new, that are very usuable. Household good are everywhere.
I always felt I was doing my part to prevent all these good and usuable items going to the land fill. That’s a tragedy.
Nowadays I don’t have a way to do the ‘trash fairy’ thing but I do get to garage sales, another favorite, once in awhile.
Thrift stores I have practically lived in during some years of my life. I just love the bargains and the excitement of finding something really cool for little or no money.
I can’t claim credit for the name “trash fairy”. Someone suggested it to me. It’s a good way to meet the neighbours too when they catch you snooping through their stuff. 🙂
I like “trash fairy”, too. Or stuff from the “no-host garage sale”. Or “gomi”, Japanese for cast-offs. My last gomi was a Victorian oak side table with the sweetest little claw feet. Painted green, but who cares?
We’ve a fair sized garden, augumented by past pull date produce bargains from a local produce stand if you’ve got one. We’ve got a freezer and I make a lot of jam/jelly/preserves and also dry fruit and tomatoes. The neighbors have chickens and are into trading.
Clothes from Goodwill and garage sales. Books from the liberry. Someday I will be able to give up my morning NYT for the on-line version, but there’s something about the tactile sense of newsprint, ink, coffee and toast…
I’ve kept a change jar for nearly my whole adult life. In the past, I used it for emergencies, like food or rent. As I got older, I didn’t need to dip into it too often. So, at one point, I was able to put a down payment on a car with it. Dropping your spare change (including quarters!) into a large jar is an easy and painless way to save a few bucks.
I make do with limited clothes. I buy all my daughter’s clothes on the sale/clearance racks or at Ross. I buy many of my own from Goodwill.
For big ticket items, I use Consumer’s Report to try and find an item that will last, rather than the best price.
My parents taught me two very useful things:
I rode only a bike for 5 years, in my mid fifties, I had it set up with a special rack I built with ability to carry quite a load. Good exercise, and fun too. I have not owned a car since 1992 and never drive anymore….happy, happy, I am about that.
Where I live now is not safe for an elderly lady riding a bike, so I no longer ride.
All your suggestions are good one, in fact this whole diary is just packed full.
I love music, and my local library has a surprisingly good CD selection. I borrow them and then load them up on iTunes to listen to later.
I’m sorry, I just HAVE to do this in the middle of this happyfest…
What you are doing is stealing (I’m assuming you keep the MP3s after returning the CDs). Don’t do it. I make my living entirely by selling intellectual property (I write my own computer games and sell them direct to customers at http://hamumu.com ), so the complete disregard for IP rights that is built into our culture hurts me BAD. I realize it doesn’t help that psychotic monsters like the RIAA are telling you not to do it, but ignore them and pay attention to the guys like me who are actually suffering as a result. People don’t buy cheap games from me, because they can steal expensive games from the big guys. The big guys are hurt a little yet still make millions, while I starve. It’s not good, and you’re not “sticking it to the man”.
I would not have to be nearly so frugal if people didn’t pirate games!
I understand where you are coming from.
I actually have purchased the vast majority of my music (much at live shows where I have both paid to see the artist and bought a CD in support as well), and do not feel like “I am sticking it to the man” when a friend makes me a disk or I copy one that my local library (that I support with my tax dollars) has in their collection.
All of my kids video games have been purchased as well, although usually used because they are so expensive.
Wow–thanks–I’m going to come back to this and check out others’ suggestions and resources.
What we’re doing:
But we never shop for Everyday Low Prices.
Great diary! I’m once again among the unemployed and it’s a great refresher course as well as a lot of ideas I hadn’t tried before! One thing, with local shops sometimes you can barter-I painted a small sandwich board special sign for a local diner in exchange for set amount of free meals-since Sunday breakfasts at the diner are a family tradition that I love I could enjoy them guilt free for some time. I also buy books, my big downfall but I do love them, I’ve found I can trade them for credit at our local used book store if I don’t want to keep them or sell them on Amazon or Ebay..not so much luck on ebay but still, it’s possible to get something back.
We also have a scratch and dent/overstock building supply store nearby and it’s a great help-you have to watch the prices to see if it’s really a bargain but usually it is.
And my favorite furniture is road side treasure-and it’s fun to paint and decorate-I honestly don’t remember the last time I bought a new piece of furniture!
If you can sew, a better payoff for your time than making clothes (unless you are fast and pretty skilled) can be to make heavy, lined curtains. Or take the curtains you do have and add a heavy, light-blocking liner. Usually if a liner will block light, it does a fair job of blocking excessive heat or cold. Your sewing doesn’t have to look good to be ok for a lining – just simple, straight seams.
There is also lining fabric that has thermal properties specifically, too. You can often pop in a simple curtain on a tension rod that will cover from top to bottom of a window (make it just a hair too long and wide), for use during the hottest and coldest times. This winter heating oil and natural gas prices are expected to rise astronomically, so the insulated windows will help. Make the linings, etc. just for the side of your home that gets the most unpleasant weather according to your local climate if you don’t have much time. I bought my thermal lining fabric extra cheap on ebay – but you should comparison shop locally.
You can also make fabric “snakes” filled with sand or some other stuffing to block drafts at the bottom of doors and windows. If you have or can find an old polarfleece jacket, the sleeves stuffed with more of the polar fleece make wonderful, washable wind blockers, although they are very light weight (our cats, for example, move them around to sleep on them).
Excellent idea with the curtains. I need to make some new ones, since the old ones were faded and thin. Now I’m thinking about getting some RIT dye and the lining you discussed. Well done.
on digital cable and broadband Internet, because it saves us money by giving us options for staying in.
We rarely see a movie out (last one we saw was “Revenge of the Sith”), but if/when we do, we try to hit a matinee, which usually saves us about $5 for the two of us. Fortunately, the spouse is usually off by about 3pm, so he can come home, change clothes and we can head for the theater (most theaters keep their matinee prices till 6pm).
Probably the biggest savings is in driving — I don’t drive, so we only have the one car and insurance for one. Our car is a 1988 Toyota Camry (my mom’s car till she was too sick to drive), gets decent gas mileage, and we leave it at home when possible.
We could probably cut back in other areas, but we just haven’t had the necessity quite yet; we’re out of debt, have money in the bank, and while we’re not financially secure, at least we’re financially content…
I love “Imagine” organic squash soup @ $5.00.
It is delicious but also expensive. So I decided to
add up what it cost to make my own. I paid about $5.00
for the ingredients, acorn squash @ $3.00, a dash of sherry, onion, 2 potatoes, etc. BUT, I got three times as much soup and I must boast, my soup was more delicious.
I bake the medium sized squash, cut in half, cleaned, oiled with olive oil, the two halves placed face down on a cookie sheet. Bake them until they carmelize at the edges for added flavour. In your soup pot, saute in 2-3 tbsp. olive oil, one onion, 2 potatoes chopped coarsely, garlic, add to 3-4 cups of water, 1 organic vegetable bullion cube, dash of sherry, cayenne, salt, pepper. After the potatoes are cooked, add the baked squash which you scoop out of its skin with a tablespoon. Buzz with a hand mixer in the pot, until the soup is velvety. MMMmm. You can add cream, milk, soy milk for protein, or grate a little cheese as a garnish on top of each serving.