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September 23, 2010, at 6:00 am If you're new to BFS, please subscribe to my RSS feed. It shows me a vote of support and keeps me motivated to keep your attention. If you have any questions or comments for me, please contact me and I'll get back to you asap. Thanks for visiting! A couple of things were mentioned in this article, ‘The Craziest Thing I Did to Save Money’, that boggled my mind just a bit.
First, one guy refilled their condiment bottles with those little packets you can get at restaurants. They even had other family members save the packets for them. Now, don’t get me wrong, I save the extra little packets at work just in case they short me next time. BUT, when you start involving others, I think that is a little weird. Plus, if someone in my family asked me to save them those little packets, I’d just buy them a whole bottle of the stuff. Wouldn’t you?
Here’s the one that really grossed out Mr. BFS (and me), one lady decided that the best way to save money on artificial flowers for her hobby was to dumpster dive at cemeteries! Yes, she’d actually root around cemetery dumpsters for the decorations that get tossed. EWWWW! I assume that cemetery dumpsters are like all other dumpsters – gross. I never will need any hobby that much. This is freeganism at its strangest (there you go Kris, I mentioned freeganism, lol).
I know the feeling of being broke. I remember college well. I also know that I hoarded almost all free food I could get my hands on. But you would never have found me near a dumpster on purpose.
I think the craziest thing I ever did to save money was to work 3 jobs, take 12 hours of classes, and plan a wedding at the same time. Occasionally, I’d stock up on 69 cent bean burritos from Taco Bell and have them for lunch and dinner a few days in a row. Peanut butter and jelly was also my sandwich of choice. 
What’s the strangest thing you ever did to save some cash?
September 22, 2010, at 6:00 am
Finding my favorite hobby ever, blogging, has led me to blow off some of the things I was spending a lot of time on before. We have gone on financial auto-pilot.
I don’t watch as much tv, which is fine. I stopped reading actual books, although audio books are pretty fantastic and have filled in that hole very nicely. I also stopped spending 10-30 minutes every night looking at our money, playing with our money (well, in my head), and inserting all of our expenses into our Excel budget.
Although I should be worried since I’ve pretty much have let go of our budget reigns, we seem to be doing just fine. Don’t get me wrong, we spend way more a month now than we did years ago, but we also make way more too.
Including our mortgage, we spend between $2500-$3000 a month. $2500 is a really good month with no pop up expenses and $3000 is a really bad one. We also pay about $3000 a year in one-time charges like property taxes and homeowner’s insurance.
That means that even without a budget, we are spending less than $40,000 a year.
5 years ago, I would have freaked. We were only making about that much every year BEFORE taxes. It’s amazing what an actual career can do. Mr. BFS became a teacher and nearly doubled his salary over night! I’ve also gotten $8500 in raises, but that’s definitely not as big of a dent, lol.
I see several areas where we can and should cut back even now, but it is nice to know that we are safe just the way we are. I highly value financial security, so it’s just a huge load off my back to realize that even when I’m not being a budgeting babe, we still inherently know how to live below our means and automatically save for our future.
Are you on auto-pilot? Or do you run a tight fiscal ship?
September 21, 2010, at 6:00 am
A few weeks ago, we became the proud owners of a Magic Bullet Blender for $40 from Bed, Bath, and Beyond after using one 20% off coupon. I met several people who swore by their blender, so we took the plunge. So far, so good!
1) Easy to use.
I can simply throw some ingredients into a container, screw on the blade, and push the mixture onto the base to start blending. The whole process takes less than a minute to get together and 90 seconds to blend (and that is only if I used a lot of ice). Once my concoction is ready, I unscrew the blade, rinse it off, and enjoy. It really is so simple.
2) Easy clean-up.
The blade is easily rinsed and the containers are dishwasher safe. If you ever drip anything onto the base, simply wipe it down with a slightly damp cloth or paper towel to clean it up. It never takes us more than 30 seconds to have everything as clean as when we started.
3) Saves waste.
Ripe bananas make a great base for any smoothie. I usually only enjoy bananas that have just turned yellow and Mr. BFS enjoys the ones that are just a little spotty. Once they become mostly spotty, neither one of us will eat them and I only feel like making banana bread once in a while. Now those super spotty bananas can easily be halved and thrown into a freezer bag for future smoothie use. One half of a frozen banana and a little milk makes a solid base for any fruit or yogurt drink.
Other ripe fruits can be thrown in as well. Nectarines, peaches, apples, grapes, and berries all have made their way into my smoothies in the last weeks and have saved me from throwing them away since I’m so picky about textures. We were easily wasting $5 of fruit a month before, but haven’t thrown away one piece since we bought the blender. I think that is pretty awesome.
