Category Archives: Frugality

Love don’t cost a thing

valentines-heart
photo by Grant MacDonald

I’m not a J.Lo fan, I promise. But with Valentine’s Day coming up this week, there’s never been a better time to remind ourselves of this simple concept: love and money have absolutely nothing to do with one another.

I have nothing against Valentine’s Day. It’s a wonderful idea. Unfortunately, like most holidays, it’s gotten all wrapped up with money and gifts and extravagance. It’s ironic that the holiday centered on love has become so extravagant when love is is the most frugal idea ever. Love costs nothing. It offers so many wonderful benefits, and they’re all absolutely free.

This Valentine’s Day, I encourage you to celebrate love without spending any money. I’m not talking about spending less money or a little money. Try celebrating the person you love most for free.

Spending money is easy, but we all know the best things in life cost nothing.

  • Take an extra moment out of the day to stop what you’re doing, embrace your significant other, and tell him or her exactly how you feel.
  • Write a letter letting him know what he means to you and how he changed your life.
  • Make a list of all of the things you love most about her.
  • Turn off the TV and spend the evening talking about where you’ve come from and where you want to go next.
  • Remind yourself of your first days as a couple, and try to remember the time when your partner was just too good to be true. Hopefully, you haven’t forgotten, but if you have, Valentine’s Day is the perfect time to remind yourself.

If you’re planning a money-free Valentine’s Day, leave a comment and share your plans!

Planning (way) ahead for our trip to Europe

louvre-at-night
photo by Zigar

The first step to taking on any overwhelming endeavor is learning and reading as much as possible on the topic. Before I really started planning my wedding, I read book after book on wedding planning, flipped through magazines, and searched for ideas for saving money.

I’m taking the same approach to planning our frugal trip abroad. Even though I won’t start booking plane tickets or making reservations until next fall, I’m learning as much about it as I can right now. By the time I actually start making plans, I want to be as close to an expert as I can be without having been there.

I want to share my planning process with all of you, so I’ve decided to start a sporadic series on how we’re planning and preparing. I’ve already come up with a rough budget for the trip, and now I’m looking for ways to slash it without sacrificing our comfort and fun.

We’re still 18 months away from our desired departure, so these plans are subject to change (and most likely will). But I want to keep all of you in the loop in the step-by-step process (and get your ideas and feedback as we plan), so I’m going to be writing about everything. I hope you’ll continue to give me your awesome feedback and ideas. I could certainly use them!

My first step is finding as many resources as I can. Yesterday Tony and I went to the bookstore and pulled about 10 books about European travel from the shelves. Eventually we’ll buy one for each city that can serve as a reference guide, but we’ll probably wait until next year so it will have the most up-to-date information.

I really like the Frommer’s and Fodor’s series for information on attractions, but I was really looking for a guide with a focus on first time travelers and budget travel.

I started flipping through the “Let’s Go” series (Let’s Go Paris and Let’s Go London). These books are mostly geared toward young travelers, particularly students, so they’re not really good for family travel. But they offer a ton of information for first time travelers and ways to save money. So far these are my favorites.

Do you have any other suggestions for planning resources?

Having fun with a limited entertainment budget

Lately I’ve been struggling with my ho-hum routine. It’s not that I’m not busy. It’s just that I’m so busy, that the only way I can get everything done is to stick to a pretty strict routine. It doesn’t leave a lot of room for excitement.

On top of that, our recent (and exciting!) decision to start saving for a trip to Europe next year has given us a new reason to stay home and avoid spending money. I’m thrilled to be working toward that goal, but I’m already feeling some cabin fever.

Typically we budget $50 a month for entertainment, and that money goes to any and all extra entertainment expenses. Sometimes we catch a Sunday matinee or two. Other times we use it to go out to dinner at the end of the month. It really doesn’t go too far.

I’ve been looking for fun activities to break up my routine without breaking my budget.

My best friend and I decided to start a long distance book club. She lives 800 miles away, but we talk on the phone regularly. We’re choosing books we can borrow from the library, reading them, and discussing every week.

What about you? How do you break up your routine without spending money? I’d love to hear your ideas.

The results of my search for low-priced contact lenses

I agreed to let my optometrist write my prescription for newer lenses instead of the older ones I’ve been using. I like that the new ones are monthly instead of bi-weekly lenses. I also found they were more comfortable than my old lenses, and the office assured me that they would end up costing roughly the same amount per year as my old lenses.

However, I made sure I would be able to change my mind. Since the lens brand is part of the prescription, they told me they could only write it for a certain brand. I was nervous about finding a good deal on the newer lenses, though. I made sure that if I decided after doing some comparison shopping that the new lenses were just too expensive, I could call the optometrist’s office and have them write me a new prescription for the old lenses. They said that would be fine.

Before I left the office, I had them price a year’s supply of contacts with my insurance discount and any rebates. The original price was $250 for a year’s supply or $62.50 per box. A 20 percent discount through my insurance would bring the total to $200.

