Freecycle

“One man’s junk is another man’s treasure.”  This should be the motto of one of the most amazing networks out there.  It’s called Freecycle and you’re life is going to change forever as soon as you discover it, especially if you’re a packrat.  The network is essentially an email list that brings people together from a specific geographical location to offer free stuff (that they want to get rid of) and get free stuff (by replying to the offers).

It’s quite remarkable how much amazing and high quality stuff is being offered for free.  At first I thought it was some sort of scam, but I quickly realized that the concept behind it makes a ton of sense.  Whenever people are cleaning out their closets, or garages, or moving out, or whatever, they tend to want to get rid of things that they don’t need, or are just not worth transporting/selling on ebay.  For example, a couple of year ago, I was moving from my old dorm room to a new apartment after graduation.  Well, dorms usually provide the most essential furniture-including desks, chairs, and beds.  Obviously, because I was a college student about to embark in a new journey in that frightening place called the real world, my finances were a bit on the low side, and I was definitely willing to take whatever my friends wanted to get rid of.  Unfortunately, when it came down to it, I had to refuse it all because I didn’t really have a way to transport it across a vast distance.  Weeks later, after discovering freecycle and sleeping atop a piece of cardboard in my new apartment (by cardboard I mean a camping mattress), I was able to get everything I needed to completely furnish my new place.

If you don’t mind having a very eclectic looking room that is more functional than beautiful, this is the way to save a ton of money and get what you need.  And if you don’t mind tinkering a bit and fixing things or modifying them, you will be able to find even more stuff that can be quite useful.  The only problem I have seen with freecycle is that you can become easily addicted to the network and end up with way too much crap that you have to get rid of at some point.  The great thing about freecycle is that it also takes care of that problem because you can simply put that stuff back on the list and you will surely have at least one other addict that will take it out of your hands.

Happy freecycling!

Rechargeable Batteries

When I started to become more frugal with my finances by looking for ways to eliminate wasteful spending, I decided to look around my house and search for inspiration.  As I was walking around, listening to some new indie band with my Bose noise-cancelling headphones, I had a sudden epiphany.  This epiphany came because noise cancelling headphones need batteries to work, and my batteries were dead.

I decided that it was time to finally get some re-chargeable batteries and a charging station for all of the little electronics that hog electricity.  The only unfortunate part of this is that charging stations and reusable batteries can be very expensive.  But again, as with most things, this is really just a fixed initial cost that creates returns after a certain amount of usage.  After doing the math and finding the cheapest charging station and set of reusable batteries, I figured that I would come up even after using 6 normal batteries, per rechargeable battery.

I reached that point after only a month and a half, roughly one battery per week.  Of course, like all rechargeable products, they begin to lose how much energy they can hold onto after prolonged use.  Thankfully, after a month and a half, there are no signs of diminishing returns.  One full recharge still holds about a weeks worth of energy, or about one regular battery.  The other fantastic thing about using reusable batteries is that it is much more environmentally friendly, as you quickly reduce the amount of waste your electronics produce.

Happy Re-charging!

Carry Cash

I’ve had to do quite a bit of penny pinching this past year, like most people, because of the economy.  When looking at my budget and bank accounts and such, I had an interesting epiphany regarding the psychology behind my expenses and how I could curb certain behaviors to push me to cut back on costs.  I, like most people in this day and age, have lost the value of money.  How has this happened?  Debit/credit cards and their convenience, combined with the fact that most retail stores now accept both, has come to dominate our lives.  Who carries money nowadays?  That’s so stoneage!

One of my best friends always carries cash, which makes it quite convenient for the rest of us when we all go out to dinner and need change to pay for the bill.  I wondered why he always carried wads of money in his fat wallet and after asking him, I ran to the bank and nearly burst my wallet days later.  His reason?  It is much harder to fork over $5 for a coffee or $25 for dinner in bills than it is to simply hand over some plastic, which is quickly returned back to you once it is accepted (or regretfully denied at times).  My conclusion?  He was absolutely correct.

I’ll admit, carrying cash all over the place made life incredibly difficult at first, especially when you would carry $50 or $100 bills and had to find the appropriate place to break it.  Something about dropping a $100 to pay for a $3 latte is just painful and embarrassing.  I quickly started forming strategies to become more frugal, and therefore more effective with savings.  Think about it:  carrying thousands of dollars in your wallet is not easy, but having to go to the bank all the time is also quite annoying.  After about a month and calculating my expenses, I realized I had cut my spending by nearly 25%.  The best part is that everything that at first seemed annoying would just become second nature after you would establish a routine with your money.

Happy cashing!

Water Filters

This next one is pretty straightforward.  Never ever buy bottled water!  Ok maybe I’m going a bit overboard with this one because bottled water definitely has its appropriate uses, but those circumstances are typically outside of daily life (like camping or being in areas without decent water sources).  Although packs of bottled water may seem inexpensive, especially after comparing it to the cost of fizzy drinks, it is a space where your daily budget can be reduced to nearly zero.

