Good overview article that covers most of the basics. I think that on the leasing, the maintenance benefit is overstated when you look at point #5 which is that most cars won't need maintenance for a long time. If you do your homework and get that reliable car, you won't have many issues. That's one of the real problems that auto makers have today, their products are lasting 10-15 years which means fewer people needing to buy a car. Good for consumers though.
Auto dealers vary widely when it comes to service. Some are very good, albeit expensive, and others are nearly criminal with inflating the services needed. I'd recommend finding a good independent certified mechanic. And I agree, buy them lunch and you'll get your cars done much faster and cheaper.
My mom kept a grease pot on the stove. She would clean it out and start over about once a month. And on leaf lettuce warm bacon grease YUMMM! I have not had it in years. She sometimes would put some hardboiled egg in it also! YOu are right about the fried spuds also.
The ketchup sandwich made me laugh-----I thought my Dad was the only one to do this. Us kids never had it though!
The sugar/butter and bread I have not had, but we had a family of Norwegians next door to us and I grew up with their homemade Lefsa which you put butter and sugar or brown sugar on. I still get some at the holidays, and it is pure heaven! Fattening? Sure, but you don't put the butter on an inch thick. It is a light smear of butter and a sprinkle of sugar.
I was just thrilled last night to fry up some bacon for dinner so we could put the leftover grease in my special container in the fridge -- we were out! And now I know why my dad puts ketchup on EVERYTHING.
A meal that still makes me cringe is my dad's old "john-ben-getti." (No, I have no idea what that means.) We wouldn't BUY Hamburger Helper - way too pricey! Just throw together some ground beef, spaghetti, ketchup and frozen peas & corn and you got yourself a meal.
My favorite stylish sweater in 3rd grade (ca. 1980) was one of those off white, button-front fake Irish sweaters with a sailor-type collar. Mom and Dad wouldn't buy me one. But luckily, Grandpa, with his eagle eyes, pulled over on the side of the highway and dashed across three lanes of traffic to retrieve the sweater someone had lost from the inside shoulder. A wash and it was good as new! And luckily, Grandpa survived.
My family have probably done most everything on that list, including the bacon grease, and that sugar and butter sandwiches.
I still scoffed at the “best by” or “use by” dates, so long as it's just a few months apart. I drew the line when my mum passed me a bottle of baking soda that had expired 3 years back. LOL
And yes, she constantly bugged me to eat everything on my plate, up to the very last morsel or else I'd end up marrying a man with lots of acne on his face, but I did ..... end up marrying a guy with acne scars on his lovable face ....
My mom would make us onion and mayo sandwiches, sugar toast, and lots and lots of cooked pinto beans. My father would boil zuchinni from the garden until it was slimy - then made us eat it. If we didn't eat it for dinner - we had to eat it cold for breakfast. Still can't even look at a zuchinni!!
I'm a little disappointed by this list because I can't relate to anything on it. A lot of these things are unhealthy, and my mom managed to feed us well without breaking the budget.
Signs that my parents really were savers:
1) I didn't know there was such a thing as credit card debt until I hit university. (My parents only used a credit card when the money was already in the bank).
2) "Homemade" was a regular feature -- including food (including preserves and baked goods), furniture, toys and clothing.
3) My first savings account coincided with my first allowance.
4) When I got my first "real jobs" (baby-sitting and paper route), I also got my first savings bonds to save for university.
5) There was seldom panic when something major broke. If the fridge died, it was an inconvenience but not a financial crisis.
6) Eating out or ordering in was a huge treat.
7) "Vacations" never involved airplanes or long distance travel.
8) Cars seemed to stay around forever.
I vaguely remember things like my mother saving the ends of soap bars to make hand soap for camping, but that's nothing compared to years of being trained to "save for a rainy day" and set financial priorities.
my mom only bought groceries once a month, so at month's end, when food was getting low, sugar and butter sammiches were a mainstay. as was, milk toast.
i remember thinking that a hamburger with a quarter lb of meat on it was SERIOUSLY over the top - mom made all casseroles with one quarter lb of hamburger... for a family of four :o
* lard sandwiches
* ham on hand sandwich (no bread)
* kerosene heaters
* spaghetti for most dinners
* any request met with "we have oodles of them"
* hand me downs
* getting "dressed up" to go to a cheap restaurant
perhaps i'm reading into things here but there is a difference in the comments between people who are frugal by choice and have just maintained frugal habits from their childhood. the frugal by choice folks can't imagine doing some of these things and those habituated to thrift remember these things with a bit of nostalgia.
