Frugal Friday 2/6

It’s Friday again, so here’s the weekly roundup of frugal hints from around the blogosphere. Just to make it clear, these are selected with the intent of finding ideas you haven’t seen before. Lots of sites tell you not to go grocery shopping hungry. It is the useful blog that gives tips on making a meal of free samples in the store.

We start with a cautionary tale. As all citizens of Frugal Nation know, Denny’s gave away free Grand Slam breakfasts this past Tuesday. And as some may have noticed, they failed to specify one to a customer. A reporter with the Chicago Tribune attempted the obvious act of frugality, consuming 5 Grand Slams before 9AM. The results were not as joyful as you might have expected.

I don’t know if that feast of free cholesterol inspired self-reflection, but there were quite a few posts this week wondering if this frugality thing might not be bad for society. For example, Almost Frugal, which as you may know is written by an American living in the French Alps, had a post entitled The Ethics of Frugality which mused that buying the cheapest item available might be sending American jobs to China.

As this is the first week of February, lists of money saving hints for Valentine’s Day were everywhere. They mostly just repeat the same old stuff about handmade cards and single roses instead of a dozen. But Sound Money Matters had a list that cut to the quick by starting with the suggestion that you just skip the holiday entirely. Failing that, push it back a week when restaurants are much less crowded and gifts have been seriously marked down. And SavingAdvice.com has an original list of Valentine’s Day Tips for Gals. Obviously, what most guys want from their gals costs no money at all, but the post does come up with a few alternatives, including allowing your man to teach you how to change the oil on your car.

If you are a frugal user of candles, presumably because you want to save money on both lighting and heating, you will appreciate Little People Wealth’s tip: store your candles in the freezer. They will burn more slowly.

Speaking of heating, Zen Personal Finance had a series of three posts with a total of 13 ways to save money on your heating bills. The first twelve are pretty obvious, but the last one in the last post suggests saving money on heating by not eating out, because your stove will create heat when you cook. Further, the blog points out that “If your thermostat is near the kitchen, you will save money.” How true. Sadly, my thermostat is not near my kitchen. But I have remedied this by putting an electric space heater right under it.

The best frugal post of the week comes from Gather Little by Little, which provides a list of 25 uses for dryer sheets, none of which involves a clothes dryer. This, of course, is particularly important for the truly frugal, who save money by hanging laundry on a line to dry. Inevitably, this results in a growing stock of unused dryer sheets, which can really clutter up a storage closet. These 25 uses will have you putting a dent in that backlog in no time. For example, did you know that to reduce odor you can “Scrub incoming dogs or cats (especially wet ones) with a dryer sheet before they come back into your home.” All wet cats love being rubbed down with scented foam sheets.

Frugal Friday 1/30

Ah, Friday again. Instead of coming up with my own content, today I pass along the very best of the many frugality tips from the past week or so in the blogosphere.

Free Money Finance has a follow-up on their controversial post from last week, Can You Pay for a Costco Membership by Eating Free Samples? This one has tips on maximizing the free samples you get on each visit. Oddly, the author says that he “debated whether or not to publish this post or not.” Apparently, he worries that “it’s a bit over-the-line” because, according to him, “there should be a limit to what we’re willing to do to save money.” I guess it takes all kinds.

And as if the frugal world needed more controversy, Living Almost Large asks if it is more frugal to take home half your restaurant meal to eat the next day, or to split that meal between two people at the restaurant. I’m not sure that this sort of debate can ever have a resolution, but it is important to provide a forum for a free and open discussion of these issues.

There is an insightful post on How I Save Money. It is #8 in a series on ways to save money on your wedding. I haven’t read the others, but this one suggests not feeding your guests so much food. The author makes clear that although she has no plans to get married, she does read bridal magazines, looking for ways to save money on a wedding. And that is not weird at all.

The group blog Queercents (The subtitle really is “We’re here, we’re queer, and we’re not going shopping without coupons.” I could never make that up.) has a post on making homemade deodorant. The results are mixed, and at $6 a stick not really a money saver, but it is more than worthwhile because of the stereotypes it shatters. I thought gay people were much more particular about personal grooming.

