I was a single parent in college and was quite the thrifty mom. I agree that a spreadsheet is hte way to go. Computers are made for repetative things like weekly lists: why write the same thinga every week?
When I sort it by price the items I am not buying this week fall to the bottom. I highlight what I am getting (the things with prices above zero) and I choose "print selection" from the print menu. Instant paper list.
I use an Excel spreadsheet that has the prices in it so that I caqn use easy math formulas to multiply by how many of each items and find out what my total will be. A quick look at the store advertising circulars tells me if a side trip is warrented: after years of doing this I know which grocery stores have the best overall prices, the best killer deals on loss-lead items, the produce deals and the meat deals. I alternate between markets because some stores, while limited, have things I really enjoy so I don't want to skip them all the time!
I make it a game. How much money did I just save on stuff I really needed? That much? Really? Score!
@Marie-France: Talking to parents about estate planning can be some of the hardest things to do, to be sure. I actually deal with it in another article I wrote here , if you are interested.
@Veteran...: Thank you for your support! And although I'm all for the frugal option, please beware of the do-it-yourself will kits...they can leave lots of loopholes that can cause problems later down the road. Buyer beware.
@Thursday: For business owners (especially those with partners), there is a whole other set of estate planning and business succession options which need to be examined. (This will actually be the topic of some future articles, so stay tuned)! As for writers and artists, I hadn't actually given the rights to works any thought yet (bad Nora!), but it's a good idea. I'm not sure what the scoop is....anyone?
It is very difficult to save. We don't go to the movies very often. So when something new comes out, I invite the kids school friends, everyone brings a plate. And we watch the latest movies as a big group. If we watch more than one, then someone else brings one. We rotate this so everyone gets kid free days and the kids get to hang together, and it is cheap.
1) You save tons of money this way in gas and shipping prices, and TIME. I mail order things in bulk, often with low flat rate shipping. And I always have 50+ rolls of toilet paper in my house, so not only do I have the peace of mind that I will never run out when I need it, but I will never have to waste 30 minutes and a gallon of gas to run to the store when I need a single 50 cent roll. This can often translate into much higher savings (ie if I need a 50 cent roll of TP but I spend a dollar in gas getting it, not to mention my lost time, I've spent 300% of the original price!
2) Commodities in general, and foodstuffs as a reader mentioned, always INCREASE in value, so you are buying things at a lower price today than they would cost you 6 months or a year from now.
3) Your "negatives" are all technically valid, but in actual practice rarely come into play. Bulkiness--I buy 100 razor blades instead of the 4 pack. It takes up about 6" x 4" and costs about 1/3 the price. Your wine example is bulky but I don't think it's the best example of what to buy in large quantities (and who drinks a bottle a day anyway!)Illiquid? Technically yes, but this is money you supposedly would have been spending on this product ANYWAY throughout the year, and these are staples that you need, not luxury items like HDTVs that you choose to buy or not. Risks of spoilage well thats just common sense.. you don't buy 50 pounds of hamburger meat. Household items (non-food) are some of the best deals and the most important things to stock up on (ie I don't care too much if I'm out of rice, but if I can't shave in the morning, I'm in trouble). Deflation does not exist in America. And research costs? I actually know the prices better when I'm spending $100 for many items versus 2 bucks for a single one.
I'll settle this right now. I've been performing professional paintless dent removal for over 17 years. http://www.denttime.com If a dent was to come out with compressed air and a blow dryer, it would come out anyway without it in the first place.
Try taking that no good method and use it on your own dents. I guarantee that 99.9% of you won't be able to get real results. Notice I said "real."
Removing a dent takes way more physics than you think. It's actually called "physical" labor used with special steel rods and tools. Here's a link if anyone wants to see how dents are performed as a craft. http://www.denttime.wordpress.comThe only type of dent that "might" even come close to being removed with compressed air would be a flat and shallow dent that you could take your hand and pop out anyway.
I agree that playing tour guide is a great way to see a place with new eyes. It can also get you out to those 'touristy' destinations that are so easy to miss when you live in a place.
Choosing a tour guide sounds exciting. It reminds me of the beginning of an O. Henry story.
Walking is a great past time. It's good for the heart, legs, and lungs, but also for thinking things over.
