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My one year experiment with 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.

The Dead Zone

09/13 by The Frug Leave a Comment

In the advertising business, agencies like to avoid pitching after 3 PM. 3 PM is known as the beginning of the “dead zone.” However, if you worked in an office on the client side or were attending a presentation, 3 PM was the ideal time. That’s generally a low-energy point in the day for many people. You could just come in sit back and listen, pretend to take a few notes, be polite and enjoy a few snacks.

One thing I’ve learned is that many people have different dead zones, for instance, for my wife SuperK it’s from 7 AM to 11:59 AM. The key is knowing exactly when you’re dead zone is and planning your best work outside of it. By “best work,” I mean things that will require the most focus and brainpower. Knowing your zones is equally important if you work at home and need to stay self-motivated, or if you work in an office where people are clogging up your calendar with useless meeting invites.

Over the years, I’ve attended all kinds of time management seminars, they generally revolve around making long list of things to do and prioritizing them.

I have come up a simple process that basically divides the day up into three parts: Prime Time, The Dead Zone and Home. You can call them what you want, the key is to identify your zones.

Prime time- when you are at your best, ready to roll.
The Dead Zone -when you hit the wall.
Home- winding down the day attending to life so you don’t go to bed worrying.

Before we start filling in a day, let’s talk about “the list.” l’ve seen all kinds of crazy time management and prioritization schemes just for making lists. Some of them are in 300 page books that leave you with “managing the list” as your biggest chore of the day.

The best to do lists are simple. Apps and smart phones got some very creative people rethinking how we make lists. The key component in any list is simply remembering stuff you need to do. The list should be thought of as a giant catchall of things you need to do as you remember you need to do them. The best solutions automatically sync your smartphone with your desktop app and/or tablet. Basically, one list available in many places.

I use Apple Reminders on my iPhone and that automatically syncs with the app on my desktop and in iCloud. Prior to that, I used gTasks which syncs nicely with Google tasks in the browser as well as on Android phones, iPhones and other devices.

The key here is not to look at your whole to do list at one time. You want to use the list and pull off the most important items of the day and things you are passionate about and put those into Prime Time. Try not to load your Prime Time up with too many items or any long meetings. Most office meetings should be pushed into the Dead Zone or avoided if possible.

Make sure you block out a chunk of your Prime Time on the calendar so you can avoid someone scheduling a meeting during that period.

The third zone on my list is “Home.” Home is in the evening is when some people get their second wind. These are the things that we look forward to, dinner with family and friends, catching up on reading, attending to hobbies and around the house projects. Generally, I enjoy doing a lot of these things so the energy comes more naturally to get them done.

Okay, here’s what mine looks like. Keep in mind your Dead Zone may be at an entirely different time of the day. I plugged in a few examples of to do’s and types of to do items.

One item that works well for me in the Dead Zone is 20 minutes of exercise. This can be as simple as a walk or high-intensity training, it’s up to you. The key is that it happens daily. A quick workout or walk is also a great way to bust through the wall of fatigue that often hits people in the afternoon. Even better is a power nap or, as many older wiser cultures practice, a siesta. Or in my case, both.

A note about commuting; If you spend more than 40 minutes a day traveling to and from work you may think of your commute as a Dead Zone. Unfortunately, this coincides with many peoples Prime Time, especially if you are a morning person. There are fantastic tools available to recapture this time including free podcast subscriptions on any topic, audiobooks from companies like Audible.com. You can get a Bluetooth adapter for most cars that lets you listen to this over your car’s speakers. Please don’t be the person that drives around with headsets or earbuds in.

Try not to waste this time with morning DJs or talk radio. The only thing worse than listening to the news (with a humorous or politically biased twist) on your radio is having to listen to the people who call in with their various rants and opinions on what we should do about taxes, the Middle East or the price of gas. If you have an interest in the news, that’s fine, there are a lot more efficient ways to get caught up during your “Dead Zone”. Don’t waste your Prime Time on news or talk radio.

I use a Moleskin notebook to pull for five- seven important items off my digital to do list and prioritize them. Then, I plan my top priority items for Prime Time. Simpler, or low priority items can go in the Dead Zone. For example, I usually plan my next day at the end of my Dead Zone, as pulling items from my list is a pretty easy activity. I also clean out emails, and check industry blogs in the afternoon. These two items work well together as cleaning out my email usually generates a few to do items for the next day. It’s a good idea to batch similar types of activities (blogs,email,to do’s) together as you’ll find it helps you get into a daily flow especially as you need to push through your Dead Zone.

So, at the end of the day, my schedule for the next day looks something like this, The items on the right, I pulled off of my catchall to do list, and then simply batched them into my Prime Time, Dead Zone and At Home categories.

Well, that’s it, my entire time management system to get stuff done in less than 300 pages. I’d love to hear if anyone else has come across something similar or wants to share what works for them.

The Frug Workout, Less = More

09/13 by The Frug 2 Comments

Why is it so easy to miss a workout?

