Saving Money Tips Blog

I just read a book review of Dave Ramsey’s “The Total Money Makeover” and his ideas about paying off your mortgage impress me as the greatest saving money tips ever.  He talks about all of the trade-offs that we make when we sign up for a mortgage, and all of the mistaken beliefs that people have about so-called advantages with a mortgage, like tax deductions from interest payments.  His observations have always made perfect sense to me, and I could never understand why people fell for those.  If you have a $1000 house payment, and $850 of it is going to interest, that’s just like flushing money down the toilet, at the rate of $10,200 a year.  So if you get to deduct part of that from your taxes, it might just sound great, but you’re still throwing money away in interest.  He has some other great points about risk with mortgages and borrowing money.  He offered some other saving money tips having to do with being willing to live in an apartment longer so that you could save money for your house.  He also talks about setting up a fifteen year mortgage instead of a thirty year mortgage.  And as I observed, one of the best saving money tips is to pay cash for your home.  And he talks about how to go about it in this book.

Until next time.

Last Saturday, after pondering potential saving money tips, I paid a visit to my neighbor, who is a fairly good car mechanic. Of course, since its mid-summer, everyone wants to have air conditioning in their car. Sure enough, he was in the process of installing an air conditioning unit into an old Subaru station wagon for his wife. What had happened previously is that he had replaced the engine in the car way back last fall and didn’t replace the air conditioning at that time because, well, winter is coming and she wouldn’t be needing it.

We hardly need to mention that he saved over $1500 replacing the engine himself. Talk about saving money tips! But that’s a story for another day. Most of us don’t have the tools or experience to undertake a project of that immensity. Today I’m just going to talk about my little adventure, which was helping him install this unit that afternoon. I spent about two hours helping him get the pieces to fit, and find all of the bolts that were needed, and helping to get some of the smaller bolts started in the tight little places where he couldn’t get his hands. This mechanic work is a lot more fun when there are two of you.

It’s not that I didn’t have anything to do for those two hours, but I actually made time to help him because he’s my friend but also because I know he will return the favor. Sure enough, we’re going to replace that valve cover gasket on my little Mazda in a few days. I already found out from the shop in town that it would cost $80 for them to replace it. So with the actual cost of the gasket about $12, I’ll be saving about $68 on this little project. Such a sweet deal.

I got to thinking, what if I didn’t have any mechanical skills to help in the first place? Or what if I didn’t just happen to have a neighbor that was a good mechanic? It turns out that in that past I’ve been able to do other things to help my neighbor. It also turns out that I just met a guy at the gym that’s a really good bike mechanic, and he wants someone to help him move next week. And it just so happens that I need some help with my bike. This seems to be pretty common for a lot of people. We just happen to meet people that can help us by being out and being ready for it. I think opportunity arises when you’re ready for it.

Check out my free Five Saving Money Tips in the column to the right for more ways to make your life better.

Til next time,

Hal

Hi,
I hope all of you have recovered from a fourth of July holiday and are ready for some more saving money tips at this point.  It always seems a little sad getting back into the weekly routine after this particular holiday because you know the summer is about half over and autumn weather is on its way.
Today’s post is going to be rather short, because the majority of my writing efforts went into an article I wrote and published earlier this week entitled “Learn to Love Your Old Car”.

You can read it here, on Ezine Articles.

I have just a few comments to make about the article. First, my original title was “Zen and the Art of Mazda Maintenance”. I thought that was an incredibly apt title since so many of us have been influenced by Robert Persig’s book “Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance”, which though first published in 1974, is still a highly valuable and useful piece of literature. The original title for my article was not accepted because the publisher did not believe the article contained a commensurate amount of automobile maintenance instruction to deserve such a title. That makes sense as the article was submitted to the Home/Automotive section of this publisher’s website. To put things into perspective, I read somewhere that Persig submitted his book to something like a hundred publishers before he was successful in getting a contract. How the internet has changed things.
The other point I wanted to elaborate on is that the article really is about saving money. By paying close attention to the type of details outlined in it, you really can keep an old car operating safely and dependably for many years after others have traded theirs in for something newer.
I realize now that the new title also fits rather well, since the article really is about achieving a peace of mind (and saving money in the process) by learning to love your old car.
Have a great week.

