9-22-08
Wow what an economy. With all these bail outs it's time to get ready for some major inflation headed our way.
I would suggest everybody build a solar food dehydrator or at least buy a food dehydrator. That way you can shop for "discount fruit" such as bananas about to be too ripe and put them in the dehydrator and make yourself some banana chips. Same goes for apples and all kinds of fruit. It's healthy & very cheap.
Dehydrated food stores for long periods of time.
8-29-08
We drove over 500 miles, stayed on the beach front for 2 nights3 days in Galveston, TX, and ate out dinner all for $160. That's what I call a cheap mini vacation.
For families, I can't stress it enough how cheap camping really is. We booked a trip for Galveston State Park which has literally beach front camp sites. The sites ran $20 a night, but we had a coupon for buy 1 night of camping get the 2nd night half off.
We loaded our pop up camper and drove from the Dallas area all the way to the Texas island. It was absolutely beautiful. In fact, since it was mid week, we had a mile in each direction of the beach to ourselves!!!
Most of the money went into gas, $30 for camping, $30 for dinner out. The rest of the food was just our normal food that we packed along.
I love to travel, but the money it costs to travel always took the fun out of it. Hotels are mega expensive for 7 people and often located in not so desirable spots. My wife and I decided long ago to get a camper so that we could stay at beautiful places for dirt cheap. (often $10 to $12 a night). Our requirements were that it must have a toilet, shower, and Air conditioning. We had no idea that we could buy a pop up camper with all those things.
Towing the camper behind our mini van is pretty easy. We get about 19 miles per gallon while towing so it really only drops our MPG by 3 miles per gallon. Not bad, especially considering many people who tow RV's get 10 MPG. Large RV's often get 6 to 8 MPG.
It's very cost effective to camp. I just wish gas was a little cheaper. If this was 1997 at $1 a gallon gas, We would have gone on that trip for $90.... Ahh memories.
The kids had a blast, and we were 60 walking steps from our camp site to the actual water. It was like walking across the beach. Just a fantastic experience. I encourage as many people as I can to buy a pop up camper as well if you want CHEAP family vacations. You can get them pretty loaded out for around $3000 (used) and new for around $10,000.
Ours we bought last year for $6700 which was a 2007 model (current year) that and old couple bought, took home, set it up, decided they didn't want it and returned it. This thing still smelled new in every fashion.
They are great for making memories in, great for cheap vacations, and you get great gas mileage while towing because they are light & low.
8-22-08
I found a great video of a family buying groceries for about 1/2 off.
8-05-08
What can $100 a month in savings mean?
A lot. I'll give one example of just 1 single thing you can do with this.
$100 a month in savings means that you can save more fore retirement. With $100 a month, you can put it into a 401k. Many companies offer a match for whatever you put into your 401k. If you put in $100 and they match with $100, it will give you approximately $300,000 at retirement in 30 years. (I'm 32 now).
If you have a fully paid off home, and can live moderately in your expenses, $30,000 a year should be more than enough. This means that a simple savings of $100 a month put in the right place can equate to nearly 1/3 of a million dollars for retirement. It's very important to save money so you can invest money correctly. In this crazy economy, I'm putting everything into precious metals in my 401k.
8-04-08
Sorry for the delay in the update, I've been real busy lately. Anyway, I figured I'd update on cloth diapers. The experiment is going perfectly. No, it's not "wonderful" but it sure beats overspending at Costco / Sam's club on diapers. We are saving about $37 a month on diapers just for using cloth. We bought some Bumgenius diapers from cottonbabies.com . They wash very well, they are simple to use as regular disposable diapers. I suppose there is just a tat more grossness involved, but not much. Well worth a $37 a month savings.
If you line dry these diapers, they do not stain. They are expensive to get into, but for the months now that we have been using them, they have easily paid themselves off. They are also SUPER durable.
We also tried some "fitted" cloth diapers that we ordered from Wal-mart. They were not nearly as good as these Bumgenius diapers. I'd suggest these to every parent with babies.
7-23-08
Debt is one of the worst things you can do to yourself financially. Yes I know, most people don't have the money to pay up front for their homes, but that's not entirely what I'm talking about here (indirectly which affects the home directly... read on). I'm talking about things like cars, clothing, appliances, vacations... I see people charge up credit cards and make minimum payments to buy these things.
This is one of the worst things that you can do to your pocketbook. I know somebody right now who is paying over $400 a month in interest (not including their home) on regular debt. That's an amazing amount of money. Consider $400 if matched on a 401k by a company could easily be enough for a 30 year old to retire on. Instead they are paying all this money to a rich banker. Doesn't sound like fun to me.
If you are currently in debt, especially on things like cars & credit cards, GET THEM PAID OFF ASAP. Forego / reduce vacations (or do a staycation) if you must. Most importantly, once you have paid everything off, make a savings accounts so that you may pay up front for everything! Yes that means you walk into a car dealership and are able to cut a check for a vehicle without ANY financing.
Consider this, you go to a dealership and find a car for $17,000. After some extensive haggling, you get the price down to around $13500. After tax, title, license and other B.S. that the dealership throws in there, the total comes out to $15000. Let's say you have a great credit score and can put zero down, and get a 9% interest rate.
You will pay $15000 in principal and $2918 in interest! Total price, nearly $18,000. Of course, many don't "think" they feel the interest because they adjust their lives to "payments" and it doesn't feel like it affects you. Think of this though, if you were able to avoid paying the interest, at the end of this loan you would be $2918 richer. Of course, the only way to do this is to be a saver.
$2918 in this case is 1/5th of the price of another car, a nice entertainment setup, new furniture for the house, savings, a NICE vacation. All for the low price of "You used your head and didn't hand the money to the banker". That would be on a simple car purchase. Imagine if it was a nicer car at $25,000+. Imagine also if one would not carry credit card debt.
All in all, imagine if all this savings on interest in typical consumer debt could enable you to pay off your home eventually. What if you took that $2918 and dumped it into a new home loan off your principal? How much can that benefit you? A lot!!
Seriously, if you have a home, get your amortization schedule. The principal and interest varies month to month. Take $2918 and subtract the PRINCIPAL PAYMENTS ONLY out of $2918. How many payments could you remove off your amortization schedule? Well let me show you.
Say you bought a home (in Texas an upper middle class home is $130,000 it varies through the country, but so do wages). Anyway, let's say you were on your 3rd year into the loan and you purchased a vehicle with cash 4 years ago and made a self disciplined savings account of the interest you saved (payed yourself instead of a banker). Now take the amount $2918 and CLICK HERE FOR EXAMPLE OF A 30 Year Home Loan Schedule .
Now, look at the 3rd dark gray section. This represents the 3rd year of the home loan. Now LOOK at the principal. Starting at $122.52 a month!!!! That is all you are paying on the original $130,000 balance at this point. Start with $122.52 a month and start subtracting month by month off the $2918 saved on the car interest. (The next month is to the right and it increases a bit).
Once you don't have enough for another payment out of the $2918, you stop. Basically I got 1 year, 11 months OFF the mortgage. You cross out all the months of your payment. Now look under the principal, THAT IS YOUR INTEREST and YOU CROSS THAT OUT TOO!!!!Mortgage companies HATE it when you do this because they know the reality.... And this is a TRUE reality..... You can keep tens of thousands in your pocket instead of theirs by doing this.
If a person is VERY disciplined, they can save up for this $15,000 car. They pay cash. They make a savings account saving the interest they would have otherwise paid the bank monthly. This person buys the home 2 years after buying the car. Now on the 3rd year of the loan the person dumps 1 year and 11 months of payments. Now if you add all the interest up saved on the loan for 23 months you get. (you won't believe this)
$17,093 in INTEREST SAVINGS ON YOUR HOME!!!!!!!!
Of course you have to continue on paying every month anyway. And you will not see this savings until your last home payment. But it will save you!
That is an INCREDIBLE amount of money saved. It works better at the beginning of mortgages. Most people pay 3x the amount for their homes.
Now go do it again 4 years later. Eat that note away. Get it DONE!
Technically speaking, your home kills you on interest. The very thing that gives us security in this world is the thing that eats us alive.
If any of you aren't tied into anything yet, and you are disciplined, SAVE UP FOR A HOUSE. Even if you have to get a junker at first, do it. You can sell it later and apply the balance to a new home.
The biggest cause of debt is pride messing with ya. The video that inspires me on this thought is from pulp fiction (strong language but classic). It holds so true to debt.
CLICK HERE TO WATCH
7-18-08
Wow what a week. On Monday, we watched several banks fail. This economy is really getting bad. What more incentive to spend less.
When many of us were kids we were taught to "save money". True, you can call it "saving money", but I like to call it "spending less money". By looking for deals, sales, and purchasing the correct ways, you can spend a lot less money on items that you typically use.
I like to theme myself a "frugal yuppie". On some frugality sites on the internet, some of the ideas just seem silly. On one site, I read "to buy 2 ply toilet paper and separate the 1 roll into two rolls". hahahah, I thought it was funny, and I'm sure people do it.
For me, I'd rather buy the good stuff that is soft on the cheeks but for cheap. Buy it in bulk quantity, and use a coupon (try to double it) and use a credit card that will give you 3% off. Then you have soft name brand stuff that works well and you don't have to do anything funky to it.
Spending less money on quality things, that's the premise here. It's about using your brain to expand the quality of your life while pocketing a lot of money. This isn't about being so "frugal" that you work yourself into a poor depressed state. You can live a VERY high quality life on little money while being able to have nice things.
7-14-08
We had a family party this weekend over at our place. We made several cakes, jalapeno poppers, sandwiches (turkey) had chips & hot sauce. We also made some pretty good slushy punch that everybody ate. There was approx 30 people here at the house.
Our total cost for the entire event was $15. Most of it went into the punch & chips. The sandwiches, we made from home made bread, turkey sliced from a huge block we bought at Sam's club, jalapeno's are cheap, and the cheese was all bought in bulk.
Food can be made for incredibly cheap, so long as you buy INGREDIENTS in bulk and make it yourself. Even the icing on the cake was made with 1 stick of butter bought in bulk, cocoa powder bought in bulk, powdered sugar bought in bulk, vanilla bought in bulk, and a bit of milk bought with a coupon. (The organic milk was marked down to $1.49 because it was getting near the date and I used a $1.00 off coupon so the milk was $.49)
The cost for the icing was around $.50 vs. spending $1.89 for the store bought stuff.
Cooking is one of the MOST IMPORTANT things to save a lot of money for your family.
7-09-08
Cheap rechargeable batteries can be bought of Ebay. These NiMH batteries never develop a memory and can be purchased for about the same price as name brand alkaline (regular) batteries. These things will save you a fortune. Be sure to buy them in bulk to get a discount. Also, a good COMPUTER CONTROLLED battery charger is essential to get maximum life and maximum charge out of the batteries.
If you have as many kids toys as I do, or several devices that take batteries, rechargeable are the only way to go.
7-08-08
Wow, food prices have gone crazy lately. Wheat, potatoes, rice, beans, fruit have all gone way up. It's very important in these more straining economic times to be sure to buy in BULK every time you purchase food (if possible).
