Is frugality advice realistic?

[pianistclare]

They’re correct about the public school nickel and diming thing.
Almost as bad as Private Schools. Even the Catholics ones get more $$$ out of people with "activity fees, uniform fees, (and uniforms that changes depending on your grade ) and sports fees.
Whatever happened to having uniformed paid for by advertisers?

The last week of every school year at the Catholic School, I and a couple of other teachers would be on “locker cleanout duty”.
We’d dumpster dive (large rolling trash cans) for the brand NEW packs of graph paper, barely used crayons, rulers, staplers, untouched glue sticks, new binders, whole packs of filler paper, cardstock, and sharpies that kids would throw away. Their response?
“my mom will buy me all new stuff in August”.
So while, I’m not likely to make my own cheese, I see the benefit of teaching kids that buying fresh is not wise or necessary.

 

[pianistclare]

They’re correct about the public school nickel and diming thing.
Almost as bad as Private Schools. Even the Catholics ones get more $$$ out of people with "activity fees, uniform fees, (and uniforms that change depending on your grade ) and sports fees.
Whatever happened to having uniformed paid for by advertisers?

The last week of every school year at the Catholic School, I and a couple of other teachers would be on “locker cleanout duty”.
We’d dumpster dive (large rolling trash cans) for the brand NEW packs of graph paper, barely used crayons, rulers, staplers, untouched glue sticks, new binders, whole packs of filler paper, cardstock, and sharpies that kids would throw away. Their response?
“my mom will buy me all new stuff in August”.
So while I’m not likely to make my own cheese, I see the benefit of teaching kids that buying fresh is not wise or necessary.

 

[Xantippe]

One is if you live close to stuff, it’s a lot easier (though I do wonder about frugal blog folks who live way out in the sticks.)

Those “frugal blog folks” are probably spending $500 a month on gas. Sad but true.

 

[pianistclare]

Remember the cable show of last year “cheapskates?” or something like that?
Crazy stuff.
There’s a big difference in being smart about purchases and healthier options, and just craziness.
The man who separated 2 ply toilet paper thinking he was getting twice as much.
um…no. You have to use twice as much, LOL
And the people that wash potty cloths?
Nope. Hot water. $$$$ No savings, I’m guessing.

 

[KnitNut]

You know, I think the biggest takeaway of frugality advice is in cultivating a frugal mindset. The frugal mindset doesn’t mean you automatically make your own curtains, but you consider it, when you need curtains, and evaluate the options available to you as you choose the most frugal option to you. Frugal means thinking in terms of money, yes, but also in terms of time/other resources. If you’re already decent with a machine and following patterns, it may be better to make the curtains…unless a) you lose work/sleep/family time to do so or perhaps b) the fabric involved is significantly more expensive than an equivalent item purchased or commissioned. (Note, frugal doesn’t mean you have to always rummage for the cheapo stuff in a clearance bin at Big Lots). If you have time to learn the skill of sewing, this might be the project that you start with…if the investment of time/resources in learning the skill seems likely to help you down the road with other sewing-related needs.

If you’re not skilled in the kitchen, but realize that you are spending a lot on takeout/prepared items, then you may find learning to cook helpful. However, rather than set a huge goal, learn to approach it in baby steps. Learn to make ONE thing that you regularly buy. In terms of food storage (and eliminating last minute shopping/time wasting), buy one extra of an item you frequently run out of…and slowly add. Frugal kitchen skills are developed over time, and again by evaluating the options/skills/materials available to you.

I’d also add that frugality is a lifestyle - the people growing/cooking the food from scratch have learned over time and evolved the habits to suit their family. It’s not a realistic comparison for someone starting out. “Keep your eyes on your own plate,” as we say. You know nothing about gardening? Try a tomato plant and a little window box of lettuce one season. Not good with meal planning? Start small - plan one week of breakfasts, or school lunches, etc. Or go with a cheap service (no need to reinvent the wheel - that may take too much of your time!) - eMeals, Eat at Home Cooks, Once a Month Meals, etc all have low-cost services that do the planning for you - just follow their shopping lists & their provided recipes. The big thing is thinking through your “ideal” to find your personal values, abilities, resources…and then making the small (baby!) steps to cultivate the frugal mindset. Much like debt management a la Dave Ramsey, the frugal approach to living is an ongoing, self-correcting, life-long process. Over time, you’ll figure out what works (and also what doesn’t) for your family.

 

[Xantippe]

I have found that nearly always my coupon cutting was a waste of time because store brand was still cheaper than name brand with the coupon. I did great with store specials though.

