Is frugality advice realistic?

[UbiCaritas]

Re work shoes:

I learned the hard way, unfortunately, that it is very easy to really mess up your feet if you’re a woman in retail if your company requires that you wear dress shoes to work. I (stupidly) spent the first couple of years in retail wearing cheap ballet flat style shoes, and have the bunions to prove it to this day.

The best dress-type shoes I ever found were Dansko brand. They are definitely a bit pricey–think $60/pair–but their memory-foam insoles made them worth every penny. You can often find them at DSW, and DSW does have coupons available. Watch for clearance, too! Also, if you tell them your birthday, you’ll get a $10/off coupon during that month. While it is a bit of an up-front investment, and you’ll probably need to replace them every 3-6 months due to wear (less, of course, if you purchase more than one pair), they’re very much worth it in the long run because of the saving on your feet.

They tend to have very low or no heels, and have a very classic look overall, so they’d go with nearly any wardrobe.

Sketchers are often touted as wonderful for retail workers, but I’ve never been that impressed by them: little padding, hard soles, and overpriced.

 

[UbiCaritas]

I’ve been eyeing the dr. scholl’s semi-custom orthotics. They’re about $50 a pair, and they come with a money-back guarantee. I doubt insurance will cover anything - I don’t think there’s anything actually wrong with my feet. Retail is hard on your body like that. Definitely worth the money if they work and last - especially since I’m finding I’m paying more for other stuff just so I can get off my feet after work. Need to find out how long the money-back guarantee goes for though.

Honestly, a good review of cleaning chemicals and what’s the cheapest would be nice. I’ve not found the homemade solutions handle mold very well. Also good resources on keeping apartments at the right temperature without spending a fortune on utilities would be nice.

Apartments, even well-built ones, are usually models of inefficiency, unfortunately. I now live in a 2500 square foot house that isn’t particularly energy efficient, and keep it much cooler in the summer than I used to keep my apartment. The electricity bills for the house are within $5-$10 of the ones I used to get for a 500 square foot apartment.

I found insulating drapes over the windows to be moderately helpful, and also a draftstopper placed against the door, as the door didn’t fit the frame well and would have a massive draft going through most of the time.

Cleaning chemicals: I used Murphy’s Oil Soap on the hard floors, and Lysol on hard bathroom surfaces and the like. Clean and effective and not particularly pricey.

 

[pensmama87]

Apartments, even well-built ones, are usually models of inefficiency, unfortunately. I now live in a 2500 square foot house that isn’t particularly energy efficient, and keep it much cooler in the summer than I used to keep my apartment. The electricity bills for the house are within $5-$10 of the ones I used to get for a 500 square foot apartment.

I found insulating drapes over the windows to be moderately helpful, and also a draftstopper placed against the door, as the door didn’t fit the frame well and would have a massive draft going through most of the time.

Cleaning chemicals: I used Murphy’s Oil Soap on the hard floors, and Lysol on hard bathroom surfaces and the like. Clean and effective and not particularly pricey.

My first apartment, with included utilities, theoretically let me control the heat, but I could turn it off in the winter and still have it be 85 degrees inside. I felt bad, but I opened the windows some days so I didn’t sweat to death.

It did irritate me to know that probably a big portion of my rent was going to wasted energy. Or maybe the bulk of my fellow residents, who were from areas of the world that were much hotter, really hated the winter and decided to “make the most” of their “free heat.”

I love Murphy’s. That smell is amazing and a little goes a long way.

 

[Sheeniac]

I’m looking to save money on necessities like utilities, laundry, etc., rather than cut “extras.” I’m also in desperate need of a few things, some more dishes for cooking, good shoe inserts so my feet don’t hurt so badly (not the $10-$20 kind, those don’t help), that sort of thing, that can be rather expensive.

I bought this, but haven 't put it into use yet. Many of my work clothes are dry cleaning, but my shells and undergarments would be easy to wash:

amazon.com/Breathing-Mobile-Washer-Operated-emergencies/dp/B00WVTXVMC/ref=sr_1_5?ie=UTF8&qid=1437527735&sr=8-5&keywords=portable+washing+machine

Jeans, towels, sheets, etc will still be washing in the washing machine. I may hang dry more items rather than use my dryer.

You might also change how often you wash your hair. If you go from every day to every other day, you’ll cut shampoo costs in 1/2 for your life.