There was also a $50 mail-in rebate for a year’s supply. However, I would need to mail in my receipt and proof of purchase, and then wait for a check. With discounts and rebates, the total would be $150 or $37.50 per box. Not great, but I guess it could be worse.

When I asked for my prescription, the manager of the optical office said I should let him know if I found a lower price. He said sometimes he’s able to match prices. Good to know, though I didn’t end up taking him up on it.

Next I checked at 1800-contacts.com (which  powers WalMart.com contact lens sales). I was not impressed at all. Their price was $50 per box. They offered an automatic $30 discount for a year’s supply, which would bring the total to $170 or $42.50 per box.

Today I checked Costco. The regular price was $32.25 per box. They also offered an electronic rebate of $20 for a year’s supply. The final price was $109 or $27.25 per box. That’s $90 less than I would have paid out of pocket at the optometrist’s office, and $40 less after all the discounts and rebates they offered.

For the record, I also priced my old lenses just for comparison’s sake. A year’s supply at Costco would have cost $112. So I actually saved $3 by going with the new, high-tech lenses. :)

It seems like a lot of money in a lump sum. However, since they’re monthly lenses, it works out to about $9 a month. It doesn’t seem too expensive when you think about it that way.

I feel bad for all those years that my parents ordered my contact lenses directly through the optometrist. Even with discounts and rebates, it’s usually just not the best deal.

I was also surprised to find out that 1800contacts isn’t as great a bargain as I thought. I think a lot of people order through them without shopping around, because they market themselves as the lowest-priced contacts dealer. 1800contacts were actually more expensive than the optometrist’s office, though. Just thought that was interesting.

Just remember, there’s almost always a better deal out there if you’re willing to do some leg work.

Frugal European vacation – first we need a budget

london-big-benYesterday I asked for some advice for traveling abroad on a budget. Kacie at Sense to Save is a genius, and she suggested that I post my budget breakdown to see if anyone can offer tips for cutting back.

I looked into airfare and hotel costs for two people for 12 days. Then I made some rough guesses for food and entertainment costs. I want to save enough to avoid stress on the trip (and to account for any price increases between now and next year). Of course we’ll spend as little as possible so we can put the leftover money toward debt and savings.

The numbers I found are based on a May 2009 trip instead of May 2010, so they are subject to change in the next year. Here we go:

Passports: $200

We’ll apply for passports and take care of that this summer.

Airfare: $1700

Right now, tickets to London with a return flight out of Paris this May are about $750 a ticket. We considered a round trip in and out of London because I thought it would be cheaper, but it’s about the same price.

Travel in Europe: $400

Travel from London to Amsterdam and Amsterdam to Paris by train costs about $400. Please weigh in if you’ve ever traveled Europe by rail. Is it fun, or is it a big old hassle? Would we be better off hopping on a plane?

Hotel: $1800

Hotels were the hardest thing to estimate. There are so many factors involved (including where we want to visit in each city and which areas are the safest/best places to stay). I searched for hotels in each city with low prices and high traveler ratings. I found several hotels for about $125 a night with 4 stars from other travelers. Sounds good to me.

Kacie asked if we’d consider staying in hostels to cut back a little. If I were traveling alone or with a friend, I would love to save by staying in a hostel. However, as a married couple we want the privacy of a hotel room. Nothing fancy, but definitely a place where we can be alone. ‘Nuff said.

Food: $1200

This is one area where I’m purposely WAY overestimating. I’m married to a foodie, and I know he’s going to want a considerable food budget to taste everything he can. Me too. I don’t want to spend the trip fretting about how much we’re spending on food, so I’m budgeting about $100 a day. I hope we don’t spend anywhere close to that.

Miscellaneous: $700

This is another very rough estimation. I’m still not sure exactly what we want to do and see, and how much everything is going to cost. I think $50 a day for museum admissions, tours, etc., is a reasonable estimation. I’d like to say that we’ll stick to cheap/free things while we’re there, but I know London and Paris are tourist traps. I want to have enough money available in our budget to see the things we want to see, even if they charge for admission. That said, I hope most of this money ends up back in our savings account.

Total: $6,000

I’m open to suggestions/advice. Be kind. This is just a preliminary budget plan, and I’ve never done this before. :)

Photo by 13bobby

Planning a frugal European vacation

eiffel-towerLast weekend during one of our long talks, Tony and I ended up discussing the things we’d like to do before we have children. At the top of both of our lists was a trip to Europe.

There are a lot of things we’d like to do someday, but international travel is the only one we can’t imagine doing with a baby.

Ever since we met, we’ve talked about traveling to Europe while we’re young — one last big trip before we settle down and start a family. When we first started planning our wedding, we briefly considered a European honeymoon. Our budget and my inability to find a full time job after we moved quickly nixed that plan. But when we decided to take a brief (and frugal) trip to Washington D.C. instead, we told ourselves that we’d plan for a European vacation the summer after he graduated in 2010.

When we committed to becoming debt free, I shelved this lofty dream. “We can’t afford anything like that until we’re debt-free,” I told myself.

