Archive for the Category »ways we save $$ «

22
Jul 2007

My HandyWoman Skills

Bookmark and Share

We have a tiny bathroom attached to our bedroom.  Outside of the shower, sink, and toilet, it’s got about 12 sq feet of floor space.  Pretty tight quarters, but we’re glad we have it (some models in our neighborhood have a walk-in closet in that space, and we’d much rather have the second bathroom).  When we moved in, there was nasty yellow vinyl flooring that was peeling up at the edges.  The worst peeling was right next to the shower, and we always had to be really careful to not get water on it.  We replaced the floor in our main bathroom with tile, but it was a pain in the ass to do, and we decided that having tile in our tiny bathroom wasn’t worth the trouble.  But something had to be done.  So last year I tore out all the old weathered vinyl, and replaced it with new, white vinyl.  Not very creative, not eco-friendly, not as good looking as tile, but a heck of a lot nicer looking than what had been there, and the whole project cost me about $25 (plus a day’s labor).  I measured and cut everything so carefully, but I made one mistake.  Right along the edge of the shower, the floor space juts in about an inch as it runs along the shower, and I missed this important detail.  So when I cut everything and laid out the new floor, I had a one inch gap running all the way along the shower.  Damn it all.  By that time I had been working all day, and I had used up all the flooring I had bought.  So I just installed what I had and then cut a strip to go into the space I had missed.  I cut it to match the tile pattern on the floor, and it looked pretty good, but you could see that there was a cut all the way along it, and last week it started to peel up a little bit (it’s hard to get a one inch wide piece of vinyl to stick forever). 

Yesterday, we went to Home Depot and I bought a strip of white fiberglass molding with a 1.25 inch flat side and a nicely shaped other side ($6.15) and a tube of bathroom grade white caulk ($1.89).  We already had some bathroom adhesive left over from another project.  I cut the strip of molding to fit along the shower, glued it in with the adhesive, and caulked around the edges.  The strip covers the botched floor area with about 1/4 inch of overhang, and everything is nicely waterproof now.  Ta-Da!  It actually looks much better than if the floor had been done right the first time (or so I tell myself), since it has a fancy-shower look to it now.  And we don’t have to worry about dripping on it when we get out of the shower.  It took me about 30 minutes, and it cost about $8 (and I still have 8 feet of trim and lots of caulk left over for another project).  Frugality at its best. 

Of course, it would have been better to not mess up the floor in the first place.  But mistakes happen, that’s life.  Given the situation, we could have ripped up the whole thing and started over (spending another $25 and a day’s labor), so I’m pretty proud of my out-of-the box fix. 

Pin it
Category: ways we save $$, work  Leave a Comment
27
Jun 2007

Clothes to Wear to a Wedding

Bookmark and Share

Since we’re already going to be paying a big chunk of money for my husband’s outfit at his cousin’s wedding, I wanted to keep my clothing costs to a minimum while still looking good enough to walk around with my tuxedoed man.  We went to a couple of my favorite thrift stores over the weekend, and I hit the jackpot.  I got a dress for the rehearsal dinner for $13.  It still has it’s original Express pricetag on it ($58), and it fits me perfectly.  It’s got spaghetti straps, so I needed a strapless bra to go with it.  Since I didn’t have a strapless bra, and I tend to wear a lot of tank-tops, I decided that I might aswell splurge on anew underwear staple.  So off to TJMaxx I went, where I found a great strapless bra for $10.  Next I headed to another thrift store where I got a Banana Republic top, an Express skirt, and Nine West strappy sandals – grand total: $18.  The whole outfit is very simple and very comfortable (well, as comfortable as strappy sandals can ever be on a girl who tends to wear running shoes, biking shoes, or Merrells everywhere she goes).  The top I got for the wedding needs a strapless bra too, so my $10 bra will get me a lot of mileage that weekend. 

