Following Wal-Mart’s announcement in late September that stores across the country would expand last year’s holiday come-on of ten toys priced at $10 to 100 toys this year. The list includes such desirables as the New Transformers Revenge of the Fallen Deluxe Action Figures, board games including Monopoly and Battleship, Tonka trucks with light and sound, the Play=Doh Burger Builder Set (for those young wannabe burger-flippers in your family, and even a Nerf sword. Among other items.

So it was probably to be expected that competitor Target would come up with an alternative plan to get shoppers into the stores during what is expected to be a dismal holiday shopping season. Target’s come-on is to offer a selection of toys discounted up to 50%. Whether that offers more savings to cash-strapped parents than the guaranteed low prices at Wal-Mart remains to be seen.

For parents who really have to buy a few ‘regular’ toys for young children this may be a good deal, as there are unlikely to be any new Transformers or Nerf swords at Goodwill. But definitely keep the resale outlets in your planning, for such things as winter coats, dress-ups for girls, trikes and bicycles, those ubiquitous plastic child cars and play sets, etc. And it’s always possible to find one-of-a-kind items they just don’t make any more that would be perfect for someone on your list. Kitchen canisters, spice racks (may have to give empty), wooden utensil sets and many other things that are more opportunistic than planned as gifts.

The whole 50% off thing sort of reminds me of when I got a 2-day job in North Chicago while my husband was in A-School (Navy) many long years ago. I had small children and he was only there for 10 weeks, so getting a regular full-time job was very unlikely. It was at the area’s Carson Pirie and Scott department store for an upcoming late summer half price sale. One day helping prepare, and the opening day of the sale as floor help in Women’s Wear.

I showed up at the appointed hour, the store was closed in preparation for the sale. Turned out our job as temps was to replace the price tags on all the items in our departments – with the ‘original’ price doubled so the sale price underneath was exactly the same as full price was just yesterday. What a scam! Then the next day we braced ourselves against the huge crowd of revved-up shoppers who had been waiting for hours on the sidewalk. Nothing can really prepare you for watching a bunch of frenzied women with credit cards literally fighting over bras, sweaters, skirts, dresses, jeans and other items they only THINK they’re getting cheap. Clothes were flying everywhere, some things got ripped in half. It disgusted me enough that I never have trusted sales gimmicks ever since.

It wouldn’t hurt to check up on the going prices for some of those items you’re supposed to think you’re getting a great price on before you go to the big box stores to spend hard earned money. You might really be saving on that $20 item now going for $14.99, but you could be making it up on that peripheral item that’s been marked up to double. It might be a really pretty candy plate with angels and Aunt Ruth would love it, but if your experience suggests you could get the same useless item at the Dollar Store for $2, $9.99 is way too much. Retail is a little like a gambling casino. Sure, there are occasional winners, but the house always wins in the end.

Autumn is well upon us, and people who have been struggling to stay afloat in this lousy economy all year are now faced with the prospect of the coming holiday gifting season. Which can be daunting in the best of times, but can be positively depressing for those not used to not having cash or credit for the consumerist frenzy. This post is about helping to trim the gift list if you haven’t done so already, plus how and where to find gifts for loved ones that they may cherish forever, help maintain and spread the joy of the season, and not cost an arm or leg.

Previous Posts:
Christmas in a Depressed Economy
‘Tis the Season: Gift Ideas

1. Analyze your gift-giving habits, trim the tree.

In our free-wheeling consumerist culture the Christmas shopping season represents half or more of retailers’ annual intake and an average middle class family’s greatest expenditures on unnecessary items for the year. If your family is struggling, the credit cards with their usurious interest rates have already been cut into small pieces and thrown away, consumer loans have been paid down or frozen in place, and promises to self not to spend more than you’ve got have been made. Don’t change a thing just because the holidays are coming!

If you have a lot of friends and extended family for whom you’ve bought gifts in years past, networking with them early is a good idea. See if doing something other than gifting this year could be a thankful relief to them as well as you. Pot-luck holiday get-togethers are fun, and no one person has to provide all the food and drinks. “Re-Gifting” parties can be great fun too, where you give some trinket you got from someone else in the past (it’s been just taking up room in the closet or on the shelf ever since) to someone else. Chances are someone will remember who gave Fred that hideous tie he’s never worn and laughs will ensue. The holidays are for fun, so have some!

