[Celticwarrior]

I thought about what Soramina's Dad brought up about there being little on here about what to do with the current economic situation, and I think that we should have a thread about some tips and tricks to save money, make more money, or make the most of the money we have. To that end, I thought I would start with a couple of ideas:

The first would be being frugal. Learning what you can do without, or replace at a substantial savings. In other words, being a Tightwad. I have found the following very helpful in that regard.

TIGHTWAD CENTRAL... Dedicated to empowering people via personal economics. Finances, Frugality and Freebies. Income Secrets and Money Savings for a debt free future.

and

Amazon.com: The Complete Tightwad Gazette: Amy Dacyczyn: Books

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The other item that strikes me as particularly useful is one that we all deal with on a daily basis: Food.

When you read preparation books, they often harp on the idea of buying, storing and using foods that your family already eats and would find comforting in a time of emergency. Today, many of us eat out a few times a week, buy fast food for dinner rather than cooking, and enjoy a number of commercially made sweets, and all of that costs MONEY. So if you want to save money, and still make the kids (and your own tummy) happy, how do you deal with that?

Top Secret Recipes
Secret Recipes: Top Secret Recipes From Famous Restaurant's
Top Secret Copycat Recipes - A collection of copycat recipes of famous top secret recipes that are almost as good as famous restaurant recipes.

and

Amazon.com: Top Secret Recipes: Creating Kitchen Clones of America's Favorite Brand-Name Foods (Penguin Viking Plume General Books): Todd Wilbur: Books

Making your own, home-made versions of anything from McD's value menu favorites to Appleby's appetizer platters, to your favorite cookies from the Girl Sprouts, you can eat well, save money, and keep the kids happy without going broke.

Being frugal, and being able to still provide the things you and your family need are ideas that all survivalists should embrace.

We have already talked about shopping at Dollar Stores, discounters like Big Lots, and at stores like St. Vincent de Paul, Salvation Army or small thrift stores. Remember that almost all supermarkets have Generics of various sorts; that there are many "discount cards" now given out free by companies for customer loyalty that give you access to special pricing, money back for regular purchases, and discounts unavailable without the card (like using a coupon without having to CLIP coupons!); speaking of coupons, THEY ARE MONEY! Use them! Don't think that is just for housewives who enjoy holding the lines up at the market! Honestly, you can save a ton by using them, and look up more on the company websites for the stores you shop at and the products that you buy (Procter and Gamble, Coke, Johnson & Johnson, etc.) already; also the Big Box Clubs (Sam's Club, Costco, etc.) allow big savings if you can buy in bulk and repackage into smaller, more usable portions. Foodsaver or other vacuum packagers, tupperware containers, and canning jars are your best friends.

Lastly, hunting and gathering aren't just seasonal. You can find something to eat at all times of the year, and there are all manner of animals and fish that can be taken nearly year 'round. Remember that all of the foods that you can put into storage, either canned, jerked, frozen or otherwise preserved, is free food you only spent the cost of a hunting license for, or the cost of a trip out into the woods or meadows for gathering your favorite berries, mushrooms, or other goodies. Everyone should get out and fill up their pantries and freezers with the bounty nature provides us, and cut their dependancy on processed and therefore expensive foods.

I hope this was a helpful first post in this thread, and that others continue to add to it, and give their best ideas for saving and making money.

[tjwilhelm]

Good idea CW!

Here are some of the things I've done, and sometimes still do to get "stuff:"

Dumpster diving;
Cruising ahead of the garbage truck on Monday mornings;
2nd-hand and thrift shops;
Auctions;
Garage and yard sales.

It's AMAZING what some folks throw away. Sometimes things that are thrown out are in perfect working condition and just need to be cleaned up. Sometimes they only need a minor repair and they'll give you years of additional service.

I had a neighbor who got really annoyed with me. He had a Snapper lawn mower that was only a year old. It gave up the ghost and he couldn't get it working, so he bought a new, cheaper mower, and put the Snapper on the curb for the garbage/junk pickup. I asked if I could take it. Just a little bit of troubleshooting, and a $10 ignition module, got the mower running again...and I used it, "in his face" for a decade.