Safety, I must agree, should always be a priority. I would like to think, however, that after some timid ventures into those dangerous parts of your city you might find that they are not so 'bad' after all. Use your own common sense and discretion of course, but challenges to perception like this are, in my opinion, a significant part of travel.
I have what might be an excessively simple solution to the aisle issue - I asked my store's customer service desk for an aisle directory. It looks like a little brochure and lists what's in each aisle. I just keep it in my coupon envelope and use it when I make my list since I never remember where anything is.
Maybe most stores don't have this available though.
I just simply start at the entrance of the same store I always go to, and take the SAME exact route through the store every trip. Up and down each isle, across the back, then up and down each isle on the other side, then to the registers.
I never forget anything, I remember where everything is, and I never have to go back through the store for stuff.
Unless, there's something really different on my list...sometimes it takes a while to find that!
But grocery shopping takes me 1 hour, from getting in the car, to getting the grocery bags out of the car, and into the house, and that's usually with a preschooler bugging me. Sometimes her older brother, too.
I go once a week, on the same day every week.
Everyone knows what "usual" items they need, every week.
As long as I have them, I can survive another week, if I forget something.
Oh, there ARE some things that are WAY more expensive than Walmart Supercenter's price, so I purposely don't get those things, BUT, I use the voice recorder on my cell phone for each item I have to get at another store. Or, I use the notepad on the cell phone, as I walk around, just so I can get right to the items at Walmart, and get out.
Good luck! I HATE grocery shopping!
Did you ever notice just how many times you actually handle each item, before you are totally done with it and it's out of your house?
Pick it from shelf, into cart.
Pick it from cart onto register.
Pick everything in the bag into the car.
Pick every bag out of the car, into the house.
Pick each item out of the bag, into the fridge, shelf, cabinet...
Pick each item out for dinner.
Throw the box, jar, container away,
OR...put that item back for MORE uses!
I use leverage card, which also provides these resources. It most important that the site I am using is secure, with good service and leverage provides that. They have a great collection of affiliate programs, I even have my kids' Coke Rewards program up there.
I used to use my Mindspring PDA for grocery lists back when I was the only person I was shopping for. I like the shared spreadsheet idea... access from any point to add to it for one concise list. Sometimes I think of things while I'm at work.
I wonder if there's a way to get to that with some combination of Google Docs and the new Apple Notes application on iPhone/iPod Touch?
Pax, I certainly agree that my husband was a pretty poor driver at the time (this was years ago, and it has gotten better). Most of the traffic stops would have been avoided by better driving.
However, the best of drivers get pulled over now and then. If you have one of these devices, it may be taken as a sign that you speed. It's likely that the officer will ticket you when they have the chance, even if they otherwise would have given a warning.
I contribute to the Police charities because I have a good friend who is a cop, and I know how devastating it can be to the family of an officer who has fallen in the line of duty. All I was saying is that my stickers in my car have done nothing for me. Ever. And that's probably right, because otherwise it is a form of bribery, or worse still, a protection racket.
OK, now this is really getting interesting. I've been looking for ways to use my T-Moble Dash a bit more. Every online service I've tried to use makes for a big pain in the neck to try to use. It's sort of like a Blackberry.
But a list that has a mobile version . . . now that just might grab and keep my attention . . .
I use a combination of the fridgeside and spreadsheet methods. We keep a running list of a dry erase board at the side on the fridge (it's the only way I can even hope to get the bf to keep track of what we need--and even then it's a longshot). I also keep a spreadsheet with the "usual suspects"--milk, bread, carrots, apples, and that sort--always on the list and arranged in sections. Produce items are always in one area, dairy in another--this keeps me from criss-crossing the store. So I print my standard list and then add items by hand from the fridgeside list to the appropriate category. My add-on items tend to be very few. I'll also add-on any items for a specific recipe if they're not pantry items.
Maybe it's a bit of OCD peeking through, but the categories are also arranged in order of the path I take through the store--in the front door and over to the deli, swing through the bread area then on to the dairy cases, hit the frozen veg aisle, then down butcher row, then it's off to the pasta/ethnic/canned/condinment aisles (these are the two aisles that always throw me as to what's where), and the grande finale... produce (I hate squashed or bruised produce, so it's always my last major stop). Then, and only then, if there are still items left on my list I'll venture off the "approved" route.
