What frugality blog would be complete without a list of money-saving ideas?  This list comes mainly from personal experience and is certainly not complete.  I really enjoyed making it, and I’d like to add more.  If you see anything missing or have any questions or complaints, just let me know.

And now, without further fanfare, here’s my list:

1. Bathroom, Hygiene, and Health

   1. Use bath towels more than once. If you find this disgusting, you may want to try using soap.

   2. Don’t shower every day. Your skin will thank you by not flaking off all winter. You can use a washcloth for minor “touch-ups” if you’re not smelling your freshest. (I’m talking about armpits here, people.)

   3. Use handkerchiefs instead of kleenex. 13 hankies is $8 at our local Zeller’s, and they last for decades. If you find hankies (or “snot-lockers”) disgusting, then you haven’t seen the kleenexes most women are carrying around. Hankies are also far nicer on your nose, since kleenexes are made out of wood fibers. Wash white hankies with your whites to keep them looking their best.

   4. Don’t worry so much about germs. Our immune systems will take care of most of the bacteria that the TV commercials tell us are lurking on every surface in our homes. You don’t need anti-bacterial spray, anti bacterial soap, hand-sanitizer, or kitchen wipes.

   5. Shave with a double-edge razor instead of a Mach 3. It takes a bit of practice, but it’s worth learning how to shave with a blade instead of a cartridge. Razor bumps and ingrown hairs virtually disappear once you toss the Mach 3. Oh, and double-edge razor blades are $1.49 for 10 at WalMart, Mach 3 cartridges are $17.00 for an 8-pack. Your wallet and your face will thank you. (or your legs, if you’re not of the face-shaving sex)

   6. Exercise. Get out and walk. You’ll feel better, and people who already feel good don’t need to spend money to feel good. You can give yourself “missions” to execute while you’re out, too. Think about some little item you might need from the grocery store and walk there to get it. If you do this enough, you can actually cut down on the number of full-blown shopping trips you need to take.

   7. Eat properly. Take your vitamins. Get enough calcium. Brush your teeth. See your dentist every year or so. Stay healthy. It’s far cheaper to be healthy in the long run.

2. Food

   1. Eat at home. The kitchen is there for making food, not just microwaving the odd pizza pocket.

   2. Learn to cook. You’ll save thousands of dollars every year and eventually you won’t want to go out to restaurants because the food there isn’t as good as what you make at home!

   3. Make lots of extra food every meal and freeze it in individual portions. Barbecue 20 burgers instead of 4. Cook up the whole box of chicken breasts. Learn how to re-heat meat in your microwave.

   4. Drink tea. It’s cheap, loaded with antioxidants, contains vitamins, and comes in thousands of flavours. If you drink green tea, you can often use the leaves 2 or 3 times, making each cup of tea cost about a penny. How much was that coffee from Tim Horton’s again?

   5. Don’t buy prepared meals. You can make your own for 1/4 of the price. Sometimes even cheaper.

   6. Make your own coffee at home instead of going to the coffee shop. Yes, you can make better coffee at home than they do.

   7. Make your own yogurt. (or try kefir)

   8. Make your own beer. No, Budweiser isn’t a company of magicians. (or even beer makers, actually) Malted barley + hops + water + yeast + time = beer. If you’re not comfortable doing it at home, there are plenty of self-brew places to help. If you’ve tried those and didn’t like the beer, I would suggest that you try a different brew. Don’t expect the beer from these places to taste exactly like the pasteurized mass-market swill you’re used to. You may have to learn to like beer all over again, but I guarantee you that it’s worth it. Don’t be afraid to try new things!

   9. Make your own bread. No, I’m not saying you should go buy a bread machine. Bread is not hard to make from scratch, and it’s MUCH better when you made it yourself. It’s also healthier, since your bread contains only what you put into it. Flour + water + sugar + salt + yeast = bread.

   10. Buy roasts on sale and use a slow-cooker to make your own “prepared meals”. Freeze leftovers in single-serving sizes for later convenience.

   11. Don’t use the freezer on your fridge for keeping any food longer than a couple of days. That freezer doesn’t stay below freezing. Your food will get freezer burn and you won’t eat it, so you’ll be wasting money. Beg, buy, or steal yourself a chest freezer instead – and use it!

   12. Buy milk when it’s on sale and freeze it. The milk will separate during freezing, but once thawed in the fridge for a couple of days you can shake it to redistribute the solids into the whey. Low-fat milk freezes best.

   13. Freeze your bread (slice it first!), whether store-bought or home-made.

   14. Stop buying potato chips. If you really must have these, it’s way cheaper to make your own. Potatoes, a pan of oil, and a potato peeler is all that you need to make your own. Use the potato peeler to make the slices. The skins are fantastic too.

