Almost Frugal » Concepts in Frugality

The Feeling of New Without The Spending

Nicole — Thu, 15 Jul 2010 21:08:45 +0000

Move things around and, tada, new space!

Sometimes, I think we could all use a change. And to get that ‘overhaul’ effect, the first thing most of us do is think of what we need to buy to achieve that. Or we subconsciously avoid it, thinking even if we could get out of it cheap, we might have to put in a lot of work for the change to be noticeable. (Anyone who has ever painted what they thought was a small room might know what I’m talking about here!)

For example, I have been completely sick of my living room for about two months. It felt cluttered and boring… I told my boyfriend I wanted to rearrange the furniture to make things flow better. It made me realize this might be more of a female phenomena when he said “Oh ok, my mom does this stuff all the time.” About 20 minutes of moving later, it looked like a different, much more open and airy room that I actually wanted to spend time in. Even the dog is mildly impressed.

Case two is I found a sundress buried in the back of my closet. I was about to put it in the bag of clothes for donation when I realized that I wasn’t wearing because it had big foofy sleeves that I no longer liked. So I cut them off. In addition to now having one more thing I can wear when it’s ridiculously hot, I got several compliments last weekend on my ‘cute dress’.

It is amazing what a little rearranging, shuffling, swapping, or otherwise reconfiguring can do to change your outlook. I like that twice this week, I’ve gotten the idea of change in my life without the wrecking my budget (or cluttering my already small space by going out and buying something new).

How have you gotten the feeling of new without spending a dime (or even much elbow grease)?

The Feeling of New Without The Spending by Nicole | Permalink | 3 comments

Having A Plan To Save Money And Sanity

Nicole — Thu, 03 Jun 2010 12:06:37 +0000

About 95% of the time, I’m a really nice person. Most of my jerkface moments, however, happen when I’m hungry.

Those who love me know I need to be fed at regular intervals. Most people also know that I plan ahead for these moments myself by keeping snacks around in case Low Blood Sugar Nicole starts to come out. At home, I have a snack drawer and in my car and purse, I usually have something high protein ready to go. While sitting in my cubicle once, my then boss commented, “Wow, it’s like a grocery store back here!” If I am anything, it’s prepared.

Snacks are one way I plan ahead. A side benefit of being the kind of person who does this (besides not getting hungry enough to turn evil) is I save money from having to buy expensive and often subpar snacks in transit. Planning ahead is good for being frugal! I bet if you think about it, you have a plan just about every time you save money, even if it is as basic as bring your own snack.

Planning ahead also saves me money in a more official way in my business. I could tell my local small business counselor was floored when I showed up for our first session a year ago with a business plan. She told me a lot of people don’t bother to do this. Gulp.

Recently I’ve gone back and looked at my business plan and found that it has kept me on track as far as helping me make decisions in line with my priorities. Since generating revenue from presentations is a big part of my business goals, for example, investing in an LCD projector and portable screen with a fellow small business owner made sense. Renting an office space with no conference room did not, no matter how much I want to get all those electronics out of my home office. My office shelves might look like a cross between a yard sale and Radio Shack but my business plan has helped me put money where it counts.

A woman with a plan… that’s what I am. Maybe it makes me a little boring but at the very least my planning keeps me from becoming a jerk and spending money I don’t need to spend.

What do you think, friends? Does regular planning help save you money? Or maybe the more confessional, fun flip question to this: Did not planning ahead cost you big that one time?

Having A Plan To Save Money And Sanity by Nicole | Permalink | 5 comments

Facebook Freebies – Are You A Fan?

Emily — Sun, 30 May 2010 18:00:37 +0000

If you follow frugal blogs, surely you’ve seen in. “Sara Lee/Ritz/Kraft coupons” if you become a fan on Facebook (FB). Personally, I’ve fallen for it a few times. The rush of seeing that coupon on the screen, the whir of the printer as it creates something FOR FREE from mere ink and paper. Ahh, what a feeling! But then FB puts the kibosh on my little high when the company asks for access to all my friends’ profiles. Buzzkill! I always back out before hitting that crucial “allow” button.