My parents were raised by parents who grew up in the depression and a lot of the frugal habits that allowed my grandparents to survive (and survive well for the most part) were passed to my parents and were then, to some extent, passed to me (and my sister, although my sister hasn't embraced them nearly as much as I have).
I was a proud member of the Clean Plate Club when I was a kid.
I've eaten butter and sugar sandwiches (although they taste better toasted and with brown sugar. And it's more of a dessert for me than a main dish.).
I've put BBQ sauce on many things to make them taste better (I don't do ketchup, but BBQ on rice isn't half bad.).
"Use by" and "expiration" dates are really just suggestions to me (although if it's changed color, texture, smell or taste, it's thrown out rather than eaten). I've only sick off bad leftovers once (and that's not confirmed) and that was because I violated the previously state rule.
I did the math and know the break even point where powered milk is cheaper than "real" milk. When liquid milk hits that point,
I use powdered for cooking, baking and sometimes to drink
(although that's more rare).
I have a little contest with myself to see how long I can go before turning on the heat and air conditioning each year and how soon I can turn it off.
Black beans, brown rice and leftover meat and vegetables make up a reasonable portion of my diet (and I'm happy about it because it tastes good. Especially with a bit of cheap salsa to bind it all together. Maybe topped with some cheese. Mmmmmm....)
Mac and Cheese with just a pinch of cayenne pepper (or a packet of red peppers leftover from the pizza that was ordered at the youth event from which I got to bring home the leftovers) is just amazing.
And people wonder why I'm 10 years ahead on my mortgage, pay cash for my vehicles and support a whole lot of missionaries.
My mom always called this wilted lettuce.
Dad grew leaf lettuce in the garden for just this purpose. Mom would fry up little bits of bacon (the cheapest, fattiest bacon she could find) and then add a bit of vinegar and sugar to the grease (after removing the bacon). Then the bacon and bacon grease went on top of the lettuce.
Even enduring the task of cleaning the lettuce (being especially careful to pull out all of the slugs) was worth having wilted lettuce with dinner.
I'll take the public option if all members of congress, senate and the Obama administration are forced to take the public option as well. If it's good enough for us it should be good enough for them. Anybody here see that happening?
Boy, does this list bring back memories!
Guess old habits die hard.
I keep the thermostat at 54 degrees, just turning it up if I'm not feeling well--but I have NEVER pushed it above 60 degrees.
How 'bout those extra layer, eh?
My daughter is getting a zhu zhu pet for Christmas, but I may have reconsidered had I known. Not that she will ingest the animal, but why do corporations continue to decide to put known toxic materials in their products? They may say it helps cut costs, but how about the health of the employees who work where the zhu zhu pets are made who are probably being overexposed to the toxins?
How can you even maintain that health care is not a basic right? Do you even know what socialism is? This country is not exempt from "socialist" programs (see: police department, fire department, public libraries). Would you like to start paying premiums on police protection?
Introducing a public option is a lot like having public education. Harvard didn't close its doors because we establish the University of Texas.
Fearing "socialism" is an unnecessary and impractical fear. Learn about how the government works first.
This Christmas, my daughter is getting 2 of those. I had no idea that in this day and age, that any such poisons would be in modern toys.
I'm hoping since she has a real hamster, that this will be something that she shelves and forgets about. Then I can wrap it up in plastic and store it in the basement (just in case she asks for it later)...
Hurray, for Lego's both of my kids enjoy those (especially the theme ones like Star Wars).
I'll have to check out the site to see what they say about Mind Flex...
1. When we had chili, we added extra tomato sauce (homegrown) and beans to the can of chili to make it stretch.
2. Macaroni and egg
3. Bread and milk
4. Fruit & veggies: cut the worms out and bruises off, it's just as good. Leftovers and non-bad cuttings (leaves of celery, etc) go in the freezer to make stock or smoothies.
5. Bacon grease goes in the fridge so it doesn't go rancid. It is excellent to fry eggs in or onions, mushrooms, put a little in potato soup, etc.
