Frugal Mania

With gas and travel costs going through the roof (not to mention food and other necessities), more and more people are skipping their usual Summer vacations in favor of a fairly new trend - the staycation.

In my neighborhood, several families have done exactly that, opting instead to spend the money they would have spent on expensive travel and accommodations on their homes.  Here are a few of the things people are doing:

1.  Increasing the value of their homes.
Small projects can go a long way toward increasing the value of your home and they don’t have to cost an arm and a leg, either.  Why not repaint your house - inside or out.  A fresh coat of paint can make your home look like new.

Increasing your curb appeal is another enjoyable way to spend some time and a little money.  This will in most cases increase the value of your property by increasing its visual appeal.

2.  Finish the Honey Do List.
That ceiling fan that has been rattling for the last year?  Fix it.  If you need to replace it you can find low cost replacements at most home improvement stores.  What about that leaky faucet that is costing you gallons of water every day?  If you can turn a knob, you can replace a gasket in a leaky faucet and save yourself quite a bit of money on the water bill in the long run.

3.  Plant a container garden.
I know I harp on gardening a lot, but it is just so darned easy to do and it can save you tons of money on your food budget!  By starting with container gardening you can maintain just a few plants if you are worried about having a garden that overwhelms you.

In the end what you do is up to you, but if you are looking for something enjoyable and productive to do with your time off this summer, think about a staycation!

Once upon a time I was not the most responsible person with my money or my credit.  To be totally honest I was actually not directly responsible for some of the dings on my credit report but the one benefit to a failed marriage was that I learned to never allow anyone access to my personal credit information.  I will also never again allow someone to hold a second card on a credit account for which I am responsible.

What can happen when you do?  Plenty.

My credit rating was in the toilet so bad at one point that I was actually turned down for a secured credit card from Bank of America!  You read that right - a bank turned me down for a credit card that I sent money to secure.  If you aren’t familiar with secured credit, here is how it works in a nutshell:

1. The customer fills out an application with basic information such as name, social security number, address, phone ,etc.
2. The customer submits the application along with a check or money order for security.  When I did this, I sent them $300.
3. The credit card company accepts the application and places the security money into an account.  In the majority of cases, the amount you send in as security will be equal to the amount of credit you are initially issued.

In most cases you will be charged an annual fee that the credit issuer will charge to your card when they send it.  When selecting a company for a secured credit card, don’t forget to read the annual fee statement as well as the APR (interest rate) you are being charged.  There are companies that guarantee a 9.99% interest rate for the life of the card whereas many companies will charge as much as 24% even though you are securing the debt with your own money.

As always, do your homework and don’t bother getting a secured credit card if the company does not report to the credit reporting agencies, otherwise you are wasting time and money and who wants to do that?

A Note from Michael: This information comes to Frugal Mania courtesy of fellow 451 Press writer Brick ONeil on his great blog Microsoft Office.  I thought it was definitely worth a mention because of the tremendous discount the offer gives.

If you are a student who uses or needs Microsoft Office on your computer, you can’t afford to pass up this deal.  Microsoft is offering their popular Microsoft Office Ultimate at an amazingly low price for registered students.  The program suite normally retails for $679.00 but as part of this offer, students can qualify to receive the complete Microsoft Office Ultimate 2007 Suite for $59.95!  In case you just woke up and can’t do the math yourself, that is a savings of 91 percent off retail, and it doesn’t get much more frugal than that!

This powerful suite of the popular Microsoft products allows for seamless integration between programs, a feature that was not available at this level until now.

In order to qualify for the student rate on this product, you must meet the following two requirements, as taken from the web site:

1. You must have a valid e-mail address at an educational institution ending with the domain suffix .EDU (ie, leina@contoso.edu) OR have a valid email address at one of the educational institutions listed here.
2. You must be a student at a U.S. educational institution and must be actively enrolled in at least 0.5 course credit and be able to provide proof of enrollment upon request.

To take advantage of this generous offer from Microsoft and get your own legal copy of Microsoft Office Ultimate 2007 for less than sixty bucks, visit the Microsoft website here.

I am the first to admit to being obsessively frugal at times, but my frugal mania has become more tempered over time and I have settled myself into a steady pace that works for me and for those around me.

Example #1:  Grow Your Own Food
I am the world’s biggest proponent for home gardening and prior to my recent relocation at the beginning of June I had a rather respectable home garden that included tomatoes, cucumbers, squash, zucchini, green beans and other delectable treats.  When I moved though, my outdoor planting space was severely limited and I was faced with a heartbreaking dilemma.  The compromise came when I found two heirloom tomato plants at a local nursery that were on the verge of death.  When the nursery worker offered the two plants to me for free, I jumped at the opportunity.  Now I have two healthy and happy plants that (I hope) will produce large delicious tomatoes late into the growing season.

While I couldn’t restart my garden, I was able to do something that should amount to a nice savings in a few more weeks, as I spend a lot of money on tomatoes when I don’t have them growing outside.

Example #2:  The Leftover Wars
My partner and our roommate are both very picky eaters and neither of them will lower themselves to eating leftovers of any sort.  This of course goes against everything I stand for and destroys my long standing routine of make ahead meals.  The answer - at least for now - has been for me to simply cook less food, more often.  It isn’t going to save me any money on energy costs, but I had to teach myself again to package and store foods in smaller portions so as to limit and as much as possible eliminate food waste.

