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September 16, 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! I know we all buy generics of some things at least, but what do you think of these “7 Things You Should Always Buy Generic“? Here’s my take on it:
1. Pain relievers.
We only buy name brand over-the-counter medicines when we shop at Sam’s Club – it’s about the same price as the generics at Wal-Mart or CVS and we like to buy as much in bulk as possible. I hate running errands and bulk buying means I get to skip out on shopping as often, lol. If we are at CVS, we only buy generics since it’s all the same ingredients anyway. 
2. Water
We only buy 2-3 cases of bottled water a year simply because we like using the bottles for travel and refilling them for the mini-fridge. Those cases are almost always Kroger brand. One of my friends swears that Aquafina and Ozarka are the absolute best, but I honestly can’t taste the difference and we’ll just be refilling them with tap water anyway.
3. Milk
Maybe it’s just our local Kroger, but their store brand milk is more expensive than Springdale, so we buy Springdale. Why pay $3.50 for Kroger brand when they always sell Springdale for $2.50-$3.00 max? I also have a major complaint with HEB’s brand of milk – it doesn’t ever last until its sell by date! That annoys the crud out of me since we never can finish a full half gallon as it is…anyway, it’s usually Springdale milk for us.
4. Margarine
Okay, I’ll admit it. I use coupons to buy Country Crock. Mr. BFS and I agree that is just tastes better than the generic margarines we have tried. We buy generic butter though. It works fantastically for baking!
5. Bleach
I’ll buy Chlorox if a coupon makes it cheaper, but otherwise, it’s generic for us. I just don’t see any difference in the cleaning power between the two. We seem to go through one container of bleach every year or two…
6. Cleaning Products
I use vinegar the most around the house, but there are three name brand cleaning supplies we do buy. Shout, Oxyclean, and Comet. Shout works way better than the generics we’ve tried for my husband’s mud stains on his reffing gear. Oxyclean works magic on the grass stains on his white knickers. Comet cleans the stuff off of the shower grout way better than anything I’ve tried so far and costs less than $2 a bottle.
7. Spices
I can’t think of any name brand spices we buy. We did get a bottle of real vanilla while we were in Mexico, but I don’t think that counts. We also buy McCormick seasoning packets for tacos and chili, but that’s just because we like their blend, not because we think they use superior spices…
What do you think? Do you buy any name brands on this list?
September 15, 2010, at 6:00 am
Please also feel free to check out and comment on my staff writer post, “4 Upgrades That Waste Your Money” – I Think Not, at Sweating the Big Stuff today!
A few weeks ago, I decided to use some of my fun money to get an MP3 player with an FM radio since I was tired of carrying around my CDs and I wanted to be able to listen to NPR even after I got to work.
I looked at a bunch of options for a week and decided that the newest generation of Ipod Nano would be perfect for me since Mr. BFS already runs an ITunes list (so I won’t have to do anything, thanks sweety) and the radio can be paused. I take calls at work, so that pause feature is fantastic! I also thought that the 16gb Nano looked like a better deal than the 8gb one, so all I needed to do was find the best deal.
Since I don’t like buying electronics used, I looked into my options and Amazon was the winner at $155 (it would have been $130 for the 8gb one instead). I ordered and delivery was scheduled for Tuesday, August 17.
Well, Monday rolled around and I checked the front porch area just in case. No dice. I waited until Tuesday, but it still wasn’t delivered. That’s when I logged into my Amazon account and saw that it was supposedly delivered already on Monday afternoon.
I admit, I panicked.
Then I called Amazon customer service, explained the situation, and waited to hear bad news.
Surprisingly, even though UPS swears they delivered it, the Amazon rep offered me a replacement or a refund! I immediately asked for a replacement and she said it would be shipped out Wednesday via One-Day shipping.
It was actually waiting for me when I got home from work Thursday, August 19! Yay!!! Also, it works exactly as described and the purple color is even better than it looked online!
I am truly impressed with how Amazon took care of me. Amazon’s policy regarding missing packages has successfully earned them the majority of my online business as long as they are up and running.
Have you had any great experiences that surprised you? What do you think of Amazon?
September 14, 2010, at 6:00 am
I’m dedicating today’s post to Scott at Blogcrafted since I wouldn’t be able to post anything if he had not helped me out.
