The Frug Recommends

My one year experiment with Amazon Prime.

amazon prime

It’s been just over a year since we started our Amazon Prime experiment. For those of you not familiar with Amazon Prime, it’s basically a program that provides free 2-day shipping on most Amazon orders as well as unlimited streaming of videos via Amazon Instant video.

Unlike a free Amazon membership, Amazon Prime speeds up shipping to two day free delivery on any size order. As part of the deal, you also receive access to the Kindle lending library, This allows you to borrow one e-book per month from the Kindle owners lending library. It all sounds great, but there’s a $79 annual fee. I hate annual fees, but in this case, I was replacing one with another, so I decided to replace our Costco membership with Amazon Prime.

Burned out on Costco

The idea to join came to me after visiting our local Costco and realizing that between the time it takes me to park, navigate the store, deal with oversize packages and the always ridiculous lines, any savings we had was definitely negated.

Add this to the fact that my wonderful wife SuperK was also visiting once a month or so and would often come back with all kinds of unintended purchases, including one of my favorites, a 3 gallon jar of olives. To top that off, both of my kids had nicknamed Costco “the rat store” as occasionally they would get a glimpse of a jumbo sized mouse. This really added to the zoo like atmosphere of the store. To be fair to Costco, I believe it’s nearly impossible to have a warehouse this size, full of food, that is completely free of varmints. Comes with the territory.

So that was it. I decided to replace our $55 Costco membership with the $79 Amazon Prime membership. After the first year I can say it’s going swimmingly.

Here are the highlights :

I started to see immediate benefits, ordering business books and office supplies at a lower price, more than justified covering the prime membership as a business expense.
I found that by ordering online, it was much easier to quickly compare prices by pasting the item name into Google shopper and then picking the Amazon item with the best cost per unit. It makes sense to do a quick comparison as Amazon gives you the option of multiple vendors and package sizes. They also include unit pricing.
The unit pricing is usually great. For instance we pay a dollar a roll for decent quality non-generic paper towels. In Google shopper I can quickly find out if this is a better price then I would get via Walmart and other discount stores, and it usually is.
All of my purchases are saved, and easily accessed, in my purchase history so that I can quickly reorder items with one click. This is great for me versus wandering aimlessly around a Costco store or Target. SuperK will verify that shopping gives me hives.
Think about this, I can bang out a 2 ½ hour shopping trip in about 20 minutes completely skip the line and have all of this including 25 pound bags of dog food and cat litter show up on our doorstep.
For items you order once a month, like dog food, you can get an additional 5% discount for creating a monthly order. If you have five or more monthly items you can save 20%. The monthly recurring subscriptions are a bit tricky as it’s actually hard for us to find 5 items we need every month on the same delivery date.
The streaming HD video is awesome. The Frug hates expensive cable add-ons, so by combining unlimited streaming of the Amazon 41,000 video library with my basic Netflix package, I am one step closer to movie Nirvana, sans cable company. Also tons of great TV like Mad Men, Workaholics, and Covert Affairs streaming on-demand, any device. You can use a Roku HD to consolidate access to both. More on this later.
They ship almost anything 2-day including 25 pound bags of cat litter or dog food. Super K used to drive over 30 minutes round-trip to pick up this kind of stuff. Now we save our backs, some gas, and have it delivered to our front door.
You can still purchase Kirkland brand items like vitamins, trash bags etc. via Amazon Prime.
Amazon has a great app. I can just scan that bag of cat litter when I need more and dump it right in my online shopping cart. It’s like your own personal checkout lane in the cloud.

Conclusion

I would have to say the biggest benefit of Amazon Prime is cost savings. Based on my calculations, we’ve saved over $900 this past year using Amazon Prime. The other BIG benefit is the time savings, and the near elimination of any impulse purchases or waste from accidental “oversized jar of olives” type purchases.
Speaking of olives, one drawback of Amazon Prime is it may be less useful for folks who do their grocery shopping at Costco. Amazon has a fantastic selection of household items but obviously food is limited and more expensive.

