In the past, I’ve mentioned a lot of disparate facts about how we collect and use coupons, so I thought it might be worthwhile to show off our entire coupon organization system so it’s clear how we do it. Because of this system, the only time we really invest in coupons is a bit of spare time during Sunday breakfasts, some late evening idle internet surfing, and a few extra minutes when assembling our grocery list, and we often save $30 at the store because of coupons. Our system is not one of those complex and obsessive ones that tries to squeeze out every nickel - it’s merely the methodology we’ve found that gives us the maximum bang for the buck.

Here’s how we maximize our coupon value, from top to bottom.

Meet Our Coupon Binder

The best place to start is the centerpiece of the system: our coupon binder.

It’s actually just a very cheap photo album with clear pockets and a binder that allows you to move pages around as you wish. Whenever we have a new coupon to add, we just toss it in the binder in the appropriate place.

Appropriate place? We sort our coupons by one criteria and one criteria alone: by expiration date. This makes it easy for us to quickly find and eliminate the expired coupons and also keep tabs on the coupons that are getting close to expiration.

Here’s a peek inside the binder.

As you can see, the coupons each have a pocket to themselves, so we can quickly flip through the book and find what we want. We keep multiples of the same coupon in the same pocket. Thumbing through reams of coupons is a giant waste of time and drastically reduces the cost-effectiveness of the coupon clipping time investment.

The Coupons We Clip

We have a pretty simple set of criteria for clipping a coupon.

First, is it something we’re sure we’ll use? If so, we’ll clip any coupon for that item.

Second, does the coupon have a face value of $1 or more? These are coupons that are usually used as part of a large marketing campaign for a specific product and are ones that are often paired with a sale in the store within the next month or two (the one month coupon strategy at work). If we might use the product (in other words, we use that type of product, but not necessarily that brand), we’ll clip it. It’s because of this that I’m currently using Herbal Essences shampoo and Old Spice body wash in the shower, for example - I wouldn’t normally buy those brands, but clipping big discount coupons and waiting for a sale made the items very cheap.

Third, is the coupon for an item that’s often cheap or on sale anyway? A good example here is breakfast cereals (which is why you see the Honey Nut Cheerios coupon in the binder above) - they’re usually low in price and regularly go on sale, too.

If a coupon hits one of these categories, we clip it. This means our binder is often close to full and we often toss about half of the coupons we clip, but the other half really save us a lot.

Where Do We Get Coupons?

On Sunday mornings, I usually clip coupons from the Sunday paper at the breakfast table while everyone’s eating breakfast. I’ll just quickly go through the coupon sections, cut the coupons we want, and save any store flyers I see (they’re important later). This is a minimal time investment, because we’d all be sitting there eating breakfast anyway, and it’s a good opportunity to teach the value of living frugally to the kids.

If the Sunday coupons are exceptionally good, I’ll go to the local convenience store really early on Monday morning and ask the cashier to let me pillage coupon sections out of the old Sunday papers. I’ll score ten papers’ worth of flyers and cut the goodies out of them the following Sunday.

On lazy evenings, my wife or I will do some web surfing, finding coupons at places like Coupons.com and Target.com. The latter is especially nice because you can use the Target.com coupons and manufacturer coupons at the same time on purchases at Target, so you can get stuff for free sometimes if you plan carefully.

If I identify some truly exceptional coupons (for example, not long ago I had coupons for $2 off a jug of V-8 Fusion - that’s the 100% juice V-8), I might hit up a coupon broker to send me a bunch of copies of that coupon. I just Google “coupon broker” and then pay someone else a few cents to dig through their flyers and clip the coupons for me.

That’s all we do. It takes very little time in a given week to collect all the coupons and toss them in the binder.

The Pre-Shopping Ritual

Each Friday evening (or sometimes Saturday evening), we’ll assemble a grocery list. We usually make up a meal plan for the next week, make sure we have everything we need for all of those meals, and then check on the status of our household staples (toiletries, milk, flour, etc.). This gives us the backbone of our list.

A note on the meal plan We usually base our meal plan on the flyer from the local Fareway - our preferred grocery store. We get the Fareway and Hy-Vee flyers (the two main local grocery chains) in the mail each week and then use them to prepare a meal plan, usually preferring the Fareway flyer (because it’s basically lower on almost everything, as we discovered after some careful pricebooking). We just identify the fresh items on sale in the flyer and then try to base meals around those fresh items.

We also go through the flyers and look for obvious loss leaders in the flyers. What items are on sale that are low enough to seem genuinely surprising? We try to match these up with coupons we have, so that if we add an extra item to the list, we’re adding something that’s only going to cost pennies and is sometimes free.

We then pull out all of the coupons that match up with items on our list and then put them in a few pages at the back of the binder for easy access when shopping.

The extra time added to our shopping planning by coupons is maybe ten minutes, tops. We put probably half an hour total into our shopping preparation, but our whole preparation plan saves us about $50 per grocery shopping trip, so it’s time well spent.

