Frugal Fixes Around the House - Duct Tape, Foam and a Rubberband

Posted by Debt Destroyer on May 22, 2009

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Back in September I wrote about how it took me two days to fix a screendoor.

Guess what? It’s broken again.

I bring this up to show that I’m no handy man. With all the Bob the Builder that my kids watch you’d think that something would rub off on me. But nothing does. In fact when the kids break something they always run to “Mommy” to get it fixed. But I don’t blame them.

I married a female Red Green.

Ok, that might be a bit of an overstatement. But sometimes I wonder. Take our refrigerator for example.

Our bottom rack broke on the inside of the door. I messed around for days trying to superglue the original rack back in. It would be fine for a bit, then fall apart and the jug of apple juice was always falling on our feet.

I repeated this a few times until one day I came home from lunch to find out my wife fixed it.

She fixed it with Duct Tape!

That same strip of tape has been protecting our toes for over a year.

Actually the most impressive aspect of the tape job, was that Mrs DD was actively lobbying for a new fridge even before the rack broke. It is on our Wish List after all. So I was glad that she was able to put aside her desire for a new one and realize that as long as it keeps things cold, we’ll be keeping our old fridge.

Speaking of things we’ll be keeping…

Remember when Christmas came early for us and we received a hand-me-down couch? Well after we got used to it, our “new” 20-year old couch started to feel like…a 20-year old couch. So My wife took it upon herself to fix it.

Can she fix it? Yes she can!

A couple of weeks ago she went to the local hardware store and got a couple of pieces of foam cut to fit under the couch cushions. The foam was spendy ($70+), but it made huge difference. We are once again very pleased with our “new” couch and are confident that it will last until we get a leather one…someday.

While I’m busy exhorting my wife’s handiness, I do have one success story that I should share.

We were having a plumbing problem in our upstairs bathroom. Our tub spout is rather old and corroded, so water would somehow flow backwards along the bottom of the spout, get in the wall, and leak on the floor. This made giving the kids a bath more messy than it normally would be.

It took me a while to figure out exactly what was causing the water to get on the floor. But when I did, I used a rubber band to redirect the leak. Now instead of getting all the way to the wall, the water leaks down into the tub when it hits the rubber band.

I also could just put some caulk around the tub surround, but that seemed too conventional of a fix. Plus I don’t have much luck with those type of projects.

The screen door is testament to that.

So what have been some of your proudest moments fixing things yourself? Or better yet, how about some stories of home projects going awry. I don’t know about you, but I can relate to those kind of stories much better.

Until next time,

-DD

» Filed Under Frugality, Money Savers

Saving Money with Old School Technology - Answering Machines

Posted by Debt Destroyer on May 13, 2009

As I’m quick to remind you long time readers, I took your advice and switched phone/internet carriers a few months ago. One of my complaints was that we no longer could get a separate voicemail box anymore for my wife’s business. But we decided we could make do with paying $5/month for just one vm box.

But then we went shopping.

One reason our “Household Misc” category was so out of whack in March was because we spent $70 on a set of two new phones. The handsets matched our old phones so that was nice. But the best part was that they came with an answering machine. The answering machine allowed us to cancel our voicemail and save $5/month.

So as long as we use the answering machine for 14 months the phones will pay for themselves.

Ok, I lied. The best part about our new phones wasn’t the money saving feature of the answering machine. The best part was that they were used.

I know what you’re saying, “DD, why is that the best part?”

Well you see, there was a message already on the answering machine. It was a rather entertaining one too.

A woman was on the phone with her mother telling her that she couldn’t figure out her new phones and was going to take them back (obviously she had a little trouble since she was recording the conversation). She then spent a little while trying to decide whether or not to take a shower. The phone call ended with her yelling at her kid to “get out of the fridge” because he just ate breakfast and should be plenty full.

In addition to leaving us that nugget, they also named the handsets:

Youbetcha #1
Youbetcha #2

It’s kind of like those Mastercard commercials.

Slightly-used Home Electronics…$70. Knowing that you’re having a better day than the lady on the phone…priceless.

Until next time,

-DD

» Filed Under Money Savers

Top 8 Free Music Websites

Posted by The Happy Rock on April 22, 2009

music-free-internet-sites The world of free online music has changed quite a bit from the early days of bulletin boards and Napster. Now, there are so many unique and useful free music services and web sites out there that it can spin your head. Most of them are legal or at least not illegal at this point as the RIAA is usually slow to embrace new movements on the internet.

