In the age of the internet many of us have friends in different states or even countries, some of whom we know fairly well.  Have you ever thought about trading houses with them?  It’s not really a novel  idea and there are companies that will match you up with someone who wants to trade houses in your area.  It works somewhat like an online dating service.  If you saw the movie, “The Holiday” you have a pretty good idea of how it works.

One of the sites, Home Exchange (the one used in the movie) has a membership fee of $9.95 per month that is billed annually.  They also have a 3 month membership for $15.95 per month.    It’s not a bad buy if you decide that you are seriously considering a trade.   Home Exchange also has some great advice on how to be successful at trading houses.   They also publish many of their success stories and I enjoyed reading a few of them.  They really make it seem possible and FUN!

If you aren’t sure that you are ready to spend money on this endeavor, another website Home Exchange Vacation has a free membership option.  Just like Match.com, you can list your house for free and search for others but you can’t contact anyone without purchasing a full membership.   Their full membership is under $30 for a 3 month membership.

Tips for making a Successful Trade

1. Make sure that you are comfortable with the other person.  Talk in email and on the phone before you commit to a trade.  If  you aren’t comfortable with anything, pass on it.
2. Decide in advance how you are going to handle utility bills, cars, pets, etc.
3. Whether you go through a service or not, have a written contract that specifies responsibilities of each party and liabilities.
4. Check with your insurance company especially if you are trading cars to make sure that your insurance covers invited guests and permitted drivers.
5. Make lists of emergency contacts, repair people and local attractions for your guests.
6. Just for the fun of it, leave flowers and a chilled bottle of wine.
7. Have a neighbor or friend check in with your guests the day after their arrival to make sure they are comfortable and don’t have any questions.  It also puts a friendly face with the names on your list.

I think it could be a great way to see the country if not the world.  Home Exchange also mentions that long weekends are their fastest growing segment so you don’t have to go around the world or even for a month.  You can exchange houses with someone right down the road and just get away for a few days.

Have you tried exchanging homes?  How did it work for you?  I’d love to hear some of  your personal experiences.

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Used Books

I read a lot.  Most of my family reads as well so books are always a good choice for gift ideas.  I purchase most of my books from Amazon.  I buy the majority of them in good as new used condition from private sellers at a drastically reduced price.

Free Shipping

I get free two day shipping on quite a few items by signing up for Amazon Prime .  You can sign up for a free month trial now and get all of your holiday shipping free.  I find this to be an excellent way to shop for my friends and family who don’t live close by.

Online Auctions

For those unique or hard to find gifts, you can often find them on ebay.  I buy jeans for my son in law who wears a 40 inch inseam and they are almost impossible to find in stores.  I have always been able to find them on ebay for a greatly reduced price.  Other gifts I have found are new cowboy boots, some collector items for my mom, some gorgeous handmade wreaths for my daughter and of course, ebay is another outlet for books.  I have purchased all of my laptops on eBay and always been happy with them.  Be sure to check on the shipping price before you bid or buy on ebay as some shippers charge an exorbitant rate.

Comparison Shopping Sites

There are several websites that allow you to comparison shop by price.

Nextag
Shopzilla
Price Grabber

Smart Money rated  different comparison shopping sites and Price Grabber came up on the top of the heap.  You can see the whole list of comparison sites in their article.
Shop Locally

Ok, so what is shop local doing in an online shopping article?  Some stores like Walmart and Sears offer the ability to purchase off of their website and have it delivered to the local store.  This saves shipping on most items and you can stop off to pick them up when you are going by anyway.

Check for Coupon Codes

There are many online sites for coupon and discount codes for online shopping.  Many of these codes are for major retailers such as Home Depot, Kohls, ToysRUs, etc.  Here are just a few:

Coupon Cabin

Retail Me Not

Current Codes

You can find more by googling coupon codes.  Some sites have printable coupons that can be used at local retailers.

Holiday Sales

Just like brick and mortar stores, most online stores have holiday sales as well.  Amazon is offering special Black Friday/Cyber Monday deals.  You can also check to see if your favorite stores such as Walmart, Home Depot, or Target have a website and check it out for online sales.   Many of the major retailers are offering free shipping.

Safety

Be sure to make sure that whatever site you order from has a secure order form.  This means that your credit card information is encrypted in the same manner that banks use to send information.  Do not send your credit card information through email.  The safest way to shop online is to use prepaid credit cards as these are limited.  In this way, you are not giving someone a link to your bank account or credit card.

