Join AAA

My husband has been a member of AAA for over twenty years. The first time this came in handy was when we used roadside assistance to get into the car. He accidentally locked his keys in the running car and couldn't get in. He was just about to break out a back window so he could get his keys when I reminded him that he was paying for roadside assistance. We were on vacation in Pennsylvania and breaking out a window would have been a long drawn out mess for us. A guy from Lancaster came quickly and had him in the car in 10 minutes. We were all grateful. We've also gotten stuck on the road a couple of times and the AAA roadside assistance has saved us buckets of money in towing fees. Getting a jump in the dead of winter is nice and once they brought us gas so we could get to the next service station. My husband also does the driver safety course every three years. The class costs $39 for members, but automatically lowers your premium by 10% a year. This adds up to real money. He has saved thousands over the course of the years. Be creative about saving money. Find out the things you can do to lower insurance costs. Shop around for the best rate. Get a car with ABS and daytime running lights. Most of these things are relatively painless but pay big dividends in savings. You can also use the AAA discount to order movie tickets online under entertainment. (A book of 10 is $67.50, $6.75 per movie and they also make nice gifts) or use on vacation to book hotels and get a discount on entrance fees at museums and such. My husband has no problem asking for the discount whenever we go somewhere and I love the savings. Read more Blogs for Knowledge is Power. Wisdom comes from applying that Knowledge.

CREATE A COTTAGE INDUSTRY

Another good way to get out of the rat race is to think of a business you can start out of your own home. My husband and I will be doing tutoring in the fall to make a few extra dollars. We are already doing eBay and listing things on Craigslist for sale. But we need to branch out. My husband is good at math. He also likes gardening. Next summer we will be growing much more of our own food and he will be selling plants for profit. The earth is so generous that he will be making money out of nothing. I live in town, but folks out in the countryside raise chickens or rabbits and eat for free. The computer savvy can develop a cellphone app and watch the money roll in. There has to be something you could do to make extra money. I knew a hairdesser who got tired of her wages at the salon, she started cutting people's hair at home. Within a few months she gave up salon work. It was more lucrative to branch out on her own. Perhaps you do accounting work for your job. Maybe you can scare up some clients on the side. The guy who does my taxes used to work full time at the IRS. After he got his pension vested he quit and started working from home. He works really, really hard four months a year and plays with his grandkids the rest of the time. I have a former student who is teaching English in Korea. I advised her to look around for a manufacturer who is making something she can sell on eBay here in the states. She can't do it while she is working in Korea but she could have it set up and ready to go when her contract is up and she comes home. She did good in just getting the job as an ESL teacher. They pay her airfare back and forth, her rent and give her a salary. She was able to bank most of the money and pay off substansial student loans while here in the states the economy was tanking and nobody had a job. I tell her she should stay out there as long as she can and save as much money as possible to buy a place of her own here in the USA. There are solutions to most problems. It just takes thinking things through.

DUMPSTER DIVING FOR FUN AND PROFIT

When driving around, we see a dumpster. Dumpsters are opportunities for us. People throw out really good stuff. One Sunday morning we saw a dumpster. We were all dressed up coming home from church. My husband likes to jump in. My job is to look over the stuff and get it in the car. He found a boomerang ($18 on ebay) and a full set of rigid power tools in the bag($375 value), Plus some good dress jeans. Another time the neighbor down the street had a dumpster out and we went through it in broad daylight. We found Boy Scout memorabilia. We lived off those profits on eBay for a month. People throw away the most amazing stuff. We got a very old plastic doll that sold for more than $40. We also got vintage christmas stuff that sold as well. Sometimes people don't know what to do with all the stuff and just throw it away. We refurbish vacuum cleaners, lawn mowers and bikes we find. It's all extra money that makes us less dependant on the system. My favorite thing is to sell something I don't want and take the money to buy something I need. The freegans do this sort of thing for a living. We're not there yet but in major cities, I recommend checking the freegan websites for classes on how to dumpster dive professionally. Ever little bit helps to free you from dependance on jobs that are being shipped overseas.

