Frugal Mania

I’m toying with some regular features for Frugal Mania and Mondays are going to be known from now on (I think) as “Frugal Menu Monday”.

My plan is to make sure that at least once every week I include information and instructions that will allow you to create at least four new complete frugal meals each month.

For the record, the only reason I chose Monday is because ‘Menu Monday’ sounded better than ‘Menu Wednesday’.

For this week’s meal, we are going to do a simple breakfast food from scratch.  It is far better for you and will save you tons of money too! 

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As mentioned previously I recently returned from a few days on vacation.  I splurged (not a word you will see in my vocabulary very often) and went to New Orleans, a place I have always wanted to spend some time but never seemed to get around to it until this week.

On day one I was escorted in the 9th Ward so I could get a handle on the current state of affairs for myself.  I needed a visual that was untainted by the news; something I could see and touch and something that would be more real than images on a screen.

I got it.

Despite ongoing daily construction (and reconstruction), the entire area still bears all the telltale marks of the devastation.  The images that follow are all taken in the past few days by me, and my time in the 9th Ward proved to be the most poignant and intensely memorable of the entire vacation.

As a result, the post beyond this link is slightly image-intense.

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First off I really feel the need to say TGIF, and welcome to the first edition of the Frugal Friday Funnies!

…and since I have been on vacation for most of this week, I can’t think of a good reason as to why I feel that way, but I do.  So there.

In the interest of kicking off your weekend on a light hearted note, here are a few funnies that may or may not have anything whatsoever to do with frugality just to give you a cheap laugh (hey, that’s frugal!):

Water Conservation PSA
Quick note: there is some slight naked bootie in this video, so it may not be the most work (or child) safe thing to watch, but it is so funny it topped my list for this week

The Doggie and the Drawer
If you have small children, you know how they like to get into everything, especially the drawers and cabinets that you don’t want them in.  Here’s the ultimate frugal idea for keeping their little hands out of those drawers and it doesn’t cost you a single cent!

Frugal Friday Music Pick
First I need to admit something to you.  One of my dearest friends is quite close to Jennifer Nettles, lead singer of the country duo Sugarland.  That said, I have been a fan of anything that she is attached to for years now and this video is absolutely no exception.  A video made from live concert footage, “Life in a Northern Town” is a remake of a song from the eighties and includes Sugarland, Little Big Town and Jake Owen.  It isn’t often that a remake can make me forget an original track – especially when it is a song I loved – but this one does it!

That’s it for this Friday, folks!  Have a safe, happy and frugal weekend!

Editor’s Note: Here’s another guest post for you - this time from JM who loves the written word as much as I do. See the guest post I wrote in exchange (and get a rare opportunity to see an excerpt from my upcoming novel) on her site Write Anyway. My piece is called “Calling All Angels - Part 1″

It has recently come to my attention that I want to have a baby.

Yep. A baby. Crazy stuff.

While it’s very exciting to have finally made the decision that I want to bring another life forth onto this planet, it doesn’t take long for reality to slap you in the face with how much babies cost. Any parent will tell you that nappies and formula are the big expenses, but it certainly doesn’t stop there.

However, having grown up in a pretty poor family and learning to appreciate the little things, here are a few tips on how you can save money and become a frugal mama-to-be:

• Move to Canada. Or Australia. Or pretty much anywhere in the world that has a decent medical system. You don’t have to pay for check-ups and all the other fun stuff associated with pregnancy. (Unless, possibly, you are very high risk and need all sorts of specialists.)

Once you have moved…

• Breast feed. Not only is this excellent for the baby’s health, it can save you a lot of money.
• Skip the nursing bras. Just get a nice bra that you can pop your breast out of to feed the baby when needed.
• Make your own baby food. Since when is mashing up stuff too hard for you to do. Be careful about what you do it with – mashed cheesecake probably isn’t the best (hello sugar!) – but we have mashers, blenders, and all kinds of other fun kitchen gadgets for a reason.

And most importantly:

• Start saving money now. Even if it’s just a little bit every now and then, it adds up. I already have enough for a pram and car seat just by throwing some coins in a jar every now and then.

About the Author: JM has been writing stories since she was a little girl and has always had a love for well written books. She has experience as a professional blogger, an author, an interviewer, and a book reviewer, and currently writes for many personal and professional sites including FictionScribe.com, TheBookStacks.com, and LongRelationships.com.

Editor’s Note: Today we have a rare treat - a guest post from Randi Morse, a fellow 451 Press writer for the excellent blog Parenting Toddlers (among several others). Stop by her blog to tell her how much you’ve enjoyed this post and maybe we can get her to stop by more often!

