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 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.

Rule #5: don't post LLM ("AI") generated content, and don't bring up the subject unless you're running a homemade LLM program on your own homebuilt, steam-powered server farm. 

With that said, have at it!   

Comments

Cash or credit?

[michele7]

Recently, a veterinarian clinic I go to has started charging a 3% if you use any kind of electronic payment. When I asked, the office staff told me that the new card system they got automatically adds on a 3% service fee. They now quote you a cash price vs a card price. Yesterday, I noticed an older lady paying her bill with a check. Perhaps cash and checks are making a come back? This clinic made it a point to let clients know they are paying a fee for using an electronic payment, but are all places doing that? I pay my car tag and property taxes with a check, because service fees are added for online payments. It might be worth asking if a service fee is added on to card payments when making purchases.

Re: Cash or credit?

[mistyfriday]

It has always been that way. There are two different rates that are charged to vendors; a fixed rate charged by the bank for debit transactions and a percentage based rate set by each credit card company for credit transactions. That would be in addition to any charges that the point of sale equipment tacks on.

Lenocracy all the way down.

Winco, the grocery store I frequent, resisted debit card sales into the 2000s. I believe it was only when foods stamps went electronic that they started accepting debit too. They don't accept credit cards.

Re: Cash or credit?

[(Anonymous)]

Not that I've seen here in Canada -- but I'm not much of a consumer these days.

It used to be that the vendor contract with the credit card companies explicitly forbade charging extra for merchant credit card fees (or, conversely, providing a discount for cash purchases). It was called a same-as-cash clause, I believe. Since a court case overturned that clause, it is now permissible for a merchant to charge customers a surcharge on credit card transactions, usually restricted to the percentage amount of the merchant fee. The Canadian government actually has regulations regarding surcharges or discounts related to merchant credit card fees.

https://www.canada.ca/en/financial-consumer-agency/services/merchants/credit-fees-merchant.html

Surcharges and their amounts have to be clearly declared to customers before the transaction takes place.

Debit cards are a different animal, however. Payment processors usually charge a small flat fee (15 to 25 cents, I think) rather than a percentage. Contractual restrictions by payment processors are still allowed for debit card transactions, according to what I read on the government website. Speaking as a former retail business owner, I'd rather pay the merchant debit card fee than risk a bounced cheque (or having to pay an insurance fee to protect against that).

My current employer, being a small business, accepts Interac e-Transfers in lieu of cheques.

On the consumer side of this matter, my bank does not charge me service fees for online bill payments or debit card purchases. But, then, I chose this bank specifically for that reason.

Caldathras

Re: Cash or credit?

[teresa_from_hershey]

As a microscopic business (we're indie authors and sell our books at events) we finally succumbed and signed up for Square. We attach their dongle to the smartphone and can accept debit cards and credit cards.

We pay for the privilege but I'd rather pay 3% than lose the sale.
In the years we've been vendors (since 2014 or so), we've accepted maybe 2 checks.

When people ask, I tell them that Square charges us a fee but we accept cards because many people use them.

ALL small craft vendors prefer cash for this reason.

Interesting, I was a cashier at the Hershey Public Library annual book sale on Saturday morning and Sunday morning. I ran the Square account, set up on an iPad. I'd guess that despite all the folderol about the U.S. becoming a cashless society, slightly less than half the book buyers paid with cash and they weren't the 2 and 3 dollar purchases either.

I was reminded that when we were in England in September 2024, no one wanted cash! It was cards or the phone all the way.

At the Hershey Public Library, I saw cards (every conceivable kind including the fancy ones you have to pay extra for to get Buzz Lightyear's picture), phones, and watches!

Re: Cash or credit?

[(Anonymous)]

Not uncommon for small local businesses around here to offer a "3% cash discount".

Routine maintenance

[teresa_from_hershey]

Last week I brought up reading the manuals.
Reading your manuals leads directly to routine maintenance which is boring and tedious but it makes everything last longer.