Get out of the Rat Race

Things are looking pretty bad for the people who actually do the work in this country. Wages are slowly but surely being driven lower and lower while the cost of living goes higher and higher. Nearly 40 years ago when my father bought his first house, it was surprisingly affordable by today's standards. It was worth three times his yearly wages. He put one third down and got a 30 year mortgage. My mother worked for a year helping to get together the down payment but it was still pretty affordable. I don't know how the average family affords a house these days given what the marketplace is willing to pay in wages, but I'm not surprised that the housing market has crashed. What do you expect with wages being driven so low. My mother chose to work for a couple of years in order to start paying off the house. Women don't have that choice anymore. It's a necessity now just to keep body and soul together. Everyone in the family has to work nowdays. Unfortunately places with jobs also have high standards of living. New York still has some jobs but it's very expensive. The trick would be to live someplace where you have a job and living expenses are below the national average. Young people should think about portable careers like nursing which pays well everywhere. Then look for a place with a lower cost of living index, like Austn, Texas.
For the rest of us it looks like wage slavery is coming. As workers we are becoming more and more dependant on employers. This is not a good thing because dependance leads to compliance. We all need to become independant from the ratrace and be able to say goodbye to our employers periodically. Escape from wage slavery is not easy. But frugality and the skills of the cheapskate, make it possible. Everyone should be expendable even employers. I say let's stop shopping, boycott China and put them out of work. If business doesn't want to create jobs here in the USA, why should we continue to shop?
I always bagged my lunch and lived fugally because I wanted to be independant of my wages. I have an aunt who opted out of the ratrace almost 30 years ago. She bought a really big house. It had six bedrooms, two kitchens and three bathrooms. It was a shell when she bought it. Her husband spent a year fixing it up. She worked to pay the materials and to keep up with the mortgage. But she was getting tired of the daily grind. She figured out that there was a scarcity of affordable apartment rentals in her area. She rented a room to someone who was working and needed a place to live. Then she rented another and another. She didn't charge much but gave good value. Renters had a bathroom and could share a kitchen. In a couple of years she stopped working and was able to pay the mortgage and all her expenses from the room rentals. She even paid into her social security. Now she is getting ready to sell her house and retire. She was lucky but she was also smart and took the opportunity that came her way. Look around and see if you can find a way out of the rat race. Cutting expenses is the first step.

Cheap kitchen updates

I've bought a couple of properties in my time. I've never bought a place with a great kitchen. I look for the bones of a place. In my first apartment the kitchen had a ton of cabinets, floor to ceiling. The kitchen was dirty. I bought the apartment from the son of an elderly owner. It was an estate sale. Needless to say there were no updates. Everything was original to construction in 1958. But things were very well made. I got some wood cleaner and cleaned all the cabinets inside and out. They changed color, actually got lighter, but they were in good condition. I guess the grease protected them all those years. The stainless steel double sink had an inch of crude on it. The super in my building wanted to buy it from me. But I said, "No, I'll just clean it." The kitchen had a disgusting vinyl tile floor. I found a tile guy to set ceramc tile for me for very little money. I bought closeout tile. I bought the glue and the grout too. There was painting to be done and then I spray painted the cabinet pulls, which were vintage and corroded. I found someone to give me a good price on countertops and I was done. There really was no need to gut the whole kitchen and start from scratch. That is almost never necessary. Check out HGTV's Designed to Sell for more ideas. When I bought the house with my husband, the cabinets were looking a little shabby. I cleaned and sanded them by hand. My husband went over them with a stain and poly blend he got at Home Depot for about $10 a can. Then we went to an odd lot discount store and bought new chrome cabinet pulls for a dollar each. We also laid down an easy flap floor for about two dollars a square foot. Home Depot has Allure flooring which is economical and easy to work with. It looks like wood and also comes in custom colors. Because of the layout of the first floor, we were able to create a laundry room by just threading the pipes through a wall. Our whole kitchen cost about $2000 after we replaced all the appliances. The cheapest, easiest way to update a kitchen is to paint or re-stain the cabinets and change out the pulls. Spend the money on new energy star appliances. Appliances will save you lots of money in the long run.