Let’s just look at the numbers.  The easiest and most common way of buying it is in bulk, with those massive packs of 8oz water bottles.  One pack of 30 bottles usually costs around $5, or about $0.15/bottle.  One should drink about 8 glasses of water a day, so that’s 8 of these, which equals $1.20/day.  Not bad right?  So what’s a cheaper way of getting your daily dose?

Water filters.  You can one of several different water filtration systems like a standalone Brita-type water pitchers that you fill up with water from your faucet and store in your fridge.  One of these (which holds about a gallon) with one filter (which lasts for about 40 gallons-actually lasts much longer, this is just what Brita recommends) costs about $25.  What about the cost of water?  Water utility bills range from $1.25-$3/1000 gallons. So basically nothing! Once you have the pitcher, new filters cost about $8.  The savings are obvious: spend $36/person/month on water bottles, or roughly $9/month with a Brita pitcher.

The cost of water is not the only benefit you get from these systems.  You will instantly reduce a ton of waste, have great tasting water that is always cold and refreshing, you will reduce the amount of trips to the supermarket, and you won’t have to pick up another extremely heavy case of water.

Happy water-filtering!

Dinner For Lunch

I was having dinner with a couple of friends the other day and as I was flipping through the restaurant menu, I noticed something very interesting (and quite annoying if you ask me).  Obviously because it was dinner, I was going through the dinner entrée list and I settled on getting a salisbury steak, which cost $16 or so.  Because my friends are incredibly indecisive, I got bored waiting for them to pick something and decided to flip through the lunch menu because I was meeting another friend at this same place later in the week.  Guess what I saw on the lunch menu?  Salisbury steak.  It was the exact same listing, with the same exact wording and the same exact side dishes and portion size.  So what was so annoying about this?  Who cares if some people have Salisbury steaks for lunch?  It doesn’t make them weird or anything (ok maybe a little).  The annoying thing about this is that the exact same Salisbury steak, for lunch, cost $12.

I pointed this out to the friend sitting next to me, and he explained that it was incredibly typical of restaurants.  Sometimes they change the portion sizes to account for the difference in price, but not very often.  Somehow I was the last person in the table to have realized that this strange phenomenon occurs quite frequently.

Obviously, this got me thinking about how I could curb my restaurant eating patterns to maximize savings and not cut on the quality.  I’ve come up with two solutions.  The first:  switch lunch for dinner and vice versa.  This is particularly easy for me to do because I switch meal types all the time-lunch for dinner, breakfast for lunch, first snack for later snack etc.  The great thing about this is that you end up having a heavier dish for lunch, which gives you energy for the rest of the day, and a light dinner that helps with weight control.

The second solution is Happy Hour.  Tons of restaurants, especially chains like Chili’s and Chevy’s have happy hour drink and food specials that seem too good to be true.  You can easily stuff yourself like a turkey on Thanksgiving and only end up with a $10 bill with tax and tip.  After implementing both of these solutions for the last couple of weeks and tracking my expenses on Mint at the end of it has yielded incredible savings.  I have effectively cut my expenses by half and I haven’t changed my diet at all.

Happy Happy Houring!

The Coupon Fund

Several years ago, my best friend from college told me about a brilliant concept that his parents came up with.  It is called the Coupon Fund.

Putting it simply, think of a swear jar of savings.  This is how it works:  take note of every time that you end up saving money on something-be it groceries, a new TV, some random promotion at your favorite restaurant, or anything else where the savings can be calculated to the dime.  The next and most important step is taking the exact amount of money that you saved and putting it in a jar.  The main purpose of the coupon fund, at least for my friend’s family, is to function as a bailout fund.  Whenever you come across some non-critical “emergency” (for example, you got your backpack stole that contained your collection of CDs), you petition the manager of the fund for money to cover the cost of taking care of the emergency.

The reason why the coupon fund is such a fantastic concept is that it essentially works like a savings account, but with a designated purpose and a method that quickly becomes a game.  And you know how much everyone loves games! It especially works in the long term because it keeps you on track with your savings and further motivates you to continue seeking out great deals.  Just like forcing yourself to pay everything with cash instead of a credit card, money and the savings in this case are much more tangible and obvious.  It is much more difficult to fork over $400 in cash instead of just swiping your credit card.  It gives you a good sense of the value of money.

Happy coupon funding!

My Starbucks Rewards

If you cannot go one day without your Starbucks, make sure that you enroll in their Rewards program, because the savings are amazing.  Unfortunately, Starbucks recently got rid of their Gold card member program (which was a better rewards program and made you feel special because you would get a fancy black and gold card).  With that said, the rewards program has a ton of the same benefits as the old card, and it’s completely free (as opposed to the Gold card which had an annual $25 fee).

As soon as you register your card, you get two instant benefits: a free drink on your birthday, and the best deal of all, free wifi for up to two continuous hours a day at any Starbucks.  This is where the real savings pile up because even though they claim that you only get 2 hours, it appears that it’s only a psychological play because they have never cut me off after two hours.  In fact I am currently writing this at Starbucks and I have been online for about 3 hours.