We follow the maintenance schedule for our cars faithfully.

On a smaller scale, every month I run a gallon of cleaning vinegar through the washer.
I run cleaning vinegar through the coffee pot. I pour the remaining gallon of vinegar down the central pipe in the toilet tank (alternating between toilets) to keep hard water from building up inside the tubes within the porcelain bowl. I learned that one from a Hints from Heloise column and it works.

The furnace techs insist that the single most useful thing you can do to prolong your furnace's life is change the filter every month during the heating system.
If you use your furnace's blower for your air conditioner, changing the filter every month during the cooling system is equally important.

How many people do this?

An AC tech told me the single other thing I can do as a homeowner: when the season's over, bungee-cord a tarp over the top of the outside unit to keep leaves and crap out. Leave the sides bare to allow air flow. Never let anything grow up against the AC's outside unit but shading it with a tree or a screen is a good idea.

Do you clean your ceiling fan blades? Once a month and then they never get that build up. Vacuum box fans before you put them away for the season.

Everything you do to keep things clean and oiled will make them last longer. It's the simplest stuff like changing the bag and filter in your vacuum cleaner! Cleaning your CPAP machine every week. Brushing your teeth is maintenance!

Do you know what maintenance-free really means?
It means "buy a new one, you cheapskate."

Re: Routine maintenance

[slclaire]

My husband made a shed-style roof out of scrap wood to put on top of our central AC unit during the months it isn't in use. It keeps leaves out of the unit while allowing air flow through the sides. We store the roof in the basement during the warm months.

We pay for our HVAC contractor to do clean-and-checks on our furnace and AC most years (less often when we had lower income, every year now). Our furnace and AC are now 23 years old and going strong.

Defensive User Manual Reading

[(Anonymous)]

Another thing reading the user manual will do is protect you against "over-zealous" service personnel. My auto shop wanted to change my oil every 3000 miles instead of the 7500 called for in the manual. (I changed it myself anyway, but still...) Now I own an electric car. The manual says to change the heat transfer fluid (that's "antifreeze" to you and me) every 150,000 miles; the dealer tried to convince me every 40,000 miles is so much better. Having the manual back you up is useful!

Re: Routine maintenance

[(Anonymous)]

Hi Teresa,
We have been having trouble getting a stove-top kettle that des not spring a leak after a few months. So, we went to a kitchen store and bought a really expensive kettle that had a very thick bottom. While we were there, the sales clerk taught us to never leave water standing in the kettle after we use it. It has to be emptied and the whistle spout opened and the lid left off or ajar. We had never heard of this before but we are doing it.

A friend came over and saw the beautiful new kettle was spattered with grease from the frying pan. She washed and polished the kettle for us and taught us to remove the kettle from the stove when we need to fry something. That and a regular wash and polish keeps the kettle beautiful.
Maxine

[(Anonymous)]

Banks charge a fee when a customer pays with plastic. The amount can be based on the average size of the purchase for a business. The smaller the average purchase the higher the fee % payed by the business. Since 2008 all bank fees have gone way up. Last week in a health food store, small business they have 3 stores. So I payed with cash an received a 10% discount. When doing business there in the future will pay with cash. Blueberry

The analogue alternative to the internet?

[athaia]

I'm not sure if this is the right place to ask this, but I don't know where else this would fit...

Yesterday, I happened across this post on reddit, which alerted other redditors to the fact that youtube is now starting to demand age verification for its users. Redditors saw it (justifiedly, IMO) as the beginning of deanonymizing everyone's internet use, the implementation of a digital ID, and a social credit system. I'm not going to rehash all their arguments, you can follow the discussion at the above link, if you like.

