Comments on: Non-Consumer Mish-Mash

By: atsquared

atsquared — Sun, 30 Aug 2009 19:13:19 +0000

Katy, you’ve been an inspiration to me through this blog, and my non-consumer life has been pretty darn exciting lately! Last weekend was the most exciting… my husband and I spent a very “romantic” Saturday night making pickles with the cucumbers we get in our CSA box (plus a bunch more, because the farmers brought bins of extras for us to take if we wanted them). Granted, we had to buy canning supplies, onions and spices, but we plan to continue to tradition, so in my mind it’s worth it. Then, on Sunday we took our daughter for a walk. All of a sudden we heard a voice say, “Hey! Do you guys need any furniture? The people across the street are getting rid of some things.” We didn’t know these people, but they were willing to give us an adorable white dresser for our daughter’s room, and deliver it to our house! Saves us from taking one from my parents’ cottage, driving it halfway across the country, sanding, and painting it.

By: Julia

Julia — Thu, 27 Aug 2009 02:23:40 +0000

I don’t have any exciting frugal purchase to share, but we did have a fun frugal day today. We made our first visit to the biggest library in our regional library system, and my son was so excited—he’d never seen a library with an elevator before! It’s 3 stories tall and that makes it 2 stories and thousands of square feet bigger than our regular library. The children’s section alone was almost as big as our regular library’s entire collection. As we were walking out, I couldn’t help exclaiming (as I usually do!!) how cool it is too get to read all these books for free. We had 11 oversize books, you figure each one costs $20 easily, and when I told my son how much it would cost to buy these books, he was suitably impressed. I’m so glad I have a kid who gets excited by the library! And after that, we hung out at one of our favorite parks and marveled at how grateful we are for parks with playgrounds and nature trails and duck ponds and soccer fields…
No Chuck E. Cheese required for us to have fun on a summer day!

By: puppyluv

puppyluv — Thu, 27 Aug 2009 01:50:34 +0000

Ah yes, the zippered binders. Back-to-school shopping yesterday, my brother decided he HAD to have one… and, being from a regular store, not a thrift store (it was the day before school started, ‘k? Not planning ahead enough to find all our stuff second hand) it was the $17 kind.

Great find!

By: thenonconsumeradvocate

thenonconsumeradvocate — Wed, 26 Aug 2009 07:40:40 +0000

My paychecks go towards the mortgage, utilities, food, kid stuff, entertainment, (second run movies) etc., with anything extra going towards debt reduction. My husband’s paychecks serve the same purpose.

Our “lightning speed” plan is simply to live as inexpensively as we can while still maintaining a certain quality of life. This way we have the extra $$ to put towards paying down debt.

We don’t follow the Dave Ramsey method of first paying the smallest bill then moving to the next one. I would rather pay the highest interest rate stuff first.

Katy Wolk-Stanley
The Non-Consumer Advocate

By: Jacquelyn

Jacquelyn — Wed, 26 Aug 2009 04:16:00 +0000

Do you include paying down your debt in ‘household expenses’ that come out of salary? Just curious about the lightning speed debt payoff plan. I’m also paying down some debt, and I usually put most of my extra $$ towards that and a smaller portion of it into savings to help fend off future credit card use.

By: ksmedgirl

ksmedgirl — Wed, 26 Aug 2009 03:28:24 +0000

you must have a heckuva good Goodwill where you live. Ours rarely has anything worth buying.

By: thenonconsumeradvocate

thenonconsumeradvocate — Wed, 26 Aug 2009 02:45:58 +0000

Awesome job on getting the $20 per month shaved from your cel phone bill! I LOVE being able to make that kind of stuff happen.

Katy Wolk-Stanley
The Non-Consumer Advocate

By: thenonconsumeradvocate

thenonconsumeradvocate — Wed, 26 Aug 2009 02:44:12 +0000

Stef,

I would highly recommend putting all found and unexpected money into savings. It has been such a fun and rewarding experiment for me!

And let the people who gave you hand-me-downs know what a life saver they’ve been, and you’ll be likely to continue to be on the receiving end. Just make sure to look for opportunities to do something nice in return.

Katy Wolk-Stanley
The Non-Consumer Advocate

By: stef

stef — Wed, 26 Aug 2009 02:38:20 +0000

Thanks to reading this blog I’ve started to do more to avoid buying new … not well enough to join the Compact, but enough to make a difference. Everyone was quick to give me bags of baby clothes when I was pregnant, but they all went up to six months sizes. What to do? I went to the local thrift store and set her up for 6 to 9 mos., and am gathering for her next several stages. I always check the ladies clothes, but don’t find anything for myself, usually. But I checked the men’s clothes and found a brand new pair of brown corduroys — with tags — for my husband. The tag said the pants were $50, and I got them for $8. And I’m always sure to go on sale days so I get all the items for half off.

I usually spend any found money I receive, but now I’m thinking I should deposit it in my savings account. Now that our job situations are looking better, there really is no excuse for not saving any extra money.

By: Kris-ND

Kris-ND — Tue, 25 Aug 2009 20:15:25 +0000

Barb, I don’t know if you can wait for a bit to buy them, but 2(maybe 3) years ago, I wanted those binders for my kids, but since they were homeschooled and didn’t *need* them I wasn’t about to spend upwards of 20.00.

A week or two after school started, both Walmart and Target had marked them down. The plain ones were marked down to 5.00, and the “trendy” binders were 10.00. Not perfect, but if you can’t get Katy’s great deals, a 5.00 binder is alot better than a 15.00 or 20.00 binder kwim?