Living on Less: Ways to Save

Clothing swaps. Today, self-professed "swapaholics" are organizing larger, more sophisticated clothing swaps with hundreds of participants, and they're held everywhere from auditoriums to city parks. Some of these events operate on a one-for-one model, in which participants receive one ticket for each item they offer up, which can be traded for another, says Melissa Massello, editor-in-chief of Shoestring, an online magazine (shoestringmag.com) devoted to modern budget living. Others require a bag of unwanted clothing and sometimes a small fee for admission. Although the swaps are carefully coordinated, they still have a treasure-hunt feel. "It is literally a free-for-all," says Massello, who recently began co-hosting swaps in the Boston area through theswapaholics.com, and has begun branching out into other cities. Other sites that organize local events include swaporamarama.com and clothingswap.com. If you can't find a swap near you, thredUP.com operates a Netflix-style online clothing exchange.

Lunch clubs. Brown-bagging it is one of the best ways to slash your weekly spending, but it requires a lot of planning and prep. These days, groups of co-workers are sharing the load by taking turns providing lunch for each other during the week. It can be as easy as making an extra lasagna on Sunday night, or packing the ingredients for a large chef salad on Monday morning. "Even a fast-food meal can cost $5 or $6 a day," says Gary Foreman, a former financial planner who now edits The Dollar Stretcher, an print and online publication (stretcher.com). "But you can feed five people this way for about $10, and you'll spend $10 a week instead of $25." Nurturing workplace camaraderie is an added bonus.

DIY ideas. Along with other innovative savers, Massello's looking to the past for inspiration, "sponging up all the Depression-era wisdom spilled by her gregarious Greatest (and first-) Generation Italian-American family back in Boston," as she proclaims in her Shoestring bio. One of the site's most popular stories is "Homemade Condiments: Just Like Grandma Made," which coaches readers in making peanut butter, ricotta, ketchup, and mustard, and includes cost comparisons between recipe supplies and the store-bought equivalents. Cleaning products are other popular make-at-home items because their ingredients are simple, cheap, and often only require a trip to the pantry. "You can clean almost everything with baking soda and vinegar, which are safer for the environment than green products and cost less than any other cleaning products, green or toxic," says Jeff Yeager, author of The Ultimate Cheapskate's Roadmap to True Riches and blogger at thedailygreen.com.

Freeganism for non-extremists. You don't have to climb into a garbage bin. You don't even have to get your hands dirty. Instead of buying clay pots for your container garden, ask your local nursery for its unwanted plastic ones. Day trip to the woods--or park--to forage for fresh herbs, or check sites like VeggieTrader.com, where gardeners offer up their surplus. At FallenFruit.org, downloadable neighborhood foraging maps are available for finding fruits and vegetables on public land, where they are free. "It's completely legal, but there are ethics, like taking only what you actually can eat," says Massello, who once spent a week living as a freegan for research. During that time, she took advantage of community calendars, which list free events such as concerts and art gallery openings that offer free food and wine. She also interviewed other freegans: "I heard from expert Dumpster divers who worked with local bakeries to the point where food never actually touched Dumpster. They knew what time day to go."

Bartering for beginners. If you're uncomfortable with the idea of bartering but want to try it, take baby steps. Start by reaching out via social networks like Facebook or Twitter, recommends Massello. "If you're a writer, ask if anyone needs r?sum? help, and what they can offer in return," she says. Are you a yoga aficionado? A techie? Think about your skills to determine what you can offer. If you're bartering with friends, it's important to make sure the transaction is transparent, she adds: "Just be really clear about what the exchange will look like. Instead of saying that you'll paint their house in exchange for babysitting, say you'll paint 10 hours [for a set amount of time babysitting]."

Eat lentils. Well, not just lentils, but they cost little and have tons of nutritional value. Yeager recommends "eating lower on the food chain," which means focusing on fresh, healthy foods, and aiming to spend no more than a dollar a pound. "It's a myth that it costs more to eat healthy. You can spend a lot, but when you think about the kinds of things we should eat the most of--whole grains, legumes, and produce--they tend to cost less per pound than things that are bad for us like red meat and many processed foods that are high in trans saturated fats," he says. Yeager's list of 50 healthy foods that cost less than $1 a pound also includes chickpeas, eggs, yogurt--and of course, pasta.