Now we just need to find a gift.  I’m not sure what we’re going to do there.  We could just go to Bed Bath & Beyond and get something off the gift registry.  But I really really don’t like gift registries.  I think that the whole concept is tacky as hell.  We eloped, so we bypassed thewhole wedding gift thing.  We’re planning to try for a baby later this year, and there will be no baby showers and no gift registries.  If we can’t afford the basics that our baby would need, we have no business getting pregnant.  I hate the idea of going through a store and making a list of all the things I want and then telling my friends and family to go buy it for me.  By the time my husband and I got married, we had been out of college for 5 years, we were both working, and we had been living together for two years - we didn’t need a bunch of stuff.  We still eat off of mismatched dinnerware of forgotten origin, and that’s fine with us.  But I understand that people want to give wedding gifts.  I want to give wedding gifts.  It wouldn’t feel right to show up at a wedding without a gift.  But I don’t really like being told exactly what to go buy and where to get it.  So I’m thinking of bucking the whole registry thing and doing something else for them.  We’ll see what I come up with.  I admit it’s a lot easier to just get something off the registry.  I wonder if there are other people out there who don’t like registries but who just go along with it (like I sometimes do) because it’s easy and it’s what everyone expects.  Anyway, we still have a month until the wedding, so I have plenty of time to get a gift taken care of.  And at least the outfit is done!

Pin it
Category: ways we save $$  12 Comments
12
Jun 2007

Company Dinner

Bookmark and Share

My in-laws are visiting us this week – they arrived today, and they’ll be here through next Tuesday.  I get on really well with them, and I’m excited that they’re here.  This morning I got up early and went to the grocery store for lasagna ingredients.  I already had noodles in the cupboard, so I bought a package of ground turkey ($4), ricotta and cottage cheese ($5 total), and two jars of spaghetti sauce ($6 total).  I had an onion in the cupboard, and I picked a bunch of swiss chard and Italian herbs from our garden.  I had a homemade lasagna in the fridge by 10am, ready to go into the oven tonight for dinner.   And I spent $15 on it.  People pretty much always like my lasagna, so I rely on it quite a bit – and it’s great to make before the guests arrive and put in the fridge.  That way I have time to clean up all the prep stuff, so that the kitchen looks nice again.  Then when it’s dinner time, I just put the pan in the oven for 45 minutes and make a salad.  Looks like magic to the guests!  And I love how easy and inexpensive it is (we’ll get two meals out of it, which makes the $15 look even better). I’m planning a picnic lunch on Saturday and a pancake breakfast sometime this weekend.  My in-laws love to take us out to eat whenever we’re with them, which we really appreciate and enjoy.  But I want to make sure that we take care of some of the meals aswell, and since I’ve got more cooking ability than money, I try to make some good home-cooked meals whenever they’re here.   Now to think of some good picnic food… although I may just fall back on tuna sandwiches, since my MIL loves them. 

Pin it
Category: ways we save $$  Leave a Comment
06
May 2007

Our Xeriscaping Project

Bookmark and Share

We spent all day yesterday working in our front yard.  We used to have mostly grass with a small perennial garden.  Now it’s the other way around.  We have a little peninsula of grass wrapping around from the side yard – the rest is mulch and hardy perennial bushes and plants.  We spent a couple hours yesterday digging the grass up by hand, and then decided to go rent a tiller.  Best $30 we’ve spent in a long time.  The tiller did in 90 minutes what would have taken us 6 hours to do by hand.  And it did a much better job.  Then we put down weed-blocker fabric over the tilled area.  That cost about $40, so it wasn’t cheap, but we decided it was worth it.  We know that neither of us has any extra time as it is, so there was no way that we were going to be in the yard weeding all summer long.  I don’t mind pulling a few straggler weeds now and then, but I don’t want it to be a weekly project.

We spent about $60 on perennials.  We got plants that spread and get very big without requiring much water.  I also have a friend who has offered me some of her hen-and-chicks and some valerian that we can go dig up next weekend (free!).  For this year, our yard will look a bit sparse – mostly mulch with a few plants.  But in a few years, everything should fill in nicely.

The best part is the mulch.  We’re getting it for free from the local tree-recycling center.  They have a mountain of wood chips free for the hauling.  So we lined the trunk of our car with a tarp, and we’ve hauled two loads of chips back so far.  My husband is over there right now getting the third load.  We’ll probably need about two more loads to finish the job.  I can’t imagine what all that mulch would have cost to buy in bags…

We haven’t decided yet how we’re going to do the rock border.  We have a bunch of rocks that we salvaged from the open space behind our house last year for our small perennial garden.  They had just been dumped with a big pile of dirt, and we hauled them back to the house one at a time.  But there are no more left, and the ones we have only go about half way around the new border.  We saw another pile of dirt and rocks in an empty lot a few miles from here, so we’re going to go check that out.  But we’re not in the business of stealing rocks, so if it looks like anything is going on there besides dumping rocks, we’ll leave them be.  We know of a few places that sell remnant rocks, but we have no idea what they charge.  This afternoon, once we get the plants in and the mulching finished, we’re going on a rock-hunting mission.  We’ve decided that we’re not going to spend more than $50 on the rest of the project, including the rocks, so if they cost more than that, we’ll have to find another solution.

