30 Days of Tips - Toy Sailboats

Tip #15: Save those styrofoam mushroom containers for a perfect rainy day activity: sailboats! Take an empty mushroom container & poke a straw into the bottom (cut off any bendy part at the top). Attach a construction paper triangle to the top of the straw & enjoy watching your sailboat float away.

Kids can float their sailboats inside the bathtub or on sunny days, in a swimming pool. On rainy, rainy days, what's more fun than sailing the boat down the street?

30 Days of Tips - Large Scale Artwork

Tip # 14: Finding artwork for larger scale spaces can be difficult. Bigger pieces of artwork can cost a bundle. From my experience, you can easily find larger frames at yard sales or thrift stores, but the "art" that comes inside is rarely my style.

Try putting maps inside those thrift store frames for an inexpensive large wall decoration. National Geographic magazine puts out lots of different kinds & styles of maps in many color schemes. Try a "Peopling of the Ancient Americas" map in rich hues of brown and red for a study. Or try a "Solar System and Beyond" map in cool black and white for a boy's room. Maybe a map of your favorite European country would look great in the dining area (especially with artisan bread served on the table).

Look for maps of all kinds at thrift stores, yard sales & used book sales. And don't forget to put the word out among family and friends -- almost all of our maps have come to us that way!

30 Days of Tips - Recycled Paper Sources

Tip #13: When you're printing something just for use in the home, like a recipe, map directions, copies of articles for your spouse, or activity pages for the kids, don't use a fresh, clean piece of paper when you can use free paper instead. When you keep your eye out, you will quickly find lots of recycled paper sources.

Try the backs of these:

• employee paperwork, like codes of conduct, policies, announcements, etc.
• any mail that comes in a 9 x 12 envelope
• articles given to you by friends or family that you've already read
• church paperwork you don't need to save
• extra copies of materials you prepared for a group

If someone in the family works in an office, they could set up a small scrap paper collection area. Usually the lid to a paper ream box works great for this. Other office workers are usually glad not to have to throw away all that paper & you can do most of your at-home printing for free. Just be sure to let them know what you're doing so there are no ethical issues.

30 Days of Tips - Workbooks

Tip #12 - For all the home learners out there, when you do workbooks with your children, don't let them mark on the workbook pages. Instead, if the workbook's copyright allows, make a copy of each page you want to use that day. Having an all-in-one copier, printer, scanner makes this very easy, so if you are replacing your computer's printer anytime soon, consider one of these instead of a standard printer. Of course, whenever you're making a copy for one-time use in the home, don't use a fresh sheet of paper. Try recycled sources instead.

If the workbook's copyright doesn't allow for in-home copies & you like to do workbooks together anyway, letting the child "write" with his finger is just as effective for learning the material. Some would argue more so, since you are sitting & learning together.

Clean workbooks have obvious advantages: they can be passed from child to child, traded with other families & sold when you're all finished with them.

30 Days of Tips - Freezing Meat

Tip #11: Here's a tip for freezing meat & other items in perfect serving sizes that comes straight from Amy Dacyczyn in her Tightwad Gazette. I'm allowing myself to reproduce it here because I used it just today and love its simplicity as the perfect solution to my problem.

When we purchase ground turkey, I like to separate it as soon as I bring it home into dinner portions for our family of three. A bread bag is perfect for this job, as you can put in your portion, twist & tie, put your next portion, twist & tie, and so on. When it comes time to use the turkey, simply cut off each section as you need it. (You can't wash & reuse bags that have held meat, anyway.)

This tip also works for rice (we always cook rice in double or triple quantities), turkey burger patties, and summer watermelon.

If you're interested in reading the original idea in Amy's book, pull the first Tightwad Gazette off your bookshelf. If you have no Tightwad Gazettes on your shelf, then that's your far more valuable tip for today: purchase (not borrow) your own copy of the Tightwad Gazettes. Then read them cover to cover, several times a year.