So how do the rewards work?  Once you’ve visited five times after registering your card (getting 5 stars-1 star per purchase), you will be moved into the Green level, which gives you free flavored syrups and milk options such as soy, free refills on brewed coffee and tea, a free tall beverage with every pound of whole bean coffee, and a ton of other special offers and coupons.  After earning 25 stars, you’re automatically moved to Gold level, which gives you an exclusive, personalized card and a welcome packet that contains several coupons, all of the same benefits as the Green level, and a free drink for every 15 stars.

So make sure you’re caffeinated, happy, and saving tons of money on purchases you’re already making.

Happy caffeinating!

Stereo 2.0

It came to my attention that I had not been as thorough on the topic of the free legitimate streaming of music online when I remembered two other sites:  MySpace and Playlist.com.

The difference between these two websites and those like Pandora and Last.fm is that they give you much more control over what you are listening to.  With the advent of user friendly and cost effective recording instruments, the supply of music has exploded.  MySpace music was one of the first technologies that gave musicians a simple platform for sharing their creations.  What this means for you as a consumer is that you now have a massive library of all kinds of sounds at your fingertips.   Although most artists only include a couple of their songs as a sample of their music, you can easily browse through and listen to your favorite artists and bands non-stop.

Playlist.com is an even better option, in my opinion.  The website is incredibly simple and you get a ton of flexibility with your music when you register.  It allows you to create a playlist of songs that you find in their server and save in your account.  The best part about it is that the sound quality is pretty perfect.  Once in a while you’ll input a song name and it’ll return some bad live recording that someone made with their iPhone, but for the most part it is CD quality.  If you prefer to listen to whole CDs instead of mixes, you can easily do that by researching the list of songs in the CD you’re looking for and create a playlist of that CD.  Think of it like storing your entire music collection in a cloud server instead of your harddrive.  You will not only be able to access your music from any computer, but it will also cost you exactly $0.

Happy streaming free music!

If you have ever lived in a major city, you know how incredibly stressful having a car may be.  First of all there’s the crazy traffic, the incredible absence of parking spots, and the awful street cleaning rules.  After living in San Francisco for a couple of months a while ago and having to deal with all the annoyances, I vowed to never return unless I had my own designated parking space/garage, or the public transportation system was dramatically improved.

Even if the public transportation were improved (which won’t actually happen for another billion years in California), car culture is so ingrained in my mind that I would still feel empty without one.  Solution?  Zipcar!  Zipcar gives you all of the benefits of having a car, without the hassles and the massive expenses.   For a small annual fee, Zipcar allows you to find one of their designated cars around you and “rent” it for however long you want.  After reserving a car for a couple of hours or any entire day, all you have to do is bring your Zipcard with you, find your car, drive away, and then return it back to your designated parking spot at the end of your reservation.

Now let’s talk numbers.  Depending on what car you reserve, you could end up paying as little as $6.30/hr our $66.60/day.  This fee includes a free 180 miles/day, free gas, and free insurance.  If you play your cards right, the savings could be dramatic as compared to car ownership.  With a Zipcar, you could use it when you need it, always have a parking space, and not have to pay for maintenance.  It is absolutely remarkable how expensive owning a car can be, even once you’ve finished the payments.  Taking into account the cost of gas, general maintenance, random mechanical problems, insurance and all of the government fees like registrations and license plates, it’s easy to see how you could rack up such a massive bill for owning and operating one.

The only problem with zipcar is that if you’re not careful, it could get pretty expensive on a day to day basis.  But even with that, the instant elimination of the headaches brought on by car ownership in a large city is completely worth it.

Happy driving!

Mint

One of the best and most obvious ways to save money is by creating a budget that contains all of your expenses.  It allows you to tie a real number to your spending behavior, which in turn will allow you to see exactly where most of your money goes and where you can get rid of waste or make cutbacks.  The only problem with creating a budget is that it is initially a huge pain in the neck.  You not only have to learn Excel but come up with a way to gather up and organize all of the crucial information you need.  It’s almost like finally getting around to exercising and losing weight.  It is incredibly difficult to take the first couple of steps and takes even more energy to establish and maintain a routine.

But what is this I hear: there is an easy, user friendly, completely free solution to this problem?  Absolutely, and it is called Mint.com.  Mint, now owned by Intuit, is a personal finance website that automates all of your expenditures by synchronizing with your bank accounts, credit cards, loan institutions, and stock portfolios.  It is incredibly easy to use and 100% secure.  For example, when you want to synchronize your bank, as soon as you register, you click on the “add bank” tab, find your bank from a pull down menu, and sign onto your banks website remotely through Mint.  Mint connects you to your banks system, which then verifies that the information you provided is correct.  This is the same method for synchronizing the rest of your information.

The amazing thing about this budgeting system is that it automatically dissects your spending behavior by categorizing your purchases and displaying them in an intuitive and user friendly way through graphs and other visual media.  Besides this, it identifies areas where you can make obvious cutbacks and further suggests simple methods for making them.  For instance, if you are paying a certain amount of money for a certain type of car insurance for your specific car, it will usually find a company with a plan that fits your exact description but is much cheaper.  All in all it makes personal finance a no-brainer that requires very little effort, and goes a long long way.

Happy budgeting!