Have fun.

Thanks to Egan Snow for the image.

Whenever you’re trying to change something in your life, you’re going to make it very, very hard to sustain if you hate what it takes to make that change a reality.

If you hate exercising and hate the thought of even trying healthier foods, it’s going to be incredibly hard to lose weight.

If you hate the act of reading, it’s going to be incredibly hard to read the great books of literature.

Similarly, if you hate making frugal choices, it’s going to be really hard to find ways to consistently save money.

Here’s the thing: frugality, like all of these other things, is made up of easy things and hard things, but the easy things and hard things vary from person to person and from situation to situation. The things you like doing are different than that of your friends, after all.

The best way to make frugality a big part of your life is to stick to the parts of it that are fun to you. Dig into cooking or into frugal travel planning or into more sensible grocery shopping.

View frugality as a challenge and look for ways to improve your score (the money you’re saving). Compete with yourself, but compete against your friends, too.

When you look at how much you’ve saved, feel good about that total. Know that you’ve chosen to not waste that money on silly stuff. Turn it all into cash, stroll into your bank, slap it down on the table, and say “I want my car title, please.”

Frugality isn’t about suffering and doing without. It’s about feeling good and having fun because you’re succeeding in the areas of your life that you really want to succeed at while cutting back in the areas that you don’t really care about.

For me, every step in that path is fun. It’s all about finding new things in life that don’t take away from the other things I value. It’s about focusing on friends and community. It’s about learning how to do new things and feeling great about the skill set that I’m building.

Frugality is fun.

This post is part of a yearlong series called “365 Ways to Live Cheap (Revisited),” in which I’m revisiting the entries from my book “365 Ways to Live Cheap,” which is available at Amazon and at bookstores everywhere.

The post Have Fun (365/365) appeared first on The Simple Dollar.

You read through them, discard the majority of them that don’t apply to your life, and find the handful that are actually useful to you.

Wouldn’t it be nice if you had a personal frugal assistant who did this filtering for you, leaving you with just a few tips that actually made a big difference in your life?

You actually do already have this. It’s called your social network.

Thanks to Ed Yourdon for the image.

Your friends know where you live. They know where you work. They know what you enjoy doing. They know the things that you like. You know the same things about them.

If there’s someone out there who’s going to be able to find a frugal tip that’s going to work for you and not bug you with something useless, it’s a friend.

So, how do you get this trend started? You do it by sharing first.

Whenever you hear a frugal tip that seems like it would sync really well in the life of one of your friends, remember it and share it. Tell that friend about the tip. Facebook is a perfect avenue for this kind of thing.

Don’t overshare. Stick to the frugal tactics that you are sure will be genuinely useful and new to the person you’re sending the tip to. Look for ones that really solve problems in their life, particularly ones that can be executed with minimal effort.

What you’ll find is that your friends will eventually begin sharing with you. They’ll look for tips that perfectly match your situation and share them. Some of them you will have heard, of course, but when you get a tactic that just fits your life to a tee, it can be a tremendous help.

Even better, this type of exchange is a form of “money buddy,” which means you’re mutually encouraging each other to remain frugal. A person who pops up every once in a while with a frugal tactic encourages you to keep thinking about it, not just as a money-saving and life-enhancing methodology, but as a social one, too.

Share, and share alike.

This post is part of a yearlong series called “365 Ways to Live Cheap (Revisited),” in which I’m revisiting the entries from my book “365 Ways to Live Cheap,” which is available at Amazon and at bookstores everywhere.

The post Share Your Experiences and Frugal Tips (364/365) appeared first on The Simple Dollar.

When you first dive into the whole idea of frugality, it’s pretty exciting. It’s so easy to find big lists of tips and many of them seem to apply to your life. You cut your spending at the grocery store. You cut your spending on food consumption. You cut your spending on entertainment. You cut your spending on utilities.

You cut here, you cut there, you cut everywhere.

At first, you grab the low-hanging fruit and you see savings everywhere. A grocery list and store flyer routine cuts your grocery bill by 30%. Eating at home saves you $30 a week, and using leftovers saves you about the same. You make your own household cleaners, take advantage of tax-free holidays, and use online automated shopping techniques. The savings are sizeable and plentiful.

Thanks to Southern Foodways Alliance for the image.

Before long, though, it gets harder. A lot harder. You’ve cleared all of the low-hanging fruit, which means you’re left with tactics that either don’t save you as much money or don’t apply to things you do as often. Not only that, the “newness” of frugality has worn off.

That’s the very point where it becomes vital to keep trying new frugal tactics.

For starters, it helps keep the idea fresh in your head. When you keep looking for ways to save money and you keep asking how your behaviors are minimizing your spending, you continue making frugality a natural and normal part of your life. You are frugal when these thoughts are the norm and not the exception, and the only way you get there is through practice.

Not only that, trying new frugality techniques eventually leads you to better ways of doing things. I’d happily spend an hour or two trying out a new tactic if it meant I would spend $0.50 less a month with no additional effort because in two years I will have saved more than enough money to make up for that time.

Sometimes, I’ll stumble across techniques that cause a breakthrough of sorts, causing me to save quite a lot or see things from a new angle even for someone who must have seen tens of thousands of frugality tips by now.

The practice of continually trying frugal tactics keeps my mind in the right place and continually leads me toward spending less on the normal routines in my life. It can also be a lot of fun (since I actually enjoy trying new ways of doing things).

So, when you see yet another frugality list, don’t sigh and click away. Look through it and try to find a few new things to try. You might gain a little ground or find a new breakthrough, but in any case you’ll have fun approaching an ordinary thing in a new way.