**That makes me feel better!

Store brands are probably my main area of frugality. (Although there are certain items, like disposable diapers, where I find them unsatisfactory. Currently, I find myself using a mix of disposable diapers for day use and the 64 cent pullups for naps and nighttime–too many hours were getting spend cleaning up the crib and laundering bedding, so I finally capitulated and got the super ultra amazing size 4-8 pullups from the top shelf at the store.)
**

I wasn’t brought up with things like scented liquid hand soap in every bathroom, or dryer sheets, or a different pair of shoes for every activity.

**I suspect dryer sheets aren’t that great for dryers.

snopes.com/inboxer/household/dryer.asp**

Yep.

I have to put in a plug for liquid hand soap, though–it is easier on drains.

aceplumbing.com/plumbing-faq/5_ways_to_prevent_clogged_drains

So if crazy old thrifty me finds thrifty blogs over the top…I’m pretty sure they are.

I suspect part of the problem is that there’s only so much good advice and 365 days of blog space to fill…

 

[Xantippe]

Remember the cable show of last year “cheapskates?” or something like that?
Crazy stuff.
There’s a big difference in being smart about purchases and healthier options, and just craziness.
The man who separated 2 ply toilet paper thinking he was getting twice as much.
um…no. You have to use twice as much, LOL
And the people that wash potty cloths?
Nope. Hot water. $$$$ No savings, I’m guessing.

Pianistclare, meet Pensmama87!

 

[pensmama87]

Remember the cable show of last year “cheapskates?” or something like that?
Crazy stuff.
There’s a big difference in being smart about purchases and healthier options, and just craziness.
The man who separated 2 ply toilet paper thinking he was getting twice as much.
um…no. You have to use twice as much, LOL
And the people that wash potty cloths?
Nope. Hot water. $$$$ No savings, I’m guessing.

I do this. It’s no different than cloth diapers, and like UbiCaritas mentioned it really depends on water cost. Water is incredibly cheap and plentiful here (actually, over plentiful…we have a lot of flooding problems…) When my youngest was potty trained, I expected my water bill to go down a lot, but actually, it went down very little - maybe $5/month, and that was easily half the laundry I was doing. Our total water bill is about $50/month which includes plumbing insurance (vitally necessary here).

If you have a bidet or a sprayer (which is very common in not-the-US) there’s very little “stuff” that actually goes on the cloth at all. They get prewashed by themselves and then I throw in the regular laundry on top of it. They get clean, and my washer is fine.

(I mentioned above that I do not do “mama cloth” which is cloth reusable feminine hygiene products. That is an ick factor for me. After babies I do disposable products, and then for regular stuff I have a medical grade reusable silicone cup. They advertise for hippies because it’s good for the environment, but I easily recouped the cost on that thing in three months, and it’s good for 10 years (maybe longer since I’ve only had four cycles in the past five years, hah!)

I do buy toilet paper for guests and for my husband.

 

[pianistclare]

I do this. It’s no different than cloth diapers, and like UbiCaritas mentioned it really depends on water cost. Water is incredibly cheap and plentiful here (actually, over plentiful…we have a lot of flooding problems…) When my youngest was potty trained, I expected my water bill to go down a lot, but actually, it went down very little - maybe $5/month, and that was easily half the laundry I was doing. Our total water bill is about $50/month which includes plumbing insurance (vitally necessary here).

If you have a bidet or a sprayer (which is very common in not-the-US) there’s very little “stuff” that actually goes on the cloth at all. They get prewashed by themselves and then I throw in the regular laundry on top of it. They get clean, and my washer is fine.

(I mentioned above that I do not do “mama cloth” which is cloth reusable feminine hygiene products. That is an ick factor for me. After babies I do disposable products, and then for regular stuff I have a medical grade reusable silicone cup. They advertise for hippies because it’s good for the environment, but I easily recouped the cost on that thing in three months, and it’s good for 10 years (maybe longer since I’ve only had four cycles in the past five years, hah!)

I do buy toilet paper for guests and for my husband.

How cheap is cheap? For a water bill for you guys, I mean…

 

[pensmama87]

How cheap is cheap? For a water bill for you guys, I mean…

We’ve only ever had a separate water bill since moving into this house - before that it was included in our rent. The lowest bill we ever had was $25, before we bought plumbing insurance and when we were away for two weeks.

Our water cost is under a penny per gallon, and apparently we use less than other similar homes (the company does a “how efficient are you?” comparison every month. Same with our gas and electric.) So despite the diapers and reusable stuff (I do buy paper towels on occasion, but for most things like cleaning I use microfiber cloths and wash them) we’re still not approaching typical water consumption for homes in our area, at least.

Probably because we don’t water our lawn. I water our plants using a combination of whatever water isn’t drunk from cups after a reasonable amount of time and the dehumidifier in our basement. I’d like to add rain barrels at some point but there’s other stuff higher up on the priority list.

