Frugal Friday Update

Obviously eggs aren't frugal these days...but in other frugal wins...

• I took our car to get it's annual tire rotation (free when you buy tires at Discount Tires) and something happened that made the steering start pulling hard to the right.  So I took it back and they rearranged the tires which then made the steering pull hard to the left.  They said it could be radial separation or something like that and quickly replaced all four tires with brand new tires!  The warranty when we buy new tires is only a few dollars per tire and well worth it!
• I also got the annual oil change (we drive less than 10,000 miles per year) which was $70 because it needs synthetic oil.  Then I ordered the engine and cabin air filters from Amazon and we easily changed these ourselves (total cost $24 instead of the $75+ the dealership charges for the same thing!).
• We had about 20 people we wanted to give small gifts to (neighbors and local friends) so I baked (and baked and baked) and then we delivered Christmas baskets with brownies, yellow cake, chocolate chip cookies, and sugar cookies to everyone.  This is a frugal way to treat a lot of people for not a lot of money.
  
• As I am typing this, the clothes washer has been acting up and won't go into the spin cycle.  I Googled the problem and made a quick fix (unplug for a couple minutes then open and close the door several times which does a hard reset; I've done this before).  So far it seems to be working...fingers crossed.  Note to self: my next clothes washer is going to be a simple, non-computerized Speed Queen washer!
• I made a quick trip to the grocery store early this morning.  Since much of what I have read points to continued food shortages and food price increases, I bought lots of loss leaders and other sale items such as a tub of coffee for $6.50 instead of its usual $11.99 price, canned good that were on a good sale, and some discounted baking items like sugar.  By buying ahead of time when things are on sale, we can save a lot of money--the cashier always comments "Wow!" when she hits the total button and the cost of my groceries drops by half or more off the regular price.

 

Starting Our Frugal Year Early

We decided that 2019 will be the year of simplicity and frugality for us (except for one big project that I may or may not get to which includes doing a 10k walk in every state and in every state capital for our walking club challenge...it remains to be seen if we will be able to do that this year or not). 

So starting today we began our new year a little early and enjoyed our first frugal adventure--bowling.  Hubby had coupons for free bowling that he got through his league which needed to be used by the end of the year so we went and bowled two games each.  I am super lousy at bowling and hubby is super good at bowling so when I pulled off the feat shown in the picture above (me way above my normal 60 average and hubby way below his normal 200 average), I had to take a picture of it!

A Frugal Friday Roundup

We are back on the frugal wagon so it has been a pretty uneventful day!  I made pancakes for breakfast, made sandwiches to take with us for lunch, and will make spaghetti and salad for dinner.  In general we can get by pretty frugally if we skip shopping and eating out (although for the eating out part hubby gets lots of casino comps so our meals are actually free except for the tip).

I hope all of you getting hit by the early snow are safe and warm at home.  Snow is something we definitely DON'T miss (I like the though of snow and the pictures of snow, I just don't like the shoveling and power outages that come along with snow storms).

Speaking of winter, here are some frugal tips for winterizing your car.

This was a fun frugal tip that came up on reddit today--the lady saved McDonalds packaging and made her own "fast food" at home for the kids.  Clever!

Good news, gas prices should be heading lower.  Bad news, Pfizer is raising their drug prices in January (when will we get socialized medicine????).  Also the price of postage may be going up so now is a good time to stock up if you use them.

The Difference Between Frugal and Fraudulent

I love being frugal.  If I can get a discount on my purchases, find a great deal that is little known (and share it with others), or otherwise save money, I'm all over that.  And while I like to buy products with a lifetime warranty like Darn Tough socks, if I get a reasonable number of years of use out of the product, I am not going to return ten year old socks because I wore a hole in the toe after a decade of hiking up and down mountains in them. 

There is reasonable--getting your money's worth out of a product and then some, plus the item having a good enough warranty that any sort of defect can be fixed/replaced just by sending the product back to the manufacturer, and there is unreasonable--like people taking advantage of companies that offer their customers great warranties on their products, by returning items for their money back years after purchasing (and heavily using) the item. 

There have been many instances were companies had to change their generous return policies because people acted fraudulently, and took excessive advantage of the company.  This happened to Nordstrom, REI, and now LL Bean.  I can't even imagine finding an old LL Bean product at the thrift store then taking it back to LL Bean for a new item!  That is straight up theft/fraud in my book and people who do these sorts of things, while they may be following the letter of the law, have definitely overlooked the spirit of the law.  And their scammy behavior impacts everyone who will no longer be able to legitimately return items that maybe should have lasted a little longer.