The bf hates shopping with me--I'm too focused and he dawdles too much as far as I'm concerned, I really don't want to analyze the particular properties of each jar of salsa on the shelf every time I go to the grocery store.
At first, I used http://www.knotler.com/ for my shopping lists. It allowed me to input the items on the desktop computer at home and refer to the list using my cell phone while at the supermarket. Then I switched to Google Notebook when Google introduced a mobile version of that service.
There are plenty of hard-working people willing to take risks who are willing to tough it out when those risks don't pay off. However, there are also plenty of hard-working people willing to take risks who want the government to step in and "protect" them when the risk doesn't pay off.
As long as you don't go too far, you can make either system work. What we've done just lately, though, is broken in two ways:
We're socializing the risks, but just for rich people. Small businesses that go broke just go under. Big businesses that go broke "reorganize" in a way that wipes out the employees and the shareholders--but that gives huge rewards to the banks and to management.
We're socializing the risks, but not the profits. All those businesses that "reorganize" in a way that wipes out pensions, devastate 401(k)s, and squash wages, turn around and complain bitterly about the taxes that they have to pay once their reorganized business (free of all its old obligations) starts making huge profits.
I wouldn't care about a CEO making millions when his business did well either--except I've seen what happens when the business does poorly. I'll give you a hint--what happens is not that the CEO pays back his last year's bonus and promises to live on $50,000 a year until the pension is fully funded and the stock price is back up to its previous high.
Yup! Those mess me up as well. Also, certain things like lime juice, horseradish, Parmesan cheese pre-grated, olives, curries, and more. And cornmeal! It's never in the same freaking place from store to store. Glad I'm not alone on this.
Stating the obvious probably, but in my professional life I work on environmental projects that are trying to remediate land and groundwater contaminated by drycleaners - not an easy task. Some sites are over thirty years old and still toxic as heck.
The chemicals they use on your clothes are persistant (don't break down easily in the envrionment) and can be cancer causing. They say they are using more environmentally sensitive chemicals with better disposal methods...but that is like saying "I'm using a more effective gun to shoot something" You're still shooting it.
Also, from a garment perspective, most clothes say dry-clean only because they are too cheap to buy pre-washed fabric. Buying the large industrial bolts of fabric unwashed can save hundreds of dollars to the manufacturer, so they pocket the difference and slap on a dry-clean only label. That's why other posters have had so much success with just washing their dry-clean only clothes, the fabric didn't shrink very much.
When I married my husband I stopped his dry cleaning addiction by pointing out to him that he wasn't really paying for the dry cleaning, he was paying for the pressing of his shirts, pants and jackets. Once we figured that out, being frugal we began to do the pressing ourselves. I'm sure you could substantially lower your bill by bringing in your clothes just for pressing rather than full dry cleaning if that's what you're really after.
Costco/Sams always have free samples on the weekends, and since I'm a member I often stop there in between other grocery stores just to 'taste' my way through a free lunch. Of course you have to practice self control and not buy anything that isn't on your list...Also, they are really good sources of paperbacks and new release books at very cheap prices. I've gotten three paperbacks for $5 there, by popular authors like Clive Cussler, Tom Clancy, and Janet Evanovitch.
My mother taught me to keep my eyes open while shopping, and every so often, go to a new, different, or less frequently visited store and bring your shopping list with you. Check and compare prices, see if they have similar or yummier versions of what you normally get. These notes can help you decide where to shop, and get you out of food ruts.
Recently I saved a ton by doing this at Costco** - I took my normal shopping list and 'visited' with a friend who was already a member. I took careful notes of what they did and didn't have, quantities and prices, etc. For maybe an hour or so of work I found that the $50 membership fee really would pay for itself, and I discovered fancy chicken, apple and gouda sausage - my favorite lower fat pasta addition! My regular store did not carry anything as yummy as that.
**As an added bonus, if you go at the right time they have free samples, which if you are diligent, can turn into a free lunch!
I'm working on getting them down myself, but what always trips me up is "Ethnic Food."
When I lived in the Midwest, tortillas were shelved with the other bread products. East Coasters put them in the ethnic food aisle, along with certain types of beans and peppers that I take for granted. I honestly never think to look in the "Ethnic Food" aisle, because I don't necessarily remember that half my recipes were from Indian, Mexican and who-knows-what-all cookbooks originally.