ETA: Water and sewer bills are separate here, and I know they are combined some places. Our sewer bill is about $25/month, so we’re looking at $75ish as an average for the past 12 months for both bills. That is the cheapest of our utility bills (on average - the gas and electric vary a lot based on what time of year it is.)

 

[midori]

My Mom’s parents grew up in the Depression. We were a family of six on a grad student income, so I remember her frugality— washing and reusing aluminum foil and baggies, canning crabapple jelly from the trees in our apartment complex, etc. She still makes her own mayonnaise and refuses to buy trash bags that fit the kitchen trash can. They raised a head or two of cattle, but between the feed store and the butchers’ costs, ended up saving little under the grocery store prices, although they did have the benefit of knowing what went into their meat.

I love making chicken stock. I got disgusted paying $1.50 for a can of beans (isn’t that supposed to be cheap food?!), so I’ve learned how to can beans. My kids are still small, but about the only new clothes they get is from relatives on Christmas or Birthdays, or what I can’t find at the thrift store. At the end of the season, they get sorted out into storage bins so that they’re ready for the next kid who needs them. If there’s a lot of wear left in shoes, they’ll get saved, too.

We have a chest freezer. If chicken is sixty cents a pound, in it goes! If it’s Thanksgiving and turkey’s practically being given away, I’ll pick up extra. But it’s hard to systematically eat out of storage as regularly as stuff goes into it.

But we still weren’t socking as much away into savings as we’d like. I resisted the suggestion at first, because cash money evaporates with me. But I found that I shifted my mentality when I had to pay for stuff with cash. The kids and I would have a day of errands and spend $20 at the restaurant for lunch without a flinch, but if I have a finite amount of cash to spend for the month, hey, let’s go to WallyWorld and pick up some bananas and deli meat. I’ve brought $20 to the grocery store… do I really want to spend $6 of it on root beer? I keep an expenditure log to show us where everything went that didn’t get paid for with check or cc. Everything left over at the end of the pay period goes into a jar.

I was finding that I had a disconnect going on. I was proud of myself for spending $15 in the drive-thru for 3 people, but if I did that 10 times a month… yeah, not so much. That was $150 that could be eliminated with better planning-- make some pbj’s to bring on the road with us, grab some food from the grocery store, etc.

 

[pensmama87]

I got disgusted paying $1.50 for a can of beans (isn’t that supposed to be cheap food?!), so I’ve learned how to can beans.

Since you have a chest freezer, you can also cook beans in the slow cooker and then freeze them in 2 cup containers. I do 1 lb of beans, 6 cups of water, 4-6 hours on high. Makes the equivalent of 3 cans of beans for about the same price as buying 1 can. I don’t do it with kidney beans, but for every other kind of bean, it has worked fine.

Of course, I don’t know how to can, and there’s really not enough I buy or grow that I could. Refrigerator pickles and freezer jam has been good enough for me so far.

 

[Allegra]

A lot of it is completely unrealistic, some of it is realistic for certain people who have the skills and resources, and some of it is really realistic.

For example, pretty much everyone can go to a St. Vinny’s or Goodwill. Will you be able to find everything you need? No, but often you can find something you need for practically free.

For me, making my own curtains, bed spreads, Halloween costumes, or baby dresses is a possibility, but it isn’t always a money saving one. All of those things can probably be purchased from Target for cheaper than I can make them, however, I can make nicer ones than can be found at Target and they will be exactly what I want. I can also mend a lot of clothes, which means we can get more use out of them. However, without the time to learn this skills or the equipment I mostly inherited from my mother, such advice would not be realistic.

For me, the idea of trying to be a self-sustaining mini farm is completely unrealistic. For one, my home is located on a lot with practically no decent top soil. The cost of purchasing the soil and fertilizer alone will negate any savings on the veggies I grow, particularly since there is a produce stand within walking distance of my home that is very cheap! In addition, one has to invest in the materials to build the gardens, purchase seeds or seedlings, protect them from the local herbivores, and purchase other equipment. If you have enough land that you can grow enough to sell to others, you might break even, but most likely not. That’s not even considering the time cost!

 

[pianistclare]

We’ve only ever had a separate water bill since moving into this house - before that it was included in our rent. The lowest bill we ever had was $25, before we bought plumbing insurance and when we were away for two weeks.

Our water cost is under a penny per gallon, and apparently we use less than other similar homes (the company does a “how efficient are you?” comparison every month. Same with our gas and electric.) So despite the diapers and reusable stuff (I do buy paper towels on occasion, but for most things like cleaning I use microfiber cloths and wash them) we’re still not approaching typical water consumption for homes in our area, at least.

