Thrift

4 EASY Ways to Save Money, Time and Stress on Christmas Shopping

By Kevin M

If you’re at all like me, you love Christmas, but you could do without the stress and expense of all that holiday shopping. A full years worth of shopping and buying is condensed into a single short 4-5 week space of time that leaves you worn out and nearly broke by the time it’s over. (Are we having fun yet???)

Here are some tips I’ve learned over the years that will save money, time and stress, freeing you up to actually enjoy the season…

Amazon.com and other online retailers

Among a long laundry list of gifts this year, my wife wants the first and second season collections of the TV show Vampire Diaries. We checked them out at Target–$54(!)—but a quick check on Amazon.com shows we can get them for only $12.99, or less than a quarter of the price! I’m not saying we should buy everything online, but we should certainly set a price threshold above which checking out online alternatives becomes routine. The savings can be substantial.

But there’s even more benefit to shopping online: it saves us the time (driving, parking, standing in line) and expenses (gas and a meal on the fly) that are typical when we head out to the mall. If I can save money, and do it from the comfort of my own home, then it’s a no-brainer. Just make sure that you do it in time to allow for delivery; December 24th will be too late!
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Simple Ways to Save Money Every Day


Guest Post by Philip Reed

Whether you’re feeling affected by recent economic troubles, or you’re just looking for a few ways to lessen the pinch on your pocketbook, here are some simple ways how to save money every day.

Transportation

Commuting can be a major expense! Not only do you have to pay for fuel, but there is also additional maintenance and even tolls in some areas. Depending on where you live, parking fees can add up quickly. Just owning a car is a major expense in itself, but a long, daily commute can multiple all of the expenses related to it.

If public transportation is an option, consider whether this would be a productive alternative to getting you where you need to go while trimming a few expenses related to driving an automobile. Still another option is carpooling. In some cites, such as Atlanta, High Occupancy Vehicle (HOV) lanes are dedicated to cars with multiple occupants and usually provide quicker routes that are less taxing on your vehicle.
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How Frugality Becomes Counterproductive

By Kevin M

One year ago—just about to the day—I took my first stab at this topic in Why Earning More Money is More Important than Frugality. It was one of the most popular posts I’ve done in the two years that I’ve had this site up and running. It seemed for a while that I’d covered the topic as thoroughly as I could imagine, but the subject has hit the blogosphere with a vengeance in the past couple of weeks stimulating additional thinking.

That doesn’t mean I’ve changed my original thoughts on frugality—quite the opposite. I’m now even more convinced that I was heading in the right direction on the first go round. My comment on Len Penzo’s 100 Words On: Why Frugality Has Its Limits made me realize that the subject is even more important than I imagined and that it’s time to take it on with some fresh ideas.

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Is Borrowing “The American Way”?

OR…Is Saving Money Bad for the Economy?

By Kevin M


I came across this article a few weeks ago, Industrial output falls as consumers cut back spending, and have been trying to decide what it is about it that I find so disturbing. I’m not targeting it as some sort of special case; in fact it’s one of hundreds of articles I’ve read saying pretty much the same thing. News program talking heads trumpet it all the time. Loosely, what’s good for your bank account is bad for the country.

Do we actually believe that line of thinking, or do we just politely tolerate it? Surely we have to know better!

Now, I try not to do macro economics on this site, but it seems to me that this idea that the citizenry saving money is bad for the economy is some sort of article of faith that no one questions, at least in higher circles. And I don’t buy any of it!

From where I sit, it seems that the absence of savings is at the heart of our economic troubles. When a person has no savings, he lives paycheck-to-paycheck and is forced to borrow or turn to the government when he needs money in excess of his regular cash flow. In most households, this will happen most of the time—life’s just that way I suppose. But that conundrum is what gets the debt treadmill going, and once you’re on it, default is just a matter of time.

Multiply that by millions of households and you get…about where we are right now.

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6 Tips to Negotiate Better and Save Money

By Alban


Chances are, you’ve recently found yourself lamenting the cost of things these days, and wondering how everything got to be so expensive. Well, rather than automatically hand over the sticker price for a purchase learn how you can negotiate a better deal and save yourself some money.

