I heard about Freeganism about a year ago. I will admit, the idea of dumpster diving for food and home items when you aren’t starving grossed me out. I just don’t think I will ever be comfortable rooting around trash to find treasures. But when I wrote about that on my own site, I was surprised by how many people have been able to find some awesome stuff in other people’s trash. Apparently, you may be surprised about the great things that you can find by dumpster diving. Here are some tips that have been suggested for finding the best stuff.

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I am not an extremely frugal person, but I am not a spendthrift either. I love squirreling away my money just as much as I love my home, health, and hobbies. In short, my husband and I save more than a third of our income on a regular basis, but we do not cheap out on certain things. Specifically, I will spend whatever is necessary to live healthily and sleep well. Frugality has its place in the world of personal finance, but there are some things that you just cannot afford to be cheap about and things you can.

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With the kids out of school, I know there are a ton of parents out there trying to think of ways to keep them entertained without draining the family’s coffers.  I know I remember my mother having the same problem with the three of us.  At the beginning of every summer, we’d get bored and slowly tear up the house looking for stuff to do.  After a few days of driving her nuts, we got used to playing on our own outside and she took us on a few frugal trips every summer as well.  Here are some ideas for cheap fun for the kids.

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My husband and I started a raised garden in April and our tomatoes are looking pretty good.  They are plump but are still very green and hard.  I was getting excited last week until I woke up one morning and something had taken big bites out of my best looking tomato!  It looked like gnaw marks, so our best bet is that a squirrel has been in our garden.  Here are a few frugal methods I have found to deal with garden thieves.

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A close friend, Tonia, has been trying to get me interested in garage sales for a couple of years now.  She swears that it is a ton of fun to spend her early Saturday mornings browsing through the sales around town.  I personally don’t want anything enough to wake up at 6am on a weekend to go after it, but her garage sale plans were detailed enough that I knew I should share.  Here are Tonia’s tips for finding exactly what you are looking for at garage sales.

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My husband and I don’t usually embrace ultra-frugality for the sake of saving a buck or two.  But we will change our habits if the changes are easy or we can save a significant amount of money over time.  When we realized we were doing more than 5 loads of laundry a week for two people, we decided to try out a few things (homemade laundry detergent did not make the cut).  Some suggestions worked very well but others were complete flops.  Here are a few tips we have come up with to save some money and time on laundry.

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I’ve decided to bring back an oldie but goodie, the personal finance blogger spotlight interview series. Long time readers of Bargaineering will recognize the PFBlogger Spotlight series as I’ve interviewed quite a few bloggers in the last few years. Today I have the joy of introducing you to Jason of Frugal Dad, a site “created for the average family to find financial resources with a [financially] conservative slant.”

I’m a fan of Jason’s blog because, despite its name, it is about more than frugality. Frugality is merely a tool towards overcoming debt and life’s other financial challenges. I hope, after this interview, you’ll gain a little more insight into what he’s about and why that makes his site so good.

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I never had a car in college and I never really wanted one because our student IDs doubled as free bus passes (the cost was rolled into our student fees). In fact, there were only a handful of occasions where I really wanted a car and those were cases where the bus ride would take an hour and a half (from CMU to Monroeville, which is really just a 20 minute care ride away!). I was fortunate to live in a city where public transportation was pretty good, but what about colleges where the public transportation isn’t as good or where you need a car just to get to class? You need a reliable used car.

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Did you know that it’s Thrift Week?

In celebration of National Thrift Week, I want to know, what does Thrift mean to you?

To me, thrift always seemed like one of those old fashioned words from a bygone era. I always equated it to frugality, where you are smart about your money and trying to get the most out of every dollar. Thrift was virtuous and consumerism was evil. Since that era, which I think ended sometime in the 70′s or 80′s, we’ve replaced thrift with consumerism. Saving was replaced by borrowing.

I was especially interested to learn that thrift referred to more than just saving money and spending wisely. It also referred to working hard and giving back to the community, two points that are once again coming back into fashion (along with saving and spending wisely). I think we’re seeing the pendulum swing back away from frivolous borrow & spend and swing towards thrift. I think it’s a good sign. What do you think?

Templeton Press, the fine people behind this push to bring back thrift, have generously offered to give away three copies of David Blankenhorn’s Thrift: A Cyclopedia. Leave a comment sharing what thrift means to you and you will be entered to win a copy of the book. This contest will close at noon on January 30th.

The contest is now closed. Congratulations to the winners, Diane, Caitlin, and Audra, we hope you enjoy your new copy of Thrift!

My wife and I started composted this year and one thing we learned was that ants love our compost. We keep an old 3 lb. coffee can (the same Folgers can in this post) with kitchen compost waste and ants seem to love the chopped up fruits we toss inside. We fill up that can and then empty it about every other week. It really reduces the amount of trash we discard and it will make for some good fuel for our garden next year. But, it’s also a nice little buffet for ants.

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