Frugal people are often the hardest to buy winning gifts for. Quite often, frugal people don’t want things that don’t have obvious utility or that don’t match their tastes well – it’s just “stuff” that takes up space. At the same time, they don’t often go for the obvious gift stuff, either – they really don’t need another tie or so on.

So what’s a person to do if they’re going to buy a gift for a frugal person? At the same time, what kind of sane answer can I give in response to that question?

Over the last few years, these questions have confronted me face to face many times. After some careful consideration (both for my own purposes and for The Simple Dollar), I’ve come up with a handful of general guidelines that will help in purchasing gifts for any frugal person – or might help a frugal person come up with gift ideas.

Focus on core passions. Get to know the person you’re buying for. What are they passionate about? What do they spend their free time doing? For me, the answers are pretty easy – I read, I write, I cook, and I play games with friends. So, for me, books are a good idea, as are nice notebooks. Good kitchen items are good, as are quality food items (like great cheeses). Board games are also good.

If you don’t know what specific item to get, get a passion-focused gift card or gift certificate. For example, a gift card for me to Barnes and Noble or Williams-Sonoma or Funagain Games wouldn’t be a bad idea. Why? This lets the person indulge in what they’re passionate about without feeling guilty about spending their hard-earned money on something extraneous.

Buy a single quality item instead of several of lower quality. Frugal people value things that are well-made and that will stand the test of time. Get a frugal person one good gift instead of three low-quality ones. Get them one good knife instead of a block of mediocre ones.

Consumables usually work. If you know a frugal person who likes chocolate, get that person a few bars of really good chocolate. If you know a frugal person who likes cheese, get them a chunk of Maytag Blue. If you’re gifting a beer loving frugal person, get a six pack from your local microbrewery – or if the person likes wine, go to a local winemaker.

A high quality food item in line with their tastes is usually quite enjoyed for several reasons. For one, it’s an indulgence they would likely not spend their money on. For another, it’s not yet another item that takes up space in their home because it’s consumed.

Avoid stuff that isn’t obviously useful or isn’t in line with their core values. Frugal people are often utilitarians, which means they don’t see great value in items that don’t fulfill a specific need or a specific use in their life. Avoid the kinds of gifts that rely heavily on aesthetic appeal unless you intimately know their aesthetics. If you miss their aesthetics, you’re just going to give them a gift that frustrates them.

In general, these are good gift-giving strategies for most people. The real core of the message here is to simply put a bit of thought into the gifts you give. “It’s the thought that counts” is often said tritely, but it’s really true: a little thought at gift-giving time goes a long way.

Quite often, I’ll see people spend exorbitant amounts of money on lavish Thanksgiving spreads. While I completely understand the reason for doing this – often, it’s the one time in the year that we can gather around one table with a lot of people we love – there’s still a lot of simple things we can do to reduce the financial outlay and the stress of the meal without reducing the quality of the day in any way (and often improving it). Here are ten ways to do just that.

Cook and slice the turkey on Tuesday. What? No beautiful turkey on the table? Whatever will we do? In truth, though, the turkey on the table during Thanksgiving dinner often results in lots of problems: it keeps someone away from the meal because they’re carving the bird, the bird is often dry because it hasn’t had a lot of time to rest, and the finished bird often arrives later than expected, delaying the whole meal and often reducing the quality of the other food. Solve all of these problems by cooking the bird on Tuesday or Wednesday, slicing it at your own pace, then putting all of the meat on a platter along with all of the juice and a few pats of butter. Cover the serving platter and put it in the fridge, then just turn on the oven (or the electric roaster) on Thanksgiving to thoroughly warm the meat.

Use nature for your decorations. During the weeks leading up to Thanksgiving, there are thousands of colorful leaves all over the place, free for the taking. Be picky – go outside and look for some nice, clean, colorful leaves. All you need is a plain tablecloth and a row of colorful leaves sprinkled down the middle to create a very festive setting.

Get the slow cooker into the act. Many Thanksgiving side dishes can easily be prepared in a slow cooker. Slow cookers consume less energy and quite often can be used in a “fix-it-and-forget-it” mindset. It’s the perfect tool to make cranberry sauce, for example.

Be creative with your Thanksgiving dinner leftovers. By the third day, turkey sandwiches start to get tired. Instead of allowing that to happen, share some of your extra food with people in need (for example, make a couple plates of food for shut-ins you know and deliver the plates) or make something interesting, like kugel or tetrazzini, out of the leftovers.

Round up when you estimate. I’ve been to two different Thanksgiving dinners in the past three years where there was just barely enough food to make ends meet for the number of guests (to put it politely). People showed up bringing unexpected dining companions and estimates for how much each person would eat were strangely low. Don’t fall into that trap. Estimate high, but estimate realistic. After all, you can always eat leftovers, but you can’t undo unhappy guests.

Don’t be afraid of potlucking it. Ask your guests to bring a dish or two with them so that you can focus your time, energy, and money on a few key dishes. Most people are quite willing to help (provided, of course, that they’re not coming from out of town).

Save the bones. Seriously. Put the entire carcass in a large Ziploc bag and save the bones and small pieces of meat for a day or two. Then, take all of the leftover vegetables (potatoes, corn, non-glazed carrots, etc.) and the carcass, stick them all in a crock pot, then add enough water to just cover the bones. Turn it on low overnight (this is perfect to do on Saturday evening after Thanksgiving). Then, in the morning, save the liquid. What will you do with this delicious turkey broth? Freeze it (along with a pound or two of leftover diced turkey meat). Then, in a few weeks, use it as the base for an amazing soup – just add vegetables and/or dumplings to the stock and the turkey (along with perhaps a bit of water to thin it).

Have appetizers. Inexpensive appetizers – like a selection of vegetables – helps people keep the edge off of their appetites and keeps them from over-eating during the main meal. Not only does this make the overall meal more healthy, it often makes it cheaper, since a vegetable tray can be really inexpensive. Much like the turkey, this can also be assembled the day before.

Don’t try to “impress” with your wine. There are countless great wines under $10 (here are five of my favorites from a few years back). Don’t feel the need to buy an expensive bottle of wine to impress anyone. Just stop by your local wine and liquor store and ask for a low-cost full bodied wine for the Thanksgiving table. They’ll be happy to point out something great for you.

Save your recyclable containers for leftovers. Instead of just tossing large containers of items like margarine or whipped topping, save the containers. Then, on Thanksgiving, fill the containers with leftovers and give them to your guests. There’s no responsibility at all for them to return the container and it gets an extra use out of the items that would normally be tossed.

I’m interested in replacing a piece of home audio equipment that is experiencing occasional malfunctions, but works OK most of the time. The receiver I’m looking at costs $500 on Amazon. I’m a little conflicted. The more frugal side of me says to not even buy it. Make do with the broken receiver until it’s completely unusable. The less frugal side says to save up for it and buy a new one. That sounds perfectly logical and responsible. Save for a few months, instead of putting it on my credit card. The receiver I’m looking at is highly-rated and is considered a great buy for the price, according to CNet. I’ve done research and think this is a good value for what I’m getting, compared to other similar items. I feel like I’ve done everything right but still feel a little guilty in thinking of buying it.

This is one of the biggest challenges for a frugal person. When is it appropriate to just “make do” with what we have on hand, and when should we bite the bullet and buy a replacement? And when we do, is it appropriate to buy a high-end replacement, or should we just go for the best bang for the buck every time?

I think both questions come down to the same key factor: how truly important is this item to your quality of life?

Let’s look at Andre’s case. Let’s say Andre is a serious audiophile. Every evening when he comes home from work, he puts on a series of jazz albums that play all evening at his house while he reads, works on personal projects, and does housework. Perhaps Andre is even a musician himself. The music is one of his biggest passions in life – he can’t imagine an evening without that soundtrack to his life playing.

