Things to Cut When Money is Tight...July Edition

 1) Stupid Fees

This might be the entire list today because there are lots of fees I realized I had cut through the years and have forgotten that people pay.

-ATM fees.   Use an ATM linked to your credit union or bank.   My credit union has agreements with other credit unions so I can use one pretty much anywhere in the country without a fee.  There is not only an app for that, there is a phone number I can dial it, put in a zip code (preferably the one where I am or will be shortly) and find an ATM.  ALSO...take out cash regularly and have it in hand.  Doesn't ALWAYS work.  I have yet to pay an ATM fee in 2026. I do carry more cash around than othes in my finanical class and have a stack of 20s in my home which I dip into as needed   The local branch of my credit union is closing in August so I will have to plan ahead a wee bit more.  There will still be an ATM, but I usually stop in there to take out $$ rather than using the ATM much. 

-Late bill fees.  I did bugger this one up this year one time.  While traveling, I ignored the notice in my phone calendar to pay the phone bill.  OOPS!  So, that was a few bucks down the drain and lesson relearned.

-Credit card fee at the gas pump.  I do my best to go to gas stations that do not charge more for credit card use.   Othewise, I actually walk inside with some of those 20s mentioned above, and pay cash, then go back in for the change.  It takes a moment, but it takes less time to go in to the station twice than it does to earn the takehome pay to cover the increased cost of using a credit card. 

-Credit card fee for paying taxes and government permits.  There is a significant "convenience" fee for using a credit card to pay my land taxes, building permit, etc.  I make time to stop by the actual offices when I will be in that town for other reasons, walk in, write a check (yes, a check) and get a receipt.  This requires a wee bit of planning but you CAN do this.,

-Credit card fees elsewhere.  My fave food truck (yes, I do buy food out now and then, it is in the budget and I can still afford it and find it worth it for a few specific places) has added a 4% credit card fee.  Credit cards charge the business a fee so they nee to either pass it on or raise prices across the board  I pay cash, and add that fee to the tip to maximize my support of a local business and support a healthful local food economy.  Same at the farmers markets and anywhere else I pay in person.   I do use credit cards when ordering online, paying for plane tickets/rental cars/hotels for the record and the ability to dispute charges through multiple channels should anything go wrong.

Apply this principle to whatever fees you may be paying.  You'll find other ones in your own spending patterns.  

Things to Cut When Money Is Tight...2026 June Edition

 So, not really specific things but more of a method.  Should have though through the series title but I didn't.

Anyhoo...

Slow down.  55mph doesn't just save lives, it saves $$.

Most rigs get better mileage if you slow down.   There is a limit to that.  I once had to follow a truck convoy for work duties.  The colleague riding along to make sure I didn't fall asleep on the all night drive, thought I'd get GREAT mileage at 3mph.  No.  There is just a base amount of fuel to keep a car running, and the middle of a gear's speed range seems to be more efficiently sustained than the bottom.  Got crap mileage.

Slowing down in town helps too.  Accelerating takes more fuel than keeping a steady speed.  One must accelerate from a stop, but accelerating gently will be more efficient.  If yo aren't going so fast, you may be able to just take your foot of the gas to gradually slow fore most of the stopping distance at intersections.  This is more efficient than going fast and slamming on the brakes.

On the highway, most of my driving, for my vehicle 55 to 60 does seem to seriously increase mpg.  I wonder if that is how the endgine is set up or how it was broken in or both   This past weekend I drove a few hundred miles on highways but through mountains.  I was pretty careful about not trying to accelerate going uphill, coasting as much as possible downhill, and just maintaining a speed on flat areas.   Gained over 10% efficiency.   Noted.

The other thing...walk for any errand etc under a mile (about a 15 min walk for me).  It costs money to start the car so every time you don't, that helps save $$ directly by not using fuel, indirectly by not causing wear and tear on the engine and by making me exercise which probably will make me live 3 minutes longer (and that's just enough time to binge it a bag of mini-candy-bars...damn...there goes the savings!).

Rules: 
Slow down

Start slow

Accelerate less

Maintain a speed

Don't drive if you can walk.

It will all save a bit.  Gas is back just under 4$ a gallon here for the moment, but it won't last.  So Im keeping the habits going,

A Month of Scratch Cooking

 July I did an experiment...or as Gramma would have called it...did nothing at all.

