Frugal Framnett

Fell for this gimmick the other day. Now, mind you I believe the item we were buying to be a tremendous value and we have room in our freezer, but I felt so manipulated.
(more…)

But often times events around us make money seem so insignificant.
(more…)

Anyway, the purpose here is not to circulate jokes that I would not tell at work (for fear of the HR Police and EEOC attorneys), but to discuss the idea of how to best take advantage of coupons and specials.
(more…)

The Frugal Duchess blogs on eating in rather than going out for a “quick-bite”.

A good idea and I want to expand on it and in a few spots critique.

Yesterday, in a fit of stubborn frugality, I refused to eat my money. But it was a hot debate between the $20 bill on my dining room table and the bag of pre-washed baby green lettuce in my frig. I have a weakness for salads, especially overstuffed, exotic salads with a wild assortment of tastes. My ideal meal: a big salad and a fabulous dessert. But after tax, tips and other charges that ideal meal usually costs about $20. The Frugal Duchess –Salad Plate Lessons: Eating Green; Saving Green

$20 for such fare? Wow, good start to her post recognizing a financial weakness and going about correcting it. She then goes on and details the salad she herself put together.

One word caught my attention: organic. I translate organic as expensive. Another attention grabber is a vegetarian chicken patty, sorry, if it is vegetarian then it is not a chicken patty. Also, oreo cookies without the filling are not oreo cookies, perhaps another cookie can be found? Okay, the food critique is over! Now onto her lessons learned.

1. Keep the kitchen well stocked.
   Agreed! A well stocked kitchen is one where most any food crave can be satisfied. However, this invites the question (please, don’t ever say beg the question in this context) what is a well stocked kitchen? A well stocked kitchen would have:
   • An assortment of spices

   A brief list includes: salt, black pepper, cumin, cinnamon, thyme, sage, garlic powder, basil, and oregano. Our kitchen has many more spices than this, but the above list, in my opinion, is a good solid foundation and should cover most American cooking needs.

   • An assortment of sauces.

   Another brief list: soy sauce, Worcestershire sauce, a couple cans of tomato sauce, and Tabasco sauce.

   • Staples.

   Such as white & brown sugar, butter, oil, flour (all purpose is sufficient), rice, pastas (noodles & spaghetti), baking powder, and baking soda. All sorts of recipes call for many of those items.

   • Soups

   Whether for direct consumption or for use as an ingredient.

   • Legumes

   Many dishes require beans and peas, get a basic assortment, red beans, lentils, great northern beans and the like. Learn to think ahead as beans usually require an overnight soaking prior to cooking with them.

   • Cheeses

   You do not need a whole lot, I always keep a block of medium cheddar, a block of swiss, parmesan, asiago, and romanno cheeses. Don’t get too worked up about moldy cheese, just shave the mold off and use what is left, that is called aging your cheese!

   • Vegetables

   Carrots, potatoes, garlic cloves, celery, and onions. Those vegetables keep well others do not, get any others you may need as you need them.

   • Meats

   I do not suggest storing up meats, buy them fresh and per need. If there is a deal on somewhere buy what you will consume before the meat spoils, perhaps some for freezing (remember, there is a cost to putting things in the freezer - loss of storage, and you may forget what you put in there). Planning and organization can help you take advantage of meat specials.

Find recipes calling for less & cheaper cuts of meat. Not only will this help with your finances, it will also help with your health.

2. Visit your local Goodwill store or area thrift shops.

Look for cookbooks there. The Joy of Cooking is a good book it disucsses the ingredients and technique as well as just giving recipes. Most likely you can find an older edition of the Joy Of Cooking in any thrift shop, it will probably even be clean!

Also, you can find pots, pans, and the other tools of the cooking trade there. Don’t feel you have to go to Williams & Sonoma to become a good cook.

3. Some easy recipes

Learn them and learn them well. You can then start to improvise and vary your recipes, remember recipes are suggestions and not ironclad laws to follow.

4. Sharon also urges you to be creative

Kitchen creativity starts with following recipes and practice. Find varied recipes and follow them to the letter a number of times. In each and across the recipes notice how the ingredients work together especially the spices! Then as you learn how each ingredient accomplishes the dish then start to vary to suit your tastes or add other ingredients.