What is your most challenging frugal battle and what have you done to win it?

What if I told you that replacing one light bulb could save you over $700 over its lifetime - would that intrigue you enough to want to learn more?

That’s what I thought.

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I can’t believe it is Friday already.  What a week it has been!  How about some free MP3 downloads to get the weekend off to a great start?  That’s right - free music downloads for you!

Here are my top five free and legal mp3 music downloads for this week, all courtesy of Amazon.com:

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It happens to me all the time.  I clip a store coupon for something I want to buy, take it to the store and find out that the type I want is not available.  Sure, in most cases I could get a rain check but that’s an entirely different hassle.

Most recently I made mention  to my mother-in-law that I was looking for a sale on Cherry 7UP.  Because she loves a challenge, she found a sale - an excellent sale - at Rite Aid.  She got several of the store coupons and went to three separate Rite Aid stores where her search did not yield a single purchase.  That’s right, none of them even had Cherry 7UP at all, most claiming that they were out and the delivery driver hadn’t been there yet.  None of them even seemed to know when the delivery would be made.

In this particular case, dear ol’ Mom was informed that because it is a national ad, not all stores carry the product and as such no rain checks would be issued.  She refuses to set foot in a Rite Aid again.

I contacted the Rite Aid company through their web site this morning to tell them about my problem.  We’ll see if they can do anything to earn our business back again but since this isn’t the first time we have had similar problems I can’t say that I am terribly hopeful about it.

Just yesterday she found a coupon in a weekly sale ad for Publix, who was advertising a sale on the same product.  The coupon turned a 3 for $9 sale into a "buy three, get one free" offer. 

She went to Publix.

They had no Cherry 7UP.

To say that she is frugally frustrated would be like saying that Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt like adopting foreign children.

Just before writing this article, I contacted the 7UP company through their web site to tell them about my problems.  I have received a confirmation that my email made it into their system and will report back here when I hear back from them.

Remember when we were in school and the dreaded works term paper or research paper were uttered in class?  All we could envision was hour after laborious hour of digging through dusty card catalogs and even dustier books while trying to piece together several pages on a topic that wasn’t going to matter in six months anyway.

Okay, so maybe that was just my experience and yes, I remember the days when there was no computer catalog and everything had to be found by thumbing through actual cards that yielded more paper cuts than a scissor factory.

I recently found my library card and it had me remembering more recent experiences in my local library system that were far more positive. My ritual would include a weekly trip to the nearest library during which I would check out any combination of books, music and DVDs on such a wide variety of topics and genres that the librarians would never be quite sure how to size me up - and I liked it that way.

I visited the Jefferson County Public Library web site today and was surprised at the sheer number of events they have going on this month.  I used to know that such things happened all the time but adult life had begun to shove me in other directions in recent months and I lost my youthful bliss for a while.  While I may not need such things, it did impress me to learn that aside from the expected book club meetings there are classes on computers, budgeting, even crochet and knitting in my local library system.

Are you making use of your local library?  The kids are about to go back to school if they haven’t already and you will probably have a little more free time on your hands, so what will be your excuse?  Go forth and learn something and have a great time doing it.

Frugally yours,

An article in this week’s Parade Magazine got me to thinking about credit card debt, and how many people around the world fall victim to it without ever intending to do so.  Here are a few statistics of which you may not have been aware:

• According to the Federal Reserve Board, credit card debt in the United States has reached an all time high of almost $1 trillion dollars.
• Between October of 2006 and October of 2007, the amount of credit card debt that was over 30 days late amounted to $17.6 billion, an increase of 26 percent.
• In 2006 it was estimated that there were four credit cards to every adult in the United Kingdom.

While the average new credit card rate has dropped this year, that doesn’t mean you need to jump on the next credit card offer that comes sneaking quietly into your home with the mail.  Here are a few tips to keep in mind when looking for a new credit card or using your existing credit cards:

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As you may recall we started a coupon train here at Frugal Mania a few weeks back.  Unfortunately as is wont to happen on occasion with this sort of thing, the train got stalled in a station and was apparently unable to continue.  As I said, these things do happen, but I don’t want those of you who were unable to participate the first time to miss out entirely.  So it is time to once again rev up the engine and get the Frugal Mania Coupon Train on the tracks!

If you are not familiar with how a coupon train works, the rules are quite simple:

1. Send Michael an email with your name and address.
2. When the coupon train is scheduled to make a stop in your area, you will receive an email from Michael with the email address of the person from whom the train is coming.
3. When you receive the coupon envelope, email Michael and look through the enclosed coupons, pull those you want and those that will be out of date in the next 7 days.
4. Add your own unwanted (in-date) coupons to the package and mail it to the next stop on the train (Michael will email you the address information when you tell him that you have received the package.)
5. Mail the coupon train to the next stop and you’re done!

This time I promise to be more proactive in making sure that the coupons get to the requested stops.  If you have any doubt whatsoever that you will be unable to receive and send the coupon train package to the next stop within 48 hours, please do not request to participate.