GOOGLE FOR YOUR LIFE

The internet is a magical resource. You can find everything on it. You can shop. You can read. You can learn. Don't know how to do something: Google it. There are videos and online tutorials for just about everything. When I need solutions, I google. Want to figure out how to turn the ingredients in your kitchen into dinner. Google Want to learn how to knit, sew, crochet. Google. Want to know 101 things to do with hamburger. Google. Want to know how to remove a stain from your favorite blouse. Google. I used to collect books on household and money saving tips. But now that everything can be found using Google, I will be selling my books. Sometimes the new technology can save you money. There are people who use the internet to get coupons and save money on groceries on sites like Scoutmom or Couponmom. I have to admit that this is a foreign world for me but I understand that it can be done. My next project will be to learn how. I will Google. What else? One tip, many of these sorts of things (websites and such) want an email address. I will be setting up an email for this purpose alone. I don't want to inundate my regular email with junk. Happy Googling!!

Less is More HOUSING

The American family is lost at home. We have increased the square footage of our houses only to lose ourselves in the space. Everyone has a room. This means that family interaction is limited. Whenever I watch House Hunters on HGTV, I'm shocked by how big the houses are. It seems that kids can't share a bedroom with a sibling. It's crazy how big houses have become. People don't have to see each other anymore. Is this what it means to be rich? Is it rich to be part of a family but be alone all the time you're at home. Sorry, I don't get it. I think small is better. I'm on the verge of buying something down in Florida for retirement. I want something small. I want one bedroom in about 565 square feet. I know that I can keep and clean something that size. If I got a two bedroom, I would also want to have roommate. I think a home office is kind of silly. I don't want to be a slave to my home. I want to do as little work as possible. I want to go out to the museum instead of cleaning the house. Smaller square footage also means less stuff. When I had my small apartment, I had to get rid of things periodically to make room for the stuff coming in. Now that I have more storage. It's harder to get rid of stuff, though I do give away a lot to the churches anyway because I know it's bad to horde. Smaller homes are also cheaper to heat and maintain. Next time buy a smaller house and enjoy the closeness of family relationships.

Learn to Cook

It's a myth that fast food is convenient. Most times fast food is not as fast as cooking at home. My fastest food has always been a bowl of soup. I can have that on the table in five minutes. When I was working what I did was make a big batch of soup on Sunday and then I just keep reheating it as the week went on. I added more and more stuff to it like greens and leftovers but the basic soup was the same. I'd add a quick hard cheese sandwich and make a meal of it. On Sundays I could also make a big pot of tomato sauce and recycle that into several meals during the week. In the summer. I liked making pasta salad. I could pour it over fresh greens and add cheese chunks or pair it with a sardine sandwich. I'd make it through the week without having to buy fast food, which I think is expensive and too salty for my taste. Omelettes are another quick solution and eggs in general are great snacks. I would boil up a dozen on Sundays to have for the week. Most of what I did, didn't really take a lot of time or skill. But these simple tricks do not get taught either at home or in school. Although I never took a home economics class, my mother certainly taught me how to eat. Now kids are being taught that McDonald's is how people are supposed to eat. No wonder we're all so fat. Save yourself and your family from the expense of chronic disease by learning how to cook. There are books everywhere. I see stacks of cookbooks at garage sales and library sales. And then there are all the internet resources. The money saving information is out there. Find it and save lots of money and your health.

Eat Clean Food Only

90% of seniors are on at least one prescription medication. My mother who will be 80 in January is on at least five (5). I have decided not to be like that. I cannot pop pills. Right now I am on an aspirin and vitamin regimen, but that's it. I drink yerba matte twice daily. I have low blood pressure and even lower cholesterol and my doctors were mystified when I had a stroke. They tried to tell me I had lupus, but I said, "No thank you." Drugs don't solve any health problems. There are very few medications that actually fix anything. Penecillin works and so did TPA, the clot busting drug that saved my life. Doctors are astounded when they cure something. The best they can hope for is to "manage" symptoms. It seems crazy, but food is the best medicine. Having said that, the kind of food eaten is very important. In my home as we get older we are trying to lose weight, which is the best indicator for health. The heavier you are as you get older, the sicker you are and the more meds you end up on. Sometimes I think the food companies and the pharmaceuticals companies are in league to make us sick. EAT ONLY CLEAN FOOD. Eat stuff that has not been messed with. Eat whole foods. Stay away from prepackaged anything. Buy your bread at a bakery. Pick out your fruit and bag it yourself. Grow as much of your own food as possible. Stay away from processed foods. These foods just have empty calories. The body is in search of nutrents, not necessarily calories. Sometimes the body needs calories but mostly the body needs nutrients like enzymes, minerals and vitamins. And pills are not a substitute. If you don't get enough of those nutrients you get hungry and want to eat more. Weight gain is a symptom of poor nutrition. Stay healthy and active to keep more of your money.