Hal

Hi,
I hope you all are having a marvelous fourth of July holiday, with all of the festivities and fun times and summer activities. I had some thoughts this past week about the raging debate over the idea of installing universal health care in our country. Since this is a celebration of Independence Day, I found myself wondering what the founding fathers would have thought about the idea of a universal health care system.
I imagined that they would probably have supported it, perhaps with a few conditions, because in those times survival depended so much on people helping people. It does today also, even though many people may not be aware of it.
Whether we get universal health care or not remains to be determined, and it might be a long time before we find out. It will be an even longer time before it begins to take effect, even if it does make through both the House and the Senate.
So the question is what do we do now, in the meantime, especially if we don’t have health insurance, or if the health insurance we do have is breaking our bank account? Or the bank account of our employer, who may have to lay us off as a consequence? Everyone is affected.
One thing that stands out as obvious, is that you, as an individual, can decrease your chances of being sick. And in the process, you can be increasing your energy, happiness, and saving money all at the same time.
How, you say? By increasing your level of fitness, you can greatly decrease your chances of all sorts of diseases and other horrible things like triple bypass surgery or diabetes. You can actually take steps, no matter your age, to turn things around and decrease your chances of getting sick. By beginning a program of exercising regularly and eating regularly and eating healthy, non processed food, you will become more independent of the system to some degree. And isn’t this Independence day? So perhaps this is a good thought for this holiday. Or more than just a thought. Maybe the moment you really, really begin to take action.
I know what you’re thinking: I’ve heard all of this before Hal, and I just don’t have time to exercise, and I certainly don’t have time to go to the gym. I know you don’t have time. I didn’t have time either. I’d put it off until end of the day, but then I never did it. Then I had a traumatic event, which I’ll tell you about later, and it gave me a lot of time to think about this. One of the most striking comparisons I made during this time was this: Which is cheaper, a $400 per year membership at the gym, or a $40,000(or is it $400,000, to me either number is astronomical) heart bypass surgery? Which is less work, lifting weights and cardio for an hour a day, or, when you get a little older, having to go in for some kind of embarrassing treatment every few days? Fortunately, we as individuals do still have our independence and the ability to decide for ourselves. I think you can guess which choices I would recommend.
There is a wealth of information on the internet about fitness, but I will point out a few of them that make the most sense to me, because some of the diet fads out there will do more harm than good. Fitness is not about starving yourself. One of these sources is:

http://www.buildcontent.com/Copy-Three-Healthy-Habits-of-Slim-Fit-People-4242.html

The author talks about eating regular meals, moving more, and observing progress.
The one book that really taught me the most about fitness, as far as books go, is Tom Venuto’s “Burn the Fat”.
http://www.burnthefat.com/

It explained the science of how building muscle actually increases your metabolism and burns fat so much more effectively than just walking, jogging or other forms of “cardio”. It’s well worth the cost even if you don’t follow all of the steps.
You might be wondering, what does all of this have to do with saving money? It has everything to do with saving money, because if you are fit as an individual, you will have more energy to do all of the things it takes to save money, like cooking or washing your own car.
By the way, the traumatic event I mentioned above was a cycling accident that laid me up for about ten weeks, and during that time I became ever more determined to become more physically so that I could enjoy life to the fullest. I am extremely happy about my recovery from that event.

Have a marvelous Fourth.

Hal Merrill

Hi,

One of the most critical things you need to do to start saving money is to identify what you’re presently spending it on, and how much you are spending. You may think you have a good idea of where your money is going, but small everyday expenditures really add up each month, and may not be so apparent.
One of the most effective ways of doing this is to record every purchase you make. This includes everything, from the daily cup of coffee to the electric bill each month. I still use the old fashioned paper and pencil but for sure a lot of people will prefer to use their latest electronic gadget like their blackberry for this. Use whatever is easiest for you.
Start by just writing down the date, and then listing all of the things you spend money on that day, such as the mid-morning cup of coffee, or the cat food you had to buy on the way home from work. Do this every day for a whole month. I create categories, such as “groceries”, “cat and dog”, or “car” expenses. I created a separate category for “food out” which would include things such as a sandwich at the cafeteria or snacks I might buy during the day. For me, that is enough detail, but some people might want to break it down even further.
Then at the end of the month add up all of the items in each category. I recommend doing this for at least three months or even six months to get a good picture of where your money is going. Some people track expenses their whole life. One reason the longer time period is more accurate is that some expenses don’t occur every month. You might have a car repair bill of $1500 or more but say this only happened one time during a year. Once you averaged everything out, the car repair bill was actually $120 per month.
Once you’ve added up all the items in each category, you can really begin to see what you’re spending your money on. I must confess that one of the things I was wasting my money on was cafeteria food at work. I found that buying lunch at the cafeteria was costing me $6 a day for 20 days each month. That’s $120 per month! This is more than the car repair that had seemed so expensive. I quickly learned to cut this down tremendously by taking my own lunch to work. So if you do the math, you can imagine how much money can be saved over the course of a year by being aware of seemingly little expenses like this.
Of course, some expenses can’t be avoided, like vitamins or pet food. We do get these at Costco however, and can still save some money.
After doing this expense tracking for awhile, you might even find that you want to increase your expenditures in certain categories. You might find more satisfaction out of buying some new toys for the kitty. This will seem like a small expenditure, after cutting out a large expense such as a $3 latte every day.
I hope this money saving tip is helpful to you. I know it has helped me a lot with finding out where my money is going.

