...Dave Ramsey, Clark Howard, Under the Median, Kate Kaden, Frugal Fit Mom, Frugal Money Saver, Prepper Princess and the one I watched this morning Living On a Dime ... good YT channels filled with good advice
Sorry about replying to myself, but I want to give that list of helpful resource people in that post for anyone who is caught in the debt crunch, or who needs help getting things paid off.
And some more useful stuff I picked up over the years. Not everything applies, but this is just what I've done to make ends meet.
I said I've lived thru this, and I have. I've been on a budget so tight I used baking soda for toothpaste and sewed my own female sanitary supplies. We were a hairsbreadth from losing our home, and that wasn't due to credit cards or consumer debt. It was a downturn in the economy in Prince George BC when we left in 1999 as G was transferred. Sold at a terrible loss, scraped whatever we could for a down payment, and moved. We had a rental property that suddenly became a drug dealer neighbourhood and we couldn't sell that thing at any price. We were going 1000 - 2000 in the hole every month paying the mtg, and the rental firm managing that place just to keep tenants (bad ones) in, and the vacancy rate was why some months it cost 2K and G made a decent salary of 4500 a month give or take.
I got hit with this auto immune whatever it is that isn't MS and couldn't go out to work even as our kids graduated from homeschooling.
Yet God provided. Every single time. The furnace blew a gust of flame one day down doing laundry that burnt my eyebrows and eyelashes right off my face. Apparently a reflex squeezed my eyes shut just in time. When I opened them, my eyelashes were spikes of ash on my cheeks. Weird!
But that month we got something from somewhere that covered the repairs. Same with the leak in the roof. The shoes I got for a $1 at a garage sale that I wore to church so I looked presentable. God finally allowed that rental to sell, just before the kids each got married in 2008. George started cruising and I put my back into getting out of the rest of our debt- we had slightly different priorities.
2 ways to attack the debt using the snowball method. Smallest debt first, or highest interest rate first. The highest rate first does save the most- other people who've done the math say so, it makes my brain hurt! But the smallest debt first method gives a win and keeps the motivation high.
Stay out of car lease arrangements if at all possible, like CC debt that will bleed you dry. Run the car till the wheels fall off, it's cheaper to repair than replace until it becomes a safety hazard to drive. Go to one vehicle if you can. I worked it out that the cost of owning a second vehicle was equal to a part time job. Drive like you got eggs in the back- no sudden acceleration or brakes. Less gas.
Nowadays I buy groceries online at Walmart, with free pickup. That saves me buying extras and keeps me on budget. I do have a Costco card, and that pays for itself just in the cheaper cost of supplements alone, but ground beef, other meat and fish plus toilet paper are another bargain. Stay out of the fancy stuff.
when we moved here I had the common sense to buy as close to George's work as possible so gas costs were low and I could drive him to work on my once a week errands day -I'd grocery shop, visit a friend and do anything else that I had to and pick him up after work. Gas went up that year, and even though he carpooled to work in Prince George, the house in Kamloops saved us a ton of cost in transportation and even dropped our insurance costs.
We always used a fancy thermostat and programmed it for winter to go low at night, rise when we did, then lowish during the day, rise for evenings. Wear wool socks and warm clothes. In the summer we would open the windows at night, to enjoy cool air and fans to help us sleep in the heat but we still needed air conditioning during the worst of the daytime heat.
In different houses I've used draft stoppers at the doors to the outside and we've added better weather stripping too. We blocked off our fireplace with balled up newspaper, and created an insulated cover for the mouth of the fireplace so the heat of the house wasn't going up the chimney.
I hang clothes to dry indoors (folding drying racks). I use wool dryer balls- they eliminate dryer sheets, no static, and they cut dryer time and reduce wrinkles. Love em. I use cleaning rags unless it's so greasy or filthy- bacon grease or cleaning the toilet for example where I will use my stash of Costco sale Bounty paper towels.
If I'm baking something in the oven I often do 1 or even 2 more dishes to use that heat effectively. Small appliances like a Instapot or crockpot do save a lot of energy over the stove top or oven.