If that’s the case, Andre should maintain his home audio equipment. He should save up for that replacement component and he should buy a high-quality one that meets his needs.

On the other hand, let’s say Andre listens to his audio system once a week at most. He turns it on when there are guests over and perhaps he’ll turn it on on a lazy Saturday afternoon, but other than that, it sits there silent. He enjoys music, but it’s not his life’s passion.

If that’s the case for Andre, he should make do with what he has and, when it breaks, get a “bang for the buck” replacement for it.

I think this is largely true for everything in life. All of us have a few key central passions. Once you know what those passions are, it’s completely fine to spend a little more on it, provided you can afford it and can save for it.

The problem with overspending comes in when we begin to overspend on areas that are less important to us. For example, if Andre wasn’t passionate about music but he still convinced himself to drop hundreds/thousands of dollars on his home audio system, that’s probably a misuse of money. If he’s not deeply in love with the driving experience, dropping thousands extra on a luxury car probably isn’t a good use of money.

I’ll use myself as an example. I’m passionate about cooking at home. A big part of that for me is getting great, fresh ingredients. Thus, I’m willing to spend quite a bit more to get great ingredients. I don’t feel bad when I spend $30 on cheeses or I buy organic fresh produce or when I replace the old casserole I had in college with a top-notch French oven.

On the other hand, I don’t value having a perfect living room set. I’m more interested in something that’s simply comfortable. So I don’t go out and spend a ton of money replacing our living room set all of the time. It’s just not something I value beyond the minimum function of it.

In the end, I have about three or four key passions in my life that I don’t feel bad spending money on if I can afford it easily. Outside of those passions, I’m as tight as a drum.

Andre, the answer to this question really comes from you. How much do you value the audio listening experience? Is it something that’s central in your life, or is it just something on the periphery? That alone will provide the guidance you need.

Whenever I head out for a few hours of visiting yard sales and thrift stores, I take my backpack along with me. I usually have several items in it that help immensely with a big day of yard sales and thrifting. Here’s what I pack.

A list of thrift stores and yard sales. I’ll usually check the local newspapers a day or two before I plan on heading out to see where the sales are going to be. I make a list of those sales. I also usually make a list of local thrift stores, but I pretty much know where they all are within a twenty five mile radius, so that’s reached the point of being unnecessary.

A map and/or a GPS unit. Just because I have an address of a yard sale two towns over doesn’t mean I know exactly where that is. A local map can help somewhat, but I’ve found that the GPS is even more useful. I simply punch in the address and go. Quite often, I’ll punch in all of the unknown addresses the night before so that I can just click a button or two and go when I’m out and about the next day.

A simple meal. A sandwich, a few vegetables, and a few bottles of water take care of any food or rehydration needs I’ll have when I’m out. This way, I’m not tempted to overpay for some unhealthy food on the go, which would pretty much undermine any benefit of hitting thrift stores or yard sales.

Cash. Yard sales usually operate on a cash-only basis (and thrift stores are quite happy to take cash). Thus, when I’m out, I do my shopping on a cash-only basis. Part of that means making sure that I have an adequate amount of cash on hand before I leave to cover anything I might possibly buy.

Sizes. What size clothes does my wife wear? My kids? Me, for that matter? I make sure to have them all written down so that I can easily identify clothes that would fit each of them.

A list, along with certain measurements. Are there any particular items I’m looking for? Sometimes there is, sometimes there isn’t. When there is, I make a list of those items so I don’t forget. For example, if we need boy’s shirts, I’ll write that down. Also, if I’m looking for items of a particular size – like a desk, for example – I’ll measure the desired dimensions of the desk and write those down.

A tape measure. If I’m going to be measuring an item – like a desk – I need to have something to measure it with. A tape measure is perfect for that task.

A notebook. I usually have this on hand anyway because I always carry a pocket notebook with me. However, if I spy something interesting at a yard sale but I don’t know if I need it or not, I’ll make a note of it, go home, and check. Sometimes I’ll even return to the yard sale to pick it up.

A rope or short bungie cord. Yes, every once in a while, something comes along that’s just too big to fit properly in a car trunk. In those cases, you might have to tie it down for the drive home. That’s why it’s handy to have a rope and/or a bungie cord on hand to secure the item.

All of this stuff fits easily in a backpack and can be packed the night before (excepting the food, of course). Going prepared makes it much more likely you’ll find the things you actually need when you go thrift store and/or garage and yard sale shopping.

Good luck!

As I dug around in the cupboards and refrigerator to make sure we had everything on hand, I came across a few scary outdated items in the back of the refrigerator. They looked scary. They smelled scary. And, sadly, they headed right to the trash can.

One of the most disappointing things at our house is food that’s gone bad. It finds its way to the back of the refrigerator or cupboard and, eventually, gets too old to use. I look at such things with disappointment, as it’s good food simply going to waste.

Throwing away food – just like throwing away anything else – is a waste of resources. Our money and/our our time was invested in acquiring and preparing that food and simply throwing it away means that your time, money, and energy went to nothing. That’s a conclusion that doesn’t make anyone happy.

Of course, much like anything else, food can sometimes be recycled to a spectacular second use. Before you decide to toss out the food, give it a serious second look and ask yourself if the trash can is the best ultimate destination for it.

Quite often, the food really is bad and needs to be discarded. If something is moldy, I don’t mess with it (well, excepting certain kinds of cheeses, of course – blue cheese is all about the mold). If something has a smell that indicates that it’s gone wrong, I’ll just toss it. If it’s opened and past the date, I’ll almost always toss it immediately.

Sometimes, though, food that I’ll pass on in its current form has value if it’s used in another context. Here are some examples.

Stale bread If you have stale bread that’s gone dry and hard, get out the grater and grate it into bread crumbs, then save those crumbs in a jar. After all, this is exactly what bread crumbs are. Bread crumbs make a fantastic breading for fish, chicken, and vegetables, helping to seal in the moisture and flavor while making a crunchy outer shell.

Old fruits As long as they’re not genuinely rotting, most over-ripe fruits can easily be turned into an excellent bread. One great example of this is banana bread, which just requires a loaf pan, a spoon, some over-ripe bananas, a bit of butter, sugar, an egg, vanilla, baking soda, and flour. Just mix them in a bowl with a spoon until it’s consistent and put it in a loaf pan. You can make something very similar with many overripe fruits – I’ve made strawberry bread, pineapple bread, and zucchini bread and all were good (we just tend to eat a lot of bananas, so banana bread is a regular thing).

Old vegetables I save these in a small box in the freezer. When I have a full box, I’ll use the vegetables to make a vegetable soup. I’ll just put all the vegetables into the crock pot, add water until it’s got about half an inch of liquid over the top of the vegetables, and then season the whole thing like crazy. It makes for a pretty good – and pretty healthy – meal.

Another old vegetable and fruit tactic Add them to a compost bin. If you don’t have one, ask around, particularly among your gardening-oriented friends. It’s far better to return the leftover materials to the earth than to put them in the trash and watch them head to a landfill. You can use coffee grounds and eggshells in a similar fashion.

Here’s the real message: don’t look at old food as something to immediately be thrown out. Sometimes, it’s a resource that can be used in future meals. It’s far less wasteful to approach things in this fashion, which means that you’re not only conserving your own resources, time, and money, but you’re also sparing the earth.

All of these problems can be solved by one simple change in your perspective about gift-giving this year: give experiences instead of things.

What do I mean by this? Instead of giving a material gift that would require you to spend money on something you’re unsure they’ll like and them receiving something that they’ll have to now take responsiblity for, give them something that isn’t material.

Six Ideas for “Experience” Gifts
Here are six quick ideas to get you started, but there are hundreds more just like it if you let your creativity go.

For a child, give a field trip. This could be a trip to a zoo, to a kid-friendly science center (like the wonderful one in Des Moines, Iowa), a wilderness hike, or to a baseball game. You’ll handle all the logistics of the trip for them.