One of the answers was that since you can't stop the monopolies ruling the internet from implementing these policies, and since you can't outrun them for long (using VPN, for example), either, the solution is to no longer use it. (Walk Away from Omelas, anyone?) and while that would probably be the only viable solution, I can't help but think that this will restrict people's options for getting unbiased information from alternative sources, too. Imagine how that whole covid debacle had gone for you if you hadn't had access to sources that didn't bleet along with the mainstream media, or found fellow renegades on the covid open post.

So I wonder what an alternative could look like when we have to walk away. How we'll stay connected across the globe (I'm in Europe, I'd hate to lose this community whose majority is located across the pond). Do we really all need to get a ham radio license? Will we learn to build mimeographs and send underground zines hidden in some inconspicuous care package? This is only kinda tongue in cheek. I don't think we'll have any free corners left on the net for long anymore.

Re: The analogue alternative to the internet?

[ecosophia]

This is a very reasonable concern. My thought is that there may be something even simpler behind it: a very large share of notionally "free" internet services are having to start finding ways to monetize their services, as costs for server space rise and ad blockers become ever more pervasive and clever. Deanonymizing internet use is an essential step toward billing people for their use of internet services, which I expect to see in the near future.

My main blog is hosted on the servers of a small private firm, and I pay for that -- it's part of my marketing budget as a writer -- so that'll remain free for the time being. I've also made arrangements to transfer this forum to those servers if Dreamwidth gets bought up or starts imposing fees for use. But those are transitional arrangements, and it's a good idea to start thinking about what comes next.

I don't have the technical skills to set up a packet system over ham radio, though I've got the necessary operator's license. I'm not even sure if that's the best option. With that in mind, maybe a conversation about frugal ways to maintain communications links within this community is a good idea.

Re: The analogue alternative to the internet?

[jenniferkobernik]

Does anyone here think the age verification stuff is *not* an ill-intentioned slippery slope? My state of Texas, for instance, has recently passed some age cutoff and verification legislation due to what seems to be actually really problematic targeting of children for creepy and/or harmful stuff by various sites and algorithms. I’m not sure where I fall on all this and am curious what y’all think.

I strongly prefer print to radio. Maybe there’s a modest subscription to a publication of some sort (like the main blog monthly post?), people can write letters to the editor for the price of a stamp, and each month’s issue includes (a selection of) the letters? Maybe also a sort of classifieds or personals section for those seeking penpals to correspond with about a particular topic, or what have you.

Re: The analogue alternative to the internet?

[linden_matryoshka]

Hm... walking away from Omelas is doable. I mean, people have done it before. Some simple ideas from my Soviet childhood:
- people wrote letters;
- people met in person;
- there was samizdat (self-publishing): you would get a copy of some illegal book and you type it on a typewriter and give it to your friend.
Mimeographs were not in use (had to research to know what it was), but it's a great idea.
Also, once you are not in Omelas anymore, where do you go? In the Soviet Union, the answers were provided not by great dissidents (nuclear physicist Andrei Sakharov was the most famous among them), but by thousands of regular people who were trying to live a good life in a cratering economic system - they self-published books, made food and clothing for sale, provided tutoring services to neighbours's kids, and sold produce from their small patches of land (all - illegal activites at the time). I think that's what we all are doing here (well, minus the illegal part).
May you all be blessed,
Inna

Re: The analogue alternative to the internet?

[(Anonymous)]

Given the state of the postal service, perhaps it might be better to make use of the abundance of band names the commentariat has accumulated over the years. A traveling act of any variety would necessarily involve persons legitimately moving from place to place and an afterparty would give a forum for everyone to catch up with everyone else in the area. The conversation would then move with the troupe.

On a smaller scale, I seem to recall colonial travelers in the moderately settled frontier would traditionally be expected to return the hospitality of their night's host family with a through account of the news back east or west depending on direction of travel. Starting a similar tradition may be a bit premature, but a widespread network of crash couches would provide socially subsidized travel, lines of communication, and general community.

Re: The analogue alternative to the internet?