This post is part of a yearlong series called “365 Ways to Live Cheap (Revisited),” in which I’m revisiting the entries from my book “365 Ways to Live Cheap,” which is available at Amazon and at bookstores everywhere.

The post Keep Trying New Frugal Tactics (363/365) appeared first on The Simple Dollar.

In simplest terms, an hour of your time is worth whatever you’re paid for an hour’s worth of work at your job. After all, you’re repeatedly willing to spend your time and energy at that rate, so it must be an exchange rate you’re happy with.

In fact, that’s a pretty good metric to apply to the rest of the time that you have. If there’s a frugality tactic that can earn you a better hourly rate than what you make at work, why wouldn’t you do it?

Here’s an example of what I’m talking about. Let’s say I can make a batch of laundry detergent in fifteen minutes that, after expenses, saves me $6 over the store brand. Since I need laundry detergent, I end up saving about $24 for every hour of my effort.

Another example is making bulk meals in advance. If a meal costs me $6 to assemble, but if I assemble four at once, it costs me only $5 per meal, resulting in the extra time I spend assembling them saves me $3. It might take me an extra half an hour to do it, but it’s an even better deal because I’ll get the time back later when I have easy-to-prepare meals in the freezer.

You can make comparisons like this with almost any frugal task you take on.

If you find that preparing a grocery list saves you an average of $20 per grocery store visit – which is a reasonable amount for a well-considered grocery list to save you – and it takes 45 minutes to prepare it, then you’re saving $26.67 per hour spent assembling grocery lists.

If you spend an hour making your own homemade dry soup mixes that cost two dollars less per mix than the ones at the store, but you make twenty of them – enough for the whole winter – you’re saving $40 per hour.

The time you spend at home on frugal tasks directly converts into money saved. It’s a direct conversion, one with an hourly rate you can calculate if you keep track of the time invested and the money saved on the item.

For me, I shoot for an hourly rate of $10 to $15 (depending on the task) when I’m doing something by myself, or a rate of $5 if it’s an activity I can do with the kids. I’ll usually try an activity once and calculate the hourly rate of my savings and if it’s around the $10 mark (or around the $5 mark if I can do it with the kids), I’ll make sure to keep it in the repertoire.

Do this calculation regularly, and you’ll also find yourself with a useful tool for deciding if a new frugal activity is worthwhile enough for you. If you’re just not saving much money for an hour’s worth of effort, there’s almost assuredly a better way to spend that hour.

A frugal task that cuts your expenses by a certain amount is just as good as working for that money – or, arguably, better since you don’t have to pay taxes on the money you save with frugality. Calculate up how much you save for a task, compare it to what you earn at work, and you might have yourself a new appreciation for frugality.

This post is part of a yearlong series called “365 Ways to Live Cheap (Revisited),” in which I’m revisiting the entries from my book “365 Ways to Live Cheap,” which is available at Amazon and at bookstores everywhere. Images courtesy of Brittany Lynne Photography, the proprietor of which is my “photography intern” for this project.

The post Remember That Time Is Money (362/365) appeared first on The Simple Dollar.

The problem with this is that I struggle for things to put on my wishlist. I usually have to start thinking about it several months in advance to come up with a reasonable handful of items for my list.

It’s difficult because I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about the reasons that I want things and I’ve realized after a while that most of the reasons I have for wanting things aren’t really good reasons at all.

I would invent usage scenarios in my head that weren’t realistic. I’d have an unrealistic belief about the quality of an item. I’d want an upgrade that wouldn’t really help me to achieve anything new. I’d want an entertainment item that I wouldn’t have enough time to properly enjoy, especially considering the entertainment items I already had. I’d be lured in by hype and not really have a good reason for wanting that item at all.

The simple act of thinking about why I wanted things has drastically cooled my desires for material things. I simply don’t want things as much as I once did.

Thanks to Jacob Batter for the image.

We all find ourselves wanting things at times, and it’s easy to build up those desires to incredible heights in our head. Why do those desires grow, though? If you really understand those reasons, it’s pretty easy to knock the legs out from under any desire.

The easiest way to get started is to focus on one big desire you have right now.

What is the material item you want most right now? Something will probably pop into your head as you read that sentence. It might be a smartphone or a car or anything else.

Why do you want that item? Can you explain it in a clear way, with actual reasons?

If you sit there for a minute without being able to come up with anything… why would you spend any money on it at all? Your desire is being driven by hype.

If you do come up with a reason, start thinking carefully about that reason. Do you want this item simply because of peer pressure? If that’s the case, you’ll just be encouraged by your social group to want something else tomorrow. Is it because of a particular feature of that item? Are you sure you don’t already have access to this feature? If it somehow gives you “better” access to that feature, how is it really better? Do you have time to actually use this thing? For example, there are a lot of computer games that seem fun to me, but I recognize I don’t have the time to play them.

Approach your reasons with real questions and don’t get angry or upset if you don’t have an answer to a reasonable question. If you don’t have an answer, you’re revealing that your desire for this item isn’t really built on anything too important, and if you’re not wanting it for any good reason, why are you wanting it at all? Not having an answer is a good thing, not a thing to get upset about.

Start knocking away material desires and you’ll find it a lot easier to enjoy the simpler things in life and to stop spending money on things you don’t really need or only want for silly reasons.

This post is part of a yearlong series called “365 Ways to Live Cheap (Revisited),” in which I’m revisiting the entries from my book “365 Ways to Live Cheap,” which is available at Amazon and at bookstores everywhere.

