ecosophia | Frugal Friday

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 further 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 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 #4: 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!

Current Mood: calm
Current Music: Mozart, "De Profundis Clamavi" (K93)

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From:

jenniferkobernik

My tip this week reflects a recent experience of ours. My husband (and to a lesser degree myself) are pretty handy, and we have built structures before, but we found ourselves frustrated and a little intimidated by the prospect of replacing a rotten beam under our house. We called around and found that it would be both expensive and a long wait to have a contractor do it. So we decided to just take it step by step and think it through at every stage, and it only took about a day and a half, went smoothly, and saved us a bunch of money. In retrospect, it’s unclear why we thought it would be any more challenging than other things we’ve done. Of course, without a certain level of baseline skill we could have broken the house, but this tip applies to all skill levels. There was a time I wouldn’t have hung my own curtain rods for fear of messing up the walls. Spend enough time doing things that are a slight stretch for you—and doing them thoughtfully and carefully!—and you can gain a lot of skill without costing yourself a bunch of money to fix your mistakes.

From: (Anonymous)

A floor joist is a difficult and heavy item to replace ! But, you are right, if you can move the heavy item and force it in to its spot while supporting around it -- the concept is not too hard. Congrats !

Atmospheric River

From:

jenniferkobernik

Thank you! This was actually a beam under the joists (our house is pier and beam)—and it was a bear! But finally, an opportunity to use all the jacks my husband has accumulated all at the same time! 😂

From: (Anonymous)

Congratulations! That's very inspiring.

From:

jenniferkobernik

Thank you!

From: (Anonymous)

Different story, but same theme:

I became a car owner for the first time three years ago, which has been a learning curve after enjoying the bike/bus/walk lifestyle for years up until that point. Needless to say, there's a lot to learn and know about cars, but I found a good mom-and-pop mechanic shop through a personal recommendation, and they've been good to me and to all my rookie questions.

Early on I decided to stretch myself and save money by swapping my own seasonal tires. In my part of the world this is a thing you have to do twice a year, otherwise you take your chances skidding on snow all winter. Mechanics are typically booked solid with tire appointments every November and April (or thereabouts) and so doing it myself also saved the scheduling hassle.

I learned from a young lady on the farm I worked for at the time how to do this in my own driveway with a simple scissor jack and a cross wrench, which I keep in my trunk with the spare tire so that I can do it in an emergency flat situation as well. When I haul the alternate set of tires out of the basement I make sure to put them in the trunk and take them to the nearest gas station to confirm they're all adequately pressurized *before* installing them on the car.

I will echo the original poster that it is important to approach these 'stretch goals' with lots of time to think it through and pay attention to what you're doing in an unhurried, unstressed way. This week while putting on the snow tires I mistakenly applied the jack to the wrong part of the car's underside and then panicked when I saw the resulting dent, thinking I had damaged the gas tank or something. I asked my friendly and knowledgeable neighbour, who came over and confirmed that all I had done was create a bump in the floor near the back left seat, which in my immense relief I found kind of funny.

Live and learn! One day I may work up toward doing my own oil changes too.

Dylan

From: (Anonymous)

Dylan,
Thanks for that story. I am way too cautious about the car. So is my husband. We are taking the ferry and driving in to town to have the tires changed at a garage. This is expensive and wasteful. I will work on this.
Maxine

From: (Anonymous)

Yes! You'd be surprised how easy it is to learn to change the oil and air filters on your own vehicle-- and since that's a thing you typically have to do a few times a year, the savings is substantial.

There are a surprising number of things after that, you might watch the YT tutorial on and decide... you know, I could probably do that...

For me, that has included, replacing the distributor cap and spark plug cables, replacing the fuel filter, replacing a clutch cable. Have stopped short of trying to replace a starter or a belt tensioner by myself. I called in help for those, but still managed to avoid taking it to a mechanic -- it's also good to have friends who know about cars ;)

This week, will be troubleshooting noisy power steering... wish me luck!

