Dumpster Diving Is Back
Welcome back!
As a child I grew up in a home where we just managed to get by financially. Once a week my mom would pile us kids into the car to go “dumpster diving” in the wealthier neighborhoods in our area. I know this idea sounds repulsive to some, but it really isn’t. We would not go through the garbage bags, but instead keep an eye out for things set next to the rummage bin.
My sister and I used to love “dumpster diving night.” Believe it or not, we actually found some pretty cools stuff over the years, things that were in perfect condition. As I got older, we didn’t do dumpster dive nights anymore. However, I still do keep my eye out when I am driving. Once, I found a perfectly good Radio Flyer wagon in someone’s trash. It was old and a little rusty, but it worked just fine. I use it as a garden cart for when I am out working in my yard.
Recently I have been reading articles that say dumpster diving is back in a big way. This made me chuckle until the other night when I actually saw a guy doing it! I personally don’t care if someone wants to rummage through my trash, believe me all they’d find is coffee grounds and cat food tins. I am not condemning the man that I saw. Way to go for him, now that’s being resourceful.
However, like most things, dumpster diving has become more technologically advanced. Craig’s List has a free category on their website, the new modern dumpster dive. I have been amazed at the things people give away. I have seen beautiful furniture, appliances some working, and some for scrap, clothing. You name it, you’ll find it.
There are a few tricks to this modern dumpster dive. First, you must check often, especially on the weekends. Second, if you see something you want, contact the giver right away. Things can go very quickly on Craig’s List. It is okay to ask the giver a few questions about the item before you commit to taking it. This can be a great way to get what you need for free.
While Craig’s List is free, a word of caution, this type of dumpster dive can be dangerous. Most times when someone lists an item, they usually have you pick it up at their home. Please be cautious, take someone with you when you go. We have had two robberies in the area that lured people by using the free category on Craig’s List. The people showed up to pick up the items and instead, they were robbed and assaulted. So, please be careful when using Craig’s List. However, in giving this warning, I must say, I have used Craig’s List many times and I have never had any problems.
10 Things You Can Cut out of Your Life
This is part of an ongoing series or articles on how to deal with the ongoing crisis in the world economy. Many are calling it a New Depression. Whatever you want to call it, news ways of thinking are being called for. Welcome to the New Austerity.
During this time of trouble, what are some things you can cut out of your life to save money and help make ends meet? What are the things you can live without the most? Believe it or not, there is plenty in your life that you can truly live without.
The Gardener
This one is easy. Mow your own lawn. Go down to the local flea market and buy a second hand mower. It won’t take that long to mow your own lawn. Google basic lawn care and how to care for your lawn.
The same goes for tending to your landscaping. The internet is an invaluable resource and you can find out anything you want to know about gardening and landscaping. Take the time and save the money.
Cable TV
You don’t need Cable TV, you really don’t. With the advent of Digital TV, there is plenty of TV broadcast over the air. You know the stereotype, 500 channels with nothing on. It’s really always like that. What shows you do watch you can download on the internet for free. However, high speed internet, be it cable or DSL, is essential as electricity and water.
Newspaper and Magazine Subscriptions
Your local paper has a website with the same content for free. Stop wasting money on delivery. What if you want the coupons on Sunday? Then get a Sunday only subscription or just pick it up in the store. Most magazines also have a website with the same content as the magazine. Start reading your news online and you won’t need either.
The Maid or Housekeeper
It does not take much time or energy to keep your house clean. Set a schedule and a routine and you can replace your made easily. Successful households require teamwork on the part of both spouses. Help your wife out and she will in return. You’re a team, tackle the current problems together.
The Nanny/Babysitter/Daycare
If your sinking a lot of money into a nanny or daycare, it’s time to investigate the cost effectiveness of having both parents working. If you’re essentially breaking even once you factor in childcare and other kid related costs, then it’s time for one parent to dedicate themselves to raising the kids full time.
Monthly Recurring Billed Services
Look at your monthly outgoings and find recurring monthly bills for stuff you don’t really need. Cut them out of your life and cut up the credit card they’re being billed to. Things like Tivo Service, Netflix, Credit Monitoring (you can do this for free) can all be snipped out of your life.
Sell a Car
If you have two cars and one is sitting around most of the time, get rid of it. It’s just costing you money. The inconvenience of having one car does not outweigh the savings.