Same guy threw out a Eureka vacuum cleaner. It was only a few months old, but he used it to clean up a rental property where the former tenants had more than a few pets. Loads of pet hair trashed the thing and he tossed it. I installed a new impeller, and I've been using it for 8 years.

One of the best things you can do to save money on "stuff" is to build your skills set. Learn the critical crafts: plumbing, electrical, and carpentry. Learn to weld and braze and solder. Learn how things work, and develop your troubleshooting and repair skills. Fix other stuff you pick up for free, and fix your own stuff instead of paying top dollar to professionals.

[Celticwarrior]

Good tips. Can't imagine how much I have thrown away over the years paying mechanics to fix things on my cars that if I was a better mechanic I could have probably done myself at a THIRD of the price.

Sewing up holes in socks seems trivial, but how many new socks do you buy in a year? If we fixed more than we replaced, we would be a lot richer.

Auctions are a good thing too. Check out EVERY STORAGE FACILITY in your area and find out when they have their clearance auctions to get rid of the stuff people leave in their storage units and stop paying for. You can get some AMAZING deals for $10 or $20 bucks for "unsorted boxes" or "locked boxes" that contain unknown goodies, or a really cheap open auction price on items from clothes to cars.

Along those lines, this time of year people pay someone to do their taxes, and at $50-75 a return or more, that can really pinch the pocket, especially if you OWE the IRS on top of that. Many tax places like H&R Block have free Tax Prep classes that you can take and learn all about "the Tax Code and YOU". Once you are done, that knowledge and software like H&R Block's "TaxCut" or "TurboTax" by Intuit can not only help you do YOUR taxes without paying someone else, but you can use that to help OTHERS do their taxes, for a fee if you want to make a little "consulting" money.

Thanks TJ.

[tjwilhelm]

Eat less, eat better, save money...

Come one gang...fess up. I'l bet most, if not all of us eat way more than we need to. Not only is that a waste of money, but it goes counter to some of the basic values of this site and forum. Over-eating leads to being overweight, high blood pressure, high colesterol, and even diabetes. We need to be in shape! And, it's useful to learn to control our appetities.

Sometimes it's hard to avoid dining out, so here are a few things I do to save a few bucks:

Order off of the Wendy's 99-cent value-meal menu, and don't even look at the other stuff!

Look old, like me, and get the senior citizen discount!

Portion control, portion control, portion control...only eat half the meal, and take the other half home for lunch or your inevitable snack. They always give you more than you need.

Learn to like water, unsweetened tea, and skim milk.

Share a typically large-portioned meal with a friend, child, or significant other.

Many days, for either lunch or breakfast, I'll limit myself to a large protein shake, like the weight-lifter/body-builder folks slurp down...loaded with good stuff and surprisingly filling and long-lasting.

Order at the drive-through and order a kids meal.

On the run, stop at the grocery store instead of a restaurant. Buy a bag of pre-washed baby carrots and some fresh fruit to eat on the road.

Join (and USE) a CSA group -- community supported agriculture. It's a small farm that collects $, and sometimes volunteer help, from its members, and the members get a great deal on top-quality, fresh food.

Be a patron of "U-Pick" farms. We have a blueberry farn near to us, and every summer we get a boat-load of fresh blueberries for the freezer, for less than half what we'd pay at the store.

[Celticwarrior]

TJ mentions "dumpster diving". A lot of people associate that with icky maggot-riden dumpsters in urban alleys behind restaurants. However, having worked in retail, I can tell you they can be gold mines for folks with a little fix-it-ability. When stores get things that are broken in some way back from customers, they have a process they dispose of those goods. Most of the time their receiving dept. sends the company that made the item a request for return credit. If they accept, the receiving folks box the items and ship them back. IF the company doesn't think it's worth their while, they will send a rejection and the order to "destroy on site". Now, by contract, the store is supposed to make everything unusable if it IS pulled out of the trash. However, many times stores are lazy and won't do a complete job of it. Things like CD's, computer disks, pads of paper, things where there are many items in a pack OFTEN will have several if not MOST of the individual pieces unharmed. Then you have things like furniture. If you have ever bought a chair or a knock-down (put the pieces together yourself) piece of furniture like a computer desk or bookcase, you know that these things sometimes need to be returned because of damage in shipping, or broken pieces. What most people don't know is that many of these get tossed because it costs so much to ship something that heavy back to the vendor. So, receiving dept's cut up the fabric on chairs and toss them into the trash (if you know upholstery, or want to learn, I can't think of a better resource for raw materials) and boxes of furniture are tossed when all you need to do is open it up, and find out what pieces are damaged or missing and request replacements from the company that made it. Often there is no charge, or a nominal shipping charge for big pieces like chair pneumatics or bases, or side panels and tabletops.