I did my best to sort through the tidal wave of music services to provide a unique blend of the best free music services. Pretty much all of these options play almost any song that the common music listener can think of.

Pandora - My personal favorite. You create a station by requesting a particular artist and Pandora attempts to play music on that ’station’ that is similar using a huge database of properties. You can thumbs up and thumbs down songs and bands to tailor the station to play exactly the type of music you want. I have stations for Folk, Christian Rock, Hardcore, Female Rock, Blues, Modern Classical, and many others. All my stations are trained and I usually can just hit play and listen. I rarely have to thumbs down a song anymore. The coolest part is discovering new bands that you had no idea existed. The one drawback is that to keep it legal you can’t rewind or replay a song; you have to wait until the station plays it again.
Blip.fm - This one has been referred to as the ‘Twitter for Music’. You create an account and become a social DJ. You search for the song you want and you can play it and/or Blip it. Blip it means adding a short twitter like message and recommending it to your ‘listeners’. Others can subscribe to your ‘feed’ and play the songs that you recommend. Check out Trent Reznor’s Blip page for a good example.
Grooveshark - Peer to peer music service. Grooveshark connects you with music hosted by other people who have already purchased the rights to the music. You can either buy the song from them or listen to the song for free. Just search for the song you want and hit play. It is as easy and perfect as it sounds. You don’t even need an account to play songs.
Sky.fm - Free streaming radio stations. They have a large range of music categories and huge collection of electronic dance stations. Sky.fm was my reintroduction to free online music, but I have since moved on to Pandora.
imeem - Search and play site similar to Grooveshark, but they do also have videos available to watch. They have a larger selection of music too. You will need to sign up for an account to play songs though.
TheSixtyOne - Unique Digg like service that allows the user to vote up the best music. After a quick listen I realized that most of the music on this site is non mainstream and unique. Great for someone who wants to find great music that is off the beaten path.
Last.fm - Offers a service that is similar to Pandora, Grooveshark, and Blip all in one place. The only problem for me is that I never really got the site interface. I am happy with the offerings at other sites so I never really got into Last.fm
Jamendo - Free listening and downloads. Jamendo allows budding new artists to share their music with new listeners. I figured I better throw in a service that lets you download free music to round off the list. Most of the sites that offer ‘free’ downloads get closed down pretty quickly. Bearshare is still ‘legal’, but that requires you to download software to get access to the music so it doesn’t quite fit on the list.

Hope you enjoy trying out some of these great services. My favorites are Pandora and Grooveshark.

Feel free to share any other sites or experiences that you think are worthy of a mention in the comments section.

» Filed Under Money Savers

Spring Break! 10 Movies For Ten Bucks

Posted by Debt Destroyer on March 24, 2009

SPRING BREAK!!!

Here in South Dakota the State Universities go on Spring Break in March. It usually doesn’t feel like spring quite yet, in fact we had a winter storm in the middle of it (should’ve used the Pearl Jam money on a snowblower). But it was nice to have some free time.

I had grand plans before the break as to what I’d accomplish. Organize the basement, work on my taxes, and finish up a couple of video projects that I’ve been putting off. But really the only thing I got done was taking ten movies off of my queue.

Back when we cancelled Netflix, I mentioned that one of the things I’d miss most was my queue. I was right. Even though we didn’t watch very many films via Netflix, I assembled quite a list. I don’t know when I thought we’d watch them, but I added them none-the-less.

So imagine my delight when my wife decided to join me in watching a movie every night of Spring Break.

One of the local video stores has a 5 movies for 5 days for $5 deal, and we’ve been anxiously eyeballing the calendar for a couple of weeks in anticipation for the occasion. During classes I would overhear my fellow classmates talk about what adventure they’d be soon undertaking, and I’d get all giddy thinking about what movies I’d get.

The only catch with the deal is that new releases are off limits. But who cares, we’ve only been watching a handful of movies for the past couple of years, so they were all new to us.

I know you’re all dying to know what we ended up with, well here’s the list.

DD’s Spring Break 2009 :

Fast Food Nation
The Prestige **wife’s favorite**
Zodiac
Lars & the Real Girl
Sicko
Stranger than Fiction
American Gangster
Children of Men ** my favorite **
Atonement **both of our least favorite **
A Death at a Funeral

How it worked was we’d stick to our normal routine until we put the kids to bed. But then instead of going our separate ways to surf the net, pick up the house, walk the dog, or chat on the phone, we met on the couch for SHOWTIME. The only problem this house of “fuddy duddies” had was that we were constantly dragging in the morning. I think the kids were late to daycare every day.