While In The Store

We take our coupon binder with us when grocery shopping, but we primarily just stick to our list. We do keep our eyes open for any unadvertised in-store specials - every once in a while, we’ll find one that matches up well with a coupon in our binder and thus we grab it immediately. Aside from this, we just follow the shopping list, then pull out all of our coupons from the back pages of the binder at the checkout aisle.

Our time actually in the store is vastly reduced compared to the time we’d spend without any preparation. The time savings here mitigates the time investment made with the extra planning.

Is It Worth It?

Two weeks ago (the last “normal” week around here that didn’t involve a weekend camping trip or other chaos), I kept track of the time spent with couponing. If you count the time spent at the breakfast table clipping coupons as time spent just couponing, we spent 23 minutes on coupons alone that week, and an extra 14 minutes on preparing a grocery list and meal plan, giving us a total of 37 minutes spent planning our weekly shopping trip. When in the store, we saved approximately fifteen minutes because we had a tight, clear shopping list to follow, so our total time lost to the coupons was roughly 22 minutes for the week.

The savings from the coupons alone was $21 on our final receipt, a slightly below average week. That means our “wage” for clipping coupons with this system was $57.27 an hour after taxes for the given sample week.

In reality, our savings from investing the time to properly plan our shopping was significantly higher than that, even. By sticking to a shopping list, we avoided many impulse buys. By planning our meals in advance in accordance with the fresh items on sale, we pocketed even more savings on our food purchases. These are additional savings that I’m not even attempting to quantify, but both are real and quite tangible.

Couponing is clearly worth it in our case. The relatively small time investment it adds to our shopping is well worth the real cash savings we realize from our system.

Let me address a few of the usual coupon complaints.

Couponing is stupid because you’re not buying fresh, healthy food. We rarely use food coupons at all, and when we do, they’re usually for breakfast cereals like Cheerios, frozen vegetables, yogurt, and occasionally ice cream. The vast majority of our coupon clipping is for hygiene items (like shampoo, soap, razors, etc.) and other household items (like dishwashing detergent, etc.).

For example, if you look at the picture of our coupon book above, you’ll see six coupons: one frozen yogurt coupon, one Cheerios coupon, one Ziploc baggie coupon, a toothpaste coupon, a body wash coupon, and a facial cleanser coupon. Not exactly a big pile of junk food - and we still save a lot at the store. Our actual meal planning is based around the fresh produce that’s on sale that week.

Couponing is stupid because it’s not cost effective and is a waste of my time. We get $57.27 an hour after taxes for something we can largely do in our pajamas at the Sunday morning breakfast table. If you think that’s a waste of your time, be my guest. I consider it a pretty effective use of my time.

Couponing is stupid because it’s all about consumerism. I don’t really care that much about consumerism if I can get soap for a quarter. I’m not seeking the latest products - I’m seeking cheap. If I can get cheaper quality items without the coupons, the coupons go in the trash. If you want to label that consumerism, feel free, but I consider it a pretty frugal methodology.

I love going out on the town with friends, but when I was a younger man, I found that going out every night with pals was a sure way to suck my wallet dry. I’d spend $30 before I blinked and doing that every night was a sure way to drain my wallet.

Over time, I gradually began to develop a toolset of skills that reduced the cost of going out on the town with friends. I’d just use one or two of these tactics each time - the ones that seemed the most appropriate - and would find myself saving 50% or more on one of these little after-work excursions.

With that being said, here are sixteen tactics you can use to save some cash while going out on the town with friends. When you go out, just choose one or two tactics to use - don’t be a cheapskate and try to do all of these at once. If you can save 30% of your normal spending and still have all the fun of going out, that’s a real start.

Do the research
Spend some time researching the options available to you and know where the good deals are. What places have stellar offers for the after-work crowd? Which places have no cover charge on Monday or Tuesday nights? What restaurant has a great deal on its website? Know what kinds of places are available and what some of the best deals are. That way, when you’re out and about, you’re equipped with some knowledge.

Be the one that makes a suggestion
With the group I used to hang out with, the first person that made a concrete suggestion about where to go that evening usually got their way, as everyone else just went along with the flow. Thus, if you know where the bargains are, suggest that place (and you don’t have to mention the bargains, either). That way, you’ll effortlessly save money when the rest of the crowd follows along.

Clip some coupons
My Sunday newspaper always contains tons of coupons for restaurants - things like “save $4 on two lunch entrees,” for example. Clip these coupons and then bust them out when a lunch opportunity comes along. Another great place to look: local “free” newspapers (like Cityview and Juice in the greater Des Moines, Iowa area).

Buy (and use) an “entertainment book”
Around here, “entertainment books” are a common item that you can buy to help a charitable organization with fundraising. These books are loaded with coupons for restaurants, golf courses, clubs, and so forth - in other words, entertainment coupons. If you go out with the gang on a very regular basis, these books can quickly pay for themselves - just take it along wherever you go and see if any coupons match up with what you’re doing.