Haggling on price is not something which must be reserved for the market place on your next vacation, instead there are six tips you can use to help you pay what you believe is fair price, rather than the market up retail price. And don’t feel bad—if the seller really couldn’t afford to offer you the discount they wouldn’t, no one is going to run their business at a loss just to clear stock.

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Computer Dying? Try This Before You Junk It!

By Kevin M


If your computer is running poorly and you think it may be about to crap out, don’t junk it—the problem may not be the computer itself. It may be the operating system.

Our kid’s computer, a desk top, got hit with a virus about a month ago, one that the AVG system wasn’t able to stop. The computer was at a near standstill. We checked with the Geek Squad to see what they would charge to remove it–$200 plus tax.

Not gonna happen. The computer is five years old, and we’d sooner replace it than pay that much to have it fixed.

We added another anti-virus system that we’ve had excellent results with on our other computers (Trend Micro). It seemed to do the job, but the computer wasn’t moving any faster. I spent an hour and a half on the phone with the techs at Trend, who identified that the problem may be deep in the system registry. They did get the virus thoroughly removed according to their system and Microsoft’s. But still no luck on improving the performance of the computer.
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10 Things You Should Buy Used

By Kevin M

America is often described as a “throw away society”. We buy things—usually brand new—use them for a while, get rid of them in some form or fashion, then move on to the next thing.

This creates an enormous pile of stuff sitting somewhere—much of it of pretty good quality—and presents a real financial opportunity to anyone willing to invest some extra time and effort in buying what they need.

Why buy anything used? For one thing, new isn’t always better; sometimes we can get better quality merchandise second hand that we could never afford brand new. Sometimes, the item in question is one we don’t use that much, or won’t use for very long—why pay a premium for it?

But more important by far: any money we can avoid spending is money that can go either into debt reduction or directly into savings.

What are some items that are better bought used than new?

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Entertainment For Less

By Kevin M

There’s a “stealth expense” that chews through budgets and often leaves us with an empty bank account or even a little deeper in debt each month; its called entertainment expense, and at least part of the problem may lay in the fact that we’re usually reluctant to even view it as an “expense”.

Maybe this is the case because entertainment has a way of defining us—it’s often who we are, which has to be something more significant than just an ordinary expense, doesn’t it?

We can be meticulous about budgeting for housing, groceries, utilities and a host of other expenses, but entertainment is often—to borrow a political phrase—“off budget”.

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Why Bundling Services Might be a Bad Deal

By Kevin M

Companies are always trying to get us to take their bundle plans, neat packages that promise a veritable one-stop shopping trip for all of our communication needs. Cable TV, internet, land lines, cell phones—they’ll load them all into a pretty little bundle for us and provide a nice discount for dealing in bulk.

It’s easy to see why we’re drawn to these arrangements. Not only do we get the lower rate for the package deal, but we can also consolidate several monthly bills into one and, we might reason, with so much of our business placed with one provider, we’ll have clout! After all, surely a provider won’t want to lose ALL of our business if we’re unsatisfied with any single service.

As attractive as that might sound—especially from a life’s simplification standpoint—my experience with bundles hasn’t been terribly positive. As good as the bundle plans might look from time to time, I’ll keep my communication services spread over three or four different providers.

Here’s why…

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Fitness For Free (Or Close To It)

Action needs to precede acquisition in the quest for health and fitness

By Kevin M

Maybe it’s a cultural thing here in America that when ever we need to strike out in a new direction we impulsively believe that it requires spending money to make it happen (see the National Debt for tangible confirmation). That might actually be necessary in some cases, but fitness is really more about motivation than it is about gym memberships or fitness equipment. Yet many people join health clubs or buy expensive fitness equipment precisely to give them that motivation.

I believe that thinking is putting the horse before the cart. Shouldn’t we first prove that we have the motivation and energy—and can make time in our schedules–before spending any money?

Here’s a fundamental fitness reality: before there was exercise equipment, there was plain, old exercise. Exercise equipment (and the gyms they occupy) is higher level stuff; before moving onto them—and the money they cost—first prove that you’re committed to plain, old exercise.

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