Are you economizing? How?

In My Humble Opinion
21

He. Rocks. Good job (or does he get the credit?)!

A couple other things I forgot about, anyone here go to Goodwill-type stores? I suppose that’s sort of obvious. Some of my favorite finds there have been purses. They are all $2.99. I don’t need real leather, and I’m fickle anyway and my tastes change frequently. When I’m done, I donate it back and take the deduction. Another thing I found there when I was dating my ex-bf, who was a HUGE bread eater was an almost-new bread maker complete with the manual. It looked like it had hardly been used. $10.

For those of you that have a Kohls Dept. Store-right now they are running 60-75% off on lots of their in-season clothes. I got a “date shirt” (that I wore last night as a matter of fact) for $10. Today I went back and got a stick vacuum for $18 (full price something like $35).

22

You will win their undying affection if you do that …

I telecommute - I have to go in and demonstrate that I havent taught the cat to do my job and am still alive one half day a month … I am saving something like 400 a month. mrAru is getting into the telecommuter program where he works - but he will be home 3 days a week as they have some sort of group functions on tuesdays and thursdays, but that will still save him something like 250 a month.

We are only going to air condition the bedroom this summer instead of the whole house - my computer is set up in the bedroom so there is no sense in cooling a big area when I can shut myself into a 9x11 room that can be cooled with a single small AC unit in the window. We already have the furnace set on 40 fahrenheit [cant turn it off totally as it does for the hot water for the house also] and are investigating a new source of firewood for next winter [our previous source retired :frowning: ]

23

It was his idea - he likes hot & spicy stuff, and I wasn’t always able to find what he likes, so at first it was because he wanted to see if he could find that kind of thing. I give him a certain amount (after looking over the list) and he shops for bargains because I let him keep the change. It’s good for him to learn bargain shopping, and I save time 'cause I don’t have to go. It’s a win-win.

24

Okay. You rock too.

25

The way I save now is that I don’t really have time to spend money. Grad school is fun like that. I’m not really noticing increased prices much at all. I only drive on the weekends (thank you CUMTD). I’m only feeding myself, and I try to keep food expenditures <$50/week, although I don’t really keep track. I’ll splurge a bit if I have attractive company over for dinner ;). Other than that, I’ve finally set up an IRA, and I’ve set up monthly transfers of money from my checking account to my ING savings account. No point in having a few $k sitting around not getting interest.

26

I’ve been cooking a lot more lately. I used to get take-out for lunch almost every day, and now I only get it once a week. To my surprise, it’s kinda fun thinking about what I’m going to bring. On Sunday nights,I’ll make a large dish of something–last week it was sesame noodles using an easy recipe I got on-line–and divvy it up into little containers that I keep in the fridge. So in the mornings, when my brain’s not working, I can just grab them and go. And because I’m not stuck with PB&J, I don’t feel deprived.

I’ve also been more deligent of eating tasty foods that I won’t waste because of boredom. It used to be that I would buy a loaf of bread and eat half of it before throwing it away (I hate frozen bread). But now I’m willing to pay just a little more for pita pockets, which don’t have as many “slices” as a loaf, but are so much tastier. What this means is that I’m less likely to ditch my brown bag when the coworkers tempt me with their restaurant food.

For dinner, I’ve also limited take-out for just once a week (Fridays). I used to do take-out at least three times a week.

I’ve saved a lot of money living in Richmond because public transportation is subsidized for state employees. But lately, I’ve been walking to and from work. Seven miles a day, every day of the week, is great exercise.

My next sacrifice will be my cable TV. Right now, I have all the bells and whistles because I was a new customer when I signed-on and I received a 1-year deal. But it’s going to expire soon, so I’ll be doing basic cable.

27

Wow. I admire you for that. As a matter of fact, I’m downright envious!
Rascals Mom: Thanks. :wink:

28

…don’t it always seem to go that you don’t know what you got till it’s gone.*

I make do with my library and use Interlibrary loans, paperbackswap.com and Bookmans (used bookstore) to fill in the gaps.

I air dry my hair and laundry. The desert is a giant hot air dryer for most of the year, so it’s only sensible.

No cable TV connection and a VOI phone.

I bake most of our bread.

I buy my obscenely expensive pills at the highest dosage available and split them.

*Man, I miss the KCLS – I miss the rain, too, but only when it’s a thousand degrees here in Arizona, …which is most of the time.

29

It’s been a lifelong dream to be able to walk to work. No traffic, no worries about missing the bus or not finding a parking spot. The only thing is that the normal fatigue I feel at the end of the day is magnified a bit. I’m fine until I step into the house, and then I practically collaspe.

Don’t know what I’m going to do when it gets really hot, though.

30

Food is my big thing right now. My housing is the least expensive it’s going to get, I think, I use public transportation for everything, and have calculated that the 30day flat rate is the cheapest way for me to use it.