One additional word of advice on Amazon, you need to check prices on bulk items to be competitive with Costco. Costco does not have as large as a selection as Amazon but generally the bulk items they have are less expensive. You can counter this by doing a quick check on bulk items using Google shopper or the Red Laser app. After you get the swing of it you will end up ahead based on the time saved alone.

Stop Getting Shaved on Razors

10/13 by The Frug Leave a Comment

What in the hell goes on with the cost of razors? I mean, before I truly embraced my Frug muscles, SuperK and I would get our razors, like many people do, at the grocery store or maybe Target. I was buying various Gillette razors like Fusion Pro Glide and Kelly was buying a variety of individual high-end disposable razors. Just the Gillette Fusion refills run $26 for an 8 Pack!

The women’s Venus disposable razors my lovely wife SuperK was buying were equally as bad $22 for a six pack – with with the added insult of filling landfills with a perfectly usable plastic handle each time you were done with said disposable razor.

It’s one of those small purchases that a lot of people don’t think about. It just gets chucked in the cart with the rest of the groceries or shampoo. Then I saw this video about the Dollar Shave Club along with the 12 million other people who watched it. The video was great and it really helped expose how ridiculously overpriced razors are. Once you get to the site, you’ll find that the decent razors are actually six or nine dollars per month, per member. That’s a big savings over drugstore or even Amazon prices. However, it’s a “club.” Basically, a club that requires monthly payments.

This was a problem. The Frug Hates Clubs, especially any club that requires a monthly fee. In my opinion, the only type of recurring revenue people should have in their life is incoming recurring revenue, not outgoing. All of these clubs really start to add up. Think about it, Microsoft Xbox $9.99 a month, shave club, satellite radio club, all billing you every month forever, regardless of whether you use up the services or not.

So, I was not joining another club. I did a little research and found the the company that supplies most of the Dollar Shave Club’s razors. The company is DorcoUSA. I know, pretty weak name but fantastic razors for men and women, and even better prices.

I just loaded up with a six months supply of razors for myself, my wife and my teenage son for $33.35. This year, I’ll spend about $90 to keep the family in razors. For the three of us to join a club for a year, it would be over $215 for the medium priced blades at Dollar Shave Club and over $390 at a box store like Target.

The great news is that these are better quality shavers and a lot of the specials even include the occasional new razor with cartridge refills. Check out our latest order and compare this to what you’re paying.

SuperK even found that the men’s quad razors work better for her than the women’s version. Here is a link for 15% off your order. If this offer stops working, let me know in the comments below.

Dial up adventure, Dial costs down with TripTuner

09/13 by The Frug Leave a Comment

Dial your vacation costs down, and crank adventure all the way up, with this great new travel tool. Recently I’ve been sharing some of my favorite travel hacks like kayak/explore. I have found a new travel tool that’s a lot of fun to use.

On Tuesday night, I met Ted Devers at a DC Lean Startup Circle event in Arlington, VA. Ted used his experience as a DJ, and in the online travel industry, to create an equalizer for your travel experience. It’s called Triptuner. Old guys from the 80s like me are very familiar with equalizers. Every boom box and home theater system had to sport one. You can still find them on iTunes and with most music software.

This equalizer is different. I call it an “experience equalizer.” So, instead of cranking up the bass, like I used to, I can crank up “active”, or “beach” or “urban” so this great tool can help me find the location I am in the mood for.

Of course, the Frug wants to push things to the limit by turning the “high end” button all the way down to the “thrifty” setting and the “active” button all the way up. Once I did that, a lot of my favorite destinations started to show up, including Puerto Plata in the Dominican Republic, Playa Del Carmen, Mexico and great cities like Barcelona, Spain and Corfu, Greece.

Based on your Triptuner Equalizer settings, you get a quick match percentage on your ideal destination. For the Frug, The Dominican Republic came up as a 98% match. This could explain why we’ve vacationed there three of the last four years.