Long story short, I messed up BFS while trying to get another blog started over the weekend. Technically, I replaced the wp-admin folder of BFS with my new blog itself Saturday morning. What that means is that I couldn’t access BFS at all. I could see the site like you can, but I had overwritten the page I needed in order to operate BFS. Yeah, that could be a problem for a blog owner, lol.
I didn’t realize I had messed anything up until Sunday morning when I wanted to see why my Alexa ranking update had not posted. I spent about 10 minutes completely freaking out, followed by a few minutes of crying (I’m emotional, so sue me, lol), followed by a frantic chat session started with Host Monster customer support.
Kelcey was excellent and quickly figured out what I had done and even told me how I could fix it. Sadly, her explanation sounded like gibberish to me, so she thankfully walked me step by step for 90 minutes through the process of getting me back into BFS.
Then we hit a snag…an incompatible file that would require some more detail work that I didn’t understand. I threw in the towel and went to meet my grandparents as planned for lunch and an afternoon of hanging out.
When I got back Sunday night, I emailed my problem, the chat session, and my backup files (just in case) to Ms. Crafty from Blogcrafted since she was the awesome lady that had migrated BFS from Blogger to WordPress a few months ago.
Less than an hour later, I got an email back from her partner Scott giving me the quote I requested and asking if I’d be okay with him starting. Let’s just say I jumped at the chance immediately. I had not expected them to get back to me until Monday, so I was already dancing a little jig.
Within an hour, not only had he fixed what I had done to BFS, but he also had set up the appropriate back-end stuff for the third blog I’m starting soon (meaning I won’t screw anything else up) and even found an issue that had been causing BFS to go down for the last few weeks for a few minutes every night! Talk about above and beyond! All on a Sunday night!
I am extremely grateful and the price was SOOOO reasonable. Here’s their rate list - Scott simply charged me their $40 rate for the hour! $40 to repair BFS when I was worried I had killed my baby! Let’s just say that have a VERY HAPPY CUSTOMER!!! There was a happy dance involved… 
I should have hired them to start with and saved 3-4 hours of my Saturday morning and another 2 of my Sunday…oh well, hind sight is 20/20…
Needless to say, if you ever need website help, I highly suggest contacting Blogcrafted at service *at* blogcrafted *dot* com or on this contact form. They are immensely helpful, knowledgeable, and professional. I’ll only be using them in the future if any other technical blog stuff pops up!
Thank you Scott! Thank you so much!!!
Are any of you as technologically deficient as me? Please tell me somebody else has screwed up their own blog before…I feel like such a pea brain…
September 13, 2010, at 6:00 am
Jolyn at Budgets are the New Black wrote this post about her future plans for her blog. This part of her post seemed written at me:
Successful bloggers will write posts in advance, with a couple-half-dozen ready in their back pocket to pull out on days they don’t have time to write. I’ve tried to do that, I really have. So far, to no avail. Oh, I could blame the kids, this house, the heat, the price of oil… But other bloggers — serial posters — have those same things and more and still manage to crank out quality posts day after day, hour after hour. What’s their secret? Do they all get up at the crack of dawn? Write until 2:00 am? Lock their kids in a closet? Write really fast?
Actually, they probably do. (Except the closet thing, I hope.) They’re more organized. They’re more driven. They don’t watch TV. They’re better at managing their time and sticking to a routine.
I’m not good with routines.
I am a blogger that schedules her posts in advance. I get really uncomfortable if I’m not scheduled for the rest of one week and the whole following week. The one time I actually had nothing scheduled for the following Monday, I nearly freaked out. Just to give you an example, this post is currently being written on August 17.
Do I wake up early or write until 2am? No. Am I more organized or driven? I don’t think so. I might be more driven by the freaking out, but I’m not more driven in general. Do I watch TV? Heck yes!
In order to write as far in advance as I do, I have to have ideas (which is actually pretty hard) and I have to have time (having no kids probably does help in that particular arena). I also get awesome guest posters every week or two…that helps a lot (thank you to all of those who have guest posted; if anybody is interested, please feel free to contact me).
For ideas, I try to think of anything financially-related that is currently going on with Mr. BFS and me. If that is a no go, I look at the articles from news sites or the ones emailed to me from MikeS and Mr. BFS (thank you both so much). If none of those strike a chord, I look at fellow bloggers’ posts or am lucky enough to already have one in mind (like this one). I have yet to run out of ideas completely, but some days I am not as motivated as others to write.