For us, we never buy any ground beef unless it's 10 or more pounds at a time. Same with flour, rice and beans. We purchase the huge sacks at Sams's club. Be sure to watch for sales on items you use frequently, and buy a lot when they are on sale. Also, watch out for Wal-mart, as they tend not to mark dairy or meat down. Wal-Mart only seems to mark down breads and pastries. Most supermarkets will mark down food that is getting dated, but not bad by all means.
7-7-08
Learning how to do general home repairs can save you a ton of money. This last 4th of July weekend was "fun". The upstairs toilet was clogged. I plunged it, re plunged it to no success. In fact, I stuck to plunging for about 25 minutes.
Next was a pipe snake, I shoved it down the ol' toilet, spun it around and it de clogged. Many people do not know about simple tools such as a pipe snake. They end up buying stuff like liquid plumber and drain-o to unclog drains in showers, sinks and toilets.
A pipe snake will run you about $10 bucks at Home Depot/ Lowes / Sears and can unclog just about anything you can clog. They are easy to use and will save you a lot of money.
7-1-08
Sales can be annoying. Many stores have these "great sale" banners. I notice when I walk in and look up, EVERYTHING in the entire store has a "sale" on every rack / shelf.
Mervyn's for example is notorious for this. Look up the next time you walk into one of their stores, and you will see a "SALE" on every rack of clothing.
That should give you instant warning flags. TRUE sales, are not on EVERYTHING. True sales exist on specific single items or on SPECIAL sale racks that are off to the side. Watch out for fake sales, they usually aren't anything special at all.
6-24-08
Last weekend was an awesome sale at Kohl's dept store. We watched for their 60% off sale. Needless to say, my family bought 13 items of clothing delivered to our door including tax for $81. This included 1 pair of shoes. We found an online coupon for 10% off and Kohl's allows you to run multiple offers together. So we did. After $75 they put "free shipping".
We used Bigcrumbs as well, which means we will be getting 3.6% back, along with the Chase freedom card whcih will give us another 3% back. Both these came off the $81.
A great part of this deal was also that Kohl's ran an offer "Get $10 of Kohl's dollars for every $50 you spend". Sure enough, I recieved an additional $10 coupon with no strings attached. I could go into the store and buy something for $10 and walk out. I will do this next time I go to the grocery store that is RIGHT NEXT to Kohl's so I will spend nothing on gas.
So all in all, If I include an outfit for our two year old that we are going to buy for the $10 coupon we paid the following:
13 articles of clothing. (shirts, pants, jeans)
1 pair of shoes.
14 total items. $81
Average price each item - $5.78
By the way THIS IS INCLUDING TAX.
These are new, name brand items. This is what I mean by "Frugal Yuppie" .
I can't beat that deal at Wal-Mart prices. Thrift stores would have a hard time even comparing with this deal. But on this deal, my stuff is BIG name brands & NEW!
6-17-08
Food prices today have inflated to a 6 month high. It's very important to only buy food in LARGE quantities. Large bags of flour, corn meal, rice, beans can go a long way.
Ground beef at Sam's club is $1.99 per pound for 90/10 lean but you must buy it in 10 pound quantities. We just buy it, cut it up in 1 & 2 pound chunks (estimated) and use commercial plastic wrap (way cheaper & bought at Sam's) and wrap the chunks of meat. Then we stick them in the freezer. We use all we have before we buy more, so the meat never remains in the freezer over 1 month.
On the thought of ground beef, I'll tell all of you that home made hamburger buns are just fantastic. Fresh hot hamburger buns with nice grilled burgers is just fantastic. The buns are very simple to make.
2 cups water
2 3/4 cups of white flour
2 cups of whole wheat flour
1 teaspoon of salt
1/2 cup sugar
1 1/2 tablespoons of yeast
1/3 cup of canola or veggie oil
Knead in bread machine, mixer, or just by hand. You can also add a couple tablespoons of milk. Just knead it up. Heat up your oven for about 1 minute, turn it off. Roll the dough into a ball, put oil in a BIG bowl and roll the dough ball around in it till the bowl has oil all over and the dough as well. Put it in the "warmed oven" for 1 hour. Take it out, punch down the dough. Now the fun part.
Rip off about 1/7 of the dough, roll it into a ball, smash it flat to the roundness like a coaster (but 3/4 inch thick). Do it again till the dough is gone. Put non-stick spray on a cookie sheet, put the smashed buns on there. Cook at 350F. The buns are just great.
They'll cost you about .15 in ingredients for good WHOLE WHEAT buns. Compare that to store bought buns that are $2.50 for the decent ones. PLUS they are fresh, soft, and taste awesome. Makes the burger so much better.
6-16-08
Last weekend, we put up solar shades in our front windows. I had no idea how well these things actually work. The front of our home faces west and is pelted by the sun in the evenings.
Anyhow, we took all the mini-blinds off the window and had the raw glass. I felt like I was baking in a microwave. The heat was coming off that window like crazy. I hung the brackets then hung the shade. Instantly when I pulled the shade down it was apparent that these things WORK!!! I'd say 90% of the heat instantly was repelled out of the room.
Being $10 a piece, these things are completely worth the money. Especially in the summer. These are going to save us even more off our electric bill. (Electric prices are supposed to double this summer)
6-09-08
We have decided that we are going to get a family electric bike. These bikes can go about 20-30 miles per charge and run on a small amount of electricity. They go about 25mph for top speed.
We are just sick of gas prices. No matter how well a vehicle is tuned, the gas just keeps going up and up. Though all the savings advice is great, the bottom line is, if gas keeps getting more expensive, many of us will just have to drive less. A parked vehicle uses NO gas.
So that's where an electric bike comes in. No gas. No insurance. No inspection. They are great for getting around your general area. They are pretty discreet, quiet, and you can ride them on the side walk. I think it would be great to use one of these instead of going the moped / scooter route. If one could use a nice large backpack, there isn't a reason one can't go on "quick trips to the store" on an electric bike.
Sure I would like a big motorcycle, but the way I see it, why give one more dime to the oil companies? Why support big oil even @ 80 mpg. I'd rather just evict them out of my life if possible.
6-05-08
My power company went out of business. Here in Texas they have deregulation and you can pick your own electric company. I was with National Power Company for over a year and they were very very good. I guess greed took them over and they started jacking people's rates up (when rates were on a fixed plan). People bailed out and left. Needless to say they went under.
I went with Gexa power which had very comparable rates.
It's always important to WATCH the price of your KWh on your electric bill. Know how much you are paying. It surprises many people just what 1/2 a cent will do per KWh. That can and will make a difference on your bill.
6-02-08
Buying in bulk is an excellent way to save money. I encourage people often to "feed your family out of 50lb sacks of food". Rice, Beans, Wheat, flour. All of this bought in 50 pounds sacks will save you a virtual fortune.
Since I've learned how to cook bread (really easy) and make more stuff from scratch, we feed our entire family of 7 for about $50 - 70 a week now even with these HIGH food prices. This is because everything, bread, tortillas, nacho chips, noodles.... are all made from scratch. We incorporate plenty of fresh fruit, veggies, and meat as well.
No we don't eat steak every day, but we eat very well and healthy.
If it was just myself and my wife, our food bill would be under $20 a week. I'm NOT kidding either. Look at this cost ratio.
A bag of tortilla chips = $3.49
A 50 pound bag of mesa = $20. 1 pound = bag of tortilla chips. This is $.40 cents of mesa.
Water is basically free (1 cup)
Fry it up in the canola oil fry daddy. On ratio this is about $.30 of the canola use.
This bag of chips cost $.70 instead of $3.49. They are easy to make too. Also, there is no bag to go to the landfill. We just eat them fresh.
Knowing how to cook things will save your family a fortune.
5-29-08
Electric bills are going to be BAD this summer! Watch out! Save as much as you can. My electric bill started adding something called "Fuel factor". It's a sudden $13.66 charge in addition to my usual KWh. I can't get it removed...
Watch your power usage as much as possible to keep those costs down. Also, if your energy is deregulated make sure you are with the cheapest company. In texas, there is a site called powertochoose.org . This site gives you all the companies that can provide power for your home / apartment in your general area.
5-28-08
For people without big families, I think small motorcycles, mopeds and scooters are the way to go. A moped gets over 150 miles per gallon. Scooters do around 100 miles per gallon.
Getting large motorcycles like a Harley Davidson may be nice, but the bike itself will cost you (depending on model) tens of thousands of dollars.
Here is a simple moped. (Who cares what other's think?)
http://www.northerntool.com/webapp/wcs/stores/servlet/product_6970_7684_7684
I just think that would be a fantastic thing to run errands on. The downside is that it uses 2 cycle oil, the upside is that it gets 150MPG. You could even wear a nice back pack and get some containers on the side mounts.
Me, I don't get this option. With 5 kids, I have to just make sure my vehicle is in tip top shape.
5-27-08
I hope everybody had a great Memorial Day.
My wife over the long weekend decided that she wants to take up sewing. Sewing machines now have so many features it's incredible. Some will cut button holes in your fabric and sew around them to strengthen the hole. All kinds of cool stitch patterns can be made.
Now, a lot of clothing sewed from home can indeed look cheesy in today's fashions. My wife knows this and doesn't even want to sew clothing. She wants to take on things like pillows, blankets, quilts, curtains etc. She says that she will perhaps do a few pieces of clothing like little dresses if she gets good enough.
I think this is a great way to save money. Clothing is expensive. I know I don't have to tell anybody that.
Fabric can be expensive too. Just don't buy it from major fabric super stores. Those places are rip offs. Look for fabric warehouses online that sell fabric in bulk. Those places are so much cheaper.
5-21-08
Today I will blog just a bit on the value of the dollar. It's uncertain just how low the value of the dollar will go. If you have savings, the amount of inflation today (gas and many food items have nearly doubled in the last year). I don't have all the answers, because frankly, I'm a working dad, not an economist.
However, there are some things I've researched where you can protect a portion of your savings off the value of the dollar shrinking. One of them is in precious metals. Namely, silver. Though silver does go a slightly up and down in "value" based off the dollar, it relatively remains the same.
We bought some because our savings account was giving us only giving us a 2% interest rate. No good. Especially when we considered gas was going up (seems daily) food was up, electricity was up, EVERYTHING IS UP! The Fed reports 4% inflation, but I really think it's more like (at least) 15-25%. The proof of that reflects in all bills.
I think this is because the value of the dollar has dropped. If it continues, which I think it will ;o( it is important to safeguard your money vs. inflation.
Silver is a commodity. It can be exchanged anywhere in the world for any currency. It's very liquid and will hold it's value unlike the dollar has been doing.
There is a good site http://www.apmex.com where you can purchase silver on line. It has live charts to silver value, and prices are all updated to reflect the new value. Right now while the dollar is shrinking, I find it to be an excellent investment. No, it won't make you rich, but it will help you not lose money to inflation.
Silver has held value for some time now. Even Jesus was betrayed for it. Silver has been around a lot longer than the Federal Reserve dollar. That means it's steady and valuable.
