Re-reading Tightwad Gazette

[Tightwad Kitty]

Re: Re-reading Tightwad Gazette

"The Unemployment Opportunity" on pg 831 of the Complete TW Gazette.

In this article Amy mentions a book, Your Money or your Life: Transforming Your Relationship with Money and Achieving Financial Independence by Joe Dominguez and Vicki Robin.

This article was extremely relevant to me because this is my dream. I have been considering a move like this all my life.

Anyone else find this article relevant to their near future plans or living the dream now ?

As I had to retire early, you could say that I am living that dream now!

One week after the day I retired, I made myself debt-free. Then set about learning to live on the pension that I got. Which I have done successfully for the last nine years so far!

I did read some of 'Your Money or your Life' and I did a life income and current asset checks. When I was reading it. I had keeped my tax files and wage check books for past 30 years or more. Surspising they were equal.

[Duchesse]

Re: Re-reading Tightwad Gazette

"The Unemployment Opportunity" on pg 831 of the Complete TW Gazette.

In this article Amy mentions a book, Your Money or your Life: Transforming Your Relationship with Money and Achieving Financial Independence by Joe Dominguez and Vicki Robin.

This article was extremely relevant to me because this is my dream. I have been considering a move like this all my life.

Anyone else find this article relevant to their near future plans or living the dream now ?

[Mathew Green]

Re: Re-reading Tightwad Gazette

A good article to read this time is
‘Saving Money When You Have No Time’ Vol 1 p261 (CTG)

I found by making systems & routines for a lot of jobs. I wasn’t going over the same ground of finding what I had to do each time. Especially, if you are to do this task very rarely.

I keep a list of the tools I need to change my car's oil and oil filter on the wall above my toolbox. A quick look at the list tells me which ratchet, extension, socket, and filter wrench I need. No more taking extra tools out of the box, and no more dragging the wrong size tools under the car only to drag them back out again.

[Duchesse]

Re: Re-reading Tightwad Gazette

I finally got her 'complete' book out of the library and I am finding so many interesting things..nbot to much useful, (I do alot of what I am willing to do already)

This is the most profound statement of tightwaddery.

[Tightwad Kitty]

Re: Re-reading Tightwad Gazette

A good article to read this time is
‘Saving Money When You Have No Time’ Vol 1 p261 (CTG)

Amy’s list in brief
1. Be more organized.
‘This will save money as well as time.’
Timing what you are to do in the future. Pre-planning knowing what purchases so you can take advantage of coming sales. Menu planning, early morning & cleaning routines so that it stress free to do it all. Have systems in place that you know what to do beforehand before you start a task. Look at Flylady or Get Organized Now! for more ideas here.

2. Scale down‘Expect to do, have or spend less. …Eat out less.’
Make some things last longer, buy secondhand instead of new.

3. Do those time-consuming thrifty things.‘Focus on using the time you do have on ways to save that will give the largest return for time spent.' If you are having a problem in this area then do read this section.

I found by making systems & routines for a lot of jobs. I wasn’t going over the same ground of finding what I had to do each time. Especially, if you are to do this task very rarely. I made a complete job list and tasks I had to do in cleaning for every room in my house

[PrincessPerky]

Re: Re-reading Tightwad Gazette

speaking of egg cartons, are the papery ones compostable? or recyclable? (I mean like in a a peper recycle bin?)

[Tightwad Kitty]

Re: Re-reading Tightwad Gazette

A good article to read this time is ‘The Frugal Balance’ Vol 2 p482 (CTG)

Can you be too frugal? That the question in this article.
Amy Quote: ‘Because we all have different amounts of money , time space and personal energy and different ideas about what constitutes quality of life, we each must find our frugal balance.’

Amy in this article talks about Pack-Ratting.

My views on this topic.
If you are pack-ratting, it must be things of value and hard to come by items.
Some of the things that I keep are mostly things that would cost money to replace and books that I have are now out of print are hard to come by. But as for egg cartons, styrofoam tray etc. They are to easy to come by too store them, I just my neighbors to save me them I will have enough with 48 hours to fix a box.

[lrjohnson]

Re: Re-reading Tightwad Gazette

I am glad that I have an awareness that I am not a candidate for a fixer upper. I don't have the skills, not the desire.

I am however not too picky, so while I couldn't handle broken/collapsing, I could handle funky.

