With gas prices this high you’ll have fewer problems getting friends to join you for lunch in the brown bag club. If they drive a few miles every day for lunch they could be spending a $5.00 bill every week just to pay extra to eat out. Then, by wooing them into the frugality club you could ease them into doing other things more efficiently.
If you find yourself at the grocery store and you find yourself buying coffee and you find yourself buying coffee out of those bins (which I should take pictures of so that you know EXACTLY what I mean) with the little pull levers that release the whole beans into the paper bags: STOP! That isn’t to say that you shouldn’t buy that coffee as much as it is to say this: beware the funky flavored crud.
I had company in town and I didn’t purchase them the high end [high quality but not high priced] stuff I usually buy because they don’t like it (I offer and they generally refuse it). But I did buy them what was supposed to be 10% Kona beans because I’m nice like that. Except that the lemurs that put the coffee in the bins put the kona (read: hawaiian beans are in here) next to the hazelnut flavored coffee. Note the word flavored. That word should be a big warning sign. They should label it, “Death star coffee flavored like hazelnuts so that the death will be sweet.” But they don’t.
If you buy coffee that is supposed to be just plain coffee flavored out of the chute next to the flavored death star stuff then spill a little of the beans into the bag and then smell the beans. Your nose should be able to tell if miracles have happened and your kona coffee smells like coffee or if the evil siths of hazelnut have taken over and your imported beans are really just polluted with bad ju-ju.
Save your money on the coffee that’s been polluted, report to a store manager that the devil responsible for putting the coffee in that chute should be chastised heavily, and then buy something else that may not be what you wanted, but will not be polluted. Unless of course you’re into flavored coffee, in which case by all means just dump the arabica beans into the bag and proceed with your business. I’m embarrassed to have written this post because I prefer home roasted coffee if possible. But I’m a coffee snob and I have to deal with that burden every day.
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
I had written about freezing your pillow if you have allergies when this blog started last year. Since then I’ve had various people link in looking for some sort of technique. I guess I assumed that everyone would know to do the following:
We don’t generally have to deal with collections. To my knowledge I have been ahead or on time with all of my payments for a year and a half. Unfortunately this last Saturday we got a call form a store credit card collection agency that I was completely unaware of. My wife was also unaware of the problem as we ran into some issues with email notification and spam filters combining to a net gain of nothing and a net loss of a stupid interest rate and late fee. We’ve paid the card and now we’ll cancel it. I don’t like store cards and I don’t know why this one was signed up for, I think my wife was offered tremendous savings of some sort. We’ve lost the savings, but gained a lesson.
When dealing with a collection person remember several things about their job:
So in dealing with these people, and they are people, though they may seem like monsters or jerks or rude people, just realize that their job is not to wave fees, reduce penalties, take your side, or help you get things straightened out. In fact, in most cases you shouldn’t even talk to them. The best way to deal with them is to not deal with them. Instead, if you get a call from a collections agency, find out who it is they’re collecting for and then call the company they’re collecting for and bypass their job’s inherent socially aggressive issues.
Remember that they’re trying to figure out your payer type. That is they’re looking for the type of person you are to find the argument that will talk you into paying them right now, which means they get rewarded. As soon as they get rude tell them they can stop being rude and work with you or you’ll hang up. They may respond in various ways, but in the end don’t let their attitude cause you to get worked up. This is what happens to me when I’m discussing things with people and they begin to ignore intellect and rationality. They know that if you’re emotionally charged that this will get you to act one way or another. Don’t let them get you worked up. Hang up first.
Remember that if you’re legitimately in debt to someone you should attempt to pay it as soon as possible, but don’t let their problem be your problem. Tell them that you’re glad to know the total you owe and you’ll figure out how you can go ahead and pay it on your time and schedule. Say, “Thank you, good-bye,” and then hang up. Don’t give them a foot in the door. Hang up and then genuinely figure out how you can pay your debt and put it behind you.
If you’re a newer reader you may not be familiar with the Credit Rate Reduction Rally. One of the purposes behind the rally was to build a movement that is about optimizing interest rates for people paying off debt. In my case doing this on one of our cards reduced the interest we’re paying per month (which also includes a lower balance from making payments) by $125.00 a month. That would be like saving roughly $1,400.00 in one year’s time [calculated loosely with the assumption of a reducing balance with minimum payments]. Or three Nintendo Wii’s, several car payments, a very, very nice bottle of wine, a Mac Book with memory upgrade, or a nice donation to a charity.
Have you sat down and calculated how much money you might save by getting your interest rates reduced? Be persistent, be consistent, and make them change your interest rate. It could change your future!
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.
I had a great post idea earlier today. Great to the point that I thought it would be my best article to date. Or not. It doesn’t matter because I wasn’t at a place where I could write it, and I failed to write it down! So now you can imagine that this post is brilliant. But its brilliance lies mostly in that as a manager of life (and finances), you need to be prepared to document ideas and be able to come back to them so that you don’t lose important things, or blog posts.
Magazines are a thing of the past in some households. The internet sucked the life out of these old paper-bound relics, just like newspapers [free the bound periodicals!]. However, magazines do still exist and with them comes the need to keep circulation high and ad revenue higher. We got a ‘notice’ in the mail today that was a ‘late or missing’ payment notice in an attempt to get us to just send in a check and subscribe to a magazine my wife had canceled.
Tricky? Yes. Dishonest? Absolutely! This sort of tactic is slick, but wouldn’t work very well in other markets. Just imagine test driving a car at a dealership and waking up in the morning with a guy knocking at your front door asking for the first payment check. Or just try not to smile thinking about walking into Costco/Sam’s Club and having the sample ladies chasing you down asking you to pay for the sample you tasted - at full price and for the price of the entire box.
I think this sort of thing is far too common in some businesses, but be aware: just because it comes as a ‘notice’ doesn’t mean its a legitimate concern. Figure out the reality of the claim first. Don’t be swindled.
