Frugal Confessions – Frugal Living
Posted on | September 3, 2010 | No Comments
Hello Frugal Confessions Readers!
For those of you new to this series, check out the introduction here.
Here is my confession of the week:
I get the Houston Chronicle paper every Sunday for $1.75. At around 7:30 a.m. I grab a bowl of cereal, peruse a few sections, and dig into the coupons. What incredible deals I find!
Around April of this year I found an introductory offer of $20 for 20 weeks of Sunday papers delivered to my doorstep. I jumped on it; not only was it more convenient, but it was $0.75 less. My introductory offer finished up, and to my delight, they offered me 52 weeks of the Sunday paper for $52! I took it, calculating that I will be saving $39 over the next year. Woohoo!
What is your frugal confession of the week? I’d love to hear it!
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Updates: Giveaway Winner, Frugal Confessions on the News, Debt Check-up
Posted on | September 2, 2010 | 2 Comments
Hello Frugal Confessions Readers!
Some exciting things going on that I want to update everyone with. I have updated the Debt Reduction button on my website…and can finally declare that Paul and I are non-mortgage DEBT-FREE!!!! Be sure to read all about it.
Frugal Confessions is on abc news (Channel 13, KTRK) discussing how to make your produce last longer for people who want to grocery shop every other week.
Finally, I would like to announce the winners of Gail Vaz-Oxlade’s Debt-Free Book Giveaway. Crystal from Budgeting in the Fun Stuff, and Johanna O, as chosen by Random.org. Please email me your address at frugalconfessions [at] hotmail.com so that I can forward them onto the publisher.
As always, thank you everyone for reading, commenting, and engaging! Have a great Labor Day Weekend.
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Jar Budgeting: Jump Start the $5 Left at the End of the Month Challenge
Posted on | September 1, 2010 | 10 Comments
You can have it all; you just can’t have it all at the same time. – Gail Vaz-Oxlade
Gail Vaz-Oxlade is a woman who does not take crap. Just watch her show or read her book, Debt-Free Forever. You may cringe at first when witnessing her sometimes crass, but always blunt honesty about other people’s lives—like the time she told a young couple that they are kicking babies out like kittens, an occasional bleeping out of expletives, or a whack on the forehead to an unsuspecting (but not undeserving) debt monger—but her ability to bring couples who are on the brink of bankruptcy back from the edge is impressive.
And Gail doesn’t just bring couples back from the edge so that they can live a mediocre life. She leaves them with a budget that, if they stick to it, will yield them close to a million dollars in retirement! The numbers vary from couple to couple, of course, but to be able to bring someone from $70,000 in the red of non-mortgage debt, to $1 million in the black by the time they retire is incredible. What is her true magic? In a word, it’s jars.
One of the first things that Gail does with a new couple is to take all of their plastic away (both debit and credit cards) and give them glass and paper instead. She sets a budget and allocates each category to a jar with a label of the weekly amount the couple may spend in that category. Categories include: Food, Clothing, Entertainment, Transportation, and Other. That’s right; Gail is a practical realist, so she doesn’t expect a couple to go without clothing or entertainment in order to reach their goals, she just expects them to spend much less than they are used to in these categories (typically $25 a month, though that is in Canadian money).
Couples are allowed to finagle these jars; for example, if you have an unexpected spike in food expenses one week, then you can take from one of the other jars. But she is also quick to point out that pet money comes from the “Other” jar, and so if you need to take a pet to the vet later in the year, you should build up a reserve to pay for that in cash from not spending all of the money in that jar. If you are using another jar to pay for another category, you might not get that reserve you need later.
I don’t know whether it’s the simplicity of the system, or watching others who are financially lost use these jars and come out to the light, but I love the idea of money jars for budgeting. However, my husband and I aren’t really on the level where we need to use the jars to budget our money, and perhaps you aren’t either. So, I had an idea to take this a step further and make it relevant to people like you and I. Frugal Decadence is all about making do with less and not compromising on what you would like, so why not use a few jars for some of your variable expenses throughout the month and see if you can’t tweak out extra savings from these expenses to use elsewhere…say to make sure you have $5 left at the end of the month to commit a Random Act of Kindness?
Or perhaps you have another goal in mind, like traveling to an exotic location, purchasing a home, or acquiring assets to make your money work for you. Make a poster or rip out a magazine photo that embodies your goal and post it above your money jars. Now your decisions to reach for money out of these jars will be anchored around a purpose, and you may find yourself with extra at the end of the month to put towards your dream.
Are you interested in reading Gail’s new book Debt-Free Forever? Leave a comment below for the two books that I have to giveaway. The winner will need to give to email me their address at frugalconfessions [@] hotmail.com (whatever address you are comfortable with), and I will forward this to Gail’s publisher who will mail you out a copy. Good luck!