30 Days of Tips - Bulk Business

Tip #10: Certain things really are much cheaper when purchased in bulk. Here are some examples:

• dry active yeast - purchase at warehouse store for $3/pound
• spices - health food stores carry these in bulk for a fraction of the cost of the little grocery store containers
• organic coffee - buy at Wild Oats for $12/lb or buy online from The Organic Coffee company (Spend $30 at once & get free shipping, too. Split coffee with friends or freeze until needed.)
• vinegar for cleaning...always buy the large bottle
• specialty magazines (not owned by the library) you love and/or want to keep for reference....it's always cheaper to get the subscription

30 Days of Tips - Mops and Buckets

Tip #9: Instead of storing a separate mop bucket somewhere near your regularly-mopped area, use your plastic wastebaskets instead. Most of us have a plastic wastebasket in our first-floor bathroom. It needs to be cleaned anyway, so use it as your mop bucket, rinse well when done & no need to store more stuff & get more unhappy with your (lack of) space.

And on the subject of mops, always buy a mop that has a washable head, like a deck mop. You won't have to replace the head for years. Conveniently, these are also usually the cheapest.

30 Days of Tips - Tambourines

Tip #8: A rainy-day activity to file away that takes virtually no special materials.

Homemade Durable Tambourines
Take two coated cardboard dessert plates (like the decorated ones we usually serve cake on at parties). Put a handful of rice or lentils on one & glue the other onto it, face down, with Elmer's glue. The plain, white sides of the plates will be on the outside. Ideally, this should sit overnight.

When the glue is dry, let your little one decorate it however she wishes. Think about gluing on yarn, sparkles, glitter, fabric scraps. Very wee ones can draw or use stickers. When you're finished, put on some fun dancing tunes, like those from Jim Gill, and get some rainy day exercise!

Even easier tip: I like to keep a small stockpile of plates already glued. If you have any extras from a party, it only takes a few minutes to turn them into undecorated tambourines that will be always be ready for an impromptu activity.

30 Days Of Tips - Accept and Give

Tip #7: Graciously accept whatever is given to you & generously give any excess you have. Stinginess begets loneliness begets poverty in many forms.

30 Days of Tips - Long-Term Grocery Savings

Tip #6: For grocery savings that can easily become habits that last a lifetime, consider these ideas.

• visit the asian and hispanic grocers in your area for deals on produce & high-quality ethnic foods
• make your own baby food for baby by pureeing what you are having for dinner before adding your spices & salt
• maintain your garden, harvest often & freeze the excess if you don't have time to can
• scour the refrigerator twice weekly for leftovers that are soon to reach their expiry & freeze them or turn them into that night's dinner
• become familiar with making popcorn on the stove & serve this as your snacking food
• don't waste undesirable parts of meat -- boil for a nourishing bone broth & make a filling meal of soup & bread

30 Days of Tips - Short-Term Grocery Savings

Tip #5: Here are some quick ways to reduce grocery spending when you're in a crunch. Some of these tips would get tiring after awhile, so are most appropriate for short-term savings.

• eat what you have on hand rather than planning menus based on new recipes
• purchase only in season produce
• plan to eat 2 meat-free meals each day -- use cheaper sources of protein for these meals such as nuts, nut butter, beans, cheese, milk, yogurt & eggs
• use your freezer supplies!
• rather than discard dinner-gone-wrong, modify food that isn't your favorite (as long as it's in your diet plan)
• stop buying plastic wrap, aluminum foil & plastic bags -- recycle consumer packaging instead
• stop buying napkins & paper towels -- use cloth instead & designate specific selections for paper towels
• never accept substandard grocery items -- take it back to the store or write the company to receive coupons for free food
• accept any meal invitation that is extended
• vocalize to friends and family that you would love to take off their hands foods they have purchased but didn't like

This is the time to really use your crockpot & to double recipes each time you make them. As the house gets emptier of food, temptation to eat out increases exponentially. If you plan dinner at 11:00 a.m. (and even start it in the crockpot), you'll be safe from this temptation. Trying to pull together strange pantry ingredients at 4:45 p.m. is a recipe for credit card disaster.

