How I Shop

First off, I know it’s been awhile. I’ve been finishing up at my job, moving, unpacking, starting school, etc. The blog was kind of my last priority, which is bad. One of the points of this blog is to keep me on track, and I haven’t stayed on track. Actually, I’ve been pretty good about larger purchases, but as usual I’ve spent a lot on food. As I get settled in, that should be less of an issue.

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As for things that aren’t food (and occasionally for food), I thought I’d do a summary of how I try to save.

First I search online to try to find the best version of what I am looking for at the best price. Sometimes quality is more important and sometimes price is, but I always try to get a good balance. I also try to take into account whether it is something I can buy used, do without, or get for free. When I wanted Dance Dance Revolution I knew it was something I could do without, so I waited and managed to get almost all the components I needed to play for free from friends or swaptree.

My new dresser

When I wanted a new dresser I went with the cheapest one that did not have terrible reviews. I could have gotten one for free or cheap used, but I did not have the resources to move it without spending more than I would have just going to get a new one.

Once I find the one I want to buy (assuming I am buying it, and buying it new) I see how else I can save. With Bed, Bath & Beyond it is almost always cheaper to go to the store assuming you don’t make up the difference in gas. You don’t have to pay shipping and they accept expired coupons, and you can almost always find a 20% off coupon. Other places, it varies, and you might not have access online. I usually go to retailmenot.com to find discount codes, and/or search for coupons online.

I also go to mypoints.com to check if the place I am buying from is a sponsored merchant. If it is I can get points for shopping there that I can use for a free gift card. They have gift cards to a ton of different places and I manage to rack up a lot of points just doing this and clicking the links they send me in emails without actually buying from those links. If you’re interested in starting a mypoints account, by the way, let me know so I can send you a referral email and get more points for that. I’m saving for a Target giftcard at the moment.

Whenever possible I purchase the item with my cash back credit card.

Lastly, planning in advance is my friend. I can watch for deals and sales, and if I’m ordering online I can choose the cheapest shipping method.

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How do you guys shop that I am missing (besides for clothing)-I know Ali has an awesome method of shopping all the time that lets her buy things she really likes at great prices, but it doesn’t work for me right now. Any other tips would be greatly appreciated.

Moving Matters

I think moving is one of those things that really motivates me to spend, spend, spend. Of course, when you’re moving into a new place, or at least when I am, is usually a terrible time to spend. You have to pay a deposit, rent, sometimes first and last month and a broker’s fee, you need to pay for gas to drive your stuff there, etc. You need to either hire movers or buy food for the kind friends that help you, or maybe just be super mighty. I am not super mighty, by the way.

But a new place needs new stuff! When I moved into my last place I needed a tv stand, and door hooks, and baking supplies, and all new bathroom stuff since my old stuff didn’t match the tiles in the new place.

The shower curtain I totally, completely needed. And ended up not getting-I got a different one.

I am lying. I didn’t need any of those things. But I wanted them, and they were useful, and I got them. It’s not bad that I got them. The problem is that I identified those wants as needs.

Now I am moving to a new place again. I want a dresser, and new towels and maybe some baskets and a toothbrush holder for the bathroom, (what can I say, I like matching bathrooms,) and a rug and a new litter box, and probably some other things.

The dresser is practically a need, since otherwise there is nowhere for my clothing to go except in a big pile, and since I have no car it makes sense to get a cheap new one that can be delivered. The bathroom, well, if I see it cheap I will probably get stuff. Matching bathrooms make me happy! I only want a couple things, and, well, we have to give into wants somewhere. The rug I am going to try and trick my boyfriend into buying if I am getting the dresser. The new litter box is a straight up luxury, and I am going to skip it-I just one that looks nicer since it will be more visible, but the one I have is covered with a dome and looks fine, and I can maybe put an end table we already have over it.

I have to be strict with myself! As J.D. at Get Rich Slowly always says, nobody cares more about my money than I do. Nobody else is going to make sure I don’t waste money that could go towards a down payment on a cute lamp I’ll probably leave behind when I move.

