I recently had an occasion to create some sawdust building our square foot garden box.  All that cutting and drilling left a small pile of sawdust behind, and instead of simply scraping it up and throwing it away, I wondered how I might be able to reuse it.  It turns out sawdust has several little-known, but highly effective, uses around the house. From weed killing to cleaning up spills, sawdust is a handyman’s most useful leftover.

It is cheaper than Roundup.  Many people are unaware of sawdust’s weed-killing prowess, particularly dust made from walnut and cedar wood varieties. The sawdust not only suppresses weeds similar to mulch or other cover products, but as it decays it creates soil conditions that are not conducive to plant life - even weeds. Carefully sweep sawdust into crevices you don’t want weeds or grass to grow, such as expansion joints in concrete or in between stepping stones in your backyard.

Let it snow, let it snow, let it snow.  Around the holiday season a small pile of sawdust can be mixed with some glue and a little white paint, and used to coat your favorite holiday crafts to simulate snow. Add some glitter for a special holiday sparkle. This also works particularly well when creating a snowy ground for a small nativity scene or similar Christmas display.

Make your own sawdust briquettes to use as firestarters.  Have you ever used those soap-like bricks of highly flammable gel to get a fire going? With sawdust and a few other products found around the house you can make your own fire starter briquettes. First, melt some wax in a large Teflon pot - candle wax will do the trick. Begin slowly adding sawdust until the mixture becomes less pliable. Pour up the hot wax/sawdust mixture in some non-stick muffin or cupcake pans and allow them to cool. Slide out the “cake” mixtures and voila, homemade sawdust briquettes guaranteed to get your wood-burning fire going.

Sawdust is super absorbent.  Sawdust has fantastic absorbent quality, and soaks up just about any home spill, from motor oil to a bucket of paint. Stash some in your garage and throw it out over a spill if you kick over a can of motor oil. Push it around the spill with an old mop and watch it soak up the spillage.

Trade in those snowchains.  This tip is particularly relevant for drivers that must battle snow and ice on their daily commutes. Sprinkling some sawdust in a snowy rut can help your car’s tires gain traction, and prevent the snow and ice underneath from growing further compacted. As a side benefit, it is biodegradable so you are not hurting the environment by throwing out some synthetic, commercial mixture.

The next time you create some sawdust, remember these tips before sweeping it up and trashing it.  You will save a little money and do your part to help the environment.

Image Credit:  steve_lodefink

I did something last Friday I haven’t done in a very long time. I visited a fast food establishment for lunch. Yes, I have been out to eat a couple times in the last few months, but not for lunch, and not fast food. I was surprised at how expensive the so-called “value meals” were. I frequently see people looped around drive-thru windows on their lunch hour buying $6-$7 “value” meals. It got me to thinking - just how much wealth are we chewing away on our lunch hour?

The costs of fast food. These days the cost of everything seems to be going up, and few product costs are inflating faster than food. With the cost of milk, meats, eggs, and even bread rising across the country, fast food chains are passing the associated increases along to customers. As the price of eating out increases, so does the opportunity costs we pay by not pocketing that money and brown-bagging a lunch made from home.

Costs per month. The brilliance behind “the latte factor,” made famous by author David Bach, was that it got consumers to think long term. Carrying daily costs out to a weekly, monthly and yearly figure was a wake-up call to those who considered a $3 expense to have a minimal impact on their overall financial life. Take fast food for example. A $6 combo meal (which typically includes a drink, sandwich and side order of fries or salad) eaten every day of the five-day workweek will cost customers $30 a week. That $30 a week, times four weeks, adds $120 a month to your food budget.

Costs per year. Continuing our fast food example, that $120 monthly fast food bill becomes a $1,440 annualized expense. Staggering, isn’t it? Imagine the things we could do with $1,400! You could open a Roth IRA, start a 529 plan for your kids, take a couple courses at a local college to further your career, start an emergency fund, or take a paid-for vacation. All for the price of a $6 cheeseburger, french fries and soda. Next time I’m craving a cheeseburger, I think I’ll just make my own from home.