Dumb Capitalists

I grew up in New York. I remember what happened to the city in the seventies and eighties when factories left for the South. The city was hollowed out. Parts of it became very dangerous. It looks like they're at it again. Except this time they're going to hollow out the entire country not just the big cities. Despite enormous tax breaks Dumb Capitalists continue to move factories and jobs outside the United States. What jobs they are creating are low paying service jobs. And then they wonder what happened to the American Consumer? You fired him. Duh. You can't have a vibrant economy with only low paid workers. You need to have high paid workers to have consumer spending. Everybody needs to make good money, not just the Harvard graduates. This is a no brainer.
The future looks pretty bleak to me. But I'm an old lady. I'm 53 years old so it won't make much difference to me. I'm done, but our chldren are going to face really tough times. The capitalists want to go back to19th century capitalism with its major economic disruptions. They don't want government and they don't want unions. This may work for a little while but eventually the economic gyrations will be so pronounced that it will be shirtsleeves to shirt less in three generations, instead of the slow and steady growth of post WWII America. Stupid is forever. Our businessmen see only one solution to rising costs. They think all they can do is slash wages. But what they are doing is cutting their nose to spite their face. Innovation cuts costs also. Lower energy costs with renewable clean energy and develop a better product. Do something smarter than just taking money out of your customers pockets ( The ones who actually do the work!). Bring manufacturing back. They got a big tax break for Christmas and now job creation is down. Why isn't anybody shopping? Actually more like 25% are underemployed or unemployed including all those working off the books. That's why.  Heathcare is a greedy business for profit just like Wall street. We need socialized medical with reforms like in Canada and Europe.

Poisoning the Commons

Lately I have been attending anti-fracking rallies in NYS. It sure beats vegging out in front of the TV five nights a week. We are trying to convince Legislators to uphold the moratorium in NYS that has stopped fracking here. We turn into a pumpkin on June 30. If they start fracking here they will destroy my home which is a paradise.
When capitalism was getting off the ground workers were desperately needed for the factories. The problem was that people lived in rural communities and had enough. They had food and they had cottage industries like weaving that really gave them freedom. They didn't want to work regularly, they would work periodically. This was not good enough for the Powers That Be. The Solution was to close the commons. The commons were the common lands were people had traditionally grazed their cattle. No longer able to subsist in the countryside people were forced to moved into crowded cities and work in factories. They became disciplined by factory work as opposed to farm work. Their lives were changed forever.
Now things are more sophisticated. Instead of closing the commons we poison them. Up here in the Hudson Valley, for example, GE under the direction of Jack Welch dumped so much PCB into the Hudson River that it is no longer safe to eat the fish. New York Harbor was once the Oyster Capital of the world, but now with all the contaminants, oysters no longer grow there. Horizontal and vertical fracking will destroy farming in my community and, if I stay here, it will force me to buy drinking water and water for bathing and washing clothes. That's just one more bill. I go to anti-fraking rallies because I like being able to open my tap and get all water I need for very little money. I like growing some fresh herbs and lettuce in my garden and I like having a couple of fruit trees too. All of that will go away if they destroy the water table which is what Fracking does. We may be the Saudi Arabia of Natural Gas, but at what cost? Will our children have to fight foreign wars for water in the future? If we just husband our resources a bit we have more than enough fuel. Green energy is frowned upon in many circles. Green energy can make us rich again and independant. But no one really wants people to be independant because free people cannot be controlled. Better to hobble people with exorbitant health care costs, big mortgages, and high water bills. This way people are trapped. I hate feelng trapped. That's why I'm cheap. I was always pretty happy to know that I was an at will employee. In my mind that door swung both ways. I could say no to my boss without a problem. Independance is the real source of revolution. That is why I am so upset about the issue of fracking. They want to shackle me with a high water bill. The worst part is that there is nowhere to go. The whole country's water supply has been irrevrsibly polluted. New York State is the last holdout, at least until June 30.

