It’s also the last one.
When I started this site a year and a half ago, I wanted to write about how to get the most for your money. If you’re new to the site, I encourage you to go back through the archives and read about budgeting, buying food, saving on transportation and tips in general. Rather than let the blog die a slow death, I thought that I would just pull the plug and leave it up for anyone who wants to peruse the posts.
As much as I’ve enjoyed doing Frugal-Bugle, I am now concentrating on other projects.
A friend of mine pointed out that a household budget is just simple addition and subtraction. When you get down to it, that’s really what it boils down to. Can you add up what you earn and then subtract your expenses (all of them)? I have found the easier budget worksheets list all your expenses on one area and then your income in another part. Hopefully the income is greater than the expenses. Adding and subtracting. Easy math.
Frugal Village has a really good worksheet here. It’ll remind you of all the things that you are paying for.
Rather than pouring away leftover wine, pour into an ice cube tray, freeze and then put the frozen cubes in ziplock bags in the freezer. Good for future use in stews, soups and other dishes. Saves on opening a bottle when the recipe asks for wine.
Computer monitors use about 90 watts of power per hour. This is even when screensavers are on. In hibernate or power save mode, they only use 3 to 5 watts of power per hour. So make sure your computer isn’t using up unnecessary energy by setting the screensaver so it goes blank.
Granola Bars
I tweaked the recipe for Oatmeal Raisin & Nut Cookies to make granola bars. In the future, I would add one more egg (bringing the total to 3 eggs) as they were a little crumbly. Mind you, they were gobbled up pretty quickly. You could add half a cup of peanut butter to replace half the butter to make Peanut Butter Granola Bars.
1½ cups all-purpose flour
½ tsp baking powder
¼ tsp nutmeg
¼ teaspoon salt
1 cup butter or shortening, softened
1 cup brown sugar
2 large eggs (I recommend 3 eggs)
3 cups big flake rolled oats
1½ cups raisins (or dried cranberries)
½ cup nuts, ½ cup hemp hearts and ½ cup unsweetened coconut
Preheat oven to 350ºF. Line an 8×14″pan with parchment paper.
Mix the flour, baking powder, nutmeg, and salt together in a bowl.
With an electric mixer, beat the butter until creamy. Add brown/white sugar and bea until fluffy - a few minutes. Beat in the eggs.
Stir the dry ingredients into the butter-sugar mixture. Stir in the oats and raisins, nuts, hemp hearts and coconut.
Spread in pan and press down slightly.
Bake for about 30-35 minutes. After about 10 minutes, make the cuts for bars. I didn’t have time to transfer to another container. They were gone. Makes about 16 bars.
In an effort to be a more responsible cat owner, I decided to get our two kitties a dental cleaning. Some feline tooth scaling. How much could it be? My own dental cleanings run around $90 so I figured a cat has a smaller mouth but there’s an anaesthetic (I wouldn’t want to ask kitty to open wide).
I called around.
First vet. $700 and up per cat. Yikes. I wonder if that includes a polishing.
After an email to a friend of mine, I found out she paid $260. Her cat was 14 and she figured she was loaded with plaque before she went. It was $200 for the scaling and $60 for the anaesthetic.
Call around to lots of vets. There is a difference in price.
Your pants’ pocket rips. The button pops off on your shirt. You leave it for a week until you fix it. You let your hair grow a little longer before having it cut. You live with that dated furniture until you can afford to replace it.
Passive frugality. Also known as letting it ride. Saves money by not lifting a finger or spending a dime.
Now, active frugality is not always easy. The office above our kitchen was dated and decorated in what I would refer to as “early attic”. At first, I just wanted to paint and put in an inexpensive carpet. When we pulled up the carpet and the plywood, there was old 1796 pine planking. Husband exclaimed, “Oh easy, I’ll sand and urethane.” This was not easy. Days of sanding with different grades of sandpaper and then wood filler and more sanding and then four urethane coats. But it is gorgeous.
Hanging up clothes on a line, making your own clothes, cooking meals – active frugality. Lots of advantages but it’s work.
Below is our new floor.
It strikes me that parents today are trying to show their love for their children by giving them stuff and trying to make everything easy for them. It sounds good on the surface, but it doesn’t build learning experiences, character and discipline. It just builds their sense of entitlement and sets them up to fail. I constantly see parents in competition with each other in terms of how much stuff their children have as a barometer of “success”.
It’s better to spend time with your children colouring with crayons or taking a walk in the woods. My mother wouldn’t buy stuff for us but if we wanted to learn something, she’d bend over backwards to find the money.
The gas pedal thing on various Toyota models is an easy fix, and won’t cost anything for the consumer. For the most part I think they build a pretty good car. I’ve had lots of cars with way more problems than that. Prices could drop by 5% or more on most Toyota cars. There could be some great bargains out there.
-Phil
A free download of Coldplay’s new live album, LeftRightLeftRightLeft, is now available at Coldplay.com.
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