savingadvice over at Financial Baby Steps has great post called “A Perfect Newborn Gift – 529 College Saving Plan“. I think this is a great idea, and the newborns in my life will probably benefit.
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I couldn’t resist the punny title. Today I’m talking about shower heads, specifically the low flow variety. I’ll keep it short: if you don’t have one, consider buying one. For around $20, you can get yourself this lovely device that will cut your costs (for water and the power to heat it) by about $175/year if you’re an average household. Even if you have multiple showers and need more shower heads, it’s still a great bargain.
If you’re feeling extra frugal, get the kind with a shutoff valve that you can use to stop water flow when you don’t need it, but keep the setup how you like it for when you want it again.
Bonus: your water or electric company may give you a coupon or incentive to buy a low flow shower head. Look into it.
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Driving around town this morning, I ended up behind a Nissan Xterra with two stickers on the rear window: an Apple sticker and a Patagonia sticker. None of these things are terribly remarkable on their own, but put together, it looked to me like a picture of brand buy-in.
Let me say up front, I have nothing against any of these companies. But it did make me wonder how much money I spend embracing an idea versus getting something I need. The Xterra, Apple, and Patagonia are all pushing an idea as much as they are a product. The fact that this driver went to the effort of obtaining and adhering these stickers to their nice little vehicle tells me that clearly, these brands are doing a good job of getting buy-in. That’s great for them (and as a business person, I’d like to achieve those kind of results!). But as a consumer, I’m a little afraid of attaching myself so firmly to an idea tied to a product that I’m shopping based on the wrong criteria.
What do you think? Am I hyper-sensitive? Does it even matter?
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It’s Monday, which means it’s time for the Carnival of Personal Finance and the Carnival of the Capitalists! Definitely worth looking through when you have some unallocated time.
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I’m one of the millions who throw their change in a bucket at the end of the day, but I have always kind of avoided doing anything with it. Part of this is because my husband is enamored with the coolness of one day having a monsterous bucket full of change, but it’s also because my options were so unappealing:
However, according to this CNN article entitled, “Coinstar, Amazon hope to find a chunk of change“, the Coinstar machines will now provide an option to pay out in Amazon gift cards—with no fee. This works because they purchase the Amazon cards at a discount, so the difference between what they pay for them and the amount of change I put in is their profit. However, I get my full amount at Amazon.
Obviously this won’t work if you’re not interested in shopping at Amazon, but I shop there all the time, having purchased both the standard books and media type items as well as really out there (fly paper, anyone?). So for me, this is definitely a good deal. If only I could get Daniel to hand over the bucket!
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A few months ago, I heard about a type of investment that was completely new to me. I’m relatively investment-savvy (in theory, even if my practice is limited), so the fact that I hadn’t heard of it before got my attention. While undoubtedly some of you (who know more than me) have already heard about this, I figured there are probably others who haven’t yet, so I wanted to give a basic overview.
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Produce is wonderful and lovely, but I lose a fair amount of money on it because it goes bad relatively quickly. Part of this is bad planning on my part (buying more than we’ll reasonably eat in a given time period) but I recently found out that some of it has to do with how I’m handling and storing it. What follows is an explanation and an interview with a veritable guru of produce.
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For some excellent reading, hop over to the the premiere installment of the Carnival of Debt Reduction on MightyBargainHunter.com.
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I have had the goal of being debt-free for a long time. I frequently state that I want to have the house paid off by the time I’m 30 (I’m 25 right now, so that’s asking a lot). Once the house is paid off, that puts us at mostly debt-free; our other current debts are student loans (at a higher interest rate than the house, for pity’s sake!) and a 0% car loan. Here’s what I’ve done so far and what I’m planning to do in the next few years.
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Some frugalites love coupons, and some consider them a waste of time. Both camps have good reasons for their convictions, and since it mostly comes down to a time vs. money priority, I think they can both safely assume that they’re right. However, there’s a full range of coupon use (definitely not all or nothing), so I think it’s important to talk about what’s out there so that you can find the balance that works for you.
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I mentioned that shopping lists are probably the best known and most used tip. Pricebooks are probably the least known and used of all the tips, but there are some excellent financial reasons to learn more. First, let’s talk about what a pricebook actually is.
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This is probably the most common of all of my advice—probably not because it’s a great tip (it is!) so much as that it’s the easiest of all of the tips to actually do. Most people are aware of shopping lists; heck, there’s a whole site devoted just to “found” shopping lists (the geek in me loves this). But for the record, here’s why I use shopping lists.
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Meal plans are your friends. What is a meal plan? I guess the definition of “meal planning” is simply investing a little time in advance (listing out the food you’ll use in a given time period) to save time and money later.
In particular, you’ll save time by not wondering what to make for dinner each evening (while standing in front of an uninspiring open refrigerator); you’ll save time when you shop because you’ll know exactly what you need; you’ll save money by buying only what you need and not wasting money on things that go bad before you use them. Now that we’re all singing the praises of meal plans, let’s get down to nuts and bolts.
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Many people are coming here from Google searches on meal plans and frugal meal planning, so I decided to put mine online as an example (on the right side under “Articles > Meal plans”). You won’t see rice or beans anywhere, because my husband, Daniel, is allergic. But it’s reasonably frugal anyway, and we eat well.
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Unless you live in a very small town, there is more than one store competing for your grocery dollars. In my area, the big three are Wal-Mart, WinCo, and Albertsons. Obviously this will vary depending on where you live, but chances are you have a similar assortment: cheap groceries (Wal-Mart and WinCo), and a more upscale store (Albertsons). It’s a bit easier to just pick one store and shop there faithfully, but you will be missing out on some great deals if you do. Here’s why.
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As I mentioned in the intro to the “Smart grocery shopping” series,one way to cut back on your grocery costs is to cut back on your grocery trips. Frugalites have long brought up the point that when you just need to get eggs and milk, it’s not like you can walk into the grocery store and just buy eggs and milk. No. You have to walk past practically everything else in the whole store to get to the dairy section. This is not an accident on the store’s part. I am very likely to be reminded of something else I “need” and pick up “just a few extra things”… usually extra things I didn’t really need right away anyway. How about you?
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In my view, grocery shopping can be a great victory or a stunning defeat in the battle to save money. In most households where people are already making some effort to be frugal, grocery shopping is the single most variable expense. It is very easy to spend more than necessary, but it’s also the area where a little extra effort can pay off big time in savings. I’m going to list some tips for grocery shopping below, and then over the next few days, I’ll go into more detail on each topic.
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Just a very quick note to point out that I’ve posted a few articles (look on the sidebar under “Articles”) on the topic of making money. Hope that you find them useful! What else would you like to see an article about?
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