No Debt Plan

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(Photo by kk+, and no she didn’t turn 6!)

Yesterday was my wife’s birthday. Hooray Birthdays!

We had a talk about a week before her birthday about our budget and being frugal. She reminded me that she is an absolute birthday fanatic. Seems normal, right? So why mention this? Well… I’m not rah-rah excited about birthdays. They just aren’t my thing when it’s my turn. So to make sure that I understood, she wanted to remind me that not only is she super excited when her birthday comes around, but to definitely celebrate it.

We’ve discussed being superfrugal in the past. I told you to take your spouse on a date. Don’t forget how to do that. She wanted to remind me that even though we are on a budget and whatnot, I do have spendable money and she would appreciate a celebration of some sort.

Now let me be clear this wasn’t an ultimatium of “give me the biggest birthday bash ever!” It was just a gentle reminder of … hey, you don’t celebrate birthdays all out, and I would appreciate it if we did something.

Thus last night we celebrated with a trip to our favorite bar-b-que restaurant, and a double doozie cookie cake. Oh yes. It was fantastic.

On top of that we’re going to celebrate this Saturday as well. Having a birthday in the middle of the week is not as managable as it was back when we didn’t have jobs, a dog, and I wasn’t in my MBA program!

So just another reminder to all of you: don’t let superfrugality hurt your relationship. Manage your finances effectively. Budget appropriately. But don’t not spend any money on anything. (Unless you are spending more than you earn… then you’ve got to cut everywhere).

One man’s trash is another man’s treasure. With inflation increasing, gas and energy prices skyrocketing, and your pay not moving an inch every dime you can save on just about anything is a grand savings.

You can find all sorts of deals online. Just take a look at eBay and Craigslist. People are selling stuff out of their closets and basements for (usually) bargain prices. I have had great success with Craigslist. I bought my car on Craigslist from a private seller. When I left Birmingham after an internship the summer before I graduated, I sold an old, disgusting loveseat on Craigslist. The loveseat had a broken spring, kind of smelled, and was ugly. I bought a $75 slipcover for my use during the summer and listed it on Craigslist for $50. It sold and the woman brought cash. I figured I got a steal by cutting my losses to $25. To top it off my then girlfriend was more than pleased to see it go!

But those sites require you to have money. There are other ways to grab some deals… and in the following two cases you can grab items for absolutely free.

FreeCycle

I had heard of FreeCycle in the past. For the uninitiated, straight from their webpage:

Welcome! The Freecycle Network™ is made up of 4,362 groups with 5,099,000 members across the globe. It’s a grassroots and entirely nonprofit movement of people who are giving (& getting) stuff for free in their own towns. It’s all about reuse and keeping good stuff out of landfills. Each local group is moderated by a local volunteer (them’s good people). Membership is free. To sign up, find your community by entering it into the search box above or by clicking on “Browse Groups” above the search box. Have fun!

The FreeCycle webpage doesn’t actually do all that much. It just links you to your local freecycle group which is done all on Yahoo Groups. I guess as a grassroots organization it is easier to use a free service like Yahoo than running everyone on the group’s local server.

With FreeCycle, there are three different terms you will see on listings: offer, wanted, and taken. As you might imagine, offer means someone is offering the item to be picked up. Wanted is an item someone is looking to get for free. Taken means someone had offered an item, and it has now been taken (so don’t waste your time contacting the offer-er).

A look at my local FreeCycle group, here are some of the most recent listings:

• Offer: Shopping bag full of wire coathangers
• Wanted: Vanity Table and Chair
• Offer: Freezer (needs some repair)
• Taken: Two identical Graco Car seats

The two identical car seats sounds like a great deal — if you could verify they had not be damaged. The coat hangers… hey, someone might need them. If you’re handy you could get a freezer for free — just haul it away yourself.

Clever Dude recently snagged a Garmin for free on FreeCycle! Unbelievable. This is the exception, not the rule.

Rehash Clothes

Rehashclothes.com is a relatively new player in the “get stuff for free” arena. Here’s how they describe themselves:

By Rehashing, you can shop for clothes without spending a penny, all while helping the environment. Oh, and did we mention it’s free?

So you wear that new dress three times before you get tired of it. Rehash it to someone else and grab another dress from a different user.

I haven’t read of anyone using it, but it seems to be coming along just fine.

So, where do you go to get the best deals on “stuff”? Would you trust someone to send you clean clothes?

I’ve been aware of Skype for quite some time. It’s a very interesting idea — making phone calls from your computer to land line phones and cell phones.