But it was a blast!

It was fun to have some measured irresponsiblity in our lives. The best part was that it only cost $10.60(including taxes). When compared to the $100 I spent on our last 10 films from Netflix, not only did we have a lot of fun(well a couple of films were downers) but it turned out to be a good deal too.

SPRING BREAK!!!

Until next time,

-DD

» Filed Under Money Savers, Procrastination

Libraries Rock! Free Books, Movies, and Entertainement For All

Posted by Debt Destroyer on March 18, 2009

Have you been to a library lately?

For those of you who were scared off by the Dewey Decimal System, it’s time for a visit. You might not recognize the place.

The card catalog is long gone, it’s been replaced with banks of computers. The scary looking reference section has been transformed into the video section. The hard wooden tables and chairs have been replaced with soft comfy furniture.

It’s a whole new world.

I have to admit I missed the transformation. It wasn’t until I had kids that I decided to see what the library had to offer me. And boy am I ever glad I did.

It started one Saturday when my wife was shooting a wedding. She had the van, and I was cooped up with two little kids. It was a nice enough day out so we decided to pile into the stroller and go for a walk. Luckily for us our local library is only 2 blocks away (living “downtown” has some advantages).

We headed straight downstairs to the children’s section and I don’t think we’ve ever left.

My kids went right to the puzzles and toys, but I headed right to the movie section. Movies are big in our house (no cable) and I think we were all starting to go insane from watching the same ones over, and over, and over…Now I’d be able to check out 5 videos for 2 weeks. Hallelujah!

We also get 10 books. Which now made reading stories before bed a little less monotonous as well.

Going to the library quickly became our favorite part of Saturday (after cartoons of course). But then it got even better when we found out about…

Story Time!

Every Tuesday night the library hosts story time. This is where they read a couple of stories, then make something in craft time, and watch a short video. Each week has it’s own theme. So now we routinely go to the library twice a week. I don’t know how’d we function without it.

But the library is not all about kids.

At ours they have various book clubs and writing groups that meet monthly. I’ve always been tempted to join these but my plate is pretty full now (going back to school and all), but someday…

A couple of summers ago when my tennis game needed a boost, I made a trip to the library and before I knew it I was reading about doubles strategies and having Arthur Ashe and Stan Smith give me private lessons in my living room.

I’ve gone on long enough now professing my love for libraries. How about you share some of your favorite things about them.

Until next time,

-DD

» Filed Under Children and Money, Giving, Money Savers

Help Wanted - Cobblers Needed During A Recession

Posted by Debt Destroyer on March 12, 2009

Last November I made a post about how I decided to save some money by not replacing my shoes.

Well as my luck would have it, I instantly broke the thingie-ma-bobber which holds the shoe laces in. So over the holiday break I took my shoe in to the shop in town that fixes shoes. They said they’d call me when they were done. A month went by and I’ve heard nothing.

So I stopped in today just to check-up up on how things were going (I really needed my shoes).

They were done! The clerk apologized for not calling, but she said that they only have one guy who fixes shoes and he’s a college student and he is really busy. She pointed to a sign(as if I didn’t believe her).

Due to high demand, shoe repairs will take a minimum of two weeks.

I paid my $5 and left. But I was struck by two things:

That there is a high demand for shoe repair.
That my local cobbler is a college student.

But I shouldn’t be too surprised because at about the same time I was bragging that I decided to not replace my shoes, US News & World Report was telling us all about how Cobbler was becoming a hot job in a recession.

So if the teaching thing doesn’t work out for me, maybe I’ll look into being an apprentice cobbler.

Until next time,

-DD

» Filed Under Careers, Money Savers

Removing Finance Charges From My Chase Freedom Credit Card

Posted by The Happy Rock on February 16, 2009

After two months of procrastination, I finally called Chase to ask that they fully remove any finance charges related to my first time late payment offense. Did I ever mention that I hate making phone calls even if it is just calling a service rep that I don’t know to get late fees and finance charges removed? The introvert in me often hopes that avoiding the calls will make them go away…that rarely works.

The thing about this charge was that it left me seething. Every time I thought about it, I got upset. Upset because:

One 8 hour late payment resulted in about $100 in late fees and finance charges, $39 late fees and $51 dollars of finance charges that were spread out over two months of statements.
The bill was due on a Sunday and the payment was ready to be picked up on Sunday, but they don’t process payments on Sunday.
As someone who has paid their bill on time for the good part of ten years, I don’t like being treated as a delinquent.
My attempts at removing the fees(5 emails) had failed thus far and I suspected that if I talked to the right person they would remove the fees.