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Article Round-up: Get Out of College Debt-Free Edition
Posted on | August 31, 2010 | 4 Comments
Hello Frugal Confessions Readers!
I graduated from college in 2005, and wow I wish I had known all that I do not about ways to save money, stay out of debt, and to make money. If I had known, I would have come out of college with much less than my $36,000 in student loan debt (which was still a bargain for four years at a private liberal arts college).
In light of this, as well as student loan debt surpassing consumer credit card debt, I wanted to round up some great articles to help you all achieve this either for yourselves or for your children. Money Help for Christians has a great article on how to graduate college with no student loan debt.
Budgeting in the Fun Stuff’s guest poster has some great information on what is considered a liability and what is considered an asset by the government when applying for financial aid.
A guest poster at the Get Rich Slowly blog shares how he paid for his graduate school studies by renting out bedrooms.
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$5 Left at the End of the Month: A New Campaign
Posted on | August 30, 2010 | 27 Comments
I come from a divorced family. Wait, that doesn’t even tell half of the story. I come from a divorced family, who then divorced separately again and who are now on their third marriages. My familial connections seem to connect and divide like a sluggish strain of bacteria.
But even with all of the fighting, the passive aggression and the heartache, there are moments of joy that I can remember from each of my family configurations. One of these memories came from an inspiration from the Oprah Winfrey show.
I do not remember all of the details, but one day my first stepmother was watching Oprah’s show on committing Random Acts of Kindness and became inspired. She told the rest of us and we decided to call these random acts of kindness RACs. At a time when we normally only saw one another as a family unit every other weekend, and could be found bickering out in the barn at all of the work to be done, or perhaps stealing time away in our bedrooms from everyone else, the simple act of showing kindness to complete strangers united our family. My father used to take us on Sunday rides where he would purposefully get us lost in order to find our way back home. These were always fun with a tinge of adventure, except for this one particular Sunday I can remember that was just darn exciting. We had been driving around for some time and wound up at a toll booth. Instead of paying for just our toll ticket we also paid for the driver behind us. All of us giggled and smiled at the idea along with the toll booth attendant—she could tell we were up to something. We pulled ahead a hundred yards or so and watched as the car came up to the booth and sat there for a few minutes, most likely trying to digest the fact that total strangers had paid their fare. We raced off like bandits, except that the act we had just committed was for good.
Quite frankly, I cannot remember the other RACs we committed as a family, but the fact that I can recall just one in great detail means a lot to me. Lately, I have been giving a lot of thought to my purpose in life, to who I am outside of work, and to our budget. We have managed to go over our budget almost every month for the past several months. This is due in large part to working on our home while setting unreasonable spending expectations on ourselves. Still, while we have been able to pay everything on time (including our credit card in full) every month without question, it has made me wonder.
In my self-analysis afforded by writing articles for this blog, I have asked the question before of why I want to become rich, and why I am saving and sacrificing today without a real purpose. It is not entirely without purpose, as I want to be financially independent, to travel, and to enjoy all that life has to offer. But I want a higher purpose than these everyday goals; I need to do something with my budgeting and with our money that goes beyond satisfying us. I have alluded to this in the article My Charity Black Hole, which we have acted on by choosing an organization that we have been consistently donating to each month in 2010. But I do not feel that we are doing enough.
So, I have begun an exciting new campaign and challenge for us, as well as for you. I am calling it “$5 Left at the End of the Month”. Basically, Paul and I will work diligently to stay within our budget for the month, and make sure we leave room to have just $5 leftover. With this money, we will commit a random act of kindness. It could be a donation to a charity, buying coffee for the next guy at the drive thru, buying a sandwich to a homeless guy outside of Subway…the sky is the limit. Not only will this help us show kindness to others, but it will also give us motivation and purpose to stick to our budget each month.
Why $5? It is a small enough amount that no one should be excluded from participating. It can purchase a lot to help another person, or to extend some kindness. And finally, with a large enough set of dedicated people, we can truly make a difference. I have had a little over 1400 unique visitors to this website, and if each of them signed onto the $5 Left at the End of the Month Challenge, after just 3 months we would have made a $21,000 impact! How amazing is that?
Here is how this will work:
- If you want to sign onto this challenge, leave a comment below.
- At the end of each month I will post about our Random Act of Kindness, and I would love to hear all of yours in the comments section to that post!
- I will keep a tally on the right sidebar at my Frugal Confessions blog of the Kindness Impact we are making as motivation to spend within our means, to help out others, and to spread kindness everywhere we can. Of course this will only be a monetary measurement; spreading kindness and helping others has implications well beyond monetary valuation.
So…are you with me? Tune in on Wednesday for an article about an interesting way to budget and help you with this challenge, compliments of Gail Vaz-Oxlade. Then in the coming weeks I have a few other articles in the works, such as how to donate without spending any money.
