Frugal Finds Friday: Max Your Menu

Every week, perhaps every day, you spend money on food in ways that can quickly get out of control. A quick stop by the convenience store on the way to school and you are suddenly out $20. An impromptu treat for the kids becomes the price of a full-course meal or possibly two home-cooked meals if you plan right.

One of the most critical ways to save money and calories is to simply stop eating so much. Sounds almost too simplistic, doesn’t it? In America, we eat too much and I am just as guilty as the next person when I buy a food item I really enjoy. Self-control in the face off so many options is a real challenge.

A couple of quick and easy ideas for cutting down on cost by eating less are as follows:

1. Take leftovers home. Nobody is going to complain if you eat half your meal when you go out to dinner. Have the rest boxed and enjoy a delicious lunch the next day. You eat less at each meal and you get two meals for the price of one.

To read the rest of this article, head over HERE to DIYFrugal.com.

Frugal Finds Friday: Spring Gardening

Spring has arrived. The earth is thawing and bright crocuses and daffodils hold their heads high as homeowners begin to look around their yards, assessing the winter damage and preparing for the warmer seasons.

When I asked around for early gardening tips, I was inundated with so many wonderful replies that I am breaking my article into several segments. Here are a couple of initial tips I found useful:

“Keep your eyes open when you’re working in your garden early in the spring for plants making their way up on their own. These plants are called ‘volunteer plants’ that are coming up from seed. Simply save them, mark them or pot them up and move to a safe place to get a bit bigger before planting them in a permanent spot.” – By Kena Hudson of SuperCoolCoupons.com

“Start growing from seed. Annuals, marigolds, zinnias, vegetables are a good choice. (Lettuce can be grown in four to six weeks to get it in small plant form.) Seed packets are often $1 or less.” Lance Walheim of Bayer Advanced.

For more tips, head over HERE to keep reading the rest of this article at DIYFrugal.com.

Frugal Finds Friday: Interviewing Leah Ingram of Suddenly Frugal

Leah Ingram of Suddenly Frugal shares with me a little of her journey becoming a published frugalista:

We started living frugally in 2007 after we paid off all of our home equity debt and I swore that we would never dig such a big financial hole for ourselves again. I started by looking at everyday expenses (like coffee, premium cable channels) and started slicing and dicing where I could. At the same time I made a pact that we would stop eating out as a regular thing and instead make it a special thing. In the process, I began cooking at home every night of the week. While this resulted in my grocery bill going up ever so slightly (because I was buying more food for cooking at home than we were doing before), our overall expenses went down.

In your frugal blogging, where do you see the most comments or interest in a particular topic?

By far the most popular blog post in the past three years has been the one I wrote on how to make your own laundry detergent. Who knew so many people wanted to save so much money on laundry? Since then some of the most popular posts have been my recent “Cooking Without a Kitchen” series, in which I chronicle how I’m managing to cook dinner (mostly) every night, even though we dismantled our kitchen three months ago as part of a home renovation. People’s favorite recipe is my Chicken Stir Fry in the Crock-Pot.

To hear more about Leah and her new book in this interview, head over HERE to DIYFrugal.

Frugal Finds Friday: Beauty Tips

Frugal beauty tips are typically for the ladies, but men, if you see something you can use, go for it. Extreme weather (whether winter or summer) can be brutal on our delicate skin as we move from hot to cold and back again. What we often don’t realize is that there are wonderful, wholesome, moisturizing beauty tricks available right in our own kitchen.

When visiting friends, I noticed our host scooping out coconut oil for a recipe and then taking what was left in the measuring spoon and rubbing it on her hands like lotion. She shared with me that she also used it as an eye make-up remover in the bathroom. It cleanses and moisturizes in one step. Though coconut oil itself is not the cheapest product on the market, it is highly versatile in a variety of ways: a skin lotion, an eye makeup cleanser and as a healthy fat in the kitchen. I recently ran out of my favorite face wipes, a convenience bought on sale, and tried the coconut oil in my nightly make-up removal routine. It worked beautifully.