I used to try to do three one-hour workouts per week. To be honest, I generally ended up with 2.5 as an average then 2.2 and finally 1.9 workouts per week. The problem is timing. Getting ready for a one-hour workout is a bit of a hassle. Even with the equipment in the basement, I still had to schedule it early in the morning, motivate, and get down there. Then, stretch out and slowly start going through my eight exercises, two or three sets each. I was pretty good at getting at least a couple of workouts with weights in per week. I’d also find time for walks and bike rides. In my case, and I believe in many people’s lives, it’s more of a time issue than a motivation issue.

In addition to the time issue, early morning hours are prime time for me. It’s when I do some of my most creative work. A lot of people are able to work out, clear their heads and come up with ideas all at the same time. (A picture pops in the my head of an overweight executive shouting into his Bluetooth headset while on the treadmill)

I’m not a great multitasker, I prefer focus, no interruptions. Usually I’ll be working out and remember something I need to do, or have a great idea, and have to stop, put a reminder in my iPhone, write it down etc. This disrupts the flow of the workout and adds additional time. Sometime these interruptions go up to 15 minutes, running out of the room to go scribble something down and end up looking at some article online. What I need is a workout that’s over in 20 minutes, less chance for interruptions.

I researched a few of the current hard-core fitness workouts like P90X and CrossFit. I look at these programs and I see complexity, I see additional time, I see pain. It would take me 20 minutes just to warm up, set up the DVDs and fill out the charts. Try a Google search on either of those terms and check out the workout charts.

Let’s be honest here. Most people can’t even stick to the type of low intensity 2X workout I described above, a couple of 1- hour long workouts a week and some daily walking. The more time and complexity added to the workout the less chance you’ll stick to it long-term.

What I was looking for was a highly efficient exercise that could be done in 20 minutes including warm-up and cool down. Gym equipment would be optional and the exercise could be done anywhere, with many variations to keep things interesting. Most importantly, it would not require a CrossFit membership at over $150 per month, or any DVDs or tracking charts.

About a year ago, I read about High-Intensity Training using the Tabata regimen. The basic idea is you can fit a workout that has the equivalent of 60 minutes of exercise compacted into approximately 12 minutes. This includes four minutes of warm-up, eight minutes of High-intensity training in 20 second intervals followed by 10 second breaks, and four minutes of cool down. 12 minutes total.

There is a catch. The high-intensity portions of the workout are tough. The Tabata workout calls for 20 seconds of maximum intensity exercise followed by 10 seconds of rest, done eight consecutive times without pausing for a total of 240 seconds or just four minutes.

So if you’re running those 8, 20 second bursts are (all out sprints), followed by 10 seconds of rest (walking slow, catching your breath). This can be applied to all types of exercise including cycling, mat exercises, elliptical trainers, kettle bell swings and a variety of weightlifting exercises.

If this all sounds a bit far fetched, take a quick look at this article on High Intensity Interval Training. There is some solid science behind it. In fact, the Tabata method, Described in the article has been used to train Olympic speed skaters, MMA champions, and many athletes that require explosive bursts of energy, and a high level of fitness. As the article states you should have a physical before beginning any high-intensity interval training program.

My research on Tabata conveniently coincided with my son requesting a boxing heavy bag for his 13th birthday. (Insert who is he really punching joke here)

I found that heavy bags can be a fantastic part of a Tabata training session. They are inexpensive and always there, reminding you to hit it. They are often are bundled with a nice set of boxing or MMA style gloves which are sort of bad-ass. Everlast Heavy Bag Kit
Don’t want heavy bag taking up space? There are plenty of other Low Cost
options, including your closet door which I’ll describe below.

So the Frug version of Tabata looks like this — I’ve increased the warm-up and cool down periods by four minutes each to allow for one additional set of light weight-training exercises. So, the total time commitment for the Frug Workout is 20 minutes per day, five days per week. You can take any two days off.

Warm up. 8 minutes of light weight training (your choice)
- 2 sets of bench press
- 2 sets of curls
Interval Training, 4 minutes total (your choice)
- 20 seconds on the heavy-bag at 100% effort
- 10 seconds of rest, basically catching your breath
- Repeat 8 times
Cool Down. 8 minutes of light weight training (your choice)
- Two sets of calf raises
- Two sets of squats

I have found that each of these quick 20 minute Tabata sessions actually have more fitness benefits than my 60 minute low intensity weight training sessions. Because they are so quick, there’s less chance that I’ll miss them or be interrupted. For the interval training sessions, I recommend using a free app for your smart phone or you can get an inexpensive Interval training timer
or just search “Tabata timer” in the app store.

Even though this exercise regimen is fast you still need to add some variety to keep it interesting. I alternate different types of mat or weight exercises for the warm-up. These can be any number of low intensity exercises that can be slowly increased over time.

Not interested in buying a weight set? One fantastic option is the TRX Suspension Trainer
developed based on a field training regimen used by Navy Seals. It is basically a two handle strap you can anchor to any closet door and is fantastic for core fitness when combined with aerobic activity like Tabata Training. Or you can go completely low-tech just a workout mat. Here’s a video of some gals at FitSugar doing Tabata training on a mat. skip the ad.

I know that’s a lot of information for such a simple workout but I like to share a lot of low-cost options so anyone can make this work. Give this a try. I’d love to hear how it’s going and if having a workout regimen that includes a frugal use of time helps you miss fewer workouts.

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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