I also need warm things since I am moving to a colder climate. There, at least, I’m excited to not spend. I realized I have a winter jacket from high school I can use. It’s 10 years old, but I’ve barely worn it in that time and it’s super warm. And since it’s from 10 years ago, it’s probably back in. Or, I don’t care, because it’s warm. I already own scarves I also don’t wear, and my mom is always trying to give me gloves so I can just actually take some next time she offers, or find some that she gave me in the past. What can I say, I hate bundling up as much as I love matching bathrooms. I’m all about the hoods and use of pockets.

I do need to buy new boots though. All my current boots were bought with motivations other than surviving a New Hampshire winter. I almost bought some Bear Paws on sale at Target the other day, but with shipping I felt they weren’t worth it. So, any recommendations for cheap, warm, tough (or tough-ish) boots? Or ways to not spend on a new place?

Food, my only weakness! How did you know?

So I am kind of sticking to weekly updates. Kind of.

As for my budgeting goal of $300, still looking good-I think. It is after the 15th, and I’ve only spent $280 on food, moving, gifts, travel, everything but rent. So in that way, I succeeded. On the other hand, I still have one and a half gifts to get and those will probably come to more than $20.

On the bright side, I made $110 selling stuff I didn’t need on craigslist, and tricked people into taking some of the rest of the stuff I won’t need any more. One of the best ways I can save right now is by having less stuff. Plus, free money!

On another down side, I still keep spending way more on food than I intend to. I am trying to come up with a reasonable food budget for the next four weeks and it’s really hard. I know I spend too much, but what’s a limit I can set that I won’t break? Is it better to set an overall budget, a budget for eating out and eating in, or a budget and a set number of times I can eat out? I think an overall budget makes the most sense, but I also think it might be harder to stick to based on past experience. Advice totally welcome!

Restaurant.com

I’ve been reading about restaurant.com for a while now in various saving money advice places, but hadn’t checked it out. Today, someone posted in one of my communities that you can get 80% off with the code SANTA, and I had no food for lunch, so I figured I’d give it a shot.

I ate delicious cornbread for free! photo by xandert

The site offers discount gift certificates to tons of restaurants. I doubted many places I know would be on there since I don’t go to many chains, but there were tons of places less than a mile from my work, including a place I’ve been wanting to go to for a while. I ordered the gift certificate-$10 value, normally $3, but $0.60 with the code! Sixty cents! There were a bunch of qualifiers, but they didn’t matter to me-you had to go for lunch, which was my plan, and spend at least $15 total, which was no problem. I went with a friend and split a huge delicious lunch. We even had leftovers. The total per person ended up being less than $5, including the $0.60 spent on the gift certificate.

So totally worth it.

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The point here is not just to check out restaurant.com, which you should. The point is, I’ve been reading about this site for probably over six months and always figured it’d be too much work, but it was super easy. It reminds me of starting my savings account; I put that off for months and then it took about two minutes. If there’s a way to save you’ve been meaning try but think it’s too much effort, give it a shot. Go do it now, I dare you.

If the thing you’re doing is starting an ING account, by the way, let me know. If I refer you I get a bonus and you get a bonus (this also works if someone else refers you, but then I don’t get anything.)

Moving on up

So I’m moving twice in a little over a month, and moving stuff to three locations. It’s pretty nerve wracking. Or, it is for a likely-to-be stressed person like me. But this blog isn’t about stress (well, sometimes it is)-it’s about saving.

photo by Eden Hensley

I’m planning on saving on boxes by using discarded boxes from work. If you don’t have boxes at work, you can try grocery stores and liquor stores, and sometimes drugs stores, for the boxes shipments come in. Be friendly and willing to accept a no when you ask for boxes, but also try to find out what day they get shipments in since that’s when they’ll have a lot of extra boxes to get rid of.

I am also getting some of the bubble wrap we normally throw away from work. it actually coincides well with my goal of cleaning out my office more-I used to stockpile bubble wrap for mailing things, and then never actually use it. I’m also planning on grabbing a bunch of the free newspapers available at the subway station.