However, I never truly paid it any mind. It requires a Skype phone, and you have to sign up for service. I’m in the target demographic — 20-30 somethings — but I have a cell phone. Why would I pay for another phone and another service?

Wait, did you just say $2.95/month unlimited calling in the US and Canada? Woah. Now I’m paying attention.

Again, let me restate I doubt I would use the service. But it sounds like a darn good deal.

Compare to…

• Vonage $24.99 per month
• Typical phone service $15-20 per month plus long distance charges
• Cell phone (roughly 10 cents per minute)

…then $2.95 per month (roughly $36 per year) and you get unlimited calls within the US and Canada. If you do a lot of desk work or call from your home phone a lot, that seems like a stellar deal.

Maybe I’m missing something. You tell me. Skype — too good to be true or simply awesome deal?

Update: Comments from the Readers

Some readers have pointed out that Skype to Skype calls are absolutely free if both users have Skype and a microphone for a computer. So if everyone was using Skype, you wouldn’t even have to pay the $3/month charge. However, $3/month for unlimited calling to non-Skype users is still a great deal.

The weather has warmed up around here, and we’re enjoying temperatures in the 80s and 90s. Nothing soothes on a hot day like a few scoops of ice cream in a waffle cone.

But, why pay $3 per cone when you can buy a half-gallon for $5 or $6? You could buy two ice cream cones or enjoy a whole quart of ice cream. That seems like simple math to me.

Granted, a trip to Bruster’s Ice Cream Shop or Cold Stone Creamery can be a fun date. I’m not discounting that. I just think it can be expensive.

Then again, at Bruster’s the amount of ice cream they give you might be a quart!

Nonetheless it is much more frugal to eat ice cream at home. You may miss the waffle cone, but you get more bang for your buck with the half-gallon bucket.

Two Added Bonuses to Eating Ice Cream at Home

You can control the portion size. Smaller portions means your container lasts longer and eating less ice cream each serving is a slightly healthier option (hey, it’s still ice cream).

Additionally, when you purchase ice cream at the grocery store you can see the nutritional facts. Ice cream isn’t the best thing for you, but maybe you choose a brand with less fat. Every little bit counts.

So let’s have it — who here loves ice cream? What’s your favorite flavor? Leave a comment!

I personally love chocolate chip cookie dough, especially from Bruster’s because they have actual huge chunks of cookie dough in it. Back in the day Baskin Robbin’s had a flavor called Double Chocolate Fudge or something like that. It was very dark brown and extremely rich… but so good. I haven’t seen it in a while.

(Photo above by Tom Coates.)

(Photo by ToastyKen)

I got my first Walgreens EasySaver gift card in the mail last week. I decided to try the EasySaver plan a try after reading about the program at BeingFrugal.

My first purchase was a 6 oz. tube of Aquafresh toothpaste. The transaction ended up where my toothpaste paid me 17 cents to buy it even after tax. Not bad, right?

The giftcard with the 10% bonus came in the mail, full of $3.84 worth of spending goodness. The new month kicked in with a new list of items that you can get for free after rebate. Most of them were not of any interest to me, but there was an Oral-B toothbrush for free after rebate at a cost of $4.49.

Here’s how the transaction will play out:

• Toothbrush cost: $4.49
• Tax (5%): $0.22
• Total: $4.71
• Use Gift Card ($3.84): $0.87 paid with AMEX card
• Rebate w/10% bonus to gift card: $4.49 x 1.10 = $4.94
• Rebate minus cost: $4.94 - 4.71 = $0.23

Again, it doesn’t seem like much and I did have to invest an additional 87 cents to get the toothbrush. This brings my total investment to the cost of the toothpaste and toothbrush, or $3.66 plus 0.87. Total investment thus far is $4.53, and for that money I’ve gotten a toothbrush and toothpaste. On top of that, I’ll end up with $4.94 in money to spend at Walgreens on the next item.

It’s only one item a month that I am currently buying. Next month there may be nothing of interest to me to buy, and that’s fine. As I mentioned last time, this isn’t going to make me rich. But the mentality to go out and find a deal on simple every day items will add up over time.

(Photo by MShades)

The pet industry is a multi-billion dollar industry in the United States. We really like to take care of our pets.

Of course, we got a puppy two Saturdays ago. We have incurred expenses as you might expect — adoption fee, collar, leash, food and water bowls, food, toys… the list goes on and on.