If you’ve got children, find out what they want most instead of just gathering their wish lists of every toy they’ve seen advertised on TV. For children old enough to know Santa isn’t Bill Gates, one big gift can be better than ten little ones. Items like bicycles, roller blades and other sports equipment can be purchased second hand and refurbished, maybe personalized with glitter paint and trim. Go for things they’ll really use and enjoy, stay away from basic junk.

2. Seek out mainstream and even obscure second hand, consignment and/or junk outlets in your area.

There’s nothing like serious holiday shopping among the hugely varied items at a resale outlet, where the perfect something for someone on your list could be found. Often area churches, animal rescue outfits and civic organizations host thrift shops. In many places there are great private resale shops that offer amazing items from art to furniture, crockery to costume jewelry. Don’t overlook those even if you also plan to shop at Goodwill or Salvation Army.

I’ve found beautiful handcrafted chess sets and boards, totally unique hand-whittled puzzle boxes, antique glassware and china, beautiful jewelry boxes, hand-crafted doll houses, etc. in some unlikely haunts. Sometimes something just needs cleanup and a couple of touches, sometimes you can put a lot of yourself into it with a new paint job or fixes, and again you can always personalize. Commercialized junk doesn’t tend to become someone’s most treasured keepsake. Remember it’s all about the thought and effort, not about the price tag.

3. Know your local resources.

If your area has a Freecycle club, think about joining. You can get rid of some of your closet-clutter and maybe get items for gifting. Great for baby furniture and accessories, bicycles and such, often tools, household items, yarns and needles, fabric and sewing machines, books, clothing, home repair and building supplies, etc. All free.

Keep up with your area’s want ads and garage/yard sales as well. Spending Saturdays thrifting and bargain-hunting can be both fun and rewarding as you add to your collection of things “perfect for…” whoever will most love that gift. Your time and effort adds to the value of any gift you give!

4. Think Creatively!

Many people don’t know that you can make a wonderfully colorful and snuggly warm blanket out of a stack of old sweaters. They make great stuffed animals too, if you’re handy with a sewing machine. Purses out of old jeans, sparkled up with some craft store jewels and studs are always welcome presents to the teen set. For younger girls a box full of sparkly costume jewelry is great, as is a laundry basket chock full of fancy dress-up items (including high heels and hats!). For already-creative young’uns, a bunch of items from which they can salvage feathers, beads, trims, etc. may be just the thing. Art supplies can often be found second hand in areas where artists are, I always buy up as much paint, brushes, pastels, pencils, charcoals, canvases, sketchbooks and whatever else as I possibly can.

5. Have Kitchen, Will Travel.

Consider pouring your heart into food for family and friends this year. Make batches of yummy fudge, lots of Christmas cookies, try your hand at hard candies, etc. Such things are always most welcome during the holidays even if they don’t tend to last long in a crowd! If you have to go to the company party and are expected to bring a gift, fudge always works even better than some cheap soap or cologne or tie, and you don’t have to worry about whether you’ve drawn a man or a woman’s name from the hat.

6. Gift of your time and talents.

Have a friend or relative working two part-time jobs, barely getting by and who could really use a night out? Know a caregiver who is stressed to the max? Stumped for something for the teenagers? You can make some beautiful cards (post on that upcoming) and include ‘tickets’ for babysitting, house or pet sitting, a home-cooked meal (at their convenience), even a movie night in your den using your big-screen TV and DVD player. To be redeemed later.

Whatever your talents are or time you can spare, it can be gifted. If you sew, you can gift that. If you cook, gift that. If you have a vehicle, you can gift chauffeur duty. If you paint or craft, you can gift those too. There’s no reason to spend money you don’t have on things to give away to others who may not need or appreciate them just because it’s the holiday season. If you plan wisely and aren’t shy of new adventures, this could turn out to be the most holiday fun you’ve had in years! Even better, once the real spirit of the season infects you, it’s hard to get rid of even when the economic situation isn’t so tough any more.

So start planning, see how much fun you can turn this into by involving your kids, your spouse, your friends!