Nowadays cooking everything I ate from scratch ingredients myself for an entire month is not the norm.

By "ingredients" I mean no premixes (no "cake mix" "pancake mix" etc)flavored coffee, bag-o-salad,  prepped veggies from the store...whole veg and fruit YES, cut veg and fruit NO.

There were 2 exception meals.  I was invited to join friends in a meal made my a visitor from out of state.  They actually made almost everything from ingredients!  I had a few store bought pickles and some pimento stuffed olives.  The main dishes were bean soup from dry beans and chili with meat.  I had quite a bit of chili.  It was great!  I skipped the crackers and bread.

Fortunately I like making mustard so I had that as a condiment.  Along with all the flavored vinegars I make.  I needed to buy some kombucha from the folks who supply me with kombucha vinegar for free.  SO...I re-brewed the kombucha with berries and mango skins.  It re-fermented and we called it good. 

The other exception meal was a pre-committed meal at a work event my department was hosting.  It would be odd to cater a meal and refuse to eat it!  We catered in bbq pork sliders, raw veggies with dip (they were cut and I ate them but I skipped the "ranch"...I hate "ranch" so that was an easy miss).  We also had some coleslaw and another salad.  No pastries or cookies which was a choice by someone else, though I validate it in general.  The sliders were good! 

I definitely appreciated the meals I didn't cook and clean up from more than usual.

It was easy.  I just needed to think through the next day at some point of an evening.  If I had a field day coming up,  I made sure I had a "grab n go" option ready for the morning.  Mostly this was nuts and whole fruit or clean whole veg.   A few times it was boiled eggs and salad in one of my thrifted tiffins (those metal multi-tiered lunch carriers popular in India).  It gets lots of use and even more this month!  One person traveling with me was so impressed he kept asking about the tiffin.  I had a spare, also thrifted, that I use very little so I gave it to him the next day. 

Salad in a mason jar with nuts and chia seeds for protein is another good option.

I've been doing my own salad dressings for years so that's easy.  Just throw vinegar and oil and whatever herbs/spices are handy, bit of fresh ground pepper.  A dollop of my homemade mustard if I'm feeling fancy.  I'm not much on sweetening them.  All about the savory salads.

Once the serviceberries were coming on, a handful of those went in pretty much everything. 

I am growing greens so actually went the whole month just eating my own greens.  The bugs destroyed all but one kind this week so greens options are getting a bit thin.  

For meat/eggs....lots of my friend's free range eggs that she lets me "u-pick" without washing or refrigerating.  I ran out late last week and got a bit creative over the weekend.  At work we had canned a goat and no one seemed to want it so I've been eating up the goat meat to free up the jars.  We also got free salmon at work and I took one, cleaned it and am keeping it in the work freezer (a tiny one).  I took a piece home now and then to thaw and cook.

I have a fishing license and could have made more use of that or any use, if things got thin.  I also have good sources of frozen, local free range meat at a couple of farmers markets.

On days I was home, or going to be home in the late afternoon rather than not until late evening, I set up my simple solar cooker so lunch or dinner would be ready.  Even used it for late morning coffee sometimes but that's normal.  A new favorite meal is solar cooked quinoa and lentils with dried tomato and some herbs and a handful of service berries.  When it is done cooking, I thrown on vinegar, oil, pepper and a bit of salt.

Normally I don't add salt because any food not prepped at home is incredibly SALTY which bloats me up like a tic,  My sodium intake was consistently low to the point that on hot sweaty days, I actually included some salt to compensate.

Another result: I saved a boatload of money!  Came in at about half my usual food spend, which is groceries and all meals out and coffee out. So that helps.  I've cut back on meals out, coffee out is rare now, but I do buy pre-made bread at farmers markets and etc.

One factor in the low food bill is that my serviceberry bushes were bonkers so I ate a TON and have 7 or 8 quarts in kombucha vinegar to keep for the off season.  Critters were eating the free potatoes I planted so I harvested those and ate them.  Then all the canning at work resulted in quite a bit of free protein.  I have had coffee in stock and got a gift of another pound of coffee so didn't need to even buy coffee beans.

Still...what I did buy is clearly cheaper than prepared food.  For example, today I restocked with some ingredients, keep the habits going, and spent:  20$ for 4doz eggs and 8.50$ for a weeks worth of veggies.  

