Frugal Hacks

Frugal Collections

DL — Tue, 16 Mar 2010 13:42:28 +0000

Recently, while washing dishes with my new daughter-to-be, (my first born son is engaged!) she asked me if I had any special collections. Quilts and oil lamps immediately came to mind as I delight in any that come my way. However, since I don’t buy quilts or ask for oil lamps as gifts , I did not think these would qualify as real collections.

As I walked over to the pantry and glanced at my shelves, I smiled. A bit sheepishly, I turned to daughter-to-be and mumbled, “ I collect pickle jars.” Seeing her quizzical smile, I mustered up my courage to explain that although the pickles are delicious, it is the jars that I most appreciate! And no, these treasures would not be found in any curio cabinet or on display.

As proud as any collector of fine merchandise, I gave daughter-to-be a peak at my collection. Nestled on shelves of pantry and freezer, pickle jars reigned supreme. Filled with grains, baking supplies frozen milk and homemade soup, these jars showed forth their value. I beamed as she complimented me upon my resourcefulness.

Hmmm, maybe I’ll be starting a new pickle jar collection and passing it on to daughter-to-be!

Do you have any “frugal collections?”

Frugal Pleasures I admit it. Sometimes the frugal life can feel a...

Unclogging Drains With Help From the Pros

MerchantShips — Mon, 15 Mar 2010 19:36:13 +0000

After two husband-installed toilets and a desperate call to Roto-Rooter, I've abandoned emergency plans for a frugal outhouse.

I kid! Although I do live in the hills of Tennessee...and those self-composting models are pretty cool...

My son has a long history of using more than his share of toilet paper. We're no strangers to the cable auger. And yet this latest clog confounded all our efforts.

We poured boiling water down all the drains.
We plunged.
We snaked.
We tried a janitor-recommended product called Glug.

Draining the bathtub made the toilet gurgle, and suddenly, something horrible started filling up the shower on the other end of the house.

Deep breath. Wait, bad move--open a window!

I debated calling the pros. Is it better to go with an independent plumber, who charges by the hour, but might take an extra-long time? What if we go with the flat-fee franchise, but feel swindled by a 2-minute solution?

We opted for Roto-Rooter: they could come quick, I had a coupon, and their estimate is free. Plan B: phone the independent plumber if the original figure was simply too high.

Money-wise, it was a good call. Two hours of digging later, we learned that our mystery drain line dead-ends into an old septic system, makes a 90-degree turn, and runs beneath our neighbor's garden!

Now that the immediate crisis has passed, we're inserting an access point at that bend for future clean-out--the kind we can handle ourselves.

What's your favorite way to unclog a drain? Who do you call when you can't handle it alone?

No related posts.

New on the Frugal Blogroll for 3/13

kimc — Sat, 13 Mar 2010 12:29:10 +0000

New members of the Frugal Blogroll for the week ending 3/13/2010:

Blogs that should have been added long ago:

Horn Happenings (an occasional contributor to FH)
A Fine Collection of Lint and Fuzz (a new weekly contributor to FH)
The Common Room (a longtime weekly contributor here at FH)
Life in a Shoe: the methods and madness of one family of 12 (FH administrator - that's me)

New additions to the Frugal Blogroll New on the Frugal Blogroll since last time: Puget Sound...
Joining the Frugal Blogroll: a fresh start OK, people. Here's the thing. I'm expecting my 10th child...
Frugal Collections Recently, while washing dishes with my new daughter-to-be, (my first...

Frugality Isn’t Deprivation. It’s Doing The Kids (and you) a Favor

DeputyHeadmistress — Fri, 12 Mar 2010 11:58:48 +0000

Recently in an interview with Essence Magazine:

Of his own daughters, Malia, 11, and Sasha, 8, Obama told Essence magazine: “The girls don’t watch TV during the week. Period.”

Blogger Theresa Walsh Giarrusso says:

I have to say that seems a little bit harsh. My kids, and I’m sure President Obama’s kids, work very hard at school. They are gone for eight hours and deserve a little down time when they come home.

She believes when the Obama girls go off to college they are going to respond to their previous years of deprivation by spending all their time in the common room catching up on all the television they missed.

A few months ago my husband and I took a Dave Ramsey class. During class the other students were sharing their frugal successes, and one evening several of them centered around how to bring down the cable bill- not get rid of it, because that's extreme, but bring it down.