Crystal’s Quick Fruit Smoothie
1) One half frozen banana
2) Four tablespoons frozen berries
3) Splash of milk
4) Splash of orange juice
5) One tablespoon of sugar (or honey)
6) Five ice cubes
Blend until smooth and enjoy!
In short, I am a happy camper. We haven’t tried many recipes yet (like Magic Bullet guacamole), but I can see this thing working exactly as described. I’ll admit that I didn’t expect it to work as well as it does. I loved being proved wrong on points like that!
Do you own a Magic Bullet Blender? What’s your favorite blended yumminess?
— In the interest of full disclosure, I was in no way paid or asked to write this post. BUT, the above link to Amazon is an affiliate link and they will give me a small commission (4%) if you order through that. —
September 20, 2010, at 6:00 am
The following is a guest post from Jeff of Sustainable Life Blog. Feel free to check it out!
I’m in debt, which stinks. The best part about being in debt is dreaming what you’ll do with all that “extra” money you’ll have when get out of it. I am doing this a lot as well. It’s not so bad. Now that I’ve gotten my expenses under control finances have gotten much easier for me, I actually like doing them. I come across what I think is the hardest part frequently.
For me the hardest part is when you dream of spending your hard earned cash on something other than debt repayment. Like I mentioned earlier, I do this a lot. To make my debt repayment journey easier, I often create small goals for myself and try to reward myself accordingly, with something like a camping trip or a fishing trip (instead of working all weekend).
Every once in a while (so far just once) you’ll cross a milestone that deserves something more than 1 weekend away. For me, this milestone was paying off my credit cards (all of them) once and for all!
I recently completed this, and decided to reward myself for it. Luckly for me, I made finding a reward a bit easier when I was beginning to pay off my debts. When I first realized how much money I owed to my credit cards and what interest I was paying, I quickly realized that was not going to work. So I looked around for some balance transfer credit cards and I found one that gave airline rewards to boot!
I quickly calculated that if I transfered up to the limit on this card, paid it off I could have a free flight + a few extra credits towards a second one. The fact that the interest rate was about 10 points lower on this card was just icing on the cake.
I made the transfer and had the balance paid off in about 5 months. I was feeling great and moved on to the next part of my debt with my snowball. Fast forward 9 months, and I check my rewards account. It looks like the ticket is going to expire at the end of August, 2010, and I really don’t want it to go to waste.
Unfortunately, I had not finished paying off all of my debts yet, so was at a crossroads. I could:
- Let the Ticket expire and continue to pay down my debt
- Use the ticket to go somewhere.
If I let the ticket expire, there would have been no point in opening the card for the balance transfer in the first place. I would have gotten a better interest rate, but still, I wanted the ticket. I opened it for the free airplane ticket, and I want to use it. I also have a particular aversion to wasting things, especially in this case. Not using the ticket would make me feel like the credit card company won, and I don’t want that. I could also tweak my debt repayment budget for a few months, diverting some cash from debt repayment into a savings account for vacations.
I decided to compromise, and tell myself that if 1 of my other debts is paid off before the ticket expires and I have the cash available, I can go. I feel like I’ve offered a reasonable compromise to myself, and it looks like I’ll be able to hit my goal. Here are some tips to help you budget in the fun stuff
- Use your debt to your advantage – I was able to get a free airline ticket by making a credit card balance transfer to a card with a lower interest rate. When I made this transfer, I saved money on interest payments AND was able to get something tangible out of it. (I did this before the CARD act, and I know these cards are more difficult to get now.) It doesn’t have to be a plane ticket, but look to get something out of your debt instead of just paying interest. Let me make it clear that you should NOT go into debt for these rewards.
- Use it as a carrot - Find a difficult but attainable goal on your road to debt freedom. It could be something like “Increase debt snowball from $1,300 to $1,500 a month for 4 months” If you meet your goal, reward yourself with your airline ticket.
- Reinforce good habits – This can help you keep your good habits and not go into debt for your next vacation. Prepare a budget for the trip and put enough money aside (every payday) to make sure you’ve got enough (and probably a bit extra) by the time you’re ready to fly. This will be easier to do once you’re out of debt, and you’ll already have practice!
- Enjoy the Trip – I can’t stress this enough. When I used this exact method on my most recent trip, I didn’t enjoy my vacation as much as I could have. Every once in a while (usually when the cash register rang), I would think about how much money I’ve spent on the trip and how that money could be going to debt. Instead, enjoy the fact that you won’t have a “credit hangover” from this vacation cause it’s paid for up front.
