Frugal Friday

[ecosophia]

Welcome back to Frugal Friday!  This is a weekly forum post to encourage people to share tips on saving money, especially but not only by doing stuff yourself. A new post will be going up every Friday, and will remain active until the next one goes up. Contributions will be moderated, of course, and I have some simple rules to offer, which may change as we proceed.

Rule #1:  this is a place for polite, friendly conversations about how to save money in difficult times. It's not a place to post news, views, rants, or emotional outbursts about the reasons why the times are difficult and saving money is necessary. Nor is it a place to use a money saving tip to smuggle in news, views, etc.  I have a delete button and I'm not afraid to use it.

Rule #2:  this is not a place for you to sell goods or services, period. Here again, I have a delete button and I'm not afraid to use it.

Rule #3:  please keep it to one tip per person per week. Data dumps are tedious for me to moderate and also for readers to use. If you have lots of tips, great -- post one per week. This is an ongoing project. If you want to comment on someone else's tip, that's welcome, but again, don't use that as an excuse to post a second, unrelated tip of your own.

Rule #4:  please keep your contributions reasonably short -- say, 500 words or less. If you have something longer to say, please post it elsewhere -- a free Dreamwidth account is one option -- and simply put a link here. Teal deer comments won't be put through.

Rule #5:  please give your tip a heading that explains briefly what it's about.  Homemade Chicken Soup, Garden Containers, Cheap Attic Insulation, and Vinegar Cleans Windows are good examples of headings. That way people can find the things that are relevant for them. If you don't put a heading on your tip it will be deleted.

Rule #6: don't post anything that would amount to advocating criminal activity. Any such suggestions will not be put through.

With that said, have at it!

Comments

[hippieviking]

A number of years back I got extremely annoyed about the ridiculous black Friday phenomenon and the wife and I decided we would have a "No Spend November" instead as a middle finger to the rampant material culture. We have done this many times in November as well as in other months. Plot out things you will need for the month such as groceries and pay your bills early or make a singular exception for your rent etc and then simply commit to spending nothing for the entire month. Make no exceptions, pack your lunch for work, don't stop for a coffee, put that project off or improvise, do what you need to do to spend nothing.

While the original impetus for No Spend November was disgust for our materialistic culture, we have also used it when we were not quite going to hit a yearly financial goal as a way to have a one-off spending reduction. There are many things that you might not be ready to give up (especially those micro-purchases) but putting them off for a month can have you getting a substantial little cash bump without feeling like you have to give up buying books or a coffee or whatever for the rest of your life. Plus, you can stick it to the man where it really hurts!

HV

[thinking_turtle]

Recommended! Nothing clarifies your real priorities like a month of financial fasting. Although my fasting is less extreme, I only eliminate wants and still go shopping.

The opposite also works: a frivolous high spend month. Spend twice or thrice as much as usual. The purchases of your desire lose much of their appeal when you experience their reaility.

Black Friday Stinks (Like Rotten Eggs)

[(Anonymous)]

I also hate Black Friday. People are supposed to be home with their families on that day, recovering from the turkey and other fixings. To make it worse, the past few years, they've started it on THANKSGIVING DAY! Some people have rushed through Thanksgiving dinner, and *left early* to get to Wal-Mart because electronics were on sale at a certain time. One year, there was a Black Friday fight at the local Wal-Mart over bath towels, of all things.

I've thought about trying to buy Christmas presents and all food and supplies for a month, hopefully keeping my family out of stores as much as possible for the Christmas season. The rampant materialism drives me nuts.

Re: Black Friday Stinks (Like Rotten Eggs)

[hippieviking]

Agreed. Thanksgiving was long my favorite "American" holiday. I loved the fact that the family all got together but we didn't have the materialistic crap that came along with Christmas. It was just a family get together to enjoy good home cooked food.

For my immediate family one of our escapes from this has been Yule. We celebrate Yule and are the only ones in the entire family to do so. It has turned into a very pleasant occasion with "ridiculously homemade" food (as my wife likes to call it) and the exchange of some very thoughtful often home produced gifts.

HV

Re: Black Friday Stinks (Like Rotten Eggs)

[(Anonymous)]

We did something like that for a while. The parish we attended was on the "old" (Julian) calendar. December 25 on the Julian calendar is January 7 on the Gregorian calendar that everyone else uses. We would do "western" Christmas with extended family. Then we would do our own calmer Christmas thirteen days later, that was more focused on the actual religious meaning of the holiday.

I enjoyed doing it that way. The parish we attend now uses the Gregorian calendar for holy days, so if we tried to celebrate Christmas on the old calendar, we'd be messing up the cycle of feast days.

I'd like to buy as much of our food and supplies, plus Christmas gifts and gift wrap, as we can in November. Then we can spend as little time as possible in stores in December. We just had a very expensive, but necessary, home repair so I have to see if we can afford that in November. If not, we can try again next year!