Buy your wine in 1.5 liter jugs for during the week at Sam's Club. Save the good stuff in the small bottles for the weekends.
Buy your cigarettes by the carton. Forget those one dollar off for three packs ads.
Buy your wine in 1.5 liter jugs for during the week at Sam's Club. Save the good stuff in the small bottles for the weekends.
Buy your cigarettes by the carton. Forget those one dollar off for three packs ads.
Habitual Offender
Milwaukee’s Best
Tap water. Because drinking bottled water is just encouraging THE MAN to privatize natural resources, don't yah know? (Plus, the tap water is probably better quality)
Volunteer, so that all of your vacations are partially paid for by others.
For me this year "free" trips to:
Ottawa
Calgary
Montreal
Quebec City
Vancouver
Whitehorse
Too lazy to beat myself up for being to lazy to beat myself up for being too lazy to... well you get the point....
In the past few months, the biggest thing that has helped is a very detailed budget. Since I get paid every two weeks, my budget is for those two weeks, but I also do a matching month budget.
The most important thing is to write it down and follow it. Tell every dollar where you want it to go. If you want to save money, put it in savings on your budget. If you want to spend money on beer, put it in your beer budget.
By doing this, you will feel like you got a raise. I was shocked the first time and I wondered where I had spent all my money over the past several months. Now, I know where it is going.
If you want different results in your life, you need to do different things than you have done in the past. Change is that simple.
Speaking of free trips, I'm looking for someone to drive across the country with me, starting in NJ, ending in San Diego. I'm planning on leaving on the 18th or 19th of Dec., and taking about 10 days to do the drive, with some sightseeing stops. I'm starting a new job in S.D. on Jan. 3rd. Just in time to get away from the worst of the winter weather.Volunteer, so that all of your vacations are partially paid for by others.
You are missing the real oppression, the real futile short term event: BATHING. Have you stopped bathing regularly? Why not? It is HUMAN to STINK. Some anthropologists believe that it is human body odor that helped our ancestors survive. We stunk too much to eat!Originally posted by dobopoq
In the glorious post-oil world you apocalyptics are so looking forward to, once the 80% of riff-raff have died off, we will not need to bathe. We can revel in our fragrant, greasy humanity.
Liberate the Lubricated Locks!
Viva la Revolucion! Down with the oppressions of Gillette! Down with the evils of Right Guard! Overthrow the tyranny of Vidal Sassoon!
Chase Rebate Cards
On the Chase Cash Plus card - 5% back on grocery, pharmacy and gas, 1% on everything else. $300 yearly cap.
If you pay your cards on time, who couldn't use a free $300?
I know it's ripe for sarcasm, but shaving is far more trivial than bathing. Bathing is a health issue. Shaving is a cosmetic issue.
But again, absent a serious depression/social collapse. What is wrong with a little cosmetic issue? Daily bathing is not really needed for "health" reasons, but I am most certainly unwilling to give it up. Shaving is not some horrible imposition.
Bank of America now has an interesting concept... where they round up all your debit charges to the nearest dollar and put in your savings account. It would probably be effective for people who do not really do much budgeting and want a hands-off approach to increase savings.
Well shaving IS a health issue when you have food stuck in your beard...
It's not like you have to go ZZTop about it! But then again, I do enjoy a little aftertaste from my flaver saver now and then.Well shaving IS a health issue when you have food stuck in your beard...
I'm just saying economically, if you can't afford both soap and razor blades - razor blades uh, don't make the cut. It may seem a trivial expense, but still I think it falls under a large category of things people say they want, but don't really need. I'd rather have an extra 15 minutes of sleep.
I can shave my face and legs in fewer than 15 minutes....closer to 5 minutes. And in the end, I feel better about myself.
Habitual Offender
If it feels good, do it. I'm not saying don't shave. I'm just saying it's not a necessity.
I'm not a morning person. Getting up early, showering, having a quick breakfast, brushing and rinsing, getting dressed in a corporate costume and commuting to work without getting sweaty, dirty or relying on fossil fuels is enough hassle for me.
The cost of a decent shave is about $.50/per day if I change blades every other day. Altogether, the cost in time, money, loss of sleep, and razor burn, do not justify such a brief and dubious benefit.
Last edited by dobopoq; 26 Nov 2005 at 12:32 AM.
i find bringing cash to the grocery store with a calculator helps me save on my grocery bills - no debit, no checks and deifntiely no credit cards - the budget is more finite
i have my 12 year old add up as we go, so then she sees for real the value of a dollar, or lack thereof
Kim Wexler: Either you fit the jacket... or the jacket fits you.
Maybe you should get an electric razor.
Or a straight razor that you can sharpen yourself.
Do disposable razor blades really only last through two shavings?
Buy a good blade and change them every week-to-ten days. That's what I do.
Remember, discarded pizza boxes are any excellent source of cheese.
You get all squeezed up inside/Like the days were carved in stone/You get all wired up inside/And it's bad to be alone
You can go out, you can take a ride/And when you get out on your own/You get all smoothed out inside/And it's good to be alone
-Peart
How 'bout waxing as opposed to shaving?? At least that way you will FEEL the savings
I don't change the blade until the thing is ripping the hair off my face (and legs), at least two weeks and usually longer. And I shave daily (except maybe on the weekends). Of course, my facial hair is spotty. Full growth of leg hair though.
Habitual Offender
I have an electric shaver I use daily, and about once a week I shave with a good 3 Blade razor, this way, at least once a week those pesky hairs that the shaver misses get cut.
How about some REAL money-saving tips? Most money-saving tips I see online advocate painfully frugal living; they're usually along the lines of "never eat out, and save money from what you would pay for a meal at a restaurant", "during the winter, keep your thermostat at 62, and stay warm by wearing a sweater", or "instead of going to the movies, rent a DVD and buy microwave popcorn." I'm looking for those rare tips where one doesn't have to sacrifice their quality of life and live like a pauper to save a few bucks.
That is the point though, cheap is a lifestyle that you have to want and embrace and be ready to comment on every activity about in terms of how much it costs you and why you are or are not doing something.
Why do we work? To have things we want.
Why once you've made your mind up to do something that is not a necessity do people have to then comment on how expensive it is or that it was not a good value for the money?
Being frugal and careful with your money is fine but being obviously cheap is bad. Why go our for dinner if you are going to order the least expensive thing on the menu and then complain about being able to make it better at home?
As for ways to save money that don't impact your lifestyle, return empties, have a change jar and role it once a year, things that are not important skimp on (no name toilet cleaner works fine, no name toilet paper not so much). Make concious decisons about what is important to you and spend you rmoney on those things first, other things can be put off.
Too lazy to beat myself up for being to lazy to beat myself up for being too lazy to... well you get the point....
i haven't read through this whole thread so someone might've mentioned this before, but one of the first things one needs to do is figure out where your money is going. once you know where you're spending your money then you can figure out where it is possible to cut back/save $.
i've tried to keep my eating out w/friends for lunch to once a week. that saved a bunch of $$.
i've also cut back on clothes. i get tempted by the 60% off sales on stuff that i don't need and didn't realize i was missing until i saw the sale. or those spend $50 get an extra $10 off coupons.
personally, i need to work on the saving up THEN buying something concept.
In the end, we will remember not the words of our enemies, but the silence of our friends. -Martin Luther King Jr.
Quote
