Lynn Schnurnberger is a writer working on a magazine article for Parade Magazine and would like to speak to a “a family (with at least four children) who is liviing very frugally –on $50,000-$100,000 a year, no mortgage, saving for retirement or college, perhaps they find “treasure” in other people’s trash by restoring a piece of found furniture…”

If that fits you, please contact me and I’ll forward along your information to Lynn.

She’s finished, thanks!

Incidentally, our set of dining room chairs are “restored treasures” my wife’s parent’s neighbors were going to throw away. My wife and her mom sanded down these four chairs, repainted, re-stained, and then refinished them. I didn’t see what the chairs looked like beforehand but they look absolutely incredible now. There are certainly treasures out there if you’re willing to do some hard work for them, I think our society has become too quick to toss everything.

JD asked his readers today for energy conservation tips after a reader in Juneau wrote in about electricity prices in his state increasing from 11 cents a kilowatt hour to 50 cents a kilowatt hour. Over at the BFP household, we do quite a bit of energy conservation, many of which were documented in a guest by Fred from One Project Closer titled 10 Homeowner Secrets That Save You Money Now!. However, if energy prices were to increase five-fold, I think we need to think out of the box and turn to more drastic measures. That measure… is housepooling.

Simply take the idea of carpooling, where you share a commute to and from work, and extend it to living in the home. Once a week, invite a few friends over for dinner, drinks, board games, and then a slumber party. It allows multiple households to live under one roof, one energy bill for one night. Since the idea would be for everyone to housepool, your friends would reciprocate and you’d get several nights “energy-cost free.” It would cost a little more than usual to cook and entertain, but I suspect the increase would be minimal and you might even find that the heating bill going down with more people milling about your home.

The reader estimated that their new energy bill would be around $750, which is about $25 a day for heating alone. Put in a few housepooling days and you can cut maybe a hundred bucks or two off the cost of your bill, plus you get some time with your friends and have a good old fashioned slumber party!

What do you all think? Feasible when energy prices are 50 cents a kilowatt? Am I off my rocker?

Tomorrow is Earth Day, so why not start off the week with an environmental friendly post? When most people think of being green, their brains immediately jump to organic foods and recycling. Organic foods can be expensive, recycling can be a pain, and many come to the same conclusion as famed philosopher Kermit The Frog, who once sang, “It’s not easy bein’ green.” In all fairness, what Kermit was singing about was entirely different but it perfectly sums up what many people think of environmentally conscious living – it’s not easy. That’s because many focus on the difficult and expensive aspects of going green, because we commonly associate difficulty and expense with impact, rather than the relatively easy things we can do that can still make a difference. In fact, many of the easy things can save the Earth and a few dollars (and even a few pounds!).

Reuse Plastic Containers

Most people think recycle, recycle, recycle – but remember the mantra is actually reduce, reuse, recycle. Reusing plastic containers, when it’s safe to do so, is a great way to reduce the amount of plastic we consume as a whole. When we order take-out food from the local Indian restaurant, our meals come in plastic containers we can then turn into lunch boxes. While it’s great to also recycle, some municipalities don’t take certain types of plastic so reusing is the only option, besides throwing them away. Reusing plastic containers helps your wallet because you don’t have to buy these containers yourself! Plus, I always get the feeling that those Glad or Tupperware containers are overpriced anyway.

No More Bottled Water

I understand it’s convenient, I understand it’s healthy, and I understand you think your tap water tastes like crap. But every single year 29283094293 plastic bottles are thrown out and the poor penguins are choking on them. If you think my random number is an exaggeration, it’s actually not too far off because the Clean Air Council estimates that Americans throw away 2.5 million plastic bottles every hour (that’s 21,900,000,000 a year). Can you imagine that? No, I can’t either.

Want a good reason for your wallet? The cost of tap water, even if you add in a filter, is microscopic compared to the cost of bottled water. Buy a reusable water bottle, a filter, and fill your own each day and you can save yourself some serious money. If you buy a $1 bottle of water each day, that’s $365 a year you can spend on anything else. And you don’t contribute to this ridiculous level of wastefulness.

No Prepackaged or Premade Food

We love convenience right? We love throwing a Healthy Choice or Stouffer’s freezer/TV dinner into the microwave and eating it for our lunch or dinner. The only problem is that you introduce a paper box and a likely non-recycleable plastic container into the trash. Plus, to be honest, it’s really really not good for you. The amount of sodium in a typical meal like that, even if you can get it for a buck when it’s on sale, is ridiculous. If you consume that much sodium on a regular basis, it’ll have significant negative effects on your body (high blood pressure, heart disease) which will definitely impact your wallet in medical costs down the road. Instead of going with the prepackaged or premade foods, check out allrecipes.com and try making your own meals. You’ll find them more fulfilling (who eats only one of those meals anyway?), healthier, and perhaps even cheaper.

