Ideas for Lent that may Create Frugal Habits

Here are some ideas of things that you can give up for Lent that maybe you never thought of that could also create a new frugal habit for your family. If you choose to give up one of these things for lent not only will save money but you may also discover that your family does not “need” them after all:

1) Dry cleaning
2) Juice (eat the fruit instead)
3) Fabric Softener
4) Cleaning Chemicals (use vinegar water & reusable rags instead)
5) Catalogs & other advertising media that arrives in your mail (trash them immediately)
6) Shopping for unnecessaries
7) Eating out (take up cooking and meal planning for every meal)
8) Coffee from the “outside” (brew your own at home)
9) Tabloid magazines
10) Cereal (other than homemade cereal of course)
11) Cable (look into reconnection charges first if you are certain that you will be reconnecting)
12) Entertainment that costs money
13) Cleaning services, babysitting or other services that you pay for but can do yourself or do without
14) Newspaper

There are people even in America who have given up all these things or never even had them to begin with and they are still alive! So yes, it can be done. Most of these things I have been able to give up (or never had) for prolonged periods of time (years) and I still have friends, a social life, healthy children and a wonderful marriage. Really, it will not kill you, I promise.

Need vs Want Frugality

For several years my motto for frugality was to not spend a penny on any nonessentials in order to meet some hefty financial goals, (paying off 2 rather large grad. student loans on one income), except for a rare occasion. I pondered that kind of purchase a lot longer than I had been used to while trying to squeeze out the purchase price from my budget first. It’s a discipline of sorts that my financial situation forced me into but I have learned from it.

Just as I have done on those occasions, some of my acquaintances justify purchasing many frivolous things as "needs" rather than the "wants" they truly are.
I have made myself very cognizant of the use of the word “need” and have trained myself to catch it as it sometimes comes out of my mouth. If you really focus on needs vs wants you start getting a little judgmental when you hear other people say the word “need.” It’s amazing at how loosey-goosey we are with the word. Being judgmental of others is of course not good but an awareness of the use of the word “need” I think can be a positive eye opener. Many people are facing this “need vs want” discipline for the first time in years due to our current economy.

As I have explained before I have been going down the opposite road of the mainstream in this economy by spending more money and enjoying some things that we haven’t for a while having paid off our student loans. I feel a slippery slope occurring which tells me I ought to go back to my frugal ways in order to meet more long term financial goals (pay off mortgage and save for retirement). At first it was difficult to part with money that I so desperately pinched and reallocated for quite some time. After making a few nonessential purchases I found that they made me really happy and parting with the money became easier and easier. So now 7 throw pillows, some curtain rods, a lamp and some new bedding later I am thinking that it may be a sin to allow such purchases to bring such joy. I will say that I appreciate them a lot more than I would have before my frugal days but I’d like to stay in a state of appreciation so I’m going to do my best to hold back again. It also seems appropriate for this Lent Season.

So if you are trying to become more frugal not due to job loss but due to a down turn in your portfolio or job insecurity or even Lent, know that it can be a positive growing experience that can set you ahead financially and emotionally especially if you can embrace it over a long haul.

Ideas to Help you Spend Less $

Baby sit friends kids. Really. Do it a lot. Fill your calendar. Not only will you not be able to go shopping but if you have the right kind of rambunctious kids and enough of them then you will be too busy to occupy your thoughts with shopping or to browse the internet for purchases. Oh and babysitting for short spurts just happens to be fun and helpful to your friends.

January Resolutions to Spend Less Money

I have heard a lot of people making New Year’s resolutions to spend less money. I have been doing that for a couple years and it has been a wonderful experience. Why do I say it was an “experience” (other than the fact that I have become a frugal nerd)? When you set out to stick to a tight budget which limits your spending to only necessities you can actually have a wonderful experience. Let me explain. I could really go on and on about the wonderful experience I have had over the last couple years not spending money but I am trying to be brief. Think about the purchases that you are considering in the near future. You may be saying that you don’t have any. Uh huh. I doubt it. You are thinking of curtains for some room or the next car purchase or perhaps a new purse or boots that you are hoping will be on sale. Even if you know you can not afford these things right now you are probably thinking of how you might be able to make those purchase in the future. If you totally forget about acquiring any of these things for an extended time, say until your student loan/ home equity/credit card/mortgage (you name your enemy) is paid off, and focus on using the things that you already have and being completely satisfied with what you have it can be an awesome experience. Not only can you experience the strength you get from setting a somewhat difficult goal and achieving it but you also free yourself from thinking about acquiring stuff or improving the stuff you have with more stuff or spending your precious time and energy shopping for stuff. To be successful at being satisfied with the stuff you have you must shut yourself off to the things you know that make you want stuff. This might mean changing who you spend time with or not looking at magazines or watching certain television shows and throwing every last single catalog that comes in the mail straight into the trash WITHOUT perusing it first or not attending an annual homes tour. Identify honestly the things in your life that cause you to want stuff and eliminate them until your goal is met.

