Frugal

Trending Minimalist. Looking for less.

By Brad Beckstrom

Tiny houses, bring em on. Tiny house on the beach, even better, less lawn care. Less yard work, absolutely. In fact, tiny everything, that would be perfect.

Spent several hours last weekend pulling huge weeds in 95° heat. I like to take a stoic approach to work around the house. I should be thankful to have a yard, some people have no weeds to pull. I’m fortunate to have the rain and subtropical heat that helped create these epic tree-like weeds. Some people’s yards, somewhere, are burning up, literally, droughts, forest fires. So yeah, bring those weeds on, glad to have them. If I get too hot, there is a ton of stuff to do inside as well.

Years of Work

In fact, there is easily a couple of years of work waiting for me in the house. Closets, drawers, the basement and garage to clean out. You see, I am trending minimalist. I’m defining this as “moving in the general direction towards less” less clutter, less stuff. The thinking behind minimalism is freeing your life of stuff and possessions to focus on whats important.

Maximist
[Read more…] about Trending Minimalist. Looking for less.

Everyone under 25 needs to read this story.

05/15 by The Frug 1 Comment

By Brad Beckstrom

Theodore R. Johnson worked for UPS and never made more than $14,000 a year. After a 28 year career with the company, he retired in 1952 with $700,000 in company stock. He remained retired for 39 years, while amassing a fortune of $70 million.

Johnson died at the age of 91 leaving much of his fortune to an education fund he established with his wife, for disadvantaged students attending small colleges.

70 Million! How did he do it?

Many people today retire, worrying about if they’ll run out of money in their later years. How was Johnson able to retire and grow his $700K into a $70 million fortune that will benefit many into the foreseeable future?

He used some of the same tools we have available today. [Read more…] about Everyone under 25 needs to read this story.

The Costco Date. Declaring War on your Grocery Bill.

03/15 by The Frug Leave a Comment

Jumbo Dog and Refillable 20oz Pepsi. $1.50

My wife Kelly and I have started a new tradition. The Costco Date. Kelly actually coined the term and I jumped on it. I was recently complaining about our grocery bill that two growing teenage boys have something to do with. We had bailed on Costco a few years back primarily because the times we usually went, weekends, it was usually a zoo. I have better things to do with my time than visit a big-box store on a weekend. We also started ending up with oversize stuff we didn’t need like giant jars of olives and other questionable clothing and gadget purchases.

We’d started using Amazon Prime for paper products, pet food, and lots of other items so we decided not to renew our Costco membership. That was before I decided to declare war on our grocery bill. [Read more…] about The Costco Date. Declaring War on your Grocery Bill.

Dusty CDs and the Price of Music.

10/14 by The Frug Leave a Comment

Why now is really the best time for music lovers.

In my relatively short time on this planet, here are the many different ways I’ve purchased and listened to music. Oh, so many ways that the music industry has zapped us music lovers over the years.

Vinyl 45 records on mono record player
Vinyl LP records with high fidelity turntable and stereo
Cassette Tapes and mix tapes on tape deck (Luckily, I avoided the whole 8-track tape thing) But my Dad’s 1968 Olds Tornado did have one in the dash.
Recording cassette mix tapes from vinyl records and playing them on my first Alpine car stereo (I had arrived)
Cassette tapes in a Walkman
Compact discs on a compact disc player plugged into home stereo
Compact discs and cassettes on a boombox
Compact discs on portable Sony Discman
CDs, Concert DVDs, cassettes and vinyl LPs with 6 speaker home theater surround sound system. (why would I ever need anything else to listen to music?)
Six Disc CD changer in the car with cassette player and AM/FM radio
MP3 Player (one of the early versions, can’t remember how I even got the music on the thing.)
Using my laptop to “Rip” my CDs to iTunes and then sync them on my iPod
iTunes on laptop with Harman Kardon surround sound speakers and subwoofer
iPod with iTunes. Discovered the iTunes store along with everyone else.
Burning CDs from tracks downloaded on Napster, LimeWire, shared with friends
Streaming commercial free radio stations like Radio Paradise on my Mac with various desktop apps including iTunes, Chrome and Safari browser extensions
XM satellite radio
iPhone with iTunes
Streaming music via apps on my iPhone, like Last FM, then Pandora
Streaming music on Tivo, Roku and Apple TV with Surround Sound Digital Amplifier
Streaming Music from Apps to Bluetooth car stereo and a Bluetooth HD home receiver
Amazon Prime Music via Amazon Music apps

I’d almost be afraid to total up what I’ve spent on music, including all the gadgets, CDs clubs, and concerts. But the problem is, I love music. I basically listen to it all the time and I still use many of the items on this crazy list, including the vinyl records.

Dusty CDs

I am sitting here in my office looking at a very tall tower of dusty CDs. [Read more…] about Dusty CDs and the Price of Music.

B.Y.O.P. Bring Your Own Phone.

09/14 by The Frug Leave a Comment

How to Take Advantage of the Mobile Carrier Price War.

I’m going to keep this short because I can’t stand mobile phone plans. Mobile carriers have always thrived on complexity. The arrival of smartphones and data plans over the years has only added to the bizarre mobile pricing schemes already out there.

