Last week, I went running with my friend Mac. As we ran, we talked. Mac asked me how it felt to be out of debt, to actually be saving money. Like many of my friends, he's watched my financial turnaround with interest.
"It feels great," I said. "I should have learned from you and Pam earlier." Mac and Pam have always made smart financial choices. They're not misers, but they're thrifty, carefully choosing where they spend.
"I'm glad you've finally seen the light," Mac said, and though he didn't say anything further, I could tell what he was thinking.
Every week, I receive a couple of books in the mail from authors and publishers. (This week there were six!) They're hoping that I'll find time to review their work at Get Rich Slowly. I do my best, but it's impossible to read everything.
When John Smith offered to send me his book, Confessions of a Butcher, I wasn't expecting much. I've read a few niche books like this, and they're usually uninspiring. As a full-fledged carnivore, I'm please to report this one is different. Smith spent more than 30 years in the meat industry, and he's used his experience to produce a short book packed with information.
With Valentine's Day approaching, I polled my Twitter followers for their favorite frugal and romantic date ideas. Some of the great responses included:
From @Finc_Confluence: "A photo scavenger hunt worked well for us recently. Inexpensive, memorable, and a great conversation piece!"
From @MrsMicah: "Borrow an old movie from the library, enjoy with blankets and maybe hot chocolate. We had fun with The Awful Truth recently."
From @JoyfulAbode: "Go for a walk and hold hands (very important part of it!). Clean the house together (no joke) then relax in it."
From @merchantships: "Visit the fancy grocery together, try something new from deli cases, and eat at nearby park. No tip, plus healthier than fast food."
The most popular tip was to share a romantic meal, but nobody suggested dining out. Many of you are fans of picnics together — indoors at home, or outside if it's nice. One of my favorite cheap dates is making dinner with my wife. It's a great way to spend time as a couple. Kris is the better cook, so she chooses the recipes and directs the production. I'm her sous chef: I chop the onions, mince the garlic, boil the pasta. We're a good team.
This year, instead of offering yet another list of cheap dates, Kris and I pulled together a menu for a simple but delicious meal that you and your partner can prepare yourselves. These recipes aren't super frugal, but they're not expensive, either. They'll certainly save you tons of dough over restaurant prices.
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I recently had a talk with a friend about why I haven't purchased a new car. He can't understand why I still drive a 1995 Geo Prizm. I can afford to buy a new car, but I choose not to. The fact is, driving an older car saves me money!
To prove my point, I ran some numbers. I was surprised by how much money I've saved by driving this car for so long.
Early January. Though it's the dead of winter, many of us are dreaming about our summer vegetable gardens. The seed catalogs have begun to appear in the mailbox. Kris and I received eight of them today:
Images of summer...
It might seem crazy to start thinking about a vegetable garden in January. It's cold outside! But believe it or not, now is the perfect time to begin preparing for a successful autumn harvest. Over the next month, we'll plan our seed order. By the end of February, our seeds will be started indoors. All of this leads to those exciting days at the end of April when we can move our plants to the vegetable garden!
Our Garden
Kris and I own about two-thirds of an acre in Portland, Oregon. Since moving into this house in June 2004, we've been gradually building a garden of fruit, berries, and vegetables. In 2008, we conducted a year-long experiment. We tracked our garden expenses (in money and time) and also noted our "profit" from the harvest.
Frugality is all the rage. And a good thing too. With the economic situation as it is, we had better learn to take pleasure from the simple things if we want to keep our sense of balance and be able to sleep at night.
The Rise of Materialism
Before the advent of retirement savings plans, government pensions and a social safety net, most people had to save without incentive by living modestly. Frivolous, uncontrolled spending was virtually unheard of because the risks were so huge. If you go into homes that are 60 years old, the cupboards are tiny. That's because nobody had much stuff. Kids slept two or more to a room, sometimes two to a bed! And people made do with just one or two of anything.
How many different pots do you have in your kitchen? How many pairs of shoes do you own? What about sweaters, t-shirts, pants, skirts, bottles of perfume, ties, scarves, purses, face creams? How about CDs and DVDs? What about sound devices like radios, stereos, iPods? How many telephones are there in your house? How many televisions? How many tools, hair clips, sets of dishes?
If the national media is any indication, more people are embracing the notion of buying used clothing from thrift stores and consignment shops. Last week, USA Today ran a story describing how secondhand stores are reaping the benefits of recession:
As Americans look for ways to cut spending, they are scooping up bargain clothes, accessories, toys and furniture once owned by someone else.
"We're sorry about the economic situation, ... but it is a good time for our industry," says Adele Meyer, executive director of the National Association of Resale & Thrift Shops. Three-fourths of resale stores said they had higher sales in September and October, compared with the same period last year, according to the trade group. The average sales increase was about 35%.
You can have anything you want — but you can't have everything you want. That's the lesson I learned from a recent conversation with my cousin. And that's the lesson photographer Ken Rockwell imparts in an essay that explains how to afford anything.
Our ability to buy expensive toys has nothing to do with how much money we do or don't earn. Like everything in life, it has everything to do with how well you use what you have.
I love wine but I'm not a wine snob. I don't speak the lingo, and I don't want to. All I know is that some wines taste better than others, and that some wines cost more than others. For me, the best bottle of wine is one that tastes great but doesn't break the bank. With the dinner party season coming up, how can I find good wines at great prices? I turned to Gary Vaynerchuk at Wine Library TV for help.
I discovered Vaynerchuk through his personal website, and his videos about blogging and personal entrepreneurship. (Two of my favorites are: You can have a day job and build your own business and Building personal brands.) But Gary's real claim to fame is his free daily video blog in which he tastes and reviews wine. Mostly he drinks more expensive stuff, but I wondered — could he offer advice for a frugal guy like me?
Good Wines at Great Prices
I wrote to Gary and asked if he'd be willing to e-mail a few recommendations for GRS readers. He did me one better. He didn't just write back — he created an entire video featuring his best value-driven wines of the year (subscribers will need to click through to this post to see the video — sorry):
I'm driving down to my mother's house this morning to work on her roof. Over the years, the shingles have been overrun with moss, so my cousin and I are going to spend a couple of hours scraping the stuff off.
We could hire somebody to clean the roof for us, but this seems like an easy way to save a little money. The entire project reminds of a recent article from Liz Pulliam Weston at MSN Money. Last month, she highlighted five things it's cheaper to do yourself. Weston writes:
You can make a good argument for hiring out certain tasks because it frees your time or because the person you hire will do a better job. In fact, people have. Author Timothy Ferriss turned the idea of outsourcing your life into a best-selling book, The 4-Hour Workweek. But when money is tight and you're looking for places to cut, some of the places you're outsourcing now should get a second look.
Every week, I receive a couple of books in the mail from authors and publishers. (This week there were six!) They're hoping that I'll find time to review their work at Get Rich Slowly. I do my best, but it's impossible to read everything.
