Update on my current Squidoo lens (web pages)

KNITTING CHALLENGE AND PATTERN - 911 Helmet Liners by 9/11/2009This project is developed to challenge others to knit helmet liners for our troops. These liners are knitted from a specific pattern of 100% wool worsted weight yarn and then donated to our troops that are being deployed overseas. Word back from the deployed soldiers in Afghanistan is that the liners are wonderful in both hot and cold conditions since wool wicks moisture away from the skin.

http://www.squidoo.com/knittedhelmetliners

If you have difficulty reading a knitting pattern, this lens is for you. It takes the above pattern and give explanations and illustrations of the techniques needed to create a helmet liner.

http://www.squidoo.com/lensmaster/new_workshop/readingknittingpattern

How about some humor to ‘kick start’ your day. This lens is designed to make you chuckle, giggle, or laugh out loud.

http://www.squidoo.com/AnimalAntics

A personal glimpse into a sturdy country woman of pioneer stock and how that determination helped shape my view of life.

http://www.squidoo.com/Country-Woman

Some ways to save both money and our planet.

http://www.squidoo.com/GreenAndFrugalLiving

Some of my favorite recipes and tips on how to save money while eating healthy food that is quick to fix.

http://www.squidoo.com/frugalcooking

Squidoo is open to anyone so how about sharing what you know about with the rest of us. It is easy and free to sign up. If nothing else, please visit any of my lenses and comment, rate them and let me know what you think.

I hope that if you decide you want to join Squidoo that you will click on my personal referral link below as I receive credit for all referrals.

http://www.squidoo.com/lensmaster/referral/TalesTrailsAndTips2

THE THRIFTY SHOPPING GAME

THRIFTY SHOPPING or BEAT THEM AT THEIR OWN GAME

We all shop for something and the object of this game is to save as much as possible. Since my grandmother and mom did a large portion of their shopping in grocery stores, let’s play the grocery store game. By following a few easy principles we can save a lot on our food bills and reduce the number of times a week we have to eat out because there isn’t anything ready to fix for dinner. As with the previous games, add the savings to a “piggy bank” so we can have a concrete measurement of how we are doing. This time, we are using a separate “bank” from the previous game so we can chart our progress in each area.

Here are the guiding principles of this game:
1. Read and use the weekly grocery ads.
2. Always shop from a written list.
3. Never shop when hungry.
4. Shop alone.
5. Be flexible.
6. Use manufacturer’s coupons when practical.
7. Shop a maximum of 4 times a month.
8. Resist impulse buying.
9. Take a re-useable shopping bag.

These principles look simple and they can be but it usually helps when we understand the pluses and pit-falls of each one so let’s analyze them.

Read and use the weekly grocery ads.

This is the few minutes a week that can really pay off big time in the grocery shopping game.

Loss-leaders: Now stores have items called loss-leaders that they use to get us to come to their store instead of the competing grocery store. We want to use this competition to our advantage. The loss-leaders are items that are selling way below the normal price and often below the wholesale cost. IF this is an item that you use often and it will keep (canned goods for instance) this is the time to stock up.

For instance, say the sale item is canned tomatoes and you know that you frequently use two cans a week, and there isn’t a limit on how many you can buy, you might want to buy 3 months worth (8 cans a month times 3 months equals 24 cans). If the tomatoes usually sell for $1.00 a can and you can buy them for 2/1.00 then you have saved $12.00 and you won’t run out of tomatoes for 3 months.

You save in a couple of ways using this method AS LONG AS you don’t let any of your purchases spoil. First, you have the tomatoes on hand whenever you need them so you don’t have to make a special trip to the store to get some. Second, you have paid half of the regular price for the tomatoes. Third, this form of saving is a short-term hedge against inflation. In three months, the price of tomatoes may have increased to $1.05 a can so over the three month period your savings have grown without you having to do anything.

Now, compare the various grocery store ads and decide on which store has the best sales this week on the most expensive items you need to purchase. It is only time and cost effective to go to one or two grocery stores a week so it is important to decide where your will make the greatest savings.

Make a list for each store and note the items with special prices. Be sure to watch when you are checking out and verify that the scanned price is the correct price. Frequently the scanners are incorrect on sale items and often on the regular priced items as well. Some stores will give you the item free if you catch a scanner error but even if they don’t, you receive the benefit of the correct price every time you catch an error.

