Browsing Category: "Frugality"
What happened to the barter system?
The barter system was used for centuries before the invention of money. It was a great way for people to exchange goods and services for other goods and services. The local Tailor may trade a nice pair of pants for a weeks worth of milk from the dairy farmer. It didn’t really cost either person anything except their time and skills.
A few weeks ago a lady at work overheard me talking about needing a babysitter. She jokingly told me she would babysit for me anytime I wanted to come over to her house and cut her grass. I never really thought any more about it until a couple of days ago. Why wouldn’t I take her up on this barter for services?
We usually pay our babysitters $25 or so for a couple of hours of service. That’s a pretty big amount per hour for a babysitter, but we feel it’s not worth the hassle of someone coming to our house for less money than that. This can make a date cost upwards of $80 for dinner and a movie. Why wouldn’t I barter for free babysitting?
The lady from my work hates yardwork and tending to her lawn. She would much rather watch our kids for a couple of hours than cut the grass. I actually don’t mind yard work and I could always find an extra hour or so to tend her yard if it meant free babysitting.
Think of some ways you can use your skills to save some money. With the recent recession I think it’s possible you will start seeing more of the barter system being used. An ancient system may be making a comeback!
A great deal at the consignment store
Today my wife got a phone call from a friend who just visited the local children’s consignment store. She informed her that they were having an end of summer clearance sale on all their summer clothes. Since we have two small girls my wife decided it would be a good idea to at least go take a look and try to scout out some leftover deals.
The consignment store was offering a deal where you could stuff a bag full of clothes and only pay $15. I thought it would be a pretty good deal if the bag was a decent size. I’m all about saving money so I gladly watched the children while she went to scope things out.
About an hour and 20 minutes later she returned with her bag full of clothes. I was pleasantly surprised to find out that the bag was a decent sized bag. She actually crammed exactly 40 articles of clothing into the bag. All of the clothing was name brand clothing and looked new. So she bought the clothes for about $0.38 each. The best part is that everything she bought was something she would have probably purchased anyway. Sure it’s mostly for next summer but you just can’t beat a sale like this!
If you really want to save some money in the clothing budget check out consignment stores. Most of them only buy back clothing that looks new so there is still plenty of wear left in the clothes. Most of the clothes are also top name brand clothes, so you can be stylish and still save a lot of cash!
Free entertainment, take a walk
Bored and don’t have a lot of extra cash for entertainment? There are many free or very cheap entertainment options to keep away the boredom blues. One of the most overlooked form of entertainment is walking.
Come home from a hard day at work, eat a good dinner and head out into the neighborhood for a walk. It’s a great, free form of entertainment and also can provide many other benefits.
Walking is a great form of exercise. It’s very low impact so you won’t bang and strain your muscles and joints, but you will still burn some calories. The average person can easily walk a mile in 30 minutes. You’ll burn about 100 calories over that 3o minute period or 36,500 calories per year. That’s enough exercise to lose just over 10 pounds in a year without going on a diet!
Walking also helps to relieve stress. Take a look around and enjoy your surroundings. Forget about your boss at work or the pile of paperwork sitting on your office desk. Take 30 minutes to enjoy your life and relieve some stress.
Finally, if you are up for a little more challenge take a hike! Walking through the wilderness will slightly increase your intensity level burning more calories and also adding much more scenery to your walk.
Forget about spending $50on taking the family to a movie. Grab a few water bottles and head put on your tennis shoes. Take a walk around the neighborhood, enjoy the scenery and conversation and save a lot of cash!
Buy Brand Name and Save
Alright, I have to take back what I said in a previous post. I wrote an article a while back about how you can save a lot of money buying generic brand foods. I wrote that article before I truly understood the power of coupons.
Recently my sister-in-law introduced my family to a group of extreme savers who used the power of coupons to save hundreds of dollars per month on their grocery bill. At first I was a little skeptical because from previous experience coupons only brought name brand foods down to a price that was almost as cheap as the generic brands. However, after doing some research and some hands on experiements I am now a believer.
The key to the savings is to stockpile a lot of coupons and only use them when something is on sale, as well as combining paper or printed coupons with other incentives. For example there are some websites that allow you to load manufacturers coupons to you Kroger plus card as well as use a paper coupon for the same item. Sometimes you can get items for free or very close to free. My last weeks trip to Kroger yeilded almost a 50% savings in the gorcery bill!