5-20-08
Where will oil stop, nobody knows. I've even heard over seas rumors of $200 a barrel that would spike prices to around $7 a gallon here. I have no idea if the economy would survive that.
Needless to say, in these times of recession it's vital for everybody to use as little fuel as possible. Keep your vehicles in TIP TOP shape.
1) Over inflate tire pressure to 10lbs over the max.
2) Keep your oil clean. Change it if it is dirty.
3) Be sure your air filter is new and clean.
4) Drive slower, accelerate slower, look ahead for red lights so you can coast to stops mostly instead of using your brakes. Drive 5-7 MPH under speed limit in the right lane.
Those are the top 4 things for good MPG in your vehicle.
Other important things.
1) Nice new spark plugs.
2) Plan your trips out so you can drive as little as possible. Do errands for the week on commutes. Try not to make any special trips.
3) Walk / Bike if you can. I can't much because I'm in the suburbs and it's pretty far from everything, but if you can that's great.
I don't mean to blog so much on your vehicles, gas, or MPG, but gas is just out of control. That is a great place to save money is in your fuel consumption.
5-15-08
Watch out for "small charges" like ATM charges. Never use the ones outside of your bank. Those things literally bilk you for money.
A good trick is if you need cash money and are out of town or in an unfamiliar area is go into a Wal-Mart and buy something with your ATM card and simply select "Less Cash". It doesn't matter if it's a .10 cent item, you can withdraw well over $100 for free.
ATM's often charge you $1.50 to $2.00 then sometimes your bank will hit you up for a fee. There are banks that refund the ATM fees as well, but those banks are few and far between.
5-14-08
Today I'll just suggest a small way to save electricity. Re-use bath/shower towels once or twice. With 5 children, my spouse and myself, we would go through a ton of towels. Towels are one of those things that take the longest try dry hence running your 220v dryer longer.
If you re-use towels once or twice (just hang them up after you dry on the towel rack) you will save a good deal off each electric bill. It's simple, and easy. You are clean anyway, and when you dry it's really just clean water. Let the towel dry out on the rack & reuse it some.
5-13-08
A great way to save money is learning some how to work with your hands. Don't be afraid to attempt to fix the dryer, washer, dishwasher. Disposals change out easily.
The internet can give great tips on repairs. Be inquisitive. Look it up. Don't find things to seem impossible.
I changed a resistor on a dryer that took about 10 minutes once that would have cost about $200 for somebody to come out and change. The part cost about $5.
I'm writing this to inspire myself to fix my dishwasher. It has two "spinny" things, one for the top rack, one for the bottom. The top rack isn't getting clean at all and the bottom works perfect. I think I narrowed down the problem because the bottom "spinny" thing wasn't very tightly screwed down. I think that caused excess water pressure to be lost to go to the upper "spinny" thing. I'll update on this one.
5-12-08
I was pumping gas on Friday and looked up at an add for a carton of Marlboro cigarettes. It dawned on me that I never emphasized much on this web site how much cigarettes cost people. They were $35 a CARTON! I could not believe that people spend money on these things. Not only are they bad for your health, they will cost you tens to hundreds of thousands of dollars for a lifetime of smoking.
So of course, I need to officially state it.... DO NOT SMOKE! You will save yourself a fortune, and your health. If you are a smoker right now, please realize this and stop. You will be giving your body & wallet the best break it's had in a LONG time.
5-8-08
"Economy Stimulus Checks" - Yes I left it in quotes intentionally - are arriving to many Americans right now. I would encourage many of you to use these to get out of debts. Nothing is worse for saving money than having debt.
Debt, especially consumer credit card debt comes at premium interest rates. They are specifically designed to keep you in debt to the credit card companies for as long as possible.
The only way to use credit cards is to get the rewards from them. ALWAYS pay them off every month. NEVER have cards that charge any monthly fees for anything.
5-7-08
Once again gas is on the rise. I would suggest to anybody that has over a 1 hour commute to work to look into a Toyota Prius or a Honda Insight. Often people find if they can offset the cost of the gas with one of these vehicles, it's like picking up a FREE CAR.
I know a guy who was spending $500 a month in gas for his pickup truck to get to work. He bought a prius. After trade in, he owed a payment of $300 a month. Now his gas bill is around $125-135. It's basically like he picked up a nice free car & gave himself $75 a month if you add the gas with his payment and take away his high gas bill.
DO the math, how much gas mileage do you get? Do you drive enough to offset the price of a NEW CAR. Many don't think they can afford it until they look at their current gas mileage, the price of gas, and how much the car costs.
5-6-08
I found a FANTASTIC way to save on your phone bill.
There is a device called magic jack. http://www.magicjack.com/1/index.asp
This device costs $20, and $20 a YEAR note a YEAR (not month) for unlimited local, long distance nationwide calling. It works like voip, or similar to vonage. You get a FREE phone number, free voicemail, free caller ID. You can pick area codes from your general location in the United States.
This is unreal. I've never heard of unlimited calling for $20. It goes right off your internet connection. YOU PLUG ANY LAND LINE phone into it and it works just the same.
This would be GREAT for cable modem users. DSL would depend if their DSL carrier required them to have a phone for discount.
5-5-08
Happy Cinco De Mayo!
Well, we do not have any Mexican in our blood, but we sure like Mexican food. Every May 5th we enjoy having a nice Mexican fiesta. Even though we are Irish, the Irish find any reason to party!
Home made tortillas are extremely good and cheap. We'll probably end up making a ton flour and corn tortillas for quesadillas, enchiladas, & fajitas. We'll fry some up for some chips, and we'll also fry some up for some elephant ears. (elephant ears are sliced in 1/4 section flour tortillas fried up. Then you put cinnamon and sugar on them).
We won't go too sparing on the sour cream, cheese, or any of that. However, beans are pretty cheap, and certainly refried beans are always great with Mexican food.
I'm sure after all the cost of beef, chicken, cheese, sour cream, and salsa, our big celebration with us (family of 7) and a couple relatives will cost about $5-6 bucks. Making your own tortillas can certainly save money. They are great too because they are in so many Mexican dishes.
Have a great day!
5-1-08
Wow, still people amaze me with how they drive. There is a street where I live that has 4 total intersections with lights. People speed up fast then stop at the next light and stop. They speed up again, just to stop again at the next light.
I slow poke my way through. When the first light turns green, I accelerate very slowly and drive very slowly to the next light. By the time I get there it turns green. I slowly pass the jack rabbit driver until he/she speeds on past me to be stopped at the next light. I pass them again, then they do it again.
Little do they know, they are killing their gas mileage per gallon. Stopping and beginning to accelerate burns the most gas that you can. This goes for anytime you go from a complete stop to moving. IT BURNS THE MOST GAS!
So, try not to ever come to a complete stop if possible. Try to time lights out in your area. Look way ahead for red lights.... If you see one, let off the gas asap. Let your car slowly slow down (preserves your brakes too). More often than not, the light turns green and you can very slightly depress the gas and get your speed back up.
You will save A LOT of $ per year driving like this.
4-30-08
Direct paperless billing is a great way to save with many companies. My electric company, called "National Power Company" out of Houston offers a .5 cent discount per kilowatt hour for direct billing.
Sure you have to give them your credit card number for automatic billing, so I just give them my credit card that gives me 3% back.
With all the power reduction that we have done, my bills are $150 at dead summer and dead winter. During this time of year, the spring, I see $80 bills. The .5 difference can be about $5 bucks off. Put that up with 3% this time of year from credit card savings and I'll have around $7.40 off the bill in total.
So truly, my already cheap electric bill will be $80 - $2.40 from the 3% on credit card and $5 from the savings of .5 kilowatts.
$72.60 will be the approx electric bill. Again, I have an all electric house a wife and 5 kids. There are numerous things in my savings on electric bill that will help you to save on your electric bill too!
4-29-08
A great way to watch how much electricity something uses is a called a "killawatt" meter. It's a fairly cheap little tool that plugs into your home outlet. It has a plug on the front of it that you plug your electronics or appliances into.
The button on the far right tells you how many kilowatt hours your appliance / electronics are using. You basically leave your device on for about 2-3 minutes and take the number that you read off the meter. Grab your electric bill, and see how much they charge for a KWH (kilowatt hour). Usually it's around .13 cents.
It's a great tool for auditing your electricity usage in devices. Some things even when off take up power even. It all adds up.
People often look like they are going to faint when I show them my electric bill with 2 adults and 3 kids in an all electric house being around $100. Audit everything, change light bulbs to CFL's (corkscrew ones) and you'll see a big difference.
4-28-08
Yesterday I scored big off a discount rack at Kroger's. They had this pasta sauce that was imported from Italy. The sauce was completely organic and had tomatoes from Italy. The original price for this sauce (I kid you not) was $9.99 per jar. I couldn't even read a lot of the jar because it was all written in Italian (other than the ingredients).
Well I suppose most people think that $9.99 for 32oz of pasta sauce is too much. I certainly do. But on the discount rack due to lack of sale, they were marked down to $2.00 per jar.
I bought all of them.
I now have about 17 jars that would have cost me $170 but I only paid $34. We are set for pasta for some time now.
I stress constantly to buy in quantity when there is good deals on discounts. Often there are multiples of the same type of items on these discount shelves. BUY ALL OF THEM! Stock up while it's cheap, you'll use it. But watch out, that doesn't mean buy everything on the rack..... Don't buy just because it's on sale. Only buy if you have used a particular item before. We eat a lot of pasta, so the sauce was just right!
I could pay $2.00 for a jar of generic pasta sauce, but I paid $2 for about the highest quality sauce (Organic made in Italy) you can get. The sell by date is in 08/2010. We'll put away 17 jars easy by then. It tastes great!
4-25-08
Wal-mart is a terrible store to shop for groceries. They almost never mark anything down, nor do they have dented can sales. If milk is dated, it remains dated until they throw it away.
Stores like Kroger, are excellent, as they understand that people sometimes enjoy buying dated things at a discount.
To save a lot of money with a family, I suggest everybody buy dated meat and freeze it. I suggest dented cans because who cares, you are going to recycle the can anyway. I suggest dated organic milk, because it outlasts even fresh "hormone" milk in the stores. You can even use coupons on some dated things.
Yesterday I bought the following for $16.88
4 gallons of organic milk
5 pounds of (not old but ripe) organic bananas
3 pounds of beans
2 pounds of lentils
1 dozen organic eggs (dated marked from $2.99 to $1.49) plus I had a coupon off a box of dated cereal I've bought previously for $1.00 off. I bought organic free range eggs for $.49 cents. Amazing.
We went home and cooked 8 loaves of banana bread (with low sugar). They took up all the eggs and most of the bananas. The kids are gobbling this stuff up for snacks and for sides at meals. We are giving some away to relatives. We'll have banana bread for 1.5 weeks all for the nice low price of $.49 cents for the eggs, $2.00 for the bananas. So for $2.50, fresh home made no preservative banana bread every day for 1.5 weeks for 5 kids. Not a bad deal at all!
The bread was simple to make too and is delicious! The only problem with it is since I am 32, I don't want to gobble too much of it myself because I won't burn it off like the kids.
