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How retailers trick you into buying more crap than you really need. Mmmm, delicious sample day at Costco. [Joe Consumer]
frugality
By 2.11.08
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9 ways to do Valentine’s day inexpensively. The hanging out in the back of a bookstore, reading books and talking quietly idea sounds nice. [The Simple Dollar]
By 2.7.08
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9 Things Star Wars can teach us about frugality. Number one: “1) They do their own maintenance and repairs. Rebels don’t take the x-wing into the local Space Lube Garage.” [Wise Bread]
10 Things You Can Do With Baking Soda
By 1.29.08
Baking soda is a magical substance with all kinds of crazy uses. Here’s 10 things you can do it with it that you might not know about:
Remove Pen Marks From Dolls With Acne Medications
By 12.20.07
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.
How To Pay Off $35,000 In Consumer Debt In 3 Years
By 12.5.07
J.D. at Get Rich Slowly has made his final payment and is now free of consumer debt. He still has a mortgage, but has eliminated $35,000 of consumer debt that began with a $500-limit department store credit card.
Buy Nothing Day Is This Friday
By 11.20.07
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.
Irrational Humans Trying To Be Rational Buyers
By 11.2.07
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.”
6v to 32 AA Batteries Video Is A Hoax
By 10.17.07
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.
Save Money On Coffee With A Home Espresso Maker
By 10.15.07
CNN Money takes a different approach, suggesting fine coffee lovers consider buying a home espresso maker.
30 Frugal Gift Ideas
By 10.11.07
There are times in life when you need to give someone a gift to show you appreciate them and the Starbucks gift card just won’t do.
Urine, Nature's Free Plant Fertilizer
By 10.8.07
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.
8 Great Places To Travel On A Weak Dollar
By 10.2.07
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.
By 9.27.07
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“He lives cheap because: “Sooner or later they fire everybody.”” [Frugal For Life]
Get Rid Of "Phantom Power Usage" In Your Home
By 9.21.07
Trent at thesimpledollar.com is on a mission to cut the extra fat from his budget, and he’s found that one step is to reduce the amount of unused power that goes into his home. Everything you leave plugged in continues to draw a small amount of power, and although the cost for these small drains is minimal on a per-item basis, they can add up faster than you think.
By 9.19.07
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UPDATE: This is a total hoax. Inside a 6 volt battery is 4 D batteries. So it seems you can open a 6 volt battery and find 32 AA batteries inside. Consider that a 4 pack of AAs costs around $5, and you can get a lantern battery for about $5, and that’s some powerful savings.
Save On Textbooks By Borrowing Them From The School Library…
By 9.17.07
We always knew one of the biggest scams in college was the school bookstore, but we never realized that you could actually try borrowing textbooks from the library. The blogger behind The Baglady certainly did:
When Should You Get Rid Of Your Old Car?
By 9.13.07
We know some of you would love to buy a new car every year. Others want to drive the same car forever, but realistically, when should you find a new (to you) ride?
