Frugality

I love to read and usually read one or two books every week. Sometimes I might purchase a book using a free Amazon gift card from Swagbucks, but the vast majority of books I read are free. If you have a Kindle or other popular ereader it is easy to find lots of free books. This includes popular books like The Hunger Games.

Before I started reading on my Kindle, I used to get all my books from the library. Most libraries now have ebooks available to lend for a variety of ereaders. In my experience, there aren’t too many titles available and the more popular ones are always checked out. Your local library might be better, so it wouldn’t hurt to check out their ebook selection.

My preferred method for getting free ebooks is to get them from Amazon. For a list of the currently available free books on Amazon you can go to a site like HundredZeros.com that will compile them for you. I usually just go to the Amazon Kindle books best seller list. There you will find the top 100 free books. You can click on a category, such as investing or mystery, to see that category’s top 100 list. This will give you tons of options for free reading.

Although you can find lots of free books on the Amazon free best sellers lists, the most popular titles are rarely on there. To get a copy of popular titles to read you need to join a borrow and lend site such as Lendle. On these sites you list the books you have available to lend and request books you want to borrow. This is how I was able to get free reading copies of the last two books of “The Hunger Games.” The loans last 14 days and after that the book is returned to the owner. Bonus tip: If for some reason you are not able to finish the book in 14 days it is possible to keep the book longer if you have a wi-fi ereader. I wasn’t able to finish “Mockingjay” in 14 days because I kept reading other books that were more interesting to me. In order to finish the book, I just didn’t connect to wi-fi for a couple of days. They can’t pull the book off your Kindle if you’re not connected to the internet.

If you don’t have a Kindle you can still use these methods to get free ebooks. There are Amazon Kindle apps that allow you to use your iPhone or Android phone as a Kindle. There are also apps for your PC or Mac. Or you can just read in your browser using the Amazon cloud reader.

If you have an ereader that is not a Kindle you can still read Kindle books on it. You will need free ebook conversion software such as Calibre. It allows you to turn a Kindle format book into a variety of other formats. For example you could convert a book from the Kindle mobi format to the Nook epub format. With this free software you can read almost any ebook on almost any ereader.

There are a lot more sites than what I’ve mention that have free ebooks available, but I haven’t used them. I am able to find more free books than I can read just from the methods in this post.

In this neck of the woods (just a bit south of Denver, CO), Memorial Day weekend is the first time we can be reasonably certain it won’t frost again. I say this with tongue firmly in cheek, since I’m talking 6250 feet in elevation here. We’ve had snow on Aug. 1st!

This season, everything has stayed warm and reasonably moist since mid-May. The hummingbirds have also appeared from their annual migration — another good sign. (They leave not long after Labor Day.) I’ve been gradually planting, a little here and there. If you’re starting to put in your garden, as well — or at least thinking about it — here are ten frugal tips that should help you do it better.

*Use up your old seed. Even if it’s an older sell-by date, many of these seed packets are still quite viable. They may not have as high a percentage, though, for germination — so plant them thickly.

*Look for seeds at dollar stores and discount places. Even the ‘fahncy’ brands will cost less at these places…and generic seeds do just fine. In fact:

*Generic seeds are often more reliable than the new types. Why? Because the new ones have only gone through a year or so trial. Generics are usually the old standards, heirlooms that have gone into the ground for generations. They often do better in more difficult conditions, because they’ve had multiple generations to adapt to them.Examples: Blue Lake, Provider and Kentucky Wonder for green beans. Straight Eight and pickling cucumbers. Yellow Bantam for sweet corn. (I’m also hooked on Honey n’ Cream, a newbie that’s been around long enough to know its chops.)

These reliable garden stuffs also make it possible for you to:

*Save good seed for your next garden. Let your last crop of beans ripen until the pods are dry — shell them, and you’ve got next year’s seed. Spent marigold and zinnia blooms contain literally dozens of seeds — and all you have to do is pull them off and throw in an envelope.

 

*Get good equipment. This is one area where truly you save more by spending more. A good brand of shovel or hoe will last for decades. Look at Consumer Reports, or check Amazon for customer comments. Tools do go on sale during the spring — and again at the end of the season. Or look for an estate sale — if they’re an avid gardener, they’ve usually left behind good stuff.