[(Anonymous)]

I call it the alternet. My friend Fred, when referring to zines, calls it the papernet. Here are some option for what encompasses the alternet:

-BBS system on ham radio for those with the gear. Can forward to those without the gear.

-Community radio stations. With NPR leaving, who blocked a lot of low power FM laws that were trying to implement that, perhaps more low power FM

-part 90 compliant radio stations in operators homes that broadcast hyper locally to neighborhoods. A network could be built.

-shortwave radio: airtime typically has to be bought, but fundraising can help a show stay on air. See Imaginary Stations program for one example...

-physical bulletin boards

-zines

-indie publishers and record labels

-distros: a person who distributes zines and records etc through the mail and at events (thinking of stsrting a small one myself to sell my book, cassettes and friends zines at twice yearly recird fair in my neighborhood)

-Amateur press associations. (I will post my article on this up online soon, currently only in New Maps).

-Pen pals. I currently have one from ecosophia, though I havent written as many as he has sent.

-messages in a bottle for random river delivery, etc.

-my friend Josh home produces a cassette zine. For now cassettes are appropriate tech...

That is just a start...

Anyone who is interested in this topic should pick up a copy of Our Band Could Be Your Life by Mile Azerrad. It details how independent bands built up an underground network berween 1981-1991. My first article on why that is so important is here:

https://www.sothismedias.com/home/our-band-could-be-your-life-part-i

Hail Mercury, hail Hermes and
let it rip.

Justin Patrick Moore

Re: The analogue alternative to the internet?

[(Anonymous)]

One of the answers was that since you can't stop the monopolies ruling the internet from implementing these policies, and since you can't outrun them for long (using VPN, for example), either, the solution is to no longer use it.

Wow. Such an extreme jump to get away from corporate social media -- print publication, ham radio, snail mail, etc.

Diversity is certainly the key. Social media is only dominated by monopolies if we allow it. There are open-source, not-for-profit options out there too. For example, Twitter ('X') can be replaced with Mastodon. Reddit can be replaced with Aether. Instagram can be replaced with Pixelfed. Facebook can be replaced with Diaspora. WhatsApp can be replaced with Signal or Element. You get the idea ...

Alternative search engines also exist. There are numerous alternatives to YouTube. I'm am sure the same holds true for blogging sites.

I'm just saying that if people are dissatisfied with the tech giants dictating terms, there are alternatives to go to that don't involve going to the extreme of dismantling the Internet. Of course, I'm not saying that non-digital options will not become more relevant in the years to come ...

[(Anonymous)]

Synchronicity Alert! The Kalihi Valley Druid's (KVD) blog addressed this issue yesterday:

https://naakua.substack.com/p/we-need-better-comms

This isn't about the internet exactly, but does explore ideas for small communities to stay connected.

Valerie

[(Anonymous)]

Thanks Valerie!

I forgot to mention that the character limit is 230, but it also allows the use of web gateways so technically one could string together a bunch of texts (chirps) and send them to the other side of the planet where a waiting counterpart could piece it together for distribution. We're in the early stages of an emergent technology, and the fact that an open source solution has generated this much interest makes one hopeful that an off-grid Ecosophia might be possible someday.

KVD

Meshtastic

[(Anonymous)]

I was on the fence about posting a link to my most recent article in FF, but will accept Athaia's comment as an invitation.

https://naakua.substack.com/p/we-need-better-comms

Summary:

Mesh networking is taking off in popularity. Unlike satellite phones or starlink, it is a means of off-grid communication using affordable devices that allow encrypted text messaging and (for the moment) exists completely out of the control of governments and tech giants. Sat comms have their advantages, but the user base of Meshtastic has exploded in places like Spain after the 2025 Iberian blackout indicating a very convincing use case scenario.

Disclaimers:

I'm not making any money off of this, and just wanted to give everyone a heads up that these devices could become scarce for any number of reasons. If you want to skip the political rant in the beginning and pick up where the tech information begins then start reading after the picture of the pager (the black rectangle with the blue screen).