The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reports its latest unemployment figures as of January 2009 as 7.6% of the workforce, compared to 7.2% in December of 2008. We all know that jobs are being lost by the hundreds of thousands across the nation. We also know that these statistics account only for those workers who file and are eligible to receive unemployment benefits. Which makes the real unemployment figures at least twice as high, now more than 15%. That’s definitely edging into ‘Depression’ territory, and there will be no let-up any time soon.

Whether or not you qualify for unemployment benefits – which aren’t enough to pay the mortgage for most people – if you are out of work you and your family probably qualify for food stamps, or what is now termed by USDA as the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program [SNAP]. The Social Security Online website also has good information about eligibility for food stamps, and we most certainly hope that readers of this weblog aren’t too proud to make good use of this program if they find themselves in need. You may hope that another good job will soon be offered, but don’t let your family go hungry in the meantime. DO something!

This blog has examined issues of health and nutrition in trying economic times in several post series. 3 Easy Ways to Eat Cheap outlines best strategies for stretching food dollars without sacrificing nutrition. What’s For Dinner? examines fast-rising food prices and ways to get around paying so much. There are some good resources linked in those posts and their follow-ups, but today I discovered a whole new resource that is dedicated specifically to getting the most from minimal food budgets and food stamp allotments.

The website is called Cook for Good and it breaks things down for all to understand. Food stamps in most instances offer a mere $1.50 or so for a single meal per person in a household. It is difficult to figure out how to feed a family on so little as the price of food goes up every single day at the supermarket, and most government subsidies won’t cover fresh foods, farmer’s market purchases, etc. In this website a host of questions and answers can be found on just how to stretch those fake food dollars to not only keep your family fed, but fed well and without the gross extra calories that have turned the “face of poverty” in this country from rail thin to seriously obese in a short 50 years.

Cook for Good even offers a month’s worth of menus to demonstrate exactly how to feed a family for an average of just $1.25 per meal. Including desserts far less fattening than Twinkies! Going with the “green” menu adds just 53¢ to the cost per meal, but includes fresh and organic foods. Between this example of a month’s worth of menus and the shopping hints, recipes and hints on the website, anyone recently out of work (thus with time to spend), on food stamps and concerned about health and nutrition can plan ahead and feel much better about the whole situation.

Who knows? Perhaps if enough people have to go through figuring out how to eat well on much less money, when the economic situation improves we’ll be generally slimmer, healthier and more involved in eating good food than we ever were before. That would be something very good to come of these trying economic times. So go on over to Cook for Good, check out the links here at Shoestring Budget, and if you know of more resources out there please offer them in the comments.

Eat well, be happy!

Links:

U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics
Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program
Food Stamp Facts
Cook for Good
Month of Menus
3 Easy Ways to Eat Cheap
What’s For Dinner?

For those of us out there who still have work and a regular paycheck, and who managed to put some store-bought presents under the tree on Christmas, some shock and awe may be hitting home right about now when the credit card bills are received. Seems the credit card companies have exercised the clauses in the light gray 6pt type nobody ever reads to raise their interest rates and fees through the roof and cutting off available credit altogether no matter how good your credit score may be or how promptly you pay your bill. Some card companies have been creative about shuffling due dates at will, confusing customers and hamstringing small business, and some are refusing to even try to explain to customers what’s going on or what their options may be.

As Kathleen Ryan O’Connor explained in a recent CNN article, Credit cards gone wild: Shocking rate hikes, “Faced with the same economic pressures as other companies affected by the ongoing recession and credit crunch, credit card companies are racing to protect themselves from the costs of more defaults by hiking interest rates and slashing credit limits, even for cardholders with excellent credit histories.” Banking analyst Meredith Whitney predicts that $2 trillion in credit lines will be wiped out over the next year and a half.

As if to add a note of irony to the pain and suffering of consumers and businesses being screwed by their credit card companies, those new card offers are still coming in at the undiminished rate of one a day. One wonders if the marketing department ever even communicates with the front office!

There are ways to cancel your cards and pay out the principle at the old interest rate, but the companies are loathe to actually inform cardholders about this or answer pointed questions. Congress is expected to rein in this current ridiculous situation with emergency legislation early in the ’09 session, and may even re-implace usury laws stricken years ago so that interest rates could rise as high as loan sharks disguised as credit card companies wished. Similar legislation was passed by the House in 2008, but failed to make it through the Senate, so the Fed, the Office of Thrift Supervision and the National Credit Union Administration imposed some new rules in December that companies are scrambling to get around by the current shenanigans.