From:

jenniferkobernik

Dylan,

Thanks for this! It’s one I need to work on. Luckily my husband is good with cars so it’s not a matter of money, but I’d rather walk a hundred miles (which I have done, so I know of what I speak!) than touch the [redacted] car other anywhere other than the key and steering wheel—and barely that. It’s not practical for us to go without a vehicle these days, so I should probably suck it up and learn…but I just don’t want to!

From:

slclaire

My husband and I don't want to do car maintenance either. We'd rather the expert mechanics less than a mile away do all the work on our car. As old as old as our car is, they earn good money from us, and they repay us with their careful work. My husband does do the routine, and some of the less routine, maintenance on his motorcycle.

Since each of us only has so much time, it seems to me that each of us picks and chooses from a menu of frugal choices.

From: (Anonymous)

20 years ago, I did the exact opposite and went car-free. I had replaced the "computer in my van to the tune of $500, only to have the head gasket blow 2 months later.

It took about 2 months to get my schedule and lifestyle to fit. I was already a cyclist and took the bus when my car was being worked on all the time. It was mainly a matter of scheduling.

Biking, bussing and walking were the way I commuted the last 10 years before retirement. My bike and walking route were along an old canal towpath trail and abandoned railroad track. I would tell my coworkers about the traffic jams with the deer and the ducks!

I could never go back to the costs, hassles and headaches of the "open road!

From:

isaac_hill

Just got a doe this morning, that's 40-50 pounds of free range, organic, local, lean meat after I butcher her. I never hunted until a few years ago, and though there is a learning curve to shooting guns and dressing/butchering deer, there are plenty of youtube videos to watch, and experienced hunters just waiting to share all they know about it, and it's a heck of a lot easier than the learning curve on gardening. I've still got 2 tags to fill, and could easily end up with 150 pounds of meat this season, for nothing but a few shotgun shells and my time. It certainly helps that I live on a few acres, but there are plenty of deer everywhere on the east coast - way too many - and I've known of bow hunters hunting in the middle of the city and being quite successful. Also, the strategy of planting deer gardens is great. I am lucky to have a few ancient apple trees, and that's where I hunt, but I've been planting lots of American persimmons, up here in the northern edge of their range, and those are the perfect deer magnets - persimmons tend to hang on through November and December, and are the sweetest treat a deer - or human - could ask for (I think anything sweeter than a persimmon is kinda gross).

From:

prayergardens

Congratulations! That's a great skill to learn. Well done.

One community thing I used to love was game dinners. Local churches would have members donate an extra deer (or moose or bear) to the church, the church ladies would cook it up and sell tickets to a big buffet dinner to support the church. I thought it was a great idea to allow members of the congregation with skills but maybe not as much cash to support their churches.

Happy eating!

From:

isaac_hill

Thank you! What a lovely practice!

From:

michele7

In case anyone is wondering why JMG was feeling pretty proud of his thrifty solar oven purchase (I think it was $30), I recently got an email from Sun Oven brand solar ovens announcing a sale. JMG saved over $500 on his thrift store purchase! A truly frugal purchase.

From: (Anonymous)

Those of us still choosing to use a dryer for at least part of the year would do good to remember to periodically clean the exhaust duct - that tin pipe that leads out of the house. While your dryer has a lint trap, its not perfect and so lint will inevitably get into the exhaust where it can build up and choke your dryer's performance. I let the exhaust go uncleaned for 5 years and didn't realize how bad things had gotten until I cleaned it out and found dryer performance had gone from 2 cycles on medium heat to just one cycle on low heat for a full load of clothes!

From:

methylethyl

Protip: if your dryer vent goes under your floor for a ridiculous distance before venting out of the house, there are relatively inexpensive drill-attachment tools that can help you get that clear.

From:

teresa_from_hershey

You may ALSO discover, if you can remove the bottom panel, that even when you keep the lint filter clean, clean out the ductwork leading to the outside, AND use one of those super-long brush gizmos to reach deep inside the lint filter area, the area UNDER the drum is packed with lint.