The post Think About Why You Want Something (361/365) appeared first on The Simple Dollar.

Do you go to each other’s houses for potluck dinners, or do you go out on the town for dinner?

When you watch movies together, do you toss a DVD someone already owns into the DVD player at a friend’s house, or do you head to the theater?

When you have a party, do you try to outdo each other with expensive finger foods and beverages, or do you just enjoy whatever’s available?

When you’re bored and call up a friend for something to do, do you get together and play a board game or do some crafts, or do you head out for a round of golf or some shopping?

The answers to these questions aren’t absolutes, but your answers likely trend a certain way. If they trend toward the side of spending, you might want to look at rebooting your social circle a bit and find friends that will encourage you to have a lot of fun on the cheaper side.

Thanks to Star Athena for the image.

How do you find frugal friends, though?

Your best bet is to go where frugal people would go. Look for social groups that don’t require a significant amount of money to be spent to enjoy the activity. Free classes at the community center is one good place, as are book clubs sponsored by the local library. Volunteer activities are another good way to meet people whose social activity isn’t necessarily focused on spending.

When you engage in these activities, look for people to build friendships with. Be outgoing. Get to know as many of the people there as you can. Look particularly for the ones that click with you in some fashion.

Then, engage in frugal social activities with those people. Invite them over for a potluck dinner. Or to watch a movie. Or to play a board game. Or to work on a craft project. Or to make a bunch of meals in advance. The number of frugal things people can do together and have fun is almost infinite.

Before you know it, you’ll have cultivated a social circle whose normal behavior is one that conserves money rather than a social circle that spends money. Not only will that save you money in terms of your social outings, but it will also save you money in terms of the social reinforcement of frugal behavior when you’re not around your friends.

This post is part of a yearlong series called “365 Ways to Live Cheap (Revisited),” in which I’m revisiting the entries from my book “365 Ways to Live Cheap,” which is available at Amazon and at bookstores everywhere.

The post Find Frugal Friends (360/365) appeared first on The Simple Dollar.

The same phenomenon is perhaps even more true when it comes to a big windfall. If you don’t use it wisely, you’ll quickly find yourself right back where you started.

We’ve all heard the stories of lottery winners who took a big windfall and then found themselves bankrupt in a few years. People ask themselves how such a thing could possibly happen, but it makes sense when you think about human nature.

Think about what you’ve done whenever you’ve received a windfall. The initial impulse is to celebrate and to use the money to indulge in something you wouldn’t otherwise afford.

You win $50 in a raffle and it’s tempting to go out for dinner. You get $1,000 as an inheritance and it seems like a great time to replace that old television. Inherit $10,000 and it’s suddenly time to build a swimming pool.

I’ve known people who have done all of those things.

The impulse to splurge exists no matter how big or how small the windfall is.

Thanks to Susana Fernandez for the image.

Let’s look at a different approach, though.

A person who finds $50 uses it to buy groceries instead of going out on the town. A few weeks later, they’re able to easily make that insurance payment they forgot about without going into debt for it and they’re able to continue their forward financial progress.

A person who finds $1,000 immediately pays off a credit card that was charging them 20% interest on the balance. Not having to make that payment every month makes it that much easier to make ends meet an not fall into further debt.

A person who finds $10,000 puts it in the bank and in a year or so buys a late model used car by writing a check instead of getting a loan. There’s no monthly payments for that car at all, enabling that person to keep accelerating through paying off their other debts and reaching financial independence.

A person who wins a $10 million lottery pays off every debt he or she owes and puts the rest into investments, choosing to live off of the investment returns while re-investing 20% of those returns automatically. Their annual income is somewhere in the range of $300,000 for the rest of their lives and they have a massive amount to leave to their heirs.

But what about rewarding yourself after a windfall? The best reward is less worry. If you reward yourself with some big spontaneous reward, you don’t do much at all to get rid of the financial concerns in your life. Use the windfall correctly and you chip away at or even eliminate the financial stresses that hold you back.

This post is part of a yearlong series called “365 Ways to Live Cheap (Revisited),” in which I’m revisiting the entries from my book “365 Ways to Live Cheap,” which is available at Amazon and at bookstores everywhere.

The post Handle a Windfall Intelligently, Too (359/365) appeared first on The Simple Dollar.

The challenge is that when you get a raise, there’s a strong temptation to raise your spending right alongside it.

First, there’s the temptation to celebrate and reward yourself. You’ll tell yourself that you earned a goodie thanks to your hard work and you’ll pick out a nice splurge for yourself. However, that splurge takes away from other goals you might have and a big splurge often comes with costs – insurance, a data plan, and so on.

After that, there’s the temptation to live “a lifestyle matching your income.” You raise your expectations in terms of the places you eat, the vehicle you drive, and perhaps even the place you live.

The result? You find yourself right back in the same financial rut you were in before that raise, just with slightly shinier baubles around you.

Thanks to Matt Reinbold for the image.

There’s a much better approach to this situation, one that can turn a raise into a lifeline to a better life.

The plan is simple. Figure out how much your raise increases your monthly take-home pay, then set up an automatic transfer to take that much out of your checking account each month.

In other words, you just continue to live on what you made before the raise. Meanwhile, the money from your raise is moved out of sight and out of mind, to be used at a later time for a well-considered purpose.

Don’t touch that money for a few months, then use it to take a big swipe at one of your debts. Don’t touch that money for a year, then use it to make an extra mortgage payment. Don’t touch that money for five years, then use it to make a large chunk of a down payment on a house.