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Two years ago, I began my journey to ‘fix’ my financial situation.  I began reading personal finance books and blogs with a passion and one of the rules that I saw the most was “Spend Less Than You Earn”.   While at first glance it seems like great advice, it was almost enough to make me give up.  I was over my head in debt and my income was shrinking not growing.  Obviously, spending more than I earned had gotten me into this mess.

Spending less than I earned every month was pretty much an impossibility.  I had so much debt and so little income that every penny that I made had a  place to go.  When  I wrote down my first budget, I was so far in the red that I couldn’t see black.  How could I possibly spend less than I earned?

I look back now and realize that it was the first book that I read “The Richest Man In Babylon” which helped me the most.  This book was written in 1926 by George Samuel Clason.  It was originally a series of pamphlets that were handed out by banks and insurance companies.  Clason’s firt rule was to “Pay Yourself First”.

Pay Yourself First

In other words, no matter how much you owe others or how much you spend, you need to pay yourself first by saving some of your money.  Clason suggests saving 10% by spending only 9 out of every ten dollars earned.  I always questioned this amount but I can tell you that 10% works.  It is a small enough amount that if you put it into savings, you will not miss it.   Even when I was barely making enough to live on each month, that $10 on every hundred was small enough that I didn’t miss it.

At first, I thought I would put whatever money was left at the end of the month into savings.  I quickly learned that if I waited until the end of the month, the money ran out long before the month did.  There was always an extra bill to pay  or groceries to buy or that extra tank of gas to go someplace.  There was never any money left at the end of the month.  The habit of spending what I had in my pocket was so deeply ingrained that it left without me even realizing it.

When I started to put that 10% into savings FIRST even when I knew I was not going to have enough money to pay bills or buy groceries.  Every single month that I put money into savings before I paid bills or bought groceries, I made my savings goal and somehow I managed to pay the household bills and eat.  I  didn’t pay all of the bills but I could not have paid them without saving anyway.

Now I know that many of you are thinking that you would have used the money that I was putting into savings to pay the debts.   Clason’s second rule is to control your expenses and to learn the difference between needs and desires. Clason’s second rule is to control your expenses and to learn the difference between needs and desires.In some ways, I agree with you but I had come to think of my small emergency fund as my survival fund.  If something went wrong, I would not be able to pay the essentials like rent, utilities and food without some small amount of money in savings.

Emergency Fund

My initial savings goal was $500 to be used for emergencies.  It seems like a small amount but it took me almost 6 months to save it.  I tried snowflaking money into it by selling things on eBay and on craig’s list.  I saved my change and added it to my savings.  All of it helped but in the end the only thing that really worked was paying myself first.

Eventually, my income grew and my debt load shrunk.  It is now possible to spend less than I earn but that first lesson is still the one that governs my financial life.  No matter what else I buy or pay, no matter what I have to give up, I pay myself first by putting that 10% into savings.

After 2 years, I still do not have the fully funded emergency fund (6 – 8 months of living expenses) that is recommended.  I would like to think that I will eventually build up to that amount but I have enough to keep my head above water for a month or so.

Beyond Emergencies

Paying myself first has become more than just a tool to build my emergency fund.  The emergency fund also doubles as an operating account.  I do withdraw money from it for more than emergencies.  There have been times when I have had to take money out of it to keep the farm operating.  My goal is to only take money out for emergencies and to pay for something that will increase our income.

Clason’s third rule is to make your savings multiply.  This can mean as little as earning interest on your savings by putting it in a savings account or cd but it can also mean using it to invest in something that will increase your earnings.  While we don’t take money out of savings to buy things that we desire, I do not feel guilty about taking it out to take advanatage of opportunities.

We buy and sell horses for a living.  We generally budget a certain amount of our income to buy more horses.   Every once in awhile an opportunity to purchase a horse for very little comes along and if we didn’t have some savings, we would have to turn it down.  For example, a friend recently had a horse that she needed to sell quickly.  It was  a wonderful horse, registered, well trained and very pretty.  She wanted a little more for it than we currently had budgeted for restocking, however, I knew that we could easily make double or triple that amount when we sold her.  I took the money out of our savings to buy the horse and sure enough I more than tripled our money on her.

For those of you who are not in business, there are many chances for investment.  You might invest in a college course that will increase your earning potential or you might be investing in your own home.  The important thing is to not only save 10% of your income but also to make that 10% work for you so that it increases.