So, next time you’re looking for a reward for paying off your debt, don’t forget to look at leveraging you debt to produce the reward. Sure, you’ll still be in debt, but you may as well try to get something out of it. With these steps, you can use your reward and set good habits for your future debt free self. Good luck!
Crystal’s Questions:
Do you reward yourself for accomplishing personal finance goals like debt repayment? If so, how?
September 19, 2010, at 6:00 am
BFS is a member of the Yakezie Alexa Ranking Challenge! My ranking last week was 61,460 and is now 60,035!
The original goal was to be in the top 200,000 by July 4, 2010 and you helped me blow that out of the water in 2 months…a whole month early! Then we were shooting for 100,000 by July 4th and we hit that goal too!!! After that we started a new goal of 75,000 by the end of August, and I thought there was no way, but we hit that out of the park by August 15!!!
Now we are shooting for 50,000 by Halloween! I know it’s a little insane, but let’s try it out anyway! It is getting harder to go down every day, but we are doing it!!! Thank you!
As always, I would like to sincerely thank all of my readers and the members of the Yakezie Challenge. Obviously, this would have been impossible without all of you. Thank you all so much! I repeat those words every week, but please understand that I mean it every time.
In case you didn’t know, Alexa traffic rankings are determined by the numbers of hits a site gets by people with the Alexa toolbar. If you want to be part of this ranking community, you can download the Alexa toolbar here.
If you are a Yakezie member and don’t see yourself on my member list, please send me an email or leave a comment here to be added. I copied the list originally in early March and updated it in mid-June. Please let me know if you are still missing. Thanks!
September 18, 2010, at 6:00 am
Please also check out my new blogs,
Crystal Clear Thoughts and It’s a Dog’s Life For Me!!!
I’m so excited! I hope you all like them!
My Favorite Posts this Week
BFS Guest Posts
Thanks Funny! It’s always fun at your place!
Other Info
Feel free to email me if you have any suggestions. I’d love to add a few more blogs to my regular reading list or at least give a shout-out for great posts or contests.
If you would like to guest post on BFS, please send me an email with your idea or post and I’d love to have you over for the day! If you are a business, please email me for more details. Thanks!
As always, thanks to all the bloggers that teach me something new every day. Thanks to all my commenters for making this blog the community I want it to be. Thanks to all my lurkers too. I hope everybody is enjoying this as much as me!
Just in case you didn’t see it above (shameless plugs, I know),
please also check out my new blogs,
Crystal Clear Thoughts and It’s a Dog’s Life For Me!!!
September 17, 2010, at 6:00 am
Some of you may blog already. If so, I hope you agree that it is pretty fun.
Advertising opportunities can produce passive income streams, but my favorite aspect of blogging is the feeling of community.
For a social creature like me, there isn’t a better feeling than being able to communicate with all of you. When you leave a comment or send me an email, it’s like a mini-Christmas every time. The gift of being a part of something is pretty powerful. It lets me know that my ideas are striking chords in others (hopefully good ones). It also is nice to know that there are some other crazy people out there that enjoy personal finance as much or more than I do! 
I really do learn alot from my commenters and fellow bloggers. Blogging led Mr. BFS and me to pay off our last car loan way before we had planned. It also helped us prioritize our spending even more than we already did.
I’ve met some awesome people and even have become real friends with a few of you already. I’m sure I’ll wear the rest of you down in time, lol.
Expansion
Since blogging has become such a big part of my life, I’m glad to say I will be branching out! I’ve started two more sites!
Sites like Everyday Tips and Thoughts and First Gen American convinced me that I wanted a blog that could have some random non-fiscal musings. I wanted an open non-themed forum to go along with BFS. I also want to blog more about my dogs and pets in general.
So, feel free to check out Crystal Clear Thoughts and It’s a Dog’s Life For Me if you have a moment! There’s not much on either site yet, but I hope they can be a place where the BFS community can go just to hang out a little. I’ll be announcing both sites “officially” next week when I start a normal schedule, but I figured my Friday readers may like a sneak peak, lol.
They both will be random blogs filled with the blabber from my slightly fractured mind, but I truly hope you all will want to join in. Rant, boast, chat, or just make some friends.
Oh, and I should mention that I’d love to have guest posts from pet lovers of all types! I know some cat owners and bearded dragon owners that may be interested already.
So, my fellow bloggers, do you enjoy what you do? What drives you to keep going? For my non-blogger readers, what drives you to keep reading blogs? What do you enjoy the most?
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DISCLAIMER I am not a professional or a financial advisor. BFS posts are informational opinions only. Please make your own financial decisions based on personal research or see a financial advisor.
Also, there are paid links on this site. There is no obligation on your part to purchase any products advertised on this website.
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