Doing this changes nothing about your life. You’re still living exactly the same way you were before the raise. The only difference is now that raise is quietly working for you, building up and waiting for a chance to bring about permanent positive change to your life.

If you’ve just received a raise, walk away from the temptation of lifestyle inflation. Instead, look at a raise as an opportunity to genuinely improve your life over the long haul, because a raise can certainly do that if you give it that chance.

This post is part of a yearlong series called “365 Ways to Live Cheap (Revisited),” in which I’m revisiting the entries from my book “365 Ways to Live Cheap,” which is available at Amazon and at bookstores everywhere.

The post Handle a Raise Intelligently (358/365) appeared first on The Simple Dollar.

When I first started my financial turnaround, there were a few months where I was amazed at the amount of money left in my checking account at the end of the month.

Not three months before, I would find myself with a few bucks left in checking before my paycheck arrived. Now, I would see hundreds of dollars left in there at the end of the month, and the total was growing. I was making extra debt payments and still building up my financial reserve.

The problem then became temptation. Since I knew I had money just sitting there in my checking account, it started to become easier to talk myself into spending money that I really shouldn’t have spent. I started to slip into bad spending habits again.

Luckily, I caught myself before bad patterns completely reappeared. I knew I needed a different approach, and automatic saving was that approach.

What I did was really simple. I simply set up an automatic transfer from my checking account to my savings account that would drain away the excess each pay period.

After paying careful attention to how my money was building up, I realized I was spending about $200 to $300 less per pay period than I was bringing in. So, I set up an automatic transfer for $200 per pay period to go straight into a savings account.

I set up my savings at a different bank entirely – I used ING Direct. Why? If I kept the money at the same bank, it was quite easy to just access that cash at any ATM. The whole point of doing this was to put the cash somewhere else, out of sight and out of mind, so I could make careful, rational decisions with it.

Eventually, that saved money helped me smash through remaining debts and eventually made the move to our current home possible. More importantly, the automatic transfer kept me from spending it on foolish things.

Automatic transfers are still a vital part of how I manage my money. I sock away money automatically for Christmas gifts, for our next car purchase, and for our emergency fund. These all go into separate savings accounts which I tap at the appropriate time.

Automatic transfers simultaneously protect you from lapsing back into poor financial choices while also enabling you to plan ahead for the events in your future. That way, you’re not sacrificing a wonderful Christmas for your family due to your own questionable spending habits, and your frugal choices are not going to waste.

This post is part of a yearlong series called “365 Ways to Live Cheap (Revisited),” in which I’m revisiting the entries from my book “365 Ways to Live Cheap,” which is available at Amazon and at bookstores everywhere. Images courtesy of Brittany Lynne Photography, the proprietor of which is my “photography intern” for this project.

The post Automatically Sock Away That Savings (357/365) appeared first on The Simple Dollar.

The first step, though, is figuring out how much all of these frugal changes is actually saving you.

Thanks to Dave Dugdale for the image.

Whenever I make a frugal change in my life, I want to directly see my return on investment. I want to know exactly how much I’m saving because of this move and whether that change was worth it.

For example, let’s say I make a batch of my homemade laundry soap. I can make fifty loads’ worth of laundry detergent for about $1.12 and fifteen minutes of effort. At the same time, I can buy about fifty loads’ worth of Tide at the store for roughly $8. I’ll save $7 on that exchange while investing about 15 minutes of effort.

If I do that six times in a given year, I’ll have saved $42 on laundry detergent over the course of that year (along with an hour and a half of effort, spread out over the year). Given the performance of the homemade soap, I’d happily say it’s worth it.

So, I’ll add that $42 to the list.

How much am I saving by switching my gas purchases to Sam’s Club? $25 a year, let’s say. How much am I saving by cooking my own beans at home roughly once a week instead of buying cans? $40 a year, let’s say. You set your thermostat two degrees higher in the summer and two degrees lower in the winter and you find that you’re saving about $20 per energy bill, or $240 per year.

Whatever tactics you choose to use, if you keep track of what they save you, you’ll find that they really start to add up.

I highly recommend estimating annual savings from your frugal choices, then adding those savings up. You’ll directly see how much your choices are actually saving you, and you’ll probably be surprised as to how much it is.

Now, take that money and apply it to genuine change in your life. Keep living your life as you live it now, but use that money to pay off debts, to build up an emergency fund, and to start saving for retirement.

As the debts fall away, you’ll have fewer and fewer bills and thus more money to use to target other debts. When emergencies happen, you no longer have to rely on credit cards to fix the situation and can use an emergency fund to handle it, saving you from even more debt and even more interest lost to the banks.

Those little changes you make at home are the catalyst for all of these things. The first step is to see how much impact those little changes really have, then resolve to take that money and use it to create real lasting change in your life.

This post is part of a yearlong series called “365 Ways to Live Cheap (Revisited),” in which I’m revisiting the entries from my book “365 Ways to Live Cheap,” which is available at Amazon and at bookstores everywhere.

The post Figure Out Exactly What You Saved (356/365) appeared first on The Simple Dollar.

Simply put, travel with others. Make your trip into a group excursion and you’ll save money (and increase your enjoyment) in many different ways.

Thanks to Ralph Daily for the photo.

For starters, traveling together allows you to share things. You can sometimes split a car rental if you travel together, for example, reducing the cost for each of you.

My favorite money saver when traveling as a group, though, is to rent a cabin or a house instead of a hotel room. You can easily fit two or three families into a house or a cabin for the length of a vacation, reducing the cost per night for each of the families to a very low rate.

For example, when I traveled to Seattle last summer with my family, we rented a house in the outskirts with another family, sharing the cost of the home for the eight days we were out there. The cost per family sunk below a reasonable hotel room.