As usual.
I was a single parent in college and was quite the thrifty mom. I agree that a spreadsheet is hte way to go. Computers are made for repetative things like weekly lists: why write the same thinga every week?
When I sort it by price the items I am not buying this week fall to the bottom. I highlight what I am getting (the things with prices above zero) and I choose "print selection" from the print menu. Instant paper list.
I use an Excel spreadsheet that has the prices in it so that I caqn use easy math formulas to multiply by how many of each items and find out what my total will be. A quick look at the store advertising circulars tells me if a side trip is warrented: after years of doing this I know which grocery stores have the best overall prices, the best killer deals on loss-lead items, the produce deals and the meat deals. I alternate between markets because some stores, while limited, have things I really enjoy so I don't want to skip them all the time!
I make it a game. How much money did I just save on stuff I really needed? That much? Really? Score!
@Marie-France: Talking to parents about estate planning can be some of the hardest things to do, to be sure. I actually deal with it in another article I wrote here , if you are interested.
@Veteran...: Thank you for your support! And although I'm all for the frugal option, please beware of the do-it-yourself will kits...they can leave lots of loopholes that can cause problems later down the road. Buyer beware.
@Thursday: For business owners (especially those with partners), there is a whole other set of estate planning and business succession options which need to be examined. (This will actually be the topic of some future articles, so stay tuned)! As for writers and artists, I hadn't actually given the rights to works any thought yet (bad Nora!), but it's a good idea. I'm not sure what the scoop is....anyone?
It is very difficult to save. We don't go to the movies very often. So when something new comes out, I invite the kids school friends, everyone brings a plate. And we watch the latest movies as a big group. If we watch more than one, then someone else brings one. We rotate this so everyone gets kid free days and the kids get to hang together, and it is cheap.
A few very important other factors:
1) You save tons of money this way in gas and shipping prices, and TIME. I mail order things in bulk, often with low flat rate shipping. And I always have 50+ rolls of toilet paper in my house, so not only do I have the peace of mind that I will never run out when I need it, but I will never have to waste 30 minutes and a gallon of gas to run to the store when I need a single 50 cent roll. This can often translate into much higher savings (ie if I need a 50 cent roll of TP but I spend a dollar in gas getting it, not to mention my lost time, I've spent 300% of the original price!
2) Commodities in general, and foodstuffs as a reader mentioned, always INCREASE in value, so you are buying things at a lower price today than they would cost you 6 months or a year from now.
3) Your "negatives" are all technically valid, but in actual practice rarely come into play. Bulkiness--I buy 100 razor blades instead of the 4 pack. It takes up about 6" x 4" and costs about 1/3 the price. Your wine example is bulky but I don't think it's the best example of what to buy in large quantities (and who drinks a bottle a day anyway!)Illiquid? Technically yes, but this is money you supposedly would have been spending on this product ANYWAY throughout the year, and these are staples that you need, not luxury items like HDTVs that you choose to buy or not. Risks of spoilage well thats just common sense.. you don't buy 50 pounds of hamburger meat. Household items (non-food) are some of the best deals and the most important things to stock up on (ie I don't care too much if I'm out of rice, but if I can't shave in the morning, I'm in trouble). Deflation does not exist in America. And research costs? I actually know the prices better when I'm spending $100 for many items versus 2 bucks for a single one.
I am also a resident of upstate New York and I couldn't agree with you more. A good blanket really makes winter nights bearable.
Very interesting list!
I'll settle this right now. I've been performing professional paintless dent removal for over 17 years. http://www.denttime.com If a dent was to come out with compressed air and a blow dryer, it would come out anyway without it in the first place.
Try taking that no good method and use it on your own dents. I guarantee that 99.9% of you won't be able to get real results. Notice I said "real."
Removing a dent takes way more physics than you think. It's actually called "physical" labor used with special steel rods and tools. Here's a link if anyone wants to see how dents are performed as a craft. http://www.denttime.wordpress.comThe only type of dent that "might" even come close to being removed with compressed air would be a flat and shallow dent that you could take your hand and pop out anyway.
I agree that playing tour guide is a great way to see a place with new eyes. It can also get you out to those 'touristy' destinations that are so easy to miss when you live in a place.