Whatever we end up doing, we know that the yard will look great.  We’re both really excited about it, and the whole thing is costing us about $200.  I have a friend who spent $15,000 on landscaping last year, for a yard about the same size as ours.  She and her husband bought a new house that just had dirt in the yard, and they paid someone 15k to put in rocks (big ones), flowers, grass, and irrigation.  It looks great, but so will ours.  I had no idea how much landscaping cost until she told me that story.  Now I know what a deal we’re getting by doing it ourselves and looking for bargains as we go.

Pin it
Category: our frugal stories, the simple life, ways we save $$  4 Comments
23
Apr 2007

Padding the Nest Egg With Interest on Payroll Taxes

Bookmark and Share

When we Incorporated our business last year, we decided to use a payroll service.  We used Payroll1 for the first three months of this year, and they were great.  They took care of everything, got our checks to us right on time, handled all the reports, and sent our quarterly tax payment to the IRS and state gov.  We paid them $55/month, which was very much worth it to me.  But we talked with our accountant a few months ago, and she mentioned that she does payroll for $25/month plus $40/quarter to file reports (so the actual price is $38/month).  We had just been using her on a consultation basis, and paying her $125/hour when we needed to sit down and go over questions/problems with her.  But if she could save us $18/month on payroll, we figured that was worth it, so we switched.

April was our first month with her doing our payroll, and it worked out just fine.  But there was an added bonus that I hadn’t thought of.  When we were with Payroll1, they would deduct the payroll taxes from our bank account each month and keep them in a withholding account.  Then at the end of the quarter, they would file our reports and send payment to the appropriate agencies.  With our current system, our accountant just tells us how much we need to set aside each month to cover all the payroll taxes.  But she doesn’t take the money.  At the end of the quarter, she will complete all the reports we need, and send them to us.  We’ll sign them, and then send them on to the govn’t along with the taxes we owe. 

So when I got our payroll report in April, I took the exact amount that we needed to withhold for taxes (about $1000) and put it into an ING account.  It will sit there until July, when we have to file the second quarter report.  Each month I’ll take the amount that we owe and put it into the ING account (4.5% interest…) and then at the end of the quarter, I’ll just send it off with our quarterly reports.  By my rough calculations (done in my head while driving home from the gym, so probably not very exact), we’ll make about $23/quarter in interest on the tax money as it sits in the ING account.  When we were using Payroll1, they got to keep whatever interest was earned, since they deducted the taxes from our bank account monthly, and submitted them to the govn’t quarterly.  So this is a good bonus, and makes the actual cost of using our accountant for payroll even lower. 

Pin it
Category: savings, ways we save $$, work  One Comment
19
Apr 2007

What to Do When You Forgot to Read Directions

Bookmark and Share

When we installed our new storm door recently, we threw away a few strips of plastic that were left over after we had everything in place.  It looked like they were meant to go on another door (the instructions were for several different doors), and we pitched them with the packaging.  Bummer.  The door had a solid glass front, with a full-size screen inside of it.  The design is a bit awkward, but the idea is that you can have glass and screen, or just glass, or just screen.  We had the glass and screen setup in place, since that’s how the door came out of the box.  But we decided to go with just the glass, as it would look better, and the chances were slim of us ever going to the trouble of taking out the screen, taking out the glass, and then putting the screen back in order to have just screen. 

My husband set to work on it a couple days ago, and soon realized that he needed some long plastic strips that were supposed to be included in the packaging.  These were meant to hold the glass in place inside the rim of the door.  Oops.  Guess they were for our door after all.  We debated calling the company that made the door and trying to order the strips by themselves, but that would probably have been pricey, and we were very proud of how low-budget the door had been so far.  So he went over to Home Depot to browse the hardware section and see what he could find.  He came home with a $1.50 package of mirror holders – tiny little steel brackets about half an inch long, with screws to hold them in place.  He wedged two of them into each side of the door, between the glass and the edge of the door.  He drilled holes and screwed each one in place.  The door is very solid now – the glass doesn’t wiggle at all (probably better than it would have been with just some plastic strips down the sides).  And the tiny mirror brackets look like they were made to go on the door.  Only about 1/4 inch of each one shows, and you’d never know that it didn’t come that way.  So I guess we’ll be more careful to read directions all the way to the end in future, but I’m very proud of my sweetie for his resourcefulness and creativity.  And his frugality – $1.50 is a pretty cheap fix!