If you are new to personal finance and struggling to get your head above water, don’t be discouraged by the advice to spend less than you earn.  Try paying yourself first and you will soon find that you are spending less than you earn.

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When I had a job, I automatically had money put into a 401(k) plan.  It was thoughtless savings and when I left that job or fell on hard times, I ransacked the account, paid the penalties and counted my blessings.  If I had only known then, what I know now.

I watch my children, young and old, making the same mistakes that I made.  If they don’t have money, they spend it anyway.  When they do have money, they spend it like there is no tomorrow.  I cringe when I see the way that they spend money.  Don’t get me wrong, most of them are grown and have the right to buy what they want and live the way they want but I feel like I should have taught them better.

These few things took me 52 years to learn.  I wish that I could teach them to my children, it would make such a difference in their lives.

#1 – Save, Save, Save

Kids, I can’t tell you how long it took me to learn this lesson.  Save a small percentage of your money and protect it from yourself like a mother protects her nest.  When times are good, saving is comparatively easy and while it’s easy to save, it is also easy to rob that savings because it was so easy to accumulate it.  When times are hard and you can still manage to save a little, your savings are harder to come by and will give you security.   You will also value whatever small amount you can save.   It’s hard to remember that times might not always be good and you might need that savings at some point in your life.  So when times are good, save as much as you can; when times are bad, save as much as you can and remember when you dip into that savings for something that you might need it more tomorrow than you do today.

#2 – Debt Has Eternal Life

Most of the things that you buy today will have no value in 5 years.  That new phone or new car or new tv will not be worth a tenth in 5 years.  Quite a few of them will have no value in a year.  Yes, they are cool today but you will get bored with it quickly and want a newer model.  If you go into debt for it, you will probably still be paying for it long after it is gone.   Save credit for a house and a car as they are probably the only things that will outlast the payment. Even after paying your debt off, it lives on in your credit report.  If you have a 5 year loan, it will stay on your credit report for 12 years.

#3 -Learn About Money

No one teaches you about money.  There is no class in school that teaches basic finance much less about saving and investing your money.  You are pretty much on your own when it comes to budgeting, investing, saving and planning.  There are tons of good books out there that you can read about finance.  Take the time to learn about it.   Investing is fascinating and it was a total mystery to me until a few years ago.  I am still not sure I totally understand all the facets of it.  If you don’t know what a zero based budget is, find out.  You may not want to do it but at least learn about the choices you are making.

#4 – Don’t Put All Your Eggs In One Basket

What led to my own financial troubles was relying on the equity in my house to be the biggest part of my financial plan.  The unthinkable happened, real estate values dropped like a stone and I lost all that equity.  In six months, equity of over $100,000 dropped to $0.  I wish now that I had invested some of that in other things so that I might have had a chance to save some of it.  If you invest your savings in one thing such as the stock market, and it falls, you can lose it all.  Diversify.  Keep some in a savings account, some in CDs, some in stocks, etc.

#5 – Budgets Are Not Evil

A budget does not mean that you can’t spend money on what you want.  It is simple a decision making process to determine where you really want to spend money and how much money you will have to spend.  It is a process that allows you to prioritize your spending so that you have money to spend on the things that are important to you.  It gives you the security of knowing what you have, what you owe and what you will be getting.  Budgets aren’t set in stone, you can change them easily.

#6 – Credit Cards ARE EVIL

The single most devastating thing that you can do to your finances is buy things with a credit card.  Almost all credit cards charge ridiculously high interest rates even the best charge more than you would pay at a bank.  If you pay the minimum payment, you will be primarily  be paying the interest charge and you will pay it forever.  If you are late, most credit cards will not only charge you a late fee but raise your interest rate.  It is extremely difficult to pay off the balance especially when your budget is tight.

#7 – Emergency Fund

A credit card is not an emergency fund.  You need to have some amount of money in a savings account in case of an emergency.  Hopefully, you will have enough in it to support you for a couple months if you have no other income.  At the very worst, you should have enough in it to get you and your stuff home.  It is not easy to have the discipline to save an emergency fund but the more you save, the easier it gets.

#8 – Financial Freedom or Financial Peace

I don’t know if I will ever have financial freedom but I will have financial peace.  There will come a time in my life when I know that I have enough money to live on in the worst case.  Every dollar that I put in savings gives me more security and less worry.  To me, financial freedom would be the freedom to be able to follow my dreams and to have the money to do so.  I doubt at this point in my life, I will reach that but there is no reason why you can’t.