Let me know where it takes you. Enjoy.

Wine Hacking with the Frug (plus an App for Finding 4 Star Wines at 5 dollars a Bottle!)

08/13 by The Frug Leave a Comment

Many of us enjoy a great bottle of wine. If you enjoy a couple of glasses of red wine every few days like I do, the habit can get expensive. I used to visit some of the big box stores like Total Wine. I always came out of there spending too much money and a bit overwhelmed by all the choices. I could never remember if that $24 bottle of wine was better than $7.99 bottle of wine or which vintage was the best for that particular brand.

I needed a more curated selection of wine and more brands that were reasonably priced. I found my wine mecca at Trader Joe’s. Trader Joe’s has always specialized in inexpensive wines that taste great and are a good value. Their first store in California was famous for its selection of local wines. I’ve picked up some great bottles of wine there, including their house brand Napa River Merlot for under $6.00.

Still, not every wine in TJs will meet my taste and frugal budget. I experimented and put a limit of $7 for any bottle of wine I purchase at Trader Joe’s. Not a problem since they have plenty of French and Italian wines, as well as great California reds and whites, many of them in the $5 to $6 price range.

So, I narrowed my choices from thousands of bottles of wine at Total Wine to maybe 50 or so at Trader Joe’s. Still too many. I needed something to narrow that selection down and help me find the very best of these cellar dwellers.

To assist in my experiment, I found a great app, Vivino. At first, I just thought I needed something that would allow me to look up different wines and save them in the app. Then I came across Vivino. I could literally scan any wine label and instantly pull up the products reviews, global ranking, country ranking, even ranking among that particular winery. For example, I scanned a fancy looking bottle of French wine called “Badet Clement Pontificis 2008.” Instantly I saw that this bottle had a 3.6 of 4 rating in the app, but more importantly, had a high rank in France, had a high rank in it’s region of France, and was the seventh highest ranked bottle from this winery. Lots of glowing reviews from wine snobs who would take the time to write this kind of stuff up. Best of all, it was at a “drop it in your cart and go” price of $5.99.

I don’t get too hung up on the reviews, I just like to see a decent sized sample of four-star reviews. I look at a few of them to see what other wine lovers are saying about the oak or raspberry finish or other clues they may leave behind about the type of wine, such as “great with lasagna.”

The other interesting thing about this app is that it’s calling on a total database of 693,000 wines so there’s plenty of information to back up a high rating.

Once I get home and taste the wine, I make sure that I drop in my own quick star rating so if it’s a dog, I don’t buy it again. Trader Joe’s is pretty loyal to some of these brands so once you find a couple of great ones it’s easy to quickly go in and stock up.

Another trick I found to make a $5.99 bottle of red wine taste like a more sought-after vintage is to properly aerate before drinking. There are lots of quick easy ways to do this.
Here are a few of my favorites:

Rabbit Swish Wine Aerator

Vinturi Essential Wine Aerator

You can also check out the mad scientist Tim Ferriss’ method for hyper decanting wine here.

So, open up that great bottle of cheap wine, aerate it, and sit back and enjoy the fruits of your search for the perfect bottle of cheap wine. No Trader Joe’s in your area? Use the app to sniff out some decent buys at your local supermarket.

My current wine selections at Trader Joe’s.

Excellent value

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Live Lean Food Hacks

08/13 by The Frug Leave a Comment

It’s football season. That means a lot of us will be doing some hard-core snacking. Football helmet full of nacho cheese dip anyone? Anyway, in preparation, I’ve come up with some food hacks for those of you who like to snack but prefer to do it following a live lean philosophy.

I’m a big fan of the #slowcarb diet, so I was excited to find some chips and dips that fit with the diet and still taste good. For instance you can’t do corn chips or potato chips on the slow carb diet, but you can have all of the beans you want. Doug and Dave Foreman came up with Beanitos. These chips are made with nutritious black beans, free of additives, preservatives and corn. Beanitos are also gluten-free, high-fiber, high antioxidant, certified kosher, dolphin safe …etc. etc.