I recently shared with a few friends that I hadn’t spent any money on any unnecessaries in about two years and how it was difficult to part with money now. My friends gasped in horror at the idea of not spending money or shopping for such a long span of time. I suppose I don’t particularly like shopping with kids in tow (and I’ve generally always been too cheap to pay a sitter to shop) so it didn’t seem like that much of a loss to me but I was surprised that my friends thought that it would be so difficult. I suppose that if you have financial goals or needs bigger than acquiring more stuff then you just do what you got to do (or don't do). I am certain that these friends of mine would be able to do what needed to be done if they were faced with a financial challenge. I know they could do it if they had to but they just have not faced such a challenge. These are strong intellegent women, don't get me wrong, they are my friends. :)

The really fun part of spending less money is the creative thinking you force upon yourself to make do with what you have. The library is a wonderful resource for jump starting this kind of brainstorming which is where I came across Amy Dzcyczyn's The Complete Tightwad Gazette . Amy’s book gets you in a mind set of creative frugalism. I have established uses for things in the last two years that I will continue for years to come that saves money and encourages creativity. Finding extra-ordinary uses for ordinary items can be rather surprising and quite fun. Thinking outside of the box is what has me using bread tabs for cleaning/scraping gunk, using potato/onion sacks for scrubbers, cleaning with disinfecting vinegar water, planning our meals and grocery trips like never before, creating our invention box, mastering stain removal (I have never been good at this but I am getting better), redecorating with curtains I found in a box from our last move and mending socks and other garments rather than tossing them. Sometimes you do have to purchase a few things but you can do so in a minimalist fashion. For instance take up garage saling or searching Craigs List and surprise yourself and your family at what you can do with nearly free items. Buy shoe polish or shoe strings rather than buying new shoes, shop for kids clothes at resale shops (they keep growing so there is no way around buying kids new cloths at some point), or admit to yourself that one pair of decent shoes for a child is plenty and you do not need to buy another because those ones on sale are just so cute. Being honest about what you need versus want is a great experience also especially when you really want is financial independence.

My New Year’s resolution for 2009 is actually to spend more money. In two months we will have met a huge financial goal of paying off our student loans on one income. We have limited our spending to such a great extent that resolving to spend more money is not exactly going to be difficult or haphazard. In the last two years I think we have eaten out about four times although I can not recall the specific instances (my husband says only about two times) and visited McDonalds about 6 times (3 times involved a road trip to visit family). Up until a couple months ago I think I bought 3 shirts off the clearance rack and a skirt to get me through post partum weight struggles at discount stores in two years. So this year for us will be about putting those former student loan payments into savings (easier now that we have changed our spending habits) and trying to relax a little with some entertainment money. It would be fun to visit the movie theatre at least once and to get a sitter every couple months so we can have a date night (just did that last night and it was wonderful). Perhaps taking the kids out to dinner a few times would be nice and adding a few activities to our current fun free activities that we may not have splurged on pre-school loan pay off. I know that these little things we do will be enjoyed much more after our two year tightwad venture and knowing that we met our financial goals before enjoying them again. Karate lessons for my son and gymnastics classes for my daughter will also be a wonderful way for us to enjoy having met one of our big financial goals.

Invention Box – Perhaps A Lesson in Minimalist Frugality?

I would think that most of us would like to teach our kids to think creatively so that they can overcome obstacles in life and make the most out of things and I would also guess that we all want them to be able to do this with little or no resources. Planting some seeds for this skill is my goal with our “Invention Box.” I don’t recall where I originally came across the idea, maybe my mother-in-law or maybe the Tightwad Gazette, but it has been a hit with my 6 year old for quite some time and I am working on developing this skill with my 4 year old. My kids love making stuff. They don’t need a whole lot. A box, some construction paper, scissors and tape are favorite “making stuff” materials. I keep trash for our invention box. Plastics, cardboard, yogurt containers, cottage cheese containers, you name it. If my son sees me putting something in the recycle bin that has an interesting shape he say, “no mom, put it in the invention box!” So we have a huge pile of trash, I mean Invention Box materials for making “stuff.” We even get neighbors and grandparents to saving stuff for our invention box. Once we solicited everyone we knew for frozen juice lids to make a knights armor. We had neighbors that drank orange juice from frozen concentrate every day. We had it together in no time.


Here is a picture of my son’s latest space ship creation with “stuff.” On this one he even got his school Principal to agree to let him take home an empty milk carton. I'm not sure it is supposed to be on the front but I do know that the paper towel rolls are the "blasters" in the back. The black things are pipe cleaners. He can stick his head through the bottom hole that he had me cut and fly it around while he looks out the clear container that our Sam's Club spinach came in.





Here he is flying his straw jet plane.






For Halloween we made this spooky graveyard out of a box, tissue paper, construction paper, Q-tips and some Halloween stickers someone gave us. This is the only project that I helped invent. Usually he does it all one his own.
He also made a cool monster using a clear V8 container, filling it with green tissue paper and taping green construction paper arms. I did not get a picture of it before my 1 year old tore the arms off though. My daughter made a haunted house out of a box but she lost interest before finishing it. Why we buy toys I will never understand.