We were in PetSmart the other day looking at dog food. The Humane Society gave us a 5 lb. bag of Science Diet for Puppies, which they recommended. We found the location of the Science Diet and did some investigation. Just like you might check the per ounce cost at the grocery store, we did the same thing with the dog food.

The per pound cost of dog food

This is what we found:

Small bag, 5 lbs.: $11

Big bag, 40 lbs.: $40

Woah… wait a second. Do the math. The small bag is $2.20 per pound. That’s practically chuck round ground beef! The big bag is only $1 per pound.

There is a significant bulk discount to buying the bigger bag. If you buy the smaller bag you pay a 120% premium. I could understand charging a little bit more for the smaller bag, but 120% seems a bit over the top.

Long story short, if you have a pet make sure you’re checking the per pound or per ounce cost of the food. Compare it to other bags from the same brand. I would imagine that generally the more you buy, the cheaper the food is.

When our free small bag runs out, we’ll definitely be getting a big bag of the dog food.

I think most people buy more clothes than they can possibly use. So you wore the same shirt to work two weeks ago… who cares?

Then again, some people push the limits of frugality and let clothes become worn down and tattered. That is pushing it too far, looks unprofessional, and can seriously damage your career.

We all need to buy additional clothes at some point. With a little forethought and planning, you can get incredible deals online and in stores by simply waiting:

• In spring and summer, buy winter clothing.
• In autumn and winter, buy summer clothing.

It’s April 17th. If there are any sweaters or winter coats left at the store, now is a great time to buy.

It’s a simple idea, no doubt. Timing is critical for this strategy to work. If you wait too long into a new season, you may not be able to find things in your size or style. If you go too early, the heavy discounts may not be applied just yet. It may be too late to find a decent winter coat in stores these days. Maybe you can find something online instead.

Some things are discounted throughout the year at seemingly random times or simply don’t get put on a severe discount. Men’s dress shirts would be an example. There isn’t a typical “dress shirt season” as there is winter coats. For these items, just doing your research and buying when a deal comes around seems to be the best option.

What about you? Do you just buy clothes whenever you feel like it, or do you plan ahead?

In the personal finance world, we’re all about dollars and cents. Stretching every dollar, saving every penny.

Yet, sometimes life isn’t all about how much profit you can wring out of every dollar.

When I graduated college, I had a ratty, ugly, smelly love seat I took with me to my first real world apartment. We threw a slipcover over it and made due. At the same time, my Mom had taken a job about 3 hours from home. My parents were living in an apartment. They went outside one day to discover someone had been evicted… someone with nice furniture! The guy cleaning out the apartment told them they could take whatever they wanted because the person wasn’t coming back. Literally, there was a stack of nice stuff sitting on the curb. (You’d think they could’ve called the Salvation Army or something?)

My Dad called me and said there was a matching love seat and couch, a microwave, and some other knick knacks. What do you think I said? “Well what are you waiting for? Grab the love seat!”, of course!

So, bless them, my dear parents went down stairs, grabbed this relatively heavy love seat and hauled it upstairs to their apartment. I made a trip home a few weekends later to get it and it was in near perfect condition.

Fast forward several years, and we buy a new house. The love seat doesn’t exactly fill up the living room, so we bought a new enormous couch off of Craigslist for a very inexpensive price. We put the love seat in the office, and made that work. But it took up a lot of space, and my wife really needs her own space (i.e. a desk) for her school things. We tried to sell it on Craigslist for profit, but didn’t get any bites.

We recently had some friends relocate back to the area on a tight budget. They are both starting new jobs and cash is tight. My wife thought we might offer the love seat to them. Stuck in my personal finance mentality, I wanted to sell it to them. Even though we got it for practically free — the cost of a U-Haul rental and a tank of gas — I wanted to make a profit off the love seat.

Greed. It isn’t necessarily a bad thing — but this was unnecessary. Remember, these are our friends. To say the least, this was over the line. So we gave it to them, and they were really appreciative. They came by and got it few weekends back. And now we’ve got a nice open space already stacked with “stuff”.

Let this be a lesson to all: personal finance is important. Truly, I believe that. Sometimes you’ve got to step back and take a look at the big picture. Accumulating money shouldn’t be the #1 end all thing in your life. I can’t tell you what should be number one, that’s for you to decide, but don’t let it be money.

Happy Sunday.

See results of our window treatments at the bottom of this post.

Our house has two thin windows next to the front door that look into the foyer. When we moved in we didn’t think much of them. However, the way the house is designed you can see all the way into the living room if you were standing at our door. That really ruins the “walking around in your underwear” part of owning a home.

