Ridiculous Money Saving Ideas
Part of the fun of setting up the Festival of Frugality is that I try to read each of the festival posts and at least hit up a few of the posts being linked to when they catch my eye, thus far I haven’t seen too many off the wall tips but every so often you see a few that really don’t make much sense!
So, for your reading enjoyment, here are some ridiculous tips and my thoughts about them. Some of these are from past festivals and some are just tips I’ve heard over the years:
- Buying two-ply toilet paper and pulling the sheets apart - Ignoring the fact that you can just buy singple-ply toilet paper, the time it takes and the “risk” involved in using single ply is too high to make this really worth it… right?
- Buying one entree and splitting it, buying dinner and asking for a take-out box to split it immediately - I understand that meals have gotten bigger and bigger but seriously, if you want to save money, cook for yourself!
- Skip on insurance - Some insurance policies aren’t worth it but all those folks who argue that you don’t need the big insurances (auto, health, and homeowners/renters) are fools. Sure, if nothing catastrophic happens, you’ve saved yourself a few bucks… but if something does happen, you could be out a lot of money. The funny thing about accidents and disasters is you don’t see them coming.
- Tip less than the customary 15% - If you get good service, why punish the server by saving a few dollars and short changing them on their duly earned money? If you want to save this money, don’t go out to eat!
- Dumpster dive for stuff - I’ve taken a television out of the trash (it was in an apartment and someone left a TV by the garbage chute, which was fifteen feet my from my apartment, but I would still calling me fishing it out of the trash despite not having ever set foot there) but I’ve seen suggestions that you take food (and coupons and other assorted items) out of a dumpster. Dumpsters are dangerous (ever see the signs, don’t play in or around the dumpster) because people throw all their crap in their, sharp crap too, chemical crap, and you don’t really need other people’s garbage that badly. If I was a dumpster diving advocate, I’m not anymore.
Gems from Consumerist Commenters
- BOHEMIAN: Save your bar soap slivers and putting them all in the mesh bag you get onions in. I take my old bar of soap and smash it into my new bar of soap, but saving the slivers so you can reconstitute it with other bars? That’s a little too much.
- MAMEDENNIS: Driving 30 miles to save twenty cents - for groceries, for gas, etc. I know plenty of people who do this and it’s ridiculous! It’s not like media hasn’t smashed it into your head that gasoline is expensive not to mention your own personal time.
- RECTILINEAR PROPAGATION: “Taking flowers from funeral homes to give to your wife.” I think the ridiculousness of this one is pretty obvious.
- CHICAGO7: Expanding on the original splitting two-ply TP, Chicago7 has this to say - “Save on toilet paper - use your hand!”
What are some of the ridiculous frugal or money saving posts have you heard? What about some that you may use yourself that others have called ridiculous? Share share!
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38 Comments - Share Your Thoughts
Wow I would never have thought of #2 as a money saver with the exception of dining at places like DisneyWorld
. I do use it as a calorie saver when I go out simply because if it’s on my plate I will try to eat it all even if its more than I should.
The most ridiculous thing I’ve heard is people driving to another country to save $7.
Hey, my wife and I always order an appetizer and 1 meal and split it! Never had a restaurant refuse to just give us a second plate, though. Its enough to fill our tummies and cuts the price significantly. But we rarely eat out because we can’t afford to!
I don’t dumpster dive since our neighborhood doesn’t have dumpsters, but people do leave treasures next to their trash on the side of the road. You have to be careful though! And if you are picking up furniture (I like stripping and restoring/reupholstering discarded furniture) fumigate and check the wood for infestations! People throw away perfectly good stuff and there’s no reason not to pick it out. Just last month I put a perfectly good bike with a flat tire on the street for someone to grab; nothing wrong with it I just didn’t want it and didn’t want to bother selling it for $10 so I let someone else take it. Its much better than letting it end up in a landfill!
LOL @ Buying two-ply toilet paper and pulling the sheets apart
ok, some people are super crazy. That is not frugal, it’s just simply cheap!~
With #2, I thought the ridiculousness of the idea wasn’t so much the splitting of a meal (because we do it at some places that have huge portions), it’s the idea that you split it immediately and bring your own box. However, the more I think about it, bringing your own box is probably a good thing because it cuts down on waste.