I’m not the paranoid type. My information is all over the internet by this point. Google my name, and you come up with more than one page of hits (wo-hoo!). I’m okay with that, I still sleep well at night. But willfully exposing all my friends to that without their knowledge or permission? Hunh-uh. Maybe they’re particular about who knows what about them (if they are, they probably shouldn’t be on FB, but anyway…). Who am I to hand their heads over to the big corporations? To me, a free package of Oreo Cakesters isn’t worth that.

And don’t even get me started on Farmville…

How do you feel about Facebook? Do you FB? Do you troll for freebies? And share – if you’re on FB, how many pages are you a “fan” of?

Facebook Freebies – Are You A Fan? by Emily | Permalink | 6 comments

Saving Money With The Sun

Nicole — Thu, 27 May 2010 14:19:11 +0000

What a nice week weatherwise it’s been in my corner of the world as we head into summer. All that free energy from the sun seems to be a shame to waste if I’m not using it. Here’s what I’m up to this summer solar-powering a few small parts of my life:

Solar Powered Battery Charger

I know you can go crazy and buy everything with solar panels from ovens to panels. That said, I can’t afford a big solar upgrade but I did decide to spend $20 on a solar battery charger. It takes the better part of a day to get a full charge into the batteries (it can hold 4-8 batteries, depending on sizes) but I’ve put the charged batteries in a few devices and they seem to be lasting. Over time, this will save me on electricity and battery costs, a double win. Bonus is it’s about the size of a hardcover novel.

Clothes Drying Rack

I have a washer in my house but no dryer so the drying rack can be viewed first and foremost as a necessity. But when I learned that one of the biggest drains on an electric bill is running the dryer, I realized I didn’t miss having one so much. Since I live alone, it’s fairly easy to keep on top of the laundry situation and I only need one drying rack to hold everything. The $20 I spent years ago on it has no doubt saved me at least $100 over time in electricity and money I could have spent at a laundromat. (Sometimes for a treat though, I bring my clean sheets and towels to the laundromat and let them fluff in the commercial dryer. Shhh.)

Food

I don’t have the space or time to grow all of my own food but I am going to have a couple pots of herbs on my porch and may add a tomato plant in the mix. Those fresh herbs cost a few dollars each at the grocery store so why not buy a small plant for the same amount of money and be swimming in mint and cilantro all summer?

So here I am, making hay where the sun shines and taking advantage of the sun the short time of year I have a lot of it. Any solar secrets I am missing out on taking advantage of?

Saving Money With The Sun by Nicole | Permalink | 9 comments

Some Thoughts On Start Up Costs

Nicole — Thu, 13 May 2010 20:10:21 +0000

I took my dog to the vet for the second time in the less than two months I’ve had her. After tackling roundworm, hookworm, and fleas (oh my), it turns out she also has a yeast infection. In her ear. Didn’t even know that was possible.

I was joking with my friends that I got a lemon of a dog when my friend Jen brought up an interesting idea, “Well, these are start up costs.”

Think of any new hobby or really anything when you first start out doing it. There are start up costs in terms of equipment, time, supplies, gear… I am hard pressed to think of anything that doesn’t require some money out front.

My most expensive hobby is probably skiing. There was the initial costs of skis, boots, poles, and warm clothing were substantial. Maintenance costs include an occasional lift ticket and gas money towards driving to find cheap or free places to cross country ski. I justified these costs as an investment in my winter health and sure enough, I’ve been using my gear for at least ten years.

My least expensive hobby is probably writing. A bound blank book and a gel pen can last me a year no problem. (I’m sure I could get by even cheaper but it’s easier to write when things are pretty, people!)

Even things that are less fun have start-up costs, like a security deposit with the rent or a down payment on a car.

I’ve been wondering if these start up costs keep more money saving types from trying new things. I know I personally hold back a bit. But is it because I want to save a few bucks or is it an excuse to keep doing what I know? It’s a question I now ask myself before that automatic ‘no’ response because it’s important to keep in mind.

What about you, Almost Frugal friends? Do start up costs keep you in a rut? If they don’t, what’s something you did that had worthwhile start up costs? (P.S. I can respond to your comments this week as I am now officially out of the woods and back to the world of internet and electricity!)

