Last week’s giveaway is a tough act to follow. What could possibly be as good as a a $100 Amazon.com gift card?
Good question.
Hmmmm.
Dang.
I’ve got it: A cute puppy!
Can’t anybody here play this game?
Here’s a recipe for frugal fun: Go watch some “coach-pitch” Little League. Go even if you don’t have any kids. And go to the bathroom before you leave for the game, or you will almost certainly wet yourself laughing.
Coach-pitch is like an extended bloopers reel on YouTube, minus the annoying music and captions. Think “The Keystone Kops,” only shorter, and with bats instead of billy clubs:
- Runners piling up two or three deep on third base as coaches scream, “Go back! Go back!” and the third baseman tries to figure out which one to tag.
- A shortstop singing a little song to herself, complete with hip-twitches, as a series of line drives sails past.
- The right fielder and center fielder who played catch during the game.
- A runner dashing almost off the field to avoid being tagged. A few steps more and he’d have been in the bleachers.
- A catcher, all but blinded by an oversized protective mask, turning around and around in a futile search for a loose pitch that was practically under his instep.
- Another catcher adjusting his protective cup. From inside his pants.
- Outfielders waiting patiently for hits to roll all the way to them. Then again, it’s hard to show much hustle when the baseball glove is bigger than your head.
Shopping online? Don’t forget your coupons.
Over at my day job — the Living With Less personal finance column at MSN Money — I’m sharing info about online discount codes.
“Nab a $19 discount in 80 seconds” provides a primer on the five basic types of discount codes offered at sites such as Fat Wallet, Savings.com, Sunshine Rewards, Rather Be Shopping and Retail Me Not. These codes work just like coupons, with a couple of significant differences:
- No clipping or filing
- You don’t have to listen to folks in line lowing like cattle when you pull out a fistful of paper Qs
Two carnivals, no waiting.
I was delighted to have been selected for the two blog carnivals I entered this week. “Frugal materialism” was an Editor’s Pick in the Carnival of Personal Finance, at Rainy Day Saver. “My first laptop, finally” was selected for the Carnival of Money Stories, hosted this week at My Journey to Millions. At both carnivals … Read more
I travel with mayonnaise.
Recently I flew to Anchorage, Alaska for a 10-week housesitting gig/visit. I generally go with just a carry-on bag, but my new neck-supporting pillow takes up a big chunk of that bag. I couldn’t stuff much Stuff into the small space where the pillow wasn’t.
A real frugalist just hates to pay checked-bag fees. Were this to have been a short trip I’d have simply used a rolled-up towel under my neck. But 10 weeks is a little long to subject my creaky neck to a tube o’terrycloth. Into the bag went the pillow and into another bag went a bunch of my stuff.
Plus some birthday presents, and some mayonnaise.
Who the hell would want to hear bloggers talk?
“Microsaving” may sound a little dull, but we talked about everything from recycling cans to getting paid to watch porn.
Got an honest face? You have a bright future in sneak-thievery.
Recently I bought my first laptop. However, I could have gotten one or more for free at the University of Washington. During the month before I left for Alaska, I was twice asked by library patrons if I’d watch their stuff while they went to the bathroom.
Of course I said “yes,” because it was a simple favor. But I could also have strolled out of Odegaard Undergraduate Library with a couple of nice computers plus whatever was in their backpacks.
Frugal materialism.
One of my earliest articles for MSN Money was called “Living ‘poor’ and loving it.”* In the essay I noted that there’s real joy in knowing that you have everything you need and some of what you want.
But what if your goal is to have more than one of everything you need, and a whole bunch of what you want?
My first laptop, finally.
Two years ago I wanted a laptop. I thought my life would easier if I could write during my 50-minute bus rides to the University of Washington.
But then I examined the potential purchase the way I examined all others:
- Can I really justify the expense vs. the payoff?
- If I got it, would my life be significantly improved?
- If I didn’t, would my life by substantially diminished?
No, no and no. Buying the laptop would have meant dipping into my nascent emergency fund. It also would have meant one more thing to carry – and a backpack jammed with textbooks and my daily brown-bag lunch already had me feeling that I was toting my house on my back.
In other words, it would have amounted to a very expensive shoulder ache.
Jam jars and laminate flooring: Why Freecycle rocks.
You can get rid of anything on Freecycle, and I can prove it: A woman came to my house the other day to pick up five empty 42-ounce oatmeal boxes.
Bonus: The lady is a Yup’ik Eskimo so while we chatted on the phone I had a chance to use one of the approximately three Yup’ik words I know: “Akleng,” or “I’m sorry,” when her toddler daughter woke up crying from a nap.
I wasn’t sorry to be giving her the boxes, though, because it gave them one more use before they hit the recycle bin.
I also wasn’t sorry about having five empty oatmeal boxes. I kept them because I figured someone would want them. And someone did.