Take advantage of special local events
Many communities offer interesting local events that can easily eat up a social excursion or two. See what the community festival is all about, or check out restaurants that are participating in any big cross-promotional events (like “restaurant week”, which some communities have).

Pay per drink - don’t start a tab
Never start a tab when you’re out at the local watering hole. A tab makes it incredibly easy to rack up purchases without really thinking about it, leaving you with a stunning bill at the end of the night. Instead, buy each drink with cash - and tip each one individually. If you take in only $10 or $20 in cash, you’ll be capped at spending that much and thus won’t be shocked at the end of the night with a huge bill.

Catch happy hour
Many dining and drinking establishments offer a “happy hour,” usually timed to catch the after-work crowd. These usually offer cheap drinks and usually very cheap (sometimes free) appetizers. If you know of a place that offers a great “happy hour,” offer up that place as a suggestion as to where to go after work, then eat up on the free appetizers (meaning you’ll only need a tiny supper you can easily fix at home for pennies, saving you even more).

Don’t be the only person buying rounds of drinks
It’s fine to buy a round of drinks for your friends, but only if everyone does it on a regular basis. Otherwise, you’re throwing money away needlessly. Don’t feel obligated to buy a round, especially if you’ve recently bought one.

Take advantage of any “members club” offers
At a few of the drinking establishments in Des Moines and other nearby towns, there are “members clubs” that offer deals if you buy so many drinks. For example, at one place, if you buy 10 different drinks, you get one free - they use a “wooden nickel” system to do this. Take advantage of it, especially if it coincides with other deals like cheap appetizers or a great happy hour.

Meet friends for lunch instead of dinner
If you’re looking to meet up with friends for a meal, consider going out for lunch instead of going out for dinner. The lunch menu is always cheaper and you can still have a great time together. Plus, there’s less temptation to drink heavily (and thus spend more than you should) over lunch than over dinner.

Eat plenty of the free appetizers
At many places (especially Mexican-themed restaurants), free appetizers are given to you before the meal. If they are, order a light meal and chow down on the appetizers - and if you feel bad about this, just tip strongly. There’s a Mexican restaurant I love near where we live that has $4 lunch specials with unlimited chips and salsa - I always leave $6 behind just because the meal is good, you can eat as much as you’d like, and the service is great.

Order a glass of water (if it’s free)
If you can, always order a glass of water before ordering food. Drink that glass of water quickly, then evaluate the menu. The glass of water will not only hydrate you (a real bonus), but will fill you up a bit and encourage you to order a smaller portion off the menu, thus saving you a bit of cash.

Split an entree with a friend
If you’re going to a place with large entrees, suggest splitting an entree with a friend and also splitting the cost. This is sometimes frowned upon with small parties, but with large parties, it’s fine. Choose a meal that’s easy to separate into equal portions (soup’s bad, sandwiches are good) and pay an equal portion of the bill.

Drink some beverages and eat a snack before you go
Another way to keep your eyes from overloading your wallet while studying the menu is to eat a snack or drink some beverages before you go. This way, when you arrive at the restaurant or club, you’ll already be partially full and won’t want to order as much food or as many beverages, thus saving you money.

Don’t be ashamed of the doggy bag
If you order an entree, focus on cleaning up the side dishes first. That way, if you start digging into the entree and can’t finish it, it’s very easy to package up into a doggy bag for lunch the next day. Don’t be ashamed of the doggy bag, either - it’s an incredibly smart (and non-wasteful) thing to do.

Join the group after dinner
Another clever strategy is to simply agree to meet up with the gang after their dinner. Just meet them outside the restaurant an hour or so after their reservation and then hang out with them afterwards. Meanwhile, you can either skip the meal or eat something inexpensive by yourself (likely something at home).

Using one or two of these tactics in an evening is not a social intrusion, it just ensures that you spend your money in a sensible fashion - and doing that over and over can mean many evenings of fun without many nights of worrying about making ends meet.

In the comments of my recent review of You’re So Money, partgypsy left a very interesting comment:

My sister lusts after those kind of items, and spends all her disposable (and some non-disposable) income on clothes. She seeing eventually owning a home, or retirement as being out of her reach, but she can still buy some designer item which to her = success. There is almost this feeling of scarcity, well, I better buy this, because I might not have the money for it later, and besides this makes me happy and I might never be able to retire besides I could get hit by a bus tomorrow. The items are tied to happiness, fun, glamour, while life as seen in your money or your life is seen as a gulag-like abhorrent existence. It is too far to jump from there to here.

This comment, in one swoop, picks up several of the image problems that frugality has. Let’s look at some of them.

The Perception: Frugality is boring and the opposite of fun.
In that comment above, the phrase “while life as seen in Your Money or Your Life is seen as a gulag-like abhorrent existence” really stuck out at me, clearly delivering the sentiment that frugality is simply not fun.