Always shop from a written list.

But my memory is fine, you say. Well, so is mine – most of the time. However, it isn’t fool-proof and I’m usually the fool that has to go back to the store to get the key ingredient for the main dish that I forgot because I didn’t use a shopping list. The other problem I frequently have when shopping list-less is buying the same item repeatedly. We had to eat our way through 40 pounds of potatoes one month because every time I went to the store I thought I needed potatoes so I bought 10 pounds. It was quite a while before the family wanted potatoes again after that fiasco!!! LOL.


The picture of the pizza notebook is from a Trashion Team member’s shop NatureMadeScents Think Again Notebook
http://www.etsy.com/view_listing.php?ref=sr_list_18&listing_id=5232344

The Trashion Street Team specializes on creative thinking and making useful items from “trash”. This is just one example.


Next time we will continue with this discussion.

What Can I Do With This? Game

What Can I Do With This?


“A stitch in time saves nine.”

Notice that this pearl of wisdom doesn’t state nine what – stitches, cents, minutes or all of these?

“But I don’t sew,” you say.

No problem. It is very simple to sew on a button or to tack a seam by hand. All it requires is a needle, scissors and thread that matches the garment. In fact, if you secure the buttons before you wear the garment the first time you will probably never have to replace one as they will stay in place. The commercial sewing of buttons leaves a thread hanging and if you pull on that thread your button magically disappears. Once that happens you have to spend more than nine minutes finding another one, more than nine cents to purchase a new one and often more than nine minutes to sew it on if you count the time to get out your supplies, sew and put everything away.

The same principle holds true with many things. If you oil a squeaky hinge when it first starts to squeak, it won’t annoy you as much and it won’t wear out as fast.

Fix a leaky faucet and you save money on the water that drips down the drain and the faucet won’t wear out as fast.

Tighten a loose screw or bolt and it won’t fall out and disappear so you have to purchase a new one or throw the item away because you can’t find one the correct size.

But what if the item does break or wear out? What do you do with it? Throw it away? That is the American way after all – just toss it and go buy a new one. But remember, we are working on not spending extra money but learning how to change our wasteful habits.

The thrifty person looks at it first before tossing it to see if there is any part that can be used for another purpose.

Does it have a handle that will work on that case where the handle broke?

Do the small gears lend themselves to your latest art or craft project?

A plate breaks and after I get through being annoyed I wonder if I can use the pieces as mosaics in the new stepping stones for the patio.

My jeans have too many holes to repair – can I make a purse or an apron or a pot holder out of the useable pieces?

When something at our house breaks I hold it in my hand for a moment and try to imagine a new life for it.

Of course, not everything can be reused but you will find many items that can and save pennies or dollars with a small amount of thought and effort. Remember every penny you save this way you don’t have to pay the government taxes on again so it is really more than a penny saved.

One example of this is, I have a lovely brown stretch top in my shop that had a small spot on the front. Now it looked like new except for this small spot and I couldn’t bear to just toss it. I found a small piece of lace with a flower and leaves in it and cut them out, used some fusible webbing and attached the lace to the top. Then I added some fabric paint and a few amber and topaz colored glass beads. Instead of a spot, now I had a lovely lace bouquet on the front. Since this top was slightly too small as you can see from the picture I listed it on Etsy in hopes it will make someone else’s wardrobe sparkle.

Every item you reuse instead of discarding means that there is one less thing in your trash that you have to pay to have hauled away and one less thing in the landfill.

Reuse, Repurpose, Upcycle, Recycle – make these words a part of your daily life and your piggy bank game will grow rapidly.

I'm in two Etsy groups that focus on reusing and recycling items: EcoEtsy and Trashion. When you visit Etsy, search for trashion or teamecoetsy and you will find a wealth of ideas and products to help you save money and be creative with your own items.

COME PLAY GRANDMA’S ECONOMY GAME

My grandmother and mother both lived through the ‘great depression’ and learned some very hard fiscal lessons. Money was scarce but taxes still had to be paid on land or the family homestead would be forfeited and sold to pay the taxes, jobs were non-existent or paid very little if you could find one, often workers were paid in local script and that ‘money’ didn’t pay the federal tax bills. Hopefully we won’t experience these dire circumstances again but we can all use some of the lessons to increase our financial well-being.