My husband and I married in 1982. During our 28 years of marriage, we have never had cable television, except for a six month period when we lived in a trailer where the trailer park management provided cable television. In fact, I grew up without cable television, without color television, and for the first several years of my life, no television. My mother says somebody felt sorry for the family and gave us one, and she always felt like they weren't really doing us any favors. Did we feel deprived? No, we didn't. Why should we?

Not only that, but my husband and I mostly didn't have television at all, cable or otherwise. We have lived in places where no cable meant no reception, and so, for all but about five years of our 28 year marriage, we haven't had any outside television programming coming in to our home. We used the television screen for watching movies, which we mostly checked out for free from the library.

We did not feel deprived nor did we feel like we were depriving our children. In fact, we felt like we were doing them a favor.
Our thoughts and decisions here were influenced by some of the reading we did. Your child's growing mind by Dr. Jane Healy was probably one of the most important of those books.

This sense that we were doing our Progeny a favor by 'depriving' them of television was reinforced in the last two months when, in order to earn some extra Swagbucks (we use them for Amazon gift cards which we were saving for a camera, and now mostly use for homeschooling materials for our two unofficial foster sons), we got a free two week subscription to Netflix, and then our 19 year old daughter did the same thing and liked it so well she bought a paid subscription. The result was, in order to 'get our money's worth' the entire family glutted on movies. Whereas formerly we had a standing rule that there was no more than one movie per week, we've been watching one a night- and sometimes more. Disgusting.

After just a couple of months of this I can see the difference, particularly in our youngest two (11 and just recently 14). They are doing fewer creative things. They are more fractious. They are reading less. Their conversation is less interesting. They, and I, are less willing to spend time on processes with delayed gratification- such as baking bread from scratch, making yogurt, art projects with several steps and long drying out times between steps, reading longer books, laundry... The results of this experiment are, for our family, completely unsatisfactory and we are returning to our one movie a week, if not fewer, rule. Within days of implementing it, my children have been getting along better, more active, more interesting, and showing some of their old initiative.

Our television watching has been commercial free, so we haven't had that to deal with. However, years ago when we lived in Okinawa we observed the effects of commercials on children in an interesting fashion- this accounts for four of the five years we had television. Since we were on a military base, there was only one English speaking channel, and it was commercial free. Instead of commercials, we had public service announcements, and short 'ads' about some event in history. Our next door neighbor's father back stateside recorded Saturday morning cartoons for his 5 or 6 year old grand-daughter and sent them several video tapes. We were amazed, though in retrospect I wonder why, at the instant response to those ads. She immediately began to clamour for toys and cereals she'd never heard of but now believed she needed instantly. Her mother called her to breakfast during one of those commercial breaks, and the child sat glued to the floor, insisting that she couldn't leave the room because the man on the television had told her "Don't go away, we'll be right back!"

Getting rid of cable isn't a deprivation. It's an opening into a new life. Television isn't just about all the things you're seeing that really are not that profitable, but about all the things that are not being done while you're watching television, all the creative thoughts you'll never have, the walks you aren't taking, the projects you aren't undertaking, the genuine interaction that isn't going on during those hours.

Living without television isn't a hardship. It's a blessing.

Frugality and the WOW Factor The three frugal books I have found most helpful remain...
Cheerful Frugality Celebrates Fall Fall has officially arrived. We've packed away the swim suits,...
Cheerful Frugality Fights Buyers Regret Ever made a big purchase, then lived to second guess it? We...

How to negotiate a discount on medical bills

kimc — Thu, 11 Mar 2010 12:28:20 +0000

When I submitted my upcoming medical need to Samaritan Ministries*** I received a list of tips on how to negotiate a discount on hospital or other medical bills.

These tips can be used by anyone, regardless of whether they are members of Samaritan Ministries, so I'm sharing them here.

