Weirdest ways to try and save money?

[jeffrey]

Just curious as to some of the weirdest ways that you have heard others (or you have tried yourself) to save money? We have a friend that had toilet trained their cat to use a regular human toilet (no kitty litter costs). Any others like that out there?

[Joan.of.the.Arch]

Well, how about a new weird way to save money with duct tape?
How about a duct tape guided DIY hair cut?

My college son bought himself electric clippers to cut his own hair when he took off for freshman year. This summer when he came home to visit before junior year he had a fresh, very short cut. He spun around to ask if the back was straight, saying, "I used duct tape." What???!!! He says after he did the basic buzz, he put duct tape on the back of his head, basically spanning ear to ear. The he shaved everything off the neck from below the duct tape line to get a clean, even edge at the nape!

I asked him whether the duct tape pulled out his hair when he removed it. He said, "Not much!"....He thinks this is a perfectly normal thing to do.

[disneysteve]

I saw a story on TV once about a guy who reused his dental floss. He would tie it in a loop so he could use the whole string, not miss the ends. Then he would rinse and dry it and reuse it. That's going a bit too far, IMO.

[bjl584]

Let me first say that I do not advise doing this because it is illegal, but my cousin works for the power company and told me a story about a guy that wanted to lower his electric bill. He found a large magnet, buried in a flower pot, and placed the pot directly underneath his electric meter. The draw from the magnet was strong enough to slow down the spinning of the wheel inside the electric meter. This significantly lowered his electric bill. i believe it more than cut it in half. He was caught after a few years when an electric company employee was working on his lines and dropped a tool onto the side of the pot, breaking it, and exposing the magnet. He was given a hefty fine, but he was able to save quite a bit while he got away with it. I thought that was an interesting story.

[Broken Arrow]

Well, there was this one time when I was sleeping in the closet....

[ceejay74]

Well, there are the people who are spendaholics for whatever hobby they have, so when getting out of debt or saving money becomes their new obsession, they just start spending money in that area--budget software, fancy ledger books, financial planners, advice books--instead of just, you know, trying out the old stop-spending method.