Your Next Vacation
Trip to Europe or Vegas planned? Time to cancel it. If the trip is already paid for and you can’t get your money back, then by all means go. But if you can get out of the trip, now is the time to take a hit for the team and wait until the world financial outlook improves.
Eating Out
Stop eating out so much. It’s much more cost effective to eat at home. Make eating out a monthly treat that the family looks forward to. It will feel so much more rewarding to you and your family when they get something they have been working for all month.
Ditch a Hobby
Into model trains? Building RC Planes? Dungeons and Dragons? Collect stamps? Your hobbies are costing you money. It’s time to put your hobbies aside. They aren’t going anywhere. You can resume them when the economy improves. For now, stop spending the money and put it towards saving and living. I’ve given up comic books for now. It sucks, but the comics aren’t going anywhere. You can always take up a hobby that doesn’t cost any money.
If you have any ideas for things you could cut out of your own life and want to share, please leave it in the comments!
How to Cut Advertising Out of Your Life
They’re not on your side.
Day after day, we are bombarded with thousands of advertisements a day; all encouraging us to spend money in some way. Some manipulate us. Some make us aspire to a life we don’t have. Some make us feel like shit for not having something or make you feel too fat or too skinny.
I could write a book on the wrongs advertising inflicts upon us. But that’s not what this post about. This post is about how to cut advertising out of your life, as much as possible.
It’s possible and I’m going to show you how to block advertising today!
Ad Blocking Software
If you use the computer a lot, you know that you are bombarded with ads to pretty much any website you go to (including this one…). Not only can they be annoying but they can be a major violation of privacy as cookies track your movements from site to site and target ads towards you based on your history.
For example, pretty much every website I go to has advertisements for the latest deals on flights to London. It’s no coincidence that I love England and would give my left foot to go there again. So, the ad networks track me when I price out dream vacations. They know what I want, sometimes more than I do.
So, how do block the ads out?
If you use Safari on the Mac, I recommend SafariBlock. If you use a PC, the Firebox browser has extensions such as Adblock.
There is not a simple solution to block ads in Internet Explorer. You’re better off switching to FireFox anyway, it’s much more secure and works a lot better anyway.
TIVO – DVR’s – Digital Video Recorders
While the TIVO may seem like an unnecessary gadget to have, especially with it’s ongoing cost (monthly fee), it’s a great thing to keep around. There is a TIVO remote hack that allows you to set the TIVO to have 30 second skip. This way you can skip all commercials.
If you don’t have a TIVO or want to invest in one, most cable companies offer a DVR now and charge a small monthly fee for it. While they aren’t as elegant as TIVO, you can still fast forward through commercials and skip them entirely.
Another solution if you want to go even further is to download your favorite TV shows over the internet. The commercials are usually removed and you can get almost any popular show for free via Bittorrent. Though, the legality of this is in dispute. You can also buy most TV shows from online stores like the iTunes Music Store and Amazon UnBox.
Life is so much better without loud and obnoxious TV Commercials.
RSS Feeds
If you are a regular reader of a website and just read the content, the RSS Feeds are your new friend. All you need is a RSS Feedreader like Newsgator or NetNewsWire, or even Google Reader and you can read the content on most sites without ads. Some feeds are starting to have ads, but they are not nearly as obtrusive as content on websites surrounded by ads.
Heck, though I’m shooting myself in the foot, you can even subscribe to the feed on this site and avoid my ads all together (but please don’t!).
Sunday Paper
The Sunday Paper can usually be a useful source for coupons and deals for the week. However, it’s best to just toss the sale paper section. It’s solely designed to get you to WANT. To get you to go out and spend money.
If you want the coupons, of which there are usually only a few and they aren’t worth the trouble of clipping, just take out the coupon ads and throw the rest away into the recycling bin. Your wallet will thank you.
Personally, I hate nothing more than being tempted with a new flat screen TV every time I read the sale papers. So, just toss ‘em. You’ll want for less and be all the better off for it.
Magazines
Pretty much avoid all magazines like the plague, especially more ‘popular’ ones. They perpetuate our society’s materialism. The ads and usually most of the content it written to manipulate you into wanting ’stuff.’
There are some quality magazines out there that have unobtrusive ads and are renowned for their quality content. I recommend The Economist, The Atlantic Monthly and The New Yorker.
If you want to avoid ads even in those magazines, they have websites where ads can be blocked. Most of them also have RSS Feeds.