Some Thoughts On Start Up Costs by Nicole | Permalink | 7 comments

How To Avoid Becoming a Statistic

Emily — Mon, 12 Apr 2010 10:00:00 +0000

Between March and June 2009, 381,000 people filed for some form of bankruptcy protection in the United States. 381,000. Let that number sink in. Over a third of a million people. And that was a year ago, the last hard data I could find on the internet – where do you think we’re at now, number-wise?

You’re reading Almost Frugal, so forgive me for making some assumptions about you. Are you the frugalite/frugalista looking for new ideas and a friendly community to share your victories and failures? Or are you the flailing and sinking consumer reaching for a life preserver?

A few years ago, I was the desperate debtor, splashing around, looking frantically in the choppy waters around me for some help. Somehow I stumbled across Kelly and have been following her since. Unfortunately, the life preserver she and other frugal bloggers graciously threw wasn’t strong enough to prevent me from sinking. No fault of theirs, their life preservers just weren’t built for debt of my size.

But the US Government had the mother of all flotation devices for me! Complete absolution of all my debts. All for the low, low price of $1900.

That’s a story for another day. Today I’d like to tell you how to NOT let your story become mine.

Avoid debt completely. Yes, completely. No mortgage, no car payment, no credit card. No cell phone or cable/satellite tv or anything else that comes with a contract. Of course, be prepared to pay more for car insurance and have to put down a deposit for your utilities, and maybe miss that job you wanted so badly because they screen applicants by credit report. But hey, small price to pay, right?
Don’t ever get sick. Catastrophic (and not-so-catastrophic) medical bills prompt 60% of bankruptcies. So keep yourself healthy and pray none of those free radicals ever decide to mutate into something sinister.

Yes, that was a little sarcastic, but I hope you’re getting my point. Even the most even, stable people can fall into the machine and be chewed up, through relatively no fault of their own. One bad twist of DNA, one car accident, one layoff, we are all one something away from pulling the ripcord to our bankruptcy parachute.

But you can take steps to minimize your risks:

Get rid of debt. Now. Seriously, right now – I’ll wait!
Put together an emergency fund. A few thousand dollars in the bank can make what would be a cliff to one person seem like hurtle to you.
Get some life insurance, or reevaluate what type and how much life insurance you have. Surely you don’t want your wife and kids going into poverty if you get in a serious accident and languish in the hospital a few weeks before expiring.

What are your thoughts on other ways to avoid bankruptcy? What have I missed here? Do you agree with me, or do you believe there are absolutely ways to annihilate the chance of having to file? Please share…

How To Avoid Becoming a Statistic by Emily | Permalink | 6 comments

Review: Bank of Mom and Dad

Nicole — Thu, 08 Apr 2010 11:00:46 +0000

One of the things I do only when I’m completely alone in the house is eat salty snacks and watch terrible television. And by terrible television, I’m talking infomercials (excluding exercise ones), reality television shows… basically if it would make the average person publicly roll their eyes, I privately love it.

When I was out of Millionaire Matchmaker and Real Housewives of Orange County episodes to watch this week on Hulu, I decided to branch out. Bank of Mom and Dad on the Soap Channel? Yes please!

The show’s premise is simple. Women in debt get an intervention from their parents and help from personal finance expert Farnoosh Torabi. For a week, the family moves into their grown daughter’s space and controls all her spending. The family gets three sessions with Farnoosh, who shows them how to budget, pay down debt, and otherwise move forward. At the end of the week, the woman in debt goes from whiny to grateful as she understands why there was an intervention and how it will improve her life.

Watching the shows, you meet a woman who spends over $400/month on makeup and another who pays so much for designer clothes that she can’t afford furniture for her apartment. No doubt, these cases are extreme but they do make you think: What would my mom think of what I spend my money on every week? Should I really get a second job if it would allow me to save up some money? What fat can I trim from my budget?

Of course, the biggest question is why is the show just women? I’m guessing it’s the fact that the Soap channel’s primary demographic is women more than anything else but I’ve seen that Farnoosh has a pretty good post at Walletpop about how most overspending is emotionally tied. I think all of us can identify with the former beauty queen who buys her friends birthday cakes when no one else steps up. We think, it’s just money and want to say ‘yes’ more than ‘no’ when it comes to people we care about.

If this show makes a few people think, great. It has made me make some changes myself.

This week, for example, I finally admitted to a collaborator that I couldn’t afford our regular business lunches out. When we meet tomorrow, he’s bringing a sandwich and we’re having our meeting at my house. I’m also looking to get a second job for the summer to supplement my income and allow me to save some money.