I run a pantry system. I buy meat, frozen fruit or veggies etc on specials, and stock the freezer. When I used to be ok to eat bread and gluten, the bread outlet sold bread cheaper than I could make it at home although I did that too. Looking back that was a waste of my energy. The bread at the outlet was good, and I'd swing by once a month and take it home and freeze it. I bought canned goods, and pantry supplies on good sales, stocking up enough to get thru to the next sale or so. I use a sharpie pen to this day to mark the goods when I buy them and I rotate my supply.
I knew what we ate, I planned my menus on a 5&5 basis- 5 meats and 5 veggies per week. 1 day is leftovers, 1 day is going out or leftovers. Pick a starch to go with- pasta, potatoes or rice. 5 meals got me thru the week. My recipes were and still are very simple so I only needed to keep those spices, those ingredients on my shelves and in my pantry back up supply.
I relied on standard breakfasts: home made porridge, eggs and toast, pancakes or waffles (always home made from scratch) and standard lunches: sandwiches from that bread outlet and sliced meat from the Sunday roast or chicken breast boiled up and chopped, or egg salad, or peanut butter and jam. Fruits were apples or oranges because those are cheap. Veggies were cabbage, carrots, potatoes, onions, garlic and whatever was on special.
I get a chuckle out of the Dining on a Dime lady I mentioned above- many of her recipes in her cookbooks look similar to my staples. Home made shake n bake. Home made pancake mix, Home made biscuit mix. Easy chocolate cake from flour, cocoa, baking soda, oil, salt, vinegar. She uses the same recipe I did.
I didn't go hunting for variety in the meals or baking I did. Too much variety is like too many clothes in the closet or too much food stored in the pantry going bad. It's an investment in time, money and effort that just doesn't pay off. Figure out your top 20 dinners, and stock those ingredients on sales in your pantry and freezer.
Vaseline and cheap Walmart body lotion are your friends. Bar soap lasts longer and is cheaper than liquid body wash. I got a little dollar store spike soap rest that allows it to dry fully between uses rather than resting in a wet soap dish, dissolving in a puddle of water.
Cleaners: I bought a jug of Zep concentrate from Home Depot and dilute into spray bottles- that is a couple years worth of all purpose cleaner. Shower cleaner is Dawn dish liquid, vinegar and water. Spray and scrub with a back brush from the dollar store, one of those puff net things while in the shower, rinse and squeegee clean. Dawn or Pinesol in the toilet to clean with the toilet brush, bleach occasionally, and vinegar water spray or baking soda elsewhere. I stopped using Windex to clean glass, microfibre cloths, cheap at Home Depot do a better job with just water. Microfibre cleaning cloths are great elsewhere too.
I put an old worn out facecloth in the finger poke holes of my swiffer mop and it's a floor mop or wall mop. Put nylon net on top for extra scrubbing power, and soak with vinegar if you need more power on soap scum in the shower.
Put aluminum foil on the bottom of the oven to reduce cleaning effort, line the burner pans too. If you get a smoking mess it's easy to pour some baking soda on, then toss and replace when the oven or burner cools. Less effort, less often you have to clean the oven. I've used the ammonia in a dish method to clean the oven when I've had the non self clean models, but Easy Off works easier and better. A self clean oven will always pay for itself because it has more insulation for safety during the self clean. G and I always bought self clean ones when it came time to replace.
Buy toothpaste. The only time I got a cavity was during my I'm too cheap to buy toothpaste era when I used soda only. I still like soda but toothpaste is a luxury I'll splurge on as it saves dental bills.
I CAN tell you that my hair and me survived and even thrived on bar soap as a shampoo, followed by dilute household vinegar as a rinse. Vinegar is a great detangler, and it adds shine and some conditioning. It doesn't aggravate my allergies to this day, it's my backup for when my allergies kick up.
I cut my own hair after watching a tutorial. I tied it up on the top of my head, cut it off at the general length I wanted, and trimmed it up using my vacuum cleaner to suck the hair out straight from my head. It worked. But 3 years later I found Leah my hairdresser and I'm glad I don't have to do that anymore. However the difference between a bad home haircut and the salon is only about a week so there's that. During Covid I got a kit and cut George's hair. He survived. Same hair rule.
Some of those tips might be too much, but some might resonate.
Love to all
M
