Frugality

The following is a guest post by Lisa @ Frugalist, an Australian personal finance blog that promotes living well on a budget.

In the battle to save money and promote quality time, many families are forced to become creative in their down-time. Here are 7 ways to stick to a budget while entertaining the family.

1. Cookouts
Who needs to waste money on expensive restaurants, waiting for a table on a Friday night? For your immediate family, and perfect for when extended family is in town, consider a cookout – or a potluck type of idea when it’s not so nice outside. Add some games and you already have a good basis for such an event.

2. Did Someone Say Games?
Board games are a great family pastime, where you can certainly save money. Consider that Friday night dinner at your average restaurant – it would be fair to say that the board game (if you don’t have one/enough) would easily be cheaper than the meal (maybe half). Why not take advantage of that pizza special and see who will reign as board game champion in your family?

3. Cook Together
Food is certainly a pesky problem on a family budget, often when it comes to eating out. While not eating out that much is an obvious solution to sticking to a budget, you shouldn’t forget about the benefits of cooking at home. Let the children help as they are able; it can be a fun and education experience – for everyone!

4. Create a Stay-cation

It’s not necessary to leave home in order to allow your children to experience exotic locales. Plan a stay-at-home “trip” with meals, movies, travelogue films, and music based around the country of your choice. A stay-cation can be a fun way to spend some quality time together, while saving money. Granted, it’s not Disneyland, but it is a lot less expensive!

5. Entertainment Deals
When your family leaves the house to do something fun, take stock of adventures that are discounted. For instance, you might not like the normal bowling rates at your local lanes, but most places offer a myriad of specials on the weekend or during non-peak hours. You might be able to locate a great deal on bowling, miniature golf and a number of other fun family activities.

6. Free Outings
“Free” is better than “on sale,” and there are luckily many choices here as well. You could make the park a staple for your family, where sports and playgrounds offer plenty of options for all ages. Be on the lookout for free zoos or museums that are within driving distance, as well as free concerts and other family events nearby.

7. Movie Night
Sometimes the easiest way to save money is to stay in for the night. Designate one night each week as “movie night.” Rentals from your local Red Box or Blockbuster DVD kiosks are less than $2 per night. Purchase microwave popcorn and soda or juice, then let the kids haul out the sleeping bags and set up residence in front of the TV.
Consider cost-efficient options where you can stay in as a family. Trade the movie theater for a cheap rental. Have some of your children’s friends over for a home cooked meal, games, and whatever else you have planned. Maybe you could ride bikes around the neighborhood, play catch, and do some fun things outside. There is much to be said about the activities that can be enjoyed for very little money – that don’t require “going out.”

Lisa Kling is a freelance blogger for several personal finance sites, like Frugal Living, and on her own blog, Thriftability.com.

In order to increase productivity we have cut our cable from expanded basic to basic and rented an office. Cutting our cable from expanded basic to basic will save us about $33 a month. Our savings should be more than that since we will be losing most of our channels and no longer be able to watch on demand programs. We are paying a lot more per channel than we were before. I would cut cable out completely but we still have a tube TV and can’t receive over the air signals. We will likely get a new TV during the holiday season and if it is able to pick up the local channels we will completely cut the cable. That way our new TV could pay for itself. 🙂 We will also be staying in hotels two or three times a month and can get our cable fix then if we need it.

We also rented an office. I’m going to allocate 50% of the rent to my web business and 50% to our offline business. We don’t have to have an office but we are getting this for only $120 a month. It is basically just a 12×12 room but it is all we need. If I’m able to improve my productivity enough to make an extra $60 a month then the office will be worth it. I’m confident that the office will make me more productive. We will know for sure at the end of the month.

We have saved quite a bit of money this year by taking advantage of Staples’ ink cartridge recycling program. Staples allows you to recycle up to 10 ink cartridges a month and receive $2 in Staples Rewards for each cartridge recycled. This gives us $20 a month in Staples Rewards to spend. So far this year we have used them to get a printer,router, toilet paper,paper towels, and lots of office supplies. By combining the monthly rewards with coupons,rebates, and the 1 cent back to school items we have been able to really stretch our rewards.

To get started recycling ink cartridges at Staples you need to sign up for their Staples Rewards program. It is a simple form and should only take a few minutes to complete. You also need cartridges to recycle. If you don’t have enough cartridges of your own to recycle you can buy cartridges for about 25 cents each on Ebay or Craigslist. That still leaves you with a nice profit on each cartridge. After recycling your cartridges you will receive your rewards online the following month. You can either redeem the rewards online or print them out and use them in the store.

There is a limit of one Staples Rewards account per household plus there a few items for which the rewards are not valid. Office Depot and Office Max also have ink cartridge recycling programs. Office Depot limits your rewards to the amount of what you spend in their store limiting the usefulness of their program for me. They do allow 20 cartridges a month to be recycled for rewards though which might make their program worthwhile for others. I don’t have any experience with Office Max because they have more restrictions on their ink recycling program and they don’t have any stores in my area.

Recycling ink cartridges with the Staples Rewards ink cartridge recycling program is an easy way to save money on office supplies and household items.

Last week my wife and I did a movie theater mystery shop that required me to basically be at the theater all day for 3 days.  Some theater patrons that I observed participated in dishonest and sometimes really gross behavior in order to save a few bucks.  I’m not talking about sneaking candy into the theater.  That behavior might be unethical but it is not stealing.

The gross behavior I observed was a man digging through the trash for a popcorn bucket and drink cup.  He then took them into the bathroom.  Presumably to clean them out.  He later returned with a full bucket of popcorn and full drink.  The reasonable assumption is that he took these items to the concession stand and got the free refills on both of them.  I’m all for saving a few bucks but I am not going to eat out of a container that has been in the trash.  That is just plain gross.  You don’t know what could have been put in there and you are not going to be able to get them clean in the bathroom.  Even if you could be sure that they were clean this isn’t something I would do because it is simply stealing.

We also observed people being let in a side door and sneaking into a movie.  This is another form of stealing.  In the  past I used to sometimes cross over to another movie after watching a movie for which I had a ticket.  I used to rationalize this behavior as frugal but that is one of my supposedly frugal behaviors I no longer indulge in because I have determined it to be wrong.

I doubt that the people who stole from the theater actually thought they were being frugal but just to be clear: stealing isn’t frugal.

I’m back from my trip which ending up costing me more than I planned. While on the trip my Sprint phone died on me. I had been looking at the LG Optimus V Prepaid Android Phone for Virgin Mobile for a while now and I decided to go ahead and get it. I don’t usually have any desire for electronic gadgets but I had been wanting this phone did appeal to me. I can somewhat rationalize the purchase since my plan with Virgin Mobile will only be about $27 a month with tax for unlimited text, data, nights and weekends and 300 anytime minutes and my plan with Sprint is just over $35 a month. With the slightly over $8 a month savings I’ll break even on my purchase in 21 months. It will actually be a little less than that since I did make my purchase through Mr. Rebates which will give me 1% cash back and I should get another 1% cash back from my Discover credit card. I’m also hoping I can sell my old phone for a little cash.

I haven’t done much with the phone yet so I am hoping that it works as well as I think it will. The setup process was a little messed up and I see three pending charges in my debit card account for the setup when there should only be one. I’m guessing the other two will go away and only one will be completed but I’m keeping my eye on the account in the meantime. If you have a more expensive phone plan than making this switch would be easier to justify.

I included a link to the Amazon page selling this phone but I bought mine through Best Buy which I think offers a better price right now. Make sure you shop around because the prices for this phone vary quite a bit.