I expect another 30$ this week to stock up my coffee, grains, and dry beans/lentils because those are all pretty tapped out. 

I learned that having nuts on hand keeps me from running to the store for fieldwork lunches when I have low supplies of grab-n-go food.   Nuts or seeds and an apple or orange can get me through a day.

There is likely more but I'm supposed to be focused on a webinar...

Incidental Frugality

 I'm doing a month of "no industrial bread type products" as a diet experiment.  I do like my diet experiments...this one did NOT result in intestinal distress.   Suddenly-Keto...that one went bad on me. Oops!

Anyway, this month has been no industrially produced bread, wraps, tortillas, chips, pasta, etc.  No carby things from big factories.  I am buying a bit of bread and maybe a 1x per week sugary treat from local bakers at a farmers market.  As a result, the salt and the processed food are way lower.

As a side effect...my grocery costs are WAY down.

The grainy-carby things I have at home are whole dried hominy and chicos (corn stuff) from a past trip to Santa Fe, some wheat berries (the stuff that comes off the wheat plant before it is ground up into flour), and I recently added some millet because it was cheap and I wanted to try it.

I've been canning dry black beans with the hominy and/or chicos.  EXCELLENT!  It takes the same amount of time and butane to can 4 pints of beans an corn as it would to cook a meal's worth.  I end up with 4 instant meals.  So far I haven't even heated them up.  Just eaten right out of the jar.  I may try it with wheat berries too.  

Lots of lentils with wheat berries.  Cook up in about 30 min and then I take it to work the next day.

Breakfasts have been eggs.  Lately with grated carrot or kohlrabi thrown in and fried up together into sort of a hash thing.   Good.  

I bought a grain mill, manual and small, from thrift a while back and busted that out a couple of days ago.  Turned wheat berries into course whole wheat flour (it's not a great mill but it works and was cheapish).  I added some to a breakfast carrot hash and it made it into more of a fritter.  Then I mixed the rest up like a biscuit dough and slow fried it over a very low flame.  Brought it to work and it was a fine biscuit if a bit heavy.  I'll get better.

The possible downside...is...well...ENORMOUS amounts of fiber.  This is healthy.  And gassy.  Win win??  Not for my colleagues.  But I'm not hungry all the time.

It's making me eat mostly what I cook.  Think before going to a restaurant because there is crappy industrial bread everywhere.  And it's making me really appreciate the local bread makers, especially my favorite guy with his long ferment sourdoughs.  I'm only buying a bit since even artisanal bread is super salty. 

The few times I've eaten at restaurants I've gotten in the habit of going for salad, no croutons.  Then just ignoring any rolls or bread on the side.  Mostly it makes me think before I even go to a restaurant.   A brunch meeting for work was ok. I picked the veggie omelette and skipped the biscuit (those are usually gross anyway).  

My grocery bill is coming in on budget so far and I'd lowered the budget considerably to make room for the increased gas costs.

101 Money Saving Ideas: Numbers 42-59

To review:  Totally bogarting this series idea from Centsible Living with Money Mom on the youtubes.  She's awesome!  Watch her.

42 A dollar a pound, all year round.  This was part of hint #32 and I want to expand on it again because it really works. It's a food purchasing GOAL but not a hard line. So, what can you get this week at the local grocery stores for 1$/lb or less?  USUALLY potatoes, onions and bananas are available year round so those can be staples. All are flexible.  E.g. my favorite soup is potatoes and an onion.  About 4 medium to large potatoes and 1 medium to large onion.  Dice them up, add 4-5 cups of water.  Boil until tender. Eat.  It's super good when sick or tired or sick and tired (so basically every day for me since I find my fellow humans exhausting).  Change it up with spices, a diced boiled egg, drop a raw beaten egg in there and bring to the boil while stirring to make potato egg drop soup.  A bit of lemon juice, lime juice or vinegar in your bowl just before you eat it will make this incredibly delicious.  Mexican spices, Italian, whatever you have, poultry seasoning you can never seem to use up, a knob of ginger diced up ...ANYTHING is good in here.  Maybe not sugar but who knows.
The left overs turn into mashed potatoes eventually.

