Once again, I am inspired by Funny About Money, who, in a recent post, mentioned that her financial advisor opined that she had a talent for small savings.
I think I have a talent for microsavings. Many bloggers, whatever their take on frugal tips, declare that the big savings are what count: mortgage, insurance, travel, car purchases, and so forth. Elizabeth Warren and Daughter say the same in All Your Worth: The Ultimate Lifetime Money Plan" Count the Dollars, Not the Pennies.
Of course, I'd rather save dollars than pennies. But it's not always possible: only the microfrugalities have a guaranteed and steady payoff.
On insurance, for instance. I live in a state where some former Insurance Commissioners reside in prison. I have known several people who had insurance from smaller companies that went out of business, leaving them with unpaid medical bills and car insurance claims. Because of this, Mr. FS and I have always bitten the bullet and stayed with national companies. Post-Katrina, we had little trouble.
On travel,too. Yes, we use the on-line sites for deals. Often poor Mr. FS will spend hours on plane fares, only to end up saving $15.00, or worse, watching fares go UP. Sometimes he does quite well, but sometimes it's a waste of time. And it's never guaranteed.
On the auto purchases, yes we got the prices from Consumer Reports and used them well. But you can't do super-well on cars that are in high demand for good reasons. So we are happy with our Camry (1998) and Civic Hybrid (2003), both bought new for good, but not great prices.
But every week, I can save at least 20% on groceries, just by picking up the loss leaders. This amounts to pennies, but week in and out, year in and out, it adds up. I can always save pennies.
The only guaranteed way of saving dollars these days seems to reside in paying off your mortgage. I guess it's a good thing I already did that. I'd love to hear about other strategies.
So, dear Readers, do you think my concept of microsavings works? How do you microsave? And, if you have bigger ways to save, of course, please share.
Wednesday, 6 May 2009
Tuesday, 5 May 2009
Barbara Kafka's Continuous Cooking
A change of pace from my ruminations (to be continued) on cash gifts for adult children. Today my plan was to buy a chicken (a good sale at Rouses) and roast it. I was at the store because I had to mail a few items and also needed some milk. That was good, because chickens were nowhere to be found. I had to get a raincheck. In fact, I was at the end of a long line for my rain check. (Why? the chicken wasn't THAT cheap.)
So we're gong to have potato and vegetable hash, part of my clean out the fridge quest, and some eggs, which were gifted to us by a retired colleague.
But something good came from my roasting plans. Since I didn't want to roast a chicken all by itself, I had decided to roast some veggies too. So I took a look at a cookbook I had gotten from Paperbackswap.com a long while ago. I confess I had not opened the book: Barbara Kafka's Roasting: a Simple Art.
Kafka anticipated my oft-repeated sentiments that people today eat fewer home-cooked meals AND spend more time at it, because each meal is a unique event, shopped for and prepared in isolation. Here is Kafka's eloquent exhortation:
It seems to me that less cooking is done today than used to be and that when it is done, it is so much more work because we have lost the habit of the continuous kitchen. We start each meal from scratch with fresh shopping and a brand-new independent recipe. Our predecessors didn't, and we can save ourselves a great deal of work and have better, more economical food with greater depth of flavor by seeing cooking as an ongoing process. There is not better way to get in the habit than with roast birds, meats, and fish.
"Start with a roast" might be the motto of the continuous kitchen. When the roast is done and eaten, there are usually leftovers of the home cook's version of a chef's mise en place for future meals.
. . . .paragraph on using bones to make stock . . .
Leftovers have gotten a bad name . . .. Today's leftovers can be turned into tomorrow's elegant first-course salad, a simple sauter, or a curry. Having good leftovers is like having a good souos-chef in the kitchen, someone who has done half the work before I turn up for the finishing touches.
So we're gong to have potato and vegetable hash, part of my clean out the fridge quest, and some eggs, which were gifted to us by a retired colleague.
But something good came from my roasting plans. Since I didn't want to roast a chicken all by itself, I had decided to roast some veggies too. So I took a look at a cookbook I had gotten from Paperbackswap.com a long while ago. I confess I had not opened the book: Barbara Kafka's Roasting: a Simple Art.