That’s where time comes in. If I’m not personally motivated enough to type up some posts during free time at work or when I settle down for the evening at home, then I have to make myself write over the weekend. Any time I haven’t written at least 7 posts in a work week, I force myself to give up a 3 hour block during my weekend to finish off what I have left. Usually those 3 hours is a late Saturday evening or part of a Sunday afternoon.
People may argue that uninspired posts – those written when I force myself to write – bring down the value of a blog, but I don’t think so. Some of the posts I’ve forced myself to write have turned out to be some of my most successful posts since starting BFS. 7 Common Money Mistakes, Are These Really “10 Things We Can’t Live Without”?, and True Trick to Save Money on Appliances were all weekend posts. They all drew in a lot of comments and even got some attention from bigger blogs.
I don’t think “forced” writing necessarily means that it will be emotionless or bad; it just means that I wasn’t personally moved to write it to start with, but by the time I’m actually writing the first few lines, ideas start popping up and I get more involved.
So, yes, I guess a routine does help, but it definitely does not have to be set in stone. The true trick to posting every day and staying scheduled in advance is to make yourself write even when you don’t feel like it. I sometimes procrastinate for 3-4 days, but eventually I will notice that my scheduled posts are dwindling to less than a week or two. That is when I start plugging away.
If you are a scheduled blogger, how do you keep posts churning out regularly? If you are not a scheduled blogger, would you even want to be given that you may not only write when you want to? If you aren’t a blogger at all, do posts like this annoy you a little bit? Blogging about blogging does seem a little Twilight Zoney to me…
September 12, 2010, at 6:00 am
BFS is a member of the Yakezie Alexa Ranking Challenge! My ranking last week was 63,123 and is now 61,460!
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 any day we go down even one spot is a success and we are succeeding all of the time! 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 11, 2010, at 6:00 am
My Favorite Posts this Week
Carnivals that Included BFS
Thanks for putting tons of work into these carnivals! I know how long these things take!
Guest Posts on BFS
Thanks for the day off! I appreciate all of my guest posters for giving BFS readers quality content and allowing me to have a little breather from my 7 day a week schedule.
If you would like to guest post on BFS as a fellow blogger, 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!
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.
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!
September 10, 2010, at 6:00 am
I learned how to fish when I was 4 years old. My grandparents have owned two catfish ponds for as long as I’ve been alive, so that’s what I know how to fish. I love fishing the ponds since they are surrounded by pine trees and it is so relaxing just to cast a hook into the water and wait.
My grandpa, aunts, and uncles all had a hand in teaching me. They successfully taught me to bait a hook and cast it. I even quickly learned how to properly reel in a fish once it took the bait. Then they hit my stubborn streak.
I refused to learn how to take a fish off a hook. I was even more against cleaning them so they could be eaten.
I think I was 10 years old before I realized why I hated to take the fish off the hooks. I saw all my family get “hit” by the catfish fins more than once and thought that it was silly to get yourself hurt for food that you didn’t really need. Once I realized why I was so wary, I decided that my grandpa’s thick gardening gloves protected my hands enough that I started handling that task myself.
I have yet to gut a fish. I enjoy eating fried catfish and will keep people company if they are cleaning them to be our dinner, but if I am on my own, I am a catch and release fisherman. Killing and skinning and gutting just seem like too much trouble to me when we have perfectly good food in the house anyway.
I thought about cleaning a fish one time. We went on an 8 hour deep sea fishing trip out of Galveston when I was about 19 years old. I caught a big fish about an hour and a half into the trip, and then sea sickness hit me for the next 6 hours. It had to be the worst trip ever for me, but I refused to throw back the one and only fish I caught since it signified the only fun part of the whole day. I resolved to keep it, clean it, and eat it…but thankfully there were guys back at the dock that would clean and fillet our catch for $1 per fish. I quickly paid to have it done and ate the fillets with my husband-to-be the next day. So my stubborn streak continues.
So there you have it. I like the process of fishing but I don’t usually revel in the work involved after the catch. I keep count though. The most catfish and perch that I’ve caught in one day – 23! It took 4 1/2 hours and I could have caught more if I hadn’t gotten bored. They must have been starving or something because my little sister even caught one that day – her first caught fish ever – on an UNBAITED hook dangling off the pier…she was so proud.
Have you ever been fishing? What do you enjoy about it?
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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.
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