Bill Shrink offers an overview of the 8 new rules, as well as Credit Card Bill of Rights: Which cards are complying? – a list of which card companies are obeying the new rules. If you’re disgusted with your company for pulling a fast one, Credit Card Guide has templates and instructions for exactly how to cancel your card in a way the company can’t simply ignore (as they too often do).

Once you’ve got your balance frozen at the lower rate and are paying it down, you may want to consider a new card or two that will allow you the convenience without making you feel as if you owed gambling debts to Mafioso thugs in Vegas. Go ahead and check for compliance on the BillShrink site linked above, then go on over to Credit Card Matcher to check out the Cash Rewards Credit Cards offers. Matcher also lists Gas Rewards Credit Cards offers, a good idea for both commuters and any small business that relies upon deliveries as part of its services. Don’t forget to balance the slightly higher initial rates with zero annual fees, thus making your overall expense quite reasonable. Then the rewards can be factored against that cost, and you the consumer can come out way ahead.

Finally, no matter whose cards you hold, open and read those incoming letters even if they look a lot like junk mail. Companies are using these to inform customers of sudden rate hikes, increased fees and limit freezes, and way too many customers are missing that notification. We can all hope the 111th Congress will step up to the plate and put a real lid on this outrageous usury, but none of us should be holding our breath. The recession (or, depression for many of us) is projected to last through 2011 at least, and some estimates don’t see the economy pulling out until 2017. We’ve got to control our spending habits, manage our indebtedness, and work especially hard to keep our small businesses going in a slow situation.

Happy New Year to all, and here’s hoping that 2009 will bring some relief from the ongoing mass looting of the nation’s wealth by the greedy and inept.

Links:

Credit cards gone wild: Shocking rate hikes
Cash Rewards Credit Cards
Gas Rewards Credit Cards
Bill Shrink: 8 New Rules
Credit Card Bill of Rights: Which cards are complying?

Ask any shoe lover, and they will tell you that shoes can make an outfit. You can wear the same outfit during the day, at night, or on the weekend and give the outfit a very different look and feel just by changing the shoes you wear with it. In fact, most shoe lovers would probably agree the only drawback with shoes comes from not having enough of them or enough money to buy them. The good news is, whatever your shoe budget, there is a way to find great bargains to satisfy your shoe cravings.

For those of you who love shoes but are on a tight shoe budget, clearance sales are the way to go. Every year stores prepare for the upcoming season by ridding the store of the previous season’s stock. Summer shoes and sandals are marked down over 50% by mid July to make room for fall and winter fashions. Department store stocks and popular stores like Nine West offer their coveted early summer stock at minimal prices. So what if you only have a month and a half left to wear them. That means you still have a month and a half to show off your new acquisition.

The clearance sales are the money conscious shoe lover’s best friend. You don’t have to miss out on the shoes you have been eying since the beginning of the season. You are just a savvy shopper that recognizes that buying on clearance allows you to buy your dream strappy sandals without breaking your budget. And besides, how will anyone know that you didn’t pay full price for those gorgeous coral wedge heels that match perfectly that new outfit you bought on vacation? So take advantage of the clearance sales and enjoy showing off your summer shoes for the next month!

As we move into 2008′s extended holiday period, more than a few families are wondering if there will be a Christmas this year. Sure, some retailers are going all out to stay open long enough to see if anybody’s buying this year, but with consumer credit at a virtual standstill, international trade languishing on the docks and jobs being lost by the thousands every week, it’s a no-brainer that this Christmas isn’t going to be ‘the usual’ consumer spending orgy of Christmases past.

Presuming that your family still has a home, can heat it, and enough income to put food on the table, there are ways to have a festive, meaningful Christmas without going further into debt and without ending up with cheap Chinese junk that nobody really wants or needs.

The best thing you can do for your family is Make Your Own, and involve the kids! We save old Christmas cards in a box in the closet, pull them out around Thanksgiving and use them, plus various saved papers, made papers, trims, sequins, glitter, buttons, studs, etc. to make brand new Christmas cards for the people in our lives. Scissors and glue, a paper cutter, maybe some cutsey hole punches and lots of odds and ends, these cards inevitably get saved by every Mom, Grandma or other friend/relative who gets them! And kids are especially creative in this area. Sure you’ll have to clean up the mess, but a great time was had by all.