4-23-08
I've found more often than not, it's not wise these days to actually "Shop around for gas". The other day while filling up at a gas station, a man stopped his car and asked if I knew where a "Murphy USA" was. (Wal-Mart gas station). I told him the directions although the gas station was 2 miles away. I also let him know that the gas at Murphy USA was indeed cheaper but only about 3 cents cheaper per gallon.
I let him know that a SUV like he was driving that got about 16 miles per gallon would cost him 1/8th a gallon of gas to get there.
At the prices today, $3.50 a gallon 1/8th is .43 cents. Most SUV's have an 18 gallon tank. That basically means that this guy would save .03 cents per 18 gallons on a fill up. This means his savings would seemingly be .54 cents vs. the station I was at. However, it would cost him .43 cents just to get there. This means his real savings is .11 cents.
Now, I didn't include the fact that he would have to sit through about 4 lights, fight traffic, and spend at least 10 minutes to get there.
In reality this guy not taking my advice, just shot himself in the foot. He probably ended up spending 15 cents more (after lights) and bought "cheaper gas" than that from a major gas station.
Well big deal..... I guess.... It's just some ways people try to save doesn't make "cents" (ok that wasn't funny).
I've even witnessed people DRIVE AROUND looking for cheap gas. To me that's the epiphany of dumb. Why on Earth would somebody do that? Any time your vehicle is on, get to your destination with as short of a route as possible. If this means you have to pay 5 cents more for gas then DO IT! It won't save you to go out of your way for gas.
4-22-08
Backyard gardens are always a GREAT thing. They not only provide you with a bit of cheap food, but the kids also have fun playing in the dirt. It's also nice to teach them something natural and "Earthy".
We bought some discount lumber at Home Depot (At the back of the lumber area) and made some raised garden beds. We filled them with dirt and cow manure. Right now we have tomatoes, broccoli, cucumbers (for pickles later), cayenne peppers and jalapeno peppers. My plan is to make some salsa, pastas, pickles, and stuffed jalapeno peppers with all this. Plus I can trade a bit at a local farmers market and get some store credit (not much but just to show the kids).
I put chicken wire around all the beds unless they were peppers to keep the bunnies out. Wild jackrabbits don't like the taste of peppers :o) . Here are some pictures of two of the garden beds. The chicken wire can be done real loose. Just about all small animals (including dogs) HATE the feel of chicken wire and will not cross it as a border.
4-21-08
Last weekend, I ran into a great deal at the store. We like to buy organics, but of course, we wait until the manager marks things down that is getting dated. Anyway, there was an organic brand of honey nut cheerios that was marked down from $4.85 for a box to $2.79. Usually, I would have not bought it at these prices. But this time I noticed on the back of the box, 5 coupons for $1.00 other miscellaneous items. The items included organic milk, eggs, fruit, veggies, and organic cereal. (We bought all 30 boxes of cereal)
I will use ALL of these coupons! This will save us $150 from the coupons. We use all those products. Hopefully we can buy these items on mark down on the same little close out shelf. Some things, we may be able to pick up for a couple of cents, or perhaps even free!
Always.... ALWAYS watch for coupons inside of boxes of the things you buy!
Also, always try to have some reserve cash so that when something you use often is on a good sale, you can buy in bulk. 30 boxes @ $2.79 was $83.70. I'm not worried, the boxes still had about 8 months before the sell by date, and my 5 little "gobblers" will take care of all 30 boxes in 8 months with no problem.
4-17-08
Wow, gas just seems to go up, up, and up! It's really important to keep your car in tip top shape at all times right now. Along with a tire pressure check today, I'm going to purchase some new spark plugs and put them in this weekend. Hopefully they'll help up the gas mileage just a little bit. Heh, mine have about 100,000 miles on them!
Also, be sure you have clean oil! Oil can cause you to get much less performance in your engine that will hinder gas mileage. Make sure your air filter is clean too!
4-16-08
There is a WONDERFUL automatic dishwasher detergent that I would love to share with you. No, you can't really buy it.... But you can make it for PENNIES on the dollar.
It's a very simple process.
1 part Borax
1 part baking soda
That's it. Just mix up a batch and use in the little compartment on your dishwasher. You can get a mega sized container of baking soda at Sam's club, and a huge boxes of borax at Wal-Mart.
The benefits are:
- inexpensive
- no harsh chemicals
- does not emit chlorine gas like other commercial detergents
- effective sanitizer
- effective stain remover
- effective water softener
- environmentally-friendly (phosphate-free)
I hope everybody can save some time, and the environment using this detergent.
4-15-08
I found a great way to save money making your own yogurt! Every person in my family loves yogurt. It's a daily feeding frenzy here at the house on the stuff. Plain white yogurt is not only good for you, but great for your teeth too!
Yogurt is really just bacteria culture in milk. That's about it.
What I do is take skim milk. I put in how ever many cups I want to make. Let's say for example 7 cups of yogurt. I put the cups of milk in a pan and turn up the heat.
With a thermometer, I heat the milk to 180F. Then I take it off the heat.
I let it cool between about 100F to 110F. Next I add 1 tablespoon of yogurt per cup of skim milk. In my example, 7 tablespoons of yogurt. (You can add flavor here too).
I stir it up, let it sit for about 1 minute, then pour it into some sterile jars with lids. I close the jars, and put them in a large pan of hot tap water. I put the lid on the pan with the jars inside, and put it in a dark closet.
4 hours later I come back and viola, nice yogurt!
Why pay 3.99 for a larger tub when I can make the same for about $.75? It tastes great too! Just be sure to save enough yogurt for your next batch!
4-14-08
One super cheap way to clean is with vinegar. This stuff makes a lot of commercial cleaners look bad. It's simple, cheap, and very easy to work with. Also, it does not contain toxic material. Sometimes I worry that the young ones will get into the cleaners and poison themselves. Not so with vinegar.
Here is a link to a site that talks all about cleaning with vinegar.
http://www.vinegartips.com/cleaning/
4-10-08
The Rat Hole Money
Last night several tornadoes moved through the north Texas area. It was about 3 am and the tornado sirens were going off like crazy. We took cover and everything was fine. However, there were huge gusts of wind with the storm of about 75 MPH. We had some fence damage, a few broken limbs on trees and our bird bath fell over and broke.
This looks like a job for Rat Hole money!
What is Rat Hole Money?
Well, it's a term (not sure where it came from) where you have a little hidden spots or spaces (Like a rat would make) where every now and then you just throw some cash. Have 10 bucks in your wallet? Throw it in there. Get a couple bucks back at the store, stick it in a different rat hole. I think Rat Hole money is honestly more of a guy thing..... Not sure... But most women I have told about it think it sounds manish.
Anyhow, It's great because I'll need to get some concrete glue for the bird bath and a couple new fence posts. I just opened up the Rat Hole and found about $90 in there. Well more than I would need.
Rat Hole money is also termed "small rainy day money". It's just for little jams that life presents to you. It's stuff you can use without using your "main money".
Other times I've used Rat Hole money on:
Broken faucet on bathroom sink
Huge puncture on one of our tires
Doctor visit deductibles and co pays
They are best rarely tapped, but really nice when you would rather not touch your main bank account for something that rarely happens.
4-09-08
Credit, it's such an incredible word. It seems very promoted today that one must have good credit. Let me do everybody a favor and call it what it really is. "Debt Points". It's the amount of DEBT that one can acquire at what interest rate.
Truly, the only way to win using credit is to take benefits from it. Get those cards that give you 3% - 5% off certain purchases with no annual fees. Pay them off monthly and get a nice discount in life.
Otherwise, I'm watching some of my friends and family use credit like crazy and basically getting ripped off by banks. It's very important while you save money to always be sure that you have all your debts paid if possible. I know in the realm of housing, most of us don't have a full amount to pay cash for a house. It's not what I'm talking about.
I'm talking about those credit cards that will make you pay 12-25% interest annually. Pay those things off! Get out of that type of debt immediately.
It's pretty simple to use benefit credit cards to an extreme advantage. Just be ABSOLUTELY sure to pay them off or else you get interest charged which is like negative savings.
4-08-08
With a new estimate on gas peaking this summer at $3.60 according to Yahoo news, it will mean that people's pockets are really going to be getting tight. I have found that often it helps to use a few common sense methods to reduce your gasoline bill. I have a section off to the left "ways to save on gasoline", however, I would like to add just a small smidget of advice beyond that.
Make a list of the things you need & plot your course.
If you have a detailed list of item / things you need (or need to do) you can plot your course around these things. It really does help. You won't find yourself doubling back in your car. Consider that red lights often take 45 seconds to 1 minute while your car is running. Try to plot courses around red lights.
Make "future lists". Do you have a project next weekend? How about run by Home Depot while you are near the post office for example. Go ahead and buy the supplies for next weekends projects. This will not only save you time, but it will save you a lot of fuel in the long run. This does require some organization and brain use, but I think any of us can handle it.
This past weekend I realized that by doing this I saved probably about 45 minutes of driving time and 45 minutes of my vehicle running.
-UPDATES
Ways to save on gas
4-07-08
With the economy getting pretty rough, some saying recession, some saying almost recession, it's important for each and every one of us to eliminate needless expenses in our lives. Every couple of months, I do a home audit of sorts on myself. I like to track just about where every cent goes and to whom/where.
It's important to do this! Even if you think you know where all your money is going, it surprises me to find that little monthly expenses add up. For instance, on our water bill, the city was over charging us about $10 a month on the sewer part of the bill. This doesn't show up in the total, it just is in fine print well under the total amount. Well I called and they reduced the sewer by $10 a month.
Doesn't seem like much, but still, just from one phone call, we were able to save the family $120 a year just on sewer alone.
Be sure to check EVERY BILL you get. Be sure to watch every single thing you spend money on at the store. IMPLUSE ITEMS ARE A BIG FAT NO NO!!! I'm talking about the gum / candy / cokes / magazines they put right there at the cash register. These are VERY highly priced items that the stores use to lure you to just "BUY NOW REAL QUICK" at a "Cheap" price. We see gum, we see $.79 cents and it's like what's $.79 cents?
Of course, you can go to Sam's club buy that gum in bulk for about $.25 cents a pack. It's really amazing how much impulse items can add up to.
So if one could eliminate impulse items and small charges on bills you can save a TON of money. Consider things like lowering your cell phone plan to the next level down. Do you really need texting? I personally find texting VERY dumb and annoying some of you probably like it though, and you may find voicemail annoying which I like. Just be sure to reduce your bills with things you don't like.
More features isn't always worth it!
4-03-08
Today I updated the Ways to save on your electric bill page. I included a photo installation of my water on demand. I did this about 1.5 years ago and have not had 1 single regret yet. It still saves us about $50 a month on our electric bill! I included some descriptions as well.
Enjoy!
-UPDATE
Ways to save on your electric bill
4-02-08
Freecycle is a great way to get things for free in your area. It's a community based web site where people in your general vicinity give stuff away that they don't want. I obtained a free wheel barrel for some future projects that I have coming up.
It really was wonderful. There was an older woman who couldn't use a wheel barrel that just had it sitting around. Instead of me going to the store needing to purchase one, she simply gave it to me.