Junk Mail
Junk Mail keeps the Postal Service alive so it won’t be going anywhere anytime soon. There are, however, ways you can reduce your junk mail.
The Direct Marketing Association has a website where you can sign up to opt-out of getting most consumer catalogs. At one point I was getting 3 or 4 of the same Victoria’s Secret Catalogs every couple of weeks. We signed up for this and haven’t gotten one since.
Also, there’s a system to opt out of all those credit card offers you get in the mail. I hated nothing more than getting offers for scam credit cards. I don’t get them anymore.
For all other junk mail that keeps coming, just toss it in the recycling bin without reading it.
E-mail SPAM
The best way to battle e-mail Spam is to get a Gmail account. Their spam filters work the best out of any of the e-mail services I’ve tried. Gmail is free and secure and you can set it up with your usual e-mail reader (i.e. Outlook or Apple Mail) to avoid their targeted ads.
If you want to avoid Spam, avoid a Hotmail account all together.
Telemarketing
Thankfully, telemarketers are pretty much a thing of the past thanks to the National Do Not Call Registry. You can sign up online here. This is, by far, one of the easiest ways get rid of a common annoyance.
Branded Clothing
Is Nike or the Gap paying you to wear their corporate logos? No! In fact you’re overpaying them for the privilege. It is pretty easy to buy clothes without labels on it. I’m a t-shirt and jeans guy and nothing I wear has a corporate logo on it. Even the business casual clothes I wear to work lack ‘labels.’
If you have any tips on cutting advertising out your life, please post them in the comments!
Just Say No to Credit Cards
According to a recent story in US News, Americans are starting to turn their back on credit cards. Many are forsaking the plastic god that has been sustaining them and are beginning to draw down the rampant consumerism that has created the situation we’re in now.
It’s a shame that the credit crunch was needed at all to teach us that our habits were going to destroy us. Millions have had to suffer unnecessarily.
We’re pretty much against credit cards here at Austerity blog. Though, we aren’t opposed to all forms of debt. We have long believed, and have experienced for ourselves, that the credit card companies are not your friend.
They want you to spend as much money as possible and the minute you slip up, they have your balls in a vice. They laugh all the way to bank as you write that check that seems to get bigger and bigger every month.
While this contraction in spending and reduction in credit usage will, and is, harming the economy, I think that in the long run, the economy will be stronger. This entire society is based on debt and that is unsustainable as an economic system. The recent problems are proving that.
So, what’s the hapless consumer to do? Be responsible and always be prepared for an economic downturn. If you apply the principles of austerity during times of plenty, you’ll be prepared for the downtimes and the downtimes won’t seem so bad, because you are already used to living austerely.
Just Say No to Credit Cards.
That’s our official advice to everyone. I don’t care if you are one of those people that think they are using them responsibly and taking advantage of the credit card companies by their rewards systems. They are taking advantage of you. And when you slip up, they won’t hesitate to punish you.
Like most vices in life, credit cards should generally be avoided.
Austere Back to School Tips
This can be a very expensive time for families as kids go back to school and they need all the accoutrements that go with that.
A major problem that parents face is that often kids don’t know the difference between needs and wants. They don’t think anything of thinking they need the newest clothes and most expensive school supplies.
It’s the job of the parent to reign them in and teach them the values of austerity and to clarify needs and wants. This can be extraordinarily difficult with children, whom generally don’t respond well to reason. This is why one must be the parent in the relationship.
I won’t pretend to be an expert in parenting. My wife and I are waiting to have kids until we can afford it. Which is what many people in this country don’t do. They have kids left and right and don’t think it through. We have decided to buck the trend and put money away first, before they come along.
One of the main philosophical tenants of this blog is to deny yourself until you’ve earned it. And we have not earned children yet. To save and plan for something you really want makes it all the more rewarding when you stop denying yourself.
I bring this subject up because there have been many articles in various news outlets about parents becoming more frugal this fall because of the tough economy. Essentially, hand-me-downs are back in as is shopping at thrift stores. Parents are also seeking ways to get their school supplies cheaper.
Keep in mind, if you’re shopping for your kids, that there is always somewhere where you can buy something cheaper. Walmart generally has the cheapest of everything but they’re not the only place for a deal. While some people hate Walmart, it’s not a bad place for a deal and in the future we’ll be talking about the virtues of Walmart.
Times are tough and the retailers know this. They are tripping over themselves to provide you the best back to school deals. It’s your job as an austere consumer and responsible parent to take them up on it.