Choosing a tour guide sounds exciting. It reminds me of the beginning of an O. Henry story.
Walking is a great past time. It's good for the heart, legs, and lungs, but also for thinking things over.
Safety, I must agree, should always be a priority. I would like to think, however, that after some timid ventures into those dangerous parts of your city you might find that they are not so 'bad' after all. Use your own common sense and discretion of course, but challenges to perception like this are, in my opinion, a significant part of travel.
I have what might be an excessively simple solution to the aisle issue - I asked my store's customer service desk for an aisle directory. It looks like a little brochure and lists what's in each aisle. I just keep it in my coupon envelope and use it when I make my list since I never remember where anything is.
Maybe most stores don't have this available though.
I just simply start at the entrance of the same store I always go to, and take the SAME exact route through the store every trip. Up and down each isle, across the back, then up and down each isle on the other side, then to the registers.
I never forget anything, I remember where everything is, and I never have to go back through the store for stuff.
Unless, there's something really different on my list...sometimes it takes a while to find that!
But grocery shopping takes me 1 hour, from getting in the car, to getting the grocery bags out of the car, and into the house, and that's usually with a preschooler bugging me. Sometimes her older brother, too.
I go once a week, on the same day every week.
Everyone knows what "usual" items they need, every week.
As long as I have them, I can survive another week, if I forget something.
Oh, there ARE some things that are WAY more expensive than Walmart Supercenter's price, so I purposely don't get those things, BUT, I use the voice recorder on my cell phone for each item I have to get at another store. Or, I use the notepad on the cell phone, as I walk around, just so I can get right to the items at Walmart, and get out.
Good luck! I HATE grocery shopping!
Did you ever notice just how many times you actually handle each item, before you are totally done with it and it's out of your house?
Pick it from shelf, into cart.
Pick it from cart onto register.
Pick everything in the bag into the car.
Pick every bag out of the car, into the house.
Pick each item out of the bag, into the fridge, shelf, cabinet...
Pick each item out for dinner.
Throw the box, jar, container away,
OR...put that item back for MORE uses!
Man, I hate shopping!
LOL!
What?
I use leverage card, which also provides these resources. It most important that the site I am using is secure, with good service and leverage provides that. They have a great collection of affiliate programs, I even have my kids' Coke Rewards program up there.
After seeing The Bucket List this weekend...and reading your great post, it's probably time for a lot of us to examine our priorities.
Thanks!
I used to use my Mindspring PDA for grocery lists back when I was the only person I was shopping for. I like the shared spreadsheet idea... access from any point to add to it for one concise list. Sometimes I think of things while I'm at work.
I wonder if there's a way to get to that with some combination of Google Docs and the new Apple Notes application on iPhone/iPod Touch?
Anyone?
Pax, I certainly agree that my husband was a pretty poor driver at the time (this was years ago, and it has gotten better). Most of the traffic stops would have been avoided by better driving.
However, the best of drivers get pulled over now and then. If you have one of these devices, it may be taken as a sign that you speed. It's likely that the officer will ticket you when they have the chance, even if they otherwise would have given a warning.
I contribute to the Police charities because I have a good friend who is a cop, and I know how devastating it can be to the family of an officer who has fallen in the line of duty. All I was saying is that my stickers in my car have done nothing for me. Ever. And that's probably right, because otherwise it is a form of bribery, or worse still, a protection racket.
OK, now this is really getting interesting. I've been looking for ways to use my T-Moble Dash a bit more. Every online service I've tried to use makes for a big pain in the neck to try to use. It's sort of like a Blackberry.
But a list that has a mobile version . . . now that just might grab and keep my attention . . .
I use a combination of the fridgeside and spreadsheet methods. We keep a running list of a dry erase board at the side on the fridge (it's the only way I can even hope to get the bf to keep track of what we need--and even then it's a longshot). I also keep a spreadsheet with the "usual suspects"--milk, bread, carrots, apples, and that sort--always on the list and arranged in sections. Produce items are always in one area, dairy in another--this keeps me from criss-crossing the store. So I print my standard list and then add items by hand from the fridgeside list to the appropriate category. My add-on items tend to be very few. I'll also add-on any items for a specific recipe if they're not pantry items.