I suggest everybody sign up with freecycle. It's 100% free and really works out nice for everybody.
Now I'll be able to mix up some concrete for some of my future projects of a "free" brick oven and a patio extension without having to fork out $50 for a wheel barrel.
4-01-08
This is no April Fool's joke... But did you know that there are numerous satellites for satellite TV that you can get for free? I'm serious, there are many channels that a person can get absolutely for free. You can do it with a satellite receiver called a Free to Air. You need about a 3 ft. dish, a motor, and you can get all kinds of stations from all over the world absolutely for free.
We have enjoyed having this for quite some time now. Sure it's a bit expensive to get into (about $200) but after that we never needed cable or satellite pay service again. I can't tell you how many times we turned on those pay TV services and found nothing good on anyway. We'd literally dump about $75 a month and there wasn't a single thing on.
I bought the Free to Air satellite system, installed the dish, now we get many channels absolutely for free. They are different stations than you would get with cable, but they are still pretty interesting. There are a lot of stations from all over the world. I saw a version of what seemed to be a "River dance" like program but it was in India with music etc. It was real well done and I enjoyed it very much. All for free.
Here are some links for free to air. Just check out all these channels you can get for FREE!
http://www.lyngsat.com/freetv/United-States.html
Now as for the receiver and dish you will need both.
You can buy these at ebay or somewhere like this http://www.freetoairdish.com/
A bit more info on Free to Air http://www.bealenet.com/~jimsat/free_to_air.htm
I hope that this type of TV can work for you and your family. WE have found some excellent children's programming on Free to Air satellite. It also saves us about $75 a month to have it.
3-31-08
I hope everybody had a great weekend!
While I was mowing my lawn last weekend, I happened to glance over at the electric meter spinning like crazy. This means that my home was in the process of using a lot of power and kilowatt hours. I was curious to see what was causing this so I went inside real quick. My wife had turned on the electric dryer. Ah ha! That was it. No problemo.
We use our electric dryer for CLOTHING ONLY. All our towels, dish towels, and awesome cloth diapers get hung out on the line to dry.
Since the motto of this entire site is to be a frugal yuppie, we found that clothing dried outside does really get a slight funny smell and also they get faded / feel a bit more scratchy. Since one must wear clothes for long periods of time, we decided to simply wash and dry our clothing in the normal manner. Our washer is a tromm, one of the few things we bought that was outrageously expensive. It was worth every penny. It has a high speed spin cycle. In fact normal spin cycles are about 425 rpm, but this machine does a whopping 1320 RPM. This makes the clothing come out "barely damp" so the dryer (the big energy hog) only takes about 15-20 mins to dry clothing.
Still though every electric dryer (no you aren't doing much better $ wise with gas dryers either) uses a TON of power. The shorter the dryer runs the cheaper your electric bill will be.
We have 5 children, and we use an abundance of towels, dish towels, and our youngest is in cloth diapers. We allow all of these to be line dried. The towels, simply because they are only used in short brief moments, and the diapers because the sun brings out extra whiteness in them.
This saves us needing to use our dryer about 40% of the time. It really does equate to big money savings in the long run. In my estimation, it's about $10 off a month on our electric bill. It's nice to hang stuff outside too. It's a break during the day just to go outside. It's green too, saves power plants from burning more carbon in the air.
3-26-08
I made some home made spaghetti noodles last night. I used organic eggs with organic wheat ground flour. It made excellent noodles and they were organic and healthy. The total price (organic eggs are expensive) was about $1.00 to make about 24oz worth of these noodles.
Spaghetti bought in stores is about $1.00 per 12oz package. So basically we bought our quantity of noodles for half the price. The difference is that ours was fresh, organic, and healthy along with being half the cost.
It did take a bit of time, but the flavor was so much better. It was also nice to watch our toddler chomp them down and know what she was eating. Our pasta maker worked very well for this. You can get those pretty cheap too.
3-24-08
Easter was great! We hosted a small family get together here at our house. 7 adults came so in total there was 9 adults. There were also 5 children who all went Easter egg hunting. I served hamburgers, fries, and dessert.
Here is the neat part, everything was home made. I made home made candy, home made buns for the burgers. In total, including the charcoal, the burger "fixings" and all the meat bought at Sam's club (bulk pre weight 1 pound patties each) I cost me about just about $20 total.
That price just seems amazing to me, because my wife and I buying hamburgers for ourselves after tip costs $20 if we go out to eat. Now, this is for 14 total people all eating 1 pound hamburgers grilled... Fries.... Fixings.... It's amazing how much you can save by just learning how to cook and buy in bulk.
3-20-08
I found a neat way to make home made cheese.
Get 1 gallon of milk. Heat it up to 190F. Put 1/4 cup of lemon juice in it. Turn off the heat and let it sit for ten minutes. On top of the milk it will curd up to about 3-4 cups of cheese! It's really neat to do. It's great if you have some milk that is about to go bad and you need to do something with it. This type of cheese is called "farmers cheese".
Don't let that milk go bad if there is something good you can do with it.
3-19-08
Home made tortilla making is going absolutely wonderfully. I'm truly shocked at how simple it is since I started doing it. It did take a bit of practice, but now that I have it down, I can make an entire large batch of tortillas for about fifty cents. They taste absolutely fantastic and the kids gobble them up as if they have never eaten before. Sometimes it seems as soon as they come off the griddle they vanish out of the tortilla warmer!
Sure tortillas are pretty cheap in the store, but why pay $2 for tortillas when you can make 100 times better fresh tortillas at home for $.50. The value & quality of these tortillas is far more than $2.
Sometimes when saving money, it's important to look at the real value of the things you are doing. Especially when it comes to food. Home made bread, noodles, tortillas and such are so much better fresh, cost less than if you bought them, and the overall value far outweighs what you'd buy in the store. Plus it will educate your children with cooking.
Things like saving energy and water will help the environment, save you money, and teach your children how to live a greener life and find the Earth as a precious blessing. These things to me outweigh the money any day, but it's nice to save the money too!
3-18-08
I was watching my son wash his hands this morning. Being the little potty training graduate that he is, he enjoys NICE LONG hand "washes"... Yeah RIGHT! He likes to play in the water. I was giving some thought to it, why is it that we don't use the gray water from the sink drains to fill the reservoir of the back of our toilets?
When we get up and are done with our business, we flush. The reservoir empties and sends it all down the "magical hole" where all the potty goes. Then we walk over to the sink, turn it on, get soap and wash our hands. Well all that sink water just goes down the drain. (Which leads to the same "magical hole" (That's what the kids call it for some reason).
So I got to thinking, "How much do I really care about the quality of the water in the toilet reservoir"? Honestly, NOT MUCH. So long as it flushes the toilet and is not completely disgusting water I really don't care.
I know in prisons they use those toilet sink combos for the same reason. However, most of us tend to like our homes to not look or feel like prisons. So, I'm considering making a discrete fill system from normal sink to toilet reservoir. This could potentially save the Earth over 4000 gallons of water a year just in my home alone. If I could combine this with a dual flush toilet (The fancy ones that flush half the water for #1 and full for #2) my family could probably save the earth nearly 8000 to 9000+ gallons of water a year.
If we put on water saving shower heads that only use 3/4 a gallon of water per minute, I think my family could save the Earth 20,000 gallons a year... Interesting.
It would also cut my water bill & sewer bill in half. It would go from $70 a month to $35. I know for a fact that we would never even notice the difference in our water usage too.
So basically, doing this weekend warrior project (probably 1 weekend of work) would cost about $20 or so, 12 hours of work, would save my family $420 a year in water and 20,000 gallons that the Earth would not have to waste on us.
-Updates
Ways to save on your water bill
3-17-08
Happy St. Patrick's Day!!!!
Like any holiday, the stores seem to "exploit" in ways simple holidays. Green balloons, hats, candy, green cookies.
We made Irish Soda bread with raisins and cooked up soma calcannon (Spinach, potatoes, butter, salt, onions, cabbage mixture). We all had a load of fun talking about St. Patrick's day.
Our entire celebration of this holiday (which we love) cost about $1.75 in ingredients. We find it more fun on the holidays to celebrate with each other rather than needing frills that stores would like you to think you need. We also have a couple of freeware folk Irish songs that we played that were not copyrighted that you can download and burn to CD's / use on MP3 players.
It has been a real fun day, and all for the low price of $1.75
3-14-08
I'm considering to start posting numerous photographs on the web site of some of the projects I've completed and am working on. Being the father of 5 children on a limited budget is often a challenging thing. I definitely want to share some of my strategies with everybody and put a more human (not just text) feel to it. Photos for me help bring humanity and more "real life" into a web site.
I think things like water on demand installations for example seem tough. But it was really simple in all respects. Time consuming yes, but simple. Photographs may be a help to many people who are more visual like myself.
Saving money is something I would like to help every person with! I feel that photographs may be a great benefit to everybody. Have a great weekend!
3-13-08
Craigslist is an excellent place for you to save a ton of money. It's like a free online classifieds service. It covers every "larger" city in America. You can find stuff for free, barters, and at incredible discounts.
I've traded and have bought numerous things through this site with good luck each time. It's excellent for buying supplies to build projects. For instance, I built a solar heater from some sheet metal I bought through them. The sheet metal was at a $100 discount per sheet.
It's amazing what you can find on that site. I encourage everybody to check it out before you buy or build anything big.
3-12-08
A large outdoor mall is opening near my home. The stores are all pretty upscale and expensive. It is a bit inconvenient to be real as I typically do not shop at Dillard's, Macy's and those types of stores to have them so close. There are a few restaurants and outdoor amusements for the kids.
Needless to say, we probably won't be using it too much. I do not like paying a jacked up premium for the things I buy (If you could not tell that already). The free things like the park and water fountains (shooting from the ground) will be fun for the kids, however, we probably won't spend much money their.
My biggest hope is some store, restaurant, or fast food joint will serve up cheap soft serve ice cream cones. (such as McDonald's) That way we can take the kids for an outing and pay probably $3.50 for some ice cream and a run to the outdoor park located at this outdoor mall. That's a pretty cheap "treat" and fun for the family that would probably last a couple hours.
3-11-08
Gardening is a great way to save money. It is also incredibly healthy to eat your own organic fruits and veggies. I've found a great web site that has plans to build a CHEAP greenhouse out of PVC pipes and plastic. It's PVCplans.com . I think it would be a wonderful thing to have a greenhouse namely because it makes gardening way easier. I'm contemplating actually building this. I'd love some input from my readers if they would like me to blog build this with photographs. My email is daddymorebucks@daddymorebucks.com.
Greenhouses also allow you to extend your growing seasons dramatically plus it will keep many types of bugs out.
3-10-08
Gas is ready to whoop our country bad. People are estimating $4 a gallon if not more. My suggestion to everybody is use 3% to 5% off gas cards AND accelerate nice and slow. Accelerate down hills and coast up hills as much as possible.
Never do "jack rabbit" starts. This wastes your gas thus reducing your over all MPG. Also I would suggest everybody start making shopping lists and "out and about" lists so that you can quickly (mentally) plan your routes and stops for the least amount of driving.