#9 – The Best Thing You Can Do For Your Marriage

Developing a financial plan and having an emergency fund is the best thing you can do for your marriage.  Agreeing on a financial plan, determining your financial goals and relieving the financial stress will do more for your marriage than any counselor in the world.   I have listened to all of you and your biggest marital problems are financial.  You and your spouse need to sit down and reach agreement on what is important to each of you and find a meeting point.  Once you have developed your financial goals, develop a plan to reach them and then stick to it.  This will help your marriage more than any other thing that you can do.

#10 – Teach Your Children

Do what I say, not what I did.  Once you have taken the time to figure out what to do with the money you have and  don’t have, teach it to your children.  Teach them about saving, help them to develop a habit of savings, let them see how their money can grow.   Teach them about budgeting.  Let them plan how they are going spend their money and let them suffer the consequences of not following their plan.  It is a hard lesson but it’s easier when you are there to help them.  Once they have learned about budgeting and planning, teach them about credit.   Teach them everything you know and it still won’t be enough.

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To complicate matters, our income has dropped over the last two months.  This probably has as much to do with all the other stress going on.  I have been less diligent about advertising and I have been much more focused on the crisis of the moment than on business. It has been hard to focus on writing, it has been hard to focus on much of anything.

Today is the first day of the rest of my life.  I woke up this morning and realized that my emergency fund has dwindled and that I have done nothing to rebuild it.   The first thing that I did was move half of my paypal account into my Ing Orange Savings account.  It won’t bring my emergency fund back up to the $500 minimum but it is a start.

Over the last two years, I have found that the most important step to improving my finances is to start.  It doesn’t matter if you are trying to save an emergency fund, pay off your debts, increase your income or build your retirement, it’s starting that is the most important step.    It gives you an imediate sense of satisfaction and accomplishment and starts the momemtum going.

If your goal is to build your emergency fund, put $5 or $10 into it to get it started.  If you need to pay off bills, pick one and send a snowflake off right now.  If you need to increase your income, sell something on Craig’s List or eBay.  Building your retirement, use the snowflake concept to send a little money to your retirement fund.

You will imediately feel better.  You will feel as though you have accomplished something positive.  Use that feeling to keep your momentum going, find a way to do something towards your goal every day.  Give yourself credit for every little thing that you do.

In my case, an emergency fund is not something that I can build quickly.  There is not enough money in our budget to put large sums of money into savings.  I am doing well if I can put $25 into it at a time but even smaller $5 deposits add up quickly.

Today I got started getting back into the savings habit.  I feel good about it.   Instead of looking at how far I have to go, I am going to look at what I have accomplished.  I am going to rework our budget so that we can find some amount of money to send to R’s alimony bill.  It will only be a drop in the ocean but no one will be able to say he isn’t trying.

Do you ever lose your focus?  How do you get started back?

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For those non-smokers out there, let me remind you that nicotine is one of THE MOST ADDICTIVE substances.  Quitting smoking is akin to quitting cocaine or heroin.  There is nothing easy about it.  It is not just as simple as not doing it.  Withdrawal has serious physical and emotional effects that sometimes need to be handled medically.  For me, those symptoms include crushing depression.

I would love to quit for both the health benefits and the financial benefits, however, it is not something that I approach lightly.  I know what quitting has done to me in the past and frankly it scares me.  I am going to attempt it simply because the cost of quit smoking aids has become less than the cost of smoking.

Right now, I am smoking a pack a day.  A pack of cigarettes cost me $3.14 right now and I have to say that I smoke discount cigarettes.  The average cost of a pack of cigarettes here is probably closer to $4.  If I figure out how much I spend per week and per month, it comes out to $21.98 per week and $87.92 per month.  It’s probably closer to $25 and $100 as there are days when I smoke slightly more than a pack.  I am going to average up and say $25 per week.

I can buy Habitrol 21 MG patches online for $13.50 per week.  Nicorette is $19.50 and Nicoderm CQ for $25.88.  There are generic store brands available at Walmart and other drug stores.  If I remember correctly our local Walmart has Equate Nicotine patches for $28 for 2 weeks worth.  That works out to $14 per week.

I have also looked into trying Chantix and the cost of that is approximately $140 per month.  If you can take it, I have heard wonderful things about it from other people who have tried it.

I will also need to take a anti depressant while I am reducing my nicotine intake.  The quit smoking aid buproprion is also an anti depressant so I will need to get a prescription for that.  It runs about $40 per month.