Don't write off "dumpster diving" as beneath you until you have checked behind your local big box or department store, shopping center or favorite hardware store. You might be surprised by what you come up with.

[walkabout]

Great ideas CW and TJ.

On the food sis and I when we're in town we'll be getting back to brown bagging it, which is a great saving, we were slackers this winter. The food we eat in town is way to much and we don't feel so good afterwards and thats even sharing a meal. So its not from being way stuffed.

Another thing to think about is setting up a booth at the Farmers Market. They even have those that sell items other then food. Plus you can get some good deals as well. Good food for sure.

Keep in mind that as the green movement moves forward so do things like clothing and even toys. Old fashion toys made from wood are really a lot of fun and much safer then all that painted and toxic junk they sell. Learning wood working is such a great gift and sure to always be needed.

Check the laws to make sure you can sell childrens clothing and toys. I'm not sure if that bill passed or not, or still on the table.

Learning how to make clothing and coming across fabrics and build your stash. Textiles may get harder to come by if factories have lay offs or shut down.

Labor is going to be the key to surviving. The more you learn the more your value will be to others in need and can barter or pay with currency. Not being above any type of work that will come your way . If someone will pay to have a sidewalk sweeped then by golly take it cuz some other fortunate one will come along, take it and be able to feed his family.

CW thanks for those links, good stuff

[blacksmith]

wow all I can say is wow but up here I need to eat more seafood we are putting a garben in this year I will hunt deer I do sping wool but by it from ebay not hard to do want to set up a loom someday

[countrygirl]

When I was heading to Alaska, I really did not have hardly any money. I was on the verge of homelessness and living in my car. Which would have been hard, since the car wasn't even mine. Things I did to preserve what small amount of money I had:

When I needed to buy clothes for the coming winter for David and I, I took a little trip to goodwill. I came out of that store with four huge bags, set to go for a year or more and spent $200.00. That covered everything that I need now for my wardrobe.

I stopped eating out. I really could not afford it. We ate dinner at home everynight. Tortillas and rice go a long ways. I can make so many things if I just have that. And tomato sauce.

We started to go to the library, park and other free ways of finding Entertainment is always good. Most kids like the library. They just need to get exposed to it. Playing card games and board games used to be really fun for me. What happened to those days? I used to love going to Grandmas and playing games all day.

Thanks for great ideas on this thread. Those are really good suggestions.

[Celticwarrior]

Originally Posted by countrygirl

I stopped eating out. I really could not afford it. We ate dinner at home everynight. Tortillas and rice go a long ways. I can make so many things if I just have that. And tomato sauce.

Funny you say that. When I worked in a store that had a breakroom, fridge and microwave, I used to bring a big package of flour tortillas and a small bag to keep in the fridge. In the bag were packages of salami, pepperoni, sliced and shredded cheeses, squeezable pizza sauce, a jar of peanut butter, some dollar-store jars of spices, some condiments like taco sauce, jelly, ketchup and mustard, and a pack of hot dogs. With the tortillas, I could make mini-pizzas, various sandwiches, buns for hot dogs, and just nibble on them with a pat of butter or a smear of pizza sauce as a snack. Way cheaper than fast food, probably a whole lot healthier, and certainly not boring.

[blacksmith]

rockfish make his own tortillas on the boat all the time not that hard to make and we can food I have the start to the garden in the window of the boat and we still have over 100 lars of fish still on the boat just want to get a woodcook stove now I have lived remote most my life so you make things takes to long to get then from the stores
if you can make more then you by you will not spend all your money
we have lived on $280 a month not that long back and did good better then now
I think when we moved into town that was bad for us now we get about $1400 a month and do not have it as good