For a food lover, offer a home-cooked version of a meal they’ve longed for. Try making them something challenging like coq au vin or beef bourguignon. Get out your fine china and linens for this dinner, too – make it something special. It could be a romantic gift for a food-loving couple.

For an art lover, plan a trip with them to the art museum of their choice later in the year. Buy the ticket and handle the transportation yourself.

For a spouse, pledge to do the dishes for a year – or give them a few weekends where they can do whatever they want (with or without you).

For a gamer, give them some invitations that allow them to choose a game to play with you. This is a great way to understand someone’s hobby better (and perhaps find it interesting and exciting yourself).

For a parent, give a free night of babysitting. To them, this means an evening doing whatever they’d most enjoy doing without having to worry at all about their children.

Barter for Services
If you have some good ideas for experiences but don’t have the cash, look into a barter with the person that could provide that service. For example, you might be willing to work 40 hours at a museum or a zoo for a certain number of tickets. Perhaps you could provide IT services at a spa in exchange for some gift certificates there. Many businesses are quite willing to offer credit in exchange for your skills and/or your time. Take advantage of that.

The Presentation
Many people balk at such gifts because they’re unsure how to present it. With a home printer and some time, you can create an elegant presentation of any gift.

First, spend a little on a decent stationery set that you can use for many such gifts over the long haul. Look for something tasteful and simple that doesn’t necessarily have to be holiday-oriented.

Second, use a straightforward layout in your word processing program of choice. There are thousands of templates for Word, most of which are compatible with most word processing programs out there.

Fill out the document with the details of the gift, print it on the best printer you have access to, and also print the envelope with the recipient’s name on it in an elegant font.

Here’s the kicker: include some visuals within the envelope. A brochure that shows what the event is all about is perfect, as is a photograph that provides a visual reminder of what you’re going to do. It can even be something as interesting as snapshots from a past event you’ve enjoyed together.

Why This Works
Aside from the fact that it’s less expensive than giving traditional material gifts, giving experiences works for three reasons.

First, it doesn’t give a material item that the other person will have to deal with. It’s not going to wind up needing maintenance or taking up storage space in their home or requiring a trip to customer service.

Second, it will stand out in a positive way in comparison to the items they receive. When you receive several items for Christmas, something distinct like this will definitely stand out from the crowd. Most of the “experience” gifts I’ve ever received still stand out for me.

Third, it often allows you to experience the gift together. If the gift is an event you can both participate in, it becomes a shared memory, something far beyond what a material gift can offer.

For us, unfortunately, “experience” gifts are a bit of a challenge since we don’t live near many of the people we exchange gifts with. Of course, we have another solution for many of those folks for frugal, unique Christmas gifts… but that will have to wait until next week.

Unfortunately, he also had a “pack rat” compulsion – he was always buying more and more and more things to fill (and then eventually over-fill) his home. In the end, the dollar store wasn’t really a bargain for Ken – he eventually had so many tchotchkes and stored bulk goods that not only was he often broke, his home was overloaded with stuff.

Quite often, the stuff was of (at best) moderate quality as well. While he’d often find some incredible bargains, he also would buy a lot of things that I would identify as junk (but I suppose that one man’s trash is another man’s treasure).

After Ken’s passing, he left behind enormous piles of various dollar store purchases, most of which were simply tossed out. It was almost painful to watch all of those things that he had invested his time and energy in simply get handed out and thrown away.

Earlier this year as part of a discussion on haggling, I outlined a similar tale in which a woman who bought “plastic doodads” (her words) in bulk at the dollar store under the belief that she was getting a bargain.

To me, Ken’s story defines what a dollar store is. It’s a place where you can occasionally find tremendous bargains on the things you need, but the cost threshold is so low that quite often you end up buying far too many impulsive things. It’s easy to convince yourself to throw a thing or two into your basket that you don’t really need because, after all, it’s only a dollar, right?

Does this mean I don’t ever go to the dollar store? Of course not. The dollar store can be a good place to find great values on certain things. However, you need to approach it with a plan.

First, look for the staples you already use. Dishwashing detergent. Diapers. Bath soap. Hand towels. Focus on finding the dollar store version of the things you already use.

Second, try the store brands, but don’t expect greatness. I’m always willingg to try a store brand if it means I’ll save significant money, but quite often I’ll find that the quality of the item isn’t up to snuff. Trash bags that rip, aluminum foil that’s too thin, and plastic wrap that doesn’t stick to anyting but itself isn’t worth anything, even if you’re “saving” money by buying it.

Third, avoid the other stuff. Most of the items in a dollar store are there to convince you to make an impulse buy. Ignore all of it. Focus exclusively on the list of things you want to check out – your staples. If it’s not on that list, don’t buy it. Don’t even look at it. If you end up buying something you didn’t intend to buy when you arrived, it’s not a bargain. It’s a loss of your hard-earned money to an impulse to acquire stuff.

Dollar stores can be really useful for finding bargains on certain items. However, they’re prone to impulsive buys and low-quality items that can end up quickly undoing any benefit one might get from shopping there. If you go there, go there with a plan and you can come out a winner.

I used to hate cooking at home, though. I was awful at it. I burnt things. I messed up scrambled eggs beyond all recognition.

But over time, I got better at it. I started figuring out lots of little things that made the entire process smoother and made my results much better without necessarily improving my skills.

Now, I vastly prefer what I make in my own kitchen over what I can get at most restaurants. What I make at home is tastier, usually healthier, and quite a bit cheaper, too.

Along the way, I’ve picked up lots of little techniques for making home cooking much easier and faster. Here are ten that really changed things for me.

Hone your knives. One of the biggest frustrations I had with home food preparation is that whenever I had to chop anything, it took forever and I often smashed them into oblivion. I thought it was cheap knives, but after getting a much nicer one, I had much the same problem after the first use or so. The entire problem was a simple one – the edge of the knife wasn’t honed. Honing a knife’s edge is incredibly simple. Just take a sharpening steel and lay your knife on it, with the hilt of the blade near the hilt of the sharpening steel. Then, with the blade forming a small angle with the steel, drag the blade slowly but firmly back down the steel to the tip. At the end, the tip of the blade should be near the tip of the steel. Then, switch hands and repeat with the other side of the blade, and alternate back and forth a few times. Your previously-dull knife will now slice through vegetables like a hot butterknife through butter.

Don’t fear the crock pot. Crock pots have this strange reputation for turning out bland food. In truth, though, crock pots are just as good as what you put in them – all they really do is cook things at a low heat over a long period of time. The trick is to make sure your ingredients are good and that you’ve added plenty of herbs and spices right off the bat. Crock pots are absolutely perfect for making stews and soups and chilis that benefit from long, slow cooking – just put the ingredients in the crock pot in the morning, turn it on low, and let it sit all day. In the evening, you’ll have a tremendous meal waiting for you. We’ve also found a lot of success slow-cooking pot roasts with lots of vegetables in a crock pot.

You can almost never over-season a dish. The only exception to this seems to be hot peppers, which can drive some people away. Aside from that, you have to go to almost grotesque lengths to over-season most dishes. So, if you’re unsure, toss in some more spices. It’ll usually make the dish more tasty than simply following the recipe absolutely.

Use fresh ingredients. Fresh ingredients are often the key to making a recipe really pop. While frozen vegetables (for example) are passable, nothing beats the pop of fresh vegetables in your mouth. While canned vegetables can work in a pinch, they just don’t compare. Canned meats are convenient … that’s about all I’ll give them. In most cases, there’s more nutrition in fresh ingredients as well.

Store staples in the freezer. Whenever you prepare something that might be used as a staple in another meal, make plenty of it and store the extras in the freezer. Chicken breasts, loose ground beef, loose sausage, and diced onions all work well in this way.