If I buy the cheapest nicotine patches plus the generic form of buproprion, my budget will look like this for a month:

Nicotine Patches          $54
Buproprion                     $40

Quitting Total                 $94

Smoking                           $100

Budget gains from quitting $6

Now there are other indirect savings such as needing less allergy medicine, fewer trips to the doctor with sinus and other respiratory infections, etc but I can’t really say that I can budget that savings.

There are many, many benefits of quitting both health and cosmetic.  It has been proven that people are healthier if they quit smoking.  It can lengthen your life by as much as 15-20 years.  It can reduce wrinkles, improve your dental health, and make your fingernails stronger.

Now I know these seem like trivial things but when you add them all up, the benefits of quitting begin to look more attractive.  Big sigh!  Yes, I am seriously thinking about quitting.

Does anyone have any tips?  Have you quit?  What helped you the most?

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The tree is up and the house has been decorated since Thanksgiving weekend.  Now I am ready to start thinking about visiting, cooking and generally just enjoying the holiday.  I might even be able to afford to buy a dress to wear to my daughter’s wedding.  She is getting married over the New Year’s weekend and I have been sweating whether I was going to be able to afford a new dress to wear.

So looking into the next 7 days, I am predicting an enjoyable and peaceful week.  It feels good to be looking forward to the holiday and not dreading it.

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I am still trying to get things put away so that the shop will be functional tomorrow.  I have gone from total chaos as I had lots of free help which got things moved but also meant that there was no organization to the move at all.  People grabbed things and stuck them anywhere.  I got here yesterday and had to move boxes of things so that I could move furniture and put those things away.  I got a great deal done yesterday and even more today as I am waiting for the phone company.

The good news is that high speed internet is included in my rent here so I will be able to update this site from work and I should have time to do it daily.  I am also way behind on my reader so  need to spend some time catching up with everyone.  I’m looking forward to it and will share a roundup of my favorites in the next day or so.

Just like coming back from vacation, I am brimming with ideas.  You can look forward to some perspectives on the economy from people in different walks of life as it is a major topic of conversation.  You might be surprised at how it is affecting people from all walks of life but then again you might not.

Until Tomorrow….

No related posts.

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by Caro‘s Lines

On Friday, I listed the 10 ways that I have found that I cannot save money and most of them are the ways that are recommended to save.  So how have I managed to save money while being on such a limited income?

The first and most important step is that saving money has become a priority.  Circumstances over the last year have decimated my retirement fund and all of my scant savings. Anything outside of my meager budget became an emergency even something as small as an extra tank of gas. In November, facing a dismal holiday season, I took a long hard look at my financial situation, started Oh My Aching Debts and began the road to financial recovery.

It has taken me six months to find ways that I can actually save money on my somewhat meager income of $12,000 a year.  I have learned to be creative, frugal and to develop some additional sources of income.  But again, and I can’t stress this enough, saving has become my number one priority and once it became a priority the rest just fell into place.

Here are the ways that I have found that I can save money:

I have made saving money a reward. It used to be that putting money into savings was more of a punishment than a reward.  Changing my priorities has meant that every dollar I put in savings is a reward and makes me feel good about myself.
Develop an additional income stream and designate that money solely to savings.  I have tried several different things from selling things on eBay to doing notary loan signings to hobby income.  The money from each of these activities went directly into savings.

Save my change every day.  I started dropping my change everyday into a jar.  It is a small amount, usually less than a dollar a day but it adds up over the course of a month and over the past few months I have been able to save almost $200 this way.

I snowflake money into savings.  No matter how hard I try, I end up buying soda and snacks.  It’s a habit I have tried to break but I guess it’s a luxury that I will end up never giving up entirely.  If I manage to go one or two days without purchasing any, I reward myself by dropping that money into my change jar. If I really, really, really want something frivolous and don’t buy it, I drop that money into savings as a reward.

I have found ways to save a dollar at a time.  Every day I put one dollar into savings for each dog that I groom.  Some days this is two dollars and some days it is five.  The trick is not to wait until the amount gets bigger than five dollars so I do it daily instead of weekly.  You and I both know that it works out the same but it is so much easier to drop one, two or three dollars into that jar than it is a twenty dollar bill at the end of the week.