You can always try craigslist and freecycle. I see packing materials listed all the time on craigslist on my free in my neighborhood feed, and if they were nearby I would totally grab some.

I’m also using craigslist to sell the big stuff I don’t need anymore. Even though I just bought some of this recently, it’s almost like free money, which is exciting.

The rest of the stuff I am giving away for free, because, well, I like getting things for free. In fact, I am giving away a couple things I got for free recently, but that’s okay.

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As for my goals, it looks like I will make it and be under $300, but I still have to see how much gas ends up costing me, and am short a gift still. I broke it down into categories to help me not overspend. I’ve spent a bit too much on lunches, but I’ll just cut back on my dinners and/or miscellaneous fund to balance it out. Eating out is always my weakness.

Saving on a Wedding, Pt. 3

This is post three of a three-post guest series by Ali of Tattered, Tagged, Treasured on how she saved a ton without cutting anything they valued on her wedding. Post one is here, and post two is here.
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The Decorations

So, we had our caterer but no plates or silverware or linens. I looked into rental places and the lowest cost per tablecloth for tablecloths I considered fit to serve upon was $15 each. Screw that. I bought about 15 matching tablecloths in various sizes that fit my wedding colors on eBay for less than $100 shipped. If you start early and you’re willing to use patterned tablecloths and be flexible, you can get an insanely good deal.

For plates, we decided we didn’t care if every plate was different since the eclectic look, again, fits well with our theme. I picked a few up at tag sales, but I bought the bulk of them at Goodwill. FYI, you can bargain here, too! At our Goodwill, plates were $1 each. We bought 106 plates (every plate they had that wasn’t chipped or terribly scratched) for $70. We probably could have bargained even more, but at some point you just get tired and want to be done, you know?

For my silverware, I didn’t care what it looked like as long as it had the heft of metal. Standard rates in a lot of places were as high as $1 per utensil. I went with this eBay store: Bob’s Restaurant Supplies. I got 432 pieces for just over $100 shipped.

We wanted a lot of easily disposable stuff since we’re doing so much ourselves. I hit up Party City and spent $350 on all disposables. This was enough for all 70 people to have two rounds at the buffet, over eight drinks, plenty of passed cocktail food, two plates of dessert and one cup of coffee or tea. For our napkins, we went entirely with paper. For our dessert plates, we went with gold plastic. For our dessert forks, we went with gold plastic. For our coffee cups, we went with gold paper. For all drinks, including wine and champagne, we went with clear plastic. Sure, glass would have a much nicer heft, but this is something we didn’t feel it was worthwhile to schlep in or spend on. Rentals for glasses and linen napkins cost more than the total amount we spent on all of the disposable stuff and you don’t get to keep any of that, either. A lot of people choose to go personalized on all of this kind of stuff. We chose not to because it’s very hard to control the quality of what you’re getting and the plain stuff is ultimately going to look a lot classier on our patterned tablecloths. The best part is that we could open packages as needed and return some of it after the wedding.

I like flowers, but the return isn’t worth the money to me, so only the wedding party bouquets was going to use flowers. Our centerpieces were large glass vases which we were going to fill with water and frozen cherries (to float). We spent between $8 and $15 on each vase. When I went to go get the frozen cherries, I couldn’t find any. On the other hand, roses were on sale super cheap, so we went with roses after all.

I had masquerade masks to hang everywhere and candles to place everywhere. The mansion is fully furnished and decorated, so that was it for decorations for us! Using what’s already there is a great way to save money and it lends so much personality and warmth to your wedding.

Honestly, there are so many ways to save at your wedding. These are just a few of the ways I chose.

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Ali’s post about the wedding with links to all the photos from the wedding is here if you’d like to check out the end results and see if it looks like a frugal wedding. In my opinion, it was an awesome one.

Carnival, Goals, Being Happy

I don’t know about you, but I had a pretty great Thanksgiving.