The problem is definitely food. For a single person, I spend an obscene amount on food (though I have at least one friend who thinks that what I spend now is stupid low).

I have several problems. The first is that I don’t cook well, particularly in looking at food I already have and figuring out how to turn it into something delicious with minimal supplementation from the store. I also have more wastage than I’d like to have, particularly of perishables. I suspect that I’m going to become a lot less experimental soon, just because I know myself well enough to know that a) if I think something isn’t good I won’t eat it and b) I don’t understand how food comes together well enough to rescue something gross.

I am decently good at taking advantage of sales, though getting stuff home on crowded buses (meaning carts are largely not an option) is exhausting. I end up making many trips to the store a week, and the time investment is depressing sometimes. I have a spare freezer, and I keep it stocked. I have a portion of a large pantry, and my new goal is to figure out how to use up some of that stuff.

I love fessie’s food swap. It’d be nice to get something like that going around here, though I suspect I wouldn’t have a large enough set of recipes to contribute myself.

I’m also rereading The Complete Tightwad Gazette right now. There’s a ton of dated information in there, but a lot of it is timeless as well. Plus it just gets the brain thinking about ways to save money in general, and be aware of wastage that flies under the radar.

I have a huge pot of buffalo & bean chili on the stove right now. That’s a lot of meals in itself, and I only needed to buy two cans of beans and a can of tomato sauce to make it work. Everything else I had in the pantry or freezer (though after this the buffalo will be nothing but a fond memory!). The next step is to figure out what to do with all the butternut squash soup in the freezer. The first time I made that recipe, it was divine. The second time (much later) it was “okay”. The most recent time (again, much later), it was edible at first and now not even that. I don’t want to toss it, but the thought of eating it as is turns my stomach.

We’ll see. I’m not naturally frugal in most ways, but at least there are some things that come very naturally to me (either because I grew up with them or because they are both frugal and environmentally friendly).

31

Coupons. They can cut your food costs quite a bit. But they do not keep up with the rapid inflation we have . Even with coupons almost every kind of food is much more costly than last year.
I walk to the store often. it is less than 1/2 a mile. But I cant buy too much, things get real heavy on the way back.

32

Economize on what? This internet account, on a modem, is one of my few luxuries. Cable TV? Eating out (more than once a month, if that)? Cell phone? What are these things of which you speak? Of course, you don’t miss what you never had. I will continue to smoke.
The 13 gallon gas tank gets filled every 4-5 weeks. I eat whatever’s on sale. When it’s cold, I close the plug in the tub and let the heat from my shower radiate into the place; after all, I already paid for the hot water. When it’s hot, I fill the tub with cold water and bring a paperback. And how is it that people need to buy new clothes before the old ones are even worn out? Keep a few good outfits around for special occasions, and don’t worry about the rest.

33

Lessee… much of this was forced on my during my debt-repayment phase. But I’m only hitting my stride now. I’m now debt-free and saving an emergency fund, so that’s a big big weight off my shoulders.

I do not own a car, but take the bus and train everywhere in the city, including to work. When I get lifts, I offer gas money.

I’ve started cooking more, and doing my own pasta. A tray of 3 chicken fresh breasts was $9 (!) across the road, but I got four meals out of it: chicken with pasta, chicken sandwich, chicken with peanut-butter sandwiches, at a net cost of about $3 per meal. I still buy a lot of meals at the company caf, but I calculated that doing that every workday adds $100 to my food spending every two weeks. So more and more I bring my own.

The thing I really need to cut down on is all those $2 bottles of cola. I can get cans of cola for $0.33 each across the road at the Valu-Mart. Yes, they’re smaller, but I can probably cut down on cola anyways.

I’m pondering dropping the analogue cable since I watch it so rarely. I’m also pondering dropping either the cellphone or the landline phone; I’m not sure which. The Internet connection goes last; it’s a lifeline. And I use it to connect to work as well.

34

It’s funny- my ability to economize has been dramatically enhanced by just recently getting a car. It ends up costing about $20 a month more for gas than a monthly bus pas, and now I’m able to buy stuff in bulk and shop the sales at several different grocery stores.

Before I had the car I had to buy stuff at the close-by co-op (incredibly expensive) or bus or bike with a very limited amount of groceries, often stopping at tony places like Kowalski’s grocery store because it was on my bus route. But now I can buy the 10 pack of toilet paper, stock up on heavy jars and cans when they’re on sale, and buy the mondo bags of cat litter and food. I got an 8 pound pork loin last week on sale for $16- I never would have been able to do that before. Plus the car is helping my boyfriend get to a new once a week job where he makes $150, and that would have been next to impossible before the car. And the time saved is important to me, too. The difference for me is astronomical (though I may be singing a different tune when repair time inevitably comes).