LEDs have really come down in cost lately. I’ve been switching over slowly and need to buy more.

 

[pianistclare]

Re work shoes:

I learned the hard way, unfortunately, that it is very easy to really mess up your feet if you’re a woman in retail if your company requires that you wear dress shoes to work. I (stupidly) spent the first couple of years in retail wearing cheap ballet flat style shoes, and have the bunions to prove it to this day.

The best dress-type shoes I ever found were Dansko brand. They are definitely a bit pricey–think $60/pair–but their memory-foam insoles made them worth every penny. You can often find them at DSW, and DSW does have coupons available. Watch for clearance, too! Also, if you tell them your birthday, you’ll get a $10/off coupon during that month. While it is a bit of an up-front investment, and you’ll probably need to replace them every 3-6 months due to wear (less, of course, if you purchase more than one pair), they’re very much worth it in the long run because of the saving on your feet.

They tend to have very low or no heels, and have a very classic look overall, so they’d go with nearly any wardrobe.

Sketchers are often touted as wonderful for retail workers, but I’ve never been that impressed by them: little padding, hard soles, and overpriced.

Very best shoe deals: www.6pm.com

Honest.

 

[DarkLight]

Thankfully I don’t have to wear dress shoes to work! Sneakers it is. Still, a long day walking around (9h counting transit time) really does hurt.

 

[pensmama87]

It did irritate me to know that probably a big portion of my rent was going to wasted energy. Or maybe the bulk of my fellow residents, who were from areas of the world that were much hotter, really hated the winter and decided to “make the most” of their “free heat.”

Wanted to clarify this statement: most of the other people in my building were foreign, and during these ridiculously hot indoor times I noted more than once that while I was attired in a T-shirt and shorts in common areas, I’d run into residents not coming or going attired in sweaters, etc. No joke about the thermostat reading 85.

And when I called to ask if something was wrong, management said everyone else cranks up their heat so I’d just have to deal with it.

 

[Xantippe]

Thankfully I don’t have to wear dress shoes to work! Sneakers it is. Still, a long day walking around (9h counting transit time) really does hurt.

If you ever find your way to a podiatrist, you’ll find they’re very opinionated about shoe brands as well as shoe types.

Oh, one other thing. You may do this already, but I can’t recommend highly enough wearing some sort of shoe at home when on your feet. It’s kind of a middle aged person thing to do, but I find it helpful. (I wear slip on Birkenstocks, but even flip flops would do something for you.)

 

[DarkLight]

If you ever find your way to a podiatrist, you’ll find they’re very opinionated about shoe brands as well as shoe types.

Oh, one other thing. You may do this already, but I can’t recommend highly enough wearing some sort of shoe at home when on your feet. It’s kind of a middle aged person thing to do, but I find it helpful. (I wear slip on Birkenstocks, but even flip flops would do something for you.)

I’ve been thinking of some of those foam sole slippers, just to have something to slip on around the house. It’s really getting into my cooking, I don’t want to fix dinner because I have to stand.

 

[Xantippe]

I’ve been thinking of some of those foam sole slippers, just to have something to slip on around the house. It’s really getting into my cooking, I don’t want to fix dinner because I have to stand.

Even just a little cushioning and support will help, so I’d go for it and get something nicer as your finances improve.

Good luck!

 

[Book_Worm]

Wanted to clarify this statement: most of the other people in my building were foreign, and during these ridiculously hot indoor times I noted more than once that while I was attired in a T-shirt and shorts in common areas, I’d run into residents not coming or going attired in sweaters, etc. No joke about the thermostat reading 85.

And when I called to ask if something was wrong, management said everyone else cranks up their heat so I’d just have to deal with it.

Location may also be a factor. When we were first married, we lived in the same apartment complex as my DH’s cousin and his wife. They were in another building, which had two wings of apartments which came together in a vee shape, and their first-floor apartment was one if the two in that vee, which was over the heating system. We were in the middle of another building, on the second floor. We really had to crank up the heat to get moderately warm while DC and his wife had their windows open all year long.

But if the other residents are from warm climates, they might very well find it difficult to keep warm.

 

[Xantippe]

I revisited The Practical Conservative’s blog post and I see that her commentor Ceebarks has left a very interesting comment.