The only thing that kept me using the card is $500 in cash back in just one year of using the card.

After some prayer I was finally motivated to the point of action. I armed my self with all the relevant information which included the statements for the credit cards and for my bank payment. holding strong to the fact that they thought of me as a valuable customer. They had just raised my limit to $5,000 in a slow economy. I didn’t even plan to try and use ‘I own a personal finance site that talks about your company’ line.

When I called I got a reasonable customer service rep who listened intently as I laid out my case as strongly and politely as I could. She started to give me an annoyed scripted response about how the due date can fall on any day, but I politely persisted and said that she had to get a manager to remove the fees. A friendly manager came on and I politely told the story again and added stronger language about how I have one credit card and switched to Chase because of their service, but now every time I use the card I want to cancel. I continually stressed how I was a good loyal customer and how if this was resolved I would be a loyal customer again.

She relented and offered to remove half of the fees($26). I was placated. Not completely happy, but placated nonetheless. If I wasn’t averaging $40 a month in cash rewards from the card, I would be much more upset. Plus at $26 replaced in ten minutes, it feels like earning $156 an hour.

» Filed Under Credit Cards, Money Savers, Productivity(Financial)

Runaway Electric Bill - Looking For Electricity Savings Tips

Posted by Debt Destroyer on February 10, 2009

I thought I was prepared for winter.

I took some steps to winterize my house, we’ve added insulated curtains, and have been wearing our smart wool socks we got for Christmas. But now I hear that according to Punxsutawney Phil, we’ll have 6 more weeks of winter.

Thank goodness!

I can’t wait for Spring to get here. I’ve already mentioned how my back is tired from all the shoveling, now my wallet is ailing from the high electric bills.

I don’t know what the first thing you would do if you got a $485 electric bill, but the first thing I did was turn down the furnace. It was set at 68 degrees, so I lowered it to 67 (Kept it at 63 overnights). The next thing I did was turn off all the lights.

My precious daughter is on kick about turning on lights. I think she likes this so much because she is finally tall enough to flip the switch herself. But her new found hobby leaves us with a bunch of lights on. It’s cute, but not that cute.

So for the past month I’ve been pretty adamant about “when not in use turn off the juice.” Lights have been off, heat slightly lower. I was actually looking forward to getting our next bill to see how much all our hard work has paid off.

$468…Ugh.

While January was just as cold as December, I still hoped there would be a bigger drop off in our bill. I guess I could lower the thermoset some more, but it’s already pretty chilly and it didn’t really do all that much last month(but I probably will go down to 66).

In addition to being able to see our breath in our house and reading by candle light, I think it may be time to make an action plan for reducing electric costs. Luckily I didn’t have to go very far to find some great resources.

In fact I didn’t have to leave The Happy Rock:

Spartan Saving - I found this site listed under “Top Commentators.” This site has lots of great tips for saving money around the house.
Vampire Power - Frugal Dad (listed under “Personal Finance”) wrote about how our household electric devises are sucking energy even when they are turned off.
Switch our light bulbs - The Simple Dollar (also listed under ”Personal Finance”) broke down the cost benefits of using different types of bulbs (A side note, a local lighting store talked me out of buying 5 CFLs last year telling me that I’d be crazy to spend $45 on CFLs when I could get old fashion lights for $2).

I think these are all great ideas/tips that I will adding to the mix to help lower my monthly electric bills. I’ll probably also sign up for the “budget plan” so I can spread the pain of the winter bills to the other months.

That way there won’t be any huge surprises next winter.

Now it’s time for me to turn to you. Did I miss anything? What are some of your favorite energy saving tricks? As always, thanks for sharing.

Until next time,

-DD

» Filed Under Energy, Frugality, Money Savers

Sacrifice and Save Money with Store Brands

Posted by Debt Destroyer on January 22, 2009

I used to think “generic” was a derogatory term. It probably stems from a childhood visit from my snobbish cousin who called everything I had or liked “generic” and everything he had or liked “special.”

Kids can be cruel.

But that was a long time ago. I’d like to think I moved on as soon as I hit adulthood, but I didn’t. All during college I held on to my trusty name brands. Perhaps buying them was like having a little piece of home in my dorm/apartment. Or maybe I was just a sucker for the clever marketing.

