Frugality

Being a frugal person I love free stuff. It is hard to get a better price than free. Here are some resources for finding free stuff.

freecycle.org– Just join the local group in your area then look at what is being offered. Be sure to put up some of your own unwanted items too.

craigslist.org– They have a section for free stuff. Check it often because you never know what might pop up.

fatwallet.com– They have a free stuff board. I’ve found a few different free items I wanted here.

slickdeals.net– They also have a freebies board.

These are just a few of the free stuff places on the internet. If you keep your eyes open for possible free stuff you will probably find many more places. This includes places in your local community not just on the internet.

There is a new post on dumpster diving at the Frugal Duchess. She included my post on dumpster diving as well as posts from All Financial Matters and Frugal for Life. She is going to provide her own tips in a later post. There is some good information on dumpster diving in these posts. As a postscript I’d like to add that I have made almost $60 this month selling coupons I retrieved from the trash.

You can save money by walking instead of driving. The option of walking might be more feasible than you think. I used to think that it would take too long for me to walk to school.

My car needed repairs last week so I had to walk to school. I was pleasantly surprised that the walk only took about 20-25 minutes which is less than what I thought. I really should walk to school everyday. It would save gas and provide me with needed exercise.

Now that my car is fixed I should continue walking to school but it is too easy to drive. I didn’t walk today because it looked like it might rain. I can see myself making these types of excuses pretty often. What I discovered last week is that I don’t really need a car. When the option of driving is removed I find another way to get where I need to go. The only reason I can justify having a car now is that I might need it for my future job. When I get a job if the job doesn’t require me to have a car I might sell my car. This would save me money on gas,insurance, repairs, registration and whatnot. The drawback is my car isn’t worth much so the best way to get the full value out of my car is to drive it until it just won’t go any more. And the fact that I like the freedom of being able to hop in the car and drive somewhere whenever I feel like it. I just have to decide if the drawbacks are bigger than the money saving advantages.

There are many advantages of frugal living. One of them is apparent when making the switch to Daylight Saving Time. The only appliance I had to change the time on in my house was my alarm clock. I also had to set the time on my cell phone and car. My laptop updated automatically. My total time spent was probably about one minute.

I read an item in the paper about a guy who was complaining about having to change the time on many different appliances in his house. If he was living simply he wouldn’t have had that problem. That is just one example of how living simply has its advantages.

I received a mailer of coupons from Chick-fil-a in the mail yesterday. The coupons included ones for a free chicken sandwich and a free chicken biscuit. What made these a really good deal is that no purchase is necessary. I don’t have to spend any money to get my free sandwich.

This is where the dumpster diving comes in. Since this is such a good deal I wanted more coupons. There is a small trash can in front of my apartments mailboxes that people use to dump their junk mail. Digging through this trash can I found 5 more discarded mailers. It looks like I’ll be eating a lot of Chick-fil-a this month. I’ve dug through this trash can before to get Northwest Air coupons that I sold on eBay.

I call this dumpster diving lite because this trash can only contains discarded mail. That makes it pretty clean. I’ve never tried digging through the actual dumpster with people’s rotten food, dirty diapers, and such. It would probably take more than a free chicken sandwich to get me to dig through the garbage dumpster.