frugal hacks

Not a Swagbucks member? Get a bonus if you join by the end of the day.

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swagbucks screenshot © by Ruby Galanida

Yesterday I took part in an online chat at CompareRewards.com, a site specializing in news and reviews of rewards programs. One of the guests was from Swagbucks.com, my favorite rewards site.

She gave us a promo code, good only through this weekend, that will provide new members with 70 Swagbucks upon joining, instead of 30.

I intended to put up a post last night — but I lost my Internet connection. (Moral of the story: Don’t intend. Just do.)

So if you aren’t a Swagbucks member yet, I hope you’ll do the following:

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A matter of timing.

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Kitchen Timer © by Cea.

The kitchen timer Mom gave me is working once more. It had met a clumsy yet oddly appropriate end about two years ago, when I knocked it off the counter and into the bucket of bleach water I was using to mop the floor.

I cried out in dismay, and later cried actual tears. Yes, it was just a timer. But it meant something to me. It was a gift from my mother, during a time when I couldn’t talk about what was going on in my life – but she knew what she saw, and she must have guessed that what she couldn’t see was much worse.

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Frugal-hacking my way through a month without pay.

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Two dates for you:

February 7 – The last direct deposit for my day job

March 11 – The earliest I can expect to get paid again

I’m not saying this because I feel sorry for myself. For reasons I’ll detail below, I’m doing fine. I’m bringing it up to remind other freelancers – and fully employed folks – to get creative about meeting your needs.

 

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The day I saved Heckboy.

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On my way home from the store recently I found nine cents, a My Coke Rewards cap and two ice-cream bars.

About that last: While waiting for the light to change I saw a discarded plastic grocery bag on the ground. As a rule I pick these up for my sister to use when she walks her dog. This bag held one of those Klondike Bar six-packs, with four missing.

The supermarket register receipt indicated they’d been purchased only about 15 minutes earlier, and it was a chilly day. You bet I took them home.

If you feel you must say “eeewww,” go ahead. I’ll wait.

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Selling unwanted gift cards.

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Here’s my feeling about presents: Once they’re yours, you get to use them any way you like. If you want to regift it, donate it to charity, sell it in a yard sale or run over it with a steamroller, that’s your business.

Which is why I sold two of the gift cards I got during the holidays. They morphed from $75 worth of might-not-get-used promissory plastic into $63.79 worth of Amazon.com gift cards.

Some would look at this as an $11.21 loss. Not me. I look at it as being that much closer to the crib I need to buy.

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Strategic pizza.

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Last month I was fried extra-crispy: too many things to do in too little time before I left for a seven-week trip to Alaska. Will Chen over at Wise Bread did a telephone intervention, i.e., I sort of melted down while he was on the line.

Bless his heart – he didn’t start to make bad-cell-reception noises and say that he couldn’t hear me so we’d have to talk some other time. (Like, um, never.) Instead, he listened to me whirl and howl about so many things I wanted to do, so few days until my plane left, so many professional plans but no time in which to bring them to fruition.

Then he gently encouraged me to think about how I’m spending my time.

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The hottest news in yogurt making.

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I’ve been meaning to write an update to “Lactobacillus love: Is it wrong?” Making yogurt in the slow cooker was pretty easy in the summer, but autumn brought several fails in a row – and I never could get the process right while up in Alaska last summer. So I went online to research what I might be doing wrong.

Turns out I should have been making sure the milk was heated to 180 degrees and then cooled to between 105 and 110 degrees, and also making sure of a guaranteed, long-lasting source of warmth. The latter isn’t easy in a cooler or downright cold season.

One writer suggested heating the oven to 100 degrees, then shutting it off (but leaving the oven light on), then putting the covered bowl of milk and starter in to “cook.” Despite the current cold snap in Anchorage, this worked great.

That is, until I set my friend’s oven on fire.

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Occupy Black Friday: A grab-bag of tips.

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Today I had a pleasant realization about the Black Friday online deals that start at 12:01 a.m.: In Alaska, that’s only 8:01 p.m. My niece and I will be able to hit the one or two specific sites we wanted without staying up late.

Midnight isn’t that late, necessarily. My hostess and I were up until almost 3 a.m. yesterday. But my niece and I also plan to do some shopping outside the house, so that 8:01 start time means we can get sufficient sleep before joining the doorbusters queue. I believe that’s 5 a.m., and we’ll probably have to brush fresh snow off the car and warm it up for a while.

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Give yourself a present for Christmas 2011: A well-stocked pantry.

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The food ads are mighty attractive at this time of year even up here in Anchorage, where prices are noticeably higher than in the Lower 48.

A few of the items currently being offered at decent sale prices: bacon, eggs, cheese, soup, canned tomatoes, flour, chicken broth, coffee, yams, canned and plain frozen vegetables, crackers (I’m partial to the cracked pepper and olive oil Triscuits), potatoes, butter, apples and canned beans.

The idea is to get us to buy extra ingredients for holiday meals and those homemade sweets. But why not buy extra ingredients for ourselves?

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