Smartphones have become money machines for the carriers, racking up all kinds of data charges, upgrade fees, smartphone accessory sales. It’s time for things to change. I’ll be the first to say that the smartphone a useful appliance. See 21 Things my iPhone replaced.

But if you’re not careful your mobile phone bills will be higher than your utilities. If you’re single, they probably already are.

About a year ago, things did start to change. T-Mobile touched off a price war with some aggressively priced data plans. Especially for families of four which seem to be the holy grail for carriers. T-Mobile is trying to grow market share with some heavily discounted plans and even offered to buy out your old contracts. To our benefit this infuriated competitors in bringing us to some of the better values out there today. [Read more…] about B.Y.O.P. Bring Your Own Phone.

Save Money by Living an Experiential Lifestyle.

03/14 by The Frug Leave a Comment

See More Stuff, Don’t Buy More Stuff

Last week, I went to a free photo exhibit at the National Gallery around lunchtime and hung out there for several hours. At some point late in the afternoon, I got a text message from my boss, SuperK wondering where I was. I was seeing more stuff. I recently attended a conference in Barcelona. I got a early start each day but I put a giant X across the daily conference activities between 1 and 5 PM. I was in Barcelona, after all, and I needed to see more stuff. Seeing more stuff is very important. I think of it as recharging my creative batteries. My one caveat is that I see more stuff, not buy more stuff.

It’s all about your location

The secret to seeing stuff instead of buying stuff is all about the location, and I don’t just mean while traveling. Over the last few years, SuperK and I have been using Amazon Prime, in place of visits to Costco and cutting back on visits to big-box stores. This really works. Even for a very frugal person like myself, it’s hard to walk into a Target or a Costco and not spend over $50. And for someone like SuperK, that figure is more, much more. For some reason, the shiny displays and super deals trigger some I’m going to miss out if I don’t purchase this now and hoard it reflex. You’re guaranteed to come home with extra stuff. Plus going to malls and big-box stores makes me hungry AND gives me hives so there are health benefits to skipping the trip as well.

Just Skip It.

I used to run to Home Depot every couple weeks. I would take the boys and they would play with the vacuums and grills, knock over some stuff. And guaranteed I’d end up with more stuff. At one point, I had four separate toolboxes, not kidding. I am still working on getting rid of all this stuff. An excellent solution I’ve found is to just not go to Home Depot at all. I just skip any home repair that would involve a visit to the hardware store and go for a walk in the woods instead. In the rare instance of some sort of repair emergency (last weekend’s toilet implosion) I visit a small local hardware store and take advantage of their knowledge and customer service to learn something while I also support local business.

If I need something, I now take a hunter’s approach.

I need furnace filters, an item that is absurdly overpriced especially in small quantities.
I jump on Amazon Prime and search my past orders which are auto saved by size, brand, price and rating. No more scribbled lists.
Quickly paste the item name into Google and click “shopping” above the search results to make sure I am getting a great price on Amazon, then pull the trigger. Total time invested – 5 min.
I keep a running list saved in Amazon so I can batch or group my purchases together when necessary. All Amazon Prime items ship 2 day air for free, some other items ship free as part of a larger order.

Done. In the past, buying these filters would have necessitated jumping in the car, sitting in traffic, trying to park, looking at power tools, etc……….If you put a $ value on your time and add the extras like gas, and impulse purchases, the hunter’s approach for stuff you absolutely need makes a lot of sense.

SuperK has spent the last month or so testing this “stay out of Target” theory. She’s confirmed that reducing the total number of visits to malls and big-box stores will save you more money than any sale coupon or circular ever could. The less stuff you see, the less you buy.

So, here are a few more ways to live a more experiential lifestyle and save time + cash.

Stop running to the store the very moment you need something. Do without, skip the chore, skip the errand and go for a walk instead. Your family will survive without duct tape for a day. Your house will still be standing a month from now even if you don’t buy those filters right now.
Go for a walk with your kids or significant other and talk about what you see. Have a conversation instead of buying something.
Nasty outside? Go to a public gallery, museum or library, you’ve paid for them!
Clean out your closet, garage, basement. You’ll find something you lost and something you’d like to give away.
Play with that Frisbee you found in the closet. It’s been a while.
Work from home at least a few days a week. This will keep you out of random places like gas stations, convenience stores, coffee shops, and lunch buffets.
If you’re stuck in a store some reason, practice delayed gratification by putting that purchase off for a few days. Most likely you’ll forget about it.
Skip the trip Use Amazon Prime you can also add Smile.Amazon.com and a percentage of every purchase goes toward your favorite charity.

Here are three related books and posts on:

My one year experiment with Amazon Prime

Working remotely Remote: Office Not Required

Valuing your time The 4-Hour Workweek, Expanded and Updated: Expanded and Updated, With Over 100 New Pages of Cutting-Edge Content.

Frugality and Valuing your Time Your Money or Your Life: 9 Steps to Transforming Your Relationship with Money

I’d love to hear what helps you see more stuff.

The Frug