BellaOnline Forums Money Frugal Living Reducing Expenses

Dianne - that's an awesome idea especially for free movies from the library!

We cut cable tv and kept cable internet. We use an antenna for digital and analog channels. It's just me and my boyfriend so we don't need the kid channels. We just keep up with the networks so I get my soaps and our nighttime primetime tv just fine.
Also, there is way less food waste here-- all leftover veggies and meats get throw into the soup pot once a week. Overripe bananas become banana bread, etc. What we don't use right away we freeze.
I am also starting a victory garden outside.
Sheryl

That is great about recycling the food daisybun! It's amazing how much food the average household just throws away.

There's a lot of shows you can watch on your computer now!

What is a victory garden?

Jill, you are too young to know about Victory Gardens!
They are simply a veggie garden in the back yard where there was never one before. During WW11 people at home were inspired to do all sorts of things to help with the war effort, and planting a garden in your yard helped feed your family and cut down on the demand for food when gas was rationed and so many workers were in the service or in war material manufacturing. Of course they called them Victory Gardens because everything we did was geared toward victory in the war.
My Dad dug up our back yard in Brooklyn and planted an ambitious Victory Garden, and was he proud of the magnificant HUGE tomatoes he raised, along with the peppers, salad greens, carrots and kohlrabi. (Nobody had ever heard of kohlrabi before but they turned out to be edible and even tasty!)
I think of Dad's Victory Garden every time I work in my own little veggie patch.

That's nice to know about Victory Gardens Claybird, so our gardens will help both our health and budgets. It seems everyone is getting on that. The First Lady recently planted a organic garden on the South Lawn of the White House.

Other than that I'd like to add;
- Pay bills on time. Avoid late fees.
- Shop at sales, wait for sales, clip coupons. Buy only what's needed.
- Use online money management tools to track your expenses, once you've got your list of expenses, consider each one and ask yourself if there is a way to reduce it.

When I was younger, my mom and dad got divorced, we had to cut way back in our family spending. This was before you got anything unlimited. My mom got rid of her long distance phone plan and only have the local. She got rid of the cable. It was hard at first not having but we managed. We lived with out cable for 8 years until my brother was old enough and had the money to get cable. Now I am married and living on our own. We don't have cable. We have a converter box, that has allowed us to get three more channels that we never had before.
People are looking for a way to stretch a dollar and buy the best value and to have time and money left for important things like themselves and their family. Unless you have a perfect life with all the time and money you want, this might be something you would be interested in.

Find out which days your grocery store has senior rewards days or double coupon days. I save a lot on this kind of stuff.
Also, most food banks don't just give out free food -- some have value boxes the public can buy. We get about $100 worth of groceries this way -- for $20! And I've heard some will take food stamps if you have those.
Sheryl

Claybird that is truly cool about your dad's victory garden. How neat!

I need to think about maybe growing some tomatoes in my RV. Not much room but i can put them in the shower when we travel and take them outside when we camp? Trying to come up with some ideas...

That is neat also about the first lady planting an organic garden at the White House. I am so in love with those two. :-)

I have not had cable in a while. You can pretty much download any TV show off the internet for free, so we just do that.

Living in an RV also makes one frugal...you can only carry so much on the road. Just a suggestion for people who find the idea appealing! :-)

Jilly - it might be challenging to manage tomatoes right now - I imagine you are trying to simplify! I would suggest instead growing a few of your favorite herbs in a window. Fresh herbs smell wonderful! They add *awesome* flavors to pretty much any food you make. So they enhance your world all the time, and are tiny and easy!

I don't mean to discourage you from growing tomatoes, but they take up a fair amount of space and I think the few tomatoes you get from them might not be worth all the hassle when you're already dealing with so much!