I understand where the idea comes from. If you make a big list of frugal tactics and a big list of things to do where money is no object, the list of things to do where money is no object will appear to be more fun. What’s more fun: a camping trip to a state park or a trip to the Bahamas? What’s more fun: a fuel-efficient Honda or a Lexus? It’s pretty obvious which list will have the fun factor when you look at it just on the surface.

The Reality: If “fun” requires you to spend a lot of money and accumulate debt, is it really fun?
But it’s extremely superficial to just look at the surface. There’s much more to a purchase than just the excitement of getting that neat new item. As I wrote a while back, the total experience of a purchase involves not just the high of going on that trip or getting that nifty new gadget, but it also involves the realization that maybe you’re not getting as much value from that item as you might have thought, as well as that awful feeling in your gut when you get the credit card bill in the mail.

Frugality isn’t about cheap. It’s about maximizing value for the buck. If my wife can buy a $50 handbag and get 70% of the enjoyment and quality out of it than someone who buys a $3,000 handbag, she’ll do it. That leaves her $2,950 to do whatever she wants - save it for something big in the future, perhaps? That $2,950 can make a big difference when buying a car, for example.

The Perception: Frugality is all about living in the future instead of the present.
When you’re being cheap, you’re trying to scrape a few more pennies off the table to hoard in your pocket for the future. Why not live for today and spend big? After all, as the comment above says, “besides I could get hit by a bus tomorrow.” If you spend every day scrimping and saving, it won’t do you much good at all if you die young.

I see this sentiment echoed a lot in my peers. Shiny new cars, a bag full of brand new golf clubs, exquisite home furnishings - they have it “all.” Quite often, I’m jealous of it. I’d like to have that bag full of shiny golf clubs. I’d like to have some nifty gadgets. Undeniably, there’s a fun factor there.

The Reality: Frugality is all about living in the present instead of the future.
But then I look at a slightly bigger picture. Instead of having those golf clubs, I can sleep well at night without debt hanging over my head. Instead of having some of those nifty gadgets, I can afford to travel to visit friends and family without skipping a beat. Instead of having the snappiest clothes, I don’t have to have a lump in my throat every time I hear about retirement.

Frugality isn’t about denying yourself every pleasure. It’s about having good sense. It’s about realizing that buying a $3,000 handbag means that you have $3,000 less to spend on something else that’s important. It’s about realizing that when you buy something on your credit card, you’ll have some sleepless nights knowing a huge debt is breathing down your neck.

To me, frugality is simply peace of mind. I never feel guilty about anything I spend, and I never get a sick feeling in my stomach when a credit card bill comes in the mail. I have the freedom to do most of the things I want to do and have the sense to realize that some things simply don’t have enough “bang for the buck.” It’s also a realization that little choices, those that shave a little bit off the top here and there without any change in quality, are the ones that give you all the freedom you could ever want. Frugality is about the life you want today: do you want an expensive handbag stuffed with monster credit card bills, or a similar but far less expensive bag without any debt bills at all?

The Perception: A “big” expense like a house is out of reach, so why bother reaching for it?
When I first started seriously thinking about a house purchase, I was completely stunned at the numbers I was coming up with. More than a thousand dollars a month in house payments? Are you kidding me? I couldn’t help but think of all of the stuff I would have to give up for that, and I didn’t like it one bit.

Thus, for years I convinced myself that a house was really out of reach for me, and with that settled, I was free to bust out the cash to buy golf clubs and iPods and Magic: the Gathering cards and all sorts of other things. That “big” expense was simply out of reach, so why even bother to try for it when there’s so much fun stuff to be had?

The Reality: A “big” expense like a house is only out of reach if you want it to be out of reach.
What I chose not to see then is that I could have easily been enjoying most of that stuff while also building a financial foundation for myself. I could have just purchased better “bang for the buck” golf clubs and put that extra wad of cash up for a house down payment while still enjoying golf. I could have bought just one iPod and enjoyed it. I could have not demanded a room with a view overlooking Hyde Park for six days while on our honeymoon in London, but still enjoyed a great honeymoon in the United Kingdom with her. Instead of running to the bookstore to buy every book I wanted, I could have stopped by the library and just checked some of them out.

Just a handful of changes like these - ones that wouldn’t affect my life much at all - and I would have had my down payment years earlier. These big things are reachable - telling yourself that they’re not is just an excuse to enjoy little tchotchkes right now instead of a big dream down the road.

The Perception: Saving a dollar here and a dollar there gets you nowhere.
I often get ridiculed when I post lists of specific frugality tips. “I’m not wasting my time just to save $2,” I’ll hear.

$2 on the surface isn’t much money at all. It’s a drop in the bucket compared to the real expenses in life, so why should one ever bother to worry about it? Focus on the hundred dollar bills and the one dollar bills will follow, many people believe.

