Too many open browser tabs! I’ve found a lot of good stuff lately, and I can’t devote full blog posts to all of it. All the same, I have to close some of these tabs. Here then are a few of the most interesting articles I’ve been collecting on my computer:
Over at Yahoo! Green, Lori Bongiorno has an article about how to find free stuff. “Obviously, seeking out free stuff is great for your budget, but it can also be good for the planet,” she says, linking to over 20 different web sites that let you get something for nothing.
Meanwhile, EcoSalon has a list of 20 fun things to do without spending a dime, including gardening, stargazing, exercising — and sex! This is a great resource for the next time you’re feeling bored.
Erica has some advice on how to negotiate your phone and cable bills to save thousands of dollars. While “thousands of dollars” probably seems like hyperbole to most of us, her step-by-step tips are a great guide to asking for rate reductions.
Finally, here’s another article from Yahoo! Green (which I’d never heard of before today): Jeff Yeager, the ultimate cheapskate, has an easy way to cut your food bill 25%: waste less. This may sound stupid, but from my experience, Yeager’s on the money: “According to government sources, roughly 25% of the food Americans buy goes to waste. That’s about one pound of food, per American, per day.” Yeager has some tips on how to reduce this problem — and save some money.
This article is about Spare Change
great link to go through! thanks for sharing!!
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I like your link to “saving on your phone and cable bills.” It’s a good script. I’m putting it down on my to-do list over the next couple of weeks to see if I can save some cash!
Thanks for the tip!
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I love Erica’s “negotiating your bill” post. Particularly those 4 words, “I can’t afford it.” I always forget to say that, in part because I know I can but just don’t want to!
Should being conscious of the fact I can affford the payment indicate I should just accept it?
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Thanks for the links. We have had a food waste problem that defied all our efforts. We realized that we are just not good at meal planning. We don’t know enough about cooking to plan ahead to use the same ingredients for several days in different recipes until all is used up. We too often ended up with no plan for dinner and no ingredients – so we would get takeout.
Then a friend invited me to go to one of those meal preparation stores. I was skeptical (thought it would not be tasty or worthwhile), but the meals were really good and more importantly they solved our food waste and meal planning problem. We have a freezer full of meals that just need to be thawed overnight – no wastage of ingredients, only need to be cooked, and lots of variety.
Using a meal prep store once a month has cut our food spending in half, since dinner was our biggest challenge. Food was by far our largest spending area and the savings and lack of waste is a huge help. I highly recommend using a meal preparation store (there are lots of different chains) if our situation sounds familiar.
We do still cook from scratch a couple of times a week, but the pressure is off and we are equal to the task of using up fewer ingredients.
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There’s a problem with the statistic that 25% of food in America goes to waste. Nearly everyone that quotes that statistic misses one key aspect: the food isn’t being wasted directly by consumers. Most of it is thrown out by stores and restaurants because it wasn’t sold. I don’t dispute that it’s lamentable; but the average individual consumer is not going to see a 25% grocery cost reduction just by eating their leftovers!
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The Ecosalon list reminded me of Morgan Spurlock’s “Thirty Days” Season 1 (which you should watch and post on, perhaps, JD) where Morgan and his fiance live on minimum wage for a month in Ohio. Part of the episode is coming up with ways to have free fun. One idea is to take a tour of a bank. It’s so funny. (“Look, kids, here’s the money you DON’T have!”)
And as for the idea of sex being free, you better be careful or it could turn out to be the most expensive free activity you ever do!
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In my ongoing battle against my (former) spendthrift ways, trips to the grocery store have become much more infrequent. Whereas during my super-spendy days I would visit the grocery store at least once a week (sometimes more often), I now go once or twice a month.
Part of this decrease has to do with using what I’ve already purchased. I related to Jeff Yeager’s article about waste, because I find myself purchasing food and then allowing it to go bad—and then starting the cycle all over again when I next visit the grocery store.
Case in point: I feel the end-of-month urge to make a trip to the grocery store. But I have half a bag of potatoes and a stalk of celery (among other things) in my refrigerator, and loads of pasta and sauce in the cupboards. Granted, the pasta and sauce won’t go bad, but the potatoes and celery will, if I don’t find a way to include them in my menu over the next week.
I’m trying to open my eyes to what I already have in my life—including food—-rather than letting my spendthrift autopilot direct me to the store to purchase items I may not really need.
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I liked Jeff Yeager’s article, but suspect (as noted above) that most of the waste doesn’t come from individuals. I save by not buying perishable food if I don’t have plans to use it immediately. My DH and I both work long hours and cooking is not happening every day. … I also have a very boring routine in which I eat basically the same things for most of my meals, variations on bread & cheese, fruit and salad … this saves time as well as money, which I then have available when the day comes that I MUST go out and get something fun to eat. Like a nice slab of ahi, for sashimi at home (talk about saving!).
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Actually, without intending too I followed the reducing your cable bill post. I did call them to cancel saying I couldn’t afford it and am now getting 6 months free and then $40 less a month charge than the “regular” customers. Total savings of $100 a month over what I was paying for full cable and 3 mb/s internet. New bill is $40 for 4 mb/s.
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We don’t waste a lot of perishable food, but when we do, I feel a lot better about it now that we compost. Knowing I’m fueling next year’s crop makes the loss easier to swallow.
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