I make a game of it.  I make a challenge to myself every week to see how much money I can squeak out of my budget to drop into savings.  Things like an extra trip to the grocery store can cost me as much as $20 in fuel so finding ways to eliminate trips or having a friend pick things up for me when they are in the city can save me money.  This goes back to snowflaking but it has the added allure of being fun.

I make things myself with what I have on hand.  There are a ton of forms that I use in my business.  Post cards, invoices, receipts, grooming records, appointment books, etc.  I have found that when I already have the supplies on hand, I can save money by making these myself and printing them out.  The savings will level out when I have to buy card stock but for the moment, I have it on hand.  At home, I make notepads out of scratch paper and find new uses for things I would have thrown away.  When I know I am saving a dollar or two, I drop that money into savings.

I don’t count my money.  I know this seems strange but when I drop a dollar into the jar, it ceases to exist.  I don’t think about it or about how much money is in that jar until I am ready to deposit it into the savings account.  That has a totally separate existence from my budget.  The amount that I put into it isn’t in my budget and the amount that is there is not included in any of the calculations for the coming month.  I never, ever allow myself to think that I can pay for this or buy that by using the money in that jar or account.

Those are the ways that I have managed to save more money on my limited income.  None of them by themselves adds up to a hill of beans but when I add them all together at the end of the month, I am always surprised at the amount that has accumulated.  I really don’t miss the money out of my budget and that is  the beauty of snowflaking whether it is to pay off debts or increase savings.  The tiny little amounts aren’t painful but they add up quickly.

What are some of the ways that you have found to put money into savings?  Do you have a regular amount that you save each month?  Do you have a savings goal monthly, annually or just a total amount?

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by Nieve44/La Luz

Several people on Twitter were talking about not being able to save money because they didn’t earn enough. It actually made me laugh because I earn less than $15,000 per year at my business. I have a mortgage that is over 50% of my take home pay every month. I would be willing to bet that the people complaining easily earn twice as much as I do.

Somehow, I have managed to save more money in the past few months than I did when I was earning $70,000 a year. So what changed? Well, I have a confession. For most of my life, I have thought that saving was…. boring. Yup! I’m embarrassed to admit it but I wonder how many other people feel that way.

Over the last year, saving money became a priority for me. I realized that it was no longer an option, I had to have an emergency fund. It is even more of a priority because my income is so low. When you have less than $300 a month to spend on groceries, electric, phone, and fuel even having a flat tire could be financially crippling.

These are the ways that I have found that I cannot save money on my current income.

1. I cannot have an automatic withdrawal from my account. My checking account is way too fragile with the balance usually hovering under $100 to have anything withdrawn automatically.
2. I cannot put a regular amount into savings monthly. My income is too irregular to plan on putting any certain amount on any certain day. I find that I miss the date or the amount and it de-motivates me from saving anything.
3. I cannot put large amounts into my savings account at one time. While I would love to save money in $100 chunks, I just can’t do it. If I wait to save until I have a large amount, the money will never get there.
4. I cannot use Smarty Pig. This has been a popular plan lately but with the restriction of having to close the account if you withdraw before you reach your goal, I just can’t justify the trouble it would take to set it up in the first place.
5. I cannot reduce my expenses any more than I already have with one exception. I smoke. I wish I didn’t but I do and I can’t seem to quit right now. It’s something to work on for the future as it’s an expense that I hate and really want to get rid of. I have reduced it to less than a pack a day and am working on reducing it even more.
6. I can’t have a payroll deduction as I don’t get paychecks. This is one of the drawbacks of being self employed.
7. I can’t save money by reducing my grocery bill. I am spending less than $100 per month on groceries now and I really can’t see myself spending any less than that.
8. I cannot save money by giving up movies, cable, eating out or other entertainment. I have not had the directv connected for the last year. I don’t go to the movies or eat out. I find my entertainment the old fashioned way. I spend time with my friends and family, and believe me, they are plenty entertaining.
9. I can’t save money by reducing my heating or cooling expense. I have found that my tolerance for keeping my thermostat set low is 60 degrees in the winter. Any lower than that and I just can’t function. I can’t reduce a/c as I don’t have it in this house.
10. I can’t save money by reducing my fuel expenses as I have already cut back as much as I can. I go so far as to only make one trip into town per week. Right now, that is my trip to Richmond for foster care training. If I need something in town, I get it then or I don’t get it.

So there you have it. I have tried most of the tips and tricks that are advised for saving money. It just won’t work for me. So how do I manage to save money? Stay tuned for Monday’s post on How I Save Money.

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