6. A dozen different ways to use potatoes. Or various grains.
7. Proficiency at finding out where you can glean fields.
8. Not afraid to ask strangers if you can pick from their fruit trees when you notice nobody has picked anything and fruit is dropping to the ground.
I think a big problem with many of the things listed in the article is that the diet isn't very healthy. It's more about getting cheap calories than about what should really be going in the body. It is perfectly simple and reasonable to eat healthy whole foods frugally, people just need to learn how to do it.
I heard things such as "just put on another layer" and "there's still have a tissue left there! Save it until you need to blow your nose again". I grew up in Wisconsin, and the house was set at 63 degrees in the dead of winter. We didn't freeze to death, but some days it felt like we would.
I have: grown, peeled, and canned nearly every veg and fruit known to man; eaten squirrel and rabbit that my father shot or trapped; been forced into trespassing to harvest wild fruit; learned to cook myself when I was 7 rather than be forced into eating cold cabbage again (it was on my plate, and I had to eat every scrap. To this day, 25 years later, cabbage still makes me want to throw up).
I think I can could on one hand the amount of times we ate out growing up. We never, ever took a vacation. Ever.
Even when my parents got more on their feet financially, they kept to their thrifty ways. I guess that's probably why they own their home and business outright, have never had a credit card (nor needed one), and have toys like ATVs and Harleys that they paid for in cash.
It's funny that most of the commenters have zeroed in on the sugar and butter sandwich, myself included. My first thing though was your comment in your post about not saving bacon grease. You truly don't know what you're missing. Fresh grown leaf lettuce in a bowl with hot bacon grease drizzled over it lightly....yummy, yummy, yummy. And man oh man, fried potatoes taste delicious cooked in it.
I grew up in a very frugal household, my mom grew up in the Depression. She once made us kids sugar and butter sandwiches. There better than you would think they would be. Think of them as cinnamon toast without the cinnamon or the toasting.
"Healthcare is not a basic right." So we can have free speech and guns, but not be healthy enough to use either?
When I was in full day kindergarten (1983) we had afternoon snacks, and my favorite was the butter sandwiches on soft white bread.
Good overview article that covers most of the basics. I think that on the leasing, the maintenance benefit is overstated when you look at point #5 which is that most cars won't need maintenance for a long time. If you do your homework and get that reliable car, you won't have many issues. That's one of the real problems that auto makers have today, their products are lasting 10-15 years which means fewer people needing to buy a car. Good for consumers though.
Auto dealers vary widely when it comes to service. Some are very good, albeit expensive, and others are nearly criminal with inflating the services needed. I'd recommend finding a good independent certified mechanic. And I agree, buy them lunch and you'll get your cars done much faster and cheaper.
My mom kept a grease pot on the stove. She would clean it out and start over about once a month. And on leaf lettuce warm bacon grease YUMMM! I have not had it in years. She sometimes would put some hardboiled egg in it also! YOu are right about the fried spuds also.
The ketchup sandwich made me laugh-----I thought my Dad was the only one to do this. Us kids never had it though!
The sugar/butter and bread I have not had, but we had a family of Norwegians next door to us and I grew up with their homemade Lefsa which you put butter and sugar or brown sugar on. I still get some at the holidays, and it is pure heaven! Fattening? Sure, but you don't put the butter on an inch thick. It is a light smear of butter and a sprinkle of sugar.
I was just thrilled last night to fry up some bacon for dinner so we could put the leftover grease in my special container in the fridge -- we were out! And now I know why my dad puts ketchup on EVERYTHING.
A meal that still makes me cringe is my dad's old "john-ben-getti." (No, I have no idea what that means.) We wouldn't BUY Hamburger Helper - way too pricey! Just throw together some ground beef, spaghetti, ketchup and frozen peas & corn and you got yourself a meal.
My favorite stylish sweater in 3rd grade (ca. 1980) was one of those off white, button-front fake Irish sweaters with a sailor-type collar. Mom and Dad wouldn't buy me one. But luckily, Grandpa, with his eagle eyes, pulled over on the side of the highway and dashed across three lanes of traffic to retrieve the sweater someone had lost from the inside shoulder. A wash and it was good as new! And luckily, Grandpa survived.
Hey, I come by it honestly.
My goodness.
My family have probably done most everything on that list, including the bacon grease, and that sugar and butter sandwiches.