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Liquidate Your Past and Invest in Your Future
Posted on | August 27, 2010 | 4 Comments
Please note: If you are my ex and are reading this, then it is not your jewelry I pawned!
Ever since being engaged (we are E+ two weeks now, as my fiancée likes to keep track of time after the big day), I have had this consuming desire within me to organize, de-clutter and simplify every aspect of our lives. I suppose I can only relate it to the fierce nesting a woman supposedly goes through during her pregnancy when the entire house must be cleaned and organized and perfect for this next big stage in her life.
Unlike some phases or emotions which can send a person to compulsive shopping, compulsive eating, etc., this one is actually quite lucrative (would you expect any less from me at this point?)! By cleaning out the recesses of our closets, drawers, hope chests, and jewelry box, I have made a small profit, and have decided that all money earned will be donated to our honeymoon fund.
It started with our guest room closet, aka the pit for things we don’t have a place for. I took everything out of it and made distinct piles: donations, throw away, sell. I threw away all of my fiancées wire hangers (think Mommy Dearest the movie), organized all of my photos into neat little photo boxes, and ruthlessly sorted through a lot of belongings. Next I focused my attention on our book shelves—Paul and I are both avid readers and each have our own book shelf. Between the two of us, we came up with 15 books we no longer want to sell at a used book store.
As I was walking back into the bedroom with a handful of old clothes, my jewelry box caught my eye. How about I sell my ex boyfriend’s jewelry and put it towards our honeymoon as well? Quite frankly I thought my idea was brilliant, although I am sure many others have done the same thing in the past. I picked out two necklaces, a bracelet, and two rings and cleaned them using jewelry cleaner. Now, I have never been to a pawn show before, and my imagination conjured up sleazy men with slicked-back hair, little spectacles and smoke-filled rooms. To my surprise, this was not the case, although the pawn shop I went to (The Write Pawn and Jewelry Co.) did have metal bar doors for an entranceway (this is most likely due to its location on Westheimer). In all but twenty minutes, I walked out of the place with a smile on my face, some money in my hand, and a feeling of weight lifted off of my shoulders.
Here is a breakdown of what I have been able to sell so far:
- Laptop Case: $10, Paid $15 for it
- Cell phone: $25, Paid $0 for it
- Jewelry: $50, Paid $0 for it
- Books: $15, Paid approximately $75 for them
With the books we sold, we were able to buy a copy of a used “How to Buy a House for Dummies” for $7.00. The rest of the money, as well as any other profits from sales, will be going into our honeymoon account. One hundred dollars is not much money, but this exercise has been more valuable as an intangible cleansing of the past for me, as well as a way to make room for us—and our belongings—to grow together.
Hurrah to simplifying and decluttering!
Originally posted 2009-08-01 13:25:58. Republished by Blog Post Promoter
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Frugal Confessions Friday – Frugal Living
Posted on | August 27, 2010 | 5 Comments
Hello Frugal Confessions Readers!
For those of you new to this series, check out the introduction here.
Here is my confession of the week:
I am a member of Cashbaq, a site that offers money back for making purchases at a ton of different sites. I only buy rock-bottom bargains online, and so the cash back is not much, but it is worth it to score great deals such as a free 2009 Entertainment book (after cash rebate), and a $3.21 turtleneck from Land’s End. I just received my second payout of $11.83 automatically to my paypal account! Hurrah!
What is your frugal confession? I’d love to hear it!
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Food Experiment: My Trip to Wal-Mart
Posted on | August 26, 2010 | 2 Comments
Check out my original article in this series here.
Wal-mart happens to be a fascination of mine. Any business that can start from a small store on the corner of a rural town and grow to practically encompass every small and large town across the U.S. is a topic of interest in my book, regardless of whether or not you believe in their practices. Being the sole outlet for the majority of consumer purchasing decisions in the U.S. means that your decisions as a corporation has worldwide implications for people, retailers/manufacturers, and even politics. Let’s just say, I consider them a force to be reckoned with.
As a consumer, I am left with a difficult decision each time I go shopping. I could shop at a Wal-mart, where I know that even without coupons, I will probably get the best prices around (this is not a sure thing, but it is guaranteed—if you bring a sales flyer from another store that has the same product for cheaper, Wal-mart will charge you the cheaper price). But what am I supporting when I shop at Wal-mart? Wal-mart makes products cheap so that everyone can afford them, but at what cost are they providing this service to their consumers?
I shopped at Wal-mart when I lived in Florida a few years ago and had sticker shock at the hike in living costs. Since moving to Houston, I have only shopped there twice now: once a few months ago, and last month for this experiment. One thing I am particularly happy to report is it appears Wal-mart has taken strides in the last several years to incorporate more natural and organic products within their stores. In this case it is very positive that Wal-mart has such influence on consumers’ pockets; the potential implications on the food chain are great if Wal-mart continues down this path.