What else is 1$/lb or less this week?
24oz loaf of bread for 99cents...that's under 1$/lb
Pasta is right at 1$/lb and as a dried product, cooked up it is even a better savings.
Remember that principle with dried beans too if you have a way to cook them!  1lb of dry beans will make 2-4 lbs of cooked.  Canned beans are often 1$/lb but not nearly as good a deal as the dried.  If you don't have good cooking facilities, canned are the better deal.
Frozen veggies, 99cents/lb
2 jumbo cantaloupes for 5$...WEIGH them.  You're bound to find a couple that are 2.5lbs or more making them 1$/lb or less.  I'm almost ready to start carrying a little hanging scale and old onion bag so I can weigh at the Grocery Outlet and etc where fruit and veg is all by the piece or bag.
You may notice I left out all sugary drinks.  Those are never a deal even at under 1$/lb because they are not nutritious.  But if you must drink them (and sometimes I must), then pay less.
You probably won't find coffee and spices this low so techniques on those later in the list (probably)

43  No Plastic Days.  Just TRY to spend money without acquiring plastic!  You may not spend at all or you may spend less.  Be mindful of packaging and of the plastic coated receipt paper!   Once in a while I shop online but that is just acquiring the plastic later.  Also, usually can't check mail on a "no plastic day" because of those damn little windows in the envelopes.  Those CAN just be open without plastic like they used to be or your address could be on the envelope...like the old days.  If only.  I spend time when watching a movie or youtubes tearing those damn things out so I can burn or recycle the envelope  Aggravating.

44  Write a letter.  Sure, the stamp costs you something, but it takes up time you might be spending or online shopping, and you get ZERO targeted ads based on handwritten letters.  Your emails, facebooks, texts and cell phone calls are scanned and you get targeted ads.  If you manage to turn off the snooping on your own email/phone, etc, likely the person on the receiving end did not.  And you get targeted ads.  Try even talking by someone's smart phone. I like to say things like "Nutterbutter ice cream sandwich" or "artisan" and watch the ads roll in next time I'm on the internet.  Creepy man.  Targeted ads are more effective, that's why they do them.  So get targeted for things you don't use, at least. And at best, avoid being targeted.   People also love getting letters. 

45  Review your insurance(s).  I try to do this once a year or so and see if there are savings, if a rate deal has been dropped (e.g. I need to take another cheap defensive driving course in order to get money off my car insurance).  Call the insurance agency, not just email and online.  Get someone on the phone.  It shocks them.  They might drop it a few dollars.  Maybe get some easy online quotes and see if you can get something cheaper.

46  Can you consolidate some of your items/tasks/bills and save $$?  You never know.  A few years back I reorganized, culled and consolidated 2 storage units into 1 slightly larger than the previous "big" unit (heh heh) which save 50$/month.  I'm going to try another cull to see if I can minimize it again and maybe get down a size again...though I like the location.  But you say...why have a storage unit?  Get rid of that sh*t! Well, yes, ideally (see #47) I would do that.  But alas, living in 135sq feet and wanting my furniture for the house being built as we type, I have it in storage.  I am a genetic hoarder so have to downsize in phases.  That's what works for me,

47  Get rid of crap in storage units.  This saves you the storage costs.  If you are lucky, you can sell some of your crap and/or share it out to people who will appreciate and use it.  In #46 I get defensive about why I am keeping my crap in storage.  And another thing...about a 5'x5' portion, 11' tall, of the storage is "live" storage where I keep things like off season clothes, extra food storage containers, a gift bin so I can buy gifts when they are on sale.  The stuff outside that goes through periodic culls.  I'm working on it.  #genetichoarder!