I’m now somewhat addicted to coupon clipping and deal shopping so stay tuned for more information about this money saving topic!
Save money with free trash bags
Most grocery stores still use plastic bags to package your groceries. Unfortunately where I live I’m not allowed to recycle the bags in the recycling bin. Some grocery stores do allow you to bring them back to the store and they recycle them, but you can reuse them yourself and save a little money. I’m sure by reading the title and the introduction you already know where this is going.
Forget about buying those cute tiny trash bags to put in the trash cans in the bathrooms. Simply use your free grocery bags and place them in the cans for trash bags, after all don’t they just go in the trash? You can also use grocery bags to clean out your car. No need to fill up your kitchen garbage bags with trash from your car. Simply grab an unused grocery bag and start the cleaning process for free.
We have also got in a habit of using grocery bags as our main trash bags. It’s not the best habit to get into but depending on when you show up at our house you might find a grocery bag hanging from the pantry door with that days trash inside. I’m sure it’s not the most decorative trash storage but it’s free and it’s convenient. After all who wants to open the pantry to throw away their trash?
With as many grocery bags as we use for trash bags I bet we cut our trash bag spending in 1/2. Sure it might only be $30 or $40 per year but every penny counts!
Extreme saving with coupon loopholes
Last week I was introduced to a new world in savings. I’ve always know that you can save some extra money on groceries if you use coupons, but didn’t realize exactly how much until now. My sister-in-law told me about a group of extreme savers who take complete advantage of coupons and sales.
Always save unused coupons until they are expired. Many time grocery stores run sales based on the current coupons in the local paper. They try to avoid offering sale priced items at the same time coupons are introduced. If you save your coupons a week or two it’s very possible that sale priced items will overlap with coupons bringing extreme savings on your grocery bill.
This week I found my own first coupon loophole with Kroger. They are offering 3 – 12 packs of Coke for $10 and you also get 2 free boxes of Ritz crackers. I also found a coupon for $2 off any 2 – 12 packs of Coke. So for $8 I got 3 – 12 packs and 2 boxes of Ritz crackers.
There are entire websites and blogs dedicated to these types of deals. They do the research for you for general coupons. You can however do more research for local coupons and find great deals. From what I see you can save tons of money for a few hours of searching.
If you are the type that thinks saving $0.30 or $0.40 on an item isn’t worth your time, think about the whole shopping list. If you can find a coupon for 20 items you use everyday and save $0.40 on each item this adds up. Saving $8.00 per week over the course of a year is over $400 you will save! Next time you get the weekly paper don’t just throw those coupons away you may be sitting on a small gold mine!
Not as frugile as I thought
For the past few years I’ve made an effort to track our spending and try to save money. I think we’ve done a great job at reducing our debt and building a good savings. We’ve also managed to purchase a home and also own an acre of land which we plan to build our “dream house” on in a few years. We’ve managed to do this by watching our spending and being blessed with great jobs.
For the past 8 years I’ve packed my lunch at least 4 of the 5 days of the work week. I usually drink the office coffee and only occasionally treat myself to some Gourmet coffee. We also try to eat dinner at home or go for fast food restaurants. We have a planned budget and for the most part stick to it, however recently I realized that maybe I’m not as frugal as I thought.
We’re in the middle of some construction projects at our work which we volunteered to do during our not so busy season. We’re tearing down walls, building walls, laying ceramic tile, ripping up carpet, putting up molding and painting.
After using a roller the entire day I pulled it off and tossed it in the trash. Take note it was an all purpose roller from a hardware store that probably cost about $1.00. A co-worker asked why did you throw the roller away, you know you can clean those out and use them again? Sure, I could have spent 15 minutes cleaning out the roller and using it again tomorrow after it dried, but was it really worth it?
I’ve tried cleaning out rollers before and from my experience they never work as good as a new one and besides, it’s $1.00. He informed me he had rollers that he had been using for years.
Maybe I should have saved the roller. I should have taken 15 minutes of my time and cleaned out the roller to use the next day. I could have saved the company $1.00. Any thoughts?
