Frugal Living Today

Have you looked at the cost of stamps lately?  Sheesh!

Can you believe it costs 42 cents in the United States to send a standard letter?  Incidentally, that’s how much it costs if you pay a bill through the U.S. mail, but it does not need to.

To make it more concrete, take a look at the basic mathematics of the thing:  Let’s say that you send four bill payments each month through the mail.  That would end up costing you about twenty bucks at the end of a year that you could have saved had you just explored your other options.

What other options, you ask?

This is the Internet Age, baby!  You can pay your bills online or have them automatically drafted from your checking or savings account.  If you are like me and prefer the hands on approach, I recommend the former.  It allows you to physically see the amount of the bill (painful but important) and to actually receive a payment confirmation at the time you are thinking about it.  I’m scatterbrained at times and this has tended to be the method I use most often.

If you are a bit more organized than I or if you are the opposite - so disorganized that you often forget to pay your bills - I recommend using automatic draft.  While this does require that you are mindful of the balance in your checking or savings account it also ensures that you don’t incur late fees from your debtor for being late yet again.

Think about it, check with your banking institution and find out what options will work best for you but for heaven’s sake - quit wasting your money on stamps when you don’t need to!

Here’s another option that I have found useful:

Paypal offers a free debit card for use with existing Paypal accounts.  Since I receive payments through that company on a regular (weekly) basis, I opted for the card.  Every time I use the card for signature purchases (that is, anything that is not specifically marked as a debit purchase), I get one percent (1%) of that purchase back as cash in my account.

1% doesn’t sound like much but if you consider that most interest bearing checking accounts (and many savings accounts for that matter) barely pay more than that, it’s a good idea to save that one percent every chance you get.

Want to get away but just can’t fathom paying for a hotel on your frugal vacation?

How do you feel about surfing?  Couch surfing, that is…

One of the hottest trends for low cost travelers is the art of couch surfing which is the ultimate in frugal travel.

The process is quite simple.  A potential couch surfer visits a web site like CouchSurfing and searches for available (and suitable) couches in the area in which they seek to travel.

If you have questions about the safety of such an excursion, I encourage you to visit the website and read up on the phenomenon for yourself.   If you have experience with couch surfing, we’d love to hear your story!

My partner and his mother are some of the oddest people I have ever seen when it comes to fruit.  They won’t eat fruit like peaches unless they are hard.  Not just firm, but crisp like an apple.  It is still an uphill battle for me to get him to realize that when the peach begins to soften it isn’t time to toss it - I like my peaches with a little bit of give!

From Mother Earth News comes this peach of a fruit preservation idea:

Freeze fresh, whole peaches in zipper bags.  When you are ready for a treat, take one out, run it under a bit of water and the skin should slide right off.  Let it thaw and the flavor should be almost as good as it was when you bought it!

Just for Men hair color has a brand new product for men who don’t want the telltale signs that they color their hair.  Touch of Gray is a revolutionary hair color that leaves a hint of gray visible to avoid being mistaken for a metrosexual at the next poker game.

What’s more, they are offering to let you (or the man in your life) try it at no cost to you!  That’s right - it’s a freebie. Continue Reading »

Before her death, my Granny used to tell me stories about growing up in the south.  I can still remember her describing the first time she met the woman who would become her mother-in-law, “Big Mama”.  Big Mama was in the kitchen (as she often was, it would seem) preparing a meal.  Without a moment’s hesitation - and in mid-sentence - she stepped through the screened door and into the yard, grabbed an unsuspecting hen and snapped its neck.

After finishing the needful and hanging Henny Penny upside down from the clothes line to drain, she stepped back into the kitchen and picked up right where she left off without missing a beat. Continue Reading »

Eat your oatmeal!

For years I thought I was the only kid in town who was subjected to the seemingly enormous bowl of thick, sticky goo for breakfast all winter long. It seems though that I have to make an apology to my mother.

She wasn’t, as I then was convinced, trying to kill me. In fact, she was on to something that even she didn’t fully realize at the time. That bowl of oatmeal that I ate every day as a child was not only quite cheap, actually made me a little healthier too.

Continue Reading »

It never ceases to amaze me how many people waste money on gym memberships when they are entirely unnecessary unless you are training for a bodybuilding competition - which I, for the record, am most decidedly not doing. Still, with my 36th birthday less than a month away I do like to get some exercise to keep myself reasonably in shape.

Here are a few frugal ways you can exercise without spending a dime: Continue Reading »