Carpool

You can’t have a list about being green and saving green if you didn’t throw in carpooling. The secret to cutting your gasoline bill by 20% is to carpool once a week. Brilliant right? That’s because saving on gasoline is not difficult, people just don’t want to be inconvenienced and the best way to do that is to strategically pick the day you’re going to carpool. By consuming less fuel, you contribute less in greenhouse gases, reduce the demand for petrol, and you save yourself some money each time you hop in a rideshare. Considering how many people complain about fuel prices, it’s amazing there aren’t more carpoolers.

Eat Less Red Meat

How could I, editor of Grill Maestro and lover of red meat, possible endorse the idea that we eat less red meat? I do this because I read in a recent Ode magazine article that stated a single cow produces as much as 132 gallons of methane a day! The United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization calculated that the livestock industry accounts for 18 percent of all greenhouse gas emissions, compared to 13.5% produced by all of the world’s transportation. That’s downright amazing. And meat is hardly cheap too, chicken on sale is $1.99 around us and beef is far more expensive (obviously depending on the cut). I don’t think I’d ever go vegetarian, ever, but consuming less red meat is something we’ve done accidentally given the rise in prices and changing food preferences.

Bag Your Lunch

Bagging your lunch is better for the environment because you don’t need to drive somewhere to eat and you don’t have all the waste associated with the restaurant. For your wallet, saving yourself that $6-$10 lunch each day is going to translate very nicely to your bottom line and you’ll probably be eating healthier if you cook the food yourself. There’s a reason why so many restaurants are fighting new regulations regarding nutritional information – their food is terrible for you. Super Size Me may have been a gross exaggeration but the point is still clear, fast food restaurants are horrible for you and the fact that they don’t want to list nutritional information on the menu is proof positive they know it too. So, save yourself a few dollars, save yourself the gas, and save your arteries!

Buy Stuff Online

I once gave 8 reasons I do my shopping online and reason #5 was that online shopping meant less driving. Less driving, of course, means less fuel. Now, the trade-off here is that companies will have to ship you the packages, which will mean more driving on their part. I believe that since they are shipping packages anyway and are on optimized schedules and driving routes, their consumption, after you factor in how they won’t need to ship that product to their stores, will be less than yours. I think there will never be a provable answer to this but I’m confident that shopping online is better for the environment.

There you go, seven easy ways you can be green and save green – just try one this week and see how easy is and good it feels!

Today, on my way into work, I was listening to some morning radio show talk about how 47% of British men give up six months of sex for a 50″ plasma television. It sounds ridiculous (that’s why they did the study in the first place!) but the interesting part is what followed. Approximately 25% would give up smoking and 25% would give up chocolate for the 50″ plasma television. That’s when one of the hosts said that if you gave up smoking for six months you could buy the television.

So why not reward yourself for frugal behavior? If you’re a smoker and you want a new 50″ plasma television, why not give yourself an added incentive to quit? If you smoke one pack a day at around $5/pack (my guesstimate), it would take 268 days to save up the $1,339.98 for a Samsung HPT5064 50″ Plasma HDTV. That’s a little under nine months at $5 a day. If cigarettes are more expensive in your area or if you’re a heavier smoker, you can save up even faster (and that’s not even taking into account all the positive health benefits you get!).

Don’t smoke? Don’t want a 50″ plasma television? Replace smoking with another dirty little secret habit (mocha lattes?) and replace a plasma television with something you’ve always wanted (trip to Europe?). Having a goal always helps you be frugal.

A few weeks ago we booked our tickets to Hawaii, where we will be spending our honeymoon, and we had a quick little $60 decision to make. On the way back, we have the option of two flights:

• $390: Departure at 11:50pm, arrive at 6:30pm, or,
• $330: Departure at 10:50pm, arrive at 7:30pm.

The two flights were similar otherwise (the first had one extra stop, but you never deplaned and second flight had a longer layover) so the difference was in just the flight time and departure times. The first flight was $60 more expensive but we were able to stay in Hawaii an additional hour and we arrived at home an hour earlier. So, which flight did we choose?