   15. Don’t buy bottled water. If the water in your area is bad, buy water in 5 gallon jugs and refill those at one of those refilling kiosks or at a friend or family member’s house where they have a well. Clean the jugs periodically with a weak bleach and water solution to make sure nothing grows in them, or you can go get new ones by returning the used ones once a year and buying some with water in them.

   16. Plant a garden. If you have the space, growing your own food is cheap and rewarding. Even if you don’t have much room, you can have a few herbs in a pot. Oregano, rosemary, basil, and cilantro are wonderful fresh, and they’ll grow almost anywhere.

   17. Avoid alcohol. It’s a costly indulgence. (Unless you make it yourself, then… uh… it’s just an indulgence.)

   18. Cigarettes are even worse. (Unless you grow your own tobacco, dry it, and roll your own.  They’re still really bad for you, but at least you’ll get them cheaper.)

3. Cleaning

   1. Only rich people need maids or “cleaning services”. You’re not rich, or you wouldn’t be reading this.

   2. Minimize use of paper towels. Dishcloths work great, and you can rinse them out. Worried about the bacteria in your dishcloth? You have options!

      1. Throw it in the wash and get another one out

      2. Rinse it well, squeeze it into a ball, then throw it in your microwave for one minute on high. The temperature of the washcloth will reach well above the level required for pasteurization. Careful when you take it out – it’s hot!

   3. Don’t waste money on disposable dusting cloths. Head to the dollar store and buy a couple of microfibre dusting cloths. They’re re-usable and they hold tons of dust. You can also clean glass with them – no liquid required. Toss them in the wash with your other towels and use them for years.

   4. Skip the air fresheners. They just mask the problem and they aren’t good for you. Here are some other options:

      1. Open a window (if weather permits)

      2. Pot pourri: A few whole cloves in some water on the stove on a low simmer in the winter will humidify and make your house smell great.

      3. Get an air ionizer. A good one will cost you a few bucks, but it will make your house smell fresh and keep the dust down too.

      4. Make cookies. Yummy AND it smells great.

      5. Bake bread. ’nuff said.  (Poet.  Didn’t knowit.)

      6. If the smells are persistent, perhaps you need to clean your carpet or get new sneakers.

   5. Take off your shoes when you’re in the house. This will cut down on a lot of cleaning. You can use slippers for around-the-house if your feet get cold. I was surprised to learn that people didn’t already do this. In Canada we always take off our shoes in the house. Must be something to do with the snow.

4. Cars and Driving

   1. Buy your cars used. Save tens of thousands. If you don’t drive much, you might even be able to get a deal on an SUV, since they’re not selling very quickly these days. If you only drive to the grocery store and to church, the gas price on one of these might not be such a problem for you.

   2. Drive close to the speed limit. Wind resistance is the enemy of fuel economy.

   3. Accelerate slowly. You’ll get there just as fast.

   4. Check your tire pressure periodically. Stop the car first.

   5. Change your oil. $30 worth of car maintenance now can save you thousands later.

   6. Combine trips to save gas.

   7. Ask yourself if you could walk there and back in less than an hour. If so, walk instead of driving. (unless you mean to pick up more groceries than you can reasonably carry)

   8. Sell your extra car(s). If one car sits in the driveway most of the time, sell it. If you could get by with one car instead of two by waiting until the car gets home to go grocery shopping, sell the extra car. Nothing except your house costs more than you car. This will save you thousands per year.

   9. Live closer to work. Easier said than done, but once you figure out how many hours per year your commute costs you and how much gas and car maintenance are, you might even look at taking a pay cut just to avoid those previously unknown costs. If you can live within walking distance, you might be able to get rid of a car, which could save you thousands or tens of thousands of dollars per year.

5. Entertainment

   1. Drop all non-essential TV channels from your cable or satellite subscription. (No, you do not watch all of those channels.)

   2. Don’t use a TV for “background noise”. That’s what radios are for, and they use a lot less power.

   3. Go for walks in the woods or the park, go for bike rides, go to museums, look in the paper for free community events. There are lots of things you can do for free. Every trip out of your house doesn’t have to be to a mall or store.

   4. You do not need surround sound, high definition, or a media room. Save thousands by not buying into the hype. In the end, it’s just a more expensive way to sit on your ass.

   5. Use the library or buy your books at a used book store. The book I just read was $39, according to the dust jacket. I paid nothing because it came from the library.