Pin it
Category: lessons learned, Our stuff, ways we save $$  3 Comments
02
Apr 2007

Our DIY Storm Door

Bookmark and Share

We live near a wonderful Habitat for Humanity thrift store.  They sell all the usual thrift store stuff, but they also have a home improvement section, with appliances, windows, doors, lights, plumbing fixtures, etc.  In January, they had a bunch of storm doors, still in their original packaging.  I’m not sure if they were overstock or had just been donated to Habitat, but they were sweet doors and Habitat was selling them for $100 each.  They only came in one color – “cranberry” which is like a deep reddish maroon color.  Our front door was bright red, but a bit faded, so I started thinking maybe we could paint it to match.  We decided to go ahead and get the storm door, and when we went back, they were on sale for $50!!  Whoo hoo!  So we brought home the door and took a piece of it to Home Depot to get matching paint. 

After that, we had about five weeks of bad weather, then we were out of town for the next three weekends.  This past weekend, we had set aside for home improvement projects, and the weather was beautiful.  I painted our front door on Saturday, and then we spent half of Sunday following the very convoluted directions that came with the storm door.  It took us forever, but we now have a beautiful storm door (it’s very fancy – it even has it’s own deadbolt!) and a matching front door.  And since we did all the work ourselves, it only cost us $50 for the door and about $30 for the paint.  We have lots of leftover paint, so maybe we’ll find something else that needs to be painted that shade!

Not only does the entryway look much better, I’m also excited about the energy saving aspect of the storm door.  I bet it will pay for itself within a couple years. 

Now to find the motivation to finish painting the downstairs…

update:  here are the pictures…

outside view of the storm door

the original front door that we painted to match the storm door

Pin it
Category: Our stuff, ways we save $$  2 Comments
01
Mar 2007

natural lotion and body scrub

Bookmark and Share

In addition to being frugal, another hobby of ours is being as toxin- and chemical-free as possible.  We eat almost exclusively organic food, we use non-toxic laundry soap and dishwasher soap, we use hydrogen peroxide as a mouthwash, we use lavender oil, orange oil, vinegar, water, and baking soda to clean, we installed a reverse osmosis water filter in our kitchen and a carbon filter on our shower head.  But we were still using ordinary hand soap (although we never buy antibacterial soap), shampoo, and conditioner.  Last week, I got a great book out of the library.  It’s called Home Enlightenment, by Annie B. Bond.  It’s a treasure trove of great ideas for a chemical-free existence.  She gives great ideas for making body scrubs and lotions. 

I bought vegetable glycerin, shea butter, cocoa butter, coconut oil, and organic cane sugar at the health food store.  They were all much less expensive than I was expecting.  I was used to seeing $20 jars of shea butter body cream at fancy stores, so I thought the base ingredient would be pricey – but it wasn’t at all.  The most expensive thing I got was a $7 jar (20 oz) of coconut oil.  I made lotion this morning – and it smells like a chocolate-coconut cookie (two of my favorite flavors!).  I made a double boiler by putting a bowl on top of a pan of boiling water, and put a few tablespoons of cocoa butter, shea butter, and coconut oil into the bowl.  Once they melted (they’re all solid at room temp), I mixed them all together, and let them cool.  I put the mixture into a little container I had, and for about $3 worth of ingredients, I have about 12 ounces of all natural, wonderful smelling body lotion – all made with stuff that you can eat.  No mystery ingredients. 