When you’ve got children, saving money takes on a whole new level. Suddenly you find yourself wanting to buy your child every thing that you didn’t have, and may spend more money than you can afford to spend on a weekly budget. Here are a few ways to keep your costs down while raising your children.

State Parks Rock!
If you’ve never experienced camping, you really should. It’s extremely inexpensive to camp when you have all of the gear (and you can always borrow some from a friend or family member), but stay away from commercial campgrounds if you can. Most states have wonderful campgrounds that cost less than $20 a night to stay at.

The Old Cardboard Box.
Cardboard boxes are extremely entertaining to children of all ages. Get the biggest cardboard box you can (hint: many department stores and grocery stores have plenty of boxes on hand, don’t be afraid to ask the manager if you can take some off of their hands), get out some paint, markers, or crayons, and go wild! It can become anything you want it to be, from a sock puppet theater to an impromptu secret fort.

Clothing.
I can’t believe how expensive clothing for children is. Fortunately there are ways to save money. The first is to use hand-me-down clothes. Get handy with some stain removal tips and you can make any hand-me-down look brand new. The next is to find used clothes at yard sales, which can be tricky. I, however, tend to use the hand-me-down trick along with Ebay lots. If you take a bit of time, you can find huge lots on Ebay that features used children’s clothes in your child’s size for next to nothing.

Eating.
Breakfast for dinner is one of my personal favorite tricks. It not only is inexpensive (making your own pancakes or French toast is cheap, cheap, cheap!), it is also something that the kids are guaranteed to eat. Throw in some scrambled eggs, toast and peanut butter, and a glass of milk and you’ve got a filling meat.

Grocery Shopping.
All kids ask, or beg, for things when they’re at the grocery store. I think it’s in the DNA. It’s hard to say no to them sometimes, so, instead, use the idea of a treat as a way to keep them well-behaved. Explain to them that if they are good while they are in the store, they can have a treat that equals $1. Chances are high that the things they wanted you to purchase in the store cost much more than a dollar, saving you money and sanity.

Your own theater.
Movie theaters are expensive! I can’t go in with a husband and two children and spend less than $30 (and that’s a matinée). Instead, rent a DVD (or go even cheaper and use one of the ones you already own) and turn your living room into the ideal movie wonderland. Bring in tons of pillows and blankets – you can even make a tent with chairs and a comforter! Pop some popcorn, pour some M&M’s into a bowl, and your night will be much cheaper, and more relaxing, than any spent in a movie theater.

Get down and play!
Kids don’t always want expensive things, they want your attention more. You can save yourself a lot of money on toys and activities simply by getting down on the floor and playing with them! Markers and paper can go a long way (tic tac toe, hangman, etc.), and a game of hide and seek can while away an hour or more very quickly. Our children don’t need things that cost tons of money, they simply need our time and attention in order to thrive.

My name is Michael and I am a frugal snacker.

I actually have quite a sweet tooth but I am just not comfortable spending tons of money on frugal snacks, so I have to do what I can to save where I can because sometimes I just get that hankering that I can’t avoid. It is at those times that I am thankful for learning some sneaky frugal snack tricks.

There’s no better sweet to me than a gummi bear, but they can be expensive. Please don’t tell me that Wal-mart sells a big back for a dollar - just don’t. Yuck!

How about making your own? It sounds much more complicated than it is and they are truly wonderful! Here’s the best recipe I have found for making your own homemade frugal gummi bear snacks:

INGREDIENTS
1 small packet of Jello (or the generic equivalent)
7 envelopes of unflavored gelatin
1/2 cup of cold water

INSTRUCTIONS
1. Before you put it on the stove, mix all of the ingredients in a pan thoroughly.
2. Heat the dough-like mixture over low heat until completely melted.
3. Carefully pour the melted mixture into small candy molds and put it in the freezer for a few minutes, until you can easily remove the candy from the molds.
4. Pop them out and store them in zipper baggies - that is if you don’t eat them all!

For variation more similar to commercial varieties, make two or three different flavors and mix them together in the baggies. You can also spritz the formed gummis with water and sprinkle with ascorbic acid for sour gummi flavors!

I wouldn’t have believed it if I hadn’t seen it with my own eyes.

I was in North Carolina recently visiting my father for Father’s Day (for the first time in 18 years, but that’s a story for another time) and when I got to his house to pick them up for dinner, I saw one of the strangest sights I’d ever seen - and this from a guy who grew up in the South.

As I walked up to the front door, there on one of the posts was stapled a ziploc baggie full of water.