There are schedulers, list-keepers, budding writers and artists in just about every family. So another great gift are notebooks, journals, sketchbooks and schedulers you can make or buy. My friends over at Casual Keystrokes have compiled a worthy list of the best of the best journals, notebooks, sketchbooks and schedulers available online, some of them offer great deals and discounts.

If you really want to put some ‘self’ into it, the ideas and designs of some of those items Keystrokes suggests can be used as models for do it yourself gift projects. My grandson learned how to make leather bound notebooks in school, has really turned it into an art form. He collects old used leather jackets from Goodwill and other thrift shops, and recycles that leather for bindings. The neatest looking ones are patchwork of different kinds of leather, bound together with leather glue (can be purchased at a craft supply store).

Paper can be bought or made, but making can be fun. Did you know that you can make fine paper from collected dryer lint? Frugal Living offers the recipe and details on how to do this. Fine handmade paper bound in a fine handmade leather bound book can be the most delightful gift under the tree for anyone who loves to write, doodle, or keep meticulous notes.

You might be surprised at how useful that dryer lint can be to the dedicated crafter. PlanetPal offers recipes and instructions for how to make lint paper mache and lint clay as well as lint paper. And if there are very young ones on your Christmas list, there are some great patterns and instructions for how to make stuffed animals and dolls, and that dryer lint makes great stuffing too!

There is also the tradition of “Hobbit Presents” that some families find so fun. This is the practice of re-giving a previous year’s gift to someone else. When it’s unwrapped, the family can remember where it came from, who has enjoyed it, and who gave it to whom. These sort of gifts need to be more substantial than cheap plastic stuff from China, but quality items handmade with skill and care make great Hobbit Presents. Pride in craftsmanship is something children miss out on too much these days. Teaching them, encouraging them and helping them learn to value such things from themselves and others won’t hurt them a bit.

So it’s November. Get busy!!!

Links:

‘Tis the Season: Gift Ideas
Casual Keystrokes
Making Paper from Dryer Lint
Lint Craft Recipes
Stuffed Toy Patterns

Part 1: The List of Ingredients

Now that it’s late May, it’s time to stock up for the summer – and our many summer visitors – on things like bug repellant (we really do live in the Deep Woods), anti-itch solution, insect sting remedies, poison ivy treatments, cut and scrape treatments, etc. The basic summertime First Aid Kit, all ingredients of which will be used as regularly as the usual household cleaners, deodorizers, detergents, polishes and disinfectants get used all year round.

Might as well get items that do double or triple duty as household cleansers and disinfectants as well as personal skin and hair care products too. I’ll use this post to make the basic list of things to buy, and later posts will give specific recipes and hints on how to use them to best advantage. And the best thing about these products? They’re Green and Eco-Friendly to boot!

Baking Soda: It all starts with good old baking soda. You can purchase generic or the primary name brand we recognize (Arm and Hammer). It’s cheap either way, and the same product though generic will tend to clump and solidify quicker and easier. Compared against the multitude of specialty chemicalized products you could be buying to do many of the same tasks, you could save hundreds of dollars a year with a cleaner, fresher house and a healthier family to show for it!

Baking soda is a good deodorizer for carpets and upholstery (even effective against pet and human urine odors), disinfectant, anti-fungal, a surface-safe scouring powder, cockroach insecticide, drain unclogger, silver and copper polish, laundry aid and pH equalizer for things like pool water. It is used medicinally as an anti-itch wash, insect sting treatment, toothpaste, mouthwash, gargle for sore throats poison ivy neutralizer, soothing treatment for athlete’s foot, an antacid, deodorant and anti-acne scrub. Given that it doesn’t cost much – particularly in 4-5 pound boxes – it can save you a bundle on all these sort of products that cost several dollars apiece.

Borax: Our list of necessary household basics continues with another sodium product, borax. Baking soda is sodium bicarbonate, while borax is sodium borate decahydrate. It’s a laundry booster (improves detergent action, natural colorsafe bleach), a water softener, multipurpose cleaner, fungicide, preservative, insecticide, herbicide, disinfectant and dessicant.