Always make stock out of leftover bones and leftover vegetables. The meal is done. You have leftover chicken bones, or maybe you have some leftover vegetables of various kinds. Perhaps you have a leftover hambone or the bone from the middle of a roast. Quite often, these things get thrown out. Save those leftovers. Just take them to a crock pot, add enough water to the crock pot to cover whatever you add (and maybe half an inch more), then turn it on low and let it slowly cook all night. In the morning, strain the liquid (just to get the big pieces out) and save the liquid in a jar in the fridge. Then, the next time you need to make something using those flavors, just bust out that jar. That stuff is fantastic flavor.

De-glaze at every opportunity. Another great source for flavor is the “glaze” on the bottom of a frying pan after you cook something – that stuff is pure flavor! Just put some water into the hot pan, watch it sizzle, and notice how much of the glaze on the bottom of the pan comes off into the water. That liquid can now be used in a lot of ways, from adding flavor and moisture to rice and side vegetables or allowing the meat to simmer in it.

Stick with comfort foods at first. It’s easy to get caught up in the sexy idea of preparing some novel dish in the kitchen, but if you don’t have the skills yet, it will likely end in frustration and an underwhelming result. Instead, at first, stick with dishes that you know you like that you’re intimately familar with. For me, that means tuna casserole, hamburgers, and broccoli with rice.

Try cooking something familiar without a recipe. Another great way to really amp up your skills in the kitchen is to attempt making a familiar recipe from memory without using a recipe. This requires you to begin thinking on the fly a little bit as you cook and often forces you into doing things a little different. Sure, sometimes you’ll fail, but you’ll learn a lot from abandoning the recipe.

Get others involved. For me, no kitchen experience is better than cooking in the kitchen with people whose company I enjoy. Being in the kitchen while my wife chops vegetables, my daughter stirs a mixture, my son snaps green beans, or my best friend butters some garlic bread makes the entire experience far more enjoyable no matter how the meal turns out. Get people into your kitchen and cook together – it becomes an amazing social experience.

1. Brush your teeth. An unclean mouth is a perfect place for unwanted bacteria and germs to take root. Good oral hygiene reduces the chance for bacteria to grow in your mouth. This reduces doctor visits, medicine costs, and productivity lost to illness – not to mention the time spent feeling awful.

2. Take leftovers to work for your lunch. If you have something left over in the fridge from a previous meal, pack it up and take it with you to work. If you choose to eat it there, it’s a double savings – you save in that you didn’t waste the food you made at home and you also save by not buying the overpriced food options at work (eating out or the food vendor).

3. Take a piece of fruit or toast with you as you leave. A simple high-energy breakfast raises your energy for the rest of the day, making you more productive. It also helps with alertness, helping to ensure that you make better decisions throughout the day.

4. Adjust your thermostat before you leave. In the summer, raise the temperature several degrees; in the winter, drop it several degrees. Don’t waste money controlling the environment of your home while no one is there.

5. Prepare a grocery list before you leave. Look in your refrigerator and cupboards to identify the things you actually need, then make a list from them. Look in the freezer, too, and make a rough meal plan while you’re at it so that you’re sure to be buying only the things you actually need and will use.

6. Turn off all possible electronic and electric devices before you leave. Devices left on that aren’t doing anything sap electricity which you pay for. Devices even as simple as toasters devour energy throughout the day. Turn off your television, your cable box, any gaming consoles, kitchen appliances, radios, and also don’t forget to turn off your lights. This can be made much easier by putting your home entertainment equipment on a switch, so you can simply flip it before you leave.

7. Take a new route to work (and do the same on your way home). Every six months or so, it’s worth trying an alternate route to and from work. Why? For one, there might be a better route for you to take due to new roads or simply a lack of earlier observation on your part. For another, traffic flow changes constantly based on road construction and new roads, often affecting roads not under construction, meaning a previously-discarded route that’s close may in fact be a much better route now.

8. Park far away from your office. Why? Two reasons. For one, at many workplaces, parking far away from the building is less expensive, because closer spots are often in restricted lots (this was the case in my previous workplace). For another, parking far away from the building requires you to walk much further to get in there, giving you a bit of exercise.

9. Wash your hands a few times a day. This works for similar reasons as brushing your teeth – it reduces your chance of getting sick, which saves on doctor’s bills, medicine, and lost productivity. Get your hands wet, get soap on them, and rub them together for the length of time it takes to sing “Happy Birthday” twice.

10. Use your work downtime to spell out in writing your personal goals. It’s far more valuable than just surfing the web or sitting idle. Make lists of your short term and long term goals, then flesh out how you’ll achieve each one. Come up with specific things you can do and write them down.

11. Eat lunch at your desk. Eating lunch at your desk is far less expensive than eating out, plus it gives you time to work on your goals (as mentioned above). Of course, this is even easier if you brought your lunch, as suggested earlier.

12. Drink water instead of soda or coffee. Water is virtually free and quenches your thirst more effectively than coffee or soda, both of which have adverse health effects (caffeine addiction, weight gain).

13. Invite a friend over. Make a plan for doing something social at your home. Inviting a friend over is far cheaper than going out with a friend and, even though you might have to spring for some costs such as food, it’s likely that such an invitation will be reciprocated later, giving you a free evening of entertainment.

14. Touch base with some people you haven’t heard from in a while. How does this save money? The more established relationships you have, the more likely it is that you can tap your social network for advice (and sometimes more), plus friends often drop each other useful things all the time. Friends are useful to have all around.

15. Meditate or pray. Meditation and/or prayer calms you, improving your health and making it easier for you to make better choices afterwards. Take some time near the end of your work day or the start of your post-work day to meditate for a bit or offer up a prayer in quiet solitude.

16. Try a generic product. When you’re trying to decide at the store which product you should pick up, consider giving the generic alternative a try. It’s almost always far less expensive and it’s often identical to the name brand – many times, they are the same item in different packaging.

17. Hit the library. Libraries offer an abundance of entertainment options for free: books, magazines, DVDs, CDs, games, and countless other items are there to easily be checked out.

18. Air up your car’s tires. Filling your car’s tires up to the maximum recommended pressure once a month or so has an enormous positive impact on your car’s gas mileage. With some recent testing on my wife’s car, we found that it improved her mileage by four miles per gallon.

19. Wash your windshield when you stop for gas. A messy windshield reduces vision (which increases the likelihood for accidents) and can have a subtle negative aerodynamic effect on your car. Since it’s free and you’re just standing there pumping gas, wash it up!

20. Have something in the freezer for dinner. Instead of going out to eat or stopping by the grocery store to pick something out, take a look at what’s in your freezer. Likely, there’s something in there you’ve forgotten all about that will make a wonderful, cheap dinner.

21. Read a book for your evening entertainment. A book (particularly one checked out from the library) is an incredibly inexpensive way to entertain yourself. Turn off the television and the cable box (saving energy) and crack open a book instead.

22. Go for a thirty minute walk. Not only can it be a free form of entertainment, it’s also a great way to improve your physical fitness a bit, reducing your health care costs.

23. Do some of your morning routine the night before. Pack up your leftovers. Turn off as many of your devices as possible. Put the things you’ll need to take in the car. Why? Doing this now helps to ensure that you’ll do things more efficiently in the morning – and you’re more likely to remember everything, too.

24. Turn down the thermostat before you go to bed. Just drop the temperature five degrees or so. You won’t notice it until the morning, at which point you can raise it right back up when you’re still toasty warm from a long night’s sleep. This can easily save you a few dollars.

And a final bonus one… go to bed early. A well-rested mind is a more alert mind, more able to avoid marketing tricks and also more capable of helping you to get ahead in the workplace.

Last winter, I catalogued several of the best tactics to share with you at the dawn of the next winter. Here they are.