I have to admit that I laughed. I thought to myself that this had to be some sort of southern voodoo ritual of which I was not yet privy and it even took me almost half an hour to ask about it. When I did, I was told that this is an old home remedy for flies swarming at the door. Still not convinced, I had to step back outside and take a look for myself.

You know what? I didn’t see a singled darned fly! Like I said before, I wouldn’t have believed it if I hadn’t seen it for myself. It actually worked.

I got home and just yesterday my roommate’s grandfather told him the same solution, since we now have our own problem with figuring out how to get rid of flies at my home. I’m going to the store to buy some ziplock backs. See you tomorrow, you frugal maniacs!

Paula Dean stands for everything that I am against.

She cooks everything with a pound of butter (which at least is better than margarine), adds everything but the kitchen sink to everything she makes, and I see her face on everything from toasters that make incredible breakfast egg sandwiches to thick cut peppered bacon taunting me from the meat aisles of the local Sam’s Club.

She infuriates me but the fact is that I love her. Adore her, in fact.

I am making it my personal mission to take her recipes apart and turn them into plates full of deliciousness that have all the taste with less fat and for less money. That will make me the anti-Paula I guess, but there’s no denying that she is the Queen of Food Network and I am but a lowly princess relegated to reigning over my own kitchen and sharing the occasional triumph with my lovely readers here on Frugal Mania.

The first on my list for reconstruction is a recipe that my new roommate told me about after he returned home from being out of town for a few months. Now I should tell you that this roomie won’t eat anything that isn’t a hot dog, fast food burger or candy. Or Absolut, but that’s a story for another blog.

The recipe in question is for Paula’s Deep Fried Mac and Cheese and even I have to admit that it sounds pretty darned delish. I will work my frugal kitchen magic and report my findings back here soon!

This should prove to be really interesting. I just wish I had a video camera in the kitchen so you could see how comical my trial and error efforts can be.

What do you do when despite all of your best efforts to scrimp and save and make the most out of each and every little thing you have, your spouse, roommate, child, pool boy, mistress (hey, who am I to judge who lives under your roof?) may simply not understand your frugal nature.

When that happens (and it will if it hasn’t already), how do the frugal deal with the backlash?  Is it possible to live frugally while being surrounded by friends and family who are of the mind set that they should be able to get what they want when they want it?

I know you can’t even get them to put the toilet seat down, but it is possible to bend their wills toward the frugal – even if it is just a smidgen now and then.  In fact, there are frugal ideas that can be incorporated into your collective lives without their knowledge so that the wasteful ways of the uninitiated members of your frugal household are lessened.

Children are much easier to work with (go figure), because the easiest way to make them understand frugality is by using the powerful lesson of money.  For every dollar they help you save for example, you might give them x number of ‘house credits’.  A frugal house credit is a unit of exchange – think home currency – that your kids can save up for things they want.

How you work your house credits is up to you, but I suggest involving your children in the creation of the incentive program in order to bring them around more quickly.  If they get to pick the incentives (from very small to substantial) they are more likely to begin paying attention to those small details that can end up saving you big.  They may even surprise you by finding new ways to save money and live more frugally!

Want to make your own compost but can’t deal with the headaches of having a large outdoor compost bin that you have to maintain constantly?

Let your kitchen scraps become worm food!

Worms serve a purpose beyond fishing bait and causing little girls (and some grown men) to scream - they can also make some of the richest and easiest compost available with a minimum of effort on your part. Before I go into explaining the how of vermiculture (composting with worms), I’m going to give you a few reasons why it just makes good sense:

1. Putting the brakes on landfill waste.
The less you put in the garbage bin, the less you are contributing to the disposable nature of our society. Vermiculture makes it easy to turn vegetable-based waste into something beneficial.

2. Free nutrient-rich compost.
Did you see that? I said free. Aside from the (minimal) startup costs, running a small worm farm won’t cost you much of anything at all.

3. No more rodents in your garbage bin.
The reason rodents, insects and small animals are so attracted to the garbage bin outside is because of the scent. When your worms eat your kitchen waste, the outdoor critters will leave your bins alone.

If you’re worried about odors or the containers being dirty, don’t. They are amazingly clean and you won’t have an issue with odor either.

Next week we will go deeper and you’ll learn how to have your own worm farm that is so compact it can fit comfortably under your kitchen sink. Until then, check out this article by my friend Shelly Wilkerson at one of my sister blogs, Natural and Sustainable, where she tells you how to make your own easy homemade compost bin!

See you next time, my frugal maniacs!