Even more important, it was very easy to prepare food instead of eating out. We prepared meals there, ate together there, and even prepared picnics for days out and about. Having this kitchen area saved us a tremendous amount of money.

If you’re traveling with others, you can often maximize group discounts. If you bump into “buy three, get one free” deal by yourself, it doesn’t mean much, but if you do it with a large enough group, it can mean savings for everyone involved.

Another big advantage of traveling in groups is that there are many eyes to help search for bargains. Everyone can do their own travel research in advance of the trip and share their ideas.

Often, another person will find a discount that you may have never discovered, or they may find a free activity that you never considered. The trip planning itself can turn into a social opportunity as you pass information and ideas back and forth and come together on the basics of the trip.

In the end, though, a trip with others is an amazing social opportunity above all else. It gives you a great chance to cement your friendship, both during the planning stages and during the travel itself.

Group travel is just a winner all around.

This post is part of a yearlong series called “365 Ways to Live Cheap (Revisited),” in which I’m revisiting the entries from my book “365 Ways to Live Cheap,” which is available at Amazon and at bookstores everywhere.

The post Vacation with Others (355/365) appeared first on The Simple Dollar.

For one, we didn’t even end up doing some of the activities. We’d go out to eat after a long day with two or three of the activities, be enjoying a beverage out on a patio somewhere, and just decide to skip the evening activity so we wouldn’t have to rush our wonderful dinner.

For another, I can’t tell you the number of times we had to rush by things that looked interesting or that we wanted to explore simply because we had to get to some specific place on time.

If your travel plans for vacation are starting to look like one of the pages in your daily planner, throw out those travel plans. You miss out on a lot if you vacation that way – and it usually winds up being more expensive if you use a detailed itinerary, too.

Thanks to Steve Jurvetson for the image.

So, what should you do instead?

You should absolutely have a handful of things you’d like to do in mind when you leave. Bring along info for those places, but don’t specifically buy tickets unless there’s a strong chance they’ll be unavailable when you arrive.

Yes, that might mean passing up on some bargains on tickets, but I suggest keeping any discounts or coupons that you can use at the time of admission and bringing those along with you as well.

On a given day, pick a few things that you might do that day. Don’t insist that you’re going to do all of those things. Just choose a handful that you might do.

I suggest choosing things that are geographically linked, so that you can just go to a certain area to do multiple things you’ve decided to consider doing that day.

After that, just explore. Let serendipity strike. If you find an interesting place to wander through, wander through there. Don’t let yourself be burdened by a tight schedule, and give yourself the freedom to explore the new things you find.

What you’ll find is that you end up doing fewer of the planned activities, which is particularly good if those planned activities cost money (which they often do), and you do more unplanned things like wandering through a park or visiting a public art display, which are often free.

If you end up bumping one or two of the things you’re least interested in doing from your schedule and you do it in a relaxing way, you’ll almost always end up saving money while actually having a better vacation.

This post is part of a yearlong series called “365 Ways to Live Cheap (Revisited),” in which I’m revisiting the entries from my book “365 Ways to Live Cheap,” which is available at Amazon and at bookstores everywhere.

The post Don’t Overload a Vacation with Scheduled Activities (354/365) appeared first on The Simple Dollar.

In 2011, my family travelled to the Seattle, Washington area, much like we did in 2004. We visited my wife’s sister, spent a lot of time with her on the event of her wedding, and visited my wife’s other sister who lives out there, too.

Fairly regularly, we visit the Chicagoland area, where one of my cousins lives. I adore this cousin and her two children, and we stay with her every time we go there. We also have the chance to see several old friends who now live in that area.

Almost every time we travel, we do it in conjunction with family. We often make it a point to visit places where there are friends and family to see, either along the way or at the destination.

Not only does it give us a powerful chance to bond with people we don’t see that often, it also saves us a truckload of money on our vacation.

Thanks to Connie Ma for the photo.

For starters, a local person is often the best travel guide of all. They’ll know of local deals and discounts. They’ll know when to go to various places. They’ll also let you know about places to be avoided.

I’ve had relatives literally take our GPS unit and program it with great places to visit in the area. I’ve had other relatives take most of a week off just to travel around the area with us and show us the sights and sounds. I’ve rarely went on a trip without a relative pressing some coupons into my hand – or sometimes even free passes to stuff – that they’ve picked up here or there.

Locals know the area. Locals that care about you will do a great job of making sure you get the best of the area at a good price.

Beyond that, visiting people can sometimes take care of lodging costs. It’s much easier to visit the Chicagoland area since we know that we have lodging when we arrive. My cousin will almost always insist on preparing several meals for us, too.

(We reciprocate for such hospitality when people visit Des Moines, of course.)

Of course, you shouldn’t expect such things. However, I’ve found that if there are friends and family that I am excited about seeing, they’re almost always excited about seeing me and they usually want to show me the best of where they’re located. All I ask is just a chance to see them when I’m there, so I’ll get ahold of them well in advance of my trip just to see what’s happening.

The recipe is simple. Beyond the personal value of meeting family while traveling, there’s also frugal value as well. Take that into account when planning your travel.

This post is part of a yearlong series called “365 Ways to Live Cheap (Revisited),” in which I’m revisiting the entries from my book “365 Ways to Live Cheap,” which is available at Amazon and at bookstores everywhere.

The post Align Vacations with Visiting Family and Friends (353/365) appeared first on The Simple Dollar.