Until next time,

Hal Merrill

Hi,
One of the best part of saving money tips is helping people out by bartering or trading work. Today I’m going to post a valuable article by one of my favorite authors, Sharon Astyk. Sharon has been writing about managing her family with little money for years and has a lot of experience to share. Her methods of bartering and developing relationships are very much like those I describe in my book “Survive with Little or No Money” which will be available for you very soon. Hal Merrill

Sharon’s original article can be found on her website at:
http://tinyurl.com/mrcfd
Barter, Baby, Barter

Published May 8 2009 by Casaubon’s Book
Archived May 8 2009
Barter, Baby, Barter
by Sharon Astyk
The first year we lived here, Eric’s job was half-time, and we (Eric, me, Eli, new baby Simon) lived on 17,000 dollars a year. About half of that went to our mortgage, since we were trying to pay it down quickly. $3K of the remainder when to replacing the well lines, which exploded the first time it froze. It was very little exaggeration to say that we had no money.
What we did have was time - despite the fact that I was pregnant or had a new baby, Eric was teaching only about half time, and I was home with the kids, claiming to work on my doctoral dissertation, but really not doing any such thing. From our efforts to substitute time for money came a whole lot of good things - first our gardens, then our small CSA, which made a big dent in our budget. And a whole lot of barter.
In those first few years, we bartered a number of things - babysitting for our kids, a time-shared vehicle with another family, vegetables and gardening help for help with other projects, eggs for firewood. I remember experiencing every transaction as a breath of air - here was something that I could not afford in dollars, but that I could fairly and honestly obtain for my family and offer something good in exchange - and know that although we couldn’t afford credit card fees and borrowing, we had a measure of credit that didn’t come with fees - the good credit and relationships that came with barter, and that meant that neighbors were willing to go out of their way for us, because they knew we’d do the same.
We have a bit more money now, but we still barter a lot - for example, I barter the use of our large pasture and day to day sheep tending work for lamb, help with fencing and wool. I have gladly bartered my books for other author’s books, and happily accept barter for participation in my classes (although many people still use paypal, since it can be hard to barter long distance). I still feel that sense of gratitude whenever I have a bartered relationship with someone - the idea that we could function out of the money economy is a great joy to me.
Which brings me to the marvellous Barbara Ehrenreich’s latest essay, which is just a delight - in it she properly takes aim at the idea that the newly unemployed should work full time at job hunting, and argues that this is keeping us artificially passive. She offers a list of useful things one could and should do with their time, now that they are unemployed, to which I’d like to suggest “get as far out of the money economy as possible.” Now this is not a magical panacea, and for households with a single earner, or multi-earner households where all earners are unemployed, at some point, someone is going to have to get a job if at all possible, even if it is a crappy one.
But until a job appears, the reality is that there are things one can do to minimize one’s dependency on the formal economy - and those things include thrift, subsistence labor (ie, making, scavenging, growing, preserving, fixing the things you would ordinarily pay for), and barter. Frankly, I think that these are more productive and better things for the world as a whole than many of the things we do as jobs, and to the extent that it is possible for one to spend one’s unemployment fighting for justice or even just growing beans (ideally both), I think that most of us do less harm this way, and a great deal more good.
Moreover, I think that the loss of our time, and the trade we’ve made of time for money hasn’t always been a good one for us - it makes us more passive politically and dependent personally, and the first things lost when we lose time are human relationships. We simply don’t have time to depend on one another - so we move further and further into the money economy, where money acts as a shorthand for what talk and meals together once did for people. We become more dependent on the public economy as a whole at each step.
I’m particularly fond of barter because while it is often not possible to pay the property taxes that way, barter can cover an awful lot of other territory. It is astonishing what barter can bring about - and while I like barter networks and other programs, and can see their advantages, I am particularly passionate about barter that takes place in human relationships - because I think it kills two birds with one stone, not only does it save money on the particular exchange, but it helps us give up our general dependency on money in place of community. I see all the uses of internet barter networks, which give you credit you can use with people for what you need, even if the person who has the other thing doesn’t need your resource. And yet, direct barter - the oldest form of human exchange, in which my eggs and your honey meet one another, has something special going for it.
And that is the reality of human exchange - in monetary exchange, and I think by necessity to an extent in barter networks, things have a fixed valuation. This is convenient, of course, but it also changes the nature of the relationship. When your eggs equal on “barter buck” or “credit hour” you are shopping for the best possible bang for your buck.
But when you and your neighbor who have a relationship are figuring out how many eggs a week are worth a cord of firewood, something more is at stake besides the precise exchange - you have entered into a relationship that can’t be commodified fully, one in which you have to talk to each other, have to interact. And this is always just the beginning - someone who eats eggs will probably keep wanting them. Someone who heats with wood may want more firewood. The relationship will be based on two things - your perceived equity (ie, it was fair) and your pleasure in the relationship - this is also true with some kinds of shopping, and is why people like going to farmer’s markets and hate Walmart (in part).
But the thing about barter that I find true is that it brings out the best in us for the most part - because it is never possible to full equate eggs with logs, because they are fundamentally not the same, in barter, you are never fully sure that the price paid is a fair one - you can’t be. And what I see in barter relationships is a turning around of economic exchanges - because we want fairness even in ourselves mostly, because few of us like to beholden, or to look cheap, we find ourselves feeling as though the relationship is never fully even - at its best, both barter participants always feel that they got the better of the deal, that they paid too little, and thus, “owe” a little on next time. Instead of *getting* the best bang for your buck, barter becomes about *giving* the best bang for your time.
One of the things that worries me about our present economic situation is how very vulnerable we are in our total dependence on the formal economy - and we are taught to look only there for our security. So when the formal economy fails us, it seems that there is nothing left, that all that remains is the empty rote of enacting participation that we cannot truly succeed in. I don’t claim that barter will save us from poverty - it won’t. But it may save us by offering us a kind of livability that the formal economy when it cracks and fails cannot. What we may get back in this crisis, difficult as it is, is time - and the chance to use time instead of money.
Moreover, it offers us credit we can afford - when I and my neighbor make those first tentative gestures towards exchange, we are at first still caught in the monetary economy, still calculating what is fair. But after a time, we are in relationship in such a way as to know that we can trust one another not to take advantage (and it should go without saying that if anyone does, that’s it for the relationship), and thus, the valuation of things change - a good exchange is one where you feel you are invested already in the next one, relieved from the pressure of the money economy, because your credit ”is good with them.” In a society where credit is disappearing, this may be the only kind we have.
Sharon