Suggested Procedure for Negotiating a Reduction in Medical Bills

Pray that God will help you to be a witness with each call you make, and that the bills will be reduced for His glory and the good of His Kingdom.
Ask for the supervisor in the Patients Accounts office for each provider. You must speak to the peron who has the authority to make the decision to reduce the bill. Don't be dismayed when the first person you talk to says, "We don't give discounts." If you can negotiate the price of a new or used car, you can negotiate the price of a medical bill.
Be sure that the provider understands you do not have insurance; you are a "self-pay" patient.
Many hospitals have a sliding fee scale based on your income level. Be sure to ask about this.
If you are a Christian worker, ask if the doctor or hospital has an automatic discount for clergy and Christian workers. Many do.
Say to them, "By what percentage would you consider reducing this bill?" Then wait for them to respond. There are no high-pressure tactics needed. Just simply ask.
If they still have not given a discount, they might if they're offered cash. Hospital and doctors often give discounts of up to 30% if the bills are paid promptly in cash.
Say to them, "If we can arrange to get 70% of this bill to you in cash within 30 days, will you accept that as payment in full?" Again, just wait for them to respond.
If you are still refused a discount, politely ask for that person's supervisor and repeat steps 1-8 with that supervisor. If you move up the chain of authority far enough and are politely persistent, the chances are very good that you will get a discount.

There are also services that will help you negotiate a discount on larger bills. Samaritan recommends The Karis Group, which seems to be a free service. The Karis Group has also partnered with Christian Financial Ministries to provide a service which is not free, but is guaranteed to save you significant money on larger bills, making it very worthwhile. We have no experience with either service, but Dave Ramsey thinks highly of them and his recommendation means a lot to money-smart people.

***Would you like to know more about Samaritan Ministries? We have been happy members for years. You can read about our experiences with Samaritan on my personal blog. If you decide to join Samaritan Ministries, please tell them KimC sent you.

Homebirth and health insurance Traditional Health Insurance Health insurance is a hot issue today. ...
Where does your money go? The brains in the US government think they know where...

Leafy Greens Are A Rip-Off

Emily @ A Fine Collection of Lint and Fuzz — Wed, 10 Mar 2010 11:51:50 +0000

I wrote a while back on my old blog about how flour-based products are a rip-off. They are fairly easy to make ourselves and the ingredients are cheaper than the store-bought version, so if someone has the time, there is no reason to pay others to make them for us. I'm getting the same impression about leafy greens.

We live in Maine in an apartment. There is no yard to plant a garden, yet we have been having fresh salads this winter without paying outrageous prices for out-of-season leafy greens. Leafy greens are always in season in my kitchen.

Here's how I grow them.

Take a coffee can and make drainage holes in the bottom using nails. I use 34.5 ounce cans, but have used cans as small as baby formula cans with success.
Put an inch or tow of "stones" in the bottom for easy drainage. I use packing peanuts or broken up pieces of styrofoam, since styrofoam cannot by put in the recycling bin.
Fill with soil.
Plant seed and place near window. Water.

It's that simple! In 6-8 weeks, depending on variety, you'll have your salad. If you plant enough, depending on your salad needs, you'll never have to buy leafy greens again, even in the winter.

We recently got all fancy and switched over to self-watering planters, so I have no pics at the moment, but we usually don't eat the whole plant at once. We pull a bit off here and there for tacos and sandwiches, then pull a small handfull off of each plant when we want a big salad. More leaves grow in as long as you keep it happy. We've noticed the yield goes down eventually, and then we eat the rest of the greens and replant.

Frugal Pleasures I admit it. Sometimes the frugal life can feel a...

Leaving the Frugal Life Behind

DL — Tue, 09 Mar 2010 13:31:48 +0000

Recently, my husband and I were given a gift certificate to dine at a lovely, expensive restaurant. Our dinner was delicious (of course, we ordered “the special“) and a delightful evening was put into our memory bank. However, I couldn’t seem to leave the frugal life behind.

Taking a brisk winter walk before arriving at our destination - remember this is South Texas “brisk” - I was a bit chilly and declined giving my coat to the Maitre d’. Little did I know how wise this would be! Pleased to be attired in some “new” clothes, I panicked for a moment as I have been known to forget to remove those plastic thrift shop tags! Thankfully though, this was not the case and we quickly took our seats in preparation for a scrumptious meal.

The place was crowded with conventioneers who seemed to have nary a thought to the expensive menu. With some chagrin, I must admit, after seeing a patron’s convention identification tag, I did hope his expense account wasn’t being paid by my tax dollars!

Thoughts seemed to continue down a frugal lane. I will confess, I doubted if anyone in this restaurant was doing their “debt snowball.” And I hoped that all those dining were now “living like no one else” because they had “lived like no one else before.” As we were leaving, I happened to see the Maitre d’ assist another patron with her coat. Honest, I wasn’t staring, I just happened to see her give him a $10.00 tip! He smiled and I gulped - only three more coats and this Maitre ’d would match a well-known blogger’s weekly grocery budget!