Perhaps the worst abuse I've seen regarding a generous return policy was last month when a woman bought a Christmas tree at Costco before the holiday then returned it after Christmas for a full refund.  It's these kinds of people that I hope karma wallops upside the head when they are least expecting it just for being such horrible human beings.

A Great Deal and More Stuff

First:

• Here's a great (free) deal on a book about an amazing family (you may remember I blogged about them in the past--they were the ones who rode their bikes from Alaska to Argentina).  I believe it will only be free through the end of today.

Second:

• I've created a monster.  Each Wednesday we hit up the Goodwill for half-off senior day and hubby WON'T QUIT SHOPPING!  I told him he is becoming a hoarder (not really but he is heading in that direction) and after doing so much to minimalize the things we need in our home and life, he is now bring stuff in every week.  He picked up a like-new rice cooker yesterday (it was only $4), a bunch of hats (he rarely wears them but can't pass up a newish Nike hat for 50 cents), and shirts shirts shirts (50 cents each but he has enough to wear a different one for the rest of his life!  Somehow I need to introduce him to flipping all of this stuff on Craigslist or eBay!

Third: (some useful/interesting/fun links)

• Tried and True Ways to Save
• How I Found the Courage to Quit My Job and Follow My Dreams
• 100 Lessons You Should Learn from Frugal People
• Geoguesser (I can do this for HOURS!)

30 Ways We Are Saving Money in Our New House

Now that we are all settled into our new house, it is decorated to the hilt, and the pantry is full, we have reverted back to frugal mode.  Here's a bunch of ways we are saving money:

1. Our bathrooms each have a six-light light bar across the vanity.  Hubby unscrewed four of the lights in each until they no longer turn on when we flip the switch.  We figure we are saving 240 watts each, every time we turn on the light.
2. It's easy to hit the bathroom sink (single-handle) faucet and turn the water on warm.  We are careful to make sure the handle is all the way to the right so we are only using cold water when we turn on the faucet instead of draining the hot water tank.
3. My shower is sparse--shampoo, soap, razor.  Simple.  And inexpensive.  My sister has about 50 beauty products lining her shower, all expensive and most unnecessary.
4. Since each bathroom has a window, we have gotten used to opening the blinds in the bathrooms to light the area during the day instead of using the lights.
5. Both of the showers have low-flow shower heads (provided free by the water utility).  Otherwise I can empty and entire hot water tank with one shower!
6. Each bathroom has a Soft Soap soap dispenser from the $1 store.  Then we bought a giant refill of softsoap for a few dollars which should keep these dispensers full for a year!
7. I don't like the chemical smell of air fresheners so to make our house smell nice, we simply open the windows in the morning to air out the house.
8. I only do laundry once a week (of course these are full loads).
9. I do all of our laundry in cold water.
10. I only use half the recommended amount of laundry soap with each load and the clothes get just as clean as using a full measure of soap.
11. I cut the dryer sheets in half and only use half a dryer sheet per load (again, I'm not a fan of chemicals).
12. I use Spray and Wash for stains on clothes and it works really well (this also means we don't toss out clothes each time they get a stain).
13. I use the minimum amount of time needed to dry our clothes in the dryer instead of setting it for an hour or more (clothes dry in about 35 minutes).  It would be cheaper to hang the clothes to dry but I tried that and they come out crunchy. Ick.
14. We have a total of two TVs in our house and they each have an antenna so we can pick up free over the air TV.  We figure guests will just have to watch TV on their computers instead of buying two more (expensive) TVs and antennas for the guest rooms.
15. We keep the air conditioner set at 80 degrees during the day; 82 degrees at night.
16. We use ceiling fans to help keep the house cool (these really work well!).
17. We have minimized the number of things we have which saves money.  Instead of buying ten sets of sheets for our three beds, we have a total of four sets which is more than enough.  Ditto for towels, wash clothes, etc.
18. We have closed the vents in the unused guest rooms so we aren't air conditioning and heating rooms we don't use.
19. Everything is super organized.  I have a shelf that contains a sewing box, and office supply box, a box of thank you and birthday cards, etc.  This way I know where everything is and don't need to run out and buy things that I already have but can't find.
20. We don't wear shoes in the house.  It's socks or bare feet on the carpet and slippers on the tile kitchen floor.  This saves a ton of cleaning and keeps the flooring looking good for years.
21. We use small lamps with energy-saving fluorescent bulbs to light the tasks we are doing (reading, computer work, etc), instead of lighting up the entire room.
22. While the house is well insulated (even the garage!) we have noticed that the insulation around the doors is pretty lousy (like you can easily slide a piece of paper between the door and frame).  We are buying and installing new weatherstripping this weekend.
23. Almost all of our decor came from the Goodwill (on half-off Wednesdays).  This includes wall hangings, clocks, lamps, etc.  This has saved A TON of money over buying retail (for items that are worth pennies on the dollar should you want to sell them at a garage sale).
24. We have a "winter ensemble" stored in a spare closet.  This includes extra blankets, sweatshirts, sweatpants, socks, etc.  While air conditioning is a requirement in Vegas, we rarely used any sort of heating last winter.  If it got cool we just threw on a sweatshirt or covered up with a blanket while reading or watching TV.
25. Entertainment at our house is free.  This includes a stack of books and a stack of DVDs checked out free from the library each week. We have an old DVD player hooked up to one of the TVs which works great and hubby often watches movies on his computer.
26. We did spring for cable internet, however.  For the first six months we are getting it for $19.95 a month and when this offer is over I will call and ask for another discount (or we will cancel internet).  There is no way we want to pay $55 a month for internet. 
27. The pantry and supply cabinet is stocked with loss leaders.  If a local store is offering products at super low prices we stock up.
28. Hubby tracks our electricity meter each day.  Right now we are averaging about 40kwh, in the condo we were averaging 20kwh; we are definitely trying to hit as close to 20 kwh as possible as this means our electricity bill would be $65 a month instead of $130.
29. We are generally gone all day long.  When we are gone we turn off the AC completely and since nothing else in the house is using power, we can actually only use 3kwh of power for the ten to twelve hours we are gone.
30. We water our landscape--what little there is of it--twice a week.  Although we have a watering system and most people use these systems to water every day during the summer, our landscaping still looks fine with only a little water twice a week (water and electricity are the highest-costing utilities in Las Vegas).