The idea behind the “peak-end” rule is that when you think back to a past event, you generally have the strongest recollections and feelings about two elements of that event: the “peak” and the “end.”

The “peak” is usually the moment where you had the strongest response (either positive or negative) to whatever is happening. For example, you might remember a trip where the “peak” was visiting a national park you’d always dreamed about.

The “end” is how you felt about how the trip concluded. For example, you might remember dinner on the final night of the trip or something else that occurred on your vacation.

Here’s an example. For me, the “peak” of our honeymoon in the United Kingdom was the afternoon we spent visiting Parliament and Westminster Abbey on foot. The “end” of our honeymoon was the final night, where we stayed in what amounted to a bed and breakfast far away from the city center.

When I think of the trip, those are the first two things I think about, and they’re the strongest memories. They’re both happy memories, too, so they fill the trip with a very positive sentiment when I look back.

Thanks to Frank Bonilla for the image

So, how can you apply this idea to frugal travel planning?

The first – and most obvious – part is to simply carefully manage the “peak” and the “end” of your trip. Have one day that’s a home run – full of the experiences you’re sure you’re going to love. Save one or two wonderful things for the very end of the trip – a meal at a great restaurant, perhaps, or a final sight to see on your way home.

As your memories fade, those two events will be the ones you recall the best.

Then, fill the rest of the trip with low-cost activities. Visit free things to fill other days. Go about them at a slow pace so serendipity will strike.

It might occur that one of those ordinary days ends up being the “peak” – but if that happens, that’s a good thing. It means your vacation must have been an incredible one.

In our recent travels, we’ve mostly avoided higher-priced areas except to fulfill the “peak-end” rule. On our Seattle trip just last summer, our “peak” was the day spent in the city center with our kids – they still speak of going up to the top of the Space Needle and the various other things we did that day. Our “end” was my sister-in-law’s wedding. Those are the two things we recall the most from that trip – and most of the rest of the vacation was spent very frugally.

Use this concept when planning your travel and you will save money.

This post is part of a yearlong series called “365 Ways to Live Cheap (Revisited),” in which I’m revisiting the entries from my book “365 Ways to Live Cheap,” which is available at Amazon and at bookstores everywhere.

The post Use the Peak-End Rule (352/365) appeared first on The Simple Dollar.

One, you don’t need to make prints (unless you want to). I almost never make prints unless I have a specific need for a physical copy of the photo. Instead, I just keep all of the digital images on my computer and use them with my computer monitor as an effective digital picture frame.

Two, it’s very easy to filter the images and get rid of the ones you don’t want or need. All you have to do is hit the delete button instead of keeping that out-of-focus shot.

A digital camera means no need for film and little or no need for postcards.

Beyond that, though, digital cameras offer other possibilities. Did you take a great shot of a particular location while traveling? Turn that shot into a print, put it in a tasteful frame, and you have a great home decoration or even a potential gift for someone. There’s even the possibility of selling the image or selling prints of the image if you’re willing to go that route. (Generally, these options only come about with a high-end camera, though).

Thanks to Mr. T in DC for the image

A digital camera is a very effective tool for saving money beyond mere travel, too.

For one, you can use it to take apartment pictures before moving in. This way, if there’s anything that’s worn or slightly damaged when you move in, you have proof that the wear or damage preceded you, which can help with getting your deposit back after the rental.

Another use is for insurance claims. Taking digital photos of your damage and getting those images to your insurance agent quickly can get you the cash you need to fix things up right away.

I often use my digital camera for memory enhancement. I’ll take pictures of things I want to remember or things I want to research later. Then, all I have to do is flip through my pictures later on and I’ll see those things that I wanted to recall.

The best option for most people in terms of digital photography is a low-end digital camera or a higher-end cell phone. These options can take high-quality digital photographs by the thousands, and the startup cost is quite low.

I consider a digital camera to be a very effective frugal purchase for those who do not have one, though I don’t see the need to regularly upgrade such a camera. I’m still using my second digital camera (purchased in 2007, after my first one from 2002) without any problems and I’ve taken literally tens of thousands of pictures. The value of those pictures, from helping me to remember things to storing family and vacation images, is well worth what I’ve put into those cameras.

This post is part of a yearlong series called “365 Ways to Live Cheap (Revisited),” in which I’m revisiting the entries from my book “365 Ways to Live Cheap,” which is available at Amazon and at bookstores everywhere.

The post Use a Digital Camera Effectively (351/365) appeared first on The Simple Dollar.

Of course, many people like to bring home physical items to remember their vacations by. Sarah takes this route with her souvenirs. She likes to have a physical object to remind her of where she once traveled.

Thanks to Martin Abegglen for the pic

It would be easy for Sarah to find a souvenir in a shop somewhere, but let’s be honest – most of those souvenirs are drastically overpriced and often not very useful. Who wants to pay $20 for an ordinary t-shirt or something silly like that?

Instead, when she looks for a souvenir, she looks for something atypical, either something free or something without markup.

One approach she often takes is to seek out elements of the environment.

For example, on our trip to Oklahoma and northern Texas, we wandered about in the Arbuckle Mountains (an ancient and largely eroded away mountain range in Oklahoma) and found a wonderful red rock that currently sits in our garden.

On our trip to Seattle, she memorialized our trips to the ocean by saving many of the seashells we found while wandering around.

Another approach is to bring home a consumable item from a non-tourist location. She’ll buy a local bottle of wine or some local beer and bring them home with her, saving it for a while before enjoying it.

Often, she’ll buy two of these things, consuming one while we’re traveling and then enjoying the other later on, as it creates a pretty direct connection of the senses to the trip.