The blower unit gets packed full too!

Lint gets everywhere inside a dryer. No exceptions that we've found.

In our experience, a dryer needs more cleaning and maintenance than the manual indicates. You've got to clean everywhere.

The easy to reach ductwork should be done every year or so, annually if you use your dryer a lot.

Remove the bottom panel to access everything else every few years. Annually, if you use your dryer daily.

Dryer fires are a real safety hazard.

From:

athaia

Yes, and all that lint are fibers that's now missing from your garments. Dryers are really hard on clothes. For that reason, and to save on my electricity bill, I've decided against replacing mine when it broke. I line-dry now, on my balcony in warm weather, and in my bedroom when it's too cold or damp outside.

Edited (Typos) Date: 2024-11-25 09:47 pm (UTC)

From: (Anonymous)

Hi Everyone,
I often find people babble at me about their phone and the expense of their plan. They are talking about cell phones which are simply an annoying and pernicious addiction, not an actual need. We pay for a landline and use it to book events, talk to family members and friends and that is about it. That is what phones are for.

I bet people could save a lot of money and a lot of time and have a more pleasant life without a cell phone.

There is also the possibility of writing a letter by hand and sending it through the post. Receiving a real letter from a friend is a huge boost to most peoples' day.
Maxine

From: (Anonymous)

Hi Maxine,

I'll piggyback on this and note that in at least some places, such as where I live, landlines cannot be obtained anymore - what you get is a cell modem in a box that you plug a normal handset into. For either case, however, both actual landlines and these cell-modem-in-a-box-"lines" cost far more (as in 2-4x) than a basic prepaid* cellphone plan in my area. I've heard from others in very different regions that this is also the case for them as well. The higher tiers of prepaid plans offer unlimited minutes and often a modest amount of data if you care for it. Compared to anybody with a landline of either kind in my area, I'm paying less than half what they are per month and could pay even less than that if I went for an even more no-frills plan without data of any kind.

So, don't think that landlines are at all frugal in all areas - in some areas and countries they're a terrible deal compared to prepaid cellular.

* Note, I'm specifically talking about prepaid cellular - as in what poor people get, not postpaid contract-based plans. Check with the various cellphone providers in your area - you often have to do quite some digging on their website to find the various prepaid offers they have available. Some are hidden behind small fine-print links. They can be confusing (and often intentionally are) - but a little bit of careful calculation will show you what each of them will cost comparatively. If your phone is an important and often used instrument of communication, I highly suggest plans with unlimited nationwide minutes at the very least so you have no surprises with per-minute usage. Check the terms carefully for rollover, balance expiration, and things like that, but you can get shockingly good deals on phone service this way if you're willing to put a little effort in.

From:

borealbear

As another data point, this applies to my situation here in rural southeastern Norway too. They literally dug up and removed the landline infrastructure a couple years back, so now it's either a wireless "landline" that still uses the mobile network or a cellphone. I'm old enough to remember landlines from my childhood in the 90s, and I'd love to get one if I could, but it's both way more expensive than a cell plan and not a true "landline" in the first place, so kind of pointless.

My compromise has been to get a 10 year smartphone that was midrange at the time and install Ubuntu Touch on it instead of Android. That means I get most of the smartphone functions, but no apps, which is fine with me. (They can technically be emulated, I think, but I never bothered to look into it.) Most importantly, I used it for an internet connection, which is about half the price of the fiber optic I'd otherwise have to get. Maybe a fifth of the speed too, but again, not a problem for me.

From:

fringewood

Where we live, a landline is not an option. We have no grid lines coming up to our homesite and we like it that way. A cellphone or no phone are our choices. We decided to go with Vsible's $35 per month unlimited with hot spot for internet and our occasional call out.