Check your insulation.
Take a quick peek in your attic. What do you see? Do you see any bare spots not covered in insulation? Attempt to identify what type of insulation you have and make sure it’s up to the level of insulation you need for your area using this helpful insulation guide along with this tool for understanding insulation R-values. Proper insulation is key to keeping your house warm.

Make sure your home is air sealed.
Air leaks and drafts allow warm air to quickly escape your house, resulting in tremendous heating and cooling bills. The solution to this problem is to check your home for air leaks and properly air seal any leaks you discover. This useful guide from the Department of Energy will walk you through the entire process.

Close the vents in unused rooms (and seal them off, if possible).
If your home is well insulated and you have a room or two that’s not actively being used, turn off the air vent in that room and seal the room as best you can. The temperature in that room will drop significantly when you do this as you’ll no longer be heating it – and no longer paying the bill for heating it, either.

Invest in thick socks.
I work from home in Iowa, and I’ve learned that there’s no better way to stay warm in the winter at home than to wear thick socks. Thick socks keep my feet warm even if I keep the temperature in the house low, and feet are one of the primary thermal indicators for the body as well as being a relatively poorly circulated extremity. Keep the feet warm and the rest of you will be fine.

Test the lower levels of your thermostat.
Along with wearing warm socks, I often tend to turn the heating down during the day (raising it when my family is at home, which is basically just a manual version of the effect one would get from installing a programmable thermostat). I work on the upper level of my home where it’s warmest, so reducing the house temperature during the day rarely has any negative impact on my work – but it certainly saves on energy costs.

Use a hot water bottle. We also tend to dip our thermostat down a bit at night when we’re snuggled in our beds. Unfortunately, after a long winter day, a bed might not necessarily be cosy right at first. Thus, I often use a trick that my father used when he was a boy – a hot water bottle. We use a reusable microwaveable hot water bottle filled with a gel-like substance. A quick heating in the microwave just before bed means that the bed quickly gets cosy warm – a perfect resistance against the cold nights.

Open the blinds on the sunny side of the house – close them on the other side.
In the winter, I do this on the top two floors of our home (where most of the windows are). In the morning, I open all of the blinds and curtains on the east-facing side of the house and make sure everything is closed on the west side (usually done the night before). Then, when I eat lunch, I switch the two. Then, just before dinner, I close everything on the west side of the house. This goes a long way towards maximizing the benefits of direct sunlight and minimizing the heat lost to windows not facing the sun.

Stick together – share a blanket.
If you walked into our family room, you’d see that we already have several blankets out for the winter months. We love to cuddle up as a family under a blanket or two on the couch, sharing our natural body warmth with each other. It keeps us all close together and toasty warm.

Use the oven.
Who wants to go out to eat in the deepest part of winter anyway? Stay home and cook something in the oven. Not only will the food preparation save you money, you’ll also find that the oven is far more energy efficient in the winter. How so? It works with the warming of your house rather than against the summer cooling of your house.

Drink warm fluids.
For me, winter is filled with cup after cup of hot tea and hot chocolate. Drinking a warm fluid makes me feel much warmer (and likely does slightly raise my body temperature). For me, the effect lasts for about forty minutes, a time in which I can get away with a temperature a few degrees lower. During the day, I’ll often prepare myself a giant mug of hot tea and slowly sip it over the course of a few hours. The small energy expense of heating up the water is more than replaced by the energy savings of being able to lower the house temperature a bit more.

“Mindy” writes in:

My husband and I received a panini press as a wedding gift from his aunt. After opening it and looking at it, it appeared as though the press had actually been used already. There seemed to be a thin film of grease on the plates of the press and the packing was pretty messed up. My husband argued that his aunt probably did it because she thought we would actually like it and she already had one on hand. I thought it was really rude and kind of gross. Please don’t tell me you think this is an acceptable way to save money.

The first question raised here is whether a re-gift is appropriate at all. If someone gives you a gift, is it appropriate to keep it and then gift it to someone else? If it is, is it appropriate to use the item before re-gifting it? In other words, is it appropriate to gift someone a used item?

Let’s break it down into the three separate arguments.

Regifts are tactless. Someone gave you a gift because they thought you would appreciate it. If you simply use it as a way to get out of having to buy a gift for someone else, you’re taking the care and thought someone put into the item for you originally and tossing it out the door. If you absolutely must refuse a gift, do it quietly and tactfully by returning it and not making an issue out of it. After all, if you found it useless, why would someone else find it to be a great gift?

Regifts are fine if they’re never used. Sometimes we wind up with duplicate or redundant items or gifts that simply don’t match some aspect of our lives. That doesn’t necessarily mean the item isn’t useful or isn’t a good gift – it just doesn’t match your situation. In that case, regifting is a great way to take that item and breathe new life into it by passing it on to someone who will find value in it.

Used regifts are fine. Sometimes, you have an item in your home that’s superceded by something else. For example, perhaps you get a knife set and find that you mostly just use the chef’s knife (this often happens), then someone buys you a very expensive chef’s knife. That knife set now sits there unused, but it’s a perfectly good knife set, perfect for a friend or family member. So why not wrap it up and give it to them as a gift?

My take? I’m with the middle road on this one. I have no problem with regifts as long as the regift is an item that you received that you genuinely have no use for but can genuinely see that someone else might have a use for. In this case, it does honor the original gift, as someone thought of you and purchased an item that you would actually use – and you do use something already that fills that niche in your life – so you’re passing the gift along to someone who also might genuinely use it. The thought and care and goodwill of the item is intact.

What about used items? If you have an item in your home that you no longer use and think someone else might use it, just give it to that person without the pretense of a gift-giving occasion. If you don’t have anyone to give it to, sell it in a yard sale situation or give it away to a goodwill store.

If you do choose to re-gift used items, you should be aware that the recipient will likely feel as Mindy does – that the gift was simply something you had lying around the house that you could box up to get out of any responsibility for having to think of or buy a gift. In other words, they may feel some serious disrespect.

One thing I think we can all agree on: it’s pretty foul to regift something that you’ve used and not bothered to properly clean. It’s practically the equivalent of dropping some leftover food into a box, wrapping it up, and presenting it as a great gift. If you fall on the side of re-gifting used things, at the very least, you really should clean them well.

“Jim” writes in:

A married couple I’m friends with invited me over to dinner recently. When I arrived, they were rushing around trying to throw a meal together. The main course turned out to be leftover chicken breasts. Yes, leftover. They had been grilled a day or two before and they had merely tossed on some additional spices and warmed them in the oven. I was kind of disgusted by this. I understand that this was an inexpensive route for them to go for dinner, but I was a dinner guest at their home!

When you have guests over, how far does frugality go before it crosses a tactful line? As always, there are two sides to the story…

The price is right. Someone is providing a free meal to you. It’s rude to look a gift horse in the mouth. The meal was obviously cooked and was edible, so a good guest wouldn’t question the source of it (assuming there are no allergy issues or the like). The hosts obviously have some issues going on in their lives – perhaps financial or otherwise – and the best thing you can do as a friend is support them. In fact, instead of being outraged, you might take this meal as a sign that your friends need some help.

The hosts aren’t treating their guests well. If your hosts wanted to merely see you for a while, they did not have to invite you over for a meal. Inviting a guest over for a meal means that you’ll attempt to put something appetizing and reasonably fresh on the table, not your leftovers. If you intend to merely foist leftovers on a friend, make it clear – it can be fine if it’s a close friend and there’s some advance warning (”Hey, Jim, we have a ton of leftovers from our Thanksgiving dinner. Want to come over and help us clean them up?”). Without that, though, it’s fairly rude to toss your uneaten scraps in front of a guest in your home.

My perspective is that it depends on the friendship. I would have no problem serving my closest friends some well-prepared leftovers, nor would they feel self-conscious serving me the same. Anything beyond my closest friends, however, would never get such treatment in my home.