30 Days of Tips - Scattering Money

Tip #4: I usually don't give suggestions on investments or how to keep your money or any bank matters at all, really. But I have found this one to be very useful & I want to share it. Most of us suffer from Burning Pocket Syndrome. It's evident in that once we have a certain amount of money banked, we always tend to spend it. Now the amount that we need to have banked before spending varies for each of us, but we all have that dollar amount where, when we see it on our account statement, we start spending. I believe this is a psychological phenomenon, similar to how it feels much easier to put $250 on our credit card than to spend $40 in cash.

So one of my solutions for this has been to scatter our money. We currently have several different bank accounts, none of them very full, but each of them with some small sum. We rarely reach that psychological point of spending, plus, we usually have money to draw on if we decide we need something right away.

30 Days of Tips - Modifying Clothing

Tip #3: Let's face it, there are some great deals to be found at The Crap & all its associated venues. The regular stores have decent clearance racks, Old Navy stores have great end-of-season clearance racks & The Crap Outlet almost always has something on sale for 99 cents. Just tonight, they had all women's & girls' sleeveless & tanks on sale for 99 cents & all men's short sleeves for the same. Problem is, when you get them home, they just hang blandly in the closet along with all the other Crap clothes that look the same as the one next to it as the one in the next house over as the one in the house after that. What to do?

Some ideas:

• dye it, one color or tie-dye
• add vintage elements picked up on a thrift or garage sale budget
• add an image to the front using ink jet iron-on transfers
• add an embroidered or knitted shape to the front
• add a fuzzy collar to a plain sweater from that old boa in your daughter's dress up clothes
• cut jeans into capris into shorts
• use advanced sewing skills to turn a dress into a shirt or a tank into a toddler dress
• buy the "tent dress" for $1.99 & use the fabric for a skirt and a shirt and a tablecloth and a dress for your daughter (I must wonder, who really thinks they can wear a "tent dress" well?)

30 Days of Tips - Nine In Nine Out

Tip #2: Who thinks they could use some more space, raise your hand. Who wants a larger mortgage payment, raise your hand. Now who wants more space with the same mortgage payment? Ah ha, now we're talking.

This is your new rule, whatever comes in, the same number goes out. Nine new articles of clothing at Christmas time? Nine articles to Goodwill the day after. Food & other consumables can be an exception.

On a practical note, the system works best if you keep a box somewhere unobtrusive & fill it with your outgoing items, then donate when full.

30 Days Of Tips

The Tightwad Trainer has returned! A month late & a month more knowledgable, I will bring to the table 30 days of tips! Why? Because everybody loves tips. Because tips are easy to implement. Because tips are short & easy to read. Because I want to reward the tightwads-in-training who haven't removed me from their bookmarks this summer.

Tip #1: Fall in love with handwashing again. This method is great for small loads & helps break the dependency on the automatic washer, plus, you don't have to trek up & down the basement steps. And since it's an organic, hands-on activity, it's more fun, too.

First, figure out what container you're going to use for washing. Ideas include small plastic wastebaskets, empty plastic cat litter containers, plastic mop buckets, plastic paint buckets. Add water, detergent or soap of your choice & small load. Swish with your hands or a long spoon. Let sit for at least a couple hours. Next day, swish again & let sit a bit. Dump out water. Rinse. A laundry basket can be a great container for rinsing. Wring out wet clothes. Hang to dry or lay on heating vent in winter.

what to do with a watermelon surplus

If your family is anything like mine, sometime in late July, the watermelons start piling in. They are a welcome treat at first -- so sweet as to be almost pure sugar. As the weeks go on, though, we tire of watermelon every night; yet, still they keep coming in the house. Once all the grandparents catch wind that their grandchildren love watermelon, they bring them as gifts each week. Leftovers from grillouts make their way home with us. And don't forget the Farmer's Markets watermelons! We have to buy those since the taste is incomparable to supermarket melons.

At least once during each summer, we lose a watermelon to letting it sit too long before cutting it. It's a shameful waste of food. Throwing away 25 pounds of food is embarrassing and very, very not tightwaddy. Finally, we have found a way to use these surplus melons throughout the year. We cut, de-seed & freeze any extra melons (even those not yet rotten but a little past their prime) & make watermelon popsicles.

