Tightwads vs Spendthrifts

"Frugality is driven by a pleasure of saving, as compared with tightwaddism, which is driven by a pain of paying."

That's one of the findings of a new study comparing people's spending habits. Here's how the differences between tightwads and spendthrifts break down, according to the survey of 13,327 people:

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Dirty dolls? Acne medication + sunlight = awesomely removing pen marks from dolls, blogs Baby Toolkit. Acne meds are diluted benzoyl peroxide. This reacts with the UVs in sunlight to release oxidizing agents that dissolve the pen marks, without bleaching the doll or removing paint. Instead of tossing out that dirty doll, you can clean it up.

Clear Unsightly Blemishes: the Case of the Ballpoint Baby Doll [Baby Toolkit via BoingBoing]

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Buy Nothing Day Is This Friday

Some wily retailers would have you think the day after Thanksgiving is some sort of "Black Friday" where you're supposed to get up before the roosters and claw with other shoppers over "amazing" deals. Actually, it's really "Buy Nothing Day," where, in solidarity with anti-consumers around the globe, you don't spend any money at all. Some might argue you're swapping one mob mentality for another, but at least one costs less.

Buy Nothing Day [Adbusters]

I was listening to one of personal productivity maven' David Allen's teleseminars and he said something incisive about the impulse to buy fancy stuff. People think they want to buy a sports car, Allen said, but maybe what they really want is the sense of freedom they think a sports car will give them. Advertisers understand this and use it to get you to buy stuff. It's the principle of "selling the sizzle, not the steak."

So what do we do if we want to curb impulse spending? Try to stop a moment and think about what's really motivating the desire. I want to buy x because it will give me y. What is the y? Can y be substituted with z, which gives me the same feeling but is cheaper or better for me? Failure to understand this algebra is how rich people end up with a garage full of import cars, and a medicine cabinet full of Valium.

(Photo: Getty)

About a month ago, a video was going around (that we, regrettably, linked to) saying that if you pried open a 6 volt battery, you would find 32 AA batteries, but it now turns out it's a hoax, riffing off the (truthful) reports that 9v batteries contain 6 AAAA batteries. 6v batteries, however, contain four 1.5 volt D-cell batteries.

If that the video was from a site called "Gagfilms.com," and being featured on their home page next to clips titled, "Video Proof That Ghosts Really Exist" and "The Girl With 2 Pussies," wasn't enough of a tipoff, the images sent in by reader Roberta who tested it out should do it for you. Full deconstruction sequence, inside...

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Urine, Nature's Free Plant Fertilizer

Sellers of pre-packaged fertilizer would rather you didn't know but human urine has been used since ancient times as a plant fertilizer. It contains loads of nitrogen, phosphorus and potassium, which is good for plants. Best of all, it's free. Make sure to dilute it with at least 10 parts water to 1 part urine, or risk burning the roots of some plants. A report published in the Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry found that using human urine as fertilizer didn't change the nutritional content or the flavor of cabbages on which it was used.

Human Urine As A Safe, Inexpensive Fertilizer For Food Crops [Science Daily]
Urine [Wikipedia]
(Photo: rhys400D)

8 Great Places To Travel On A Weak Dollar

The dollar has hit new lows, but fear not, thrifty globetrotters, there's still countries with weaker currencies than ours. What they lack in fiscal might, they make up for in natural beauty and exotic locales.

foXnoMad recommends Morocco, Thailand, Mexico, China, Jordan, Micronesia, Venezula, and Armenia. Hit the link to find out his reasons for each.

The Best Places To Travel On A Weak Dollar [foXnoMad]
(Photo: Carl Puentes Photography)