Real Life gives a whole list of ways to save money on groceries. The one that you haven’t seen before is to save money on beef by getting together with a few other families and buying a whole cow from a farmer. Another list of tips comes from Debt Reduction Formula. He suggests saving on toiletries by shaving only once a week and ceasing to clean your ears altogether.

But this week’s winner for the best new way to save money is from Money and Values, which provides a link where you can download a printer font that is designed to use up to 20% less ink. I am such an idiot for not thinking of this myself. But why stop there? The truly frugal could save money by using shorter words. Also, why not avoid letters with big “ink footprints” such as w, e, and k, and favor eco-friendly ones like i, c, and l?

And in these times of economic and ecological stress, I think we should all do our bit by saving ink that otherwise would have gone to non-essential printing. In the UK, Birmingham City Council has voted to drop apostrophes from traffic signs. Even that small step, supported by a grassroots anti-apostrophe movement, was bitterly opposed by pro-ink pressure groups such as The Apostrophe Protection Society. Of course, in a nation where they spell color as “colour” change will come slowly. Here at home, with the new beginning of hope and change in Washington, isn’t it time that our nation’s leaders stepped up and endorsed spelling simplification and the widespread adoption of texting abbreviations in standard written English?

b/c if u cn rd ths, u cn sav $.

Getting Rich and Losing Weight

There’s a post today on WiseBread entitled “6 Ways that Dieting and Budgeting are Exactly the Same.” This money-food analogy is remarkably common. It’s in the title of the blog. Several personal finance books (e.g. Dave Ramsey’s Total Money Makeover) are openly modelled on weight-loss books. And there’s that old quip that you can’t be too rich or too thin. (Which, let us remember, was once meant as a joke.)

To an extent, it is a valid analogy. A generic instruction for losing weight might be “Eat less, exercise more” which could easily be translated into “Spend less, earn more.” Neither is likely to inspire a fat/poor person, but the inescapable underlying truth is there in both cases.

That said, the analogy is far from perfect and can lead to some unfortunate money behaviors.

The biggest difference between dieting and increasing wealth is that successful dieting comes from winning most, but not all, of many small battles, and successful personal financial management comes from winning a few big ones.

If you fall off the wagon one afternoon and have a big meal, you may feel terrible about it but it’s still only one meal. It will not sink your weight-loss program. The goal is to keep from eating big meals almost all the time. On the other hand, if you succumb to temptation and buy that hot new convertible instead of the used sedan that you went into the dealership to look at, you really have done damage to your get-rich program. You can maintain a frugal lifestyle for a very long time and still not make up for one big financial sin.

The other big difference is that eating is a biological imperative. When you are hungry, your body creates hormones that have a physical effect on your brain and your judgement. You may feel that you desire the latest iPod in the same irrational way as you wanted that slice of pie, but it’s really not the same thing.

Both of these differences, if ignored, can lead to serious problems. Living a frugal lifestyle but then making mistakes in the handful of financial decisions that really count is a tragic waste of effort. (Although you do get to feel good about yourself as you wash your Hummer with bucket and hose instead of taking it to the car wash.) And treating spending as an uncontrollable compulsion just makes the problem worse. The truth is that not spending is not exactly like not eating. It’s easier.

Lightbulbs and Lattes

Sometimes we confuse the number of visible acts we make working at something with the progress we actually make towards our goal. Let me explain what I mean with a story about what our leaders in Washington have been up to.

Did you know that Congress voted to ban the familiar incandescent light bulb? More than a year ago? It’s true. Starting in 2012, no more 100 watt bulbs and by 2014 none of any wattage. Clever of them to pass something that doesn’t take effect for 5+ years. The small number of folks who really care are happy, and everybody else won’t even notice until after what must seem like an eternity to the guys inside the beltway.

