So here are a couple of money-saving tips.
But first off, a word about money-saving tips and the philosophy behind them. And this tip is brought to you by The Centuri Handbook of Model Rocketry, circa 1973. On one page, they described several different techniques you could use to improve the altitude of your rocket. Things like preferring an ogive (i.e. parabolic) nosecone over a pointy one, round fins over angular ones, etc. The take-away point at the end was that no single technique would improve your altitude significantly, but several of them taken together could make a very noticeable difference.
So when you see a cheap pennypinching tip, don't think of it as something that can be ignored because it'll save you a couple of pennies a day. Think of it as a small step towards bigger savings. And some tips require almost no effort, so take that into account.
So here are my recent tips.
1. Get a clothesline. This is especially true if you live in a hot climate like Texas. Clothes dryers are horrendous energy-wasters in the summer because they do double-duty eating 220 volts while heating up your house.
Ironically, Shelly mentioned this tip in one of her yahoo-groups last week, and a couple of Australians were aghast that people in the US didn't routinely dry clothes on clotheslines.
2. Set your clothes washer to cold. Chances are you won't notice the difference in your clothes. And it'll save a cycle on your water heater.
This one is inspired by my cousin, who worked for a company that made several laundry detergents including the bar-none market leader and another very popular brand that bragged of working best in "all temperatures". We asked what that buzzword actually meant, and she explained that it was a holdover from the 1960's when detergents competed with boxed soap flakes that dissolved poorly in cold water. It's basically a meaningless slogan now.
3. Turn off the dry-cycle on your dishwasher. The dry-cycle on a dishwasher is as useless as the door-close button on an elevator. It's worse than useless because it dries out any food that managed to survive the wash. And you haven't lived until you've tried to scrape some dried up Wheaties off the inside of a bowl. Soaked and dried Wheaties can be used to repair cracks in concrete.
4. Clip coupons. I know coupons are a hassle, but a little work can get you a pretty big return. And if you look at coupon-obsession websites, you see the tremendous amount of work required to get a truckload of groceries for 28 cents. But realize that it's not an all-or-nothing deal. It's not a matter of "grab, swipe, and go" versus "pay almost nothing and do a tremendous amount of work". Any work you do saving money on groceries will pay off. Not only that, but it's a front-loaded return. If you do a little work shopping around, you'll save a lot of money. If you do more work, you'll save more money, but not at the same rate. Doing any work at all will save you money.
Today I did about 30 minutes worth of work at my favorite subscription coupon site (use john@thecodezone.com as your referral name), shopped at two stores, and ended up with a trunkful of groceries for $30. It's not as impressive as getting a cartload of groceries for a buck (which I have done, don't get me wrong), but getting a week's worth of food for the price of a couple of delivered pizzas is a great way to keep some cash in your pocket.
And you're not gonna upset the grocery-checkers. I joke with a couple of my local grocers about my coupon-stash, and they say that it's just being smart compared to grab-n-swipe-n-go shopping. One admits that she likes the coupon people, because she can watch for the best coupon-deals and get 'em herself after the shift is over.
5. Don't shy away from store or generic brands, especially in the pharmacy aisle. A poorly kept secret in the industry is that many of those store-brand knockoff drugs and soaps and shampoos are made by the same companies that make the name-brand. While the big companies would prefer that you buy the $10 name-brand pills, they'll still make a profit if they sold the pills for $4. And they already have the infrastructure in place to make the pills, so they make the generics too.
A perfect example of this was that massive recall of contact lens solution a few years ago. Remember that? The tank where they mixed a particular solution was contaminated with some kind of fungus that could harm your eyes, so they recalled every bottle. But when the company announced the recall, they simultaneously announced a recall of several generic knockoffs. Why would the knockoffs have the same tank-fungus as the name brand? Because it was the same stuff.
I'll try to post tips as I get the chance. I'm working on a couple of side-projects, and I feel guilty if I do any writing that's not related directly to them. But I'll try to write when I get the chance.
Cheers.