From time to time I bake a chocolate cheesecake. The basic recipe is straight chocolate cheesecake, but I have developed a number of variations on the theme. Add a tablespoon of instant coffee or add some mint flavoring (creme de mint is my way of doing that). A cookie recipe we executed does not call for any milk in the batter, we add a 1/4 cup per batch softens and improves the recipe (makes it messier too).

When you take a dish and your creativity makes it your own, you are much more likely to want to eat it.

5. Large batches

While Sharon did not talk about batch size, I like to cook large batches. This way you can get economies of scale on your time. Make sure you can safely store your work. Winter in Wisconsin helps, now we put our large pots full of soups and sauces in the garage.

I do not mind leftovers and it is not uncommon for me to eat the same thing day in and day out for a week at a time. People have suggested to me this is not good from a nutritional standpoint as a certain dish may be lacking in nutrients. The argument continues on to say eating different meals will cover the deficiencies through random chance. I am not a nutritionist and I understand the argument, but I do not believe a week will hurt.

6. Time and Patience Considerations

Sharon confesses she often justified going out on time considerations. She figured it would be quicker to step out to eat. However, she thinks about that idea, experiments, and applies an analysis using numbers. Guess what? It takes less time to fix her own salad than it does to step out and order one.

While the cooking I am talking about takes longer than preparing a salad if you plan things out and cook in larger batches my guess is the time used to cook your own meals is less than going out. Now mind you, I am not talking about the drive-through at McDonald’s but instead I am talking about sit-down restaurants.

In addition, enlist the help of your family! Not only do you save money and time you stay close to your family.

In the end, I think you can save a fair amount of jingle by doing your own cooking. Even though prepared meals are cheap I get the feeling they are not as cheap as cooking your own.

Bon appetit!

In my last post I report the payback period for a photo-voltaic roofing system is in excess of 15 years. Well, I was revisiting my analysis in preparation of presenting it here and lo & behold I notice I bonked!

In my analysis I misunderstood one key piece of data and based the analysis on that. I am in the middle of reanalyzing the data and it appears I the bonk led to me to overstate the payback period by twice! It appears the actual payback period would be under ten years.

I will continue to work on the analysis and present it when it is complete. Still, this realization comes too late for us our roof is on and is conventional. Perhaps this will be our first remodel job?

Drat, I have to rewrite this, my blog software [undisclosed] lost the previous version of this post, probably for the best.

We are no eco-freakos this does not mean we are careless of the environment, it means we look for prudent means to take care of the environment. It is common for people to take the no pain no gain approach to environmentally conscious living. We see those people scouring for used vegetable oil for their cars, or building houses from donkey dung and shredded newspaper, placing photovoltaic solar panels on their roofs, and installing geo-thermal heat pumps heating & cooling.

Yes, you heard me correct. Lorie and I are building a house. I have looked into photovoltaics and geo-thermal as a means to power, heat, and cool our house. My analysis was not encouraging, showing payback periods of roughly 15-17 years. Sorry, too long, I need a payback period of 10 years or less. To go with these emerging technologies would have been an extravagance we can not afford. Maybe in five years our means will have sufficiently expanded and the price of the materials will have come down to a level where it makes sense.

Now, there are people out there who can afford such technologies and I say go for it. If you have the wealth you can assuage your guilt. However, do not think you will be getting payback anytime soon on your investment (I will present my analysis in another post).

In fact, I put before you, the idea such extravagances are more damaging to the environment than conventional technologies. Why? Because price is a measure of input resources both in terms of material and labor’s time. More resources means more impact upon the environment.

However, the early-adopters provide one crucial benefit. They serve as the guinea pigs on which we can experiment and learn to produce and deliver the technology more appropriately and inexpensively.

Do not get me wrong. Not all environmentally friendly technologies are boondoggles. Lorie and I cut our electric bills roughly in half by switching most of our lights to compact fluorescents. Guess what? The reduced electrical consumption is beneficial to the environment and saves us money! Other technologies we use to save money and the environment is as simple as heavy wool sweaters and heavy wool quilts.