[getforfree]

Re: Re-reading Tightwad Gazette

We bought our house, it was a fixer- upper, but dh and me did lots of work on it. Replacing parts of the walls, roof shingles, new texture inside and outside, new paint everwhere, new kitchen cabinets, new tile, carpets, laminate, new sinks, new toilet.... almost everything new. We spent about 10k on building materials. Our friend, who is an electician, did some work for us, so now we have ceeling fans in almost every room. We didn' have to hire professionals. I am lucky, Dh is very handy, he can do anything, and I am trying my best to help. I never thought before, that I would be able to put up roof shingles, or cut the tiles.

There is a way to get free paint:

Go to your recycling center, where they recycle oil, chemials, paint and all that stuff. They give away paint, but there might not be all the colors you want, but I mixed them and it turned out well. The cans are usually half full, and you have to read labels what kind of paint it is. I also got some car cleaners and floor cleaner for free. Too bad, I found out about it after we had most of our stuff painted, but still saved lots of $$.

[Tightwad Kitty]

Re: Re-reading Tightwad Gazette

A good article to read this time is ‘The Frugal Fixer-Upper’ Vol 2 p367 (CTG)

Amy’s goes into Questions like:
Why get a fixer-upper?
Who should buy fixer-upper?
How do you shop?
What should you look for?
How do you fix it up?

I personally think that you need to know what are your skills & DIY jobs to be done that are needed before you take on task. Also get some professional quotes before you start as they can give ideas that you may never have thought about & laws of what you can & can’t do too! This will give you a price to work from too! Check with your local council for by-law etc. Here electrical and plumbing jobs are not allowed without a license as well as council approval and inspection on some jobs. (Red Tape)

My skill are limited to just painting the interior of my house all else I need the Pro’s.

[PrincessPerky]

Re: Re-reading Tightwad Gazette

plain white shirts are a major pain! that and socks! but DS has blue tags and DD has red (just the color it came with though) DS has green 'hanes' on his socks DH has grey..pretty cool of hanes to do that (DD has pink toes.)

[lrjohnson]

Re: Re-reading Tightwad Gazette

I used a version of this to mark "sleep" t-shirts versus nice t-shirts for outside the house. If it has a stain, small hole, whatever, I mark the tag with a line in Black Sharpie pen. Then when I'm pulling them off the line it's easy for me to know what goes in the t-shirt pile and what goes in the sleep drawer. Real old t-shirts don't need the mark, but a newly small grease stained tee could otherwise make it to the regular pile,

[Tightwad Kitty]

Re: Re-reading Tightwad Gazette

A good article to read this time is ‘The X System’ Vol 2 p382 (CTG)

Amy’s quote: ‘The oldest child is X, the next oldest is XX and the next oldest is XXX and so on. Everytime an article of clothing is passed down add another X.’

As a child is a household of girls, this problem came up with our socks & underwear. My mother used to sew a color thread on them for each child, any that didn’t have a color thread was hers.

This is ideal way in the same sex or uni- sex clothing in a family.
But do remember to buy the younger ones some new clothes at times. One boy I knew was eleven when he rebelled on not having any new clothes like his friends, when his parents sat down & thought about it, he had been wearing brother’s or cousins clothes since birth.

[getforfree]

Re: Re-reading Tightwad Gazette

Heh, yeah we limit it to 4 gallons a week, and with our third comming into a drinker, we are still going to keep it to 4 gallons, reducing the total for everyone so that UE can join in.

I used dry milk for muffins yesterday, didn't notice and they taste great.

I was wondering can you use dry milk to thicken pureed watery vegetables for a baby? does dry milk have the danger that real milk does for babies? little late for that now, but I used rice cereal for UE couple months ago (seems like soo long ago, man time flys!) but I was wondering for my next kid (which should be a while)

I used baby sereal or the free sample formulas to thicken the vegetables. Givng milk to the babies younger than 1 y.o. is not recomended. It has to be either brestmilk or formula. I used to get gerber baby cereal with coupons, so it wasn't that expencive, because 1 8-oz box lasts over a week.

I don't limit my kids on milk, they drink as much as they want. Dh alone drinks 3-4 cups a day. Whenever I pack his lunch, he reminds me not to forget the milk. He takes 12-oz glass-bottle of milk with his lunch. Sometimes I am joking if he wants a baby bottle instead. He said, yea, imagine me opening my lunchbox, and my coworkers see the baby bottle with milk there, they will make fun of me, that I am a baby. But he is my big baby.

[pearlieq]

Re: Re-reading Tightwad Gazette

We are using these size bottles to water our garden by putting a hole in the lid & cutting off the bottom, digging a hole in the garden near each large scrub, and burying the bottle 2/3 down in the ground. When watering you just filling the bottles and not ground around the plants so only roots get watered.

I like that idea!

The one that creeps me out is the milk jug mask! I can just see so many things going wrong with that one...