Frugality is Freedom

I don't need anything. This weekend I went out tagging and I passed up quite a few nice things because I just didn't need them. I spent my usual $20 of mad money, but when it was gone, I was okay with it. When I was young and just out of school I needed everything, but now I pretty much have two of everything and I don't have that aching need for stuff anymore. If anything I am happy to give stuff away and liberate myself. Growing up, I didn't have good winter coats, now I have coats and jackets in every conceivable color and length. I have a closet full ready for charity in the fall. Every coat I have I paid pennies for. My frugality has made me free to give coats away and still have plenty. I don't need to worry about next season. Some people do. I feel rich and free from worry. It's a good feeling to able to give. This weekend I will be going to a clothing swap. The idea is I bring a bagful of clothes to give it away, then I take away a much smaller bag of clothes for myself. This is a free event and it works well. I get rid of a lot of stuff I've stopped using and pick up something I need. And it's all free. It's a win-win. Many Churches have silmilar events and you find the best stuff there. Check your local paper. In major cities the Freegans have similar events which they call a freemarket. The freegans have a website. I hate just throwing things away particularly if they are still useful. Why fill up the dump with something someone else needs?

Buy Your Freedom

Politicians talk about freedom all the time. But they don't really know what it means. They don't really want us to be free. Everything that has been going on since the 1980's takes us deeper and deeper into wage slavery. Now the new thing is attacking the whole idea of retirement. For many years people looked forward to retirement as the time when all the hard work would finally pay off and a check would come regularly in the mail without effort. Now retirement is being turned into a dirty word. But what if retirement were not something to be put off far into the future. What if we could all pull back from the workforce earlier rather than later. The key to doing that of course lies in having some kind of a steady income that requires a minimal amount of work. Owning real estate is one option. Right now mortgage rates are at an all time low and houses are cheap while rents in some places are rising. If your house is paid off and you have some savings, this is a great time to buy income property. The cash can pay the house off while any profit can go either to savings for more property or to buy freedom from wage slavery. There was a time when people could choose when to work and for how long. They had homes and cottage industries that gave flexibility and freedom. Now things are a little different but the same. For young people I recommend getting a college education while not getting too far into debt. Right now kids graduate and have to pay back as much as a house would cost. What if instead of paying off college loans they could pay off their first place. The young person that did that would be financially free in no time. Such a person could spend their most productive years, their thirties and forties, consolidating a fortune and retire at 55. But for that distractions such as the latest gadget or new, new thing has to be ignored. Other priorities must be put in place.

Money and Marriage

It's crucial to be on the same page with your partner when it comes to money. For many years, I lived unmarried with my future husband. We got to know one another's money habits pretty well. We eventually married mostly because we both wanted to move and buy a house. I pushed him to finally get a divorce because I faced open heart surgery and did not want to leave my apartment to him if he was still married to the mother of his children. Anyway by then we had both established ourselves as consistent savers. Although when we met, my savings consisted of a $200 cushion in my checking account. By the time we married we both had substantial emergency reserves. In the beginning there was stress in our relationship because he was having trouble keepng up with child support. This was unaceptable to me. I may be cheap but certain things must be paid for properly. Within a year that problem went away and we got on track. We always kept seperate checking accounts but a joint savings. I have my money and he has his money. This arrangement works for us. We each need mad money and together we need savings. Some would say that we need to combine all our monies. This may be the best thing in the end but our money habits as a couple were established before we were married. I'm a "if it ain't broke, don't fix it" kinda gal and this arrangement works for us. We also have seperate credit cards. The important thing is to communicate and talk about money issues. Find someone with the same views on money as well as similar goals and dreams for the future.

Paint Everything

The cheapest way to update just about anything is to paint it. When we were doing our houses we had to be a little creative because we wanted to save money. We bought oops paint at Home Depot. Oops paint is a custom color that just didn't come out right. I needed to paint a guest room and bought some pink. It was a bit bright so we toned it down with a cheaper white latex. The color we mixed was soft and very neutral. It went well the the bedding I already had. When re-decorating a bedroom, first thing buy the bedding. Pull your colors from the coverlet and make everything coordinate with the bed which is the focal point. For living rooms buy new curtains or a new rug and be careful to coordinate with furniture already in the room. Then a few pillows and some throws can pull colors from the curtains or rug to bring together the room. Every room needs a focal point. Find what it is and build the room around that feature. Painting the walls is the cheapest way to change the look of a room. Paint the main living area every three to five years just for a change of pace. If updates are done and the accessories are edited periodically rooms will stay fresh and a major overhaul won't be needed when trying to sell the home.