What’s the difference? I have such a long, established relationship with my closest friends that there’s no longer any need to impress in order to further build a friendship. These people have been my friends for the majority of my life at this point (or nearly that long). They know who I am and they know I care deeply about them. They also know that they’re an intimate part of my life, intimate enough that I would feel comfortable serving them some leftovers in a pinch.

If a friendship weren’t nearly as established, I would never serve leftovers as a dish to my guests. However, I would use leftovers as an ingredient in a dish that I would serve to anyone. If I make a big pot of chicken chili, for example, quite often the chicken itself is a leftover and the liquid in the soup is chicken stock, prepared from the bones of a roasted chicken.

One of my mantras is “stop caring what other people think.” That mantra ends at my doorstep when I invite people inside. When they’re here, I do care what they think because I value them enough individually to invite them into my home and share part of my life with them. Respect your guests – and they’ll respect you in return.

“Megan” writes in:

A friend of mine had a sweater from Land’s End that she’d had for about fifteen years. It was getting pretty old and beat up simply because of normal wear and tear. A few weeks ago when she unpacked her winter clothes, she found that one sleeve had finally worn off the sweater. she called up Land’s End and complained, invoking their lifetime guarantee. They sent her a replacement one – not exactly the same, but pretty similar. She was quite proud of this “free” sweater. I was less than impressed. What do you think about this?

As always with these types of things, there are two sides to every story (at least two sides). Here are two ways of looking at it.

Lifetime guarantee means lifetime guarantee. As long as I’m the original owner of that particular item, then I should be entitled to get it replaced if it wears out. It says right there that if, for any reason, you’re unhappy with the sweater (and you’re the original owner of it), you have the right to return it and request a replacement item. This is your right, no matter the circumstances.

Fifteen years of wear on a sweater is a little over the top. If you manage to get fifteen years of wear on a sweater, then the product has been exceptionally good. Instead of trying to get another “free” item of similar quality, just buy another sweater. It’s pretty obvious that the reason for the “lifetime guarantee” is not to give you freebies if you wear a sweater to death, but to protect against a weak seam discovered after several wearings over a few years or something like that. By trying to squeeze a free sweater through this loophole, you’re basically taking advantage of a good company that puts effort into producing quality products – the kind of company we need more of, not the kind we should push out of business.

My take on this is somewhere in the middle. If I had an item that had worn out from regular use, I would not use a lifetime guarantee to try to get a free replacement. However, if I had a sweater that suddenly failed after a few years due to a weak seam or something along those lines, I’d unquestionably call in that lifetime guarantee.

To me, a very well-made item that simply lives out a long, natural lifetime is a very good product, while lifetime guarantees are there to protect you against faulty products. I have quite a lot of respect for companies that produce material with a high enough level of quality that they can provide a lifetime guarantee on it – that means that, under normal wear and tear, it’ll have a long lifetime.

If something goes wrong in the middle, I expect that lifetime guarantee to hold up. But if my long-loved sweater winds up being worn down enough that it becomes the padding on my dog’s bed, I don’t feel that I should be awarded a free replacement. The product did exactly what was advertised and did it very well – I’m deeply satisfied with it.

I guess that my impression of the situation in the question comes down to the sweater itself. If it had only been worn five or ten times in that fifteen year period and the sweater degraded enough that the sleeve fell off due to such little wear and tear, the lifetime guarantee should be invoked. However, if that sweater had been worn several times a year and was obviously nearing the end of a natural lifetime, it’s not frugal to demand a replacement – it’s cheap.

What do you think? Would you demand a replacement item if your item had a lifetime guarantee and you used it frequently to the end of a long natural life?

A long while back, in a post entitled “When Is Frugality Stealing?“, I wrote about how I would sometimes jot down notes out of books when I was in a bookstore. This was completely allowed – and even encouraged – by the store’s owner (perhaps in part because I was a regular customer there) and would often result in me deciding to buy the book once I found that the information was accurate and useful.

This leads to a bigger question about frugality: when is it okay to sample content without buying?

Take, for example, music. Some people find it completely appropriate to download and keep mp3s, offering up the reasoning that the content is overpriced for what you get or that they might buy the music someday if they listen to it enough. Personally, unless these are given as free downloads by the people that recorded it, I find this stealing. There are many, many ways to sample music without just taking what you want – thirty second previews, Pandora radio, and so on. Access to such recordings isn’t really an issue, either, unless you get into highly obscure recordings.

This is a topic that’s endlessly debated online. There’s a significant group that argues that information was meant to be free and that anything that can be reduced to simple information should thus be free. Thus, content creators should find other ways to earn an income and treat their content as an “advertisement” of sorts for their other endeavors. For example, they might argue that I should give my books away for free and then charge a price for my live appearances or for “deluxe” versions of the content.

Here’s the thing. Content has a cost. Someone had to invest a significant amount of time creating the material you enjoy. It’s reasonable to think that the creator would want to be compensated for the time and energy invested in it. When you step back and look at a broader scale, there’s an enormous amount of people involved in making a film, showing it in theatres, and then making it available for you to easily rent or buy. The same is true for any creative work.

When do I think it’s okay to sample such content? It’s fine to sample if the person who created it or the retailer says it is. So, if I want to jot a note out of a book, it’s fine if the bookstore clerk says I can. If I want to listen to a particular song, I can go hear that thirty second sample or listen to a streaming source like Pandora. If you want more, pay for it. That “pay” might mean enjoying it with ad support for free (like on Hulu) or enjoying it by paying for it without ad support.

Some people might go further and just completely give away their content, and that’s fine. They’re choosing to give it away because they believe they’ll build a bigger audience for their live events that way. However, just because one person is doing it doesn’t mean that consumers can then treat every person producing anything in that same fashion.

All that being said, I think most content companies make it ridiculously hard (even now, with the internet) for people to adequately sample the content. How do I know if I want to watch this movie or not? Well, I can probably find a trailer for it (maybe) or a review here or there. How do I know if I want to listen to this album? I can hear some thirty second samples of the chorus and (maybe) a full song or two on a service like Pandora. At least with bookstores, readers are encouraged to read the first part of a book in a bookstore so they can make up their mind – I think that’s one of the reasons why bookstores aren’t having the difficulty that music stores are having.

What do you think? Where’s the line between sampling so you can make an informed decision and stealing just so you can save a few bucks? Where is the line of right and wrong?

A few weeks ago, an acquaintance of mine told me that they’ll often go to grocery stores, go around to every sample stand in the store twice or three times, and call that good enough for their Saturday lunch. Do they also buy groceries there? “Not usually,” she said. “That store’s prices are too high.”

Is this type of attitude right or wrong?

On the one hand, the store is giving away the samples. They expect customers to walk up, take one, and try the wares on offer. The whole point is to give these samples away, so I might as well take the samples, regardless.

On the other hand, the sample giveaway implicitly assumes a few things. It assumes that you’re actually a customer of the store, there to buy things. Sometimes, it also assumes that you have some interest in purchasing the sampled product.

In the end, though, I don’t really think it’s appropriate to go into a business, eat their freebies, and leave, with no intent whatsoever of purchasing an item.

Society is built around value exchanges. In the case of samples, the store is giving one value – a free sample – in exchange for another – being a customer and/or being a potential buyer of that item. If you’re just walking in to gobble samples, you’re neither one of these.

Here’s an analogy. Imagine a friend of yours stops by. He walks into your home, opens up your refrigerator, and grabs a bite to eat – that’s often okay if it’s a close friend. But what if they then just walk out your front door without sitting down to chat with you? That’s blatantly rude.

Why is it rude? It violates a simple value exchange, the kind that society operates on. You don’t mind giving your friend some food, but you expect some conversation and friendship in return for it. By just walking out, your friend is not living up to his end of the unspoken bargain.