Kafka anticipated my oft-repeated sentiments that people today eat fewer home-cooked meals AND spend more time at it, because each meal is a unique event, shopped for and prepared in isolation. Here is Kafka's eloquent exhortation:
It seems to me that less cooking is done today than used to be and that when it is done, it is so much more work because we have lost the habit of the continuous kitchen. We start each meal from scratch with fresh shopping and a brand-new independent recipe. Our predecessors didn't, and we can save ourselves a great deal of work and have better, more economical food with greater depth of flavor by seeing cooking as an ongoing process. There is not better way to get in the habit than with roast birds, meats, and fish.
"Start with a roast" might be the motto of the continuous kitchen. When the roast is done and eaten, there are usually leftovers of the home cook's version of a chef's mise en place for future meals.
. . . .paragraph on using bones to make stock . . .
Leftovers have gotten a bad name . . .. Today's leftovers can be turned into tomorrow's elegant first-course salad, a simple sauter, or a curry. Having good leftovers is like having a good souos-chef in the kitchen, someone who has done half the work before I turn up for the finishing touches.
Financial Help to Adult Children, Part 2
Sorry about the return to yesterday's topic. I am still thinking about the issue. And I noticed that Duchesse, one of the most astute and thoughtful bloggers I've read, returned to comment once more on yesterday's post. So below in that post you can read Duchesse's two interesting comments, from the perspective of both a receiver and a potential giver. And there is also a thoughtful post from FB, a recently out of college person, whose writings show a tremendous sense of energy, ambition, and responsibility.
Let me just divulge where I got the idea of giving my children the unused money in their 529 (education) accounts. A while ago, probably before I discovered blogs as a source of information and entertainment, I saw this question. Perhaps this was on the CNN money site? Anyway, this fellow in his 20s raised this issue: (I am paraphrasing from memory, so the accuracy is subject to question)
I decided to get a PhD in psychology. My parents have always paid my educational expenses. The PhD would probably cost around $150,000.00. I mentioned this to my father and he said that he would pay for the PhD OR give me the money to start a business. What should I do?
The answer (also paraphrased from memory) went something like this:
Wise father. He was testing whether you really wanted that degree or if you made the decision based on the fact that he would pay for it. You have been given a great opportunity. Use it well. Think carefully about what it is you want.
This made a great impression on me. I spoke to Mr. FS about it. We liked that the adult child had a stake in the decision, that his decision had consequences.
So Readers, any more thoughts on the issue?
By the way, Duchesse suggested that one should perhaps help the medical student more than the less-ambitious child. Interestingly, according to the Millionaire Next Door, this is the OPPOSITE of what parents do. Most parents "strengthen the strong," by forcing the more ambitious children into self-reliance and independence (i.e. they give them less or nothing), and "weaken the weak," by giving the less ambitious or accomplished more, thereby encouraging dependence.
Food for thought, once again.
And again, Readers, where do you stand on this vexing issue?
Let me just divulge where I got the idea of giving my children the unused money in their 529 (education) accounts. A while ago, probably before I discovered blogs as a source of information and entertainment, I saw this question. Perhaps this was on the CNN money site? Anyway, this fellow in his 20s raised this issue: (I am paraphrasing from memory, so the accuracy is subject to question)
I decided to get a PhD in psychology. My parents have always paid my educational expenses. The PhD would probably cost around $150,000.00. I mentioned this to my father and he said that he would pay for the PhD OR give me the money to start a business. What should I do?
The answer (also paraphrased from memory) went something like this:
Wise father. He was testing whether you really wanted that degree or if you made the decision based on the fact that he would pay for it. You have been given a great opportunity. Use it well. Think carefully about what it is you want.
This made a great impression on me. I spoke to Mr. FS about it. We liked that the adult child had a stake in the decision, that his decision had consequences.
So Readers, any more thoughts on the issue?
By the way, Duchesse suggested that one should perhaps help the medical student more than the less-ambitious child. Interestingly, according to the Millionaire Next Door, this is the OPPOSITE of what parents do. Most parents "strengthen the strong," by forcing the more ambitious children into self-reliance and independence (i.e. they give them less or nothing), and "weaken the weak," by giving the less ambitious or accomplished more, thereby encouraging dependence.