*Keep your ground fertilized, the old-fashioned way. Sure, you can spend extra money and buy planting mix with specialty ingredients, like Miracle-Gro. But you can save a great deal by just adding what our ancestors did: manure. Try a local farmer or rancher…a fairgrounds…or even the local zoo. Just a garbage bag’s worth of horse or cow manure makes a difference. (Let it dry out first, so it won’t ‘burn’ plants — or till it in a few days before you plant.)

 

*Brew up some tea — for your garden. Manure tea, that is. Put a half-shovelful of manure in the bottom of a five-gallon bucket. (Mine used to be full of laundry detergent.) Fill with water, then let ‘mellow’ for a day or so. Water your plants with this — they’ll love it.

*Start a compost pile, posthaste. Your eggshells, banana peels and assorted leftovers can really add to your garden. (They help out with container gardening, too.) Youtube is full of how-tos for constructing your own compost bin, including this one, done with a garbage can:

*Put in a drip system. Drip hoses aren’t that expensive, and they keep the water where it should be — on your plants, instead of spraying into the wind. Even that’s too expensive? Try gallon jugs or tin cans — poke holes in them and place by plants that spread, like cucumbers, zucchini or tomatoes. Fill daily.

*Pick your veggies while they’re young. Not only will they be more tender, they’ll taste better. And the parent plant will have time to make more blossoms — and set fruit. I’ve even had success trimming beans, broccoli, spinach and other greens back — if you do it early enough in the season, they’ll have time to regrow and produce again.

 

It’s not hard to start a garden, but the benefits are terrific: better health, plants that help purify the air, and food that you know is fresh, crunchy and good for you.

 

Cindy Brick grew up in a Michigan gardening family; her grandmother sold fresh eggs and bouquets of Queen Anne’s Lace ‘weeds’ to tourists in Grand Rapids. Cindy writes and gardens in Castle Rock, Colorado, including her own flock of up-and-growing baby chickens. Find out more on her blog: A Brick’s Look At Life.

Due to developments that I do not wish to discuss on this blog I am no longer living in my apartment.  If you are a long time reader of this blog you might remember that at one time I dreamed of living in a van down by the river.  So I am looking at my current situation as a chance to actually live that dream.  I might end up not liking it but it should at least be an interesting experience.

it has been harder to find that I like in my price range than I anticipated. In the meantime I am sleeping at various different places.  I have camped out a few nights, slept in my car a couple nights, stayed at a friend’s a couple nights, stayed at my mom’s a few nights, and even slept in my storage unit a couple nights.  These are all a lot better than actually being homeless but they aren’t great. I’m hoping I find a van soon or I’ll probably break down and rent an apartment for a short term. This was going to be a longer post but the admin for this site has been down all day and now the library is about to close. There will be more posts on this topic soon.

My blogs have taken a big hit in the past couple of months and now I need to build them back up. In order to keep track of how my various blogs are doing I will now be doing a monthly blog report. It will detail how much traffic my blogs are receiving and whether traffic is increasing or decreasing. I will also thank those that sent me traffic.

For April my blog traffic numbers are:

4,083 visits for Tight Fisted Miser which was a 33.95% drop from the month before.
2,445 visits for MyRetirementBlog.com which was a 26.53% drop from the month before.
2,281 visits for InvestorzBlog.com which was a 18.74% drop from the month before.
1,928 visits for BankBonuses.info which was a 26.91% drop from the month before.

The drop in traffic was mainly due to Google sending me much less search traffic. I can’t make Google start sending me more search traffic again but I will try to write more posts and avoid links they don’t like.

I’m also going to try to get more direct traffic. The plan for that is to participate in more blog carnivals and leave more comments. I also need to contribute articles more often to US News My Money Blog. And be more active in the Yakezie forums as well. If I am consistent in implementing the plan it will work but there is a lot going on this month so I’m not sure how well I will do. We will see when I do next month’s report.

Here are the top 10 referring sites to TFM last month.

1. U.S. News My Money Blog
2. My Money Blog
3. Free Money Finance
4. Swagbucks
5. Early Retirement Extreme
6. My Frugal Freedom
7. Frugal Babe
8. So Over Debt
9. Selbstaendig-im-netz.de 
10. Wisdom Steps 101

Thanks.   If you are wondering about number 9 it is a German site that lists the top earning blogs.  I’ll be falling down on that list now but at least I’ll still be on it. Hope everyone has a great month.