3-7-08
Cloth diapers are going great! I thought I would just give an update. They are so much better than those standard ones they sell at Wal-Mart. They were expensive up front, but since disposable diapers have nearly doubled in price over the last couple years, these things are a true blessing. They are fitted with elastic and vel-cro. They are simple to clean and wash.
I would suggest every parent with a baby give these a try. They are great quality and will save a fortune in the long run.
3-5-08
A Dillard's store just opened up near my home. I walked in of course expecting to be outraged by the prices in the store. I was not only outraged, I nearly had a conniption fit. They wanted to charge $125 for a polo type shirt.
The way I see it is keeping up with the Joneses is vanity. Keeping up with the Joneses at Dillard's is outright stupid. There is no reason for anybody to throw their money away like that. Dillard's is absolutely outrageous.
3-4-08
Fight inflation with inflation! That's right, fight the rising price of gas by checking the inflation in your tires. Did you know that you can actually boost your vehicles miles per gallon (mpg) by 5-10 mpg just by having properly inflated tires?
Be sure to go off the side wall of your tire for the maximum PSI. I risk it a bit and inflate my tires a bit over the PSI just to pull off a couple more mpg's. Some people go literally crazy and inflate 10-15 over their max pounds per square inch (PSI). I usually just go about 3-4 over tops.
It really does work and it will save you a lot of money to do. It's simple and will really be cost effective in the end. You could save somewhere between $6-10 per gas tank in ratio to miles driven just by doing this. Usually even more with these terrible gas prices!
3-3-08
The price of pizza is supposed to triple over the next year due to the wheat shortage. So I will share my simple recipe for pizza crust.
2 cups of water, put 1 cup in the microwave for 1 minute to heat it up. Combine the water.
4 tablespoons of brown sugar.
2 tablespoons of yeast. Stir and let it sit for 10 mins.
Add 1 once of olive oil
1 teaspoon of salt
3 3/4 cup of flour. You can sub in whole wheat flour on 2 cups if you want.
Knead in a mixer for a few mins and let rise for 1 hour.
Roll out, let it sit, roll out again.
Roll it on a pizza stone with a little bit of corn meal spread around on it. Add ingredients such as sauce, topping cheese.
This way, you can make about 2 large pizzas for about $3 including everything. 2 large ordered costs $17 bucks. This crust is really good too, I think it's way better than most pizza places. It's real easy to make especially after you have made it a few times. My kids gobble it up.
2-29-08
Happy leap year!
The price of diapers at Sam's club has doubled in the past year. My wife and I are thinking of switching to fitted cloth diapers. They come pricey, but the thought of being able to wash them and save $31 bucks a month sounds good. These fitted diapers are put on the baby much like regular disposable diapers. By NUMEROUS testimonials, they do not leak and are apparently 100 times better than regular cloth diapers with pins. They even have vel cro.
I'll let everybody know how it turns out!
2-28-08
Ebay is not always the best place to look for bargains. I have found routinely that many vendors often have higher prices than retail. I was looking for a tortilla press and found one at Circuit City for less money (10 bucks) than what was on Ebay.
Not to mention, Circuit city was running a special - Free shipping over $24. I logged in through big crumbs, and will be given 2% back in commission. I paid through Chase freedom and will get 3% back from that.
So I ended up buying this tortilla press cooker for a 5% discount with free shipping from a reliable store!
It just amazes me that anybody shops at actual retail stores other than grocery stores. There is almost no point to doing it unless one absolutely must have something THAT DAY. For me that is rare.
I'll take this tortilla press, make excellent whole wheat tortillas for now on saving me a ton of money an hassle with buying high quality tortillas.
2-27-08
I've used the Netflix service now off and on for a few years. It's funny, they keep forgetting that I was a user before. That means I get a free 2 weeks trial. About every 6 months, I sign up again and get 2 weeks of free movies. The funny thing is, I get the expensive plan that sends you 3 movies and I get all the movies I wanted to watch for free in that two week trial period. SO I cancel the service before they bill me.
Yeah I know it's kind of cheap, but hey, they make up the rules. Just be sure you remember to cancel if you do this! It's a great way to get 6-8 movies for free at your mailbox.
2-26-08
Pasta, ahh, lovely pasta. One greatest ways I have found to save money is by buying flour, whole wheat berries, hard dried corn, beans, and grains in BULK 50 pound sacks. Sure, I know and understand, it sounds pretty intense at first. Trust me though it's well worth it.
Not only do we eat mostly preservative free everything now, but everything tastes great, is fresh, and home made. We have not bought bread for our family of 7 for about 7 months now. ALL of it has been home made. Pizza, same thing, crust is home made.
It sounds so intimidating as it did for us. The funny thing is once you do it a few times, you can make 2 loaves of bread in about 5 minutes of work. It's really easy. Usually I make bread on nights where I'm going to be using the oven anyway for our meals.
My next step in money savings is buying a pasta maker. For around 30-40 dollars, you can go on Ebay and buy a NEW pasta machine that somebody else never bothered to use. You put in about fifteen cents of ingredients and get FANCY organic home made pasta that tastes absolutely fresh (WAY BETTER THAN STORE BOUGHT) and is nutrient rich.
Generic crumby spaghetti is about $1.00 at the store for 8 oz. At home, incredibly delicious organic spaghetti for 18 oz is about fifteen cents. It's fresh, you know what went in it, and your kids & spouse will gobble it up. Sure you must wash the machine when you are done with it. Sure it seems like trouble, but like anything else, use it often for all your pasta, and you will have the process down after a short time.
It reminds me of riding a bike. When I first learned I fell often. After two days of riding I picked it up FAST and barely fell after that. I've never forgotten how to ride a bike after years of not doing it. I felt the same way with bread making. At first it was tough, seemed impossible and that I would never be able to do it right. Now I can make delicious nutritious bread in 5 minutes of work. I don't even need the recipe any more since I have it memorized. I know when the dough looks right and what it should look like. I stumbled a lot at first making some bricks and kind of funky bread, but now I have it down.
From what I have learned of pasta making, it is the same exact way. It's hard at first but if you stick to it, it'll become real easy. I'm thinking of all kinds of Italian dishes, chicken noodle soup that I can make. (Rice noodles too for oriental dishes). It's honestly incredibly amazing just how cheap you can make stuff if you just take the time to learn.
Now that common bread is $2.19 a loaf, I'm glad that I'm making it for about $0.15 a loaf. Pasta will save just the same. (That's for common "Sun Beam" bread). The bread I make is incredibly nutritious in comparison.
Organic Healthy pasta costs about $3 for 8 oz. Like stated above, crumby generic costs $1.00 for 8 oz. FRESH Organic Healthy pasta costs $0.15 for 18oz. Wow, what savings not only on the wallet, but on your health!
-Updates
Ways to save groceries
2-25-08
A small tip I've learned about buying clothing will cover the topic for today's blog. My sister is a genius on make up, clothing, shoes, purses etc. I really have never known anybody smarter in re guards to types of materials and fabrics.
Her number one tip when buying shirts is to NEVER buy 100% cotton. Always try to buy some time of mixed fabric such as a cotton polyester combo. These shirts will last literally years without any degradation. This will keep you from needing to buy cheap shirts frequently.
Of course, try to find them on sale / clearance. Try to find them online with free shipping through bigcrumbs or a related site. Try to purchase them with a good rewards card.
Right now I am wearing a shirt that is 4 years old. It's a cotton polyester blend. Honestly, it looks just as good as the day I bought it for $5 bucks. I wear it usually once every 1.5 weeks.
This tip is very simple because all it takes is for one simply to look at a label on the back of a shirt. It's amazing the quality difference that I have found and the duration the clothing has lasted since I knew about this.
Other materials are fine too, just make sure that anything is better blended, but cotton by itself is a no-no. Things like polyester or acrylic by itself are great too.
Wool is good, but I would highly suggest to keep it to coats or warm sweaters. Make sure it's mixed when using it with sweaters.
Doing this can save you a literal fortune. Extend the wear of your clothing! Clothes are expensive!
-Updates
Ways to save on clothing
2-22-08
Yesterday I went by the local Kroger store in the organic section. They had about a gillion different boxes of good healthy organic cereal amongst other things on discount for slight dings on the boxes.
I ended up buying about 30 boxes of cereal, 8 boxes of oatmeal, and several bags of organic flour. Note, these boxes of cereal are usually $3.99 to $5 each. Today they were all $1.49 to $1.79. The total bill ended up being $58.13. I pulled out the Chase Freedom card to score 3% off at Kroger. (About $1.60 off).
This is very highly nutrient rich cereal & food all grown without hormone. It was also on discount for incredibly cheap. So, I stocked up.
One great strategy of saving money is actually having extra money to strike when excellent deals present themselves. This is so you can buy in bulk when prices are low.
2-21-08
I have a great beef with insurance of just about any type. I have found it to be just about as much of a gamble as Vegas. The odds are in their favor, except the odds against you is fear and trouble.
There are funny elements to most types of insurance. Little things like "deductible" amounts that raise or lower your monthly cost.
I'll touch on insurance a lot because it's a picky issue, and one that can be up for debate. Let's take home owners insurance for example.
Mine was about $1200 a year. I had a $1500 deductible. It came with all kinds of stipulations like "it doesn't cover black mold" etc. So basically if anything goes wrong, like a pipe breaks, I have to pay up to $1500 before the insurance company kicks in.
So I think...
What insurance companies do is send out an adjuster who has the job of getting you to settle for as little money as possible. The insurance company often even finds the people who repair or swap out whatever for you.
To me this is worthless. Being a homeowner now for over a decade and "knocking on wood", I can assure you that major problems like that stuff "pipe breaking and damaging" are RARE occurances. I had a water heater break once, and it just got some carpet wet that we used a shop vac for. (17 year old water heater so it was really just dumb of us to keep it there).
Things like "hail damage" and other tidbits go under the "repair" category. Insurance companies do this and rip you off. If you get a hail damaged roof you'd think you get a new one right? Wrong.
So really, all this sums up to me is that MOST insurance companies tidbits are worthless. The only REAL thing I want insurance for is for a CATASTROPHIC rare event that is life changing. For instance, if your home burns down, or a tornado pulls the roof off your home. (You are more likely to win the lotto for the tornado, and most house fires end up just doing some conventional damage to one room) In any case though, these things would completely mess up your life. THAT is what insurance is for.
We had a break in once, The guy did about $1000 in damage and our losses were $2000. I did the math and after the deductible of $1500 and knowing we'd have to argue for hours on end with the insurance company, we could probably have gotten the full other $1500 in a check for the total of the $3000 loss minus the $1500 deductible. Horray right? Wrong again.
Then the insurance company would have hit us up with a higher premium if not dropped us completely. We would have gotten a $1750 to $2000 premium. Well that just doesn't add up at all after a couple years for our losses. There is no point.
We just sucked up our losses completely and kept our premium down. Interestingly enough though, that gave me the realization that CATASTROPIC insurance is the only way to go. Just something to cover "if the whole thing burns down or floats down the flooded river". That's about it. Otherwise, I feel like there is wasted money going to the company.