The Reality: Saving a dollar here and a dollar there is the surest way to getting rich.
I don’t believe that at all. If I can save $2 with a minute’s effort, I’ll do it every time. Why? That minute is spent earning a wage of $120 an hour after taxes. If you could repeat that minute over and over again over a year’s worth of work, you’d earn $249,600 after taxes. That, to me, is a minute worth spending.

That one individual tip that saves you $2 won’t do the trick, but a dozen tips like it begin to make a difference. If you start following them by the dozen, doing things like installing more energy efficient lighting and a programmable thermostat, writing a grocery list and using a good coupon strategy and sticking to both, or buying items in bulk to save cash over the long haul, you find yourself saving that $2 again and again and again.

Soon, that $2 becomes $100, then that $100 becomes a paid-off credit card. Even better, all along the way these tactics don’t force you to make a major lifestyle change. Buying toothpaste in bulk doesn’t mean you stop traveling. Installing a programmable thermostat doesn’t mean you have to give up dressing fashionably.

It juts means that you’re letting $2 here and $2 there add up to something much bigger.

Frugality has an image problem, but it’s only an image problem if you look at it from only one angle. If you look at the bigger picture, frugality lets you have your cake and eat it, too.

It’s just a matter of what you choose to see.

If you have a spouse or a close friend and you’ve both recently made a commitment to saving money, why not try making it into a competition?

First, a big disclaimer: my wife and I are naturally competitive with each other. We compete at the most absurd things - who can blow up a bigger balloon without it popping, who can win the most in a series of twenty five board games (yes, seriously), and who can eat the most “El Gordo” burritos in one sitting.

I lost that last one. My wife has a hollow leg, especially for such a small woman.

Anyway, the point is that if you can turn frugality into a mutual challenge, you can turn something that you might otherwise view as drudgery into something quite fun.

Five Examples of Frugality Competitions

1. Starting from zero, who can have the lowest credit card balance at the time of the next statement?
This challenge forces all competitors to not just bust out the plastic for all of their needs and instead carefully plan their purchases.

2. Over alternating weeks, one person is in charge of the meals for a week. Which person can spend the least preparing enjoyable meals for everyone?
Want to learn how to cook cheaply? Doing this will teach both of you how to shop for inexpensive foods and prepare them in a delicious fashion. It’s through competitions like this that my wife and I have discovered the delicious and inexpensive nature of the humble bean.

3. Who can go the longest without spending a single red cent on entertainment?
My wife and I went for months doing this. We read through our entire book collections, watched every movie we own, and devoured the contents of the library like ravenous wolves. I finally broke down and spent money to re-subscribe to a magazine, but it taught us both how little you really have to spend on entertainment to enjoy yourself.

4. A great competition to have with someone else: who can make the most homemade stuff to save money?
Homemade laundry detergent, homemade oatmeal packets, home-grown food - doing stuff yourself saves quite a bit of money. Start a friendly competition with a neighbor or a friend to see who can find the best home do-it-yourself savings. Share ideas with each other and see who can come up with the best stuff.

5. Who can make the most at their yard sale?
A yard sale is a great way to spend a weekend, clean out unwanted clutter, and earn a few bucks from the stuff you don’t want. Why not make it a competition? Make it a challenge with a friend of yours: have yard sales on alternating weekends and see who can earn the most? It’ll challenge both of you to clean out your closets and take a serious look at downsizing those unwanted possessions - plus put cash in both of your pockets.

A race for the prize? If you want, you can add some sort of prize to the competition. My wife and I have competed for book store gift cards before. Perhaps you and your yard-saling friend can agree to ante up a portion of your yard sale earnings in an effort to make you both try a bit harder.

The key thing here is to make saving money fun and interesting by turning it into a social situation. A friendly competition where you both end up with extra money in your pocket and perhaps a better idea of ways to save money is something that benefits everyone involved.

Even better, you might discover how cheap and tasty beans actually can be.

I’ve been collecting a bunch of interesting little money saving tips over the last few months. Here are ten worth looking into.

Buy a turkey and put it on ice. Turkeys sold in June are roughly half the price of turkeys sold in November. You can freeze a turkey forever, and after only six months, there’s virtually no degradation in the quality of the meat. So if you have a deep freezer, go buy your Thanksgiving turkey the first weekend in June. Others might think it odd, but you’ll laugh all the way to the bank.

Drink ten or so glasses of tap water both days. It’s summer. Drink more water. Not only is tap water absurdly cheap and very healthy, it also curbs hunger, which means that you’ll eat less for meals, which can directly save you some cash. Get hydrated with a big ol’ glass of water!

Plan your summer vacation - but not this year’s! Right now is the time to plan next year’s summer vacation. Identify what you want to do now so that you can book things early, get exactly what you want, and save a ton of cash. The last time we went on a significant summer vacation (2006), we booked a campground site almost nine months in advance, paid a pittance for it by check, and had the most beautiful site for four days of memorable camping with my wife and my baby. We’re bandying about ideas for next summer’s vacation right now.