For me the gas prices are not too horrifying because I haven’t owned a car in 10 years and have just sort of forgot what the prices were like, plus $100 a month is about the same financially for me where I am now as $50 a month was to 18 year old me.

Also coupons. I save at minimum $30 a month, often more. And bagging lunch is so much cheaper, tastier, and healthier. Plus we never go out to dinner and order in maybe once a month, way less now that I’ve learned to make my own pizza crust and have a baking stone. That’s my biggest tip: if you love a particular restaurant food, try to make it yourself. It may not be awesome the first try, but with a little practice I have found that I can make pizza as good as anywhere I could order from, carnitas like an almost authentic Mexican restaurant, eggplant and chicken parmesan as good as the Italian places (in Minnesota anyway; I’d never say that if I still lived in the Chicago area), and melty sandwiches under the broiler better than any sandwich shop. At a fraction of the price.

35

I’m a coupon freak. I use www.grocerygame.com to find out what the sales are and how coupons line up with them; I get lots of free items this way as well as killer deals. I buy the meat that’s on clearance because it has a sell by date that expires that day, then either cook it that day or freeze it. I cook meals at home to take to lunch all week.

We have two tax-sheltered accounts that pull cash out of every paycheck (before taxes) to apply toward medical and childcare expenses. We take the max out for childcare–$500/mo–and the amazing thing is, the difference in the net pay in the paycheck is only $300. This means it’s like $200 extra every month. We’ve just gotta keep up on submitting the vouchers, but that’s no problem.

I rarely buy new clothes, and when I do, they’re from Target or Old Navy, and on clearance.

Ditto horse care stuff–I just spent a shitload at a huge sale at a local tack store buying supplies we really need (though not now) because they were killer deals and it saves money in the long run. My mare’s joint supplement to help with her arthritis is regularly $93 for a 2-month supply; I got it for $70. Whoo hoo!

We deduct everything we can on our taxes, with help from our CPA.

This is stuff I do anyway, I just do it more now.

36

I remember those halcyon days of youth when I rode my bike to University and work. This place where I’m living now has no safe way to bike or walk anywhere. :frowning:

:eek:

I also think that’s a great idea. I’m sure you could get lots of recipies from CS here if you joined one.

37

I have a small Von’s almost across the street from me, so I can easily go there without driving. But if I want a little exercise I’ll head to the Pavilion’s, which is a little farther and at the top of a steep hill. If I buy too much I find it’s not so much the weight that gets me, but the annoying tendency of the bags to bump against my legs as I walk!

Coupons? Not much good, IMO, if it’s not the kind of food you use. They often seem to be for highly processed sodium laden “fude” that we tend to avoid. I do look for store club specials, though.

38

Got rid of cable TV, as our sweet 1-yr cable and internet deal expired and the price hiked dramatically. Switched internet to DSL with the phone company and saved a ton - that only lasts a year also but it’s a year of savings in my pocket, and then I’ll see what’s available.
We had Sirius radio in both cars, and I let mine expire since my husband’s is paid through next year. When I need my fix, I listen to the free internet channels I can get through his account.

We paid off our daughter’s car and dropped insurance to PL/PD but can’t cut the insurance on the other two until they’re paid off also. Gas is costing us easily $400-$500 a month, as we both have commutes of 20-30 miles one way. But moving isn’t an option - the school is excellent here and our housing prices are VERY inexpensive. It won’t take much until we pay more in gas per month than we pay for our mortgage. And there are no jobs in this town to be had, at least ones that would pay our bills.

We don’t go to movies, we don’t buy books (I use libraries - my county and the adjacent county, which allows me to have a wider selection but costs nothing), we eat out occasionally but are mostly cooking at home. We probably spend around $100-$120/wk on groceries and supplies (laundry soap, paper towels, toiletries) and I think that’s too high for four people and am trying to cut that back.

I’m cutting every way I can think of and it’s still not really enough. Except the cell phones, which I want to get rid of but have to talk my husband into doing so. That will help, and we are making it now, but I’d feel better having more money at the end of each week than I actually do.

39

I don’t think that’s too high, and I’m one who will pinch a penny 'til it screams. You can figure 20 to 25 dollars per person, easy - and that’s with only buying one or two meat items per week. Add your cleaning stuffs and you’re right on the bubble with $100 to $120. Ours is $120-$160 for a household of four - we spend a bit more than I’d like to because Hubby insists on name brands for some things.

40

When I need to buy clothing for the kids, it is salvation army all the way.
Instead of going out to the movies, we have a Girls Night Out at someone’s house and we all bring movies over there.

I am a big fan of Tight wad Gazette even though I haven’t seen my books in a good 10 years. ( I loaned them out on a permament basis.)

We carpool to school.

I’m slowly de-cafing myself from my coffee addiction.