This ends up with me buying catastropic type insurance only for our home. I check the prices of SKIMPY insurance without all the frills they get you to buy.
So I looked around and found a broker who offered me this very thing. For $663 a year, I can insure my home in the event of catastropic loss.
I took the subtracted the amount of money from $1200 (previous premium) for a savings of $537 a year. Not bad. No it doesn't cover little stuff at all, but still, I have $537 this year that I didn't have last year.
With this $537 I put it in an emergency fund that gains interest at the local credit union. Whenever I save money on any type of insurance, I am sure to put the money back into some type of savings for a rainy day. If *NOTE the word IF* there is another break in at my home in the next 11 years (11 years we lived here before 1 break in) we could lose another $3000. The funny thing is - including the 3% interest that we will recieve from the savings account at the credit uinion, giving it the $537 difference a year, we could save $6137.
Since we would POTENTIALLY be in the same predicament again (fearing the premium of our home owners going up) we in 11 years IF we were broken into could lose another $3000. (average burglary loss is $1500 in America). Well IF that happened we probably wouldn't file again and have to pay out of pocket $3000. So what makes more sense?
Let's break it down - IF it happened.
$1200 a year - We pay out of pocket because we don't want premiums to go up. $3000 in loss out of pocket. OR
$663 per year - We pay out of pocket because we don't want the premiums to go up. $3000 loss out of our pocket. We tap into the $6137 we saved for the last 11 years due to no frills insurance savings. We end up $3137 ahead.
Of course, the whole time if something huge happened, we have coverage.
It just makes way more sense to buy the cheapest insurance that covers the MAJOR stuff and leave the rest alone.
That whole scenerio is based on the word IF too. Here is another IF scenerio.
IF we were never broken into again due to use beefing up security after the first break in we end up with $6137 in the bank.
Now that's a lot of dough saved.
Plus you know that water heater that was 17 years old, a nice energy savings (around $45 to $60 a month) water on demand system can be bought for $225. With $6137 not going to an insurance company, a spare $225 is easy to find.
2-20-08
I have found some great free tools for you to use to make your Windows XP & Vista run much better. They are FREE anti virus and spy ware tools.
Usually you have to pay for stuff like this, but honestly, these tools work very well and are completely free. They will save you a lot of money!
The free virus software is from Grisoft It's called avg anti virus.
Click here to go to Grisoft downloads
The free spy ware remover is spybot search and destroy.
Click here to go to spybot search and destroy.
Viruses are things that are memory resident and usually spread and cause harm to your computer. Also they can open up "back doors" giving hackers with sniffers access to your computer. Trojans are similar. Maleware is malicious spyware.
Spyware are annoying things from advertisers that sort of can hijack your computer and also watch where you surf. They do this so they can shoot you advertisements etc. about their products. It's really almost like "viral marketing".
One of the largest problems with spyware is that without frequent scans, your computer will run terrible because somehow so much of it will get installed. Spyware gets installed as attached software that you install and also through certain web pages you visit. I bet you have some right now! Eventually this stuff hogs up your RAM memory and your computer starts running SLOW and often pretty funky.
Viruses can do NUMEROUS things to your computer. Usually they are very harmful and often can hurt it so bad that you'll have to wipe it out and reinstall your windows. It's important to protect your system.
These are EXCELLENT free money saving pieces of software. Each one of them has a little "donate" section. About once a year I send spybot search and destroy & Grisoft 5 bucks each. It's better than paying $50 for commercial software. Believe me, these programmers are very happy to get 5 bucks a year from a user. It's better than nothing and helps encourage them to keep the software going.
Both these programs I have used for years now and being a computer technician for about 18 years now (I've been working technically with computers since I was 13 years old) I stand by these two programs for Microsoft Windows operating system.
Some things that are free really are free and work good.
Enjoy!
2-19-08
We are planning a camping trip here in about 2 months and the cost of camping has really gone up. It's amazing for a mere parking place that includes an electrical outlet and a water spicket costs $23 a night.
Really, there is no way to save on the site itself, other than paying with a discount credit card such as the Chase Freedom that will give you 1% off.
There are other ways to save on traveling and camping though. The first is on food. Plain and simple, do not go out to eat. Coolers work extremely well and simple snacks like trail mix can save you a fortune.
Sure sometimes while we are traveling far it's fun to visit the local hole in the wall restaurant, but that's on occasion. Otherwise it's breakfast, lunch, dinner, snacks, and smores all at camp. All the food we bring in. Especially food on the road. A simple fast food stop can cost upwards of $25 for my family of 7 and it's really garbage nutritionally too.
Then there is the never ending cost of expensive gas. You can save 3% on gas through the Chase Freedom card or the Geico gas card. Also you can save on gas by simply making sure your tire pressure is good and driving / accelerating slower. You can also read the section Ways to save on gasoline to give you some more of my tips on gas savings.
Camping is something I highly suggest for all families to do. You get to drop the every day business of life full of electronics and toys, and get out and learn to spend time doing other activities such as hiking, fishing, and playing with fire ;o) .
We enjoyed camping so much that recently we purchased a pop-up camper with a stove, toilet, shower, and air conditioning. It's amazing how nice it was compared to sleeping in a tent. We bought this with the money we saved from our electric bill. It's funny how just changing a few lights and appliances can let a family afford to buy an entire camper. I would next to say, that this pop-up is pretty close to sleeping in a trailer type camper. I've slept in both old school pop-ups, this newer type, and trailers. It's really a bit more closer to a trailer.
Once we even stayed when temps reached 25F and stayed nice and warm.
Anyway for a full weekend with two nights of camping, the cost is $46 + gas + food + supplies. We are sure to use rechargeable batteries in flashlights, supplies from the house, and keep our costs to a minimum.
Pretty much after all is settled and done, the price of camping for 1 weekend is about $100 to $115. When we buy the gas, food, and everything at 3% off we get out of it for about $2.50 cheaper. Usually the nice thing is that after we camp, we have plenty of left over food.
-Updates
Ways to resist spending
2-18-08
Wholesale Clubs are usually a great way to save money. Usually, they carry pretty high end products and have them at discounted prices. They often carry a great variety of things from professional cookware, tools, clothing and food.
My wife and I have noticed though, that things are starting to get pretty expensive between the two Sam's clubs that we shop at. Not even a year ago, a box of diapers of their good quality house brand "Members Mark" was about $17.89. Now understand, this is a HUGE box. We watched over the last year the price of these go to $23 then to $27, now they are about $31.
Whether this is a sign of our economy or not, this is getting silly. Sam's should know better than to inflate prices on family based products because a lot of LARGE families shop there. Now, despite my rant, there is a solution that my wife and I decided to explore.
Now, don't jump out of your seat, our solution is to look into cloth diapers. NO WAIT, stay with me. Today, cloth diapers are not only fitted and look similar to disposable diapers (some even with elastic), but many have velcro instead of diaper pins. Many have easy to clean liners to quickly remove the # 2 from diapers.
I watched my parents use cloth diapers on my sisters when they were babies. Disposables 20-25 years ago were pretty expensive and more or less rarely used. Anyway, the cloth diapers had certain folds and I watched her use diaper pins. Often, she would have to cover them with some type of plastic pants to keep them from leaking.
These newer type of cloth diapers look NOTHING like the old style. We decided since the price of diapers has nearly doubled in the last year alone, that we would go ahead and try cloth. Cloth kind of looks cuter anyway. I'll be sure to update on this blog how the cloth diaper adventures are working out. You can buy 5 or 6 cloth diapers that are fitted with elastic for around $15 on ebay. I figure we'll start with about 12 at this time.
I've changed A LOT of diapers through the years and know that some are way worse than others. The true test is getting the real gross ones in cloth. I'm hoping that I can devise some innovative methods to quickly clean them without being gross. I was thinking of even an outdoor rinse off system on a rack. We'll see. To BE CONTINUED!
-Updates
Chase Freedom Link
Chase Freedom Testimonial
2-15-08
Without having much money in our early marriage, I was basically forced to learn some things about automobile repair. It's really amazing just how easy some of it really is. I've seen people go crazy over something as simple as a thermostat! Of course, I learned on an older vehicle. Today, it can be more complicated, but also more simple. Most cars today have pretty nice "worthwhile" computers built in.
Did you know that you can merely just get a scan tool and keep it at home for about $50 bucks? It comes in real handy for those check engine lights that many dealerships will charge you an arm and leg just to hook it up. The scan tools usually come with a booklet that tells you exactly what the problem is with your vehicle. This has saved me countless times when I forgot to screw on my gas cap at the pump until it "CLICKED" tight.
My story.
My van was running great, and continued to run great when the check engine light came up. Of course after the initial mental swearing that I did, I figured that it could be anything, small or large but at least I was still going down the road. Usually, the major stuff will trigger more lights, like over heating, major engine problems etc.
I got home and had no idea why the check engine light came on. With a little research, I found that most cars dated after 1998 have a computer in them called (funny name) an "OBD II". I looked around for what people were saying and found that you can actually buy a scan tool on ebay for pretty cheap. I looked on ebay, found one for about $40 after searching around a bit. I gritted my teeth driving the van for about three days until it arrived in the mail. Immediately, I hooked it up, and it lit up and read my code. (It's about as easy as plugging something into the wall).
I cross referenced the code in the booklet that came with the scanner. It talked about a slight emissions leak. I thought, "Oh great, that's real helpful". So I went to the ol trusty internet, put in google "OBD II code XX" and BAM pages and pages of information.
It turns out, it was the stupid gas cap. Many people have this problem and 99% of the time it's the gas cap! I tightened the gas cap, and re-plugged in my OBD II scanner. I re-read the code, and on my scan tool there is a key that says "ERASE". I pressed erase, and it erased the code and turned off the check engine light!
It was so simple to do!
So I got curious how much money just doing that code read and (hahaha) "BIG FIX" would have cost at a dealership.
I called the local Toyota dealership and they said it was $90 just to hook it up! WOW! $90 bucks! I'm sure there would have been no charge for the fix (I hope anyway because screwing a gas cap on is just SO HARD :o) ) but there would have been a $90 charge to hook it up.
That's a lot of money.
I hope everybody will be encouraged by this entry to buy an OBD II scanner and learn how to use it. It's very simple to use and the internet is just full of information on the codes. The codes are universal between almost all vehicles. Really I just find no excuse for those who are concerned with their money and have a vehicle past the year 1998 to not own an OBD II scanner. You'll save a fortune.
I've also come to learn that Autozone supposedly will scan your vehicle for free. I think this is a great service, however, I'm also one who does not like to go through lines and trouble of getting them to do it. Afterwards, if you need a part, I'm not the biggest fan of Autozone parts. I have found them to be not very high in quality.
Once I changed a water pump on my previous car a Chevy Caprice. It took around 2.5 - 3 hours and was a very long repair. I bought the lifetime warranty water pump from Autozone figuring "Yay it has a lifetime warranty and will never croak". Well two years later it croaked. Once again I took it out and had to bring it back to Autozone.
