I will say, though, that reading TSD has helped inspire me to go back to my bookshelves and enjoy favorites for a second, third, fourth time (or more). I love that I’m getting more out of my books, and my husband loves that it isn’t costing him anything.

That being said, we rarely eat out. I’m trying to think of our last lunch out. Two weeks ago. Costco. I had a turkey wrap and she had a slice of pizza. Our last dinner out was an Indian restaurant on September 29th. Mind you, we’ve been saving for expected meals out this weekend in Dallas (State Fair weekend, UT-OU game).

The key is to define actual needs, actual wants, and stuff. Cutting out the stuff and saving for the wants keeps us out of trouble.

When my kitchen consisted of a microwave and a few dishes my elderly friend was always open to having company. She often set a beautiful table and started the salad prior to my arrival so we had a few minutes to chat before time to start cooking. In return, when she hosted a party of her own I set the table, welcomed her guests, took food to the table, kept drinks fresh, made new acquaintances and met other people who cared about my friend.

The benefits of hosting at someone else’s home or sharing your own kitchen are simply to many to list.

But I often spend hours on browsing different online bookshops, searching for interesting books and where to get them cheapest. I have a list of stores that are relevant depending on whether I need just one book with low shipping costs or many with low per-book price.

A really good tip is to look at the “Used and new” section on Amazon. Very often you can get new or never read “used” books for a fraction of the retail price. Sometimes for as little as 0.01USD plus shipping and Amazon make sure that the sellers are very honest about the condition of the books – I have never been disappointed. As a European in a country with VERY high VAT (25%) it is even more rewarding to buy used books from sellers in UK as they don’t add VAT to used books and our costumes rarely control packages from within the EU. We also have a minimum value threshold of merchandise from outside the EU, so at times money can be saved by purchasing used books from the US.

Just my 2 Cents :)

OMG. No way. He’s 10 or so…. Things seem to be different now.

Plus the local news angle as someone posted above. It’s not all junk.

I decided to embark on a gameplan to cook well without blowing a bundle on cookware.Wholeheartedly I endorse EBay or Overstock.com to track down Quisinart cookware.Cookbooks? Go to Amazon.com.

I decided to shift my thinking on clothes from chic to utilitarian. I found brand new Oxford button down dress shirts on EBay for $10 that were tagged at $39.99.Dickies twills were found for $12 brand new. Penny loafers were two pairs for $80 at Shoe Carnival in my town. New Balance Cross trainers brand new for $33 were found at Nordstrom Rack.

It is all about researching ideas. Ways are available to cut costs without cutting quality.

Well, my first response is I’d make it a goal to never have to choose between feeding my family and paying cable. Seriously.

I know people fall on hard times, and I know people are struggling just to make ends meet. I have been there myself. I don’t mean to sound callous to their difficulties.

But the reason I’m working is to provide myself with a certain level of comfort. I intend to eat and have my cable too. For a long time I had only the most basic cable ($15/mo.) — just two months ago I upped my subscription. I don’t watch tons of TV, but I’m finding I actually enjoy watching a variety of things I didn’t have access to before.

Yes, I can certainly live without cable, but it adds something more to my life. Why punish myself by living a more austere lifestyle, simply because I could? What, is it a crime to enjoy ourselves even if that means spending a little money to do it?

I think the missing part of this discussion is — just because you CAN live without it, does that mean you HAVE TO?

Personally, I’m not interested in being guilted into making due with less.

Oh, and I’m a devotee of hulu.com. But even that has its limits.

ANYWAY.

I decided to google this new word and figure it out. Then I totally busted a gut laughing… First posting was from the Urban Dictionary: 1 definition – To drop your pants in a park, lie down, put french fries on your balls and let the seagulls eat the fries. Pretty sure that is not at ALL what was intended. LOL

It amazes me the amount of people who say they would never give up cable. What if it was have cable or feed your family? Yes, we have a need for entertainment. But reading books is free. Visiting a neighbor or friend is free. And here’s an idea, going to church services and attending other church events it free as well. It also will feed your soul in a way that television will not.

Eating out and going out with friends seems to be my huge money suck. It is my social activity of choice with my friends, however. So I don’t want to become a loner.

Like most things in life, striking a balance between spending money and enjoying my time off is important. I have started cooking for friends as I get more confident in my cooking so this may become an option too.

I’m definitely more into enjoying an experience with friends than buying more materialistic “stuff.” That said, I find the less I want the happier I become.

*************

We’re BFE according to Nielsen market research, and can get one fuzzy tv channel from a station 50+ miles away unless we want to go with a tv antenna slightly bigger than a cell phone tower.

You might be able to get ‘lifeline’ basic cable, which ends up being the local broadcast networks, like three different shipping channels, and maybe TBS. In order to get broadband where we live, you have to go through the cable company, and it was presented to us that we’d either pay $35/month for broadband and $10/month for that lifeline service or $45/month for just unbundled broadband service.

And we still get satellite tv on top of that lifeline basic. It’s our preferred media entertainment option- never really seemed to get our money’s worth out of Netflix, haven’t rented from a video store in a year or actually seen a movie in a theater since Return of The King. And we get to see an entire season of NHL games for less than it would cost for us to get decent tickets to see one game in person.