In order for environmentally friendly technology to catch on it has to be a value, not extravagant!

This category is similar to Cheap or Frugal. However, in this category we we will be on the other end of the cost category.

Just like we make a distinction between money saving techniques that indeed save money and those techniques that cost money in the end we also make distinctions between paying more to save money in the end and spending money just to spend money.

An example of this is furniture. You can go to a store and buy furniture that is very expensive, however it will last forever and look good forever. The alternative is to go to a store with very cheap furniture and it falls apart after a couple of years and you have to spend again to replace it.

So we would discuss whether or not an item, despite its high price, is a good value or not. Always understand, you have to judge if your financial situation and priorities are your first considerations and then you can start thinking about value.

For example, to go back to the furniture. You can spend (for instance) $25.00 for a computer desk but it is cheap and you don’t expect it last more than 5 years, but you can go to another store to buy a computer desk for $500.00 but it will last a lifetime. The $500.00 desk may be the better value but if your budget can not spare the $500.00 then it may be better to not buy a computer desk (and make due some other way) or to find something in between.

The $25.00 desk may be cheap and the $500 desk may be a value.

A $70.00 pair of shoes may be a value and a $270.00 pair of shoes may be extravagant. I encourage you to vote and comment in these postings!

Some years ago a good buddy of mine had a diesel pickup truck. When he purchased the truck it already had a large number of miles on it.

Sometime after he purchased it (from a private party) the truck’s glow-plug controller burned out. Now, the glow-plug controller was essential to starting the truck. However, instead of buy a replacement for whatever they cost the person bought two small screwdrivers and a wire with alligator clips. The screwdrivers were attached to each other with the alligator clips and the driver or companion would manually opening the truck hood and making the needed connection.

A great savings to be sure. Instead of spending the couple of hundred dollars to replace the controller a maximum of $5.00 was spent to set up the manual glow plug control.

However, my buddy started to spend money on replacing – (yeap you guessed it) burned out glow plugs. In addition, we were once stuck in the deer woods on a cold ad blowing night without light trying to figure out where to stick the leads.

Eventually, another solution was found and that was to set up a toggle switch to glow the plugs but the expense of replacing burned out glow plugs continued.

I deem not replacing the glow-plug controller cheap. How about you? Vote & discuss!

Not Replacing the Glow-Plug Controler: Cheap or Frugal?

• Cheapskate!
• Frugal (how resourceful)!

View Results

 Loading …

I wear glasses and contact lenses.

Recently I visited my optometrist and got a new prescription. He issued me a trial pair of contact lenses. Now, usually I am good about not wearing a given set of my contact lenses for too long (I have been getting two week lenses) but the last set from the old prescription and this trial pair I obviously wore too long. How can I tell?

My left eye is red, irritated, and very sensitive to light.

I judge the practice of wearing to wear contact lenses too long as cheap the kind of practice that in the end, may cost way more than what you save. How do you judge wearing contact lenses too long? Please vote and comment.

Wearing Contact Lenses Longer than one Should: Frugal or Cheap?

• Cheap (bad)!
• Frugal (good)!

View Results

 Loading …

Honesty is such a lonely word.
Everyone is so untrue.
Honesty is hardly ever heard.

So sings Billy Joel. Now, Billy Joel is not singing about being thrifty but about love and I have only snipped out the piece that is very general.

The old saying is honesty is the best policy. True, and are we honest with others? Honesty with others is not too difficult, sure there are times when we stretch the truth, we may avoid answering questions, we may twist and squirm; but I think most of us are on the whole honest people. However, are you honest with yourself?

Being honest to one’s self is important for being frugal. Can you tell yourself you do not need that day at the spa? Or do you buy the line you give to yourself you work hard and deserve it? Do you resist the idea that you would be the next Ansel Adams if only you had the new digital SLR?

It is not about mortifying one’s self it is about being honest with yourself about your needs and means. The ease with which we are granted credit makes it so much easier to lie to ourselves. Extending your purchasing with credit is deceiving yourself, be honest.