I picked on fast food establishments for purposes of this example, but they are not the only place we throw away hundreds of dollars every year. Pack-a-day smokers spend nearly the same amount to fund their habit, as do beer-drinkers and wine consumers. My vice used to be bottled soft drinks from my old company’s break room. I probably bought a drink or two a day for years over the time I worked there, at $1.00 a pop! All the while I complained about a $500 minimum investment required by a mutual fund I was interested in - where was I going to get $500? I should have started with the vending machine.

I didn’t get to my feed reader as often as I normally do this past week, but when I did I found some real gems out there that I will share with you below.

The response to yesterday’s “Ask the Reader” question has been positive - with most of you agreeing that I should write when inspired to write, and not write when uninspired. Fair enough. I will continue to post once a day, but on the occasions I have more to say I’ll include an afternoon post.

As a couple of you mentioned, writing part time is tough, particularly as you take on new assignments, etc. I never want to get into the routine of posting something just for the sake of posting it. Thanks to those of you who shared your comments.

Now, for the roundup:

My Super-Charged Life shared his thoughts on new car purchases in, “Please Let Me Talk You Out of a New Car.” Couldn’t agree more with this one!

Problogger had a great post this week that every blogger should read. “20 Types of Pages Every Blogger Should Consider” is a great rundown.

Building Camelot recently posted an incredible resource for guys entitled, “101 Awesome Sites for Men, Husbands and Fathers.” Frugal Dad was honored to be included (#17).

The MotherLoad shared an awesome parenting tip in, “Just Call Me Ticketmaster.” This ticket concept is brilliant for little ones because they value quantity (2 of anything is better than 1 of anything) in a reward system.

The Wisdom Journal shared his ideas for “What Retirement Means to Me.” Retirement means different things to different people, so it’s a good idea to start thinking about what those goals are now. As Ron mentions, it’s also a good idea to make sure your spouse shares those same goals.

The Good Human shared a quick tip to “Reuse Leftover Water.” It was short and sweet, but generated a couple ideas for watering our Square Foot Garden.

Mommy Gets Paid provides proof that it is possible to eat healthy and be frugal in “Saving Money on Organic Groceries.”

Chance Favors gave some great ideas on getting the most out of StumbleUpon. You fellow “Stumblers” out there need to read, “15 Actionable Ideas for Achieving StumbleUpon Happiness.”

Quest for Four Pillars gave us “Even More Reasons Not to Trust Your Real Estate Agent.” Some sneaky tactics described.

Gather Little By Little provided a timely post, “Homemade Car Cleaning Products.” With the weather warming up, and the pollen spreading around, one could spend a small fortune on frequent car washes. I plan to put a few of these into practice this summer.

I am considering a move to change the posting frequency here at Frugal Dad, and I wanted to gather input from my readers. Currently, I post once daily, including a weekend roundup and Saturday morning book review. Going forward, I will incorporate short reviews of books as part of larger posts on theme with my readings. The dedicated, Saturday morning book reviews were not very popular gauging from the lack of comments. And that is alright with me; to be quite honest they are a chore to crank out each week and I can use this time to deliver more frugal living content. My 52 Books in 2008 mission lives on, however I will no longer write about each book in great detail.

Back to posting frequency - what are your thoughts on twice daily blog posts? As a fellow blog reader myself I have mixed emotions. Like most of you, my feed reader subscription list is pretty long (93 blogs, at last count), and I rarely get to all of them each day. When a blog posts twice a day, it puts me that much further behind. However, if I enjoy the content I look forward to morning and early afternoon posts to help break up the day.

What say you, readers? Please share your thoughts on the one or two posts per day dilemma in the comments below.

The following is part of Frugal Dad’s weekly series, “So You Want to Be a Blogger?” which chronicles the development and optimization of a blog’s lifecycle.

So where were we before that interruption caused by last week’s surge in traffic? Oh, that’s right. We had identified a topic, audience and registered our domain. Now it is time to select a hosting service to serve as the all important back end for our blog. Think of a host as the one that serves up all the content behind the pages of your blog. The following is a list of things to consider when selecting a host.

