Frugality

My hack to increase my exercise and reduce my natural gas expense is to turn off my hot water heater.  With no hot water at home I have to go to the fitness center to take a shower.  Once I’m already at the fitness center I might as well exercise.  This solves the problem of getting motivated to exercise and will save me a little money as well.

My car has 223,000 miles and hasn’t had too many problems until recently.  I just replaced my clutch yesterday at a cost of $440.  This is on a car that is worth maybe $1000.  I’m not sure how much I should spend on the car at this point.  Before I took the car to the shop I told myself I wouldn’t spend more than $500 on it and the repair came pretty close to that.  There comes a point when it is better to quit repairing an old car and get a new(to you) one. I’m not sure what that point is but I do not plan on making any more repairs to my car.  I’m hoping to replace it with a van this summer so I’m not even sure that I should have fixed it now.  I could get by during school without a car if I had to.  I’d just prefer to get a little more use out of my car.

That is what I paid for my four night stay in Cancun.  My lodging also included a free continental breakfast.  I was able to spend so little by staying in a hostel.  A hostel is a great way for a solo traveler to save on lodging expenses.  I couldn’t have stayed even one night in a hotel for the price I paid for four nights in the hostel.  It is also a great way to meet people from other countries and cultures.

The hostel I stayed at on this trip was the Soberanis Hostal.  It is a little different than most hostels because it is primarily a hotel with a few rooms set up hostel style.   It doesn’t have kitchen facilities that you can use to prepare your own meals llike many hostels  but I didn’t consider that a big drawback.  It was located downtown but it was only a ten minute 65 cent ride to the beach.  If you’re going on a trip I recommend considering a hostel as a lodging option.

The biggest expense you can save money on when taking a vacation is airfare.  One way to cut costs is to fly on a chartered airline.  They usually have special fares that are much lower than regularly scheduled airline´s fares.  On this trip I was able to purchase my flight to Cancun for $229 including taxes.  The next lowest price I could find was $449.  That is a significant difference.

To be able to take advantage of these special fares it helps to be flexible on your travel dates and not need to plan too far ahead.  I booked my flight two weeks before leaving. The company I used is Worry Free Vacations.  They serve seven cities primarily in the Midwest.  There are other charter companies that serve other regions.  A look through your Sunday Travel section will probably enable you to find what companies are in your region.

The following is a guest post from Jacob of
Early Retirement Extreme. I am on vacation this week and will be having guest posts while I am gone. If anyone else wants to submit a guest post please email me.

When I was a student I saved a ton of money and time by not having a
TV. Instead I just watched DVDs on my laptop. Now one might think that
this could be pretty pricey in terms of buying or renting DVDs.
However, this was not the case as I joined a “DVD exchange” that had
been started by one of my fellow grad students. The basic idea is that
everybody provides a list of the DVDs they own. These lists can either
be collected in a central database, or simply sent around via email or
a mailing list. One thing you can count on is that your friends
probably share the same taste in movies and series as you do, but that
you may not own exactly the same DVDs. For instance, I own all seasons
of Startrek TNG while my wife owns the entire ten seasons of Stargate.
Conversely, friends of our owned all of Babylon 5 and Black Adder
(welcome to nerd central). So instead of all of us getting a couple of
DVDs at a time from netflix or pursuing the impossibility of getting
them from blockbuster or each paying $50 or more per season at the
store, we simply borrowed them from each other. My recommendation is
that the entire network somehow agrees on how to properly treat a DVD
(like fine optics!) and how long one should generally keep a DVD (not
more than a week!) before handing it back. Surprisingly not everybody
is into sharing, but there is also many people who think it’s a great
idea but who haven’t thought of sharing. Therefore if you are starved
for home entertainment just make a list of your DVDs and start putting
out feelers.