saving money

Back to school without breaking the bank.

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Fun fact: According to the National Retail Federation, families in the U.S. will spend $10.2 billion on back to school shopping this year.

That fact may not be fun to parents on tight budgets. It’s not much fun to me, either, since I’ve long believed this kind of shopping has gotten out of hand.

Understand: I’m not saying your kids should get on the bus wearing clothes that are ill-fitting or in tatters, or that they shouldn’t have the tools they need for education. But to judge from the ads, our kids need all-new everything.

Hint: They probably don’t.

Obviously if a kid has outgrown his shoes (and they will do that!) then you’ll need to replace the footwear. Ditto jeans that are high-watery or a jacket whose sleeves stop a few inches short of the wrist. But it’s easy to fall down the rabbit-hole of overbuying.

 

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Vinegar is magic. Also: A frugal Swiffer hack.

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Still visiting my daughter and drinking the weird water of Phoenix. She and my son-in-law cope by using a reverse osmosis system to turn the hard H20 into something approaching potable agua.

Probably I’d get used to it if I lived here; for now, I cope by turning it into iced tea.

What I really resent, though, is the weirdly random stains the mineral-saturated water makes in the toilet bowls. I made it my mission to eliminate them.

And, as Abby noted in “The beauty of a clean toilet,” I succeeded. That’s because I had a secret weapon.

Oh, vinegar: Is there anything you can’t do?

 

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8 vacation realizations.

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thNot that this Lower 48 journey has been much of a vacation. It started out as a business trip and morphed into a medical emergency.

I was supposed to have gone home on Sept. 29 but we didn’t get back to Phoenix until Sept. 28. Our original itinerary had included a short post-FinCon visit, and by gum we wanted to make it happen.

Figured I’d go home on Monday but something told me not to make a reservation. Given that lower-back spasms woke me early Sunday morning, I’m glad I listened.

Ice, ibuprofen and stretching have eased the initial holycowthathurtstooscaredtomove, but I’ll likely give it another day or two before I think about a long plane ride.

Here are some things I’ve learned and some random realizations that popped up since I got here.


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Sunoco and the sesquicentennial.

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thIt’s the 150th anniversary of the first U.S. nickel, and Mary Hunt is weighing in. The queen of frugality has teamed up with Sunoco to celebrate the birthday of the humble half-dime, which not so coincidentally is the per-gallon amount saved  by Sunoco credit card users.

Given the reaction to a giveaway of Hunt’s “The Smart Woman’s Guide to Planning for Retirement” – or, heck, to anything she has written – I know that plenty of my readers are her fans as well. That’s why I jumped at the chance to chat with Hunt.

She’d given some tips to the Sunoco campaign, such as planning meals around each week’s grocery specials and making your own laundry soap for a cost of – you guessed it! – five cents per load.

That’s frugality, though: Little tweaks that add up to big results. And since like me she is a fan of small change, we chatted about the special power of specie. 

 

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Physics and frugality.

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thRecently I had fun trying to recognize the desiccated ingredients of the boiling bag I was emptying into the slow cooker. After a few minutes of frugality CSI (cooking scene investigation), I identified the following:

Onion skins, Asian greens (they’ve gone to seed so I’m removing the last small leaves), teeny-tiny green apples (to avoid stressing our newly planted trees, DF took off most of the fruits), carrot tops and greens, potato peels, and small green tomatoes (jumpers from our greenhouse plants).

Also cucumber peels (from fruits too high in cucurbitacin to eat as-is), red romaine leaves (too bitter after bolting for salads, but fine for broth), green-bean ends, squash blossoms (from our blue Hubbard plant), dandelion greens and a little chickweed (because revenge).

After adding a freezer container of vegetable cooking water – from corn, peas, lentils, potatoes and green beans – I had quite the potage de garbage going. Cooked and drained, it smelled a lot like Campbell’s vegetable soup and tasted even better.

All this recycling reminded me of the notion that energy can’t be created or destroyed, but rather transformed from one form to another. In our home, food gets created – we grow the stuff as well as cook it from supermarket ingredients – but it never really goes away.

 

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12 ways to spend less on stocking stuffers.

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thJust got a press release from a company suggesting “fun and affordable” stocking stuffers. What got my attention was how it defines “affordable”: items under $50.

Um…no. I don’t spend $50 altogether on the stuffers for five stockings. In fact, I generally don’t spend anything at all (more on that in a minute).

On what non-frugal planet is “under $50” considered a low price for a small item? And when did stocking stuffers graduate from candy canes and stickers to things like $50 iTunes cards, Sharper Image six-port USB charging hubs ($29.98) and $30 bottles of perfume?

Little things mean a lot, but they shouldn’t have to cost a lot. Thus I refuse to pay a lot. Here are some ways to save.

 

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Why I sewed my underwear.

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th-1Because it was torn. Duh.

But seriously, folks: I had four pairs* of underpants with tears along seams. Side seams are especially susceptible. As the holes got bigger I’d stop using the garments.

But since I have enough for only about nine days, it bugged me that nearly half of my unmentionables were out of service. Naturally I kept vowing, “I’m going to fix those,” and just as naturally I kept putting it off.

Sometimes I’d wind up wearing the decommissioned drawers anyway due to laundry-day timing, and the stressed seams didn’t always appreciate it.

That bugged me even more. But as my friend SonyaAnn would say, it clearly it didn’t bother me enough. When it did, I’d do something about it.

Saturday was that day. I got out my sewing basket and spent just under half an hour repairing those seams. That included time to rethread the needle once.

Was it worth my time?

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Let falling gas prices fuel your emergency fund.

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thWhat were you spending on gasoline six months ago? Nationwide, the cost of gasoline dropped for more than three months in a row starting in late September 2014.

According to the American Automobile Association, we’re paying an average $1.11 per gallon less than this time last year.

A question for long-haul commuters and casual drivers alike: Where’s that money now?

“How to save money from falling gas prices,” my recent post on Get Rich Slowly, suggests that you don’t let this opportunity slip away.

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11 tips to cure a holiday hangover.

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thA recent survey from Consumer Reports noted that 75 percent of shoppers had paid off their 2013 holiday purchases by the end of February 2014. However, some were still paying for their celebrations in late November, i.e., almost a year after the fact.

True, that was just 7 percent of respondents. Still disturbing, though. Then again, I find it unfortunate that it takes some people two full months to pay the tab in full.

Afraid to open the January credit card bills? Personal finance author Donna Skeels Cygan calls this a “holiday hangover,” i.e., the lingering pain of overindulgence.

This kind of hangover isn’t one “you can simply sleep off,” says the author of author of “The Joy of Financial Security: The Art and Science of Becoming Happier, Managing Your Money Wisely, and Creating a Secure Financial Future.”

In this case, the hair of the dog is twofold:

  • Owning any mistakes you made this year, and
  • Learning from them.

Here’s how.

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