Our host, Jo-Lynne Shane, also runs a website for beauty tips called Chic Critique where a variety of female authors talk about beauty and fashion, what they like and don’t like, along with tips and tricks for helping low-maintenance women like me look her best. I was able to find several other excellent frugal suggestions including recipes for facial and foot scrubs listed below, both submitted by Kellie of Women’s Life Link in an article on creating your own home spa.

Keep reading HERE at DIYFrugal for two awesome frugal beauty recipes: Honey Oatmeal Mask and Brown Sugar Foot Scrub.

Frugal Finds Friday: Spring Break Activities

No plans for Spring Break? Time to get serious with a little frugal creativity.

Last year, we saved our rainy day dollars, along with hotel and airline points, and went on a wonderful vacation over Spring Break – skiing in Vail. But, we can’t do that every year and so this coming break I am looking around our area for fun ideas that are economical and still engage the kids during the week so they aren’t sitting around the house watching TV and playing video games.

Here are some of the ideas I came up with:

Game Day: Pull out those dusty board games and puzzles filling the closets. Invite over a few school friends or neighbors and have a game marathon.

Cooking Day: Plan a day of cooking fun recipes together that will last throughout the week. Make your kids a part of the planning process. Help them understand the budgeting decisions you make as you shop and cook up your specialties.

Take a hike: Look for trails, parks and more. Get outside if the weather permits.

History in the making: Find local museums that cost little to nothing and learn about the area you live in. I find that I do this more in places I visit than where I live and there are many hidden treasures right in my backyard.

Spring Cleaning: Offer to pay the kids to help you clean out and get organized. Take one messy closet at a time and you may find a few treasures that will spark a new artistic adventure.

Scavenger Hunt: Create clues and have your kids go in search of a prize. Taking the time to create a complex set of clues may keep your kids busy for quite awhile. Just don’t make them so hard the kids get frustrated and walk off. Give a teaser for the prize to keep the kids motivated.

Inventory your resources: Have a membership at the Y? The zoo? Discount coupons to the movies? What have you already signed up for that you aren’t taking advantage of?

Drama Days: Download the script to a simple tale – perhaps a nursery rhyme – and have the kids dress up and perform a play for the family.

Whatever you do, kids will remember the times you spend with them not how much you spent to keep them busy without you. Make sure to carve out those precious moments to connect, listen and love.

What are you doing to save money but have still a fun time together?

For more money saving resources, head over to DIYFrugal.com.

Frugal Friday Finds: Using the Chester County Library System

Lady Bird Johnson is quoted as saying “Perhaps no place in any community is so totally democratic as the town library. The only entrance requirement is interest.”

We love our local library in Phoenixville because I have one daughter who reads with avid interest, often checking out a huge stack of books she can barely carry. After enjoying the luxury of reading several entire series at the library, we visited a local bookstore. She came up to me with ten books in hand. I balked and reminded her that we had to pay for these and they were almost ten dollars each. She was allowed to buy one.

Conveniently, my daughter learned how to go online to check out books from throughout the entire Chester County library system and have them sent to Phoenixville. We are e-mailed when they arrive and are ready for pick up. If you catch them before their due date, you can even renew online.

In addition to the wonderful books the Chester County Library System provides many story time activities, after school clubs and weekend workshops. Check out the library events calendar for more information.

To read the rest of this article, click over here to DIY Frugal where Sarah is gathering all kinds of money saving tips just for you!

Frugal Finds Friday: Watching Your Credit Report

Do you know who has been looking at your credit lately? Have you looked? Even more important, did you know that the three national credit bureaus are required by Federal Law to give you a free report once a year?

By going online to http://www.annualcreditreport.com, you can request one free copy annually. Be aware that at AnnualCreditReport.com, you will pay a nominal fee for your credit score which you may not need for a basic overview of your accounts. You can also contact the agencies separately: Equifax, Experian and TransUnion. All will offer you other services which you do not need for a basic check. “But, why do I go to this trouble?” you might ask.