Frugal Snobbery

I had a few miniscule drops of energy left after putting the kids to bed this evening so I thought I’d search the blogging world for frugal tips (yes, I know, totally nerdy Friday night behavior, go ahead point and laugh). I found some fantastic new blogs that I can’t wait to spend more time with and I found a ridiculous one as well. I came across a blog all about a person’s “frugal life” and I had to laugh. Then I realized that I am a frugal snob. The author of the “frugal life” I will call it had a Christmas list that involved her 15 year old daughter getting some $300 ipod thing and her husband wanted some matching animal skin belt and boots that together cost well over $700! I can’t find the darned blog now so I can’t quote the exact price on the man clothes but I had to laugh. Then she snapped a photo of a great shopping trip where she utilized sales and coupons and got a whole load of crap for only $42.50. Her shopping spree included several packages of cookies, boxes of cereal, dozens of oozy type lip gloss and many other “stuffs” that would never even be purchased in my home regardless of price. Soon after reading that blog I stumbled upon these posts and I just KNOW the author this blog would also be laughing at that lady right along with me because he despises stuff I think even more than I do. Oh us frugal snobs could have great party making fun of those frugal-wanna-bes. For my imaginary frugal snob party there would have to be carpooling involved to save on gas and what would we serve? Certainly all of us would all drink water. Oh man, what I have become?

Here are some goodies I found:
http://poorerthanyou.com/
http://www.thesimpledollar.com/
http://www.bloggingawaydebt.com/ (mostly b/c anyone that LOVES Amy Dacyczyn’s book the Tightwad Gazette like I do ought to come to my frugal snob party)
http://livingthecheaplife.net/

Most Frugal Household Cleaning Tip

Vinegar Water
Vinegar Water in a spray bottle
Vinegar Water in a spray bottle with reusable cloth rags
Vinegar Water in a spray bottle with reusable cloth rags with children doing the cleaning

Vinegar is a natural disinfectant. It will not contaminate your food, your pets or your children. It is safe, effective, environmentally friendly, disinfecting and most of all totally frugal.

**For my wood floors and painted or finished wood I use 1 part vinegar to 16-18 parts water (or for my spray bottle that's 1/4 cup vinegar to 4 cups water). I am told that any higher ratio may take the shine out of such finishes.

Extraordinary Uses for Bread Tabs!

While I am putting off completing my December menu I thought I would tell you about the extraordinary uses of bread tabs. Yep, those little plastic things that you find on the end of your store bought loaf of bread. They are actually quite useful and I don’t mean for bag cinching. Just yesterday I used a bread tab to help scrub my sink and to scrape three cookie sheets clean of chocolate chip cookie crusts. They are great at getting hard to get globs of who-knows-what that is stuck to nearly anything without scratching the surface and drastically cutting down on scrub time. Bread tabs are much like those plastic scrapers that you receive from Pampered Chef with their stoneware. I only have one of those Pampered Chef scrapers but I keep several bread tabs in my sponge pullout sink drawer thingy (whatever it’s called). The bread tabs aren’t sturdy enough to last years but you come by so many of them that they are easily replaceable. You can also use them to scrape out bar soap gook from your soap dish in the bathroom.

Minimalist Preferences = True Frugal Life

Since entering this little blogging world I have spent a little time searching for other blogs that talk about frugal family life or money saving tips and such. This is one of my favorite topics so I am just sure that I will find some good ideas somewhere on-line. One theme seems to run through most all of the blogs that I have previewed thus far, how to spend less on stuff. I hate stuff. I don’t want stuff. I also despise shopping for stuff. So aside from buying necessites like deodorant, toothpaste, toilet paper and soap and such I do not give a rats arse if Walgreens has 20 deals right now on unnecessary things like anti-aging cream, which I don’t believe work, or disinfectant kitchen counter spray. Grocery savings coupons and tips usually include 50 cents off some RiceARoni mix or something similar. No, that is not saving. What would really be saving is buying bulk plain rice and adding your own herbs purchased at a country store at a deep discount. It would be cheaper AND healthier since the cheap version would contain less sodium and preservatives and who knows what other un-pronounceable ingredients. Instead of buying anti-aging cream I would prefer to read about how vegetable shortening or something that most households have on hand might be proven to have anti-aging effects when applied topically or how a mixture of distilled vinegar and water disinfects the same as expensive kitchen counter cleaners. Do you get what I’m saying? The way I like to save money is by truly NOT buying stuff vs. spending less on stuff. Making something out of nothing should be more appreciated than spending less on stuff for the sheer genious of it. I suppose this is why I like Amy Dacyczyn’s The Complete Tightwad Gazette so much. I believe the Gazette is out of print now but there are many money saving tips in there that a minimalist like me can appreciate. My hopes is to share money saving tips on this blog that involve a little more time perhaps and possibly a little more work but a lot less money and a lot less stuff.

I am certain that there are blogs out there that would appeal to my minimalist frugal preferences and when I find them I will be sure to add them to my blog list.