Mighty Bargain Hunter

Yard sale shopping with my daughter

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My wife was at a quilting bee today so I got to spend the day with my three-year-old daughter. After we went to a park near the Potomac River we stopped at a community yard sale in one of the bigger subdivisions nearby.

It’s a lot easier to say “yes” when we’re “shopping” at yard sales. Maybe this is weak parenting but I don’t think it’s a bad thing to encourage or reinforce that you can get more for your money (or more for my money) at yard sales than in other stores. I only rarely splurge in retail stores but often splurge at yard sales.

Here’s what we got:

• Four basically unworn shirts for my daughter: 25 cents each. She informed me that she didn’t need more shirts but she’ll grow into these. I even managed to find shirts without licensed characters on them.
• Marbled sidewalk chalk: 25 cents for a package of four. This was pretty cool-looking sidewalk chalk.
• Blade-type scooter: $1. Ok, this one had Barbie on it but my wife said that this wasn’t quite as bad as wearing Barbie.
• Seven bouncy balls: a nickel each. Two of them flashed when we bounced them.
• Puppy Racers game for 75 cents. This one’s pretty amusing. It’s vaguely reminiscent of Hungry Hungry Hippos but two dogs “fetch” plastic balls by pushing them with their noses.
• Small craft soap-making kit for a buck.
• A sand art kit for $2.
• A cement mixer for $1. This was one of the better deals. It’s black with a green top on it, and it’s handy for mixing up a small amount of Quikrete. If nothing else we can use it to store rice or something like that.

Have you had any good finds at yard sales recently?

Posted in Frugal Living | No Comments »

Make yourself an easy steamer

One treat my wife really likes in the evenings is a steamer — hot milk with some flavoring and a bit of whipped cream.

We have an espresso machine but we rarely use it because the start-up and tear-down time is a bit long just for one or two small drinks. That and we didn’t really ever get the hang of using the steam to heat the milk.

Here’s what I do instead and my wife thinks the steamer tastes just fine:

1. Pour milk into a coffee mug and leave 1/2 to 1 inch of room.
2. Microwave until you see the milk bubble on top for maybe 5-10 seconds. In my microwave this takes about 90 seconds, but, as always, cooking times may vary.
3. Take the mug out and remove the “skin” of milk on top with a spoon, if you see one.
4. Add flavoring and/or whipped cream to taste, plus any topping on the whipped cream (like cinnamon or cocoa powder)

After all’s said and done this steamer costs well under a dollar even with specialized ingredients: lactose-free 2% milk, sugar-free vanilla syrup, and sugar-free Land O’Lakes whipped cream (this one is a bit pricey at over $4 a can). The steamer would be even cheaper if you were to use more common ingredients.

This is a great way to put The Latte Factor™ in its place!

Posted in Frugal Living | 5 Comments »

A great high gas price indicator

My mother-in-law has a friend who works at a gas station, and her friend has an indicator on when gas prices are truly getting high:

She doesn’t think gas prices are high yet, because people are still buying lottery tickets and soda pop after filling up their tank. When they stop buying the lottery tickets and soda pop, then gas prices will be getting high.

This makes a whole lot of sense, and it’s already being seen elsewhere. Fuel costs will crowd out discretionary entertainment expenses first, and that includes lottery tickets and soda pop. Though it probably isn’t true that low-income people purchase the most lottery tickets, middle-income people have been shown to spend more on lottery tickets than high-income people, and those people will be more sensitive to fuel costs than the rich. So one might expect to see a noticeable drop in lottery ticket purchases as gas prices go higher.

Other discretionary expenses will trail off too, but lottery tickets are often purchased at the same places that gas is sold, so people’s wallets will be a bit lighter right there, so lottery ticket purchases will decline sooner rather than later.

Posted in Gas and Oil | 7 Comments »

Will frugality ever be ready for prime time?

Jim tweeted this question a little while ago (I expanded his text a bit with his permission because I’m not limited to 140 characters here):

“Why do people love stories about people paying off thousands in credit card debt? Why is there no love for people who don’t have debt to begin with? It’s disappointing.”

Flexo responded:

Everyone loves a protagonist/hero faced with adversity overcoming the challenge against all odds. It’s worked for 2000+ years.

Put another way, is it just that debt reduction makes for good reality TV but frugality doesn’t?

Well, yes, I think that’s exactly it, because struggling through a bad situation is almost always more interesting than having the foresight (or good fortune) not to get into that bad situation in the first place. Necessity is the mother of invention, but imposing the necessity on oneself takes the excitement out of it. It’s not quite a real struggle if there’s a safety net.

What’s even stranger is that struggling through a bad situation is more interesting even though that bad situation many times is the person’s own fault. Take my weight loss blog for example. I’ve already had some wonderful encouragement from my family, my friends, and other bloggers. (Thank you!) However, this doesn’t change the fact that the only reason I have to lose close to 100 pounds is because I ate too much and because I was lazy. It’s entirely my own fault.

The same goes with debt reduction. Sometimes life is challenging for things beyond people’s control, and other times life is challenging because people’s bad spending habits finally catch up with them. Now, getting out of debt is far better than self-destructing financially. But avoiding debt in the first place through frugality is merely boring, even though it’s better to never have been in debt.

Frugality might get a little bit of public-awareness juice as things tank, more people get foreclosed on or lose their jobs, and have no other choice but to dig themselves out. Then people will rediscover thrift stores, the library, and the slow cooker.

There might even be a reality show: I survived a year with Amy Dacyczyn!

(Oh, by the way: Just in case you didn’t know what “tweeted” means, it means posted on Twitter. It’s free to sign up, so if you’d like to follow our conversations or put in your two cents, you can follow us on Twitter here, here, and here.)

Posted in Commentary | 4 Comments »