I still scoffed at the “best by” or “use by” dates, so long as it's just a few months apart. I drew the line when my mum passed me a bottle of baking soda that had expired 3 years back. LOL
And yes, she constantly bugged me to eat everything on my plate, up to the very last morsel or else I'd end up marrying a man with lots of acne on his face, but I did ..... end up marrying a guy with acne scars on his lovable face ....
My mom would make us onion and mayo sandwiches, sugar toast, and lots and lots of cooked pinto beans. My father would boil zuchinni from the garden until it was slimy - then made us eat it. If we didn't eat it for dinner - we had to eat it cold for breakfast. Still can't even look at a zuchinni!!
I'm a little disappointed by this list because I can't relate to anything on it. A lot of these things are unhealthy, and my mom managed to feed us well without breaking the budget.
Signs that my parents really were savers:
1) I didn't know there was such a thing as credit card debt until I hit university. (My parents only used a credit card when the money was already in the bank).
2) "Homemade" was a regular feature -- including food (including preserves and baked goods), furniture, toys and clothing.
3) My first savings account coincided with my first allowance.
4) When I got my first "real jobs" (baby-sitting and paper route), I also got my first savings bonds to save for university.
5) There was seldom panic when something major broke. If the fridge died, it was an inconvenience but not a financial crisis.
6) Eating out or ordering in was a huge treat.
7) "Vacations" never involved airplanes or long distance travel.
8) Cars seemed to stay around forever.
I vaguely remember things like my mother saving the ends of soap bars to make hand soap for camping, but that's nothing compared to years of being trained to "save for a rainy day" and set financial priorities.
LOL, these were great!
my mom only bought groceries once a month, so at month's end, when food was getting low, sugar and butter sammiches were a mainstay. as was, milk toast.
i remember thinking that a hamburger with a quarter lb of meat on it was SERIOUSLY over the top - mom made all casseroles with one quarter lb of hamburger... for a family of four :o
* lard sandwiches
* ham on hand sandwich (no bread)
* kerosene heaters
* spaghetti for most dinners
* any request met with "we have oodles of them"
* hand me downs
* getting "dressed up" to go to a cheap restaurant
perhaps i'm reading into things here but there is a difference in the comments between people who are frugal by choice and have just maintained frugal habits from their childhood. the frugal by choice folks can't imagine doing some of these things and those habituated to thrift remember these things with a bit of nostalgia.
My parents were raised by parents who grew up in the depression and a lot of the frugal habits that allowed my grandparents to survive (and survive well for the most part) were passed to my parents and were then, to some extent, passed to me (and my sister, although my sister hasn't embraced them nearly as much as I have).
I was a proud member of the Clean Plate Club when I was a kid.
I've eaten butter and sugar sandwiches (although they taste better toasted and with brown sugar. And it's more of a dessert for me than a main dish.).
I've put BBQ sauce on many things to make them taste better (I don't do ketchup, but BBQ on rice isn't half bad.).
"Use by" and "expiration" dates are really just suggestions to me (although if it's changed color, texture, smell or taste, it's thrown out rather than eaten). I've only sick off bad leftovers once (and that's not confirmed) and that was because I violated the previously state rule.
I did the math and know the break even point where powered milk is cheaper than "real" milk. When liquid milk hits that point,
I use powdered for cooking, baking and sometimes to drink
(although that's more rare).
I have a little contest with myself to see how long I can go before turning on the heat and air conditioning each year and how soon I can turn it off.
Black beans, brown rice and leftover meat and vegetables make up a reasonable portion of my diet (and I'm happy about it because it tastes good. Especially with a bit of cheap salsa to bind it all together. Maybe topped with some cheese. Mmmmmm....)
Mac and Cheese with just a pinch of cayenne pepper (or a packet of red peppers leftover from the pizza that was ordered at the youth event from which I got to bring home the leftovers) is just amazing.
And people wonder why I'm 10 years ahead on my mortgage, pay cash for my vehicles and support a whole lot of missionaries.
Antimony is used in cloths (antimony trioxide) to retard fire. So this includes fur on toys and actual clothing items for children.
My mom always called this wilted lettuce.
Dad grew leaf lettuce in the garden for just this purpose. Mom would fry up little bits of bacon (the cheapest, fattiest bacon she could find) and then add a bit of vinegar and sugar to the grease (after removing the bacon). Then the bacon and bacon grease went on top of the lettuce.