All in all, with or without my salt and vinegar chips, I’ve enjoyed my time with Bank of Mom and Dad. Farnoosh is great as a smart, young, well-spoken financial role model and the show helping create a dialog with the woman in debt and her family ensures future success for the show’s participants.

Have you seen the show? If so what do you think?

Review: Bank of Mom and Dad by Nicole | Permalink | 12 comments

A Penny at a Time

Emily — Mon, 22 Mar 2010 12:00:16 +0000

I am blessed to have a wonderful friend and mentor here in Ohio. Kim started as a resource when it came to homeschooling my then-kindergartner, and as time has passed, our relationship has flourished. I love picking her brain for cost-saving, make-your-own personal hygiene and cleaning products. She mentioned in a recent post that her family hasn’t “made fun of my interest in frugal living & doing things ‘the old ways’ for quite a while.”

I’ve spent some time pondering that. I’ve never been more than a curiosity to my non-frugal friends. Maybe they were kind enough to wait until my back was turned before twirling their fingers around their ears.

Now that frugality is en vogue, it’s far more common for people to listen with interest. Everybody wants to tighten up their wallet a little, and we’re all looking for comfortable ways to do it. Like cheap cuts of meat in the crock pot, or container gardening on your patio (Topsy Turvy, anyone?)

But what about when it starts to get uncomfortable? When you start to live On The Fringe of Polite Society with your hippie ideas? The horror in people’s eyes when I talk about not spending another penny on shampoo. My abject disdain for all things disposable (seriously, WHY should I pay for something, only to have the privilege of throwing it away?). Once, after watching a friend’s reaction to my topic of homemade, reusable sanitary pads, I swore I’d try to mainstream my frugality, if only in public.

But those pennies you save through extreme measures have a way of adding up pretty quickly. Eventually, what was uncomfortable becomes commonplace. You’ve just learned to live a little cheaper- time to find a new way to get uncomfortable again. If I write something that causes you to grimace, that may be a good place to start. In the meantime, write yourself a check for the money you didn’t spend on Kotex or Pantene and open up a savings account in your local credit union. Watch those savings accumulate and gather interest. Dream of something realistic and achievable you want, and make that your goal. Envision it when things are uncomfortable.

Our goal is Disney World in 2 years. Our plan is to make it a reality through frugality.

What are you saving your pennies for? What extreme measures have you gone to in effort to get there?

A Penny at a Time by Emily | Permalink | 7 comments

What Is “Almost Frugal”?

Emily — Tue, 16 Mar 2010 12:00:42 +0000

Hi Everyone!

I’m Emily, from Troy, Ohio, and I’m so proud and excited to be one of the new AF writing team members! This blog has been so helpful in keeping the Wasouf family budget low, both through Kelly’s insight and the tips and comments from the readers. When Kelly invited me to join the team, one of the first thought in my head was, “what is almost frugal?” So I threw together a little quiz…

1. The alarm clock just buzzed away your good dreams. You stumble out of bed, fumble into the shower. Do you:

take a shower so long you run out of hot water, because that’s just how you roll.
no dawdling – in, soap, shampoo, rinse, out.
“navy shower” – in, wet down, turn off water while you soap up and shampoo, turn on water to rinse, out.

2. What’s your choice of hair cleansing?

Pantene
Suave
Baking soda wash, apple cider vinegar rinse

3. You’re all patted dry and powdered up. How do you keep your underarms smelling inoffensive?

Degree or other name-brand
Crystal Rock
au naturel, as God created.

4. You’re squeaky clean and ready to be caffeinated. Do you:

leave for work a little early to hit the FourBucks on the way?
make yourself a latte with your fancy countertop cappuccino maker?
brew an old-fashioned pot of coffee, and take a second dose along in a thermos for the 2pm slump?

5. Lunchtime! The coworker is headed out to that trendy new bistro down the street and asks you to join her. You:

grab your purse and head out the door. It was so nice of her to ask, you may even offer to cover the whole bill!
regretfully decline. You still have half of that $5 Footlong from yesterday’s lunch in the breakroom fridge.
smile and invite her to join you eating the delightful lunch you packed before coming to work. There’s enough hummus and pita bread for both of you!