I also made a great sugar scrub.  I mixed equal amounts of sugar and vegetable glycerin, then I added in a bunch of aloe vera gel from our aloe plant.  I just cut off a spike from the plant, peeled off the outside layer, and scraped the inside into my bowl.  I mixed everything together to break up the pieces of aloe, and dumped the mixture into a jar.  I can’t wait to take a shower…  You know the places in malls where they sell expensive lotions and body scrubs, and they’re always offering samples?  And they let you wash you hands with their sugar scrub (which can be yours for only $20 for a $12 oz jar) and afterwards you wander around the mall loving how soft your hands feel?  Well, that’s how our hands felt after we used this stuff today.  The combination of sugar (dirt cheap), glycerin (pretty cheap) and aloe vera gel (free if you have your own plant, which is cheap to get and will thrive even if you neglect it) works wonders on dry hands.  You gotta try this. 

Pin it
Category: the simple life, ways we save $$  One Comment
30
Nov 2006

Where we keep our money

Bookmark and Share

J and I have all of our bank accounts with one big name bank.  We have a checking account, a home equity line of credit (the second mortgage we needed in order to qualify for the loan on our house), a credit card, a business checking account, and a business savings account.  I’m not particularly wowed by the bank’s service, but I love the convenience of having everything on one website.  I check our accounts daily, and when I log on, I can see all five accounts on the same page.  Paying the credit card bill is just a matter of clicking the money transfer button. 

Our home equity line of credit has an APR of 8.53% right now.  Ouch.  It was 4.25% when we bought the house four years ago.  But it’s a pretty small principal compared with the main mortgage, so it doesn’t make that much of a dent in the monthly finances.  And we’ve been using it as a place to stash our money ever since we bought the house.  Every time we get paid into our checking account, I leave enough money to cover whatever bills we pay from the checking account, and then transfer the rest to the HELOC right away.  It sits there all month, and I pay the credit card bill and the mortgage (our two big bills) directly from the HELOC (we can write three free checks from the HELOC per month, and the credit card bill doesn’t count, since it’s just an on-line transfer).  Since we’re finally about to be rid of all of our high-interest, non-mortgage debt, the extra money that we’ve been paying towards debt will now just stay in the HELOC and start lowering our principal. 

So I take a glass-is-half full approach, and see this as earning 8.53% on our money, since that’s where we keep our money until it’s needed to pay bills.  And it’s pretty much a risk-free, guaranteed 8.53%, since I don’t see them lowering the rate anytime soon.  We’ll continue to put money into our IRAs every month, and $100/month into an ING account just because we like seeing the balance grow.  But without a bunch of debt payments, the rest of our money will be parked in our HELOC, safely earning 8.53%.  It sure beats leaving our money in the checking account, earning a big fat zero percent interest, and paying extra interest on the higher principal for the HELOC.

Pin it
Category: Debt, ways we save $$  2 Comments
27
Nov 2006

More Christmas non-shopping

Bookmark and Share

Last year, we went to New Zealand in October to visit friends. We had just bought our first digital camera, and J spent lots of time testing the various features for taking close-up pictures. His subjects were generally flowers and plants, which seem to bloom with very little effort all over NZ. When we got home, we realized how awesome the pics were, and decided to make note cards for friends and family as Christmas presents. They were such a hit that we’ve already had several requests for a repeat this year. When we were in Hawaii, we took lots of pictures, and a bunch of them are note card worthy.

I went to Hobby Lobby this weekend and bought two packages of blank ivory note cards and envelopes. They were 50% off, so I got 80 cards for $8.88 – worth stocking up, since I make cards all year for birthdays. We chose about 15 scenery pics that we liked best from Hawaii, and I ordered copies of them for 12 cents each. I use spray adhesive to stick them to the cards (I learned after I stuck newspaper to our hardwood floors that this is best done outside or in the garage…). It’s a pretty easy project, and the results are awesome. I tie them up with pretty string in stacks of about 10 cards, and give them to friends and family. It’s amazing how many people comment on how we should sell them at craft fairs, or tell us about how they’re so pretty that they just hang them up in their house instead of sending them out. Seriously, we get better feedback about the cards than just about any gift we’ve ever given. And they cost $2.30 for a stack of 10. Pretty sweet. Between that and our handmade ornaments for our nieces, we probably won’t even notice holiday expenses in our budget.

The great thing about photo note cards is that you can take pics anywhere. It doesn’t have to be Hawaii or New Zealand, we just used those pictures because we had lots of them. But you could take pictures of scenery anywhere. A dandelion growing up through a crack in the sidewalk looks pretty cool when you take a close-up picture and mat it on a note card.

Pin it
Category: hobbies, the simple life, ways we save $$  Leave a Comment
« Previous Entries
Next Entries »