Have you ever tried making homemade popsicles? They are incredibly easy & you can make them to suit your own diet. They can also be a great way to use up frozen fruit. Watermelon popsicles are probably the best popsicles we've ever made & they couldn't be simpler. Blend watermelon to a juice. Pour into popsicle molds. Freeze. Eat 12 hours later.

Watermelon popsicles are so sweet, you (and your friends) will be astonished that there is no added sugar in them. And if your kids like watermelon, these popsicles are a guaranteed hit.

Get Moving: Figure out what you are going to use as your popsicle molds. Consider small cups or jars covered with plastic wrap & a popsicle stick or baby spoon stuck through the plastic on top. Also, keep on the lookout for plastic pre-made popsicle molds at yard sales & thrift stores. They will be well worth your small investment!

summer break

After much thought, I've decided that TTC will take a summer hiatus and pick back up in early September. The reason is simple: the true work for any tightwad homesteader takes place in the summer. If I want to build up our supplies & reserves for the winter, I can't take 4-5 hours of each week to write.

I plan to continue the current gardening series throughout the summer, but not on any particular schedule. I will probably post new articles on rainy days. : )

I hope everyone enjoys a prosperous summer and I look forward to engaging again in the fall.

-The Tightwad Trainer

gardening on the cheap -- creating healthy soil

Have you started your vegetable garden yet? In our smack-in-the-middle Midwest Zone 6, we get the green light on Mother's Day. Since the weather is 70+ degrees & sunny this week, most of us are busy prepping the garden bed in eager anticipation of Sunday.

My grandparents graciously gave us their walk-behind tiller two years ago. Two years ago, I started with a tiny plot about 4 foot by 4 foot. Last year, I more than doubled the size. This year, I plan to do the same. We have always broken new ground with our tiller, so I have been looking forward to prepping the new ground in under 30 minutes. But, as chance usually has its way at just the wrong time, our tiller last month refused to start. This led me down the path of figuring out alternatives, and as it turns out, the broken tiller was a blessing in disguise as I've learned to look at gardening as less a hobby and more a process of nature.

As we all know, while hobbies can be quite expensive, living in sync with nature is about as free as you can get. So, this year I have even healthier soil as well as several tips to help keep your vegetable garden from busting the budget.

Before we get into the nitty-gritty details, picture this in your mind: you are hiking in the forest. You stumble upon a log overturned on the path. On the one side, you see where the tree has uprooted. There is lots of debris around the spot -- dead, rotting leaves, rotting bark, bugs galore. But, you also notice that there is also very lush new growth from ground plants in that same area. There is a low ground cover and many other taller plants, probably flowers.

Our goal is to recreate this scenario in our own home gardens to help our vegetables thrive as much as those flowers are on the forest floor.

So to begin our summer gardening series, let's look at how we can cheaply create the soil that will feed our plants.

Healthy Soil
The picture I laid out above is a perfect example of healthy soil because it contained lots of decaying plant matter. To recreate this in a home garden, many people like to use compost. Remember that compost is simply decaying plant matter. The easiest way to start a functioning compost pile is to designate a back corner of your property for yard waste & start dumping in there. You don't have to turn the pile over to create compost, but if you do turn it, you'll acheive the desired result faster. Do remember that anything that goes in your compost pile will eventually make it back into your garden, so don't dump anything with chemicals on it (such as pesticides or weed killers) and don't dump any diseased plants back there.

To prepare your garden bed, till only when you're breaking ground for the first time and maintain the bed by using an overwintering ground cover or mulch. In our forest floor scenario, nobody tilled anything. Contrast that with the scenario of new home building. If you've ever had a home built, you'll know that only very hardy weeds thrive on the disturbed soil. The function of soil on this earth is to allow plants to thrive and it does its job quite well without our intervention.