They gladly handed me a new one, but that wasn't the point. It was the 2.5 - 3 hour repair. The part was $25 bucks, the time and bloody knuckles was the worst part.
Several parts I have bought from them have been this way. Good warranties, but the parts still failed after a short time.
I suggest dealer parts for most repairs.
Anyway, I'm digressing my original point, an OBD II scanner is well worth the money.
2-14-08
Happy Valentines Day!
Wow, today I was in a quick-e mart (gas station) store. This guy in front of me bought a sandwich, a slurpee, some gum, and 3 $5 lotto cards. His total was $23.18. I stood there in amazement. He bought 3 lottery cards. It amazes me the hopes and dreams people have when they go and gamble like that. In reality, just a tiny itty bitty fraction of people ever even make money off the lottery. I think you could make much more economic sense by using your dollar bills as toilet paper rather than throwing it away like that. Lottery = rip off. Gambling gaming = rip off. When people must bet their buddies over sports, eh, that's all for fun anyway and usually a much more honest form of gambling.
$3.95 Turkey sandwich = rip off
When will people learn to NEVER buy anything at quick-e marts? The prices are outrageous! Look it's not that they are "convenient", it's just that people that buy there didn't THINK about what they would need that day before they left home. This man could have made that turkey sandwich for about $.25-.30 cents. Basically this guy just threw $23.18 in the garbage.
$23.18 could buy my family of 7 steak, potatoes, veggies, and desserts for two dinners!
EASILY!
I hope that my readers always think before they spend even a dime of their money...
IS it worth it?
-Updates
Hosting update
Logo update
2-13-08
I have noticed so much recently just how fast people accelerate while driving. If they only knew the hardships they put on their vehicles by doing this and the cost of the fuel that they use when doing this.
Quick starts burn gas like crazy. Really we should all accelerate at the level where we barely feel our cars shift gears. This not only saves a ton of money in gas, but it will save the life of your engine, transmission, and numerous other parts in your vehicle.
There's really no sense in it. I've watched people accelerate quickly, just to be stopped at another light way ahead. Sure here comes me 30 seconds later to the same light. The difference, I accelerated slowly, and also when I saw there was a light ahead, I just let my foot off the gas and let the vehicle slow down by itself. The guy who did this the other day kept doing it - light after light after light. He never once got ahead of me. Sure it turned green, he took off, "got ahead" but I always caught up at the next light where he was there waiting for me.
I just think if people enjoy saving money, they should really consider the way they drive. Vehicles, vehicle parts, and gas are all cost mega dough. Plus it may just save you a few expensive tickets that can jack up your insurance too!
-Updates
Ways to save on eating
2-12-08
I just found a great way to save a ton of money plus eat very healthy too. It can be done with a device called a grain mill. That's right you order a 50 pound sack of hard red wheat for $14 bucks, then grind it into flour. A decent sized loaf of bread is about $.07 when grinding your own wheat. PLUS, the nutrient content of ground whole wheat excels that of anything you can buy in the store.
Store brand wheat flour is virtually junk. Much of the wheat germ and fiber is taken out.
Growing up in the 80's and teens in the 90's, most house holds did not practice making bread. I sometimes watched my mother make bread, but most of the time it was store bought. Being a techie type, baking bread seemed like the last thing I would ever learn how to do.
I found it to be hard the first couple of times, now, I can have 2 full sized loaves made and rising in under 5 minutes! After they rise, I just cut it in half, mush it into loaf shaped cylinders and pop them in the oven.
$.14 cents is not bad for 2 loaves of bread. Especially super healthy whole wheat bread. You can even add seeds and oats on the top.
It's just amazing that many pay $2.29 for a single loaf when with such little effort it can be made.
By the way, a good kitchen aid mixer is a WONDERFUL investment. This is the tool I use to knead the bread with quickly. I also can make a full fledge large pizza for $1.50.
My Bread recipe
1 cup of water
1 cup of water nuked in the microwave for 1 minute
1/3 cup of white sugar
2 tablespoons of yeast
Mix and let it sit there for a minute.
Add 4 cups of flour
Add 1/3 cup of oil, (I use canola oil)
and half a table spoon of salt.
Start mixing
with the kneading hook. After about 30 seconds, you'll probably notice the dough is sticky, usually I have to add about 1 to 1.5 cups more of flour till the dough starts kneading.
It's real easy once you do it a couple times. You can also use store bought bread flour or all purpose.
Updates - Save on eating
2-11-08
Buying quality things is worth it usually. There are just some things not worth buying a generic or a junky brand. Some of these things include computers. We spend so much time on our computers that it's just not worth buying an off brand. Spend a bit more, and get a computer that will last you 3 times longer, give you way less errors, and will keep you from throwing your computer across the room. Of course, buy the high quality computer for as cheap as you can! Get every rebate and discount you can. (Yes that's the common theme on this web site).
This last weekend, my wife and I finally decided to paint a large room in the upper story of our home. With all these kids, we have this band of grime that ends up on the wall somewhere between 2.5 feet to 3 feet high. On ever turn and corner, there it is, a band of grime. This is because kids walk with their hands out feeling every single texture they can. I'm pretty sure I did it, and I'm pretty sure you did it too. We ask them not to, but never scold them for it because frankly, I think it's imbedded as instinct for kids just to touch everything. Ha! All of them do it. Also, our 1.5 year old likes to draw her version of Picasso on our walls when she gets a hold of a rebel crayon or lost pencil laying somewhere between the sofa and end table.. (for some odd reason).
We went to home depot, like all the other weekend warrior type home DYI people. We chose our color and found the paint we wanted. We selected Glidden HIGHLY WASHABLE flat paint. It was expensive at about $20 per gallon. However, since we are big advocates of taking advantage of credit card companies, we have a Home Depot Credit card. Being members of their credit system, we had a coupon of 15% off all purchases! For 3 gallons of paint we saved $9 bucks.
The rollers, drop cloths etc. we bought from Wal-Mart. I wish Wal-Mart wasn't literally one of the cheapest places in town, but it really is for stuff like that. I sure would rather support smaller businesses however, money talks! I mean a big large drop "cloth" (plastic) was $1.29. The rollers were all about $1.50 cheaper (exact same brand / thing) as Home Depot. So why not save?
Updates:
-Ways to save on clothing
2-08-08
Quality tools have always been what I find important. Buying cheap tools usually end up getting your hurt or cussing the job you are working on. However, recently I discovered Northern Tool. They have "cheaper" power tools that are still reasonable in quality. I bought a grinder tool for $10 bucks! It had free shipping, was on sale, and had a 15% off at bigcrumbs.com.
It came in the mail, and works pretty good. I'm not just floored by it's quality, but hey, I only will use this grinder tool once in a blue moon anyway. It's so wonderful to have the right tools for the right job. I just didn't need a top of the line tool that cost a fortune sitting around just to be barely used.
This thing was simply just a great deal.
Updates - Logo
2-07-08
Today it was pretty cool... When I went to Kroger, they had organic milk on sale / mark down. Usually organic milk is very expensive ($6 a gallon). Today, since it was "dated" I bought 4 gallons at $2.99 per gallon. There is a real secret about organic milk. No, it's not just for health nuts, but some real quality behind it.
First, the stuff seems to never expire. When I bought regular milk, it seemed to always get spoilish near the "sell by date". Sure it may have survived a couple days thereafter, but honestly the stuff started getting gross quick.
Not with organic milk. You gotta just trust me on this one. I have had organic milk stay good for 3-4 weeks after the sell by date. It tastes WAY better than standard regular milk. It's extremely high quality and well worth the money. At my store, since it is so expensive, I just keep a mental log of when the next round of milk is going to come up for the "sell by date". I visit the store, and it usually scores me about 4 gallons of milk for half price.
Comes in handy with 5 kids! The milk lasts for about 2 weeks before it all is consumed. 2 weeks after the sell by date, this milk tastes 10X better & fresher than a fresh shipment of "regular milk". I'm not kidding either.
Man what are they doing to regular cows? They must be injecting thing with some FUNKY hormones and nasty food products to have them producing such terrible milk. I often wonder how much this is transferred back to people. From the milk alone, I can tell organically raised cows are so much more healthier.
I'm a 100% advocate of organic foods. The problem has always been the cost. This is just one fun method that I've discovered to keep the horrible price of $6 a gallon in check. $2.99 per gallon is a lot better. Buying it with my favorite card, the Chase Freedom card, I get a whopping 3% off too.
2-06-08
It's interesting to me how many car dealers post deals that are too good to be true. I'm constantly amazed that they offer so many "great deals" to potential customers just to get them in the door. So many people absolutely hate the car buying experience. Many are out to haggle, wheel and deal, just to be turned into mush by some 30 something pushy car salesman. Frankly, I think it's an experience we all hate.
There is a friend in our corner though. It's called edmunds.com . Car dealers literally hate this site because it tells the exact model with package factory invoice price!! You can literally walk into the car dealer and know exactly what they paid for the car.
At the end of the year, you can walk into a car dealer, hand them a piece of paper offering them the invoice price for the vehicle. They want to clear the lot of the prior year vehicles. It helps them by getting rid of the older car, and it helps you by purchasing a new car off their lot for invoice pricing.
If you are lucky, the factory may be offering a rebate. DO NOT let this rebate turn into a profit for the car dealer. Check the car manufacturers web site for the rebate. Apply this rebate to the INVOICE PRICE. The dealer is it's own separate entity from the car manufacturer. They pay them X amount of money for the car. You are simply reimbursing them X amount of money for the vehicle. Let the factory actually pay you the rebate for the year end closeout car. This way, you can actually push the car under the invoice price for yourself.
Negotiation tips: Go to the dealer. They'll poke a card in your hand after they chase you through the parking lot. Ask them for the cars that are "about to be a year old but are still new". They'll bring you to them and probably won't shut up. Go to the side sticker, write down the model numbers.
Go home, check edmunds.com for the exact style of car and package. Know the car you want.
Type them a letter that states the exact amount of money that you will pay for the vehicle. Say "This is not negotiable, if you choose to not meet my demand on price do not bother calling me back". Have the entire offer typed up including the reduction for the rebate off invoice.
When you drive up, hand them a sealed envelope and literally WALK AWAY. Don't WAIT a minute. Don't do that. Say "I'm in a hurry, here you go". Leave. Did I say leave? LEAVE!
Have your offer and your phone number in the letter.
It's worked for me a couple of times. I've bought a Toyota van for invoice plus got a rebate from Toyota! What ever you do, make sure all wheeling and dealing is done AWAY from the dealership. Email is a good tool too. If you are making offers while sitting there, you are basically shooting yourself in the foot.
-Updates
Electric Bill
Frugal Yuppies We Are
Testimonial on Big Crumbs
2-05-08
Welcome to the new money blog on Daddymorebucks.com. As a hobby of mine, I am a naturally frugal person. I am the father of 5 children and we have a limited budget and certainly still like to live a nice high quality life. By force, I have really managed to find numerous ways to save A LOT of money through my life. I am not by any means rich, but still I find many ways to live as if I was. I have many financial beliefs that do not always sync up with typical ways of saving money. Through this blog, I hope I can share many methods for free with others.