I also wanted to mention that the weather models are predicting a very large hurricane in the vicinity of New York next week.

Stay safe brothers and sisters,

KVD

Re: Meshtastic

[(Anonymous)]

Some what off subject MDW an I were in Ireland when Super storm Sandy hit New York. The only American credit card that would work was BofA. Which was not a New York bank. All other banks used the same system by Verizon that was in the basement full of water. So having a back up is good but above my pay grade. Take Care Blueberry

Re: Meshtastic

[(Anonymous)]

Meshtastic is great, but I am not sure I would call the microchip-driven radios "low tech".

One thing to keep in mind is that underlying LoRa radio protocol runs in the UHF band, which makes it short range as radio goes-- practically line of sight. Nothing past the horizon and Hills block it. So great for coordinating locally, but in low density areas you might not be able to get the "mesh" going.

That said, for setting something up without becoming a techno wizard, meshtastic is where it is at.

Think of it as a high tech CB radio that sends text messages and you won't be far off.

Re: Meshtastic

[temporaryreality]

Hi KVD - so is Meshtastic a way to communicate pretty much only with people your node directly connects with? Or do nodes bounce encrypted signals along until the message gets to its intended recipient? Can you specify particular recipients or is it all party line?

Re: Meshtastic

[(Anonymous)]

The problem with mesh networks is their limited frequency access and low power. I could disrupt a whole city's network with a few well-placed, high-power transmitters.
Bluetooth and WIFI could also be interfered with easily, and most mesh setups use one or the other to set up terminals.
CB would be good for staying in touch but not everyone has access.
A low-power AM transmitter is pretty easy to build. Most people have an AM radio, most likely in their car. AM broadcasts can travel very far and hit lots of areas when properly transmitted. No chips or fancy cicuitry are needed.
It's mostly a one way medium but better than no medium!

Cheap ways to prep your apt for minor disasters

[(Anonymous)]

Urbanisto here. Just had word from the water utility that the brown-to-yellow colored water coming in through my faucets and toilets is probably due to sediment in the 100-year old supply pipes. This happens when the jackhammers and bobcats doing construction nearby shake the ground which agitates the usually quiescent pipes.

The work crews are all out today, dealing with pressure breaches and other emergency repairs. Maybe tomorrow they will send a crew to flush out the pipes in my neighborhood and restore clarity to the water and run tests just in case. Or -- maybe not!

So much for my having a bath, doing laundry or even using the kitchen sink to rinse lettuce. Urgh.

The toilets are okay to use, so that is not the main issue. It's just that not having my habitual means of washing hands, food prep, and so on, is disorienting. I have several gallons of drinking water put aside, but that is a costly way to wash my hands and lettuce.

So, it may pay off to watch for sales of items like hand sanitizer, rubbing alcohol, white vinegar, hydrogen peroxide, or even a dollar-store pack of baby wipes. Could come in handy (pun unintended) for minor emergencies like this one.

A stack of clean rags to apply the vinegar or isopropyl would save costs compared to using paper towels.

For lettuce washing, we could refill empty gallon bottles of drinking water with clean tap water, and set them aside to store for a long time just by putting 4 drops of chlorine bleach in each gallon. (about one-quarter teaspoon)

For hand washing with stored water, so long as we rinse with clean water after each soaping, then a shallow basin of soapy water can be used twice or three times before pouring it out. That would stretch limited supplies just that much farther, in case the emergency lasts longer than we hope.

Hope this tale of me being stupidly unprepared will forestall a similar discomfort in *your* next minor crisis.

Re: Cheap ways to prep your apt for minor disasters

[(Anonymous)]

Please consider having several Sawyer mini water filters just in case. Thinking the water system had a drop in pressure and you have bad looking water. Until they get things cleaned up without a filter any water you drink, brush your teeth or cook with or wash dishes bring to a rolling boil. Blueberry