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Frugal Friday
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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!
intersection of frugality and the automobile
I will be curious about the role of the automobile in both arenas of discussion. I think that reduction/removal of these energy/money/environmental pollutants should be the central focus of any discussion of frugality here in "Murca.
Cars driven by the likes of you and I suck up around 40% of US petroleum, half of them are made in other countries. Best I can figure, they suck up 20% of post tax income for individuals.
I got rid of my minivan after a wreck three years ago (getting your van totaled by a woman falling asleep at the wheel in the freeway does make one question the personal automobile's real value!) and I found that I can easily function at my current income being at around the 30th percentile of income.
I wonder if maybe this might be the biggest and most obvious "frugal" here in 'Murca?
Re: intersection of frugality and the automobile
Re: intersection of frugality and the automobile
Re: intersection of frugality and the automobile
Re: intersection of frugality and the automobile
Since Bill and I are indie writers, working from home, our car spends most of its life in the driveway.
We walk as much as we can.
But we need it, for groceries, trips, or events, it's there.
We arrange our schedule to job errands so it gets used less.
If we need a bigger car, such as a far-away book event, we arrange with Dear Son to use his much bigger 2006 Buick (handed down from Grandma).
Many of us probably can't live without one car for the household but most of us can minimize our car usage by planning trips and careful scheduling.
Paying attention to what you really need really pays off.
Re: intersection of frugality and the automobile
Our host has ongoing discussions relating to the the decline of industrial civilization due to the slow exhaustion of it's principal energy source. This here venue discusses the practical and human-scale means of coping with a economy that does more looking back at the "good old days" than preparing for a constrained future.
In a sense, I think that the other two comments made to my original comment illustrate the current state of affairs. Michele7 is semi-rural and our host is seriously urban. Both have managed to figure out workable personal choices.
I asked Grok (another piece at my place forthcoming concerning "AI") about the population distribution here in 'murca. Apparently, the best guess is that there is a 70/30 "urban/outside of urban" distribution of population. The folks in the minority of that classification are more tightly constrained in their choices.
I think that the "car culture" which for some reason is synonymous with "the good old days" is going to be be examined closely as a part of a plan for frugality.
Re: intersection of frugality and the automobile
(Anonymous) 2025-05-17 05:10 pm (UTC)(link)We didn't have a car for six years as we would borrow a car from friends once or twice a month to g to town to buy groceries and animal feed. Our friends decided to buy a new electric car an offered for us to continue borrowing it. The problem was it did not have much storage capacity. We couldn't get all the animal feed in the car.
We bought their old car and continue to go to town twice a month now for cello lessons and shopping. Because we did without a car for so long, we hardly use the one we have. That is going to make it last a long time and we get a super deal on car insurance as we put so little mileage on the car. We bought the car for cash and spend very little on fuel.
So, I think cars shared by close friends and family can be useful. Also, renting a car when you really need one. There are a lot of car-share programs in cities. My sister used Modo for years in Vancouver. I think a lot of people are unconscious about their car use.
As things become more expensive, people will have to economize on their car use. Better to get good habits around auto conservation before you are forced to.
Maxine
Re: intersection of frugality and the automobile
Re: intersection of frugality and the automobile
(Anonymous) 2025-05-19 12:33 am (UTC)(link)So, my household came out very well, even though I am not in town. I threw out my airconditioners, and heat with local sourced wood. I dont fly, or at least it is exceedingly rare. I totally left "online" for a while as that uses power we dont see for servers. Use a solar oven,etc... I drove and still drive a car. At the time, it was very good gas mileage diesel. I combine trips. Before the fire, the miles to plate for my dairy and fresh fruit and veg was measured in feet.
A city lifestyle can be low energy. But, alot of people are not in that they fly all the time, consume and throw out, order food in or eat at restaurants constantly, lots of packaging, and taking a cab uses as much propulsion energy as a private car, less embodied energy if you dont do it often. You of course can be very low consumption in a city, but I think that is not the usual lifestyle, but there are many examples of not traveling, cooking at home, and conserving heat and cooling, walking or taking the bus or train,etc..