Because she purposely avoids souvenir shops, she generally finds such items at a much more reasonable price at non-touristy locations.

A final tactic that works for frugal souvenirs is to mail yourself postcards from the trip. Simply spend a quarter buying a postcard, write what you’re doing that day on it, then mail it to yourself. When you get home and check the mail, you’ll find that postcard (and a few more will arrive in the following days), filled with your thoughts directly from the trip. It’s like a little reminder of your trip that arrives out of the blue.

A truly special souvenir doesn’t need to cost very much, and the best ones are rarely found in an overpriced souvenir shop.

This post is part of a yearlong series called “365 Ways to Live Cheap (Revisited),” in which I’m revisiting the entries from my book “365 Ways to Live Cheap,” which is available at Amazon and at bookstores everywhere.

The post Avoid Typical Souvenirs (350/365) appeared first on The Simple Dollar.

Thus, most of the time, it makes a lot more sense to choose vacations focused on inexpensive destinations.

Thanks to Mike Baird for this great shot of a California state park

How do you actually do that, though? Here are some options for planning a great vacation around inexpensive options.

Head to a national or a state park. This past summer, we vacationed in western South Dakota. Over the course of a few days, we visited the Black Hills National Forest, Mount Rushmore, Devil’s Tower, and Custer State Park. Our total cost for several days of natural beauty and impressive monuments was a pittance.

One great way to approach this is to pick up a guide to our wonderful national parks. I suggest checking out this book from your local library.

Take your time and browse through the abundance of national parks and monuments, state parks, and other amazing places of natural beauty in the United States. The vast majority of them are free and even the ones that have a cost are very inexpensive.

Select housing that’s not adjacent to a popular site. Instead of staying at a hotel that’s literally on the beach or right next to the place you want to visit, choose a hotel that’s five or ten minutes away. Then, when you want to visit the location in question, walk there.

How does this save money? You will almost always find interesting things to distract you when you’re on foot while traveling. You’ll see street performances, street art, free exhibits, and countless other interesting things going on nearby.

I can’t help but recall our trip to London, where we decided to walk from our hotel through Hyde Park and over to Westminster Abbey. Seeing the monuments was free, but along the way we found statues of Peter Pan in the park, a very good group playing Britpop-style music on a streetcorner, a guard presentation near Buckingham Palace, and a free temporary exhibit of Cindy Sherman’s photography.

All of those things were free, and they were all only discovered because we didn’t stay right by the thing we wanted to see. Instead, we walked there, gave ourselves plenty of time, and let serendipity take its course.

Get a free travel guide from potential destinations. For example, if you’ve decided to visit Washington D.C., check out washington.org. Many sites for large cities allow you to filter the many possible things to do in that area down based on free admission, leaving you with a long list of great things to do that won’t cost you anything.

On that Washington site, filtering for free attractions gives you a pretty impressive list of things to visit without shelling out a dime. Use the city’s strong metro system to get around and you can see a lot of amazing things for a pittance.

When you’re looking for things to do when traveling, focus on finding inexpensive things first and be choosy among those, and then give yourself plenty of time to explore. Chances are you’ll have a marvelous trip without breaking the bank on overpriced travel options.

This post is part of a yearlong series called “365 Ways to Live Cheap (Revisited),” in which I’m revisiting the entries from my book “365 Ways to Live Cheap,” which is available at Amazon and at bookstores everywhere.

The post Plan the Backbone of Your Vacation Around Inexpensive Stuff (349/365) appeared first on The Simple Dollar.

One of the tactics I suggested in that article is to use an ATM card if you need currency when you actually arrive overseas before turning to a currency exchange desk. Although an ATM will charge you some fees and you won’t get a great exchange rate, it’s often better than what you’ll get at your typical currency exchange while traveling abroad.

That means you should reasonably expect to use your ATM at some point when traveling overseas. What do you need to know before using it?

First, does your card work overseas? For the most part, any ATM card with a Visa or Mastercard logo on it should be fine for use in international ATMs, but the real barrier is the policies of the bank that issued your card.

So, the next step is to contact your bank and learn about their policies for international use. Can their card be used in machines in your destination country? Are there any additional fees? Are there certain ATMs that you can’t use overseas?

Also, make sure you know the location of usable ATMs near your hotel(s) on your trip. This is easy if there aren’t any limitations on overseas ATM use, but if there are limits, you’ll want to make sure you know where the ATMs that you can actually ue are located.

Another step you should take is to keep your basic banking information – your ATM card number, your account number, and your bank’s phone number – in a secure place when you travel. That way, if you lose your ATM card or find that it’s stolen, you don’t have to go to expensive lengths to fix the situation. You can just call the number and get things straightened out.

A tip: if you travel internationally, it is really useful to have an account with a large international bank. For example, Chase and Wells Fargo banks have branches in many different countries, so having checking accounts with these banks can be very, very useful if you travel overseas very often.

Why should you be mindful of these things? Simply put, these tactics can save you a lot of money.

Knowing ATM usage rules can save you a lot of money on international ATM withdrawals. Using an out-of-network ATM overseas can result in some huge fees, some very bad exchange rates, or even a denial of usage.

Having a plan in case you lose your ATM card can save you tremendously if you happen to lose your card while abroad. Knowing how to contact your bank makes it much easier to resolve such issues quickly, before identity theft or other problems can kick in, and they might also be able to help you continue to access your account while abroad.

All of these factors equal money in your pocket.