See if you have any missing money The NAUPA (National Association of Unclaimed Property Administrators, a collective of state agencies that handle unclaimed property) have set up a website where you can search by name and find out if any unclaimed property belongs to you. Check it out at http://www.missingmoney.com/. After only five minutes’ worth of searching, I found unclaimed property belonging to two different people I know - I sent them both emails letting them know about it.

Clean out your pantry/cupboards Every time I do this, I end up saving a bunch of money. First of all, I usually discover several items pushed to the back that I’d completely forgotten about, which inspires meals. Second of all, it’s a good way to inventory the kitchen staples you have on hand. Third, it lets you get rid of stuff that has become outdated. Fourth, it lets you rotate stuff around so that things are easier to find (making home meal preparation easier). A pantry cleaning is an excellent little weekend project that can save you money in multiple ways.

Look for corn, lettuce, blueberries, and peaches at the grocery store These vegetables are in season and will be pretty inexpensive on store shelves. Take a look at this list of cheapest fruits and vegetables month by month. Around here, lots of summer produce can be had very cheap in late July to late August when gardens and small sweet corn patches begin to produce. Also, don’t forget the humble cabbage - it can be very tasty when properly seasoned and boiled. Give it a try - you might be surprised.

Sharpen your kitchen knives Many people get frustrated in the kitchen and give up on cooking at home because their blades are atrocious, making it difficult to cut anything up. If you’ve got a standard knife set (and there seems to be one of these in almost every American kitchen), you can take care of that “cheap knife that doesn’t cut” problem with the honing steel that’s likely included. Watch this video to see exactly how to do it (seeing it is much better than explaining it):

I sharpen all of our knives about once every three months, and I sharpen my chef’s knife about twice as often.

Start planning for homemade Christmas gifts My wife and I are planning on giving homemade gift bundles to many people this Christmas. These gifts are much more gifts of time than money, and that means we have to start planning now for items like homemade soap, homemade beer, homemade wine, and so forth. I’ll write a detailed post on these kits in the future, but if you’re planning on making such items for gift giving, now’s the time to get started. Homemade gifts can be quite inexpensive, but they take some planning to execute well.

Go grocery shopping at midnight Many large grocery stores with a meat counter and a bakery will price many of those fresh items left over from the day at huge discounts to sell overnight, because if they don’t sell by the morning, they’ll have to be tossed. Go about midnight, and you’ll often find baked goods and fresh meats with enormous discounts. Grab some and have cheap fresh doughnuts for breakfast and a very inexpensive steak for supper.

Use vinegar as your fabric softener Instead of using expensive fabric softeners, just use two caps full of vinegar in your wash as a fabric softener. The vinegar will gently soften your clothes and the rinse water will wash away all of the vinegar, leaving your clothes soft on the cheap. Do NOT use vinegar if you’re using bleach, however; the two will produce a chlorine gas that you do NOT want to breathe and could possibly damage your washing machine, too.

One thing that always frustrates me is when someone gives me a Hallmark greeting card along with a gift. Not only does one generally cost $3 to $4, the sentiment inside is often rather impersonal, merely the best fit of the choices one might find in the card aisle at a Hallmark store.

Unfortunately, many people believe that a Hallmark prewritten greeting card is the way to show someone they care and thus they spend fifteen minutes milling through tons of cards finding “just the right one” to send, when in fact it takes less time and less money just to make one yourself.

I’ve mentioned the idea of making your own greeting cards in the past, but many readers scoffed, believing it to be a waste of time. I argue that it actually takes less time and is more thoughtful than merely sending a card selected at Hallmark. Let’s take a look and see how you can make one.

Step One: Get some cheap blank cards at a dollar store.
I like to get boxes that have some variety and usually have quaint pictures on the front, usually nature scenes or a small, simple design. On the inside, I like them to be completely blank. You can usually find boxes of cards like this for just a dollar or two at a discount store. Don’t be afraid to shop around - wait for the right cards that match your personal taste and aesthetic.

Step Two: Find some appropriate poetry, lyrics, or other materials that match the occasion and person.
Whenever I hear a piece of poetry or a song lyric or a quote that makes me think vividly of someone else, I try to make sure to write it down and save it for later use on a card for that person. For example, here’s a lyric quote from Iron and Wine’s 2004 album Our Endless Numbered Days that I’ve been saving to use in such a card for my own wife.

Love is a dress that you made long to hide your knees
Love to say this to your face
I’ll love you only
For your days and excitement
What will you keep for to wear?
Someday drawing you different
May I be weaving in your hair?

Love and some verses you hear
Say what you can say
Love to say this in your ear
I’ll love you that way
From your changing contentments
What will you choose for to share?
Someday drawing you different,
May I be weaved in your hair?