Probably because we don’t water our lawn. I water our plants using a combination of whatever water isn’t drunk from cups after a reasonable amount of time and the dehumidifier in our basement. I’d like to add rain barrels at some point but there’s other stuff higher up on the priority list.

ETA: Water and sewer bills are separate here, and I know they are combined some places. Our sewer bill is about $25/month, so we’re looking at $75ish as an average for the past 12 months for both bills. That is the cheapest of our utility bills (on average - the gas and electric vary a lot based on what time of year it is.)

WOW. That IS cheap. We don’t water our lawn either (it rains a lot here)
and our water bill runs about 125-150 per month. 4 adults in the house.
And we have “high-efficiency” everything.

 

[Allegra]

Since you have a chest freezer, you can also cook beans in the slow cooker and then freeze them in 2 cup containers. I do 1 lb of beans, 6 cups of water, 4-6 hours on high. Makes the equivalent of 3 cans of beans for about the same price as buying 1 can. I don’t do it with kidney beans, but for every other kind of bean, it has worked fine.

Of course, I don’t know how to can, and there’s really not enough I buy or grow that I could. Refrigerator pickles and freezer jam has been good enough for me so far.

That sounds like a lot of unnecessary steps. Why not just buy dried beans and cook them as you need them?

 

[midori]

That sounds like a lot of unnecessary steps. Why not just buy dried beans and cook them as you need them?

I don’t know about others, but I’m rotten at cooking dry beans. I follow the recipe… soak them for x amount of time, cook them for y period… and they’re still awful. The canning process really helps them turn out great.

I secretly enjoy reading LDS homemaker-blogs. They know how to do so many cool things. I went here to learn how to can dried beans. Places like this helped me with my chicken stock.

 

[pensmama87]

One of the best pieces of advice I ever got about frugal stuff was to figure out how much I would save if I did that money saving activity for an hour. If it’s only fifty cents, probably not much point doing it. But if it’s $5 or more…it may be worth my time.

A lot of what I do, now that I actually know how to do it, takes virtually no time. If I make a repair to something instead of hiring someone, then I’ve probably saved a LOT (provided I do a decent job.) Cooking from scratch almost always wins out. I save at least $30-$40 every month using coupons for only about two hours work (half an hour once a week).

I do reuse bags and foil if they aren’t dirty, meaning, I can just put them back in the drawer after shaking out crumbs. But I wouldn’t bother washing them. Cloth diapers and wipes are a big savings for me and now that I’m experienced with them they don’t take a lot of time. Line drying on nice days saves me enough electricity that I think it’s worth the effort, but if it’s raining that day I don’t sweat it.

The one thing that would really be super awesome is if I could afford a housekeeper. I do spend a lot of time cleaning, and while it saves me a lot of money per hour, I’m sure, it does mean less sleep. But if I had the extra…oh yeah. I’d do it. I can keep things neat, but clean, with lots of little people running around, is something else.

 

[maryjk]

That’s not even considering the time cost!

Sorry I cut so much of your post, but the last sentence is what really hit me.

My time is worth something. If I spend all of my time cooking, canning and freezing, then I am not spending time with my family.

For us, being frugal means saving money, where we can. I’ll buy large packages of meat and freeze a few extra meals. Or buying the big bag of rice, and keeping it in a sealed container to keep the pests away.

I have a sewing machine. But I don’t make clothes. It is used for repairing stuff or costumes. Material is just to gosh darn expensive.

We save money on that kind of thing, so we have money for the stuff we really want.

And sorry, I couldn’t imagine not using toilet paper.

 

[pensmama87]

That sounds like a lot of unnecessary steps. Why not just buy dried beans and cook them as you need them?

Rinse and put in the crock pot to forget about for 4-6 hours…put in containers…freeze. (Though I’m usually just freezing 2 containers, as 1 will be used either that day or the next).

This is too many steps?

 

[pensmama87]

Sorry I cut so much of your post, but the last sentence is what really hit me.

My time is worth something. If I spend all of my time cooking, canning and freezing, then I am not spending time with my family.

For us, being frugal means saving money, where we can. I’ll buy large packages of meat and freeze a few extra meals. Or buying the big bag of rice, and keeping it in a sealed container to keep the pests away.

I have a sewing machine. But I don’t make clothes. It is used for repairing stuff or costumes. Material is just to gosh darn expensive.

We save money on that kind of thing, so we have money for the stuff we really want.

And sorry, I couldn’t imagine not using toilet paper.

That’s cool - my husband can’t either.

I’m convinced that the sprayer + cloth combination gets me way cleaner than just a dry piece of tissue.

There’s a lot of non-Americans out there who think it’s bizarre that bidets haven’t caught on here.