Maybe we've had no choice. Raising
children is so expensive, with the high
cost of clothes, child care,
after-school activities, and maybe
braces. The price of gasoline makes us
crazy every time we have to fill 'er up,
and our utility bills are high enough to
start a revolution. And taxes? We all
agree they're way too high!
So how can we find an extra
$2,000-$3,000 a year to invest? Well, we
only need to save $5.48 each day. In
this chapter you will not only learn how
to automatically save $5.48, but much,
much more. But not this way:
My ex-wife, bless her heart, came
home with a pretty new dress. She
assured me that it was too good of a
bargain to pass up, "It was free”! It
was obviously an expensive dress, so I
asked her to tell me why it didn't cost
her anything. "Well", she explained, "it
was on sale for half-off the regular
$200 price. So I bought it with the $100
I saved. And since the sales tax was
less, I really came out ahead."
I guess it takes a person with a
special kind of logic to see the world
this way. (But then maybe she was hoping
it would make sense to dumb ol' me)
My earliest experience with frugality
was watching my mother saving aluminum
foil and using it a second time for
roasting or baking. She also saved the
rubber bands from the newspaper that was
delivered every afternoon. She would
carefully compare the supermarket ads
for bargains, and of course, clip the
coupons.
My mother canned fruits and
vegetables that she grew, darned our
socks, made our Halloween costumes, and
re-used Christmas wrap and ribbons. She
hung the laundry out to dry instead of
insisting on an electric dryer. We
exchanged some clothing with cousins and
baby furniture too. Our hair was always
cut at home.
Of course every aluminum can and soda
pop bottle was saved like it was made
out of gold. My mother always seemed to
know which kind of things went on sale
in which months. But nobody would say
she was cheap or a spendthrift or a
tightwad. This was all a pretty normal
way of saving money.
Then there was an uncle, who bragged
how he had a way of reusing vacuum
cleaner bags. He would even put his
electric bill and payment in the same
envelope with his neighbor's, to save a
few cents on postage. He must have had a
mile of string stuffed in a drawer,
along with dozens of 1 inch pencil
remains. He re-used his calendars, since
every 7 years (except leap years)
January begins on the same day of the
week. He drove a 25 year old car.
He only wore one color of socks,
black, so when the wicked washer/dryer
duo would eat one, he was never left
with a sock without a mate. His shower
curtain had been repaired so many times
with duct tape that you had to laugh at
it.
My uncle never went out to a movie
because it was a "waste of money". After
all, in a few years all the "good ones"
would be shown on TV anyway, and there
was The Lawrence Welk Show every week
for real entertainment. I never did
figure out why he was saving all those
egg cartons. He was quite proud of being
a tightwad, quoting "a penny saved is
a penny earned."
I promised to show you how to easily
save at least $5.48 a day ($2,000 a
year). I also promise on the following
pages not to suggest any of the dozens
of silly things people do to save
pennies, they just aren't worth the
effort.
We already know all about coupons and
generic foods and buying in bulk and
eating leftovers and carpooling and that
it's cheaper to rent videos than go to
the movies. So I'm not going suggest the
obvious.
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