Maybe it's a bit of OCD peeking through, but the categories are also arranged in order of the path I take through the store--in the front door and over to the deli, swing through the bread area then on to the dairy cases, hit the frozen veg aisle, then down butcher row, then it's off to the pasta/ethnic/canned/condinment aisles (these are the two aisles that always throw me as to what's where), and the grande finale... produce (I hate squashed or bruised produce, so it's always my last major stop). Then, and only then, if there are still items left on my list I'll venture off the "approved" route.
The bf hates shopping with me--I'm too focused and he dawdles too much as far as I'm concerned, I really don't want to analyze the particular properties of each jar of salsa on the shelf every time I go to the grocery store.
At first, I used http://www.knotler.com/ for my shopping lists. It allowed me to input the items on the desktop computer at home and refer to the list using my cell phone while at the supermarket. Then I switched to Google Notebook when Google introduced a mobile version of that service.
There are plenty of hard-working people willing to take risks who are willing to tough it out when those risks don't pay off. However, there are also plenty of hard-working people willing to take risks who want the government to step in and "protect" them when the risk doesn't pay off.
As long as you don't go too far, you can make either system work. What we've done just lately, though, is broken in two ways:
I wouldn't care about a CEO making millions when his business did well either--except I've seen what happens when the business does poorly. I'll give you a hint--what happens is not that the CEO pays back his last year's bonus and promises to live on $50,000 a year until the pension is fully funded and the stock price is back up to its previous high.
Yup! Those mess me up as well. Also, certain things like lime juice, horseradish, Parmesan cheese pre-grated, olives, curries, and more. And cornmeal! It's never in the same freaking place from store to store. Glad I'm not alone on this.
Stating the obvious probably, but in my professional life I work on environmental projects that are trying to remediate land and groundwater contaminated by drycleaners - not an easy task. Some sites are over thirty years old and still toxic as heck.
The chemicals they use on your clothes are persistant (don't break down easily in the envrionment) and can be cancer causing. They say they are using more environmentally sensitive chemicals with better disposal methods...but that is like saying "I'm using a more effective gun to shoot something" You're still shooting it.
Also, from a garment perspective, most clothes say dry-clean only because they are too cheap to buy pre-washed fabric. Buying the large industrial bolts of fabric unwashed can save hundreds of dollars to the manufacturer, so they pocket the difference and slap on a dry-clean only label. That's why other posters have had so much success with just washing their dry-clean only clothes, the fabric didn't shrink very much.
When I married my husband I stopped his dry cleaning addiction by pointing out to him that he wasn't really paying for the dry cleaning, he was paying for the pressing of his shirts, pants and jackets. Once we figured that out, being frugal we began to do the pressing ourselves. I'm sure you could substantially lower your bill by bringing in your clothes just for pressing rather than full dry cleaning if that's what you're really after.
Good post, thanks!
Costco/Sams always have free samples on the weekends, and since I'm a member I often stop there in between other grocery stores just to 'taste' my way through a free lunch. Of course you have to practice self control and not buy anything that isn't on your list...Also, they are really good sources of paperbacks and new release books at very cheap prices. I've gotten three paperbacks for $5 there, by popular authors like Clive Cussler, Tom Clancy, and Janet Evanovitch.
My mother taught me to keep my eyes open while shopping, and every so often, go to a new, different, or less frequently visited store and bring your shopping list with you. Check and compare prices, see if they have similar or yummier versions of what you normally get. These notes can help you decide where to shop, and get you out of food ruts.
Recently I saved a ton by doing this at Costco** - I took my normal shopping list and 'visited' with a friend who was already a member. I took careful notes of what they did and didn't have, quantities and prices, etc. For maybe an hour or so of work I found that the $50 membership fee really would pay for itself, and I discovered fancy chicken, apple and gouda sausage - my favorite lower fat pasta addition! My regular store did not carry anything as yummy as that.
**As an added bonus, if you go at the right time they have free samples, which if you are diligent, can turn into a free lunch!
I'm working on getting them down myself, but what always trips me up is "Ethnic Food."
When I lived in the Midwest, tortillas were shelved with the other bread products. East Coasters put them in the ethnic food aisle, along with certain types of beans and peppers that I take for granted. I honestly never think to look in the "Ethnic Food" aisle, because I don't necessarily remember that half my recipes were from Indian, Mexican and who-knows-what-all cookbooks originally.