They lived by some of the sayings that we now call clichés and ignore because we’ve heard them so often. In this series I’m going to examine some of these sayings and see if they are still beneficial today.

“A penny saved is a penny earned.”

I know that we’ve all heard this saying so let’s start by analyzing it. In today’s world a penny isn’t even worth picking up – or is it? If we find a penny on the ground and pick it up we’ve gained a little much needed exercise but we’ve also gained a penny that the government isn’t going to tax us for earning. So that penny is automatically worth more than a penny because we haven’t paid income taxes on it or social security (FICA) taxes on it. That probably makes this penny worth at least 1.15 cents or more. Now if we save this penny and put it into our savings account it will start to earn compound interest and be working for us immediately. Just imagine, if we find a lot of pennies, we have increased our wealth by just bending over and picking them up and saving them.

Now if we apply this saying to our spending habits by thinking before we spend our hard earned money, we can increase our wealth by putting the pennies we’ve saved into a savings account and again use the power of compound interest.

About now I can see you jumping up and down and saying, “But I have too much month for my money right now. I can’t save anything because I need every penny for current expenses!”

I won’t question that this is the case but we are on a mission to fix that problem. I hope that some of what I’m writing about will help you accomplish financial freedom from overwhelming bills and money worries.

How do we determine if we are saving money or overspending our income? One of the easiest ways is to write down every purchase for at least a month and then look at where your money is going. Am I spending it on espresso coffee? Cigarettes? Movies? Eating out? Beer? Snack foods? Rent? Gas? Car payments? Or….?

Once I have this information then I can see where my budget is leaking or hemorrhaging money. As a famous TV psychologist is fond of saying, “You can’t fix what you don’t acknowledge”. Information about my spending habits is the first step to fixing the problem. After analyzing my monthly expenses here is the next step.

If you are married and/or have children, it is important to involve the whole family in the debt reduction process. Children need to learn about money matters and how to handle their finances and if you work as a family then everyone has a sense of accomplishment as the piggy bank fills.

NOTE: If you have very small children set aside a small percentage of the savings for a reward the whole family can enjoy so that they see an immediate result of saving.

THE PIGGY BANK GAME

Now you are ready to start playing the Piggy Bank Game. Start playing by picking at least one thing that you are going to reduce or stop buying for at least one month. See how many things you can find that you should or could reduce. If you have an espresso coffee every morning ask yourself if you could make it at home for less money and be just as satisfied. If you smoke, could you cut down one or two cigarettes a day? If you rent movies a lot, could you use the public library and check them out instead. That is free!!!

Once you have determined what you are saving on this month, set up a piggy bank to put your savings into each day. Your piggy bank doesn’t need to be an actual piggy even though that would be fun – use a can with a lid, a jar or whatever you have on hand. You DON’T need to go buy a piggy bank – remember this is about saving money, not spending it!

Paying into the piggy bank is your visible reward for reaching your daily goal. If you drink one less espresso a week, put that amount of money into the piggy bank the day you skipped your espresso. If you smoked two less cigarettes, put the cost of those cigarettes into the piggy bank.

There are three rules to this game:
1. Pay yourself every time you save on what you have determined is your item you are reducing or stopping for the month.
2. Put the money in the piggy bank daily.
3. DO NOT remove any money from the piggy bank until the end of the month.

Once you have done this exercise for a month, count the money in the piggy bank and then take it directly to the bank and put it into your savings account. This is your first step towards economic freedom. Pat yourself on the back and get ready for next month and see if you can save even more.

It is important to continue keeping a spending record of what you are spending each day so you can analyze how you are doing at the end of each month.

Since I like to put a picture into every article and I didn't have a bowl or piggy bank in my shop, I used this beautiful blue felted bowl that is for sale in TanisAlexis shop on Etsy as an illustration of something you could use as a piggy bank. Here is the link to this bowl and other awesome items. http://www.etsy.com/view_listing.php?ref=sr_list_13&listing_id=10715266 She is a member of my awesome EcoEtsy Street Team.

Watch for my next article and please leave a comment if you have found this helpful or not.