I’ll grab the whole thing, because she makes a lot of good points:

“Y’know, I’d say got some pretty solid “traditional” domestic skills from my mom and grandma, all things considered, but they didn’t translate into a well-run household. Lot of that is much less cooking/sewing/gardening/deep cleaning and more… inventory management/clerical work, basically. Not as romantic or countercultural or whatever, but there you go.”

"When do we decide to finally throw away that tangled mess of mismatched Tupperware, how do we decide whether to hang onto clothes for another season vs donate, how DO we organize this pile of toys or books, how do we manage all these scary piles of papers and gadget cords and “stuff we plan to get around to fixing”?! Are these random old souvenirs and “heirlooms” really worth the dust they collect and the space they take up? How long do we have to keep the tax paperwork?

"That stuff is really more important to running a halfway decent household than hobby stuff like sewing curtains or whatever. (Which is a bummer ’cause I love sewing.) But you know, you start falling behind on the “piles,” and saving 20 cents a pound on chicken doesn’t make up for the fact that your gas bill has a hundred dollar late fee since you overlooked it in a pile, and you hardly have a clear space to cook or serve that discounted bird anyway.

“Anyway, my five cents, lol. (When I got married I could knit socks by hand and make chicken soup from scratch, but give me five years worth of tax paperwork mixed with old bills, random receipts, warranties, assorted email printouts and mortgage documents? shoves into nearest available box and backs away in bewilderment Yeah, I was TOTALLY ready to have a baby, lol)”

Those are some very good points.

A personal example: I didn’t quite have my act together this spring and I missed the $60 deadline for CCE in the fall. Because we didn’t pay in May, we’re going to pay $10 extra.

Or, for example, my husband took a kid to a class this week without a widget she needed for the class (the class required A LOT of different widgets). He had to rebuy the widget onsite. POOF! $3 gone.

Or, there was a formerly delicious bacon cream cheese in the fridge that I see expired a week or two ago. I tried it today–it was definitely gone beyond recall. I threw it out–about $1 worth of very good cream cheese gone. And let us not even discuss how often expensive fresh fruit does not get eaten when it ought to be eaten…

It’s somehow very demanding just to remain au courant with regard to the contents of one’s home. I was overhauling my 10-year-old’s room and closet with his help the last couple days, and as always happens when I do a really deep reorganization of a kid’s room, it always turns out that we find lots of cool stuff that the kid didn’t even remember he or she had. Just reorganizing your home can be like a treasure hunt.

There was also a comment in the Practical Conservative’s thread about tradition versus frugality, specifically with regard to rotisserie chickens. Rotisserie chickens are often ridiculously inexpensive, and yet grandma didn’t buy rotisserie chickens, so I suspect a lot of us have a hard time thinking of them as “frugal.” It’s prepared food, so it HAS to be un-frugal.

 

[pensmama87]

I revisited The Practical Conservative’s blog post and I see that her commentor Ceebarks has left a very interesting comment.

I’ll grab the whole thing, because she makes a lot of good points:

“Y’know, I’d say got some pretty solid “traditional” domestic skills from my mom and grandma, all things considered, but they didn’t translate into a well-run household. Lot of that is much less cooking/sewing/gardening/deep cleaning and more… inventory management/clerical work, basically. Not as romantic or countercultural or whatever, but there you go.”

Yep. People ask me how I save money and they are surprised when I show them the cleaning schedules (including fridge clean out), meal plans, coupon book, price spreadsheet, etc. etc. It’s basically a requirement to stay incredibly organized.

I figure even though it’s not very sexy, I do have a very good “paper trail” to back up what I might claim as skills on my resume if I go back into the regular paid workforce.

"When do we decide to finally throw away that tangled mess of mismatched Tupperware, how do we decide whether to hang onto clothes for another season vs donate, how DO we organize this pile of toys or books, how do we manage all these scary piles of papers and gadget cords and “stuff we plan to get around to fixing”?! Are these random old souvenirs and “heirlooms” really worth the dust they collect and the space they take up? How long do we have to keep the tax paperwork?

"That stuff is really more important to running a halfway decent household than hobby stuff like sewing curtains or whatever. (Which is a bummer ’cause I love sewing.) But you know, you start falling behind on the “piles,” and saving 20 cents a pound on chicken doesn’t make up for the fact that your gas bill has a hundred dollar late fee since you overlooked it in a pile, and you hardly have a clear space to cook or serve that discounted bird anyway.

