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Posted
Feb 01 2008, 07:39 AM
by
Karen Datko
Rating:
Money Blog: Smart Spending Blog - MSN Money
This post comes from Trent Hamm at partner blog The Simple Dollar. Quite often at The Simple Dollar, I'll suggest a frugal idea, like rewashing Ziploc bags, and inevitably someone will complain that I'm a "cheapskate" and that I should "get a life." I usually find such comments amusing, simply because those individuals aren't looking at the bigger picture. One instance of frugality doesn't save you very much, but when that instance doesn't take much time, the effective "hourly rate" for frugality can be impressive. Let's take a look at that Ziploc issue to show you what I mean. Let's say that a new Ziploc bag costs 20 cents, roughly appropriate based on the many varieties and quantities you can buy. (We like two-gallon freezer Ziplocs for meal storage, and those are far more than 20 cents, but the sandwich bags are much less.) Now, let's say I need one of those bags. It takes me about six seconds to dig a new one out of the box and about 12 to grab a used one and clean it. That means the time cost of washing and reusing a Ziploc bag is six seconds. That six seconds saves me 20 cents.
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Posted
Nov 29 2007, 06:48 AM
by
Karen Datko
Rating:
Money Blog: Smart Spending Blog - MSN Money
This post comes from Philip Brewer at partner blog Wise Bread.
If you read frugality and simplicity blogs for any length of time, you'll run into a lot of people who take great joy in having simplified their lives. Gradually simplifying your life is one obvious path to finding some of that joy for yourself. Let me suggest an alternative: temporary extreme frugality.
Lots of people become temporarily frugal out of necessity -- because of a lost job or an unexpected expense. Others are temporarily frugal to achieve a goal -- saving up to make a down payment on a house or car. I'm suggesting temporary frugality for which the goals are less material and more experiential.
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Posted
May 07 2008, 10:56 AM
by
Donna Freedman
Rating:
Money Blog: Smart Spending Blog - MSN Money
Water bills getting you down? "Katurah82" favors a multipronged approach to keeping usage in check. She takes three "navy showers" a week, i.e., water turned off while she lathers up. The rest of the time she heats a few gallons of water on the stove and pours it into the bathtub. "I use way less water."
Katurah82 learned to wash dishes in a gallon of hot water while camping. Why not do them that way at home? Oh, and about that water: Most heaters are set way too high, she says, so turn yours down. (A setting of 120 degrees should work fine, and could save you $20 to $50 in utility bills according to this article.)
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Posted
Apr 21 2008, 06:36 AM
by
Karen Datko
Rating:
Money Blog: Smart Spending Blog - MSN Money
This post comes from J.D. Roth at partner blog Get Rich Slowly. Stories about national economic woe abound. I've had conversations with a few of my friends about the mortgage mess, about recession and a possible bear market, and about the nature of poverty. The economy is sour in the United States (and elsewhere in the world), and this frightens many people.
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Posted
Apr 13 2009, 11:07 AM
by
Joan Melcher
Rating:
Money Blog: Smart Spending Blog - MSN Money
Wow. Free bowling for kids. All summer long. Two games a day. Could this be one of those too-good-to-be-true deals?
We checked into Kids Bowl Free and found the offer to be almost as good as it sounds, although there likely is money involved.
Many parents will either need to accompany their young children or want to bowl with their kids. But even then, if you have a penchant for rolling a heavy orb down a wood surface at 10 objects shaped like old milk bottles, you can get a family pass for $23.95 that allows two free games per person a day for up to four adult family members.
So, the whole family can bowl throughout the summer for a total of $23.95.
The real catch: You have to live in a town or area with one of the roughly 300 participating bowling centers. But there’s even wiggle room there.
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Posted
Nov 09 2008, 10:57 PM
by
Donna Freedman
Rating:
Money Blog: Smart Spending Blog - MSN Money
Last week the Boston Gal's Open Wallet personal-finance blog mentioned a Wall Street journal piece about American shopping habits. The newspaper article reported a new consumer trend: buying smaller packages of toilet paper right before payday.
In her short post, Boston Gal gave her opinion of the economic turmoil: that when people need to pinch pennies just to able to buy toilet paper, "this really is a recession with shades of a depression."
I don't know about that. But I'm thankful for the post because it shows that I'm not the only one obsessing over TP.
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Posted
Apr 29 2008, 12:47 PM
by
Karen Datko
Rating:
Money Blog: Smart Spending Blog - MSN Money
To some, 60 minutes may be a TV show, but to Kris at Cheap Healthy Good, it's the time she takes each week to implement her personal system for saving major money on groceries. With the rising price of food, this is something we all need to read about. Before you try her system, she advocates three steps. First: Junk any food on hand "that A) you can't identify, B) is in an advanced state of decay or mummification, and/or C) is old enough to be carbon-dated."
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Posted
Mar 30 2009, 04:46 AM
by
Karen Datko
Rating:
Money Blog: Smart Spending Blog - MSN Money
This post comes from J.D. Roth at partner blog Get Rich Slowly.
In general, the frugal person who saves and invests will slowly build wealth, and will find herself far ahead of her peers. But sometimes the progress is slow -- or even nonexistent. When this happens, good financial habits can seem frustrating. Recently, a reader named Sara wrote to ask what to do when frugality seems to be getting you nowhere.
Although I practice extreme frugality, I feel that I cannot get ahead financially. Every month I seem to be back in exactly the same place as I started the month before. Here are the details:
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Posted
Mar 27 2008, 03:00 PM
by
Karen Datko
Rating:
Money Blog: Smart Spending Blog - MSN Money
Did you know that you can sharpen scissors by cutting aluminum foil? Dawn at Frugal for Life says you can also sharpen the blades of your paper shredder by running aluminum foil through it. These are just a few of her tips for this kitchen-drawer staple. One of the most impressive is making your own solar cooker. (For more on that, read this post at Money Changes Things.) And for the extremely paranoid people out there: "The always important tin hat is very handy for stopping people from reading your mind," Dawn writes. (She's joking.
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Posted
Mar 28 2008, 06:59 AM
by
Karen Datko
Rating:
Money Blog: Smart Spending Blog - MSN Money
This post comes from Trent Hamm at partner blog The Simple Dollar. Just this morning, I was leafing through my favorite personal-finance book of all, "Your Money or Your Life," when I came across the idea of the "purge-and-splurge" cycle. From page 148, discussing what happens after you start buckling down and paying serious attention to your financial state: "In the first month of recording your figures you might confront one of our national foibles. Your income entry might well be lower than your expense entry. You may have spent more than you earned. (It is, after all, the American way.) Seeing this reality might come as a bit of a shock. Chances are you'll want things to change -- and change now. Accustomed to budgets, diets, and New Year's resolutions, you swear on a stack of bank statements and credit cards that next month will be better.
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