Entries Tagged 'Frugality' ↓

Do you have a cell phone? Chances are you do. Do you have a landline? If you do, may I ask why? There are plenty of reasons why you should have a landline (they are required by most security systems so they can phone home, they are far easier to use for young children, etc) but if you can’t think of a reason why you have a landline, other than “everyone else does,” then consider canceling it and saving yourself the $30 a month they typically cost.

Need a replacement landline and don’t want to eat up minutes on your cell phone? There are many VoIP options that are cheaper than a landline and can follow your computer, rather than your residence (which won’t be moving). Skype is a popular option and for $10/mo you can get a phone number that anyone on Skype can call you from (and you can call anyone else) and that you can call anyone else from.

Halloween is coming up in about a week and a half and if you’re like most families, you’re looking to save a few extra dollars on the costumed night this year. My Dollar Plan has 8 great tips for saving money this halloween. The tips include listing places to buy discount candy, some ideas on cheaper decorations, dinner, costumes, and party planning. Finally, there are even tips on pumpkins (carry your own!).

Trick or treat!

I haven’t bought a movie in at least three or four years. I don’t own a Blu-Ray player or an HD-DVD player (ha, or an HD upsampler, or whatever they’re re-marketing them as) either but I still enjoy watching movies from time to time. Buying movies has become nearly pointless as companies like Netflix will send you a dozen movies each month for the price of one movie. In fact, as internet enabled media devices become more popular, and thus cheaper, subscription services like Netflix and their downloadable content will make movies a thing of the past.

So rather than buy soon to be relics, skip the cost and just go with rental. Let’s say you buy a $20 disc every month, that’s $240 a year. If you were to choose Netflix’s cheapest option of 2 movies a month for $5, that’s only $60. You can save serious money and cut down on the clutter.

Want a great way to save money? Discuss each and every purchase with someone before you make it. Whether it’s a cup of coffee or a flat screen television, talk to someone first. It can be your mom or dad, it can be your best friend, it can be a random person waiting in line with you but talk to someone. It can be a complex discussion about the merits of what it is you’re buying or it can just be a perfunctory “Hey, how’s the coffee here?” Either way, talk to someone first.

Why does this work? First, it puts you in the position of having to do something first. That alone will stop a lot of your purchases. In the event you do get into a discussion, you can argue the merits of your purchase while your foil can argue against it. Finally, this makes the buying decision an active one. Far too many times you might find yourself buying something, like morning coffee, without really thinking about it. This bring the thinking back in.

Give it a whirl, you might make a new friend!

Rather than paying for songs on iTunes or buying CDs from the store, here’s a popular option for those of you who always have an internet connection - online radio stations. You can save a lot of money just by pointing your browser over to sites like Pandora and Last.fm. There’s an added bonus of the sites recommending new artists (or new songs from old artists) so you can get exposed to newer things. All of it is for free!

If you’ve ever bought the Microsoft Office suite before, you know that it’s ridiculously expensive. Once you’ve learned that, you’ve probably checked out Google Docs, which is Google’s free offering of office productivity tools. While Google Docs is a great service, I wanted to introduce yet another player in the free productivity suite space - OpenOffice.org.

OpenOffice.org 2 is the leading open-source office software suite for word processing, spreadsheets, presentations, graphics, databases and more. It is available in many languages and works on all common computers. It stores all your data in an international open standard format and can also read and write files from other common office software packages. It can be downloaded and used completely free of charge for any purpose.

Learn more about OpenOffice.

You can stop paying for television and avoid the slammer by shutting down all them torrents because you can get a lot of television shows online absolutely free once they’ve been broadcast on regular television. There are a lot of free and completely legal means of watching your favorite shows while dropping the $30 - $80 a month price.

For many stations, visit their main website to see if you can watch shows there. NBC and ABC offer this through their website. Another website that offers free shows and movies is Hulu.com, a partnership between NBC Universal and News Corp.

If you’ve been buying anything online and haven’t first checked MSN Live Search’s Cashback, you might be leaving some serious cash on the table.

What you will need:

• An MSN Live account: Sign up for one here.
• Next, you’ll want a Paypal account to get the deposits.
• Third, just start searching for products via Live and be eligible for Cashback!
• Profit!

Here are more details. I recently bought a new Lenovo laptop and took advantage of the program to get 10% cashback on my purchase. Some places are even offering up to 62.5% cashback!

Did you know that expired coupons are valid at commissaries and base exchanges for six months after their expiration date? Me neither! So rather than recycle them, send them to someone you know or send them to The Happy Housewife. She’ll send them along to her and she’ll send them to the troops. Contact her at coupons4troops (at) comcast (dot) net for details.

Hat tip to Chief Family Officer for this hack!.

My wife and I don’t go to many movies in the theaters these days because the cost of doing so has just gotten pretty ridiculous. I recently saw a movie theater in Baltimore, the Landmark Theater in Harbor East, charge $10.50 for a ticket. Those are New York City movie prices in Baltimore! While the Landmark Theater is certainly very nice on the inside, ten dollars for a movie is pretty ridiculous.

Our local theater in Columbia, MD is a Regal Cinemas with reasonably comfortable seats and matinee/student discount ticket prices of around $7. You can buy movie vouchers from Costco for $6.50 a showing if you have a Costco membership. I recently joined the Regal Crown Club for kicks and found that the benefits were pretty solid.

First, the reward schedule is a bit unique but essentially you get a free ticket for every 120 points. A point is earned each time you spend a dollar. If a movie at regular price is $9, each point is worth about a nickel. Each movie ticket purchase is about 35 cents (so you save more with Costco tickets).

However, you get a free small popcorn every Tuesday and you get free stuff at 40 point increments. At 40 points you get a small popcorn, at 80 you get a small soft drink. So at 120 you get a ticket, at 160 you get a popcorn, at 200 you get a drink, at 240 you get another ticket. Joining the club gets you slightly more “stuff” than buying the tickets alone.

Couple that with a Citi mtvU card that gives you 5% cashback at the movie theater and you’re talking even more savings!