Chiming in late- ~ open all my bar soap and put it in a basket when I buy it. It dries out some and lasts longer. Plus if I keep it in my linen closet, my linens smell nice. ~made my own detangler for the girls. Got a big spray bottle from the Dollar Store. Used one of the hotel conditioner bottles DH had in his bag and added water to fill. Works great.
I ride a motorcycle instead of driving a car. 66mpg and $100 for insurance per year. For movies, the pirate bay and demoniod are your friends. Walmart trickery I learned from a friend. If you have a kid who wears out or out grows clothes fast, get them at walmart and keep the reciept. If it's within a couple months they'll usually take it back for an exchange even if it's damaged. Friend of mine got her kid 3 pairs of sweat pants that way. Buy in bulk, and whatever you don't use sell off. My friend bought a case of energy drinks and brought them to work selling them $2 a piece and made all his money back and then some with plenty left for himself. That's about all I can think of :X
I dunno, the Walmart thing just seems wrong to me. And those two webs sites came up as pornography in my web filter....JMHO
So does buying products made my children in china, but such is the world we live in. :/ And those sites have everything on them, including porn, so it's technically correct.
Pirate Bay is listed as "one of the worls largest facilitators of illegal downloading", but has remained running despite lawsuits against it. I couldn't find out as much about the Demonoid site, though I suspect it is similar. I didn't go to the actual site. They don't seem to be sites I could trust. I agree with Cheryl about the Walmart thing. If it tears up in the first couple of times of wear, I can see taking it back, but not once it has been through the wear and tear of a child for months. Now, there are some children's clothing stores that will replace clothing if it wears out before your child outgrows it. Children's Place used to do this, but I'm not sure if they still do. If the store has that policy, by all means take advantage of it.
We've made excellent use of zero percent credit cards over the last 10-15 years. Every year, when a zero percent offer expires on one of the cards, we accept another offer and transfer the balance. Recently, banks have been charging 3% to transfer a balance. If you look carefully, though, you may find one that offers no balance transfer fee (we received one last year). We also make good use of low fixed-interest credit cards. Three years ago, when we last bought a new car, we paid the maximum the dealership permitted ($5000) using a cash back card. We put the balance on a car loan they set up for us and within a week transferred both balances to a "1.9% for life" credit card offer. The net result was we received $75 cash back from the first card and pay little interest on the other. The nice thing about this approach is that you can pay off as much or as little as you want every month - provided you meet the minimum payment. It's imperative you don't use the cards for anything else, so I always cut them up the moment I receive them. It's also important to meet the payment date every month, so I use online banking to ensure that. Over the last decade, I'd estimate we've saved several thousand dollars by pursuing this approach. During this time, I was able to find the funds to start a small business - which would have been impossible otherwise. The only thing to be wary of is the occasional bank/company that increases your minimum monthly payment. The only one that's ever done it to me is Discover, so I prefer to stay away from them. They doubled the monthly payment from about 1.5% of outstanding balance to about 3% - quite a difference.
shopko also offers a free club, if it wears out before the dc outgrow, u can return and get replacement
We do not have credit cards. This saves us from buying on impulse and requires us to save or attempt to save. We were in debt $32,000 and finally paid it off a while back. We learned our lesson and decided we can save almost $500 a month on credit card bills.
Wow--some new ideas to try out! Here are some strategies we use: I simply try to avoid the aisles I don't need something from. For example, if I let myself wander through the clothes section, I will find something cheap and cute enough to get, so unless I need something, I don't go to that section. We don't have cable or satellite. We get 99% of our movies at the library. We don't have a health club membership. Walking and lifting babies are free. We let go of the norm and the entitlement mentality of our culture. No, we don't have to have a huge house, expensive clothes, and participate in every organized sport there is. We buy used when we can. We research large purchases thoroughly and carefully--this can save thousands. We garden. I am saving about $30-40 a week during these summer months on groceries. We do not buy on credit. I sew. If I can, anyone can. We put together our own curriculum. We try to combine errands when we go to town. I avoid going unnecessarily. If we will be in town at a mealtime, I often pack a picnic. We do eat out, but we try to limit it. I make a shopping list. We use freecycle, Goodwill, and craigslist. In my single days, I was a shopaholic and credit card connossier (misspelled?). Now, when I feel the old thrill of a good sale coming on, I step back to consider the needs of our family and where the money will be best used. Thinking of my husband working hard to earn it stops a lot of selfish or frivolous spending. We don't run the heater or air conditioner to extremes. We don't scrimp on buying healthy groceries. I may be frugal, but I would rather spend more on items that are natural and organic today than pay thousands in medical bills later. To me, I will cut back in another area before this one. When it's time to have fun, we don't bemoan the money spent. We are careful so much of the time, but there's a time to just have fun, within our budget. We are united in this. We set goals together as a couple. We take care of our vehicles. My husband learns how to work on anything that needs working on around here. I try not to repeat mistakes in operating things around here. Most importantly, we try to be responsible stewards of what God has blessed us with. He has blessed us time and again with what we need, when we need it. My goal is to glorify Him with our lives and our resources. I fail at that often, but that is my goal. There you have it!