• Cost. Like anything else you can pay as much or as little for hosting depending on a variety of factors. Bandwidth, storage space, domains allowed, email accounts, and database features are all examples of the features offered by most typical blog hosting services.

• Bandwidth. The amount of bandwidth allowed by most hosts ranges from 3,000GB to 6,000GB monthly for beginner plans. Other hosts allow unlimited bandwidth for a higher price. Think of bandwidth as fuel in your car’s tank. Once you’ve used up all the gas your car can’t go any further. Same with your blog. Once you have maximized your monthly allocated bandwidth your host will not allow your blog to be accessed, and visitors will see an ugly message indicating your site has exceeded its bandwidth limits. It isn’t likely you will have to contend with this problem early on, but plan on having a little more than you think you will ever need to avoid any temporary interruption in your site’s uptime.

• Storage Space (disk space). Similar to bandwidth, storage space limits fluctuate depending on your selected plan. The more disk space you have the more files, pages, and emails you will be able to store on your host’s server.

After much deliberation I decided to go with HostGator, primarily because I knew someone hosting a blog there, and their introductory price was tough to beat. Setup was fairly intuitive with a one-click WordPress installation on the server. I downloaded a WordPress template and was up and blogging in less than an hour (from the time I received my account information from HostGator).

Be sure you understand the host’s backup plan, and create a backup schedule yourself to create a second layer of redundancy. I learned this lesson the hard way when I did something to corrupt my site’s files on the server. Now would be a good time to discourage messing around with template code, MySQL installations, etc. if you aren’t completely comfortable with what you are doing. Fortunately, my host backs up their servers once a week, so I was able to ask for a recovery back to their latest restore point. Unfortunately, I lost a few days of posts and template changes. Tip: Subscribe to your blog’s email subscription service and hang on to the emails. I was able to “recreate” my posts not included in the database restoration from my emailed articles.

Ask the Readers: Feel free to share your hosting experience in the comments section. I was hoping to include a list of hosts and some short reviews, but honestly I just don’t know that much about many of the other hosts out there.

With NCAA College Basketball’s March Madness in full swing I thought a post about “Cinderellas” would be particularly appropriate. I’m not referring to Cinderella the step-daughter turned Disney princess, I am referring to a dark-horse team, usually from a small conference, that knocks off the top seeds to make a run at the Final Four. It’s happened a few times, and when it does the team is instantly branded a “Cinderella” after the inspiring climb from obscurity to instant fame.

There are no Cinderellas. Some teams take offense to being called a Cinderella, because they felt they had just as much shot at the title as the other guys. The label is frequently used to slight their accomplishments by insinuating “they got lucky.” Sometimes luck plays a part in it, but most Cinderellas pull off the upset because they out-worked, out-hustled, out-coached, and out-played their opponent. The pinnacle moment in their sports careers comes as a result of hours of preparation, workouts, shoot-arounds, two-a-days, and film study.

How does this apply to finances? Many of the wealthiest people in our country are also some of the most envied. Sure, we all would like to be Bill Gates for a day, but why do so many people speak ill of successful people like Gates? Is it jealousy? Or is it the realization that they don’t have the fortitude, the work ethic, the determination to be as successful as those in the wealthy class.

“I guess it is easy if you receive an inheritance.” Believe it or not, most millionaires are self-made, first-generation rich. They do not stand to inherit a large sum of money ala Paris Hilton. They did not strike it rich in the lottery, or win a giant lawsuit. They worked every single day for many, many years at their craft. They built multi-million dollar businesses from card tables in their living rooms and heads full of ideas. They led large corporations of hundreds of employees. They spent hundreds of hours writing, editing and marketing their book ideas to anyone who would listen. These millionaires did not become overnight successes.

How can you become a financial “Cinderella?”

• Get out of debt, for starters. Carrying around debt is like trying to climb Mt. Everest with a fifty pound anvil tied to your back.

• Turn off the television and read to learn something. Knowing the last five winners of Survivor won’t make you a success, but studying these five winners will: Warren Buffett, Donald Trump, Zig Ziglar, Dave Ramsey, and Dale Carnegie.