If you have a motorized tiller, use it on new ground, then cover the bed with something that blocks the sun, such as a tarp or heavy layer of newspapers for about a week. If you don't have a motorized tiller, you can simply cover the ground for at least a week, directly over the grass & weeds before tilling. Since covering it will weaken & begin to kill the growth underneath, this will make the ground much easier to till.

After the week is up, uncover the bed. If you're tilling by hand, you can now till the new ground. Concentrate on getting only hardy weeds & grass tilled up. If you have an existing ground cover in that area, you till it less aggressively or leave it alone altogether.

Next, apply about 1/2 inch of compost across the whole bed. If you don't have a compost pile yet, you can find compost under decaying trees in almost all wooded areas you might have (legal) access to. After applying your compost, you can lightly till new ground a second time to mix in the compost. Plan to plant on or after a rainy day.

Mulch helps retain water & prevents water run-off. In layman's terms, you can water your garden less and your plants will be healthier & more resistant to disease & bugs if you use some sort of mulch. Options for traditional mulch include newspapers, cut grass, dead leaves, wood chips, sawdust, shredded non-glossy black & white junk mail, and pine needles (which will acidify your soil, so be prepared to make soil amendments). Living mulch or ground cover can be very effective since you can plant it once & be done -- no need to continually add more.

At the end of the growing season, be prepared to put in a few hours work on your bed to help it build itself while it overwinters. Plan to apply another 1/2 inch of compost across the bed and cover it with a mulch of some sort. Many people like to use newspapers, as they still let in air & water, but block the sun. Others like to sow in a crop like winter rye that will feed nutrients into the soil during this downtime.

Next time, we're going to talk about planning our garden for the most effective use of space as well as each plant's preferences.

thursday Q & A - best investment for extra income

Cyndi writes:

My husband recently switched jobs, and we will have a one year lapse in 401K benefits. We contributed 5% which was matched dollar for dollar by his former employer. I'd like to keep growing dollars somehow while we are without this benefit. What makes the most sense? IRA? Stocks? Paying down debt? Thanks!

Cyndi, from a purely numbers perspective, you can easily compare your options based on what is going to gain you the highest interest rate. For example, you could contribute to a low-risk retirement-oriented investment account. These are currently running at 4 -5%. Higher risk investments might or might not earn you more money. My expertise is not in high-return investment accounts, so I would start by doing a lot of research before choosing that option.

Paying down consumer debt would usually gain a higher return. Paying on a line of credit would give you something in the range of a 7-9% return. A car loan or personal unsecured loan is likely to be around that. Paying down any credit cards that are carrying a balance could earn up to 22%.

Personally, I wouldn't make the decision based on a side by side comparison of interest rates. I would use the extra money to achieve a goal I might not have had the chance to achieve before. Here are some that were or are important to us. Some we have achieved, others we are still working toward. I would welcome the chance to use an unexpected source of income to accomplish things like these:

• A continuing education account for ourselves and/or our children (such as a 539 account)

• A life insurance policy for the main breadwinner

• Classes to teach skills that would either provide additional income or greater self-sufficiency

• Acreage that could one day provide us a homestead

• Building or retrofitting with solar and other renewable sources of energy

• Building or purchasing a slightly larger home

You could work toward goals similar to the last three by contributing to the new types of CDs that allow you to make periodic deposits, but still do not come due until a certain date that you choose.

My larger money picture is a little bit off the beaten path. We funnel very little income into retirement accounts. Instead, we focus on adjusting our lifestyle to not need much money upon retirement. We intend to have a paid-for home that functions mostly on renewable energy with zero consumer debt when we retire. We also intend to have vehicles that can function on a renewable source of fuel (such as biodiesel) and the skills and health to keep things in repair by ourselves. Obviously, we can't guarantee that our health will be in the kind of shape necessary to live that lifestyle; however, we honestly can't guarantee that we (or anyone) will live to retirement age either.

I would keep this one hard, steadfast promise I would keep when using your extra income:

I will not spend that extra 5% on depreciating items of any kind.

If you stick to this one rule, I don't think you can go wrong with your decision.