Reusing coffeegrounds. My uncle and aunt used to do this. Their first post of bland, watery coffee was bad enough, but they were convinced that you could get yet ANOTHER ENTIRE pot of drinkable coffee out of the already weakened grounds.
I’ve always thought the whole idea of using 1-ply toilet paper AT ALL to save money is ridiculous. If the tp is single-ply, people just use twice as much.
The entire restaurant industry is NUTS…. save for the tapas places which serve small plates. I say, if a joint offers mega portions, they deserve the decreased revenue from “split dinners.”
I tried to go without air conditioning in the summer in Texas. During the day it’s not too bad. You just need a fan and many frequent drinks. But at night it’s difficult because you can’t drink, so you dehydrate. So I tried to set up a system that would drip water on a sheet that would hang over the body. The sheet would stay moist and would keep the skin moist. A box fan was used to blow on the sheet to create evaporation cooling.
It actually worked sometimes, but I couldn’t control the dripping of the water. The ideal amount of water would be about one quart. I used two half-litter water bottles with a small hole in the caps. Then I inserted shoelaces into the bottles and hung the bottles above the sheet so the water would drip onto the sheet. Sometimes it worked well. By the morning, the bottles were just about empty and the sheet stayed moist throughout the night keeping me comfortable. But other times it dripped too fast leaving me in a puddle of water, or it would drip too slow and the sheet would dry out leaving me dehydrated.
George, my wife will likely want to kill you for having planted this idea into my head now.
Shopping at Wal-Mart.
Hop on the Chinese poison train, boys!
I absolutely love splitting entrees with my DH. We get the convenience and “vactionness” of going out to eat at half the cost and half the calories.
I’ll also pull coupons out of the newspaper recycling bin.
The other three are, I agree, silly.
I agree with Chris. My wife and I often order an appetizer and split an entree. We just can’t eat as much as many restaurants provide and still feel well the rest of the night! It saves a ton of money too, though we don’t go out to eat very often.
I hate the bad rap single-ply gets. I use Kleenex Cottonelle and it’s only one-ply, and it’s soft and not linty. I don’t know if it’s any cheaper than 2-ply. But I do know the 2-ply TP that was in the bathroom at my college dorm was rough and tore easily. So yeah, I agree with Rachel R.
ha… my mother is the person that will drive 10 miles to save 2 cents on her gas price.
Why use 1-ply? Just use junkmail. It’s sent to your door 6 days a week, and is inherently 1-ply. Just remember to remove any staples or plastic faux credit cards before use.
Works great, and lets anyone who sees your butt know what your pre-approved APR is!
Those are funny… its amazing the lengths some people will go to save money even if it incontinences them greatly. I agree with the previous commenter - if you’re going to to use 1-ply you might as well use the junkmail that comes in… its free, 1-ply paper costs money.
I’ve got no problem at all with splitting gigantor entrees with my husband, but we always tip the server as though we were paying for two full orders. Everyone wins!
I dated a guy (very briefly!!) who cut open a toothpaste tube with a razor blade to get the last little bit out. He also cooked his soap bar slivers with water to make liquid soap and did split the two-ply toilet paper. Wonder if he ever found a wife?!
For presents I buy gift cards that I know the recipient will likely not use. But before I give the gift card, I use up most of the money. If the recipient ever gets around to using it, he’ll think he must have used it previously or he’ll think the money started to expire due to inactivity.
Thanks for the laugh, George!
When I was growing up, my mom and grandma cut off the toe of a panty hose and put their soap slivers in that. It worked really well, and you’d be surprised how much use you get out of those little pieces. They wouldn’t have that out for guests to use. I don’t have panty hose and am too lazy to do it, but they both lived through the depression and rationing during WWII. They also made their own soap.
[...] Brad: When I was growing up, my mom and grandma cut off the toe of a… [...]
This was a great post. Hard to believe that some people would go to these measures to try to save money when there are so many other things they could be doing. Skipping on insurance people look so smart for a long time and then all at once, the massive accident occurs and their goose is cooked. Good read!
Some of these ideas are so ridiculous that they’re funny, but I have to admit that I’ve saved up the slivers of soap before and re-used them. Of course, it’s not always a matter of frugality - sometimes I forget to buy more soap when I’m at the store (whoops).