Plain Salt: The final sodium product on the list of must-haves is salt. You should always keep a one-pound box of plain (Kosher, iodine-free) salt on hand for non-table uses. This can be fine grain or coarse, basic sodium chloride purified from a mine rather than more expensive sea salt (which comes with quite a few extra minerals and chemicals than even iodized table salt). Salt has many general household and medicinal uses, such as water (and skin) softener in bath water, soothing soak for sore muscles and arthritic joints, anti-microbial mouthwash for gum disease, sore throat gargle, nasal decongestant spray (with soda in water) and eyewash.

Vinegar: Next on the list is your basic gallon jug of white vinegar. Vinegar is also a good disinfectant, a strong degreaser, streak-free glass cleaner, no-wax floor cleaner, stain remover from carpets and upholstery, wood furniture polish and ring remover (with olive oil), garbage disposal and drain deodorizer, brass polish, ant deterrent, stainless steel cleaner, bathroom water and soap deposit scrub, faucet and shower head unclogger and in the yard, an effective weed and grass killer (spray directly).

Olive Oil, Light Safflower Oil: These are of course useful for maintaining leather and wood furniture, and in certain recipes can be substituted for liquid soaps (they also provide fats for homemade soaps). But you’ll want these primarily for skin and hair care products and bath oils and such. Buy basic 12-ounce bottles for these purposes and keep them separate from the oils you use normally for cooking and baking.

Lemon Juice, Rubbing Alcohol, Liquid Soap: Lemon juice and rubbing alcohol are household and medicinal necessities to keep on hand for a number of uses, along with liquid soap. If you save the dregs of your soap bars (those annoying left-overs that end up melted all over your sink or tub holder) in a pump jar with a little water (shake occasionally), you’ll be surprised at how much normally gets thrown away. Or, if you’re really enterprising, you can make your own soaps!

All told, I could go to the store today and bring home ample supplies of all these items for about $20, knowing they’ll last through the crowded summer and some will last through the rest of the year. If you were to do an inventory of all the specialized products you buy – furniture polish, drain opener, toilet bowl cleaner, bathtub and sink scrubs, spray-on spot removers, laundry additives, bath, skin care and beauty products, insect repellants, first aid sprays and creams and gargles and washes, etc., etc., etc., you’d find yourself spending hundreds over the next six months. Sometimes the best products are the old-fashioned (still cheap) ones!

Below are links to some basic uses on the web that readers may find useful. I’ll provide more specific recipes in my next post for household cleaning and disinfecting. Then I’ll list specifics on the first aid and medicinal recipes and uses. Later in this series we’ll look at personal care basics and how you can save a whole lot of money not buying fancy facial masks, skin treatments, moisturizers, wrinkle creams, bath treatments and skin soothers. So please stay tuned to put all this together!

Links:

Vinegar Institute: Uses & Tips
64 Uses for Vinegar
Uncommon Household Uses for Salt
Top 6 Uses for Borax
20 Mule Team Borax: Many Household Uses [pdf document]
FAQs: Arm & Hammer

Posts to This Series:

Part 1: List of Ingredients
Part 2: Recipes
Part 3: Bugs & First Aid

If you enjoy Selena’s video, don’t forget to check out her blog! There’s plenty more knowledge where that came from…

Previous Posts About Thrifting:

Thrifting: It’s An Art Form!
Credit Crunch: How to Survive the Recession
Living on Less: The Alternative Economies
The Payoff: Thrifting and Re-Selling
Free Yourself from Debtor’s Prison
Tips for Avoiding Pressure to Shop
Craig’s List: Great Resource or Scary Place?

My last post offered some Tips for Avoiding Pressure to Shop, mostly in the context of getting out of the usual “girls’ day out” type of expensive, mall-hopping, credit card fueled frenzy that way too many people in the modern world view as entertainment. At least, until the bills come due. Sad statistics demonstrate that if medical costs from an accident or illness in the family don’t lead to bankruptcy, credit card debt will. These are the two biggest contributors to middle class bankruptcies in the U.S. at this time, and as the mortgage crisis becomes ever worse, it’s not going to get any better.

In this post I’m going to offer some ways of thinking that can become habitual without too much trouble, that will help keep you out of debt by not going into debt in the first place. Not everyone can put these to good use, but those who can will find that their shoestring budgets go a lot farther in covering necessities.