It's only on when when we're using it. Otherwise its turned off and put in an aluminum bag. It's just a tool in our toolkit. No wires, no muss, no fuss. It works for us😊

From:

peristaltor

Can confirm. The Wife and I still maintain the landline and use personal pre-paid cells. If I can keep the cell usage at a decent level, that's only $80 a year, a ton less than the landline.

From: (Anonymous)

Yeah, we prepay our dumb phones a year in advance to get the dirt-cheap rate. It would be more expensive for us, in our area, to have a landline. Which is a bummer because I'd *prefer* a landline. The handsets are cheaper and last longer.

From: (Anonymous)

A landline costs less overtime when it is a family in the household. And, landline phones last forever. I have one on my wall in my house that has been in continuous operation since 1975 ! Cell phones cost around $100 and up, often WAY up, and people who use them all the time are always breaking them or losing them. Multiply this by 5 people in a family ! there are family cell phone rates, but it will be over $100/month for the family of 5. Even if you were one person, how many cell phones will you buy over 50 years ? Compared to my one phone ?

I keep a landline as it always works, we have alot of power outages. Yes, I have backup at my house, but the internet lines themselves only work when they have power ( people here use stationary or cell phones thru the internet, there is no cell phone service thru the cell network) And, cell towers also need power. I have spoke of this before, "they" want to get rid of our actual wired landlines, but so far, the rural areas here have won out and they are not allowed to do away with them.

Ifond the safety aspect worth the cost of my landline. It would be cheapest for me to just use a VOIP like Magic Jack, since I have internet service already, I would save about $380/year. But then, when the internet went out during power outages, I would have no phone. The landlines are very, very reliable. It is so sad and so short sighted that they are literally ripping out the lines in many places. ANd, as I said, it is cheaper to have one landline for a family than 5 cell phones, even in monthly charges, let alone the bigger saving in equipment over the years. But, the phone companies make more money if we all go to cell phones, so they love to get rid of hardwired lines and structure the rates to get people to change over.

atmospheric RIver

From: (Anonymous)

I suspect your 'land line' phone is actually VIOP to the closet TelCo switch-box and only copper into your home. I'm not aware of many remaining full-copper circuits being maintained. Once the battery BU at the switch-box dies, you'll lose the 'land line' too...

From: (Anonymous)

It isnt voip, at least not in how I use that word, as it is a different provider, it is not the internet provider, but away from my house it is carried on fiber optic until the last couple miles to my neighborhood and to the houses, which are copper, as they have not "upgraded it" to my area. SO, there 2 types of providers running data lines, the poles here are wired Electric on top, Internet in the middle, ATT (phone company) on the bottom.

And, yes, that fiber optic needs power along the way, I dont know its official name, I just generically say it has repeater boxes every so many miles. And they of course do indeed have back up batteries. But, here is the difference from the internet provider, ATT the phone company has better and longer lasting batteries and they also have generators at those repeater nodes, so they run generators all over during our long power outages. The internet company does not do this. So when we have a power outage after a number of hours the internet is gone. Their repeaters are no longer powered, and I cant do anything using internet ( including not being able to do magic jack voip or use a cell phone thru the wi-fi). But, the phone will continue to work for days and days and days, 6 day outage, no problem, the phones work. The phone company also runs data on their lines in addition to regular landline phones, but when the power is out and they are running off their back up power, they prioritize the voice calls and dont send on the digital to save power, the voice uses less power. They are not being alturistic, the government requires that they prioritize voice phone calls and requires that they make sure it operates, no matter what it costs them to keep the lines powered. The internet company does not have the same requirements. This is a point of contention out here and we just had to fight to not let them off the hook for this responsibility.

I have lived here for 26 years, the landline phones work, they are reliable, they are the only reliable way in a power outage that people can call for help, cell phones do not work here, the terrain is hilly, the population density is low, and this is why the state government did not allow them to rescind being the "carrier of last resort" and dump us. There is alot of California areas like this, alot of Northern California. And we spoke up, and innundated regulatory agency feedback portals, state and local elected representatives, etc... Until next time. Then people will be back to HAM radio only. get your HAM radio license.

