What’s the most extremely frugal thing you  do?   A man I know lives on a corner and he parks his car on the street and backs the car around the corner instead of going straight because it wears his tires out just slightly less than pulling a U-turn and then taking a right handed turn.  I am insanely anal about turning off lights and computer monitors around our house (we have two).  I also like to keep “fart fans” on as short as possible in the bathroom (and wish I simply had windows upstairs, though the basement doesn’t need one in the bathroom).

Tonight we bought 30 bags of goldfish crackers at the grocery store because they were on special and that was the limit.  They cost us fifty cents each and so we spent fifteen dollars on enough goldfish crackers to last quite a bit of time.  Our daughters like them and the big containers can’t compete with that per-bag price.

So… what is the most extreme frugal behavior you practice?  Have you done anything above normal like buy thirty bags of goldfish crackers?

If you like watching shows but don’t have or like the idea of paying for a DVR then save a few bucks and check out hulu.com.  It’s free to use and is sponsored by the TV networks.  That means that its free, legal media over the internet.  Yes, you have to watch it on a device connected to the internet, but I think that you can use a bunch of different devices that will do that, or you could just watch on a desktop computer or a laptop computer.

TV isn’t the most valuable thing you can do with your time, but its quite nice to have control over when you watch various things and know that the

Dear Power Company,Sorry for the huge increase in power consumption last night.  Neither myself or my wife happened to shut the windows in the front room when we went to bed and as the temperature dropped to around thirty-four degrees the heater ran all night.  Fortunately we caught it this morning and all of the temperatures appear to be balancing out as well as a reduction in heater use.Doh!Randy Petermanhttp://www.watchmymoneymaker.com

Have you ever wished you had an extra $200.00 a month? I know I used to wish that. The moved buffer theory is the theory that you should be putting the buffer in your budget at the ‘top’ of the budget rather than in each category. A buffer is an excess amount of money that is put in place to deal with a greater demand on your finances than is normal. If you’re familiar with “emergency funds” then you might describe the buffer as a preventative emergency fund built into your plan. If you are like me then you originally set up your budget with the buffers into different categories so that each category could absorb fluctuations in the category.

Evaluate the chart above representing a traditionally buffered set of categories. Can you see that the categories with buffers are theoretically more likely to use the buffer? By giving yourself access to more money you are more likely to absorb the buffer. The problem is that you should have some buffer somewhere because in real life all of the numbers are not known ahead of time (unless you are super lucky). By setting yourself up with a ’safe’ budget you are more likely to overspend potential savings (which is not the same as blowing out every budget category in overspending).

Instead, I would propose that you actually calculate a conservative amount for each budget category. What would you say to cutting each category by 20% and moving that buffer into its own category that goes untouched and your target for expenditure is reduced? That way if you over-spend in a category (or the water bill shows up and you find out you took showers that were too long, or watered the garden a wee more liberally than you had expected) you have a buffer category with funds for paying the water bill, but you don’t find yourself likely to spend a lot more in each category. The weakest link in your budget, the category that you’re overspending on, is dealt with, and you can review it for next month to see if it needs more funds, but you don’t just feed all of the categories excess money each month.

There is little doubt that real life will happen, and the potential for surprises is great, but by taking out some of the waste where it didn’t appear to be in the first place, you may save yourself a lot more money in the long run. If you can save $50.00 a month in reduced buffer excess and put it into an investment fund, pay off debt, or possibly grow other areas of your life, its worth considering! I have begun to see a several hundred dollar a month buffer that I didn’t know existed because before I was spending it. Consider your choices as you budget. This method may not work for everyone, but for us, it has been a real relief.

Note: The Moved Buffer Theory Budget is based on the Theory of Constraints by Eliyahu M. Goldratt - only applied where I haven’t seen it applied yet. You might consider checking out Critical Chain, a book that applies the Theory of Constraints to business management.