   6. Rent movies or borrow them from your library. You don’t need a collection of movies. The only time it makes sense to own a movie is when you will watch it so many times that the price of renting it would have been more than the price of buying it. Remember that new movies become old movies eventually, and the rental price drops significantly. Next year you might be able to rent that movie for a whole week for 99¢. Don’t pay $30 for it now.

6. Energy savings

   1. Turn off the lights when you’re not in the room.

   2. Use compact fluorescent bulbs in places where the lights are on a lot. Avoid using them in places where the lights are only used for short periods of time. They just burn out faster when you keep flicking them on and off.

   3. Avoid unnecessary exterior lighting. Your house is not an amusement park, and planes won’t run into it if you don’t light it up.

   4. Turn off the TV when you’re not in the room. Most televisions use hundreds of watts of electricity, so leaving one on is like leaving several lights on.

   5. Turn down the heat. Get a programmable thermostat and program it to only keep the house warm while you’re there. How warm? We keep our house at 68°F (20°C) in the evenings if we’re home, and 64°F (17.7°C) the rest of the time. We use Fahrenheit on our thermostat in order to get finer-grained control over the temperature, since each degree Celsius is 1.8 degrees Fahrenheit. You can turn your thermostat even lower if you spend most of your time in one room by using radiant electric heaters in the room you’re in. (They’re like a mini-electric fireplace, and they’re silent.)

   6. Turn down the air conditioning. In summer, just use the A/C to remove the humidity. Set the A/C to 80°F and use fans.

7. Clothing

   1. Wash your clothes in cold water.

   2. Use a gas dryer. They’re easier on your clothes, so you save money. They’re also cheaper to run than an electric dryer, and there’s no problem running them during peak electrical usage times.

   3. Avoid using bleach on any clothing. Bleach will break down fabric and you’ll have to buy more clothes more often.

   4. Wear your pants two or three days before washing them. (You ARE wearing underwear, right?) Nobody will notice, and you can rotate them to make sure they don’t notice. If all your pants look the same then you don’t have anything to worry about.

   5. Buy a good leather belt. A good belt will last a decade, a bad one will cost slightly less and will last less than a year. A good leather belt should feel soft and pliable, will be made from one solid piece of leather, and will not likely come from a department store. Seek out a real leather store.

   6. $80 jeans don’t fit 4 times as good as $20 jeans.

   7. Buy used clothing where practical. My wife bought a leather winter coat for $20 that looked like it had never been worn. I’d skip the used socks and underwear, though.

8. House

   1. Do your own yard work. It’s good exercise. Only rich people should have gardeners, and you’re not rich or you wouldn’t be reading this. Mow your own lawn, rake your own leaves, plant your own gardens.

   2. Skip the frivolous home-improvement projects. You probably don’t need a new laminate floor in your kitchen or tile in your front hallway. These things might be nice, but they’re expensive and nobody who visits your house really cares. (Yeah, they all act like they care, but they really don’t.)

   3. Don’t ever get a swimming pool. Not even the kiddie kind. Well, the little blowup one for toddlers is OK, but that’s the limit! Pools are very expensive to maintain, and nobody uses them enough to justify the expense. Want to swim? Find a public pool.

   4. Don’t ever buy a hot tub or spa. These energy-hogs are expensive to run and maintain, and hardly anyone uses them enough to justify the expense.

   5. Skip the weed control service. Get an old kitchen knife and cut the dandelions out yourself.

9. Services, Subscriptions, and Memberships

   1. Call your phone company to see if you can get a deal on your phone service.

   2. Call your ISP and see if you can get a deal on your Internet service.

   3. If you call long distance a lot, get SkypeOut or Vonage.

   4. Cancel your cell phone. Unless you spend a lot of time on the road, a cell phone is just a luxury item. Unless you’re an I.T. guy or a heart surgeon, you probably don’t need to take phone calls at the grocery store. If you’re on a contract, call the cell phone provider to find out how much it would cost you to get out of it.  (I stand corrected, courtesy of user itgoesthere on Reddit.  Apparently this tip is not universal.  It may, in fact, be cheaper and/or wiser to cancel your land line.  It depends on how much you’re paying for cellular and how much long-distance calling you do.  Your mileage may vary.)

   5. Drop the gym membership. Chances are you’re not using it anyway. Walk instead. It’s the cheapest exercise and works the largest muscles.

   6. Don’t buy extended warranties.

10. Computers

    1. Turn your computer off when not in use.

    2. Set your computer to go to sleep after ½ hour of inactivity.

    3. Don’t use screensavers. They don’t save your screen, and they use a lot of CPU power.

    4. Don’t buy the biggest and the best. Get the second biggest hard-drive and the second-fastest CPU. The difference in performance is often unnoticeable, but the difference to your wallet is not.