Now I’m back, vacation over, and it’s time to assess what I’ve done and what I’m going to do.

First off, I was included in The Carnival of Personal Finance for my post on holiday gifts, which was pretty cool. Mighty Bargain Hunter is a really good blog, and a lot of the posts are pretty interesting, so I suggest checking it out. I always love reading these things (even when I’ not in them) because there is almost always at least one post linked that gives me a new idea or helps me get motivated.

So, as for goals, well:
1. Implement my new weekly budget system and stick to it. Not so good =( I think I need to start doing weekly checkup posts again if I want to stick to a weekly budget.

2. Use images in my blog. Very good! I only made 7 posts in November, but 5 had images, and I do think it made the posts better.

3. Make things new. I mostly did this on a larger, more metaphorical level, but I still feel I succeeded-I re-focused and gained new perspective and appreciation on things I already had in life. Sounds cheesy, but it is true. And I love cheese.

As for my December goals, those will be divided into two chunks since I am making Dec.15th-Jan.15th one chunk, of time with one goal, as I mentioned previously. For the next two weeks the goal is to not spend more than $300 on gifts, travel, eating, and moving. I think this is fairly do-able =) My other goal is to make weekly update posts again.

I am really happy and excited, December looks like it will be a good month.

Getting Back on Track

In February, I started trying to improve my financial situation. Until about October of this year every month I got a little better. I found new ways to save, I did new things to keep me on track, my savings grew. My original plan was to save up enough to be able to afford my rent when (if) my boyfriend went away to law school. I saved enough, and got good enough at cutting costs, that I didn’t have to touch that savings when he moved away. I haven’t given myself enough credit for that.

I started slipping though. I created unrealistic goals to try and save even more, and failed, and felt defeated. I stopped tracking every expense. I haven’t come up with a new trick or motivational tool in over a month. I slowed down posting on the blog, when part of the point of the blog was to keep me on track.

It’s okay. I have to forgive myself, move on, and keep getting better. I realized I’d stopped reading new posts new places all the time and had started just reading my favorite blogs. I got really excited the other day when I spent about an hour going to different sites and reading about tips & tricks, and also pitfalls.

I also have a deadline now. I am leaving my job to go to grad school. I am going to look for a part time job, but until I get one I have to use my savings. I am incredibly excited about grad school, and I will do whatever it takes to be ready. So I am making Dec.15th to Jan. 15th a no-spend period.

It’s hard. I want to buy new bags and clothes and organizational things and pens and everything for school. I am going to try & make do with what I have, and maybe pretty up some old things. I want to go out to eat everywhere I love in the city, but I’ll be back after I’ve found a part time job, and going out to eat will be a perfect way to visit my friends. I want to keep buying gifts, but the plan is to stick to a budget and be done by Dec. 15th (that’s mainly psychological.) I will be reducing my rent by about $800 a month-all that money is for savings.

I am allowed to spend on gas, and buying dinner for people helping me move. I can buy groceries, and food for my cat. I think I will need to spend money on some toiletries. I will need to spend money on laundry, probably a bit more than usual. I am trying to decide if I am allowed to go out to eat at all, and if so, what the budget for that should be. But the plan is, no fun spending.

Which doesn’t mean no fun! I’ll be living with two of my favorite people, and we can stay home and watch movies and cook meals. I think instead of the cooking taking turns thing Ill just plan an old-fashioned pot luck. My boyfriend will be home. There will be Hanukkah and Christmas to celebrate. I just have to remind myself that that is enough. It is wonderful, and I am fortunate. Plus I don’t need to buy new things because I will be getting presents!

Now, I need you guys to help me stick to this. And in the future, I think I will give myself planned vacations from saving (instead on unplanned, like this one.) Not going crazy spending, which I haven’t done in years. Just no need to blog about it (although I can), no need to rack expenses, no need to follow a set budget. That way, just like a real vacation, I can come back rejuvenated.

Tis a Gift to be Simple

OK, so it’s the time of year when everyone is starting to do holiday gift posts, and with the economic situation even non-money saving places seem to be talking about gifts on the cheap, as are the people I know.