Atmospheric River

From: (Anonymous)

I kept a prepaid phone for emergencies for many years. I rarely use my phone, so I just put the minimum 5 dollars on it every month. That worked fine, though more often than not I was putting more money on when I didn't use it. I had to put the minimum 5 dollars on every month, though, or else the phopne company would wipe out the whole balance. Guess what happened? One month I forgot to put on the 5 dollats and by the time I realized it, two days later, they'd wiped out the balance. And then shortly after that, they gave away my number to someone else.

Part of me was pissed off that I forgot, and part of me was relieved.

It was a stupid amount of money that got wiped off, however, it was way, way, waaaay less than I would have been paying monthly all that time for a normal cell phone contract.

I'm on the fence about getting another one of these. Maybe I will, probably I won't.

From: (Anonymous)

We have a landline, but not by choice since we are in a dead zone for cell phone coverage. Our landline costs us $100/month. Our time with it is probably limited, though, since more and more of our neighbors on the same line are switching to cell phones. We also have a pre-paid cell phone that we use when working in remote fields or when going to town. That cell-phone costs us $9/month.

From:

mistyfriday

In a single person household a smartphone can be more frugal than either a landline or pre-paid flip phone when it replaces the computer, phone, and internet service. Instead of using a major carrier I use a mobile virtual network operator with an unlimited plan that costs $30 a month.

I use my phone primarily for reading and writing. I have a bluetooth keyboad and mouse I use with the phone for longer writing projects. The small screen isn't good for everyone, but it can be a frugal option.

From: (Anonymous)

Sometimes a cell phone is not optional. I just visited my retina doc, only to find my appointment had been cancelled. It turns out they have a computer text you a few days in advance; if you don't confirm, the computer cancels your appointment. They had my land line #, so of course the text went into the great bit bucket in the sky. Annoying...

-Roldy-

From: (Anonymous)

Yes I find it annoying that so many service providers assume one has a smartphone, and do things like this.

The thinking seems to be: All things smartphone are so modern! This is all so inevitable! We have no choice!

Where I live almost everywhere I shop the clerk up front asks for my phone number. Even in the nail salon, where I'm supposed to wait for, like, not even 3 minutes on a perfectly comfortable chair in the lobby, they want to take my phone number. I've learned to say, "Sorry, I don't do the phone thing." I've had a couple of clerks get flustered about that, but most are slightly surprised, and then they're, like, "oh, well, OK."

I did have one incident recently where I told the clerk my phone wasn't working and he got annoyed with me. I thought that was strange, I mean, that does happen to people. I should have told him, dead straight, it fell in a vat of boiling peanutbutter fudge.

From:

teresa_from_hershey

This is thrifty but not for you. It's for a stranger.

Bill and I walk a lot and when we do -- Thanks dad for teaching me this! -- we ALWAYS pick up nails, screws, scrap metal, tools, and other pointy bits from the road. They go into the nearest recycling bin.

The rationale is to save someone from a bad day via a punctured tire.

The universe having its own agenda, this does not mean that you won't find a screw as we just did and have to get, after much travail, two new tires.

On the other hand, how many punctured tires did I avoid, as well as saving someone else?

We will never know.

Pick up those pointy bits from the road and save someone's day.

From: (Anonymous)

Everyone in my family automatically scans the ground as we walk. My mom always looked for change that went into the coin jar, but my husband (and now my son) are always on the lookout for random hardware that comes home to be added to their "stash" in the garage. Many a project has been completed using a screw or washer found in a parking lot.

From:

escorcher

Like this.

Thank you stranger:)

From: (Anonymous)

Having had a tire punctured by a stray screw, I thank you!!