“Anyway, my five cents, lol. (When I got married I could knit socks by hand and make chicken soup from scratch, but give me five years worth of tax paperwork mixed with old bills, random receipts, warranties, assorted email printouts and mortgage documents? shoves into nearest available box and backs away in bewilderment Yeah, I was TOTALLY ready to have a baby, lol)”

Those are some very good points.

A personal example: I didn’t quite have my act together this spring and I missed the $60 deadline for CCE in the fall. Because we didn’t pay in May, we’re going to pay $10 extra.

Or, for example, my husband took a kid to a class this week without a widget she needed for the class (the class required A LOT of different widgets). He had to rebuy the widget onsite. POOF! $3 gone.

Or, there was a formerly delicious bacon cream cheese in the fridge that I see expired a week or two ago. I tried it today–it was definitely gone beyond recall. I threw it out–about $1 worth of very good cream cheese gone. And let us not even discuss how often expensive fresh fruit does not get eaten when it ought to be eaten…

It’s somehow very demanding just to remain au courant with regard to the contents of one’s home. I was overhauling my 10-year-old’s room and closet with his help the last couple days, and as always happens when I do a really deep reorganization of a kid’s room, it always turns out that we find lots of cool stuff that the kid didn’t even remember he or she had. Just reorganizing your home can be like a treasure hunt.

There was also a comment in the Practical Conservative’s thread about tradition versus frugality, specifically with regard to rotisserie chickens. Rotisserie chickens are often ridiculously inexpensive, and yet grandma didn’t buy rotisserie chickens, so I suspect a lot of us have a hard time thinking of them as “frugal.” It’s prepared food, so it HAS to be un-frugal.

You know, I’ve been surprised that as I’ve grown more frugal, I actually keep fewer things so I have less to manage. And I often don’t sell them - they go into a donate box because they are too much bother to take care of, and do I really want to hang onto it waiting for 2 or 3 people to no-show from Craigslist to pick it up for $2?

My fridge is actually usually less than half full. Stuff does not get lost in there. What’s in there will get consumed within a week (except for condiments right on the door). My freezer and pantry are another story, but again, I have the decidedly unsexy method of organizing it so very little ends up expiring. Which I couldn’t do if I was managing all the other non-food stuff in my life.

After this baby, even if we continue to just have boys, most of the clothes are getting donated because my designated clothing storage area is just about full, even with those vacuum bags that get the air out. I’ll keep a couple favorites and then the rest is out. I know enough about where to get cheap or free stuff now.

ETA: Actually, now that I think about it, even though my background is in education, the last two paid positions I had were office management. So it may have just been very natural for me to take that stuff home with me and run my home in a similar way.

 

[maryjk]

Those are some very good points.

A personal example: I didn’t quite have my act together this spring and I missed the $60 deadline for CCE in the fall. Because we didn’t pay in May, we’re going to pay $10 extra.

Or, for example, my husband took a kid to a class this week without a widget she needed for the class (the class required A LOT of different widgets). He had to rebuy the widget onsite. POOF! $3 gone.

Or, there was a formerly delicious bacon cream cheese in the fridge that I see expired a week or two ago. I tried it today–it was definitely gone beyond recall. I threw it out–about $1 worth of very good cream cheese gone. And let us not even discuss how often expensive fresh fruit does not get eaten when it ought to be eaten…

It’s somehow very demanding just to remain au courant with regard to the contents of one’s home. I was overhauling my 10-year-old’s room and closet with his help the last couple days, and as always happens when I do a really deep reorganization of a kid’s room, it always turns out that we find lots of cool stuff that the kid didn’t even remember he or she had. Just reorganizing your home can be like a treasure hunt.

There was also a comment in the Practical Conservative’s thread about tradition versus frugality, specifically with regard to rotisserie chickens. Rotisserie chickens are often ridiculously inexpensive, and yet grandma didn’t buy rotisserie chickens, so I suspect a lot of us have a hard time thinking of them as “frugal.” It’s prepared food, so it HAS to be un-frugal.

Reading through your entire post, (I only quoted a small portion of it), I realized that I am quite frugal but in a more modern way.

We buy a rotisserie chicken every time we go to Sam’s Club. It is great for dinner with traditional sides, cut up in leftover rice for fried rice, cut up for chicken salad or just on a salad, made into chicken pot pie or stew/soup.