48  Drink Tap Water.  Guess what is in those bottles and gallons of water you buy...TAP WATER.  Maybe it's spring water and maybe it comes from somewhere with "springs" in the name.  Much of the time it's tap water.  It's EXPENSIVE.  Drink tap water.  I bring tap water from work to my house because I haven't bothered to get the well tested (house! HA!  I flatter the shed sometimes).  It's not hard.  You fill about 1 gallon a day and bring it home for drinking and cooking.  Live on the streets?  Well, then you have bigger issues.  Chlorine in your water?  Air it out a bit or get a filter pitcher AT A THRIFT STORE.  I also generally found the filters, still packaged, at thrift stores.  Also, lots of people drink chlorine water.  Maybe work with your town if you don't want it in there.
So, how much is it to drink bottled water which is total BS on so many levels....at least refill the goddamn bottle.
1 qt of bottled water is about $1.50, maybe a buck.  I get a gallon of distilled (for the solar batteries) for a dollar or so.  We'll be nice and say 1$/day for buying bottled water.   Cost of municipal tap water per gallon?  $0.002  on average.  That's 2 onehundredths of a cent per gallon for well water?  I spent 19,000 or so on the well and solar to run it (but the solar does more).  I use about 500gallons a week in the summer when watering the garden.  Less in the winter or rainy season.  So, let's call it 250gallons a week...250/7 = 35/day.   I've used the well for 5 years and 6 months or so... 19000/5.5years = $3555 per year/365 9.45/day cost for 35 gallons.  9.45/35 =   $0.27per gallon!!! Already cheaper than buying water!! Woot woot!   It gets cheaper every time I use it.  I don't waste it to drive down the cost. I 'm very frugal with my water usage.  Aquafers are precious resources and one does not save money by wasting water.

49  Change clothes when you get home.  I hate doing this but I try.  Right now it's so HOT that I change into thin pants and tissue thin shirts before working around the property after work. Easier to wash those.  I keep "work pants" hanging on a hook all year round.  Those get washed less and are sacrificial pants.  They are meant to be worn out and stained and grubbed up.  Changing out of "office worthy" pants and shirts saves those.  It means I've been wearing the same jeans to work for years and my office shirts last for years too.  Boring, but cheap! 

50  The clothes/fabric use chain.  When clothes DO wear out and are not shareable, tradeable, donateable, then what?  For me, they get torn into rags.  Seams on jeans and the waste band are usually strong even after the fabric rots.  I use them to tie up stuff in the garden.  Since I wear 100% cotton most of the time, or 100% wool/linen/natural if at all possible, these things decompose into the soil eventually rather than being there as plastic bits forever (functionally forever...who knows when that sh*t goes away?).   The main body of the clothes get used as wash clothes or reusable rags until they are so bad they become a 1 use rag to be trashed.  These are good for engine oil checking.  Or for wiping up greasy spills and then being used to start fires (in the woodstove...not just random locations).  Elastic off bras and undies has various uses as well...tie up tomatoes etc.  But, has to be gathered up as it won't decompose in a reasonable amount of time.  I keep a bag on a shelf near the other cleaning products for clothes that need to be rags now.  I fish in there for what I need when I run out of wash clothes, or am crafting, or need to start a fire and paper isn't cutting it to get the kindling going.

51  Do something while you stare at the TV/Computer/Whatever.  Watching a movie or show or random youtubes?  Do something.  Lately I've been folding boxes for mustard samples. You probably don't need to do that, but maybe you have mending or you like to knit.  I like to darn socks while I watch a movie or listen to a book.  Don't have any that need darning right now but I do need mustard sample boxes.  In fact, I'm blogging this during a work webinar.  Maybe I shouldn't but the webinar has repetitive bits so when something is being repeated, I type.  Then tune back in when it's new info.

52  Sell something you like to make/do.  This is new to me, but I'm testing it out.  I like to make mustard so I started selling it.  I'm tracking the money to see if the cost/benefit works out in my favor. It takes time and space, 2 things I don't have lots of to spare.  But, I like doing it.  And so far the mustard is selling at a local farmers market.  I'm just above break-even right now and had to do a price adjustment so we'll see.  Some people cook meals for those without time or space, others do sewing alterations, manual labor, or whatever.  It doesn't hurt and might be worth a try.

53  Keep Long Term Goals In Mind.  These would be financial related mostly.  Like I want to retire some day.  Every day I spend half what I earn, I earn a day of NOT WORKING because I have that amount of money saved (hopefully with interest) to pay for that day of retirement.  This is above and beyond my retirement fund and Social Security.  Another goal is having a house, garden and land the way I want.  I hasn't been super cheap getting toward that and compromises have and continue to be made, but if I keep going the way I'm going, I will get there debt free.  When I was trying to buy land I had a cost per square foot so before I spent $$ on something, I figured out how many square feet of land I could buy instead.  It wasn't totally accurate but it helped keep the spending down.