I’ve been quiet about this for far too long and it is time to not only toot my own horn (which sounds much dirtier than it is, by the way) but to share another wonderful frugal blog with all of my lovely frugal maniacs here at FM.

Over the past few weeks I’d noticed some incoming traffic from a blog on MSN that is written by Donna Freedman and Karen Datko. Smart Spending is full of great info that isn’t necessarily frugal-specific but it has tons of really useful tips and ideas that are frugal by extension.

The writing style brings the info to their readers in a handy and easy to read format and I haven’t told them yet that I’m going to start stealing some ideas from their uncanny methods for summarizing. I tend to have a problem with that quite a bit - tend to get long winded at times.

I know this surprises all of you who see me as the perfect example of a human being to which we should all aspire to become…

We Internet writers share a kinship no matter how much we may differ in our topics, but when I saw the introduction video that is linked to from Donna’s blog, I knew she was one lady I wish lived next door. Suffice it to say that when I make it back Westward one of these days soon, Donna Freedman and I are going to have to meet!

Check out Donna and Karen and their wonderful blog Smart Money @ MSN Money, tell ‘em you read about ‘em on Frugal Mania and that Michael wants to meet them for coffee one day soon!

It is time for Michael’s Frugal Penne Carbonara!

Carbonara is an absolutely delicious pasta dish that is usually made with a pork cheek that has been salted and cured (it is called guanciale which sounds much better than ‘pork cheek’). My version uses good ol’ bacon and I have to admit that it is pretty darned good regardless of how many little Italian (pronounced ‘eye-talian’ here in the south) women are going to be up in arms over it.

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If you hadn’t noticed folks, I’m running a bit behind these days, but with good reason. I have recently moved, had to deal with my mother being in town (not as bad as that may sound - she works out of town for weeks at a time), and had to do some legal running around for a friend in need.

Oh, and in two days I will be leaving for North Carolina where I will surprise my father for Father’s Day - the first time we have seen each other in 18 years.

It means I have also been remiss in sharing with you the current week’s Festival of Frugality, #128 in the weekly series. The Festival of Frugality is hosted at No Debt Plan this week. Head on over and check it out.

On regular days, No Debt Plan writes about helping you get and stay out of debt. I strongly recommend his RSS feed if that is a topic that interests you. And if that isn’t a topic that interests you then when they heck are you even reading this? Do you just love me that much?

Here are my personal picks from this week’s edition, though all of them deserve some kudos:

• Budgets are Sexy, “10 Reasons to be “cool” and make your own cards”. What, would you rather give your cash to Hallmark?
• FIRE Finance has a great piece on generic drugs that you really should read.
• “Do you notice frugality?” from Mighty Bargain Hunter gets the ‘it made me think’ award for the week.

Hope you’re have a great week! I promise to do better about not leaving you to wander the unfrugal life without my expert (if overbearing) guidance.

My name is Michael Nolan, and I’m a breadaholic.

There, I said it. It’s been four days since my last real homemade bread experience – a banana nut bread that made me want to cry it was so good – and I have been a slacker ever since.

Okay, when I went to the store a couple of days back I saw a beautiful ciabatta bread at the bakery and yes, I bought it, despite my frugal nature. I haven’t even touched it. (more…)

Desperate for frugal fun with your kids during the sweltering summer months when they are out of school, bored, and leaving you hangin onto the end of your rope by a thread?

Worry no more! Here’s a fantastic and completely frugal weekly diversion that will allow you to have a great time along with your kids while not busting your budget!

AMC Summer MovieCamp
AMC Theatres has a special summer program with movies for a dollar! You read that right; beginning on June 25 and continuing until August 6, 2008 you and your kids can enjoy movies each and ever week on Wednesdays at 10:00 a.m. for just a buck.

Not only is it seriously frugal (when was the last time you paid a buck for a movie in a theatre?), but the proceeds are all going to the Will Rogers Institute and Variety - The Children’s Charity. Frugal and charitable? Sign me up!

According to the website, this is the schedule (though it is subject to change):

• June 25: Mr. Magorium’s Wonder Emporium
• July 2: The Water Horse: Legend of the Deep
• July 9: Alvin & The Chipmunks
• July 16: Shrek The Third
• July 23: Bee Movie
• July 30: Surf’s Up
• August 6: TMNT

Head over to the website to check availability in your area by zip code.

Regal Entertainment Group Free Family Film Festival
Not to be outdone, the Regal family has been offering free family-friendly movies for 9 weeks each summer on Tuesday and Wednesday mornings for the 10:00 a.m. showing. Seating is on a first-come, first-served basis. Did I mention that it is free?

Visit the Regal website for details based on your location.