Love and Some Verses, Iron and Wine

Something about the lyrics makes me think of my wife in a very deep, personal fashion. When I’m feeling more unusual, I might use something like:

Starfish and coffee
Maple syrup and jam
Butterscotch clouds, a tangerine
And a side order of ham
If you set your mind free, honey
Maybe you’d understand
Starfish and coffee
Maple syrup and jam

Starfish and Coffee, Prince

Don’t worry about finding the “perfect” sentiment - there is no such thing. Instead, just find something that personally evokes the person you’re writing for. For example, that Prince lyric makes me think of my wife immediately, and thus even though it’s quirky and might seem a bit imperfect, that’s what makes it perfect. It’s a perfect match for the beauty I see in her and our relationship - maybe it’s not the normal, plain sentiment she might expect, but it has something more than that. It’s a mix of who I am and who she is, and just like life, that mix isn’t perfect, but it does ring true.

If you’re particularly creative, you can attempt your own poetry, which I sometimes do. I usually try to draft it electronically, get it the way I like it, then transcribe it.

Step Three: Write that poetry in your own hand on the inside of the card.
Speaking of transcription, a big part of what makes this simple card work is that the material inside is written in your own handwriting. You might find just the perfect lyric or sentiment online, but copying the words in your own shaky penmanship makes the message much more personal and sentimental.

The few minutes it takes you to transcribe a simple poem or lyric in your own hand is the difference between a boring card that will be quickly forgotten and something personal that will be remembered and perhaps treasured.

Step Four: Add your own personal signature and message.
End the card with a simple note stating the occasion and a nice sentiment, followed by your signature, and your card is complete. It’s intimate, personal, and costs you a fraction of what the Hallmark special costs.

The next time you’re faced with a situation where it’s appropriate to give someone a card expressing a sentiment, consider this plan instead of the Hallmark plan. You’ll save yourself a few bucks and create something far more meaningful along the way.

The photo above depicts Warren Buffett and Bill Gates at a bridge event in Omaha, Nebraska in 2006. They were spending an afternoon playing bridge, an intellectually challenging and quite enjoyable card game that only requires you to have a deck of cards, three friends to play with, a pencil and a pad to keep score, and a sharp mind. It’s also been a closet passion of mine for many years, though I rarely have as many opportunities to play as I would like.

What’s Bridge?
Bridge (short for contract bridge) is a trick-taking card game like countless others out there. It’s similar in a lot of ways to games like hearts, spades, pitch, 500, euchre, and so on - any of those can be a great substitute for bridge, but bridge is the most widely played game of the lot and perhaps the most interesting from a strategic standpoint. Rather than just explaining the rules in my own language, take a look at Wikipedia’s detailed entry on bridge, or you can try playing bridge online at Yahoo! (I play on there occasionally as “trenttsd,” especially on lazy afternoons when the kids are napping, but I’m not exactly a strong adept and I’d rather play it face to face so I can read people).

Bridge is usually a game best learned from someone who already knows how to play, but in most social situations, you can just choose any trick-taking game that at least a couple people at the table know. For instance, with my own family, a pitch variation is often played, and my in-laws play a version of 500 (which is only a slight variation on bridge), and in each case I learned from playing with and against family members and friends.

Five Reasons to Spend an Afternoon Playing Bridge (or Another Card Game)
A card game like bridge is one of the most frugal ways you can spend a lazy afternoon. Here’s why.

It’s practically free You just need a deck of cards and a pen and pad to keep score on. No equipment, no anything - just the cards, the score pad, and the people. That’s almost no cost at all.

It makes you think Trick-taking games are deeply mentally engaging. You have to keep track of the state of the game, read other players, formulate a strategy, try to understand your opponent’s strategy (and often your partner’s), and make a play that takes into account all of this. That forces you to be mentally sharp to play well at all.

It’s inherently social Four people sitting around a table playing cards is a social situation. You get to interact with people and can often develop interesting conversations while the game is being played. Once, over a card game, my partner (who I didn’t know well) taught me a great deal about the business of building an organic farm - fascinating conversation.

It can take as little or as much time as you want You can just play one quick game and be done with it in just a half an hour, or you can burn the entire afternoon and evening playing, keeping it fresh by rotating partners and players. It can expand or contract to fill the time as you need it.

It can be played in pretty much any situation with any four people (provided they’re willing to learn) All you really need are the cards, the score sheet, and enough space to lay the cards down. Thus, it works in countless situations: lazy afternoons at home, camping, family reunions, or about anything else you can conceive of.

The next time you’re bored and itching to do something, call up some friends and bust out a pack of cards. You’ll have a fun afternoon and it will scarcely cost you a dime.

I love baking soda. It’s one of those things I can scarcely resist buying. Whenever I see a huge quantity of it for sale at the local warehouse store, I’m always tempted to pick up a big box of it, as you can get a twelve pound bag of baking soda for $5.76.