Even enduring the task of cleaning the lettuce (being especially careful to pull out all of the slugs) was worth having wilted lettuce with dinner.
I'll take the public option if all members of congress, senate and the Obama administration are forced to take the public option as well. If it's good enough for us it should be good enough for them. Anybody here see that happening?
Boy, does this list bring back memories!
Guess old habits die hard.
I keep the thermostat at 54 degrees, just turning it up if I'm not feeling well--but I have NEVER pushed it above 60 degrees.
How 'bout those extra layer, eh?
My daughter is getting a zhu zhu pet for Christmas, but I may have reconsidered had I known. Not that she will ingest the animal, but why do corporations continue to decide to put known toxic materials in their products? They may say it helps cut costs, but how about the health of the employees who work where the zhu zhu pets are made who are probably being overexposed to the toxins?
Got to check these out. We presently use Swaptree and have been able to get lots of CD's.
How can you even maintain that health care is not a basic right? Do you even know what socialism is? This country is not exempt from "socialist" programs (see: police department, fire department, public libraries). Would you like to start paying premiums on police protection?
Introducing a public option is a lot like having public education. Harvard didn't close its doors because we establish the University of Texas.
Fearing "socialism" is an unnecessary and impractical fear. Learn about how the government works first.
Thanks for bring this to my attention!
This Christmas, my daughter is getting 2 of those. I had no idea that in this day and age, that any such poisons would be in modern toys.
I'm hoping since she has a real hamster, that this will be something that she shelves and forgets about. Then I can wrap it up in plastic and store it in the basement (just in case she asks for it later)...
Hurray, for Lego's both of my kids enjoy those (especially the theme ones like Star Wars).
I'll have to check out the site to see what they say about Mind Flex...
We've been using Goozex.com for video game trading. It's a LOT better than trading used games in at Gamestop for the pittance they give you.
1. When we had chili, we added extra tomato sauce (homegrown) and beans to the can of chili to make it stretch.
2. Macaroni and egg
3. Bread and milk
4. Fruit & veggies: cut the worms out and bruises off, it's just as good. Leftovers and non-bad cuttings (leaves of celery, etc) go in the freezer to make stock or smoothies.
5. Bacon grease goes in the fridge so it doesn't go rancid. It is excellent to fry eggs in or onions, mushrooms, put a little in potato soup, etc.
6. A dozen different ways to use potatoes. Or various grains.
7. Proficiency at finding out where you can glean fields.
8. Not afraid to ask strangers if you can pick from their fruit trees when you notice nobody has picked anything and fruit is dropping to the ground.
I think a big problem with many of the things listed in the article is that the diet isn't very healthy. It's more about getting cheap calories than about what should really be going in the body. It is perfectly simple and reasonable to eat healthy whole foods frugally, people just need to learn how to do it.
I heard things such as "just put on another layer" and "there's still have a tissue left there! Save it until you need to blow your nose again". I grew up in Wisconsin, and the house was set at 63 degrees in the dead of winter. We didn't freeze to death, but some days it felt like we would.
I have: grown, peeled, and canned nearly every veg and fruit known to man; eaten squirrel and rabbit that my father shot or trapped; been forced into trespassing to harvest wild fruit; learned to cook myself when I was 7 rather than be forced into eating cold cabbage again (it was on my plate, and I had to eat every scrap. To this day, 25 years later, cabbage still makes me want to throw up).
I think I can could on one hand the amount of times we ate out growing up. We never, ever took a vacation. Ever.
Even when my parents got more on their feet financially, they kept to their thrifty ways. I guess that's probably why they own their home and business outright, have never had a credit card (nor needed one), and have toys like ATVs and Harleys that they paid for in cash.
It's funny that most of the commenters have zeroed in on the sugar and butter sandwich, myself included. My first thing though was your comment in your post about not saving bacon grease. You truly don't know what you're missing. Fresh grown leaf lettuce in a bowl with hot bacon grease drizzled over it lightly....yummy, yummy, yummy. And man oh man, fried potatoes taste delicious cooked in it.
I have eaten several of these, along with the plain mayo one and even mayo with sliced onion.
I grew up in a very frugal household, my mom grew up in the Depression. She once made us kids sugar and butter sandwiches. There better than you would think they would be. Think of them as cinnamon toast without the cinnamon or the toasting.