Food for thought, once again.
And again, Readers, where do you stand on this vexing issue?
Sunday, 3 May 2009
How Much Financial Help for Adult Children?
I have posted now and again on my plans to hand my now 18 and 20 year old children (in smallish pieces, over about 5 years) the money we had saved for their college education. This is because they chose no-cost options. I have not really received any comments on this plan, though I would welcome some. Good idea? Bad?
The other day, I mentioned in a comment on Funny About Money's blog (see Blogroll to the right for a link to her fabulous blog), that, as my wants are kind of low at the moment, I plan to help my children out later when they want to buy houses. Funny's response: SDXB reflects that middle-class children never grow up: we continue to nurture them psychologically and financially in perpetuity.
SDXB (aka Semi-Demi-Ex-Boyfriend, for those who are not FAM aficionados) is echoing the advice of Thomas Stanley and William Danko, authors of The Millionaire Next Door. They call the giving of money to adult children "economic outpatient care," and note that, generally, parents who do this "weaken the weak." Children who receive EOC are (relative to their peers) low-producers. I have certainly seen this weakening effect among people of my acquaintance.
Of course I LOVE The Millionaire Next Door. I remember reading it for the first time, seeing a question along the lines of What are the three characteristics of millionaires? I turned the page to see this: FRUGAL FRUGAL FRUGAL. I was so happy, especially since this was in the big-spending 90s, when the laws of saving and frugality didn't seem to apply.
So on one side there are Stanley and Danko, whose arguments are backed up by research. And I do despise the sense of entitlement of many (most?) of my peers and their children.
But here's the other side. I keep feeling that kids now are--sometimes because of the example set by parents--starting out behind. I read an article stating that students have NEVER graduated with the amount of education debt common today. In days of yore, parents who could afford it gave children a head-start--with a dowry, a piece of land, a goat.
Now people enter adult life with mounds of debt that will take years and years to pay off. Remember: college financial aid officers and the media have been declaring for years that "education debt is GOOD debt." Is this really "good"? And the lending has been "privatized," with our government guaranteeing the loans for the private lenders. And the lending has rules so complex that I cannot understand them, like the one that says that you can only consolidate or refinance your loans once, no matter how much interest rates may go down.
I'm getting out of my element here, so I had better stop. But here's my question: does all financial help weaken the recipient? Are kids starting out "behind" compared to how they started out in a perhaps mythical past? Help!!
The other day, I mentioned in a comment on Funny About Money's blog (see Blogroll to the right for a link to her fabulous blog), that, as my wants are kind of low at the moment, I plan to help my children out later when they want to buy houses. Funny's response: SDXB reflects that middle-class children never grow up: we continue to nurture them psychologically and financially in perpetuity.
SDXB (aka Semi-Demi-Ex-Boyfriend, for those who are not FAM aficionados) is echoing the advice of Thomas Stanley and William Danko, authors of The Millionaire Next Door. They call the giving of money to adult children "economic outpatient care," and note that, generally, parents who do this "weaken the weak." Children who receive EOC are (relative to their peers) low-producers. I have certainly seen this weakening effect among people of my acquaintance.
Of course I LOVE The Millionaire Next Door. I remember reading it for the first time, seeing a question along the lines of What are the three characteristics of millionaires? I turned the page to see this: FRUGAL FRUGAL FRUGAL. I was so happy, especially since this was in the big-spending 90s, when the laws of saving and frugality didn't seem to apply.
So on one side there are Stanley and Danko, whose arguments are backed up by research. And I do despise the sense of entitlement of many (most?) of my peers and their children.
But here's the other side. I keep feeling that kids now are--sometimes because of the example set by parents--starting out behind. I read an article stating that students have NEVER graduated with the amount of education debt common today. In days of yore, parents who could afford it gave children a head-start--with a dowry, a piece of land, a goat.