But now that we’re credit card debt free and making serious plans for a family, I’ve realized something — we’ll be paying our student loan debt for a long time. No matter how aggressive we are, we’ll be paying those debts for years after we’ve had children. I’ve come to terms with that, and I’m ok with it.

We can’t wait until we’re completely debt-free to live our lives, though. My first plan was to be 100% debt-free before having children, but there’s no way I’m waiting 10-15 years to start a family. I’ve decided to add the dream of a European vacation to that list, too. We don’t want to wait until retirement to take the trip we’ve always dreamed of taking.

So we’ve set a new goal for ourselves: we want to plan a trip to London and Paris for May 2010. If it works out, we’ll be spending our second wedding anniversary in Paris! :)

That doesn’t mean we’re sacrificing our other goals, though. We’re not going to add to our debt for this trip or stop working toward our goal to be debt-free. After some planning and discussing, here’s our rough plan:

  • We’ll pay for the trip in cash.
  • We’ll be as frugal as possible in planning the trip, and plan ahead to make sure we’re getting the best deal possible on airfare, hotels, and other expenses.
  • Our emergency fund is still our top saving priority, so any saving for Europe will start after we’ve fully funded it.
  • We’ll continue to pay a little extra on our student loans to cut the total time we’ll be repaying. After the trip, student loans will be our top priority.
  • All extra money (including gifts and extra income) will go toward emergency and vacation savings.
  • We’ll cut spending in other areas to free up money for savings and debt.

I did some preliminary research and determined that we’ll need to save about $6,000 for the trip. Including our emergency fund goal, that means we’ll have to save about $12,000 in 16 months.

I realize this plan will delay a lot of our other goals — including being debt-free and buying a house. We’ve considered all of this in our decision, and I can’t imagine a scenario in which we’ll regret the trip (as long as it doesn’t add to our debt).

I’m more excited about this goal than I’ve been in a long time, and I’m feeling good about our decision. As excited as I’ve been about paying debt, it can be so overwhelming and depressing to devote every extra penny to what seems like an endless black hole of debt. Adding an exciting goal to our plans has given me the lift I needed. I can’t wait to get started!

photo by franz88

Frugal extras that bring me joy

Between the economy, the freezing temperatures throughout the country, and the post-holiday blues, everyone can use a pick-me-up right now. I know I can.

In the past, I often used money as a method of cheering myself up. If I was feeling down, I’d spend. But that only led to guilt and more depression when I realized I was broke.

It’s possible to treat yourself without breaking the budget. Here are the little extras I splurge on when I’m feeling down.

Gourmet coffee

It would be too expensive to drink gourmet coffee every morning, but sometimes we buy enough beans for one pot. For about $3, we create our own coffee house at home.

Movies

Most of the time we rent from RedBox (which is usually free with a code), but sometimes we see a movie at the cheap theater for $2 or splurge on a matinee for $5. Watching a good movie with my husband takes me back to the days when we first started dating.

Dessert

Sometimes after dinner we go out to a local bakery for a cup of coffee, and we split a slice of pie. For about $6, we’re out of the house enjoying something sweet.

Cooking fancy meals

If we’re craving a restaurant meal, we buy the ingredients in the grocery store and try to make it ourselves. Cooking together is fun, and it’s so much more rewarding to enjoy a meal you made yourself (not to mention cheaper).

What frugal extras bring you joy?

Be wary of liquidation sales

I came across this video, and I couldn’t resist posting it.

Just as I suspected, liquidation prices aren’t necessarily the best deals. No matter where you’re purchasing an item, make sure you’ve done your homework to ensure you’re getting the lowest possible price.

In the end, the supposed “percentage off” is less important than the final price. Always shop for the lowest final price, not the largest percentage off.

The second most frugal way to buy contacts

The best way to save money on contacts is to wear glasses instead. You can get a great deal at online discount stores like Zenni Optical, and a good pair of glasses will long outlast your supply of contact lenses.

I’ve had the same pair of glasses for two years, and they’re still in great shape.

As much as I’d like to give up contacts, I just can’t get over my discomfort with glasses. My lenses magnify my eyes, making me look pretty silly. So I only wear my glasses in the evening and at home.

I have an eye exam scheduled for this weekend, and it’s time for me to order new contacts. In the past I’ve ordered them from the same place where my exam is done. This time, I’m doing some research to find a better deal.

Here’s what I’m doing to make sure I pay the lowest price possible:

I’m taking my prescription with me.

I’ll have my doctor write a prescription for my contacts so I can shop around online and in stores for the best price.

I’m checking prices everywhere.

I’m not thrilled with the prices at 1800contacts.com, so I’m checking prices at Wal-Mart, Costco, and other places to find the absolute lowest price.

I’m looking for online coupons.

There are a ton of coupons for online contact lens dealers. I’m finding the best ones so I can figure them into the online prices for a real comparison.

By shopping around, I’m hoping I can get a 6-month supply for $75. The best I’ve found so far is $100 for a 6-month supply. Hopefully I can do better than that!

Where do you buy contact lenses?