Original article available here

http://sharonastyk.com/2009/05/07/barter-baby-barter/#comments

One of the first things that come to mind when you think of saving money tips is saving money on food.  We’ve all heard advice about shopping for the best deals …and of course, reducing restaurant meals.  But with such a busy life, how can you find time to cook at home every day?

One thing you’ll discover that works really well is to set a few hours aside every week to prepare food for most of your meals during the week.  You’ll probably want to have a fresh salad or healthy vegetables at least a couple of days a week.  This keeps the menus interesting, and you’re less likely to splurge on restaurant meals when you get tired of your pre-cooked soups and other foods.

However, if you’re like me, you’ve got better things to do than hang around the house for four hours on a Sunday cooking a pot of beans, especially with springtime here and so many things to do outdoors.

So here are my saving money tips for today:

1. Use a pressure cooker -
It takes about two thirds less time than cooking on a standard stove top.  The investment of buying a pressure cooker is well worth the money if you have a busy schedule and your food preparation time is limited.  A pot of black beans, for example, will be done in 45 minutes in a pressure cooker, as opposed to over two hours in a regular pot on the stove top.  This means even when you forget to do anything about preparing food to eat during the week, you can still find time to cook in advance.  Beans can be left to cool off during the day. Later you can quickly flavor them up and add them to whatever recipe you’re preparing.

2. Tips for cooking grains -
Some grains can be cooked especially quickly (without a pressure cooker,  just on the stove top) for easy meals if you’re pressed for time.  These include:

• cornmeal
• wheat bulgur
• kasha (buckwheat)
• quinoa
• many others

These will keep well in the fridge for three to five days, and taste great with beans and salsa for a quick meal.  I keep some plain, unsweetened yogurt on hand too. It’s a delicious substitute for sour cream, …and saves lots of calories.
Saving money tips like these will also help you eat healthier.

Welcome to my saving money tips blog.  Before I go any further, I’d like to explain why this series will be different from all the other frugality-oriented sites and books out there.  With all the information that’s been offered and published in the last couple of decades, I wondered if I really had something useful to share with you. Then I realized, I do have a unique perspective to offer in the ways of frugal living.

My friends and I have been working on an effort to build neighborly community ties for many years. By developing this little “community,” we help our friends when they need us, and vice versa.    We have learned that by trading our skills with each other, there’s so much more added value to our lives than if we tried to get by on our own.

This blog is about so much more than just exploring saving money tips. It’s also about living with a sense of community.  Get to know your neighbors.  Just like neighbors did in American colonial times, you’ll learn to reach out and help each other again. Read the rest of this entry »