Society operates on such unspoken bargains. Traffic operates in this way. Almost all interpersonal relationships work in this way. Workplaces operate in this way. Without these unspoken bargains, society collapses.

What do you think? Is the idea of free samples at a grocery store really such an unspoken bargain? Is it a situation where people should feel fine walking in and taking samples without even thinking about it?

A little over a year ago, I witnessed something that bothered me quite a bit. I tried several times to write an article about it, but I could never figure out exactly how to address it.

I was at a community festival with a flea market attached. One family had rented a slot and was selling homemade candles and soaps. At one side of that family’s slot, however, was a boy, aged ten or so – presumably, their son. He was selling comic books. He had several issues laid out in front of him and a bunch more in a pair of boxes nearby.

As I watched, he was negotiating with a gentleman that I would guess was about thirty five years old. The gentleman took out a ten dollar bill, threw it on the table in front of the boy, and said (quite loudly), “Take it or leave it.” The boy shook his head. The man picked up the bill, said, “It’s your loss,” and turned heel to walk away. Under his breath, the man muttered, “Stupid kid.”

I looked back at the booth and the ten year old boy was obviously kind of upset at the interaction. I walked over and looked at his comics, talking to him about them, mostly to cheer him up. After about five minutes, the guy came back, threw fifteen dollars on the table, and picked up two books with a price totaling $30 as though it were his birth right.

The boy looked at the cash, then picked it up and handed it to his father. The boy looked at me and said, “We need the money.”

Usually, I have no problem with haggling. However, it was fairly obvious that the gentleman was trying to take advantage of the kid using several psychological techniques – showing the money, acting angry and aggressive, and using other tactics to get what he wanted – and it simply left a really bad taste in my mouth.

How far is too far when it comes to haggling? I don’t mind doing it on occasion, but there are a lot of times when I find it in extremely poor taste.

Is it appropriate to haggle with children? Some of you might have been fine with the gentleman’s behavior above (I wasn’t), but what about a six year old selling lemonade? Are you going to argue that you should get a cup for a quarter instead of fifty cents? Where’s the line between bargain hunting and cheapness?

Is it appropriate to haggle with the obviously disadvantaged? If I see a family selling homemade throw rugs and they’re obviously destitute, should I haggle with them? Again, I tend not to do this, but I’ve heard many arguments against this – appearances can be deceiving, if people can’t afford to haggle then they can’t afford to sell, etc.

Where do you draw the line with haggling?

“Maddie” writes in:

My husband and I stayed at a hotel for two nights recently. As we left, my husband packed all of the hotel shampoo, conditioner, coffee packs, plastic cups, soap, and so on into his bag. On the way out, he stopped in the pool room and picked up two towels. I didn’t mind the disposable items in our room, since they would likely be tossed, but I thought taking the towels was wrong and I told him so. What do you think? Is it right to take things like this from a hotel when you stay there?

As always, there are two sides to every story. Let’s look at them.

Taking such items is stealing. A stay at a hotel consists of permission to use their room and to use disposable items they offer you. It is not permission to simply take items on the premises that you want. It would be the equivalent of going to a friend’s house and taking the soap and shampoo and toothpaste and towels out of their bathroom and taking them with you.

Such items are part of the service you receive. You’re paying a substantial fee to stay there – and part of that fee is toiletry and other simple convenience products for your use. Not using them is essentially the same as paying for something at a store, then handing the item back to the store owner and saying, “No, thank you!” That’s frugal foolishness!

My opinion is pretty straightforward on this one. I have no problem taking the items that would likely be disposed if I didn’t. The small convenience soaps, shampoos, conditioners, cleansers, coffee, and so forth are fair game for taking. However, the items that the hotel would re-use – like towels and the like – should be left there. Quite often, the hotel’s rules make it clear that if you take such an item from your room, they’ll charge you big. Using other means, like snagging a towel from the pool room or from the maid’s rack, is pretty much just stealing, as those are items that weren’t there for you to even use.

What do you think? Is it appropriate to take such items from the hotel? What items are appropriate to take?

The question continues, too. What should Maddie do with the towels that were taken from the hotel if she believes it was wrong to take them?

Should she return them? This is perhaps the most honest thing to do, since the towels are/were the property of the hotel. Is it okay to return them anonymously, or should she identify herself when returning them? Or should she just keep the towels?

If I were in Maddie’s shoes, I’d return the towels. I don’t think it makes any difference whether they’re returned anonymously or not – if you dropped them off at the front desk and say, “These accidentally wound up in our bags,” I doubt a word would be said. If you mailed them, I suppose they might investigate the return address, but I’d think it was unlikely. Most likely, they’d simply be accepted – and you’d be psychically off the hook.

What do you think? Should Maddie return the towels now that they’re taken?

“Jane” (we must protect the innocent here, right?) writes in:

My husband has always used this expensive Aveda shampoo for his hair. He says it needs to look good for work. I’ve always used Suave or Pert and it’s worked fine. Lately, I noticed that his shampoo looks almost identical to mine, so when his bottle was empty, I washed it out and filled it with my shampoo. I thought the only way he might notice is because of the difference in smell, but he hasn’t noticed it at all. In fact, I’ve refilled it twice with my cheap stuff. But now I feel kind of guilty about it. Should I tell him? Was this the right thing to do?

There are always two sides to every story. So let’s look at them.

It was fine, Jane. Your husband refused to even try a frugal alternative, so you essentially gave him a trial run at it. If he had noticed and it would have actually made a difference to him, no problem – it would be easy for him to pick up his Aveda and continue with the expensive stuff that actually works with his hair. Instead, you found out that his expensive shampoo may just be a “placebo effect” for him – the idea that he’s using an expensive shampoo means that, in his mind, he looks just a little bit sharper and thus a little bit more confident at work.

It was not fine, Jane. You basically lied to your husband. You told (or at least insinuated to) him that you picked up his brand of shampoo, but what was actually in the bottle was not his shampoo. That’s dishonesty, no matter what, and honesty is the foundation of any good marriage.

Which side is right? For me, it depends on how directly the husband avoided even trying the less-expensive shampoo. If Jane barely brought it up to him, this was the wrong move. If he just refused to try it without a rational reason, I’m much more sympathetic to Jane’s position – although it was not the most honest move, it may have been done in response to utter irrationality. I don’t think I would have ever done this, but I can at least understand it in the face of irrationality.

What do you think? Was Jane’s switcheroo ethical or not? It saved her family money, but it misrepresented the actual product to her husband. Of course, he didn’t even notice… but does that matter?

Of course, now that the die is cast, should Jane fess up? Obviously, the honest thing to do is to confess the switcheroo. Her husband might be pretty upset (after all, it is dishonesty), but he might also realize that, in fact, the shampoos are more or less interchangeable and be agreeable with sticking to the cheaper shampoo.

Not confessing the switcheroo is also an option, though. Jane could just continue refilling the bottle with the less expensive shampoo and sticking it in the shower without a word. If her husband is happy, she’s happy, and it’s saving the family real money over time.

Now that the damage is already done, I think Jane should ‘fess up. Telling her husband the truth might cause a short-term conflict, but it gets the relationship back on an honest bearing. Plus, the husband might realize that the cheap shampoo actually works pretty good and also be willing to try other low-cost options, which can really save the family some serious money.

What’s your take? Should Jane now ‘fess up? Or should she keep perpetuating the expensive shampoo mystique?

In a broader sense, do you think such secret substitutions are ethical? I don’t think they are, although I can at least sympathize with them in the face of a person who is irrational about at least trying generic products. What’s your take?

I thought I’d share some of my best thrift store finds (spurred on by a couple of recent finds) and encourage you, the reader, to share your own. Perhaps this will convince a few of you who are thinking about diving into thrift shopping to go ahead and give it a shot. Trust me – thrift and secondhand stores contain some of the best bargains on earth.