Team these bad boys up with some of this crazy spinach or egg plant dip from Trader Joe’s and you are ready to go. It’s like having the top fantasy football quarterback and running back on the same team.

Enjoy

George Carlin – Stuff

07/13 by The Frug Leave a Comment

George Carlin on Stuff transcript.

Actually this is just a place for my stuff, ya know? That’s all, a little place for my stuff. That’s all I want, that’s all you need in life, is a little place for your stuff, ya know? I can see it on your table, everybody’s got a little place for their stuff. This is my stuff, that’s your stuff, that’ll be his stuff over there. That’s all you need in life, a little place for your stuff. That’s all your house is: a place to keep your stuff. If you didn’t have so much stuff, you wouldn’t need a house. You could just walk around all the time.

A house is just a pile of stuff with a cover on it. You can see that when you’re taking off in an airplane. You look down, you see everybody’s got a little pile of stuff. All the little piles of stuff. And when you leave your house, you gotta lock it up. Wouldn’t want somebody to come by and take some of your stuff. They always take the good stuff. They never bother with that crap you’re saving. All they want is the shiny stuff. That’s what your house is, a place to keep your stuff while you go out and get…more stuff!

Sometimes you gotta move, gotta get a bigger house. Why? No room for your stuff anymore. Did you ever notice when you go to somebody else’s house, you never quite feel a hundred percent at home? You know why? No room for your stuff. Somebody else’s stuff is all over the place! And if you stay overnight, unexpectedly, they give you a little bedroom to sleep in. Bedroom they haven’t used in about eleven years. Someone died in it, eleven years ago. And they haven’t moved any of his stuff! Right next to the bed there’s usually a dresser or a bureau of some kind, and there’s NO ROOM for your stuff on it. Somebody else’s shit is on the dresser.

Have you noticed that their stuff is shit and your shit is stuff? God! And you say, “Get that shit offa there and let me put my stuff down!”

Sometimes you leave your house to go on vacation. And you gotta take some of your stuff with you. Gotta take about two big suitcases full of stuff, when you go on vacation. You gotta take a smaller version of your house. It’s the second version of your stuff. And you’re gonna fly all the way to Honolulu. Gonna go across the continent, across half an ocean to Honolulu. You get down to the hotel room in Honolulu and you open up your suitcase and you put away all your stuff. “Here’s a place here, put a little bit of stuff there, put some stuff here, put some stuff–you put your stuff there, I’ll put some stuff–here’s another place for stuff, look at this, I’ll put some stuff here…” And even though you’re far away from home, you start to get used to it, you start to feel okay, because after all, you do have some of your stuff with you. That’s when your friend calls up from Maui, and says, “Hey, why don’tchya come over to Maui for the weekend and spend a couple of nights over here.”

Oh, no! Now what do I pack? Right, you’ve gotta pack an even SMALLER version of your stuff. The third version of your house. Just enough stuff to take to Maui for a coupla days. You get over to Maui–I mean you’re really getting extended now, when you think about it. You got stuff ALL the way back on the mainland, you got stuff on another island, you got stuff on this island. I mean, supply lines are getting longer and harder to maintain. You get over to your friend’s house on Maui and he gives you a little place to sleep, a little bed right next to his windowsill or something. You put some of your stuff up there. You put your stuff up there. You got your Visine, you got your nail clippers, and you put everything up. It takes about an hour and a half, but after a while you finally feel okay, say, “All right, I got my nail clippers, I must be okay.” That’s when your friend says, “Aaaaay, I think tonight we’ll go over the other side of the island, visit a pal of mine and maybe stay over.”

Aww, no. NOW what do you pack? Right–you gotta pack an even SMALLER version of your stuff. The fourth version of your house. Only the stuff you know you’re gonna need. Money, keys, comb, wallet, lighter, hanky, pen, smokes, rubber and change. Well, only the stuff you HOPE you’re gonna need.

All material written and owned by George Carlin.