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Posted
Jul 09 2008, 12:01 AM
by
Donna Freedman
Rating:
Yesterday I was thinking about "hypermilers," those folks who go to great lengths to squeeze maximum mileage from their cars. While of course I strive for the best mileage possible, I don't hypermile -- with my car, that is. As a frugalist, I hypermile my whole life.
Meal plans, shopping, entertainment, transportation, utility usage, gift-giving -- all are done with an eye toward achieving maximum bang for the buck.
Plenty of you are right there with me, if posts on the Smart Spending message board and the comments about my articles are any indication.
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Posted
Jun 23 2008, 08:55 AM
by
Donna Freedman
Rating:
As yard sale experiences go, Saturday was just about perfect. The weather was beautiful and I not only found exactly what I was looking for, I scored a killer deal on it. While the low prices I saw all day were thrilling, they were also an object lesson as to why yard sales can be as dangerous as dollar stores: Things are so cheap that it's easy to overbuy.
Prime example: the foot-tall statue of a bull terrier, priced at a quarter, that reminded me of the classic "His master's voice" ads for RCA-Victor. There was something very appealing about the pup, yet I had no real need for such a thing and also no place to put it. Why in the world would I consider buying it? Because it was only 25 cents.
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Posted
May 21 2008, 09:17 AM
by
Donna Freedman
Rating:
Thinking of giving somebody a coffee mug for Christmas? Don't do it. It'll probably end up at a yard sale.
That's what I inferred after reading a thread on the Smart Spending message board about a charity rummage sale. Reader "SC CDF," who with her daughter volunteered at the event, noted that 144 mugs were left unsold. So were beauty-product gift baskets, "a box the size of a refrigerator" full of decorative tins and enough clothes to fill three pickup truck beds.
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Posted
Apr 14 2008, 03:22 PM
by
Donna Freedman
Rating:
Tired of being a slave to your cell phone? Dump it. A pay-as-you-go cell may be your ticket to freedom, according to a reader who calls herself "Alexandrainabox."
"I relish my unreachability," she wrote in a Smart Spending message board thread called "Going low-tech is cheap and liberating."
Alexandrainabox, who writes a frugality blog called "Living Without Money," also sings the praises of low-tech entertainment: cooking at home, travel-trailer vacations, learning guitar from YouTube, and jamming with other musicians.
"All of this stuff is very low-end -- but it's so enjoyable. It's also very inexpensive. Kinda like the cashmere sweaters I buy at thrift stores for two bucks," she writes.
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Posted
Mar 31 2008, 09:48 AM
by
Donna Freedman
Rating:
When I wrote "Surviving and thriving on $12,000 a year," some people thought it was a scam. They wrote notes to the editor along the lines of, "Come on, nobody could really live on that." The fact is, plenty of people in this country live on less.
These days, some readers ask whether this part-time writing job changed things. As I noted in the follow-up to the original article, my life changed but my lifestyle didn't. The additional income has let me visit family, invest in decent shoes, and buy the occasional rotisserie chicken.
I still hate to pay retail, though.
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Posted
Mar 05 2008, 09:15 AM
by
Donna Freedman
Rating:
Which deal sounds better: buy one item and get 50% off the second, or get 25% off each of two items?
What's more attractive: a low monthly payment or a high one?
Are deals like "six for $10" capitalizing on people who are bad at math?
Smart Spending message board reader "SC CDF" started a thread about "math games" that retailers play with consumers' heads.
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Posted
Feb 27 2008, 09:49 AM
by
Donna Freedman
Rating:
Picking lowbush cranberries is a challenge. They're about the size of the eraser on a new pencil and grow just a couple of inches off the ground. It was tough going until I learned how to put on what I now call "berry eyes." For a moment, I would concentrate on what lowbush cranberries looked like -- and suddenly, they seemed to be all over the place.
Frugal behavior can feel like that. Changing your spending habits seems difficult or frustrating at first. Then something clicks, and you see the possibilities for frugality just about everywhere you look.
Lunch is a good example. One day you decide to throw leftovers into a bowl and hit the workplace microwave at noon: five or six bucks saved. You start to do it twice a week, or three times. Then you start buying canned soda in the lunchroom because it's 50 cents cheaper than the bottled -- until you realize you could buy a 12-pack of pop for what you pay for a week's worth from the machine.
In time, you realize that a glass of water is better for you. It's also free. See?
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Posted
Feb 18 2008, 08:25 AM
by
Donna Freedman
Rating:
Ever seen that Monty Python skit about the "Four Yorkshiremen"? A quartet of rich guys sit around talking of the poverty they knew in the old days. The stories get more and more outlandish as they compete to see whose life was the toughest.
Amy Clark, who writes the Motherload blog, seemed to channel the Four Yorkshiremen in a piece for the Frugal Hacks site. In "Four frugal hackers sitting at the bus stop," a quartet of frugalists compete to see whose life is the thriftiest.
For Amy, this kind of one-upmanship is personal. She'll feel good about something she's posted on her personal-finance blog -- until someone leaves a comment "about how they have done that for years and what you should have done."
Gee, thanks.
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Posted
Feb 15 2008, 10:01 AM
by
Donna Freedman
Rating:
Want to plug some financial leaks? Look at the things you do every day and see if you're overdoing them.
Here's an easy example: driving at the speed limit or above it. If you slow down from 65 to 55 mph, your gas mileage improves by 15%, according to an MSN article.
But we indulge in many other forms of waste that are much stealthier. I'm talking about habits so ingrained that we don't realize how much they cost us -- or why they might be unnecessary.
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Posted
Jan 28 2008, 08:32 AM
by
Donna Freedman
Rating:
Spent your check yet? The details aren't even finalized but readers are already posting their plans on the Smart Spending message board: groceries, car payments, orthodontics, property taxes, trips to Atlantic City.
A recent MSN Money article explained why you shouldn't spend your share of the proposed fiscal stimulus package. (Is it just me, or does the phrase "fiscal stimulus" sound like something you wish a doctor didn't have to do to you?) It would be far better, the article suggested, to bank the money or use it to do something like pay down credit card debt or start a retirement plan.
Those are fine ideas. But I'm going to suggest a different tack: Spend it, but spend it frugally.
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