This post is part of a yearlong series called “365 Ways to Live Cheap (Revisited),” in which I’m revisiting the entries from my book “365 Ways to Live Cheap,” which is available at Amazon and at bookstores everywhere. Images courtesy of Brittany Lynne Photography, the proprietor of which is my “photography intern” for this project.

The post Know the Rules When You Use Your ATM Card When Abroad (348/365) appeared first on The Simple Dollar.

It’s understandable why they charge a fee. They’re providing a service, and then they have to deal with converting the funds themselves.

Still, it’s an unnecessary expense, and it’s one that you can avoid with some clever preparation for your travel.

Thanks to Niels Heidenreich for this pic of Polish zloty and Euros

The first suggestion I have is that, if you’re traveling internationally, plan to put many of your expenses on plastic. Use a credit card for as many things as you can so that you don’t have to deal with the currency swaps.

To do this, contact your card issuer before you leave and make sure they know you’re traveling overseas. Talk to them and make sure that there aren’t any restrictions on overseas use – most large banks have few, if any, restrictions on using their Visas or MasterCards.

You may also want to write down your card number and the phone number of your issuing bank and store it in a private place far away from your card, so that if your card is stolen in an international setting, you can get things fixed as quickly as possible.

Still, it is very worthwhile to have some foreign currency on hand, and I recommend doing the currency exchange before you leave.

Doing the exchange before you leave gives you more opportunities to shop around for the best rates and allows you to avoid the pain of having to deal with the exchange fees once you arrive and have more limited options.

So, how do you shop for currency exchanges? Your best bet is to contact the branches of large banks in the city you’re flying out of. Cities with a large international airport often have bank branches that will do the exchange for you, often at a pretty low rate.

The rate is even lower if you happen to be a customer, so if you’re a customer of a large bank with a lot of branches, contact your own bank first and find out what exchange fees they offer you.

My experience has been that these bank branches will give you the best rates you can find. If that doesn’t work for you, the next best rates have come from actually using an ATM card overseas – but if you’re going to do this, contact your bank before you leave so your card isn’t shut down due to theft protection. Usually, the currency exchange fees (if any) on the ATMs is actually lower than dealing with the banks directly, but the ATM usage fees end up tipping the balance toward doing the exchange before you leave.

The worst option is the currency exchange desks that you’ll often find in airports when you land. They’ll exchange currency for you, but the fees are painful and should be avoided.

So, here’s the plan. Try to put most expenses on the credit card, and also take some currency with you by exchanging some dollars for your foreign currency of choice at a large bank before you leave. If you’re overseas and need cash, use an ATM – resort to a currency exchange desk only as a last resort.

I’ve used this strategy with most of my more recent international travel and I’ve found the cost of converting my dollars to be much more reasonable than just playing it by ear. The savings can really add up.

This post is part of a yearlong series called “365 Ways to Live Cheap (Revisited),” in which I’m revisiting the entries from my book “365 Ways to Live Cheap,” which is available at Amazon and at bookstores everywhere.

The post Do Necessary Currency Conversions Before You Leave (347/365) appeared first on The Simple Dollar.

Our friends had chosen a hotel online and booked a room, so we decided to just stay at the same hotel for that weekend. However, when I went to book that room online, I was stunned at the price. I didn’t want to pay that much.

So, I placed a call to that hotel. I spoke to a receptionist, and then to a manager, about reserving a room for that weekend. I told him that our budget was limited and that we were considering staying at another hotel (presumably their main competition) as well as a bed and breakfast in the area.

The manager almost immediately offered me a rate that was about 40% of what I could find online. I agreed to the rate and placed the reservation, and I received a confirmation email shortly thereafter confirming the rate.

The end result? We spent less for two nights than our friends likely spent for one night in the same hotel.

It’s important to note that this is a tactic that works best when you’re traveling to a less-populated place, such as a city under 50,000 people or a small tourist destination. I have tried this with great success in cities or areas with only a few hotels, and my success has been much lower in more heavily populated areas.

If you do try this, here are a few tips.

One, the manager at such hotels is usually the one with the power to offer low rates. Often, the first person you talk to couldn’t give you a low rate even if they wanted to, so feel free to go ahead and ask to speak to the manager.

Two, don’t be afraid to directly ask for a rate. Tell the receptionist or the manager that you already have a room quoted at a lower rate and that you’ll stay elsewhere if the rate can’t be matched. There’s nothing rude about this – you’re simply trying to find a bargain.

Three, don’t be afraid to shop around by phone right before the cutoff to cancel your reservation. Let’s say you have to cancel your reservation at 6 PM the night before your stay. At 5 PM that evening, call a few of that hotel’s competitors and inquire about a room starting tomorrow night and just directly compare that to the rate you already have.

Finally, include bed and breakfasts in your comparison. Most of the best lodging deals I’ve found in such places have been bed and breakfasts, where we’ve actually been staying in the attic of an older person’s home and they serve us a nice breakfast right at their kitchen table. If you call one of these places shortly before you’re going to stay, you can sometimes find one at a really low rate. The nicest bed and breakfast Sarah and I ever stayed at cost $30 a night and included an amazing home-cooked breakfast – I suspect the couple just loved having the company.

Don’t just book hotel rooms online. Try using the phone – sometimes you can get a very nice rate by just talking to someone.

This post is part of a yearlong series called “365 Ways to Live Cheap (Revisited),” in which I’m revisiting the entries from my book “365 Ways to Live Cheap,” which is available at Amazon and at bookstores everywhere. Images courtesy of Brittany Lynne Photography, the proprietor of which is my “photography intern” for this project.

The post For Hotel Rooms, Call the Local Branch and Negotiate (346/365) appeared first on The Simple Dollar.