Now people enter adult life with mounds of debt that will take years and years to pay off. Remember: college financial aid officers and the media have been declaring for years that "education debt is GOOD debt." Is this really "good"? And the lending has been "privatized," with our government guaranteeing the loans for the private lenders. And the lending has rules so complex that I cannot understand them, like the one that says that you can only consolidate or refinance your loans once, no matter how much interest rates may go down.
I'm getting out of my element here, so I had better stop. But here's my question: does all financial help weaken the recipient? Are kids starting out "behind" compared to how they started out in a perhaps mythical past? Help!!
Frugality plus Working=Happiness and a Long Life: Rest in Peace, Albert Gordon
Wow! I just have to post this, even though it will be all over the fruality blogosphere (of which I am a mote of dust). Within the past few weeks or so, there were stories about the remaining survivors of the Wall Street Crash of 1929. The oldest--and most charismatic--was Albert Gordon, who just died at 107.
Here is his obituary for your reading pleasure. I love his work ethic and ingrained sense of frugality. Not to mention his appreciation of good writing, as evidenced by his love of The Elements of Style. From the New York Times:
Albert H. Gordon, who helped pick up the pieces of a shattered Kidder Peabody after the 1929 Wall Street crash and built the firm into what Forbes magazine called “a minor powerhouse on Wall Street,” died Friday at his home in Manhattan. He was 107.
His son John announced the death.
Mr. Gordon lived to become an éminence grise of the investment community, began running marathons in his 80s and at his death was the oldest graduate of both Harvard College and Harvard Business School, according to Harvard Magazine. In 1960, Fortune magazine listed Mr. Gordon as one of the 10 most powerful men on Wall Street and as the financial community’s most successful underwriter and salesman. It noted that he ordered his men to read “The Elements of Style,” written by William Strunk Jr. in 1918 and revised by E. B. White in 1959, to improve their reports.
Mr. Gordon used his charm, powerful friends like Armand Hammer of Occidental Petroleum and legendary energy to chase deals. John C. Whitehead, former chairman of Goldman Sachs, called Mr. Gordon “a famous business-getter.” In ruling that the investment industry did not violate federal antitrust laws in 1953, Judge Harold R. Medina noted the industriousness of Kidder. He said Mr. Gordon’s firm had “forged its way strictly on the merits from a minor position in 1931 to that of one of the country’s leading underwriters.”
Mr. Gordon arrived on Wall Street in 1925 as a new Harvard Business School graduate, to take a job as a statistician with Goldman. He traveled an immense territory selling commercial paper; he was on a train 12 nights out of 14. (He was later one of the first investment bankers to fly.)
In those days, investment bankers strove for decorum.
“We wore silk collars,” he said in an interview with National Public Radio in 2004. “We wore hats. We took ourselves seriously.” Kidder itself was a respected Wall Street institution when Mr. Gordon arrived in 1931. The firm had been prominent in the early financing of the American Telephone and Telegraph Company.
But two years after the crash, it was broke. J. P. Morgan & Company arranged financing that included a cash infusion from the Webster family of Stone & Webster, the engineering company. Frank Webster had led Kidder for most of the first third of the 20th century.
The reconstituted Kidder had three principals: Edward S. Webster Jr., Frank’s grandson and Mr. Gordon’s Harvard classmate; Chandler S. Hovey, who led a Boston investment bank, and Mr. Gordon, who, at 29, was the youngest.
Kidder came back. From 1960 to 1964, it ranked second among all investment banking concerns in a category of securities offering, The New York Times reported in 1965.
Mr. Gordon was chairman and a large shareholder of Kidder in 1986 when General Electric bought the business. Under G.E., Kidder floundered and ended up selling most of its assets to the competing PaineWebber Group in 1994. Mr. Hovey retired in 1952, and Mr. Webster died in 1957.
Albert Hamilton Gordon was born in the community of North Scituate, Mass., on July 21, 1901. His father, after working as a sheepherder in Wyoming, had moved east to become a successful leather merchant, supplying the British Army in World War I.
The younger Mr. Gordon graduated from Roxbury Latin School, where he broke his nose playing football. He graduated cum laude from Harvard College in 1923 with distinction in economics. He ranked third in his class at Harvard Business School. Arriving in New York, he shared an apartment with four or five friends, who embraced the local popular culture, including speakeasies, flappers and Babe Ruth. “We were having a very, very good time,” Mr. Gordon told NPR.