And people will notice. Although the law does not, strictly speaking, ban the incandescent bulb, it only mandates energy efficiency standards that amount to a ban, the bottom line is that consumers will have to replace the familiar old bulbs with compact fluorescents. And earnest green hype aside, CFLs are not the same. The light they give off is a little bluer, they cost about six times as much (twenty times as much if you want to use a dimmer switch) won’t fit in all existing fixtures, and, let’s face it, look dumb. Oh, and also they contain mercury so are bona fide toxic waste. Not only can’t you recycle them, putting them in the trash is illegal in many places.

So what’s the benefit for this inconvenience? Why, we reduce greenhouse gas emissions, of course! By how much, you ask? Good question. For that I will have to do actual research, as none of the news articles seem to cover that. According to the EPA, burning fossil fuels to generate electricity accounts for 38.9% of CO2 emissions in the US. And according to the Energy Information Administration (which is a real government agency, even though it sounds like I made it up) residential use of electricity is 37% of the total, so 14.4% of CO2 is due to the electricity we use in our houses. And how much of electricity used at home is for lighting? Only 8.8%. To put that in perspective, 13.7% goes to the kitchen refrigerator. 3.5% is for stand-alone freezers. The total percentage of our national CO2 output due to household lighting is 1.27%.

And how much of this 1.27% will we eliminate by doing away with Edison’s greatest work? That’s not so clear. But let’s get real, even cutting it in half isn’t going to move the CO2 needle much. Banning stand-alone freezers would probably be just as effective and much less annoying. There is even the argument to be made, which I don’t buy, that switching to CFL will not reduce CO2 emissions at all because CFLs don’t give off heat, so people will burn more oil and gas heating their houses.

This is bad policy. Even if you accept that looking to take out CO2 from the 14.4% of it that goes to household electricity makes sense, then looking at the 8.8% of that that goes to lighting is nuts. So when this law kicks in people will rise up and protest and force its repeal? I doubt it. Most people really like the idea of saving the planet and the fact that this particular way is a little bit of a sacrifice just makes it that more attractive. The best part is that it is so everyday. You get to remind yourself that you are saving the planet every time you see that funny looking bulb in your living room.

What this has to do with personal finance is that it is exactly the same dynamic as the idea that you can save your way into wealth by giving up a minor daily expense or two. Give up the lattes at Starbucks and you will be rich when you retire. The fact that the math doesn’t really work doesn’t stop millions of people from embracing the principle. Its attraction isn’t so much that you save money but that it’s something tangible that you can do starting tomorrow and everyday. As with the light bulbs, it is as if progress towards the actual goal is less important than maximizing the number of noticeable acts in the right direction.

Meanwhile, I’m buying light bulbs to stash in my basement. Look for them on eBay in 2014.

Frugal Friday

Fridays sometimes put me in a certain mood. I thought I might highlight a few frugality tips from this week in the blogosphere:

Free Money Finance asks can you pay for a Costco membership by eating free samples? That is, if roaming the store and snarfing up food samples can substitute for a meal, would that savings be enough to cover the annual membership fee? I’ve read this post several times now, and I really think it’s a serious question.

The Frugal Mom Blog has a list of even more amazing ways to save money on food. My favorite is saving the wrappers from your sticks of butter to grease baking pans. If you baked enough, I estimate that you could save the equivalent of an entire stick of butter in a year. Now that’s real money.

The Frugal Duchess had two posts listing ways to watch the inauguration for free, assuming you do not own a TV. The answer is that you could have watched it on any one of several obvious websites, e.g. CNN.com or CSPAN.org. (You may not have a TV, but you’ve obviously got high-speed web access, right?) Also, it turns out that it was on every TV in every public area in the nation. Come to think of it, a post listing ways to manage to spend money watching the inauguration would have been more interesting.

Rounding out the week’s insights, The New York Times’ Frugal Traveller reports that Cape Cod is cheap to visit in January. How true. In a similar vein, I will add that admission to Fenway Park is much cheaper on days that the Red Sox are not playing.