    5. If you’re looking for a computer upgrade, consider getting more RAM. It’s the cheapest bang-for-the-buck upgrade you can do.

    6. Use OpenOffice instead of Microsoft Office. It’s free, and for most people it works just as well.

    7. Get your ink cartridges refilled instead of buying new.

    8. Don’t print photos at home unless you’re sure your total cost per print is cheaper.

11. General

    1. Avoid stores and you’ll avoid buying things.

    2. Learn to separate what you need from what you merely want.

    3. Learn how to not want things. It’s a difficult mental adjustment, but it is certainly possible. A wise man once said that the root of all suffering is desire.

    4. Learn to find happiness in little things. It doesn’t have to be costly to make you happy. A new car will only make you happy temporarily, but will take you years to pay for. An ice cream cone might be a better investment from a happiness perspective. (Everybody loves ice cream cones, right?)

    5. Talk to your spouse or partner about their goals and desires. Reach an understanding about how money is to be spent, and revisit this discussion at least once a month. If you’re both on the same page things will go a lot smoother.

    6. Live within your means. Always. Money coming in should always be more than money going out. If it’s not, fix it immediately. Credit is not money. It works just like money, but you haven’t earned it yet. No matter what you may think you deserve, don’t spend money you haven’t made yet.

    7. You do not deserve anything besides your pay for working hard. If your pay is not enough to buy something, you have not worked hard enough to deserve that thing. It sounds harsh, but sometimes the truth ain’t pretty. Get more pay or buy less things. Don’t get caught up in a sense of entitlement. Don’t listen to commercials.

    8. Stop trying to keep up with your neighbours. Truth be told, they can’t afford it either.

A few months ago I made one phone call and my phone bill went from $55/month down to $31/month. I didn’t lose my visual call display or call waiting, but I did slash $24/month from my phone bill. At the same time, I cut $10/month off of my Internet bill.

Here’s how I did it:

Early this year, a new phone company had been going door-to-door in our neighbourhood leaving pamphlets and door-hangers advertising their super-duper all-in-one phone service for $19.95. It was a local company, and they had been quite aggressive. In fact, the number of these pamphlets had actually become annoying. Fortunately, this relentless advertising gave me an idea.

I called Bell Canada (my phone company) and told them about this terrific offer I had received, which was essentially the same service Bell offered at less than half the price. I could also, for a reasonable price, get high-speed Internet through the new company over the same phone line, so in theory I could also cancel my Bell Sympatico Internet service if I decided to switch to the new company.

The Bell representative tried to convince me that this new company’s phone service was a “digital service”, and therefore was inferior to what they were providing me. I told them that for the price difference I was willing to suffer with the digitalness. I asked them if there was anything they could do for me to convince me not to switch to the new provider, since I didn’t really feel like going to the trouble of switching over if I didn’t have to.

The gentleman on the line was actually quite helpful once he was given the chance to keep my business. He told me about a package he could set me up with that still let me have my call waiting and visual call display for $33 a month. If I agreed to stick with Bell for 12 months, he would drop the price to $28. The only real downside to this deal was that long distance is 25 cents per minute, but this wasn’t a real problem for me.

I told him that they were virtually guaranteed to never make a dime off of me on long distance at that price, and that I didn’t really care much about the 12 months requirement. We agreed on the new price, and he set it up. The final price came to $31 because apparently there’s no getting out of the incredibly silly $2.80 “Touch-Tone Service” fee or the almost-as-silly $0.19 911 access fee.

Now, about the long distance . . .

I have two other options for long distance. On my computer, I have SkypeOut service, which costs me $3 per month and gives me unlimited long distance in North America and really good rates to everywhere else. I also have a business VoIP service in my home office with Vonage which I can use for long distance if I don’t feel like firing up the computer.

There were a few long distance options I could have selected from with Bell, but that would have just brought up the cost of my phone line. Since I rarely use long distance for non-business purposes, 25 cents a minute is fine with me.

The important lesson here is that you don’t get a price break from the phone company unless you ask. I saved $288 per year by spending 10 minutes on the phone. Ka-ching!

But wait, there’s more. Remember how I said that I could also get high-speed Internet from the other company? Once we were agreed on the phone pricing, I asked him what we could do about the Internet pricing. At the time I was paying $55/month for DSL UltraMega (or whatever they call the really good DSL, I forget). The friendly Bell representative was able to lower it to $45/month, as long as I agreed to a 24 month contract. Another 10 minutes on the phone, another $120 a year in savings.

Net result: $288 + $120 = $408 savings per year.

After tax result: $461 per year.