Extreme measures. Chew a half stick of gum at a time. Time your showers with a stopwatch. Use only a pea-size amount of toothpaste. These particular things may out of the realm of what you're willing to do to save a buck, but "most people, I think, have one or two things they tend to be really frugal with," says Foreman. "Why, I don't know ? we see a lot of people saving in interesting ways. What they're trying to do now is maintain their standard of living." The bottom line: Don't feel guilty about reusing plastic silverware or squirreling away restaurant soy-sauce packets. "My take is that if it bugs your family and friends to the point that they tease you, it's probably too extreme. But if not and it makes you happy, go for it," says Massello.

Crowd buying. When it comes to discretionary spending, the collective buying power of crowds can help you nab some great deals. The concept: Local businesses offer their products or services at a large discount--think $25 for $50 worth of salon services or $35 for a half-day rafting trip--but the deal is only good if enough people snap it up. The most well-known of the sites is Groupon.com, which lists daily deals in more than 40 metro markets. Other sites that operate on the group-buying model include Boston-based BuyWithMe.com, which lists deals in four cities, and DealOn.com, which services 10 cities.

Source: The following excerpts are from USA Today, by Katy Marquardt, On Thursday April 22, 2010, 2:12 pm EDT

http://finance.yahoo.com/news/10-Creative-Saving-usnews-615163334.html?x=0

In The News: Stalker Sentenced!

Was Christine Arrosco a lone stalker or an integral player in an organized stalking protocol? We don't know because she refused to tell the court why she embarked on her reign of terror against the victim.

"I know of at least one other stalker who, like this lady, did a bunch of things which group stalkers do. He, too, was totally silent on WHY he did those deeds.

I suspect that some of these may well be group stalkers, but know their life isn't worth a penny if they say anything at all about a group of stalkers.

In order to make use of a video like that, we would need to describe it as JUST LIKE what we experience.

We must not claim she IS a group stalker, because there is no evidence of that in the video..." - Eleanor White

Thank you, Eleanor, for your insightful analysis. Here's hoping that A Word to the Wise T.I. is sufficient.

Get Wise, T.I. - Best Free Anti Virus Website

I found Virus Total http://www.virustotal.com/ at PC World. It received awards as one of the "best products" from numerous PC magazines. You can use Virus Total to check any file before you launch that file on your computer. This site lets you send them the file and then they run 41 different brands of anti-viral software against it, and then sends you back a report.

Here's hoping that A Word to the Wise T.I. is sufficient.

Get Wise, T.I.: When parked car horns blast

A lot of T.I.s report that when walking by or through a parking lot, unoccupied parked cars' horns will suddenly go off and continue to blast, even after the T.I. exits the area. Many T.I.s have wondered how this was possible.

Here's a news article that explains how one man did it.

Local Tech Wire

DALLAS ”A man fired from a Texas auto dealership used an Internet service to remotely disable ignitions and set off car horns of more than 100 vehicles sold at his old workplace," police said Wednesday.

Austin police arrested Omar Ramos-Lopez, 20, on Wednesday, charging him with felony breach of computer security.

Ramos- Lopez used a former colleague's password to deactivate starters and set off car horns, police said. Several car owners said they had to call tow trucks and were left stranded at work or home.

"He caused these customers, now victims, to miss work," Austin police spokeswoman Veneza Aguinaga said. "They didn't get paid. They had to get tow trucks. They didn't know what was going on with their vehicles.

"The Texas Auto Center dealership in Austin installs GPS devices that can prevent cars from starting. The system is used to repossess cars when buyers are overdue on payments, said Jeremy Norton, a controller at the dealership where Ramos-Lopez worked. Car horns can be activated when repo agents go to collect vehicles and believe the owners are hiding them."

Many thanks to Debbie Newhook of http://osnanaimo.org/ for sharing this article. Here's hoping that A Word to the Wise T.I. is sufficient.

Protect Your Teeth For Free

Right click on the above diagram to enlarge it in another browser tab so that you can switch between tabs to identify the bones to which I refer. If that doesn't produce the enlargement, then right click HERE and open in new tab.

Also use the palm of hand, which is thicker, fleshier, than the fingers.

To protect upper teeth use palm of hand to 1) From top to Down - cover entire upper jaw, including lower ocular (eye) bone ridge downwards to cover the mallar and maxilar bones as well as roots of teeth, while at the same time covering 2) from jaw hinge to nasal concha bone (nose ridge). If the very front upper teeth still hurt, use palm of other hand (or shift original hand) to cover the nasal spine, aveolar process and front teeth.

To protect lower teeth use palm of hand to 1) cover mandible (lower jaw) from the hinge/joint towards the front teeth, making sure to cover the entire jaw line, including teeth roots. If the very front lower teeth still hurt, shift hand (or use other hand) to cover the the mental tuberosity, mental protuberance and roots of front teeth.