Anyways, I can’t say enough about how much I have learned from watching such channels as the History Channel, Discover, NatGeo, Discovery Health, TLC, Science Channel and so on. My formal education may have stopped with a high school diploma, but the ability to self-educate using resources such as these educational channels has been going on for decades now. I’m grateful.

Regarding using the library rather than buying new books, I certainly advocate this. The caveat for myself, however, is that the towns I have lived in either didn’t have one or was very small and limited. The library in the next zipcode mandated that I have that town’s zipcode to be a member. It was a lose-lose situation.

Instead, I’ve used Amazon.com to buy my books used for pennies on the dollar. I can then turn right around and sell them at my next garage sale for around .50, depending on the book itself.

I agree that we should not give up the things we love doing, but we also need to recognize the fact that just because some of us choose to cut cable from our lives, doesn’t automatically make others to do the same.

Das ist alles……

Sounds like a pretty bleak existence using that formula too closely (and yes, I fully realize that so many around the world don’t even have clothes or shelter and we are, as Americans, even the poorest among us, much better off than others globally).

How does art (visiting museums; purchasing art; purchasing supplies to create art and crafts)and self-education (via books, courses after college, activities, etc. and yes, gasp, even TV such as PBS)fit into a life? It doesn’t seem to.

Our family has memberships to two museums–and we are proud to support them. Given the high cost of a single admission and our love of going, it pays off. (Yes, we do go to some museums for free when they have free days.)I cannot imagine living in the wonderful city I live in without going to its museums regularly. Same with the theater, although now it’s only an annual excursion. But we look for cheap, experimental stuff as well as free. And we’d rather spend whatever “extra” money we have on this than other things like designer clothes.

We use the library each week and Paperback swap. We exchange books with friends. We watch a lot of TV shows on the computer.

We’ve invested in a well-stocked kitchen. And we find, surprisingly, that sometimes we spend MORE not less than we would if we ate out because you know what? You can really get into cooking and it can get expensive when your tastes move well beyond the basics, as often happens when you cook for yourself and really try to duplicate some of the food you miss because you can’t afford to eat out and also want to eat home more.

We are aging and we continue to do what we can afford when it comes to the theater, museums and other activities in our beloved city. The day will soon come when we simply will not be able to afford very much at all–even with a senior discount. At least we will have some great memories to sustain us.

FYI: When we were single, in our twenties and thirties, we spent a lot of time and money socializing at events, activities and eating out–and we did buy expensive clothes. I don’t regret that for a second and had we not done it, we never could have lived a more “austere” life when we had a family and needed to save and invest for our family’s needs.

Life is about cycles. Both in earning and spending. There is a time to “spend” (without debt, obviously!) and a time to spend less and a time when you won’t have enough to spend. Do what you can, when you can based on what really matters to you. And it will always require hard choices unless you have a lot of money. (We would have loved to have purchased a home over the years, but it just never worked out given our fluctuating incomes and work)

You will have plenty of time in later life to sit in your home, maybe meet with friends, etc. Socializing often means spending SOME money even if you just hang in each other’s houses.

As for TV: some of you fail to get that in certain parts of the U.S. you have cable for one reason only: You cannot get ANY channels without it. That includes basic local news, and national news on a real-time basis. For some of us, particularly based on our professions, those are not a luxury. (And no, net news is NOT a substitute.)

What’s pathetic is that just to get basic channels you need to pay an arm and leg, both in monthly fees and electricity for their stupid always-on boxes (and you need more than one).

That’s a rip-off I wish we could eliminate. (We tried. Converter box and antennae via a USB tuner device on our computer. Not so great.)

I am so very very tired of advocates asking people to strip their lives down to almost “nothing” in the belief that less is always more.
The monastic / zen life is NOT for the average family, although an annual “life audit” can help to pinpoint where we are wasting our time, energy and resources of all kind. And if our lives as we live them, match the life we want.

Your life is not about what you have in it, but how you use it.

We have TV so our kids can have their friends over and we can “monitor” what they watch and have them around (safer). We share our Netflix sub and have friends over for “movie” night (between the two couples, we save something like $65 and up per movie, given what a nite at the movies would cost).

We participate in various community nights and have progressive dinners and special theme nights. (Not sure how much we save with those, but it’s a lot more intimate and friendly than expensive restaurant dining.)

Oh, and yes. It’s a lot easier to give up expensive dining because again, in our twenties, and thirties and forties, we worked like dogs and part of that included business entertaining at some very nice places. We’re grateful, even if a lot of the time it was not fun. (Business entertaining is anything but relaxing.)

By the way, I never hear much about anyone advocating to cut back on kids activities, lessons, and stuff with related high $ expenses. This is something in every socio-economic group. I have to laugh. We never could have afforded what so many parents spend on their kids activities todays

Kids are so over-scheduled and often so pushed by parents…but nobody talks much about trimming/cutting back on this! same with clothes for kids.

Being a child today seems to be a huge competitive sport in so many ways for the kids and parents. It’s just unreal.

I don’t know how parents today cope with the pressure from the kids, the schools and other parents.

I admire your lifestyle Trent. But it would not work for many people with their kids in major cities. Trust us on that. Those who try to break the mold here end up isolated and ostracized. It’s not fun at all.

But people get a lot from this city that you can’t get anywhere else. And whether one lives here for a time or forever (lucky), it’s a blessing, whatever else the sacrifices.