• First and foremost, get rid of the credit cards. Even if you just pay the minimum every month, all that covers is interest and fees. Nothing you bought with the cards gets paid for, and your debt never goes down. I know this can be difficult when you receive a dozen “Great Credit Card Offers!” every week in the mail, but you can ignore them if you try. There are no “great credit card offers,” there are just financiers trying to profit from your spending habits. If you can start thinking of them in those terms it’s a lot easier to resist.

And don’t be fooled into believing you HAVE to have a credit card in order to purchase anything on-line. Your debit card from the bank usually comes with a particular card option stamped somewhere that allows you to indicate what kind of card you’re using, even though the transaction works just like regular bank account debit. If you don’t have enough money in your account to buy that nice watch you saw advertised on the Shopping Channel, you shouldn’t be buying it. It’s not that hard to find out what time it is, and most grocery stores sell $5 watches right there in the checkout line anyway. They work fine.

• Another way to save money – while at the same time doing wonders for your family’s nutritional health – is to learn how to cook from scratch. I have a sister who hasn’t had a working stove/oven for the last 15 years, and never bothered to get one because she doesn’t cook and neither does her husband. The family, which includes three children, lives on fast food. Wendy’s gristleburgers, MacDonald’s big macs and Happy Meals, most any highly fattening, nutritionally deficient fast food or processed junk they can buy. Not only is this outrageously expensive, it leads directly to health problems, obesity and chronic depression. For which my sister takes drugs she doesn’t really need. My best advice on this is to sit down and watch – really watch, paying attention – the movie “Supersize Me.” It’ll scare the heck out of you, and maybe scare the junk food out of you too!

It’s just not that hard to heat up some frozen vegetables or open a can of beans, cook up a roast or even try your hand at some cool vegetarian alternatives. Get a few cookbooks at a used book store, read through them, see if there aren’t some recipes that make your mouth water. I’m betting there are, and your family will thank you for it.

• You can also purchase food and home products like toilet paper, toothpaste, etc. in bulk when on sale. Prices are not coming down at the grocery and drug stores any time in the future, as increasing energy costs translate directly into higher prices for everything. If your local store is having a week-long 2-for-1 sale on canned and boxed goods and TP, paper towels, garbage bags, etc., take advantage of it! You’re going to use these items in the course of your daily life regardless. Might as well double up at half the price.

• Another idea if you’ve got the time and energy is to make your own household products and beauty items. These projects can be great fun for families to work on together during at-home weekends, and many who do this find that their products earn serious fans among the extended family visitors and friends who end up using them at your house. Or get them as gifts, since they make such good gifts. There’s some good information and recipes out there, such as Making Your Own Natural Designer Soaps. The web is a very useful tool, with sites devoted exclusively to recipes, projects, crafts and basics that you can make at home for not much money. Do some surfing!

• If you have school age children, get them a nice lunchbox and make their lunches. Not only will their lunch be more nutritious and useful than the junk that passes for food at most school cafeterias, you’ll save a significant amount of money. Buy dried fruit (roll-ups, raisins, mixed fruits, etc.) in bulk, have single-serving zip-locks handy to divvy it up into a week’s worth of lunch. If you make your own real good bread (with a machine or the old fashioned way), it can give peanut butter and jelly a whole new meaning!

I make sourdough bread, which my family thinks is the best bread anywhere. It’s quick because sourdough doesn’t have to be kneaded to death and doesn’t require hours’ worth of rising time. I usually use half unbleached all-purpose and half whole wheat, sometimes adding rye, barley or soy flour plus sunflower seeds, flax seeds, even chopped walnuts to make a slice a meal. A chunk of good cheese and a thermos (or purchase a carton) of milk and a baggie full of celery and carrot sticks makes a highly nutritious lunch that will stick with your child through the rest of the day and maybe even help them do better in school because they’re not falling asleep from sugar-crash during their afternoon classes.

• Home gardening saves a lot on truck vegetables now getting so expensive at the store than many can’t afford them at all any more. Things like bell peppers and tomatoes can be easily grown in containers on a sunny porch. Use a lot of compost in the soil mix (these are heavy feeders) and water them with compost tea regularly. My grandchildren eat raw peppers and tomatoes just like apples, and can never seem to get enough. I do sometimes include apples in their lunches, but if there’s a home grown, super-sweet handful of cherry tomatoes or a fist-sized home grown purple bell pepper they’re thrilled – and the envy of all their friends at school!