My current location is not ideal, Being right outside of a town or in a town with a 1/4 acre or 1/2 acre lot sounds very nice, or at least not with the elevation gain I have to a town. ( 2000 ft over 6 miles).But, I have less travel and "stuff" and food energy used than most people, country or city. I also know that people lived right here where I am before cars. They had the same elevation and distance to the same town. They walked or took a horse or wagon. They hauled apples down from here by wagon in the fall. There were vineyards before prohibition. This was also a lumber and lime(for cement) mining area. Once most of the lumber was taken, it went to farming the crops that didnt need rain ( apples, wine grapes), they stopped taking the lime recently, there is still alot left. Once the economic competition changed for the fruits, it is all mature forest again. There were less houses here, with larger lots then ( for hay and firewood I would imagine) and we had many more schools, smaller, but more of them. 3 one/two room school houses eventually consolidated to the current school once cars were very common. The closest one to my location is about a bit over a mile, certainly less than 1.5 miles walk from my house, elevation change is moderate enough. The building is still there, added on to and used as a private residence.
I would imagine if energy expenses get high enough, accommodations will happen. I have taken the bus many times, but it doesnt run often enough to make it easy. I can take the bus and get groceries and my allergy shots if needed, it goes to the further, larger town. It is good exercise at both ends. I go to town once a week by car currently, combine trips though including other locations I cant walk to from that end station and then too much to carry on this end. Most people have never taken it at all, or put their teens on it ! So, they could, and more frequent buses could be added if people were taking them. And, we could get some kind of local "store" in places up here, right now, it is against county zoning (!) to have a "corner" store outside of city limits. But, if there is ever in the future sufficient demand, then an illegal one will spring up. We have a non permitted pop up coffee shop twice a week, thursdays and saturdays, and we sometimes have private people selling weekly bakings of bread or pizza. Personally, I could live just fine with infrequent inputs of bulk foods, hay and chicken grains. Socially, a small town closer by sounds good ( in theory...)
Atmosperhic River
Re: intersection of frugality and the automobile
Something I took from the Riot was that it was often fairly painless for families, even large ones, to reduce consumption down to 10% or less of the American average in just one or two categories. For example, at the time, I had a 7 person household (3 adults, 4 children) with a large vegetable garden, and yet somehow we managed to use less than 10% of the average American household's water consumption.
Gasoline was a harder one--we used, and still do use, about the average amount of gasoline, mostly because I work 90 miles away from the house in the middle of a transportation desert (we can walk, bus, train or bike almost everywhere other than my job.) The obvious answer is that I should get a job closer to home! But change is hard.
--Ms. Krieger
Re: intersection of frugality and the automobile
(Anonymous) 2025-05-20 10:38 pm (UTC)(link)The transportation issue is not always fully solvable at a household level. In many areas there would need to be community level restructuring that everyone else is not on board with yet. That does not lessen everything you do at a household level, the level you can control. The main thing is for you to take care of yourself, a 90 miles each way commute is brutal, very tiring. That is my concern about that.
My household hit at or close to 10% overall for quite a while, even though living out of town for a couple reasons: the car got 45mpg; my savings were much more than 10% in the other categories, so it averaged out. The online calculator that we used to have access to was great for showing that averaging out. My super low areas were electricty, heating fuel and locally produced "wet" foods (eggs, dairy, fruit, vegetables) and less of those than average, trash/consumption. I have no way to measure water usage, but I am sure it was low enough due to the water saving measures we took.
You are correct in that most changes were painless. Or, kind of interesting to see "how low can we go". We lived in a house at a comfortable temperature most of the time ( some high heat days in summer), used a washing machine and even a dishwasher in those days as the household was larger, had a refrigerator and a car etc...
Giving away the airconditioners ( 3 window units) and exclusively heating the house with local wood, not having a clothes dryer, and practicing electric conservation ( a boring top freezer energy star fridge, laptops, a timer on the electric water heater, and just turning things off..) did the most. Making use of carpooling and the bus line where possible for teen school/activity transport. Extras here in a large yard was backyard eggs, milk and a fair amount of produce, using a solar oven alot half the year and dehydrating fruits on a sheet in the sun instead of using power.
Atmospheric River
Re: intersection of frugality and the automobile
(I do look forward to the day when I can slash that gasoline number, though!)
—Ms. Krieger