The Emergency Fund

Life is pretty random and no one knows the future. Unemployment and disability insurance pay only a fraction of a regular paycheck. Nobody likes being unemployed. It stinks. In 2009 I had a stroke and had to go on Social Security Disability. My husband and I had just bought our first house together. I ended up in the hospital with tons of bills some of which I am still paying off. This all happened in the middle of the financial meltdown. We had just finished fixing up the house. I would have loved to buy new furniture and stuff for my new place. As it was my husband also lost his job and we were just about getting by. We had a hefty emergency fund, unfortunately, most of it was in the stock market so it got cut in half. Nevertheless it was enough to pay off most of the credit cards. I made deals with the other creditors and paid them off little by little. I closed up most of the cards and just kept a couple. We cut expenses going without TV and got by. Though eventually we had to move out of our dream home to make ends meet. My only regret is that I had the money in the stock market. If I had it in the bank we would have been all right. In the good times we had set aside more than a year's worth of expenses in the emergency fund. It felt good. It felt safe. Now we are working to build up the savings again, but it's hard. I am still not well enough to go back to work and my SSD money is less than half what I used to make a year, though I'm not complaining. My husband's unemployment ran out a long time ago, but we still have bills to pay and gas has to get put in the car, etc. I'm getting better aaand eventually I will go back to work because I miss it so much. My husband has a lot of skills and he will find something soon too. In the meantime he works for himself. We have gone through this before. The problem with doing home improvements is that there is no work in the winter.

BEDBUGS

When you buy an article of clothing, even if it's in a fancy mall store, put it in the dryer for 20 minutes when you come home. Bedbugs are everywhere. Lately when I go to the movies, as a precaution, I take off my clothes and put them in the dryer when I get home. An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. I also bought plastic mattress covers for all my beds. Should we ever get infested, God forbid, I can wash my linens and keep my beds. Nothing comes into the house without first being put into the dryer. I'll never know if I prevented an infestation but it doesn't matter. I never liked picking up upholstered furniture from the garbage but if I did it now, I would first hit it with bedbug spray from the Home Depot. Then I would let it sit in the yard in the sun on a hot day. Heat kills. That would do it. In order for cold to kill, the temperature has to go down to zero Kelvin for two to three weeks. If that ever happens, we'll all be dead, not just the bedbugs. Heat kills just as effectively, so my dryer is my first line of defense.
It's not just "soft" furniture that is a problem. Watch out for bureaus too. Wipe down all drawers (the corners especially) and spray with a commercial insecticide or straight white vinegar. The idea is to kill any eggs that maybe dormant. Bedbugs can live for a year or more without a meal.

Saving money is hard work

I love saving money. I started doing it because I was ill and just couldn't work long hours and make the big money. But now frugality has become a way of life for me and I like it. But it takes hard work. Listing on eBay is tedious and time consuming. Packing and shipping things is no fun either. Sanding tables and repainting is tough too. But there is a sense of achievement that comes when things get done. I enjoy doing all the little things that save my household money and make my life better. But it is hard work. Some people might feel sorry for me, or look down on me because I can't afford to spend the money. Now that's fine for them, but I am proud to wear second hand clothes and buy used stuff at yard sales. My wardrobe is unique. I can afford loads of stuff and with a washing, it becomes new to me. Sometimes I buy new but in the end I tend to regret it because I eventuallly run into the same sort of thing at a tag sale. I prefer to spend my money on experiences like travel. No one can take that away. Someone can steal my computer or my big screen TV. But whatI have lived and seen and experienced is mine forever. Even my plans for the future, my Florida purchase, is my dream and something that once accomplished will be mine forever. The Cheapest Woman Alive Meets Her Retirement Goal.