At his first job with Goldman Sachs, he got a $2 million deal from National Dairy Products, a predecessor of Kraft Foods. He was entitled to a substantial commission, but his boss took all the credit. Mr. Gordon learned an important lesson, he told Forbes in 2000, “You can’t retain employees if you don’t spread credit around.”
The Times reported in 1989 that Mr. Gordon had imbued Kidder with “an air of positive gentility, giving employees a free hand to pursue deals.” He also gradually sold back ownership of the firm to its workers, to signal that he would not challenge the new management he had recruited. He did not want anyone to think of him as “that greedy old bastard,” he told Business Month in 1989.
As one of the oldest surviving Wall Street veterans of the crash of 1929, Mr. Gordon was often asked to reflect on how he thought it had happened. In 1987, he told The Nation magazine, “Young men thought they could do anything.”
Mr. Gordon became something of a legend for his dedication to physical fitness, which he believed explained his longevity. He took one puff of a cigarette in his life, he said, didn’t salt his food and limited his alcohol intake to a glass of Champagne a year.
He was twice the oldest participant in the London marathon and sometimes walked from airports to his hotel. He made cold calls to prospective clients well into his 90s. At 105, he was still working four days a week at Deltec Asset Management.
Mr. Gordon was a past president of the Harvard Club of New York, and his generosity to Harvard is evident in the Albert H. Gordon Track and Tennis Center there, as well as a professorship at the business school. The New York Road Runners named its library and an annual race after him.
Mr. Gordon’s wife, the former Mary Rousmaniere, died in 1980. He is survived by his sons, Albert F. and John R., both of Manhattan, and Daniel F., of Philadelphia; his daughters, Mary Gordon Roberts and Sarah F. Gordon, both of Manhattan; 12 grandchildren; and three great-grandchildren.
In the 1960s and 70s, Mr. Gordon offered cash rewards to employees who quit smoking. He always flew economy, and when he noticed a young Kidder vice president sitting in first class, Financial News reported in 2001, he penciled a note for a flight attendant to pass on.
“What is the food like up there?” it read.
Here is his obituary for your reading pleasure. I love his work ethic and ingrained sense of frugality. Not to mention his appreciation of good writing, as evidenced by his love of The Elements of Style. From the New York Times:
Albert H. Gordon, who helped pick up the pieces of a shattered Kidder Peabody after the 1929 Wall Street crash and built the firm into what Forbes magazine called “a minor powerhouse on Wall Street,” died Friday at his home in Manhattan. He was 107.
His son John announced the death.
Mr. Gordon lived to become an éminence grise of the investment community, began running marathons in his 80s and at his death was the oldest graduate of both Harvard College and Harvard Business School, according to Harvard Magazine. In 1960, Fortune magazine listed Mr. Gordon as one of the 10 most powerful men on Wall Street and as the financial community’s most successful underwriter and salesman. It noted that he ordered his men to read “The Elements of Style,” written by William Strunk Jr. in 1918 and revised by E. B. White in 1959, to improve their reports.
Mr. Gordon used his charm, powerful friends like Armand Hammer of Occidental Petroleum and legendary energy to chase deals. John C. Whitehead, former chairman of Goldman Sachs, called Mr. Gordon “a famous business-getter.” In ruling that the investment industry did not violate federal antitrust laws in 1953, Judge Harold R. Medina noted the industriousness of Kidder. He said Mr. Gordon’s firm had “forged its way strictly on the merits from a minor position in 1931 to that of one of the country’s leading underwriters.”
Mr. Gordon arrived on Wall Street in 1925 as a new Harvard Business School graduate, to take a job as a statistician with Goldman. He traveled an immense territory selling commercial paper; he was on a train 12 nights out of 14. (He was later one of the first investment bankers to fly.)
In those days, investment bankers strove for decorum.
“We wore silk collars,” he said in an interview with National Public Radio in 2004. “We wore hats. We took ourselves seriously.” Kidder itself was a respected Wall Street institution when Mr. Gordon arrived in 1931. The firm had been prominent in the early financing of the American Telephone and Telegraph Company.