I have rescued clothes people have thrown away on trash day. I wash them and give them to people who need them or to organizations. Once on the way home from I saw a couple of vases sitting outside a dumpster (apartment complex near our place). I brought them home and gave them to the local school, so they can use them for functions they have.
I always ask for a doggie bag to bring food home. I bring home the food anyone at our table leaves and give it to my dog. I just don’t want to see the food going in the trash.
Zig
The best way to save on gas is to leave the keys on the table. We are too much in the habit of jumping in the car and going to the store for whatever instead of composing a list and shopping once weekly. Instead of driving 3 mi. daily, 6 return, for coffee (a rural necessity in winter) and post office /store business, I cut back to 3 x weekly and bo’t a trailer with what I saved over 7 months.
Great post…as usual!
I used a permalink to write about it on my blog. I just can’t believe some of the comments!!!!!!!!!! LOL!
just FYI, this article was talked about on WFNX Boston this morning.
George-I think you reinvented the desert cooler.
I also have to confess to constantly sharing meals with my husband. If either of us has a strong preference or is really hungry we will order our own. Even then we will commonly split something else like a salad or a dessert. Maybe we are cheap : ) but we definitely don’t miss out on anything by sharing.
I don’t think that splitting dinners is that ridiculous. Try as I might, I just don’t possess the cooking skill to make food like restaurants do - especially without spending time. That makes cooking at home sometimes not possible.
I usually just bring half home instead and eat it the next day. This is probably more for frugal reasons than for health reasons.
I guess my husband and I are fat asses, but there is no WAY that we would ever split a entre at a resturant. I eat too much and so does he and the worst thing ever is going to a resturant and not leaving full.
[...] refilled a travel size tube of toothpaste, this should go in my list of ridiculous money saving tips (in all fairness, it was a time constraint and convenience issue and not about saving [...]
Cooking Accomplished! has been a great find for myself and several of my friends. The concept is simple; you go online, pick the entrees you want and the date you want to assemble them. The difference between Cooking Accomplished! and several other businesses like this in Portland, is quality! The owner is a trained chef. They have a commercial kitchen where all the ingredients are prepped by Shelley and her staff. Many of my friends, prior to joining me for meal assembly sessions at Cooking Accomplished!, admitted to serving and eating frozen or pre-cooked meals several times a week and to dining out two or three times a week. We decided since we are worried about nutritional value and using quality local ingredients we would research meal assembly as a solution to reducing time spent shopping and preparing dinners with the goal of eating healthier. The only assemble-your-own meal company that we found in Portland, that had great selections, high quality local ingredients and prepped all their food in-house is CookingAccomplished! in Lake Oswego. Since I started preparing meals at CookingAccomplished! I’ve also signed up for a couple of great cooking classes. My son attended a kids class as well and he can’t wait until the next one. Shelley has done a fantastic job of creating a quality experience!
[...] to reduce how much you spend while still maintaining a sensible standard of living (some folks take this to the extreme). There are two parts to achieving this. The first part is trying to find cheaper ways of getting [...]
My job requires me to travel a lot and I probably spend 8 months of a year in a hotel room. I collect all those little unused shampoo, conditioner and lotion bottles that hotels provide. Once I get home I squeez out all those in a big bottel and use it at home. I now have so much shampoo(all different variety, since different hotels offer different shampoos), conditioner, lotion, and bars of those little soap that I dont have to worry about any of the above for atleast next 5 years. I still have regular shampoo, bars of soap etc for guest.
You all are rejecting the “toilet paper splitting” frugality suggestions without any serious thought. Soo - just a little historical and cultural backround: Many civilized cultures (notably in the middle east) do not use toilet paper but rather have small hoses next to the toilet for rinsing and washing. (an added savings is that wide diameter waste lines are no longer needed making plumbing less expensive) Toilet paper is a rather recent “need” not much different than the U.S. marketing coup that has caused underarm deodorant and shaving of body hair to be nearly universal. A personal note — after a hemroidectomy operation several years ago the doctor suggested I wash rather than wipe to prevent irritation of the scar tissue. The doc said to install a bedet (a French bottom washer). It works, and the edge of the tub and a shower hose does the “dirty” work efficiently without the cost of European bathroom appliances.
I know a family that only flushes their toilet once a day (or less) to cut down on their water bill.