Well that's all I can think of so far.  We are actually living quite well.  Being frugal doesn't mean that you have to suffer to live as cheaply as possible.  By making small changes that really don't impact your overall standard of living, you can really save a lot of money!

And Now We Have Guests...

I mean so many house guests that I need to get a calendar to schedule them all!  I haven't had to use a calendar in, oh, about a year and a half which was pretty nice but now so many people are coming to visit us that I need to have a way to organize everyone.  And while I love seeing friends and having people visit, I am just a bit stressed out because...

• We are really frugal.  We don't have cable TV (over the air TV works fine for us but it seems like everyone else in the US has cable TV like it is a requirement or something).  So I am wondering what our guests will think when they get a grand total of 20 stations--half in Spanish--to choose from.
• We are also really frugal in that we keep the air conditioning set at 78 when we are home and on 82 at night (and use ceiling fans...a lot).  We are acclimated to it but will our friends be?  After hearing from friends who live here in Vegas that their normal summer electricity bill is around $200 we can gladly live in a bit warmer home than usual.  Our guests on the other hand...I wonder if they will think we are too cheap.  Yikes.
• Then today's discussion was about internet service.  We haven't paid for internet service since we moved to Las Vegas as I am at the library nearly every day and use their internet for free.  But I think our guests will probably expect that we have internet so we are looking at the cost between DSL and cable internet and the thought of paying an extra $40-$70 a month for internet is making us both cringe!  So for now, this subject is still up for debate.
• And then there is food.  Fortunately hubby is an excellent cook and he can whip up a meal out of a little of this and a little of that and people will think he cooked them a gourmet dinner but we haven't even had time to stock our pantry yet (we are buying loss leaders each week so for now we have a mountain of canned vegetables and that's about it).  
• Of course there are still decor issues.  We have been furnishing and decorating our house pretty cheaply (thanks to the Goodwill and the Dollar Store) but I still want to get a TV and antenna for each guest room, some decor for the walls in the guest rooms, and some curtains as well.  Buying these things slowly allows us to save money and buy the items on sale or when we have the cash for a big outlay (like when buying TVs).  Now that we have three sets of guests scheduled to visit, we will need to speed up this process.
• And now we only have one car.  Before (when we lived in a place that no one ever visited) we  usually had three or four cars in the driveway and on the off occasion that people did come to visit, we could easily lend them a car to use.  That won't be the case now so we will either have to drive them or ask them to rent a car.
• Finally there is entertainment.  We have always spent money on entertaining our guests (taking them out to dinner, to do sightseeing, to local events, etc) but since I haven't worked in ages, our income is pretty limited.  Again, I am cringing at the amounts I expect us to spend on our guests.  Fortunately hubby has comps for many restaurants in town so that will make the dinners out free and I have already planned on researching free and low cost activities and things to do during the time that our friends will be visiting.

I'm sure everything will work out fine it is just that this is yet another thing that has changed drastically since we have decided to live on a very low income.  Our usual habit of throwing money at a problem to fix it won't work now (we don't have that much money to do this with!) so we will just have to be creative (and "be weird" as Dave says) and hope our guests will not be too put out by our odd way of living.