But two years after the crash, it was broke. J. P. Morgan & Company arranged financing that included a cash infusion from the Webster family of Stone & Webster, the engineering company. Frank Webster had led Kidder for most of the first third of the 20th century.
The reconstituted Kidder had three principals: Edward S. Webster Jr., Frank’s grandson and Mr. Gordon’s Harvard classmate; Chandler S. Hovey, who led a Boston investment bank, and Mr. Gordon, who, at 29, was the youngest.
Kidder came back. From 1960 to 1964, it ranked second among all investment banking concerns in a category of securities offering, The New York Times reported in 1965.
Mr. Gordon was chairman and a large shareholder of Kidder in 1986 when General Electric bought the business. Under G.E., Kidder floundered and ended up selling most of its assets to the competing PaineWebber Group in 1994. Mr. Hovey retired in 1952, and Mr. Webster died in 1957.
Albert Hamilton Gordon was born in the community of North Scituate, Mass., on July 21, 1901. His father, after working as a sheepherder in Wyoming, had moved east to become a successful leather merchant, supplying the British Army in World War I.
The younger Mr. Gordon graduated from Roxbury Latin School, where he broke his nose playing football. He graduated cum laude from Harvard College in 1923 with distinction in economics. He ranked third in his class at Harvard Business School. Arriving in New York, he shared an apartment with four or five friends, who embraced the local popular culture, including speakeasies, flappers and Babe Ruth. “We were having a very, very good time,” Mr. Gordon told NPR.
At his first job with Goldman Sachs, he got a $2 million deal from National Dairy Products, a predecessor of Kraft Foods. He was entitled to a substantial commission, but his boss took all the credit. Mr. Gordon learned an important lesson, he told Forbes in 2000, “You can’t retain employees if you don’t spread credit around.”
The Times reported in 1989 that Mr. Gordon had imbued Kidder with “an air of positive gentility, giving employees a free hand to pursue deals.” He also gradually sold back ownership of the firm to its workers, to signal that he would not challenge the new management he had recruited. He did not want anyone to think of him as “that greedy old bastard,” he told Business Month in 1989.
As one of the oldest surviving Wall Street veterans of the crash of 1929, Mr. Gordon was often asked to reflect on how he thought it had happened. In 1987, he told The Nation magazine, “Young men thought they could do anything.”
Mr. Gordon became something of a legend for his dedication to physical fitness, which he believed explained his longevity. He took one puff of a cigarette in his life, he said, didn’t salt his food and limited his alcohol intake to a glass of Champagne a year.
He was twice the oldest participant in the London marathon and sometimes walked from airports to his hotel. He made cold calls to prospective clients well into his 90s. At 105, he was still working four days a week at Deltec Asset Management.
Mr. Gordon was a past president of the Harvard Club of New York, and his generosity to Harvard is evident in the Albert H. Gordon Track and Tennis Center there, as well as a professorship at the business school. The New York Road Runners named its library and an annual race after him.
Mr. Gordon’s wife, the former Mary Rousmaniere, died in 1980. He is survived by his sons, Albert F. and John R., both of Manhattan, and Daniel F., of Philadelphia; his daughters, Mary Gordon Roberts and Sarah F. Gordon, both of Manhattan; 12 grandchildren; and three great-grandchildren.
In the 1960s and 70s, Mr. Gordon offered cash rewards to employees who quit smoking. He always flew economy, and when he noticed a young Kidder vice president sitting in first class, Financial News reported in 2001, he penciled a note for a flight attendant to pass on.
“What is the food like up there?” it read.
Saturday, 2 May 2009
The (Blog) Writer is Always A Fiction
When I was in graduate school, Walter Ong published an article that proved to be very influential: "The Writer's Audience is Always A Fiction." I don't remember anything about it beyond the title. Ong, who was a Jesuit priest as well as a scholar, remains an academic hero: in addition to writing about Ramist logic, he published many groundbreaking books on media, on the shift from manuscript to print culture. These studies are relevant today as we move from print to on-line culture--such as the present blog.