• Stop trying to impress people at red lights you will never meet again. The average new car payment in America is $475 a month. Sell that sporty new car, buy an old, reliable, used car with cash and drive it until the wheels fall off. Keep driving used cars the remainder of your life and deposit $475 into a mutual fund every single month. In thirty years you will have over $1 million dollars. Don’t believe me? See for yourself.

• Don’t mortgage away your future. Stay well under the 28/36 suggested debt-to-income and payments-to-income ratios (suggested by the lending industry, primarily). I personally wouldn’t tie up more than 20% of my take-home pay in housing. Doing so would mean less to save and invest, and that’s a trade off I’m not willing to make to score extra square footage.

• Practice frugality in all areas of your life. Buy clothes on sale; and only when you need them. Avoid paying for name brands when quality alternatives, or homemade solutions, exist. Be a frugal grocery shopper. Eat at home; it is healthier and less expensive. Invest in yourself; you will live longer and pay less for it in medical bills and insurance premiums.

Finally, after a couple decades of sacrifice, determination, and dedication you could become an overnight success, and be called a financial “Cinderella” yourself. Do not take offense, because you can proudly reflect on the effort you invested to reach your financial goals.

Watch the commercial that inspired this post: There Are No Cinderellas

Image Credit: MonsterShaq2000

What is the first word that comes to mind when I say the word frugal. Cheap? If so, you are not alone. Most people tend to incorrectly associate being frugal with being cheap, when in fact they are two entirely different ways of looking at financial life. Dictionary.com defines frugal as “prudently saving or sparing; not wasteful.” The same online dictionary service defines cheap as “stingy; miserly.” But the differences don’t stop with the words’ definitions. Frugal people spend, give and consume a little differently than their”cheaper” counterparts.

Followers of frugality generally believe in being lightweight consumers of resources, whatever those resources may be. For instance, many frugal people prefer to make meals from scratch rather than paying several times for the cost of equivalent foods at a restaurant. Cheap people also frequently look for deals, but still could be heavy consumers of resources. Many cheap people will buy things on sale just because they are on sale, not because they really need them. Frugal individuals hunt for sales, too, but buy only enough to live on for the immediate future.

Need more evidence? I’ll use myself as an example. I appreciate value in a product, even if it costs more than a cheaper alternative. My time is important to me, so I’ll pay a little more for convenience items in a pinch, or shop at a nearby store to reduce the commute time to drive to another area just to save a couple dollars. I recognize good service, and am willing to tip extra to show my appreciation when I receive it. In fact, I typically leave minimum 20% tips when we dine out and receive exceptional service. After all, we don’t eat out that often, and the two or three dollar difference in 10% and 20% doesn’t change my world much, but it may mean the world to our server. I enjoy giving to help family members, friends and strangers. In fact, one of my life goals is to become so wealthy that I can play Secret Santa and give a lot of it away.

The typical cheap person generally displays the polar opposite qualities. When it comes to shopping, many cheapskates will drive all over town to save a few cents on a gallon gasoline, or a loaf of bread. These types will pass up sales on quality products because the final price is still higher than the cheaper alternative. Many would never consider tipping anything above the 10% rule, even if it meant counting out the $3.90 on a $39 bill - come folks, round up and live a little!

The one thing I have found that frugal folks have in common with cheap folks is there willingness to give, however they typically do it in different ways. Frugal individuals enjoy making monetary donations for causes they believe in, while their cheaper counterparts prefer to donate non-monetary gifts such as their time, their services, etc. Both types of givers are required for most charitable programs to be successful, so there is a place for each type, and I’m certainly not discounting the good deeds others have done without shelling out cash.

I honestly believe there is a little of each category in all of us (by “us” I mean those minding their money). I encourage you to think about ways you may be perceived as “cheap” and move towards frugality. I should take my own advice here and stop trying to buy the 1000-count cheapo napkins at wholesale clubs that my wife insists could double for sand paper. I think I’ll make her day and show up with a few packs of Bounty napkins next time I’m out (I have two coupons!).