Now, it really isn‘t my place to decide how other people spend their money. And that is not my point. As we left the restaurant, the realization came to me that living frugally has taught me to evaluate and appreciate the choices I make. Special evenings can be a lavish treat, yet, while grateful for this fine dining experience, I have no desire to leave the frugal life behind. How about you?

No related posts.

Shopping To Feed A Crowd

MerchantShips — Tue, 09 Mar 2010 04:48:02 +0000

Last week we discussed feeding a crowd for less. But before you can cook, you must shop. Is Sam's Club always the cheapest alternative?

Most of my quantity cookbooks list ingredients in bulk sizes: a #10 can, a quart of sugar, etc. The only way to compare apples to apples is to check the unit price.

TOTAL COST / NUMBER OF OUNCES = PRICE PER OUNCE

You know this, but it bears repeating. In some cases, the bulk size is no bargain. It's simply a timesaver.

When I'm cooking for a crowd, I try to shop like a business. Restaurants don't buy disposable pans at Kroger, so I stocked up on a variety of sizes at GFS Marketplace. (A smart reader pointed out that Sam's Club also sells half-sheet pans, 30 for $9.)

Frugal Hacks editor Kim C. realized her family was eating 30 pounds of bananas a week--a lightbulb moment. She began buying wholesale quantities from a produce terminal for a fraction of the price. I always wonder why the Duggar family, of TLC's 19 and Counting, doesn't adopt the same approach. (They make mega trips to discount grocer Aldi instead.)

I usually end up splitting my shopping for a crowd in two: half goes to seasonal produce and sale items at the regular grocery, and half to those bulk purchases which truly save time and money. When I saw how little frozen hashbrowns cost at GFS, for example, there was no way I'd sacrifice an afternoon to peeling potatoes!

Pick and choose your focus. Few caterers make everything from scratch. If cakes are your thing, start piping! If not, consider warehouse clubs, where big desserts have small prices. I was amazed that Costco's half-sheet cake feeds 48 for only $16.99. Muffins for a crowd, on the other hand, are cheaper to bake at home, especially if you use a make-ahead batter like this one.

Net your biggest savings by doing the entree yourself--even if you're only warming a spiral-cut ham with your special gourmet glaze. Pound per pound, meats and casseroles prepared at home cost less than their frozen or deli counterparts. If you do outsource, the cheapest meats are usually fried chicken (from Walmart) and pulled pork barbecue (from a local favorite.)

There's no simple answer to shopping for a crowd. You have to weigh time, money, and storage capacity to determine a formula that works for you. If you have any tried-and-true quantity strategies, we would love to hear them in the comments below!

Feed A Crowd For Less Our church hosts a fellowship brunch one Sunday a month....
Shopping Once A Year? For some time now, I have been mulling over in...
I want to go shopping with you! A few days ago I asked you to guess the...

New on the Frugal Blogroll for 3/6

kimc — Sat, 06 Mar 2010 12:45:21 +0000

New members of the Frugal Blogroll for the week of March 6:

New additions to the Frugal Blogroll So far, so good. I'm keeping up on new members...
New on the Frugal Blogroll I check the new ones as I add them, but...
New on the Frugal Blogroll for 3/13 New members of the Frugal Blogroll for the week ending...

Saving Money Isn’t Always Frugal

DeputyHeadmistress — Fri, 05 Mar 2010 11:45:34 +0000

Living frugal is about more than just a few tips on saving money here and there. It's about changing the way you think about things, adjusting your thinking about wants versus needs, and revising both a sense of entitlement (which doesn't do us any good), and our ideas about deprivation.

Several years ago I started subscribing to a paper so I could get the sales fliers so I would know what all the 'deals' were. After a couple of months we dropped it, as I realized that having those sales fliers actually brought more stuff to my attention, and then into my house, stuff I never knew existed without those ads, stuff I suddenly saw a need for-and-it-was-on-sale so I would save money. I saved more money not buying those things at all than buying stuff I'd never even heard of before just because it was on sale- even when it was a very good sale. I do still use the grocery sales papers- those are important, but I borrow them from my mother.

Staying home is where the real savings come from.

Find unclaimed money I've never paid much attention to the idea that I...
Advice from a young bride The Equuschick (our second girl) got married to her best...
Make Money Writing, Homemade Gifts for Men, and More I've just signed up at Associated Content, where you can...