54  Gratitude moments.  I take a moment now and then when I get discouraged with the thrift and just want a giant expensive meal out or a 7$ iced coffee on a no spend day.  I use that moment to think through things in my personal life that I am grateful for.  Many of them end up having to do with being debt free and having my spending mostly under control.  Like I'm always grateful for being debt free.  A bad day at work is less bad when you know you COULD stomp out in a huff and not come back and still not lose your home.  So far that has meant I did not have to stomp out because I had a better perspective on things.  It keeps me on track.

55  Everything is a choice.  You are not a victim of your debt, your costs, your job, people/charities begging you for money, any loans you've given.  Everything you've done, including inhaling, was a choice.  So, move on.  Make a new choice.  Choose to pay the debt off.  Choose to forgive the loans you handed out unwisely or to openly ask for the money back or to sue the bastards.  Do it.  Choose to learn boundaries and enforce them with money.

56  Free Fruit!  Nice segue.  Or not.  Fruit is getting ripe right now.  Time to put the apple picker in the car and the eyes peeled for random fruit trees along the road, in people's yards, in parks.  Always ask if the tree looks like someone owns it or in a town park.  And be mindful of pesticide and herbicides that might be on them.  People spit pits out windows for generations so lots of apples and pears along highways, old RR beds, trails.  Many are delicious.  Some are crap.  Taste them if you feel comfortable.  If it looks like the area has been sprayed (lots of dead veg and/or few bugs) then I pass it up.  But often I pick them.  You get pesticides on grocery fruit too.  Wash it.  Make your own choices (see #55).  A friend has a cherry tree and calls people to pick each year.  I go and I share out the fruit and eat some.  Spent yesterday evening picking serviceberries (which are late this year) and eating them.  Some went into vinegar which will preserve them and flavor the vinegar.  I'll get more for several evenings in a row here.  Other berries are getting ripe.  Pick them.  When someone offers you their home grown fruit say yes, and thank you and enjoy and share something back sometime.

57  Free meat!  I help a friend butcher chickens and ducks and will help her butcher whatever comes up next.  I learn something and always get a bit of free meat with the new skills.  Sometimes I invest in meat with her, like when she bought ducks so grow and butcher.  I paid in for some of the ducks and helped with the meat production.  That wasn't free, but was cheap.  Some people grab roadkill. I haven't yet, but I'm all for it and someday hope to run across a fresh kill when I have my knife and something to put it in.

58  Free veg!  It's zucchini time here.  When someone asks if I want some, I say yes and take it.  Fry it, eat it raw, dry it, bake it, put it in soup.  It's good food.  Eat it.  If you have a freezer, shred it and freeze it.  Drying is my favorite because it becomes differently delicious in soups later.  Also just eating it as dried chips is good.  Don't forget mushrooms and other wild food you can gather beyond the berries noted above.  I know mushrooms aren't really veg but I didn't want to do another entry on this.  Enough already.

59  Grow some flavor.  A pot of herbs or an herb garden, some onions, garlic, peppers, or other flavory things in the garden or a pot will help with all that free zucchini.  And with flavoring that potato soup or other cheap food soups.  Herbs and spices are expensive, buy some seeds or learn to start them from cutting.  I hear you can root bits of basil from plant cuttings.  Maybe.  I have thyme, chives, tarragon, oregano, fennel, horseradish, radishes, 2 types of sage...no 3 types of sage, garlic, walking onions, sorrel (wild and garden), and probably more that I'm not thinking of.   Those all really help when I am grabbing a handful of greens to fry up or make salad.  Grab the herbs or garlic tops or an onion leaf (are the green things on onions leaves?  Blades?)  Anyway, it's cheap and healthy.  I have so much thyme I can dry it for the winter and have tasty soup all year. 

101 Money Saving Ideas: The 1st 11

I'm copying this from Censtible Living with Money Mom, a youtuber I get a big kick, and good ideas, from.  From whom I get kicks and ideas?  Well, let's let the grammar go and move on.

Money Mom is a sweety with a cute supportive husband (as far as one can tell from youtube...I thought that about another youtuber until she got a divorce and talked about the magic of editing!).

Anywhooo, she is doing a series working up to 100 money saving tips.
I am going for 101 because I like prime numbers (asperger spectrum anyone?  anyone?)

These are not in any order other than how they occur to me each time I try to blog them.