There will be more money-saving ideas forthcoming in future posts, and if any of my readers have good ideas please send ‘em in! Putting our heads together can help all of us better weather the coming recession, maybe even help us learn to live on less while enjoying our lives much more. Happy thrifting!

I don’t know about you, but I’ve never been much of a good consumer as that designation has come to signify in and out of recessions in this capitalist-based economy. I don’t “shop ’til I drop,” I don’t buy much of anything new, and whenever friends or sisters try to talk me into tagging along for a bout of binge buying at the mall I come up with every excuse in the book to beg out of it.

And now that I live on a mountain rather far from town (and any sort of mall), I’ve managed to keep from making friends who believe that frivolous spending of vast amounts of money is a competitive sport. I like that about the people here in the southern Appalachians – they’re not nearly so concerned conspicuous consumption as they are concerned about the quality of their natural habitats. Perhaps that’s true of rural areas all over the country, where people are simply not accustomed to spending money as an ingrained habit or mere way to pass the time of one’s life. When we lived in a city of a million-plus people in Florida, there seemed to be at least one strip mall for every household, and they were all making a living!

My little sisters were both given credit cards when my parents divorced, and never seemed to figure out that the money wasn’t free. When cleaning out one sister’s after she died last spring, I couldn’t count the number of shopping bags and boxes full of ‘stuff’ (basic junk) she’d bought at some point over the last decade and never even bothered to unpack once she got home. I’m convinced it’s a sickness, a symptom of how empty lives can be in our overcrowded, materialistically-minded cities. I couldn’t back out of going appliance shopping with my big sister a couple of years ago after her new lake house retirement home was built. I managed not to drop a dime, while she ended up spending nearly $16,000 in just 3 hours’ time – it was the most money I’d ever seen anybody spend in one outing that wasn’t a formal mortgage-signing! I could have lived pretty well for a year on that much.

Thus the first line of defense against peer pressure to go shopping for junk and stuff you don’t really want or need is to not live in an environment that supports the idea that this is a good thing. The second line of defense is to avoid hanging out with people who are shopaholics. And the third line of defense when you can’t avoid the pressure (because you’re related to the shopaholic) is to develop a convenient headache or offer to watch the kids while she does the shopping for herself.

I know the friend ‘filter’ sounds sort of callous, but once you’re into thrifting you’ll find other friends who are as into it as you are. Those shopping trips can be much more fun and exciting than any day at the mall, and more rewarding too. Thrifters tend to be crafty and creative, or they wouldn’t have developed an eye for bargains they can turn into income or wonderful gifts. Generally cooler people, for my own experience.

Lana Goodrich over at Wise Bread blog has a post outlining 5 Ways To Dodge Peer Pressure To Spend. It’s definitely worth a read, but I’ll go ahead and disagree here with her tip #3, which is Blame it on your values. I disagree because I don’t find it difficult in the least to just say “I can’t go because I don’t have the money.” She suggests a fib I don’t believe is necessary in most instances – though it might work well with in-laws or other family members whom you don’t wish to share your financial status with.

It’s not all that difficult to avoid spending money frivolously, especially if you’ve made a commitment in your own mind to living a certain way for all the right reasons. Recycling of anything – be it leftovers, cars, houses or knick-knacks – is an environmentally responsible commitment. Making money doing something you really like, for yourself, is very satisfying. Not spending money on things you don’t need is a moral commitment to avoid the notorious pitfalls of materialism and the dangers of a wasteful life. Thrifting for food – by gardening, joining a home gardening cooperative or buying crop shares in a farm, buying commodities in bulk at the regional farmer’s market, maybe even working trades with farmers in your area is a commitment to a healthier diet, non-support of factory farming cruelty, and a way of living much closer to nature and appreciating what it really takes to sustain a human being in this world.

I believe these are all good moral commitments to make, and more Americans should try it. It’s not as hard as quitting smoking, after all! Living in awareness of our footprints on the earth is good for us. If enough people were to choose to live that way the world situation wouldn’t be as desperate as it usually is. Our lives will be better for it, so there’s nothing to be ashamed of. There’s more to life than shopping!