My thing is to pick up shards of glass where I walk my dogs— I don't want want mine or anyone else's dogs to step on them. It's easy to do, the shards just go in the "poopy bag" and fortunately, we have a lot of trash cans in the park, so I'm never carrying that bag for long. We get a lot of picnickers and beer drinkers.

Vet bills are not much fun.

From:

ritaer

I used to pick up broken glass as well. Especially bottle glass as, being curved it is more likely to stick up and get a child's bare foot. Not so much of it these days as more drinks are in plastic and there is more recycling of glass bottles.

Rita

From: (Anonymous)

Yup - that's an automatic for me, as well as picking up dead batteries for *proper* disposal ... I see random batteries discarded like cigarette butts, but also the occasional huge lump - am guessing some "urban vandal" decided that dumping a batch of toxic waste in the street would be a fun thing to do.

From:

dr_coyote

Teresa, it's these small everyday courtesies that keep an area a nice place to live. Thank you and your family for doing this.

I've found that this habit rubs off on other people, especially kids. It's good to see my now-adult children casually picking sharp bits out of roads whenever we walk together, as naturally as breathing.

From:

claire_58

Whereas my obsession is plastic. We live near a beach and any plastic I can see is not yet micro-plastic. Fortunately my family fully supports my eccentricity. When we go for a walk with my young grandchildren they bring me bits of plastic as if they were treasures.

I don't pick up glass on the beach. I bury it in the sand deep enough that it's not going to hurt anyone and let the ocean turn it into future collectables.

Edited (added the bit about glassies.) Date: 2024-11-24 05:09 pm (UTC)

From:

mistyfriday

If you have an indoor cat and are using the Breeze litter system, I found a workable one-time purchase solution to the pellets; a 10lb bag of 3/8" white polished pebbles. The polished surface doesn't trap urine smells and washes up easily with a garden hose spray off and a swish in a bucket of soapy water. The pebbles have the added benefit of being too heavy for my cat to kick out of the box.

I'd also recommend the off brand pad from PETSWORLD. I've found that they only last for 5 days instead of 7 like the breeze pads, but when purchased in bulk, cost $0.50 each instead of $1.50.
These changes dropped my dust free litter box costs from $16 to $3 a month.

The maintance cost of this system could be dropped to near zero if I had a drain to set the box over and used it with the collection tray removed.

From:

slclaire

JMG, what is the equipment in the picture? I keep puzzling over it.

From: (Anonymous)

Looks like a Solar water heater. Stored water from the reservoir on top trickles through the black coiled tube in a glass-top box, which is presumably pointed at the Sun. Solar heat warms the water, and hot water trickles out the tube at the bottom.
Likely it would work better if the coiled black tube was mounted on a flat black surface.

From: (Anonymous)

yes. It is a teaching tool, a model to learn about how solar hot water heating works. In a normal week, it might have spurred us all to write in about solar hot water -- butmaybe we can do that next week

From:

peristaltor

That's a fireplace wood-burning insert. We discovered during the power outage brought by the Bomb Cyclone, though, that the heat coming out of it is greatly reduced without a fan.

Our power's back, but the fan's bearings have died a screaming death. (Really, spinning failed bearings are LOUD.) So, I tried to fix it.

No dice. This is something built with press fittings and glues and fasteners hidden and inaccessible. It looks like we're going to spend some bucks for a new fan unit, sadly. Two five-dollar bearings just turned into about a $150 fan

Still, I refuse to let it go. I'm going to get medieval on that old fan (once we have the new one) and rebuild it to accept maintenance.

One-time use (not repairable) stuff just drives me nuts. I'm sure I'm not alone in that.

From: (Anonymous)

yes, the built into the wall fireplace inserts have to have the fan going, but some retrofits have a wood stove that partially sticks out, which is better and can heat food still.

You should get a computer battery backup unit (UPS, uninterruptable power supply), and go under your house and install it inline with the power going to your wood insert fan so that it will work during power outages. The fan is 120V, and fans don't use a lot of power, so it should keep it going for longer than it would keep a computer going.

Atmospheric River

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