We chose the more expensive flight. This was probably one of the first times in which I’ve chosen convenience over cost when the two choices were so similar. In this particular case, there were reasons to pick the more expensive flight outside of the characteristics:

• Landing at 6:30pm: We will be tired from our trip and having an extra hour of “home” time before going back to work the next day will probably help tremendously.
• Fewer hours total: This was the only real trade off, paying $30 an hour to save that travel time really cuts down on fatigue.
• Later departure: By leaving at around midnight Hawaii time, it lets us enjoy the full final day in Hawaii. It also let us have a nice leisurely dinner prior to our departure. If we were to leave at 10:50pm, we’d feel compelled to arrive at the airport by at lets 9:30pm, which means we’d have to leave our dinner by 9 (depending on how far away it was). If we plan on having a nice dinner, that means we have to eat by 7… so for a little extra we can take our time and have more breathing room.

How do you go about deciding whether to take the cheaper option or the more convenient option?

A trimmable expense is an expense that fulfills a want rather than a need. Buying fruits and vegetables is not a trimmable, buying chocolate covered fruits is a trimmable. While you could try to go through all of you expenses and try to eliminate everything that is discretionary, you may find yourself enjoying life less and less. Trimmables, while fulfilling wants and not “required,” are there to help you live life and enjoy the fruits of your labor.

So, rather than cutting out some of your trimmables, consider reducing your trimmables in terms of quantity or frequency. Spa treatments are sometimes seen as frivolous but if they are valuable in reducing stress, then cutting them out entirely may not be a smart move in the long run. If you go every week, consider visiting every other week. If you go every other week, consider going every three weeks. Don’t cut it out entirely, reduce it so that you can save a little but not lose the recuperative effects.

Some trimmables you might want to reduce with the intent of eliminating them all together. Don’t make that decision now. Just reduce it a little and see if you lose any of its benefits. You may find that the less frequent visits help you look forward to them. You may find that you still get all the recuperative effects and that those bi-monthly visits were unnecessary. You may find that your sweet spot is really at once a month, rather than twice a month. So, you could be enhancing the experience while saving your money.

Also, you could discover that you need to go every two weeks – that’s fine. Rather than thinking you need it twice a week, you now know you need to go because you’ve tried once every three weeks or once a month and it didn’t work. Simply give yourself the opportunity to reduce it a little so you know for sure.

Finally, reducing something is far easier than eliminating it. Quitting cold turkey is practically impossible and impractical as a means of quitting something, reduce it until you hardly miss it. If you love that Starbucks and need it every morning, try cutting it out of your day once a week and replace with it regular coffee or with some tea. You may find that Starbucks’ hold isn’t as firm as you once thought! Or you may find that you like tea more than coffee, you never know until you try.

Reduce something today!

Zecco offers 10 free trades a month. Buffets offer all you can eat, which means you can get as much as you want for no additional cost. Casinos offer you all sorts of free “comps” to get you to come back into their casino. All this stuff is free, but it doesn’t meant that you should take advantage of it!

With Zecco, free trades sound great in principle because free is always good but they’re actually bad for most of us. The prevailing attitude, to which I subscribe to, is that you should be buying and holding, not actively trading a lot. If you’re a day trader with your finger on the pulse on the market, perhaps free trades is right for you. However, if you’re a “check your stocks at work for a few minutes each day” type of person, then ten trades a month is too much and feeling compelled to use them is dangerous. Buying and holding is preferable because you let time smooth out the volatility in the market, you let time lower your tax liability, and you let time temper your emotions so you don’t make rash decisions. Free trades are great, as long as you don’t feel compelled to use them.

How about buffets and their great all you can eat nature? For a while I would feel stuffed after going to buffets because I felt compelled to “eat my money’s worth” and eat as much as I could. If I paid one flat price and could eat as much as I could, I would try to eat as much as I could! Except that’s horrible! I’d feel bloated, then tired, then lazy the rest of the day… all because I felt compelled to take advantage of the free offer. Buffets are great, as long as you don’t feel compelled to actually eat all you can eat.

Lastly, casinos give you complimentary items just to get you to come back. They’ve done they math, they realize that every person they get into the casino will earn them a certain number of dollars. If they can get you back for the cost of a breakfast, that’s a win-win for both sides. You get the breakfast, they get the business, everyone wins… except for you because you probably will lose more than the cost of the breakfast right? So, comps are great, as long as you recognize what they’re trying to do (I can’t possibly say, don’t gamble because that’s how you got the comps in the first place!)

So… next time you see something advertised as FREE, think about it for a second. It might be no cost financially at the moment, but is it really the right decision?