My sister is a brilliant cook. She and her husband are both brilliant cooks. I hate to say it but they rock my pallet better than most restaurants. Someone needs to hire them to help create menus to keep a restaurant wait list long. She’s going to, at my request, attempt to create some fun posts discussing a low cost recipe and money saving opportunities to give you some fun ideas to stay frugal and full. You should totally check out this week’s recipe on her blog The Two Foot Kitchen. This week she’s hitting up the classic French Onion Soup.

Every time I go to an evening doctors appointment I end up springing for dinner for my family. Usually around $30.00 or so (we’ll pick a place like Jason’s Deli which is potentially more nutritious than a fast food restaurant, but not much more expensive). The evening appointments cost the same as the day appointments at the doctor’s office, but I can avoid missing a lot of work time during the day. The nicety of going in the evening is offset by the eating out, but when you’re sitting there at the restaurant having spent more money than you’d like for the evening you have to account for your choices.

I think I may try taking an afternoon appointment in the future and make up missed work time in the evening because it’ll still cost me less than appointments and dinner. Its time to do investigative surgery and at least try the other approach and see if it saves the money it should save. Hopefully a lesson learned and we’ll just move forward from here.

If you’ve seen the television show ‘House’ then you’ve probably heard the lines about everyone lying.  In each episode something goes wrong with some patient and they have to find out what is causing the ailment.  Often the problem has to be ‘dug’ into and they have to find out who is lying about information so that they can get to the truth of the problem.  They don’t take ‘no’ from anyone.

If you have tried to get a lower interest rate from a credit card company and they’ve said no to lowering your rate and you’re paying anything like 18%: they’re lying.  Don’t take no for an answer.  Dig deeper.  Go up the chain of command until you’re speaking to Warren Buffet’s cousin.  Get to the person who can and will say yes.  Don’t put it off, don’t delay, call now.  Get a lower rate and save yourself some big cash!

Excuses that drones at the card companies will use include:

• Your rate is the best we can do - that is not possible
• Your account has been locked for rate reductions because of late payments - this is a totally bogus issue that is policy.  Policy that can be over-ridden by a higher up manager
• Your card offers you rewards, those rewards are funded by your interest rate - bull pucky.  Those rewards are paid for by any number of things - but the interest rate doesn’t fix things.  If you have to switch card companies now may be the time to do it

Kick the credit card interest rates in the butt.  We got our interest rates dropped twice and each time they dropped the rate we saved $50.o0 in interest per month!  Of course we’ve got enough debt that we’re paying a lot anyway.  However, getting the lower rate will help us pay it off faster.

We don’t celebrate Valentines day at our house.  We celebrate February 16th because it is the day that I asked my wife out when we were in high school.  Its kinda goofy but on February 14th I told her I liked her, but I didn’t have the guts to ask her to be my girlfriend.  Without this escape you’ve probably still got to tell your special someone they’re special, and here’s a quick list of things you can do that says, “You’re special.”  Without shelling out $100.00 or more in love stuff.

1.  Write a letter experessing your feelings.  Don’t get a card from the store, but write a hand written letter.  If your  hand writing is as poor as mine, this means a lot of time spent doing it carefully, time means something in many cases - especially if your loved one knows you are normally hard to read.  Take time to think through it and consider writing multiple drafts if you have time.
2. Plan a time to massage feet, hands, head, face or some part of their body that is not intended as a lead in to other things.  Just help your sweeheart to relax.  Make sure that they know you love them with a great time of relaxing and you giving of yourself.
3. Use a dry erase marker on the mirror to write a love note.  I haven’t done this in some time, but it works great because the marker will wipe off of the mirror (check in a hidden part of the glass just to make sure).  That way when they look in the mirror they’ll be surprised by the great reminder of your love.
4. Make a mix tape, iMix or special track listing on an MP3 player or home made CD.  This sure is fun and if its with music you have already, it says you took time, but it doesn’t have to cost you more than the price of electricity or the CD.  Dance with your Valentine to the music.
5. Run a hot bath with candles around the room and read poems or the love letter you wrote to your Valentine.  If you’ve not got a great bath to do this in, consider at least setting up a space in your home where you can set the mood for romance.  Read the letter because it will mean even more then.  I recommend practicing just a little bit so that you don’t start crying (I do, but I’m a sap) and so you can add the right inflection and look up at the right times to make sincere eye contact.