I was able to purchase the following organic/fresh/minimally processed/non-HFCS products at what I consider to be a decent price:
- Nature Valley Granola Bars
- Preservative-free Chicken
- Sun Chips
- V-8 Fusion Juice
- Kashi Cereal
- Kraft Natural Cheese
- Hormel Natural (No Preservatives) lunchmeats
- Back to Nature Crackers
- Organic Yogurt
- Bread
These are the following items that I looked for to meet my above criteria, but did not find:
- Ground Beef, Flank Steak, beef of any kind
- Cornish Game Hens
- Sour Cream
- Blocks of Cheese
My total bill came in at $97.43. I was only able to use $1.05 in coupons. I have to say, I certainly bought extras during this trip (like flank steak), and we needed to stock up on meats, so I feel like I could have knocked the price down by $20.00. I also spent $20 at Froberg’s on fruits and veggies.
Overall, that puts us at $233.73 for our groceries for the month of August. This is $66.27 less than what we used to spend on groceries before couponing and sales shopping, so I still saved us money from this high while buying mostly fresh, natural, organic, non-HFCS and minimally-processed foods. Still, I was not able to use as many coupons as I thought I could during this experiment due to the much lower availability for coupons for products with these characteristics. Also, while Whole Foods certainly has a much broader array of these types of products, I was still pleasantly surprised by what I found at Wal-mart and optimistic about what the implications could be for the food chain in the United States.
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We Are Not Going to Help Them Make Vegetable Soup out of a Stone and Water
Posted on | August 25, 2010 | 4 Comments
Read the original Timeshare Story, as well as Timeshare Part 1 posted earlier this week.
Talking with the agent from Casablanca Express was a little like the folk story of Stone Soup. Here’s the synopsis: a hungry foreigner comes upon a village with only a pot and no one will share their food with him. So in order to feed himself, he declares that he will make the most delicious soup from water and a large stone. One by one a villager passes by, and he declares that the soup tastes fantastic, but needs something else…like garnish, seasoning, onions, etc. And one by one the villagers give him the ingredients, mostly because they are curious at the foreigner’s ability to make soup out of a stone. This goes on and on and on until he has a complete vegetable soup…with a stone in the bottom. Everything was supplied by the townspeople and nothing but a stone and water was supplied by the foreigner…and yet the people walk away amazed just the same.
Let me tell you, once I figured out that I was helping the Casablanca woman make a stone and some water into vegetable soup, I put a stop to her shenanigans. I was particularly impressed with all of the sneaky ways she and Casablanca Express had concocted to get me to basically pay for the trip myself while simultaneously trying to make me believe that we were getting a free deal. In a moment of true spite, I almost accepted the original deal (option # 1) just to make them pay for everything and to show them that I was not like other people (who supposedly 99% of the time turned it down once they saw what they were getting). Hey, it would have made a great article, right—truck stop gambling extraordinaire?
My Initial Decision
I decided to pay for our own airfare and get the upgrade to a hotel on the strip. It still didn’t feel right to me, but Paul’s birthday was coming up and I had to make a decision. I just so happened to have a free airfare reward with Southwest anyway, so I would just be paying for his ticket. The rep booked us for the Riviera on the strip, gave us a Las Vegas discount card (which accounts for all the buy one get one free offers on restaurants she had told me about—undoubtedly a free promotion they have with a partner), and said that we would get an $82 refund from our $100 upon checking in at the hotel.
Our Final Decision
But then…I looked at the hotel we would be staying at and found that during the weekdays any person could book it for just $27 a night. I looked up the discount card and found that it was super cheap as well. I had just let these people get away with paying something ridiculously cheap like $70 for our 3 days 2 nights all expense trip to Las Vegas. I felt shammed!
Paul’s birthday was on August 6th, so I gave Paul his gifts. One of them would have included the Las Vegas trip, except that he kept pestering me with the details of the trip leading up to his birthday and when I finally broke down and told him everything he said “get our money back, babers!”
I called the woman back from Casablanca and asked for a full refund of our $100. She obliged. Case closed. Las Vegas we will see you another time.
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Article Round-up: The Timeshare Edition
Posted on | August 24, 2010 | 3 Comments
Hello Frugal Confessions Readers!
In light of my timeshare themed week, I’d like to roundup some articles dealing with timeshares and other blogger’s experience with them.
Invest it Wisely shares his timeshare experience in Southeast Asia where he was almost scammed out of his money from a woman with scratch-off cards on a scooter.
Canadian Finance Blog discusses some pros of purchasing Timeshares, as well as purchasing them through other means, such as on eBay. He also talks about fractional RV ownership and how it has similar benefits of Timeshares.
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I have Joined the Yakezie Challenge!