1  The MASTER LIST.  This is on my ipodphone (an old iphone from my sister with the sim card removed so now it's more of an ipod than a phone).  It's with me all of the time.  I have subcategories for groceries, hardware, thrift, gardening, etc.   If I'm in a store or at a yard sale or on craigslist or whatever, I can check the list.  I recently, during the 'rona times, added a category of "stock up" items that I don't need immediately BUT could get if they are on an incredible sale

2 Price point list/idea.  I know that if I find organic peanut butter (or other nutbutter) for under 2$/lb, I should get it.  This feeds into that "stock up" part of the master list.  I may have other proteins in stock e.g. beans, eggs, BUT if the peanut butter (shelf stable, long storage life) is on sale that low, I can get a jar or two.  Not more.  Do not overfill the storage space.  I keep an idea of prices on things like chicken feed, shelf stable proteins and grains, hardware bits and pieces (staples, philips head screws, nails, hinges), undies, sox, and other consumables.  But if they aren't on the master list, it's better to go home first and see if I need them.

3 Job market awareness.  I have a job and I like it.  Not looking to quit.  Times though, they are always a-changin'.  So, good to know what's out there, what I could make here or on a move to elsewhere. 

4  Check my supply stock regularly.  I'm better at doing this for food and clothes than for other things but I try to keep up with the other bits like seeds for the garden, hardware odds and ends, lumber.  If you don't know what you have, you don't know what you need or if what you are thinking is a good deal will fit in with what you have. 

5 Put out the word!  Got this one from The Tightwad Gazette years ago and it works.  If there is something you need/want but don't see often or have a pretty low pricepoint on, put out the word.  I have friends who go to flea markets and things more than I do.  If I go, I will buy.  So instead, I let these friends know what I would like and my TOP dollar price.  This worked great when I wanted a row tiller (old fashioned garden thing that is super useful).  They found one at the price within a couple of weeks.  I always look myself for a while first and then wait to see if I really really want it because when you put out the word, you usually get it and you must pay for it.

6  Check the recycling center.  There is a free book bin, cardboard (good for gardening and things), free metal bin, big cans, glass (got 3 perfect 1 quart mason jars a while ago).  Before I go there, I think through things that I can actually use.  Truly this is more of a "projects I'd like to do" than specific things I need.  I want to do more paper bricks for the woodstove in winter but need something to dry them on.  Also I'm selling at a farmers market and need something to put a sign on.  Last time I went to the recycling center I thought through this.  When I got there I found a circle of metal about 2' in diameter painted yellow, in good shape.  Will make a fine sign holder with a bit of wood and a hinge (see above harware bits and bobs).  There were also wire racks out of a fridge or something.  Those will work to dry the bricks on.   A couple of times I've taken things that looked super useful but I didn't end up using.  Those go back for the next person or to someone who admires them.  A half-bucket with a flat side went to a neighbor with horses.  It's made for horses but just looked useful to me.

7 Maintain the vehicles.  I change the oil and check the tires and even check the torque on the lug nuts.  Boring, but keeps them going and keeps me from getting in preventable trouble.  Also keep the tanks full-ish.  (Which reminds me...gas up the truck!)

8  Know the gas prices!  I keep an eye on gas prices each time I pass a station.  I know where it is usually cheapest, but that can change. If I'm in a pricy area and really need fuel, I may get 5 gallons and then fuel fully next time I'm near the cheaper gas.  There is one super cheap station I do not go to because I always lose 10mpg when I buy gas there.  They'd have to be MUCH MUCH cheaper to make it worth it and I don't know if the gas is watery or what. 

9 Be nice.  It's not in my nature, but it gets you cheaper stuff and referrals to cheaper stuff.  Like I was in the hardware store and even though the dude at the counter drives me bonkers, I am nice to him.  He used his own membership card on a purchase I was making and saved me 5$ off 30$. 

10 Shift $$ into the higher yield savings account each paycheck.  I now have the paycheck auto deposited.  The day after payday I go online and check my accounts and shift any extra in checking over into the higher pay savings account. I don't do CDs or longer term things other than retirement right now as I need the liquid cash for paying off construction costs.  That available liquid cash is going to save me about 10% on this phase of construction which is much more than a CD or other short-mid range investment would in my income range.

11 Keep track of spending every day.  I write down my spending every single day.  I reconcile it at the end of each month.  Sometimes I do a mid month check to see how things are going.  Boring but it works.