We don't own a car, my dh uses mass transit($92 a month),if my girls or I need to take the bus we purchase one day passes that pay for themselves after two buses..and then we pass it on when we are done(these passes are good for twenty-four hours) We have cable,internet and landline bundled on one bill, this is our entertainment budget Although I could create our own curriculum,I am to lazy to keep transcripts..ahhhhh I finally admitted this My husband plants a garden and we save during the summer months on veggies There are many wonderful suggestions here that I am going to try...thank you
Maybe this is a good point to explain how I buy a car. We've saved thousands doing this. 1) Buy used, not new. 2) Decide on the model (e.g., Ford Focus) after reviewing sites like edmunds.com 3) Go to carmax.com and search for every Ford Focus. Choose 2-3 factors that drive price: year, mileage, and model (FX versus EX versus DX). 4) Use MS Excel to run a regression analysis so you can predict a car's price given its year, mileage, and model. Now, within about 5%, you'll be able to predict the carmax price given model, year, mileage. 5) Reduce this price by about 25% (the carmax markup, in my experience) and make this your target price. 6) Go to various dealerships (not Carmax, because they don't negotiate) and test drive at least 4 cars that are the same model, year, etc. so you can get the feel of what's a good car (wear and tear, how well the door closes, how the engine sounds, etc.) 7) Now start negotiating for the one you want. Use your regression analysis to intimidate the sales people, and don't be afraid to walk away. 8) It will take 2-3 days, but you will get the target price you want. This sounds like a lot of time and effort, but you can save thousands. When we bought our Toyota Camry about 5 years ago, this method saved me almost $5,000 over the advertised price. I've managed to achieve similar savings on behalf of my son-in-law and others. Oh - and always buy on the last day of the month or on a holiday. The sales people usually have a quota to meet, so they are that much more eager to sell to you.
Patty do you mind telling me how you paid off that $32K and how long it took? If it is too personally I totally understand. It is just that we are in a similar situation now. We have learned our lesson for sure!! We are now in the process of attempting to get rid of this debt and a word of advice or wisdom or just knowing how you did it would be a huge help to me.
Well, I shop Aldi's for just about everything except meat. I buy only reduced meat or very good sale meat. I will not pay more than $1.99 a lb for meat. We have 2 freezers so I can stockpile on a good sale. This week hamburger was on sale for $1.47 a lb so I bought 30 lbs and chicken leg quarters were .69 a lb . I bought 30 lbs of that too. I don't buy napkins. I bought all cloth and we wash them. I do make cleaning supplies but my hubby & one son were allergic to the homemade laundry soap. I only buy clothes at Goodwill or garage sales. I buy all paint or home improvement stuff at the Habitat for humanity restore. My whole house is painted from there. Plus, I got a brand new dishwasher there for 50 bucks!
I love to be frugal! I can't stand clutter-this also helps me to be frugal. I don't buy a bunch of stuff just because I like it. I make sure it's a need first. I have had to teach myself it's ok to go to a yard sale/resale shop and walk away empty handed! I shop resale/yard sale for as much as I can. I try to really limit what I buy new. We have a resale shop here in town and 2x's a year you can fill a grocery bag and it's only $2! I really try to stock up on clothes for dd then! On grocery shopping I take advantage of loss leader items. I use coupons-but only when it's a great deal and cheaper than buying generic. I go to the store with a list and I am prepared ahead of time. Less tempting this way! I sign up for all the freebies I can online. I am always getting HBA products in the mail! Sample sizes-but I just combine them. I cook from scratch as much as possible. Eating out is a special treat. I try to do mini OAMC-but it's more for a week than a month. I also try to always have snacks made for dh & dd's. We sold our 2nd vehicle. This saves insurance, car payment, & gas. We watch our electric usage. Unplug unused items. Keep the a/c up and fans going-shades drawn. We have a small pool for dd's for entertainment. It keeps them busy and saves us tons!! I am sure there is more but that's all I can think of for now. I love, love, love Amy Dacyczyn's book The Tightwad Gazette!
I don't use the dish soap anymore. I didn't feel like it was getting the dishes clean after some time and went back to Cascade. I don't have that recipe anymore, I must have lost it.
Ohio Mom I did the same thing. It seemed that it worked for a while then the build up was too much. I even tried to mix with cascade but it didn't help that much. It was just easier to go back to cascade but the laundry detergent I still love it!
I am sorry! I missed your post until now! It took around five or six years to get rid of the debt. Basically, we literally had to buckle down and see were the money was going. We made lists of every store we shopped at and how much we spent at each monthly and whether or not it was necessary. After adding up our necessities and non-necessities, we were wasting a lot of money, like in the thousands. We got rid of our cable, stopped eating out as much, started making a grocery list that we didn't always stick too:lol:, and basically found all the areas we could cut back on. We still went to the movies on rare occasion and out to eat but it was far less than before. Sometimes we got off track and we just got back on. Now that our debt is paid off, we are saving about $1,500-$2,000 a month. Now when I say saving, this isn't completely true. Although we no longer have credit cards we aren't always saving that money. Sometimes we have more than other months. Since we aren't using credit cards, we have to use this extra money to do repairs and sometimes this adds up. Still, it is a breath of fresh air to not have credit cards anymore. We are able to pay our portion of health insurance and maintain our cars. If we really buckled down and resticted ourselves, we would have much more in the bank than we do but we still like the extras every now and then. Honestly, when I think about it, we could have paid the debt in a couple years of we applied ourselves.