Credit reports show who you owe, how much you owe, where you live and how timely your payments have been. By seeing for yourself what everyone else you want to buy from is seeing, you can correct any errors, cancel credit cards you don’t use, and see who else has requested a credit inquiry on you.

For more of this article, head over HERE to DIY Frugal where Sarah is gathering lots of money saving resources just for you!

Frugal Finds Friday: Creative Gift Wrap

“Good things come in small packages” or so the old saying goes. I would venture to change it to “the best things come in homemade gift wrap.”

When you wrap a gift with creativity and ingenuity, you can save money while adding your own personal touch to the gift. I tapped my Twitter microblogging network to bring you ideas for creating your own wrapping. Combining their ideas with my own, here’s what we came up with:

• Tin Foil — Emboss flowers and words in your tin foil wrap with a ball point pen.
• Tissue Paper — You can stamp, draw on, fold, fluff and crinkle to make many fun wrappings with tissue paper, white or colored. With a little clever folding and tying in the middle, you can add colorful tissue flowers to the top.
• Brown Paper Bags — Same as tissue, just brown. Color, stamp, or draw on. Tie with raffia, straw, or twine for a fun organic look. Brown paper bags also look nice painted with stripes or dots.
• Pool/Tote Bag — Use part of the gift as the wrap itself.
• Basket — Group items and tie with a ribbon. This method works well with food gifts.
• Kitchen Towel — Wrap towel around kitchen tools and tie with ribbon or string. The revival of the flour towel provides the perfect weight for dual use as gift wrap.
• Receiving Blanket — Tie a thin blanket around baby items for a cozy baby gift.
• Garage Sale Wrapping Paper — Pick up fun papers at garage sales. People are always clearing out their old stock. Head to the stationery aisles of stores going out of business. Cards and gift wrap always seem to be plentiful on the sale racks.
• Cloth — Wrap present in pretty printed cloth and tie with ribbon. Even a new pillowcase might make a fun covering for a larger gift.
• Comics/Newspaper — And, then there is the old standby: newspaper or comics with a colorful bow.

To read the rest of this article, head over HERE to DIY Frugal where Sarah is gathering lots of money saving resources just for you!

Frugal Finds Friday: Dental Savings Tips

Some lessons are more painful to learn than others. After several return visits to the dentist this last month, I finally asked my dentist how I could avoid so many trips to come see him. Some answers I knew and hung my head in dental shame but some surprised me.

“I wish I could quantify how a minute a day flossing would help people save a lot of money in dental care,” says Dr. Dan Thomas of Springford Family Dental. He reminded me that the cost of dental floss is significantly less than the amount people spend annually on the repercussions of allowing food to sit in between their teeth and rot the enamel. Chewy candy is especially harmful since it sticks to the teeth in hard to reach places.

Leaving food between the teeth by not flossing can also cause periodontal (or gum) disease and gingivitis, not to mention bad breath. Periodontitis has even been linked to rheumatoid arthritis in studies (according to Jerry A. Molitor, MD, PhD, an associate professor in the division of rheumatology and autoimmune disease at the University of Minnesota, Minneapolis).

For more of this article, head over HERE to DIY Frugal where Sarah has gathered lots of money saving resources just for you!

Frugal Finds Friday: Odd Jobs

Odd jobs serve many purposes. Whether you are trying to fill a financial void, work but maintain flexibility for kids or save for a rainy day, little ways to earn extra cash exist all around us.

Over the years, I have taste-tested, skin-tested, and kid-tested more than one product for the home. I temped, taught and tried numerous tactics to work from home between loading laundry and mopping my floors.

Several advantages to odd jobs include short-term commitments, quick pay and unexpected cash in the pocket. Disadvantages may include low-pay, little notice and unreliablility in the long-run unless you really do happen on that perceived unmet need you can offer that pays off somewhere in your life.

The elusive trick to earning miscellaneous income is identifying who out there is willing to pay that little extra for a service you can offer to free up his or her valuable time.

Louise Sacco from the Frugal Yankee Radio Hour shares several ways to “find” cash.

To read these ways and more, head over to DIYFrugal where Sarah is gathering money saving resources just for you!