be more frugal

On a home phone line Long distance is a rip off. I was spending close to $50 a month to have long distance on a phone line. A few months ago, came across grandcentral:{www.grandcentral.com}. This is a free services which gives you a single phone number you can share among your friends, and it ties to all the phones you use. The service also features outbound calling, which allows you to click on a name in your address book and the service rings your phone, and then rings the number of your contact. I love it. Our phone bill is now $13.50 plus tax (about $24).

I make it a point every year to do my own taxes, following the instructions on the form, and doing the calculations. I understand that this isn’t for everyone, but it can save small chunk of cash. Remember when you write off the prep of tax paperwork, you are still paying for the work, just not the tax for the work.

This year we’ve (my wife and I) that we will build a Menu which works on a two week cycle, and the shopping will be done based upon the items required on the list. On the 28th we went shopping and bought only what we needed and stayed under our budget. It makes sense that this will save us some money, because impulse shopping cost money!
Another big savings, and simple, is to eat before you go shopping. This curves the impulse to buy what you don’t need.

I’ve been looking at my cell phone bills and trying to figure out how to pinch the pennies. My wife and I are on a ‘Family’ plan which gives us 800 minutes of talk time a month with roll over minutes. Currently we use about 200 between the both of us and we have thousands of minutes rolling we will never use. Our bill each month is $85.00. Our phones are old, and we need new hardware I was looking at prepaid, were we buy a card and recharge the phone with cash. The minutes are purchased, and there are no freebies, but I think we can actually save some cash, plus no monthly bill. I know the phones aren’t going to be ‘free’ (like anything is free when there is a 2 year contract), but the cost up front might be worth the savings over time. Has anyone actually crunched the numbers to figure if prepaid is a better deal than contract? Thanks!

This is a trick we’ve learned with 4 children who drink a lot of milk. When milk is on sale ($2.49 a gallon), I buy several gallons and put them in our freezer. We normally buy skim milk, but it works well with whole also. When the milk freezes, it turns a yellow color (from the fat cells expanding). Two days before you will use the milk, place it in the back of your refrigerator, and it will begin to thaw. It looks white after it’s completely melted, and might need a bit of shake to mix the contents. Any Ideas for less expensive milk solutions?

In the morning my wife likes a cup of coffee, and we buy coffee in the bags (like tea). She found it can be used again within a few hours for a weaker brew. I found that I like my tea on the light side, so I count the dunks in water (Microwave 1.2 C for 2 Minutes) Dunk 20 times, but I can use the tea bag for 3 cups a day. The tea bags are then torn apart and the contents are dumped into our compost bin.
I remember a story my grandmother told me about going thru the Great Depression, she said they would use one tea bag for the entire family, and the grinds would then get mixed with my great grandfathers tobacco and he would smoke them in his pipe. I don’t smoke, but I’ve found the work great in the compost pile, and they break down faster if they aren’t in the tea bag.