6. Finally, another workday is over. You have to pick up a few things for dinner tonight. You go:

to the nearest Golden Arches. Cooking takes too long, a Big Mac is much faster.
to the grocery store and stand in the Express (ha!) Lane with all the other tired, hungry people just picking up a few things on their way home.
home and think of how you can improvise with items already in your pantry.

7. Your family has just finished a sumptuous dinner and you’re basking in the glow of a meal well received. What do you do with those leftovers?

Grab a few Rubbermaid containers.
Ziploc baggies and plastic wrap – disposable’s good.
Old margarine tubs & sour cream containers (bonus points if you take the food in that container to work the next day as lunch).

8. You eat a vegetarian dinner:

Never, I’m 100% carnivore.
Weekly.
Almost always, meat is expensive, cruel, and riddled with antibiotics and hormones.

9. Your nightly ablutions include:

Lancome serums.
Good old-fashioned Ivory soap.
Homemade brown sugar scrub.

10. Your last act before climbing into bed is:

Turning down your cashmere sheets.
Turning down your husband.
Turning down all the thermostats in the house.

Now add up all your answers – 1 point for option 1, 2 points for option 2, 48 points for option 3 (just checking if you’re awake, 3 points for 3′s.) Here’s the breakdown:

10-14 – (Cuing in that famous scene from Clueless) “Squeeel! Makeover!”
15-24 – Congratulations, you’re “Almost Frugal”! Savvy enough to be saving money, but still open to improvement.
25-30 – Why are you reading this and not writing it?

In case you were wondering, I got a 25. No, the scores weren’t rigged – I still have much to learn.

Dare to share your score?

What Is “Almost Frugal”? by Emily | Permalink | 11 comments

Don’t Run Out

Kelly — Tue, 08 Dec 2009 18:30:20 +0000

One of my biggest budget busters is those last minute runs to the store. Today I made a lunchtime run to the big box ‘everything and the kitchen sink’ grocery store near my office for a certain number of essentials: diapers, cat litter, cat food, light bulbs and toilet paper. You can imagine how uncomfortable life would have been at our house otherwise…

I try really hard to stick to a regular shopping schedule, but despite my many attempts at finding the perfect combination of shopping times, preferred stores and preplanned vs impulse buys, I’m still far from having it all down pat. Things have changed too much over the past year or two (new house, new job, children’s schedules) for me to be able to find the perfect, workable solution and stick to it.

What do I do that works?

Well first of all, I try to make sure that I have dedicated areas for different supplies so that I can tell more or less at a glance when I need to buy more of something. This is one of those times that being organized really pays off, frugality wise. Three bottles of milk in the cupboard? Check. An extra roll of garbage bags in the drawer? All set. One of the failures of this system, however, is due to that all too common factor called the existence of a husband human error. Case in point: my husband changed the litter box the other day (good man!) and thoughtfully left some litter still in the bag, for the next time. The thing is, however, he only left a spoonful or two… yet I had seen the bag in its place and assumed we still had enough so that I didn’t need to buy more. He ended up making an emergency run to the grocery store that evening!

Another thing I do that seems to work well for me is to combine a variety of stores according to the coupons they accept, their ‘discount’ days and the kind of prices they have in general. I order heavy things and refrigerated items from the store that delivers. This way I can do my shopping at 11pm in my pajamas and have it delivered Saturday morning (again while I’m in my pajamas. Scary thought: if I could go to my neighborhood store in my pajamas, would I?). I buy things that the on-line store doesn’t carry from either the big box store near my office or my house, but only when I can use a coupon or my discount store. And then a lot of stuff I buy at the neighborhood discount store, which has surprisingly good deals on fresh fruit and veggies as well as dairy products.

The biggest thing that helps in not running out (both of and for food) is a certain, let’s call it, flexibility in how I cook. I often start out a recipe with just one ingredient, and add to it as I go along. This way, if I use mostly sour cream instead of mayonnaise, or maybe bulgar instead of rice, it doesn’t really matter. Of course it also means that I can’t really reproduce the same meal twice, but hey, eating’s supposed to be an adventure! Isn’t it?

How do you manage to not run out, both of and for groceries?

Don’t Run Out by Kelly | Permalink | 6 comments