Once we realized we needed to cover the windows, we thought of our options: blinds, curtains, or something else. We walked around the neighborhood to see what other folks had done. Mostly we saw open windows without coverings, and blinds.

The problem with blinds and curtains is how to mount them above the door. We have a rounded window above the door rather than dry wall, and it would be weird to cover that up. Blinds can be expensive too. We had Lowe’s install all of our blinds throughout the house. The charge to have the guy come out to do it was $35, on top of the cost of the blinds. We set aside $200 to take care of this need figuring that we would need to order two more sets of unique blinds, plus installation.

We took a walk down the window aisle and discovered what is called window film. Essentially it is a large roll of material that you stick to the window similar to tint for car windows. There are several different kinds. The styles range from tinted to frosted to stained glass. We ended up buying a frosted style from a brand called Gila. Cost? $20.

Installation is somewhat complicated, but if you have two people it works out pretty well.

Here’s what you need:

• a lint-free cloth (or coffee filters)
• a sprayer bottle (an empty Windex bottle that is really cleaned out will do — don’t use Windex, it is ammonia based and that can ruin the film)
• baby shampoo
• a couple of towels
• a credit card
• a razor blade

There was a display right next to the film that offered a “film installation kit” for $8 or something like that. It included the “special liquid” that you would need to keep the film wet for installation, a lint-free cloth, and a squeegee. That special liquid is essentially soapy water. We picked up a new sprayer bottle and baby shampoo for maybe $2. I had everything else on hand.

Basically this is how it works: clean the window really, really well. It has to be spotless and lint-free. (Anything left on the window will cause bubbles to form under the film). Put a small amount of baby shampoo (perhaps 1 tsp.) in the sprayer bottle, fill the rest with tap water. Place the towels around the window to catch dropping water. Cut the film (per included instructions) to fit your window.

Now, this is where it gets kind of complicated. You are going to wet the window with your sprayer bottle, remove the backing from the adhesive side of the film, and put the film on the wet window. After that you wet the film down on your side as well. Make sure the window and film stay constantly wet. This allows you to slide the film around on the window to get it into place.

After you’ve got it into place you will squeegee the water and air bubbles out from the center of the film to the sides. If there isn’t enough room on the sides (the film is flush with the window frame), use a razor blade and the edge of the credit card to give yourself a 1/16″ edge all the way around. Squeegee it out a few times, and leave it alone. Wait a few days and the film will be securely stuck to your windows.

In the end, we spent at most $25 for doing it ourselves. I’m not saying it is a perfect substitute for blinds, but it really does block visibility into the house.

Pros:

• Mission accomplished. Underwear walking can re-commence.
• We saved $175 off of our budget expectations. I don’t know if those expectations were reasonable, but it was definitely inexpensive.
• We didn’t really like the blinds or curtains we saw, and we like how this looks.

Cons:

• Semi-permanent. I would imagine it would be difficult to get it off of the windows. Perhaps not, I’m not educated enough to know.
• No way to peek at an unknown visitor at the front door. This is the only downside I see. We could cut a peephole into one side, I suppose.

Overall we are very pleased with the results which you can see below. Has anyone else used window film on their household windows? (And who loves the wreath my wife picked for spring?)

On Monday I’m going to share with you how much house we actually buy each month. Stay tuned.

This is our first spring in our new house. We are getting to learn — and spend — money on landscaping, grass upkeep, etc. I mowed my parents’ yard growing up, and spread fertilizer when they told me to. I never really got into all of the details of what fertilizer to put on, and when.

So we learned our first lesson as clover started to pop up in the yard. It was a small patch toward the street. Unfortunately, I procrastinated. Before I know it, there are ten huge patches in various parts of the yard. It really spread like wildfire!

I went to Lowe’s and bought some general weed and feed to spread on the whole yard. I also saw some Weed-B-Gone on my way out that was marked down extremely cheap. Being uneducated in the fertilizing world, I bought the bottle for $2 or $3. It took me a few extra days before I actually went outside and sprayed the clover patches. It says on the bottle that it should take a few days to really kick in.

Well, a few days went by and the clover looked mostly unchanged. It had changed colors only where the spray had hit. Nothing was dying.

Then it struck me: I bought weed killer on clearance. Never buy weed killer on clearance. It is last year’s batch and will be ineffective on your weeds. It took a lot longer before the weeds started to look a little pitiful, but they definitely weren’t dead. I had to go out there with a spade and pull up the patches myself.

I’ll mark this one up to getting an education in home ownership. For the other homeowners out there, what mistakes have you made along the way out in the yard?