Until very recently, due to a major Lupus flare, my house it very organized. That way we don’t have to buy extra stuff for what we’ve lost. Even for my adult son, video games/board games are rotated so stuff can feel new.

Leftovers are called planned overs at our house, and we tend to have “clean the fridge out” dinners. That way leftovers don’t have to be tossed. I also try to not buy anything that needs eaten quickly, if it isn’t on the menu.

Which leads me to the menu. I write one out for every week. It helps us save a bunch of money by using up what we have, and not buying what we won’t use.

I don’t make my own soap, I don’t have a huge garden and I don’t save butter wrappers to coat baking pans; but I save money where I can, mostly by not spending it to start with.

 

[Xantippe]

I don’t make my own soap, I don’t have a huge garden and I don’t save butter wrappers to coat baking pans; but I save money where I can, mostly by not spending it to start with.

Right.

When we started Dave Ramsey seriously about 8 years ago, that was probably the biggest lifestyle switch, learning to ignore the Pavlovian effect of SALE signs. Sure, there’s a sale. There’ll be a SALE next month, too.

 

[CatholicSheila]

Then you have to get them out and cook them again. Why not just cook them when you need them? Of course, if you’re just freezing the leftovers, that make sense. I thought you were buying like a 3lb bag of beans are precooking the whole thing for some reason. That’s why I was confused.

PS- I actually do know someone who does this with white rice and I don’t get that either. As if boiling rice is a really time consuming thing.

Throwing frozen rice in the microwave for 2 minutes is easier than cooking new rice.

I live by myself. I can make one serve five times or five serves one time and freeze. It is faster and easier to do the latter. Also only one set of dishes.

It is also a money saver in that so long as I have a serve of rice in the freezer, I’ll be able to take breakfast/lunch when I wasn’t bothered to prepare it the night before. Just add in some frozen spinach and a couple of boiled eggs that I always have in the fridge and I’m good to go. Which saves even more money because if I’m not buying brekkie/lunch I’m a lot less likely to buy coffee either. That frozen rice can save me $20 a day.

 

[DarkLight]

I’ve definitely been having to learn a lot of simplification in the service of frugality. Cheap apartments are small and it’s easy to have more stuff than storage space. I find I end up wasting money buying things I already have, simply because I can’t find them. I remember doing one cleaning and finding like 6 things of deodorant, simply because I kept losing them in all the stuff!

 

[Xantippe]

I’ve definitely been having to learn a lot of simplification in the service of frugality. Cheap apartments are small and it’s easy to have more stuff than storage space. I find I end up wasting money buying things I already have, simply because I can’t find them. I remember doing one cleaning and finding like 6 things of deodorant, simply because I kept losing them in all the stuff!

Yeah.

To give a more disgusting example, I have a relative whose fridge routinely contains half a dozen plus half-finished plates of rancid margarine (I believe I’ve seen 8 or 10 dishes of margarine emerge from her fridge), a dozen canned green beans that were never that great to begin with, a couple of liquefied cucumbers, a dish of rice with pink “foam” mold on it, etc. Relative 1) has very little idea what is in her fridge and 2) is always putting a few worthless dinner leftovers into the fridge 3) believes that tossing out food is “wasteful.” I would say that on a typical day, 90%+ of the contents of relative’s fridge are inedible (and on a bad day, it might be 95%–and Lord only knows which items constitute the good 5%). So, while I sigh over some spoiled berries or a few cups of expired milk in my fridge, there are way worse things.

 

[pianistclare]

In other news…

They are showing back to back episodes of “Extreme Cheapskates” on cable today.

OH DEAR.


Frugality run amok.

 

[Xantippe]

Throwing frozen rice in the microwave for 2 minutes is easier than cooking new rice.

I live by myself. I can make one serve five times or five serves one time and freeze. It is faster and easier to do the latter. Also only one set of dishes.

It is also a money saver in that so long as I have a serve of rice in the freezer, I’ll be able to take breakfast/lunch when I wasn’t bothered to prepare it the night before. Just add in some frozen spinach and a couple of boiled eggs that I always have in the fridge and I’m good to go. Which saves even more money because if I’m not buying brekkie/lunch I’m a lot less likely to buy coffee either. That frozen rice can save me $20 a day.

That’s very sensible.