Please Share Your Frugal Ideas!
I'm always on the hunt for new, or at least new to me money saving hacks. You'd think that I'd have scraped the bottom of the barrel after 18 years of writing The Non-Consumer Advocate, but somehow I keep coming across ideas. Often from you!
HERE's the very first Non-Consumer Advocate blog post, which I wrote on May 20th, 2008. It's cringy. I'm sorry.
Today I ask you, to share an idea or two on how you're currently saving money. No rules. Extra points for both creativity and sarcasm.
Here, I'll start:
I've been moving oatmeal from a breakfast meal to lunch. It's tasty, filling and important in this context -- cheap! I top it with fun things from the Winco bulk food aisle such as chopped dates, raisins, coconut, thinly sliced almonds and brown sugar.
Now your turn!
Just curious, do you eat oatmeal for breakfast as well?
I'd say at this time of year my garden is my most frugal thing. Free compost, free rainwater barrels, free rainwater, free seeds. I picked 2 lbs of kale today and didn't even make a dent in what I have. And we've eaten kale in quantity every day for the last 3 days.
Being able to sew, and mend, is another one of my frugal superpowers.
Unless you have to leave to go to a paying job, my #1 frugal tip
is Stay Home! Gas is $4+ per gallon. You don’t need to be spending money in stores. You don’t need anything there. Eat the food you have at home. Plan carefully when you do need to leave home so you combine errands. I retired a year ago and this is what I try hard to do.
Have you ever had savory oatmeal? Onions/garlic/some type of sturdy greens along with oats (I think steel cut is best, but YMMV). Top with a little cheese or hot sauce if you want.
We LOVE steel cut oats done up with a fried egg, scallions, and hot sauce. Cook em in chicken, mushroom, or fish broth. Almost like a riff on congee, that savory rice porridge. So good!
I know it's a loaded topic, but I've been making my own laundry detergent since 2008. *And we have a front-loader.* I can only imagine how much $$ this has saved us. We wash mostly on cold, our machine is 15 years old and has been using this detergent its entire life with no issues. (I know. )
The ingredients are:
- grated bar soap (I use mostly the smithereens from the bar soap we use in the shower, which is Dial, and I have a backup pkg of Ivory as well. Cheap!)
- washing soda
- borax
- hot water
A batch is 5 gallons and I make one every 15 months or so. (We're a two-person household.)
I re-use compulsively. Today I made soup from leftover salad. I wash and save plastic tubs for food storage. I use junk mail for bookmarks. I turn old clothes into rags. I wash and save tinfoil. I save old sheets to use as drop cloths. None of this is new, but it's the compulsive part I'm stressing here!
I charge everything I can & then pay off the bill each month. (I do not use the CC if there is a service fee.) If I have a big expense coming up & I can charge it, I get a new credit card w/ an opening bonus. (Personally, I don't do this often as it creates too many accounts to keep track of.) In the "Points and Miles" circles this is called churning, that is getting a new CC w/ a big bonus offer when it is available. My frequent flyer miles are waning. Soon, I will cancel one CC & open a new one w/ a big bonus when I run out of miles. I do have to pay a 99$ annual fee but I get some perks w/ the card along w/ the miles. My Am Ex card also has a annual fee. However if I spend a certain amount I get a free hotel night of my choosing which is easily worth the fee. My gal pals & I go to a resort, use the free night, and I use points to pay for another 1 or 2 nights. No tax or resort fees. It's all good! I might add, you have to research the CCs to see if the benefits they provide are worth the annual fee that is charged.