I am here to tell you that not only is the audience always a fiction, but the writer is as well. I mention this because a student who reads this blog now and again said "I know so much about you and your family."
Oh REALLY? You think so? This writer--even if you do know her name--is a fictional character.
I commented on a few blogs this morning, and everything I said was true: I did put our son on our Amex account; I did pay off my mortgage early; I did get new kitchen cabinets in August.
I am here to tell you that not only is the audience always a fiction, but the writer is as well. I mention this because a student who reads this blog now and again said "I know so much about you and your family."
Oh REALLY? You think so? This writer--even if you do know her name--is a fictional character.
I commented on a few blogs this morning, and everything I said was true: I did put our son on our Amex account; I did pay off my mortgage early; I did get new kitchen cabinets in August.
Friday, 1 May 2009
Free is not Frugal
No, that is not a typo. You are not hallucinating. Free is not frugal. OR not necessarily frugal.
About a year ago, I began to discover the wealth of frugal tips on the internet. Neat-o. Even though I did not, do not, and will never subscribe to the Grocery Game (a business that tells you how to combine coupons with store specials for "rock bottom" prices) or any of its free counterparts, I started perusing the Message Boards. Lots of "Hot Tips" abounded on various freebies. Tipsters and tippees recounted hitting the road in search of the goodies.
From these Boards, I also learned that you could send for free samples of this and that: oatmeal! aspirin! shampoo!
Add to that the fact that I already had figured out that you could get more than a lifetime supply of free shampoo and make-up and the like from CVS and Walgreens. So I did.
After a while, I noticed that the samples of oatmeal and aspirin were overpackaged. All that wrapping, not to mention shipping, not to mention human labor to send me 2 little aspirin.
Then I noticed that I had a plastic bin full of shampoo, body wash, soap, conditioner, toothpaste. Some of the Grocery Game ladies, exulting in their savings, sent in pictures of their stockpiles and claimed that they and their teenagers went through 5 bottles of shampoo a month. But my family goes through this stuff pretty slowly.
It occurred to me that free stuff encourages over-consumption. And I realized that the free stuff wasn't all that free in the largest sense. Driving around town to "score" a bunch of free shampoo takes time, not to mention gas.
So, Dear Readers, I went cold turkey. Even though CVS and Walgreens are offering free toothpaste yet again, I will not avail myself of it. And I no longer check out the sites that enumerate the "free" samples that are yours to request.
What think you of the concept "free is not frugal?" It's so hard to resist all the freebies out there; but I'm trying to stay strong. Wish me luck.
About a year ago, I began to discover the wealth of frugal tips on the internet. Neat-o. Even though I did not, do not, and will never subscribe to the Grocery Game (a business that tells you how to combine coupons with store specials for "rock bottom" prices) or any of its free counterparts, I started perusing the Message Boards. Lots of "Hot Tips" abounded on various freebies. Tipsters and tippees recounted hitting the road in search of the goodies.
From these Boards, I also learned that you could send for free samples of this and that: oatmeal! aspirin! shampoo!
Add to that the fact that I already had figured out that you could get more than a lifetime supply of free shampoo and make-up and the like from CVS and Walgreens. So I did.
After a while, I noticed that the samples of oatmeal and aspirin were overpackaged. All that wrapping, not to mention shipping, not to mention human labor to send me 2 little aspirin.
Then I noticed that I had a plastic bin full of shampoo, body wash, soap, conditioner, toothpaste. Some of the Grocery Game ladies, exulting in their savings, sent in pictures of their stockpiles and claimed that they and their teenagers went through 5 bottles of shampoo a month. But my family goes through this stuff pretty slowly.
It occurred to me that free stuff encourages over-consumption. And I realized that the free stuff wasn't all that free in the largest sense. Driving around town to "score" a bunch of free shampoo takes time, not to mention gas.
So, Dear Readers, I went cold turkey. Even though CVS and Walgreens are offering free toothpaste yet again, I will not avail myself of it. And I no longer check out the sites that enumerate the "free" samples that are yours to request.
What think you of the concept "free is not frugal?" It's so hard to resist all the freebies out there; but I'm trying to stay strong. Wish me luck.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)