Frugality

Here are some other people’s posts(OPP). These are all topics that I was going to write about but other bloggers have already written better posts on them than I could.

“How to start a Roth Ira” from Get Rich Slowly. I just opened a Roth IRA with T. Rowe Price and just made my first $50 monthly investment today. I’m happy with them so far.

“Finding Health Insurance Options” from My Money Blog. My health insurance started this month. I was able to get health insurance with more coverage through eHealthInsurance (aff link) for less than I could with the student health plan. You would think that since most students are young the group insurance would be cheaper than individual insurance for a 39 year old but that was not the case.

“Sprint SERO Cell Phone” from My Money Blog. This is where I got my new cell phone and I think it is a pretty good deal. I did have some problems getting my phone and service though. First I had a difficult time verifying my identity. They wanted me to tell them my last two addresses. I move often and once I’m gone from a place the address is gone from my mind. I couldn’t provide them with that information and had to call back later from the phone number listed on my credit report. Since this is my mother’s phone number who lives three hours away this was a hassle and delayed my credit approval.

After I got that fixed my phone was on back order for two weeks. The entire time I was given the message that my order would be ready to ship in 48-72 hours. Also every time I tried to call them they were experiencing heavier than normal call volume. If you’re experiencing heavier than normal call volume every day than it is just normal call volume. The company that sent the phone is a contractor for Sprint so now that I have the phone I expect better customer service.

“The Present Versus the Future” from The Simple Dollar. I have made a lot of bad financial decisions from not being patient. As a kid I’m sure I would have eaten the marshmallow right away. I might still write a post about this.

I had the night off from one of my jobs last night so I decided to get some food and watch a movie. First I went to Buca di Beppo which I had a free $10 gift card for that they had sent in the mail last month. I actually had 3 gift cards because I dug a couple others out of the junk mail trash basket. I sold the other 2 on eBay and kept this one for myself. I ordered a small spaghetti marinara for $8.99. With the local sales tax of over 10% the total came to $9.91 coming pretty close to using all of the card without any money coming out of my pocket.

While they were preparing my order I walked over to McDonald’s and rented a movie from Redbox. Since I had a free promo code the rental was free. Since promo codes are good once per credit card by using a different card every time I have plenty of free rentals coming to me. I then went back to Bucca and picked up my order. Their small spaghetti is enormous. I’ll be eating spaghetti for days. Then I walked back home and watched my movie while eating some spaghetti. It was an enjoyable evening at home and it was completely free.

So far this year I haven’t spent any money on clothing. The only clothing expenses I anticipate having are socks and underwear. Unless I’m required to buy a specific item of clothing for work I’m not going to buy any other clothing this year. (I’m going to buy some running shoes but I consider that more of a hobby expense than clothing expense.) Even though I rarely buy clothes and the ones I do buy are cheap I still have managed to amass more clothing than I need. Yesterday I donated some of the clothes I never wear and I should donate some more. Even without buying clothes they still seem to accumulate from birthdays,Christmas, race shirts and other free clothing coming my way.

It is somewhat easier for me to not buy clothing since I’m a guy and don’t need to worry about my appearance that much. For a woman’s story of not buying clothing check out  Alex Martin’s Brown Dress Project,  where she wore the same brown dress for an entire year.  I’m not quite at that level yet but I like the idea of having just one outfit. Although it would probably be more practical to have one outfit per season. I doubt many people will be as extreme as Alex Martin but it does show how less money can be spent on clothing.

I’m talking about natural gas not gasoline. My local gas company has raised their customer charge from about $14 a month to $25 a month. This means that I have a $25 gas bill before I use any gas at all. This resulted in my current bill being $5 higher than the previous month even though I hadn’t used any heat and used less gas in this billing period. It appears that my gas bill will be $40 a month just for hot water and cooking.

That seems like an excessively high bill to me so I decided to fix it by canceling my gas service. Cooking won’t be a problem since I don’t do much cooking anyway. What cooking I do can be done with the microwave or George Foreman grill.

Hot water will be a little more difficult to do without. With the hot summer days a cool shower might be nice from time to time. I’m not big on cold showers though and I’m going to want a warm shower at least. This can be solved by showering at the gym. This will also force me to go to the gym more often which will hopefully result in my working out more. I’ve also considered getting a solar shower and using that.

So far I haven’t had to use any of these solutions. Although my gas was supposed to be turned off last Tuesday and I’ve already received my final bill I still have gas. I’m not sure if there is a delay in turning it off or what. I guess I’ll find out eventually when I either receive a bill or the gas is actually turned off.

While I’m hiking I am posting some of my posts from two years ago when most of you weren’t reading this blog. This post originally appeared in May 2007.

This is probably the best way to save money on car repair. I needed to get my car repaired last week because it was running poorly and getting terrible gas mileage. That is never good but it is especially bad with the current gas prices. The first shop I took the car to told me the problem couldn’t possibly be what I thought it was and they would need to run diagnostics to determine the problem. I didn’t want to do that so I took the car to a second shop. They thought the problem could be as I thought but wanted to run diagnostics to see if there were any other problems. After running the diagnostics they told me it would take $430 to do the basic repairs and there was a total of $1200 of repairs that needed to be made. My car is worth $1000 tops so there was no way I was going to put that kind of money into it.

I ended up driving three hours to the mechanic in the small town where my mother lives. He had done repairs for me in the past and I was always pleased with his results and the cost of his services. He fixed the car for $140 and it now runs fine. I’ve had a dramatic improvement in gas mileage as well. Since I do delivery as my main job the gas savings will soon cover the cost of the repair. Even when I figure in the cost of driving three hours each way I saved a significant amount of money over what it would have cost me to have it repaired here. And I don’t think the total cost of driving there should be added to the repair since I also got to visit with my family and take care of some other business while there.

In conclusion when you find a reliable and honest mechanic stick with him. You could easily save hundreds and perhaps thousands in repair costs over the life of your vechicle.