DYI FRAMING

I hate paying big money for anything but once in a while I have done that. We all have. Mercifully I recognize my mistakes and learn do better for myself. Once and only once I got suckered into having something professionally framed at a big chain. They were having a "sale". Perhaps if they weren't so overpriced to begin with, they might have some repeat customers. Anyway I made the mistake and learned from it. Now I only buy frames at yard sales. I carry a smalll book with the measurements I need. I always have a shopping list anyway so it's no trouble to keep my book with me. I also carry a small tape measure. I know what I need and when I see something that I can use I pick it up for a dollar or two. Sometimes I let the people keep the art work if they like. I'm clear that I only want the frame. Most of the stuff stinks anyway. I picked up a great unframed abstract on ebay once, It was long and narrow and I bought a frame that was just a bit bigger. To make it work, I painted the cardboard backing black so that in the places where there is no picture, it's barely noticable. The painting is well protected and hangs in the kitchen safe from dirt and grease. I buy a lot of small unframed prints on eBay which are lovely. I have had a couple professsionally matted to drop into a standard size frame. If there is a small framing shop in your town, you can sometimes get mats cut professionally for less than twenty dollars. My husband wants to try his hand at cutting mats, but right now his plate is pretty full. Though a few times he has used his mitre saw to cut down some frames and that's good too. With a little ingenuity and patience anything is possible. Every once in a while I pick up a frame with a mat and re-use both. Nobody knows that the work wasn't professionally framed.

Price vs. Value

I find that this is a very difficult concept to explain to people. But flatly stated, there is a difference between the price of a thing and its value. The two are not necessarily related. Just because something has a high price, does not mean it has an equally high value. For example you may own an expensive home that is worth a lot and can fetch a good price, but it's value can be less to you because it just is not comfortable. Maybe it's too big or too hard to maintain. Maybe you're all alone and it is in an isolated area. It's price might be high but perhaps a small apartment that has plenty of heat and lower maintenance costs may be a better value. I once found a 10K gold brooch pin set with emeralds at a church sale for $1. The price was $1 but the value was much greater than that. I bought a beautiful painting on eBay five years ago and paid less than $150. But it hangs in my bedroom and has given me so much joy, that it definitely has a lot more value. Just because something is inexpensive to purchase (read CHEAP) does not mean that it may not have a great deal of value. And the converse is true also. How many gadgets have we bought that are now in the bottom of a drawer collecting dust? They may have had a high price but they have lost most, if not all, their value.

Make it do

There's a great old saying:
Wear it out, use it up
Make it do or do without.

I needed a new coffee table. I pulled one out of the garbage months ago and used it as a TV stand, but now I want it as a coffee table. It's the wrong color. It's a blond oak and I have all dark and mahogany furniture. For a while it made do as a TV Stand and now all I will do is stain it with a mahogany polyshade to turn it into a coffee table. You don't always need to buy something new, sometimes a look around the basement or garage reveals a piece that can be repurposed with only minor changes. Make it do. Sure it would be great to be able to just go out and buy anything, but it's also fun to take an old piece and bring it back to life. There are people who make a business of this sort of thing. I just do it for fun. I sanded my coffee table, bought some stain at a yard sale for $1 and will spend $2 on new chrome knobs for the drawers. Voila! New hardware is also a good way to update the kitchen. We essentailly update our kitchen for under $2000. We stained the cabinets and tricjed out the hardware. A new vinyl floor and new appliances completed our renovation job. It was quick easy and looks more expensive than it cost. An old friend once told me,"Bad taste costs as much per square foot as good taste." I've been in a lot of homes where you could tell the big moneywas spent, but the decor was nevertheless tacky. Spending big money doesn't mean great value.

SHOPAHOLIC? OR SHOP WITH A LIST

Shopping should be an organized activity. It is not a walk in the park. Preparations must always be made for shopping in advance. Shopping is not a family outing nor entertainment but serious business. Always shop from a list. There is an odd lot store in our area. I have found that because the discounts are deep and the merchandise is great, we must be particularly disciplined in our shopping habits or we have the tendency to overspend. We have gone into that store and spent $50 for no real reason. We use everything we buy, but we could do without much of it. Now I use a list and we leave when we find the items we need. It's just too dangerous to stay. I do the same thing at the supermarket. If I don'tuse a list, the cart gets filled up with impulse purchases. Always use the list. Always write it down.
Don't aimlessly wander the mall, either. Remember that retailers are in the business of parting you from your money. Be smarter than that and be careful. At the beginning of each season, I like to go through my clothes to see if I need anything. I make a list of stuff I need and look only for that stuff when I shop. Sometimes at the end of the season, I shop for bargains. I look for what I can get for less than $10. This was fine when I was working at a job that paid little but required a professional wardrobe. But even then I thought carefully about every purchase. Sometimes it pays to wait and think about a purchase. Do I really need this? Will it work with other clothes in my closet? Do I already have something just like it? Shopping is mundful work.