Good luck, Cyndi, and thanks for writing! Every Thursday (-ish) The Tightwad Trainer will answer one of your questions. Email me at tightwad_trainer@fuse.net and I will do my best to solve your dilemma. Sign your name if it's OK for me to include it!

Annoying but necessary disclaimer: All information contained herein express my opinions only and are based on my health status & location. Each person's situation, health, and local laws & ordinances are different. By all means, use your own common sense & don't do anything you see here if someone more important than me (like your doctor, your local police, your own conscience) would disagree. If you're easily persuaded by everything you read, and you think I might cause you to hurt yourself or break the law, quit reading my site, please.

bill-paying system

We recently applied to refinance our mortgage to take cash out for the purchase of 15 acres of raw land. After they ran the obligatory credit report searches, they sent us a copy of our scores with each of the three agencies. I was very pleasantly surprised to see our scores less than 50 points away from the max in every single agency's report. Remember, I was once a notorious spendthrift and I had the credit scores to match.

I attribute much of our credit report success to our bill-paying system. It is one of the easiest systems I have seen out there and it works so well for us that we rarely (less than once per year) overlook a bill. This has allowed us to have credit reports without a single late payment in the past five years. I don't personally agree with most of the criteria used to determine credit scores, such as the enormous emphasis on a long credit history. In my ideal world, everyone would pay cash or trade for everything and credit would be rarely used and therefore, the history would be irrelevant. However, the credit score criteria is absolutely out of my control and is essentially a game. To win the game, you must avoid late payments. Perhaps our system will work for you too.

Our bill sheet is simply a spreadsheet file entitled "Bills2007." I have four columns in the spreadsheet as follows:

Column 1: the bill's due date
Column 2: the creditor or company
Column 3: the amount due
Column 4: the amount paid

I begin each month with the name of the month and then list the bills under it. My husband is paid weekly, so there are four color-coded sections of each month. The bills to be paid from Week 1 are blue, from Week 2 are purple, and so on. Each time I pay the bill, I fill in the amount paid column with the amount and color code just that amount paid column in red. This makes it easy to see what's been paid at a quick glance.

A single entry might look like this:

Column 1: 18th
Column 2: Duke Energy
Column 3: 186.00
Column 4: 186.00

When new bills come in the house, I have a designated spot near my computer where I stash the bills until I go to pay bills again the next week. At that time, I sort through anything new that has come in and update my spreadsheet with the new bills, putting them in the appropriate week with their due date and amount due listed.

On paper, it's very easy for us to see what bills we have during any given month, so if we're looking to cut expenses for awhile, I can pore over the bill sheet to see how we might do that.

It is also a great budget helper. In most weeks, we owe in bills about $150 less than we have coming in. If new bills have come in, it's easy to see which week we should put them in based on how much overage we have that week and when the bill's due date is. Also, once bills are paid for the week, there is an exact dollar amount left that has to be budgeted for gas, groceries, gifts, savings, giving and entertainment. This is the easiest way I have found not to go over-budget.

One final tip I recommend is to make two or more payments on each credit card in each cycle. For example, if your credit card is due on the 3rd of each month and your allocated payment is $60 per month for that card, list it and pay it twice in the cycle: $30 due on the 3rd and $30 due on the 18th. This one method will eliminate all late charges on your card. Since credit cards have the steepest late payment charges of any creditor we've ever had, this can be a huge savings if you get delayed in your bill-paying process during busy months. If you have any other creditors that charge steep penalties for late payments, try to use the twice-monthly method with those bills, too.

Get Moving: If you don't have a bill-paying system that is working for you (i.e...you are not incurring late charges, each bill is paid on time, & you can easily see what needs to be paid each month), take some time to make one. It may take about an hour to set up the initial spreadsheet, but after that, the maintenance only takes a few minutes each month.

Annoying but necessary disclaimer: All information contained herein express my opinions only and are based on my health status & location. Each person's situation, health, and local laws & ordinances are different. By all means, use your own common sense & don't do anything you see here if someone more important than me (like your doctor, your local police, your own conscience) would disagree. If you're easily persuaded by everything you read, and you think I might cause you to hurt yourself or break the law, quit reading my site, please.