Our top 5 Cheap Dinner meals
We all know that college students try to live on a tight budget, because they have little or no income. Finding cheap meal ideas is a must even at the sacrifice of taste. However eating cheap doesn’t mean you have to sacrifice taste. Here is out top five cheap dinner meals to fix for you and your family that will save you a few dollars at the grocery store.- Fancy Ramen Noodles. They are not just for college kids. You don’t have to eat these tasty noodles right out of the pack, you can fix them up to make a gourmet meal, well almost gourmet. Personally I like the noodles and the spice packs, even though not extremely healthy, they can make a good base for a meal. You can add vegetables and even meat to the noodles to give them a gourmet feel. If you are trying to save a lot of money you may have to skip the meats.
- Grilled cheese and soup. For about $7 you can easily feed a family of 4 as many sandwiches as they can eat and a tasty bowl of canned soup.
- Spaghetti – The classic spaghetti and marinara sauce dinner can easily be fixed for under $5. Noodles are about the cheapest meal you can fix and a can of marinara or even Alfredo sauce is about $3.
- Breakfast – Breakfast isn’t just for breakfast. Eggs are less than $2 per dozen, a package of biscuits about $1.50 and a package of bacon about $4. For well under $10 you can feed a family of four a good dinner.
- Homemade vegetable soup – Everybody loves vegetable soup! It’s something that’s easy to make, you can freeze the leftovers, and it’s cheap. Don’t have a lot of time to fix dinner? Put some vegetable soup in the crockpot and let it simmer all day while you are at work. There is a vegetable soup starter kit for about $2, a couple of packages of frozen vegetables can be found for $1 each and a couple of cans of tomato soup is less than $2. For about $6 you can have vegetable soup for 4 and probably save some leftovers for you lunch.
It’s only a dollar
A couple of days ago my wife took leftovers to her work for lunch. She put them in the refrigerator only to forget about bringing it when lunch time came around. Instead of warming up the leftovers she opened up one of those convenient microwavable bowls of roman noodles, sounds yummy I know. On a side note I do actually like them and the only cost a dollar, or do they?
The reason I decided to write this article is because after warming up the noodles she decided she would much rather have the leftover baked spaghetti than the noodles. So, after asking coworkers if the wanted the noodles with no success she threw them in the trash, but it was only a dollar.
I would probably be considered a pretty frugal person. I don’t buy clothes unless I absolutely need them. I bring my lunch to work at least 4 times per week, and I am always looking for ways to save money. No need to say I was a little disappointed to hear the story of the trashed noodles.
Later that evening I got started thinking about the real price of that cup of noodles. Was it really only one dollar? The obvious answer was no, but how much did that wasted cup of noodles cost? I was a little surprised when I did the math.
I plan to retire in about 30 years so that’s the number I will work with in the example. One dollar put in a savings account for 30 years would be worth $2.12. One dollar put in the stock market that averaged a 10% return for 30 years would be worth $19.84. If you take inflation into consideration the $2.12 will only be worth about $0.87 and the $19.84 will only be worth $8.17.
So does this mean it’s OK to throw a dollar away, because it won’t be worth that much anyway? No, you know the answer to that question. Spend and save your money wisely, you’ll be happy you did.
Extreme method of saving money – Line Dry Clothes
How much does it cost to dry a load of clothes? It costs an average of about $0.30 – $0.40 per load to dry a load of clothes with an electric dryer. If you have a gas dryer then you will spend about $0.15 to $0.20 per load. It may sounds a little old fashioned but for those extreme money savers this is a great option.
Just because I say line dry doesn’t mean you have to put up an old fashioned clothes line in the back yard. They make in home clothes drying systems that allow you to hang your clothes up to dry in the laundry room instead of using the dryer for every load.
Use this method to dry items such as t-shirts, and other thin material clothing. These items usually don’t require excessive drying anyway so hanging them up to dry won’t take forever. If you do a load of laundry every day try to line dry 2 of those per week. You’ll save about $1100 over the course of your 30 year mortgage. Line dry all your clothes and you’ll save a small fortune.
With the current condition of our economy many people are looking for any way they can to save money. Please keep reading our blog to learn more great extreme ways to save money!