Who knows?

I think I finally let my guard down after I started to acquire some bills. Like a lot of graduates, I lived with roommates for the first couple of years after graduating. This really helped cut down on expenses. In fact I don’t think I had any real “bills” until I bought a new car. No, No, that is incorrect. I started to accumulate real bills a little before then…when I met my future wife.

Girlfriends are expensive.

So I think it was around this time that I started to shy away from the name brands that I was loyal to until that point to these new mysterious brands that I never heard of. They were familiar yet different. Some didn’t measure up to the original, and some were better. But one thing was for sure.

They were cheaper!

I remember an early episode after I found out a buddy of mine was taking a daily multi-vitamin, I figured it was time that I too start taking one. So there I was at the store trying to figure out which one to take, so I asked the pharmacist what the difference was between a couple of choices?

“About $2.00.”

That was the tipping point. Right after that I started buying practically every store brand that was offered. Some things didn’t take, like toilet paper. Others did, like mac’n’cheese.

Now generic mac’n’cheese is a sore subject in our house. That’s because it didn’t take for my wife, but I do the shopping, so when I pass by the 5 for a $1 rack, I can’t help but load up. I am sympathetic to her cause because I too had a holdout.

Orange juice.

For years I couldn’t get used to the taste of the “cheaper” juice. I grew up on Minute Maid, but switched to Simply Orange a couple of years ago (let me tell you…Good stuff). But I’m proud to announce that since we’ve started using the envelope system, which limits our grocery budget, I’ve finally acquired the taste for “Land-O-Lakes” O.J.

Hey I figure if my wife can suffer through Flavorite mac’n’cheese, then I can sacrifice something too.

So how about you? Do you utilize store brands? What were the hardest things to let go of? What is off limits?

Remember, we’re all in this together.

Until next time,

-DD

» Filed Under Frugality, Materialism, Money Savers

Out with the Old, In with the New - Switching Phone Companies

Posted by Debt Destroyer on January 9, 2009

As most of you know, I list my monthly expenses ( here is last month’s) to help track where my family is spending our money. Not only is it good for us to see where improvements can be made, but posting them online has also allowed me to gather money saving tips from all of you.

THANK YOU!

One of the most common areas where readers say we could lower our expense was our “Phone & Internet” bill. We’ve been paying $115.75 a month to Qwest for quite some time now. This included unlimited local and long distance calling, a bunch of features such as caller ID & voicemail, and high speed internet (DSL).

Deep down I’ve felt that this was too much, but I was content to not “mix things up”. Remember, I was the guy who held onto Netflix way longer than I should, so clearly I’m hesitant to change.

Well, you will be glad to know that a couple of weeks ago I did “mix things up.” But it wasn’t the motivation of saving money that got me to make the switch, it was that I was tired of our super slow “high speed” internet. For the past few months surfing the web turned into an exercise of our patience.

There were many days where I longed for dial-up speeds.

My excuse for not switching sooner was that I didn’t want to mess up things for my wife’s at-home business. We are not the most tech-friendly household and miraculously our little network has been running fairly smoothly and I didn’t want to go through the hassle of setting anything up again. Plus we have a nice phone number and I didn’t want to lose it.

Naturally I was relieved when I called the cable company’s sales dept and found out I shouldn’t have to change anything around, including our number. The news got even better when they told me that they had a six month promotion for Phone & Internet for only $6o (plus fees & taxes, which were estimated to be $15).

So I’ll be saving $40 for the next six months.

Which is nice because I had to buy a new modem and pay for installation. But the real good news is that even after the promotion ends I should still end up saving $10-$15 a month.

It took two weeks for them to come, but we’ve had our new service for about a week now and so far I really like it. The internet is much faster! MUCH FASTER!!!

I have some issues with the phone service; voice quality is one, but I’ll just pretend we’re on a cell phone. And no multiple voicemail boxes is the other. We used to have our message set up as “If you want to speak to the DD family stay on the line, if you want the world’s greatest wedding photographer please press 1.” Now we had to combine them.

No biggie, but I guess you get what you pay for. Which makes me wonder what I was paying for all those months of crawling around the internet.

Speaking of paying for things, I’ve been told my first bill will be brutal but by February things should settle down. So I got that to look forward to. I’m not big on resolutions, but it’ll be nice to ring in the New Year with some savings.

How about you, what do you pay for phone & internet? Are there any other areas where you will be looking to save money in 2009?

Until next time,

-DD

» Filed Under Frugality, Money Savers

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