Category: Frugal

25 Frugal Ways To Reuse Everyday Household Items.

As many of you know, I also run a blog about the environment and sustainability. And while I rarely cross-promote articles, I decided that this post (originally on the other site back in June) could probably come in handy over here, with the economy the way it is and the growing concern about the environment. People are looking for more ways to save money and reduce the amount of trash they throw away, and if you look hard enough, there are a ton of things that come into our houses that we can reuse for multiple purposes! Here are 25 that I came up with; what would you add to the list?

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Frugal

By David

The Best Times To Haggle On Price.

Smart Money has an interesting piece about haggling on prices, and here are the things they say you should always try to get the best deal by negotiating:

Medical Bills – This one usually works.

Retail Stores – This one has never worked for me. Anyone actually haggled at a Best Buy or something?

Cars – But, of course! Never pay retail, and always do your homework before shopping.

Financial Aid – I will have to try that one, as my wife still has some leftover student loan debt.

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Frugal

By David

Getting Ready For Christmas Already?

Oh my! Going through my RSS reader this morning, I just read a post over at Being Frugal called “Tightwad Tuesday: Christmas in July“. Seems I should start my shopping now in order to save money on Christmas presents. Go check out Lynnae’s post to see how you can save money by starting now!

Christmas. Already. Never mind Christmas, it’s practically August already. Unbelievable!

Frugal

By David

Friends Encourage Friends To Be Frugal.

Photo by freeparking

You know that expression “Friends Don’t Let Friends Drive Drunk”? Of course you do, but if you think about it, the same general principle applies for many other things in life – we all want to stop our friends from doing stupid things. Luckily, I have many good friends throughout the personal finance blog world that do their best every day to give good advice on a ton of different things; from using credit wisely, to saving for retirement, to getting out of debt. But one of the subjects that comes up most often both here on My Two Dollars and on other sites I read is the idea of “frugality” and “being frugal” – so I thought it would be cool to gather up some my friends’ best “frugal” advice for you guys all in one place. Hope you enjoy the articles and can use them in your quest to be more frugal!

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Frugal

By David

New Free Personal Finance Templates In Google Documents

I am a big fan of Google Documents – I use it for rough drafts of blog posts, working on budgets, excel spreadsheets to track blog income; basically anything that I used to use Word for, I now use Google Documents. I can access my documents from any computer, I don’t have to worry about crashes here at home, and I can share my documents with anyone so we can both work on them at the same time. It really is a terrific way of working with Word and Excel docs. And while I was comfortable setting up my own templates in Google Docs, now they went ahead and came out with what looks like hundreds of free templates, from Business Plans to Budget Tracking to Resumes to Thesis Outlines – talk about good stuff! And on top of just offering them, they are way better than the ones the Microsoft offers with their software – much more user friendly and intuitive. Here are some of my favorites upon first glance:

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Frugal