I could skip this post and assume the topic is covered, but I clearly know better than everyone else. No, but more help is always better, and there is something I want to emphasize.

Think about the receiver.

Really. Think about the person you are giving the gift to. I’ve seen tons of advice on how to save, but what’s the point on spending anything at all if it is something the person won’t appreciate? While going homemade is a great way to save, not everyone likes homemade items, or at least not the ones you were thinking of giving. Some people don’t want another cute tchotke, because it doesn’t go with the decor, the person is fighting clutter, or maybe it’s just not that person’s style. We’ll assume that it’s fantastic, because of course everything you make is fantastic and desirable, so don’t stress about that part.

Someone on a diet, cutting carbs, or just trying to be healthy during a holiday season focused on eating does not need baked goods. Someone with limited space doesn’t need a picture frame. A person with no time doesn’t need your seven bean soup mix in a jar-there’s still no time to cook it. That doesn’t mean you can’t go homemade. Try making a food that will help with the diet or healthy eating plan, a cute storage box for the friend with no space, and give the friend with no time an offer of cooking services, babysitting, whatever.

Gifts are not one size fits all, and the warmth of giving someone a homemade gift is diluted when you are giving everyone the same thing. The point of gift giving is to show a thought for someone, and do something nice for that person because you care. Or, in some cases, because social customs dictate it.

Last year at the office secret Santa, I heard a rant, in song form, about Starbucks gift cards. They seem to be a default coworker gift. Someone else at the gathering had in fact given one, and the receiver was delighted. There’s nothing wrong with a gift card-if you know someone loves a certain place and generally can’t afford to go there, or goes somewhere every day, it can show as much thought as anything else.

However, I am assuming must of us are people with limited funds but strong shopping skills. If you don’t have the time for handmade, or the skill, or you think it is not right for the person, shop around. It’s not how much money you spend, it’s how much thought. And if you happened to get those $200 boots for $20, well, good on you, and it’s up to you if you want to tell the receiver. Don’t be afraid to give used items if they are in good shape and would be useful to the person, but hesitate if you don’t know if the person generally buys things used. And if you can’t think of anything to get someone, why are you getting that person a gift?

Also, don’t give your non-Christian friends ornaments unless you know that person has a tree for some reason. Really, don’t do it.

Saving on a Wedding, Pt. 2

This is post two of a three-post guest series by Ali of Tattered, Tagged, Treasured on how she saved a ton without cutting anything they valued on her wedding:
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The Site
Luckily, relatively simple, homespun elements fit in very well with our style. Let’s start with the site because we lucked into finding it, and we had it before we even asked our band to play. Eric’s father knew someone at work who had been to a wedding way out on Long Island and he thought it sounded like it was right up our alley. We checked out the website and made an appointment and that was pretty much that.

Our site was $1,200 and we have free reign for the whole day, but it came with nothing except the use of the space. For a bride who needs to save some money, an all-in-one wedding is only a good deal if you have a large wedding or don’t want to hassle with the nitty-gritty details of your wedding. Our invite list was well under 100 and our wedding is non-religious, so we saved a lot of money by having the ceremony and reception in the same place. And that place was an old, slightly ramshackle mansion with a lovely grand ballroom and lots of character. The public grounds include a wraparound porch, a bridal suite, a dining room, a commercial kitchen, two sitting/receiving areas, three bathrooms and one large open room in addition to the ballroom and yard.

Since our quote was so reasonable, we didn’t even try to haggle, but many places allow you to. Because we didn’t haggle and there was instant like between the caretakers and us, we were allowed to store anything we’d like the whole week before. This was a big time saver on the actual day. [Ed. Note: we actually were allowed in the day before since they didn’t have an event that day, so almost all the set-up was done then.]

If you can keep a straight head about it, I highly recommend looking for spaces with a more customizable experience. This means every step of the way you can make everything meet your own price point. If you live in a major city, looking for a slightly more out-of-the-way place can also help cut costs.