Why? It has nearly infinite uses and is extremely inexpensive to acquire - the two elements of a purchase that make my frugal heart go pitter-patter.

I originally started listing out dozens of specific uses of baking soda, but as I was doing research for this article, I came across a free book online that extolled the many frugal virtues of baking soda. It’s entitled Resourceful and Ingenious Uses of Baking Soda and the entire book is available for free at that link. Check it out!

I thought I’d highlight twelve of my favorite uses for baking soda found in the above book, along with my own notes from using baking soda for that purpose. The book has many, many ideas I’ve never considered - looks like our big bag of baking soda is about to get used pretty heavily once again.

General cleaning Whenever something needs to be cleaned around the house, I just mix about four tablespoons of baking soda into a container of very hot water and mix it until it’s dissolved. The solution just cleans up almost everything quite nicely, from spots on the hardwood floor or linoleum to spots on the windows. If there seems to be any residue left behind, just wash it off again with a damp rag - just fine.

Caked-on food removal If you have a casserole dish that has food that’s been caked on that’s almost impossible to remove, put some scalding water in the pan, then add about two tablespoons worth of baking soda and mix it into the water until dissolved. Let it sit for about an hour and the food comes off much easier. If that still doesn’t work, I like to clean out the pan again, then soak it in scalding water with about two bottle caps worth of vinegar for an hour, then dump that out and do the baking soda soak again. It’ll foam up some when you first put the baking soda into the water after the vinegar soak, but this makes all of the caked-on food practically fall off.

Facial cleanser Even at twenty nine years old, I regularly get oily skin, and I find that making a paste from roughly equal amounts of hot water and baking soda does a great job of taking care of the oil on my face. If you have a severe issue, you may want to talk to a dermatologist, but I’ve found it does a great job on the oily areas on my face.

Bad breath Halitosis can be a very disgusting thing. One sure way to combat the bad breath effects of halitosis is to brush your teeth with baking soda each day. Just keep a saucer with some baking soda on it near the sink, and when you go to brush, moisten your brush, dip it in the soda, and brush away. The taste is foul at first, but it does a very good job, and you can follow it with a good rinse and a brushing with normal toothpaste if you’d like a fresher taste in your mouth.

Bee stings/poison ivy/mosquito bites/itchy skin Whenever the skin is stung or irritated, particularly when it’s itchy, just make a paste out of baking soda and water (roughly equal amounts of each) and spread it on the irritated area. This paste helps slow swelling from bee and wasp stings and takes the edge off of itchiness from other conditions. I do this all the time with mosquito bites and it really helps.

Heartburn/acid indigestion/upset stomach Instead of turning to Pepto Bismol or Maalox when I’m feeling queasy, I just put a teaspoon of baking soda in a glass of warm water and drink it down. It really helps - it neutralizes stomach acid just as well as the other stuff (though the other stuff tastes better).

Garbage disposal odor Recently, we began to smell a faint odor from our garbage disposal, so we got out the old reliable baking soda and dumped some in there, about 1/4 cup, along with a couple squirts of dishwashing soap, followed by some warm water for a bit, then running the disposal with the warm water running. The odor went away immediately.

Cutting boards I learned this from my great grandmother, who used to have a big wooden butcher block for a cutting board. After she was done with it, she would scrub it a bit with water, then sprinkle some baking soda all over the surface, then scrub it again. Her board always smelled fresh and clean - and she used it for cutting up everything under the sun.

Sweat stains If you have a shirt with some sweat stains, just get the area of the stain wet, sprinkle some baking soda on it, and rub it into the stain. This gets rid of the sweat stain every time for me, even on white tee shirts.

Light rust removal This is a trick an auto body restorer showed me once that the book repeated, and it works surprisingly well. If you have an item with light rust on it, just take a potato, peel the skin off it, dip the potato in baking soda, then rub the potato vigorously on the rust. Keep repeating it. Amazingly, the mix of the potato enzymes and the baking soda takes the rust right off! Afterwards, you may want to treat the item with rust protectant for long-term protection, though.

Smelly shoes When I was a kid, my shoes used to smell awful. My mom’s treatment for the problem worked like a charm, though. She’d just sprinkle some baking soda inside the shoes as soon as I removed them. It reduced the odor inside the house and wasn’t noticeable at all when wearing them.

Cat litter A few years ago, we owned two cats (both were given away to nice homes - an elderly couple and a family member - when cat allergies were discovered) and this is a trick we often used. Just sprinkle a few tablespoons’ worth of baking soda in with the cat litter and the odor absorption of the litter goes up tremendously, plus the soda absorbs some of the wetness, all without harming your cat a bit. Our cats seemed to like it just fine.

The free book offers tons more tips for baking soda use, including one I’m anxious to try, but seems a bit dangerous.

Considering the cost of baking soda (I can get it for far less than $0.50 a pound) and the diversity of use, I consider baking soda to be one of the best bargains out there.