These are just a few ways you can spend almost zero dollars and have a million dollar Valentines day.

My wife and sister came up with the idea of the Pantry Survivor competition wherein they would attempt to go to the store once in an entire week (at the beginning of the ’stunt’) and then combine that with whatever was already stashed in the pantry to create meals for the family for as long as possible.  The super-challenge in all of this is that it is four adults and two children (plus one on the way - no, not us, my sister).  As previously stated somewhere my sister and her husband are staying with us until they can move into a new condo they’re buying.  So the food needs to feed the whole family and last as long as possible until they just have to go to the store.  The competition stands to see what they can create, what they can make stretch, and what they can concoct out of substitutes as needed.

The first step was to organize the pantry and make sure that there was an inventory.  My sister handled this, which was good because we had a pretty crazy pantry.  I unfortunately only have pictures of the post-organizing results.  My sister, whom I will refer to as ‘Preggers’, had a pad of paper and listed item-by-item what was in the pantry and fridge so that when she and my wife went to the store they could only buy what was needed for some basic meal preparation.  Preggers is actually a great cook, as is my wife, so this isn’t a huge challenge because they have a lot of ideas between the two of them.  The challenge is that they had to have enough of a plan to have bought enough food at the store to complement what we already had to make up enough meals to last a targeted ten days with one meal having company of another family of three.

Day One:  Smoked Pork ‘Que
Alton Brown of the food network enticed me to put together my own frugal smoker last year and so we smoke meat every couple months.  This last week we smoked some Pork Butt and it has been a cheap way to add protein to salads, sandwiches, and in this case, a barbecue pork sandwich.  I have directions and recipes for those who are interested - just shoot me an email to randy@watchmymoneymaker.com.

Day Two: Chicken Pot Pie a la ‘Preggers’
My sister made a tasty variation on chicken pot pie, but instead of making an actual pie, she made a chicken soup type dish and some tasty, tasty crust rounds with a cookie cutter. You placed the soup in the bowl and garnished them with the crust ‘cookies’ (not sweet, but oh, so tasty. Have you noticed I think they’re tasty?).  Preggers did a great job with this dish, but since she made it up I have no recipe.  It did contain white pearl onions which are one of my favorite soup ingredients.

By the time anyone reads this we’ll be on day three with a week left to go.  I don’t know what we’ll run out of, but I’ll post the results as we go through the experience.  I challenge you to try the same and see if you can clear out any old ’stuff’ that you have in your pantry to keep your budget frugal, and your frugal budget interesting in the kitchen.

My bride came up to me and in her normal, ever so sweet way, told me that our debt reduction plan was insufficient.  Normally this sort of thing would be a good thing, except that I exaggerated… she was ticked that we weren’t further along.  She wasn’t angry at me so much, it was just that she wants to go on a romantic anniversary trip and the debt is hindering that.  She’s fired up.

So she called up Discover, with whom we have a large line of credit [and accompanying balance] that we’re paying off and talked to an employee to find out if they could give us a better rate yet.  They’d told us not until March the last time we asked.  Well, upon asking for a lowered rate the gal on the other end of the phone told her that she would give us a 12.9% rate.  My wife, being fired up, asked for a lower rate than that.  To which she said, “No, I can’t do that.”  But at least my wife tried.

So we’re now paying half as much interest as we were 7 months ago because we were persistent.  The Credit Rate Reduction Rally is going to be semi-annual, but just because the rally is not happening right now doesn’t mean you shouldn’t call and press for lower interest rates.