A full winter wardrobe About three years ago, I went into a thrift store looking for long-sleeved shirts for winter. I’m a very big guy, often wearing 2XLT shirts, so I love it when I can find a high quality shirt that fits at a thrift store for a few bucks.

That day, though, I was in luck.

There was an elderly worker in the store putting clothes onto hangers and sticking them onto racks. I walked in and started riffing through the men’s shirts. She looked at me and said, “Excuse me, sir? We just got in a bunch of shirts that must have come from a very large man. Would you like to see them?”

She motioned for me to follow and took me in the back. There was an enormous pile of almost-unworn sweatshirts, long sleeved tee shirts, and dress shirts, all 2XLT and 3XLT in size. I wanted pretty much all of them, so I asked about prices (as they hadn’t been priced yet).

The woman didn’t know for sure and made a phone call, but whoever she called didn’t seem to know, either. So she went out in the store and found a rather raggedy large shirt marked $2. She turned to me and said, “$2 each.”

I was stunned. This was really high quality stuff – Harbor Bay and the like. I bought almost all of the clothes in that batch for about $50.

Three winters later, I’ve still got shirts from that batch that have barely been worn. I won’t need to buy any more long-sleeved shirts for several years yet. Not only that, most of the stuff is nice enough that it actually draws compliments from people.

Now that’s a bargain!

An out-of-print surprise When I was in college, I used to play the game Netrunner fairly often. Netrunner is a card game that requires quite a bit of orderly thought. The game went out of print in 1996 and then, in about 2000 or so, I accidentally ruined my Netrunner cards, rendering it impossible for me to ever use the cards. Since it was so long out of print, I figured I’d never play it again.

Flash forward to about a week ago. After a doctor’s checkup, I stopped at a local thrift store, looking for some long-sleeved shirts that were in good shape and would fit me – occasionally, I’m pretty lucky in this regard. In the back of the store, though, in a glass case, I found a gem.

Sitting there, still in the shrinkwrap, was a Netrunner starter set. The price tag? $3.

I don’t think $3 has ever put that big of a smile on my face.

An emergency fix One time, almost a decade ago, I was on my way to work about 9 in the morning. It was early spring, so I had pulled out my bicycle for the first time and taken off on it.

Well, after about two blocks, I began to realize that the tires were desperately low on air, so I stopped to consider my options. I was in a light commercial area, but there were no gas stations nearby. To put it simply, I was in a bit of a pickle.

I went over to the strip mall area to look around for some assistance and stopped into a thrift shop. This was in the days before everyone had a cell phone, so I asked the person behind the counter if I could make a local call. I called my work and told them I would be late because my bicycle was having issues and I’d have to walk the rest of the way.

As I hung up, the person behind the counter said, “I think we have a bicycle pump.” We went looking for it and found it, near the back. It had a price tag of $2. I emptied out my pockets and found $1.75 in quarters. The lady laughed and called it good enough. I walked outside with my pump, pumped up my tire, and I was on my way.

What are your great thrift store stories? Share ‘em in the comments!

Some of the readers unsurprisingly reacted negatively to this idea. One commenter, Stephen, sums it up pretty well: “I don’t know if it’s possible to give up both cable and not going out to bars, restaurants etc.”

Stephen, like most of modern society, operates under the assumption that certain categories of non-essential spending is impossible to cut. In other words, if you cut some of the luxuries in life, life no longer becomes enjoyable, so these luxuries become viewed as essential.

Unlike a lot of other personal finance writers, I don’t advocate cutting out the elements of your life that make your life enjoyable. Instead, I take a different approach. I argue that a lot of the routines we consider essential in our lives aren’t bringing us joy on the whole.

Take eating out, for example. Many people do it because they see it as quicer and more convenient than eating at home. They can just drive to a restaurant, sit down, place an order, chat with their dining companion, get the meal, pay, then go home. Easy enough.

But when you start adding up the time invested there, it becomes less of a joy (trust me, I’ve done this a lot). For us, it takes fifteen minutes to drive to a decent restaurant. Five minutes to park and get seated – assuming no wait. Another five to ten minutes to place our order. Twenty minutes or so before we get our food. Another fifteen minutes to eat. Ten minutes to get the waitstaff to bring the bill, pay the bill, and leave. Another fifteen minutes to drive home. That’s an hour and a half just to eat out.

At home, I can have a meal from scratch on the table in fifteen minutes. It then takes fifteen minutes to eat and ten minutes to clean the table. That’s forty minutes – and you can, of course, tack on more time if you want to prepare something exquisite. Even then, though, you’re still not competing with the time investment of eating out.

Considering the much higher cost of eating out at a quality level comparable to what I can prepare at home, it was often the case that I found I was basically spending $15 to sit somewhere outside the home for half an hour.

So I cut it. Instead of eating out several times a week, we eat out perhaps once or twice a month now – and it’s only done as part of a family day out and about when we don’t expect to get home until very late (with the kids falling asleep in the back seat).

Do I miss it? No, not at all. I didn’t give up the part I loved, which was eating a delicious meal with my family. Once I gave the idea of not eating out all the time a chance, I started cooking quick meals at home a lot more – and I got better at them. Now, I can produce some pretty good food very quickly, so the food quality isn’t a question. We’re also often finished with all aspects of dinner an hour faster than if we eat out, so we have more time to do things like play a game together or watch a movie together.

What’s my point? Our lives are like a river. They flow through the channel of assumptions and priorities that we set for them. If we begin to alter those assumptions and priorities a little, sometimes the river will fight that change in flow, but most of the time, it’ll happily shift course and find that this new path is even more serene than the old one.

Here’s another example: bookstores. I used to be utterly addicted to bookstores. Twice a week (at least), I’d stop at a particular local bookstore not far from where I worked, browse for a while, and usually walk out with a book or two.

At the time, this seemed normal and quite enjoyable. I couldn’t imagine life without lots of fresh, new books to read. When we had our financial low point, I couldn’t even imagine cutting out this “habit.”

Several of the frugality tip lists I read strongly encouraged substituting the bookstore for the library, but my mind was already made up. Libraries were boring places that smelled like mice and I wouldn’t enjoy it. I basically pushed myself into going, simply because I was willing to try anything.

Lo and behold, I walked out the door with two books I really wanted to read under my arm (along with a big pile of personal finance ones). For free.

And the path of my river changed. I started using the library all the time. I discovered PaperBackSwap. And I gradually slowed my bookstore stops to a crawl. Now, I visit a bookstore once every couple of months at most.

The net result of that? I didn’t give up what I loved – reading books. I still had a big pile of fresh new ones to read. What I gave up was spending a lot of money on them – a big relief, indeed.

For me, the advantage of going minimal is not to give up the things you love. It’s to figure out what about them you truly do love. When people say, “I can’t possibly give up cable,” why is that? Are they afraid of losing a specific program? Or are they afraid to lose those lovely evenings that they enjoy in their comfortable chair or on the couch snuggled with their partner watching a show they both like?

If it’s the latter, why not ditch cable, hook your computer up to your television, and watch some shows off of Hulu? Or get a Netflix streaming subscription for just a few dollars and do the same? That way, you keep the experience you love – watching television from your comfortable chair – without the inconvenience of a hefty cable bill each month.

Alternately, you might find that you’re throwing money towards things that you think you should care about (likely because others around you do), but internally, you don’t really care about them at all. Cut these behaviors out of your life. Engaging in things you don’t really like because you think others will like you because of it is a sure path to unhappiness – and a sure path to an empty wallet.

Strip back your life. If you get rid of something you truly, deeply miss and can’t find a way to replace it, bring it back. The whole purpose is to figure out what you really do value (which are things that are perfectly fine to spend money on) and the things that you really don’t value. Often, there’s a ton of grey area in our lives between these groups – and that grey area is lost money that brings us nothing in return except heartache and missed opportunities.