I confess–I’m not the best coupon organizer. I am good at clipping them, but bad at filing them, and even worse at remembering to use them in the store. However, I recognize the savings potential for using coupons, which is especially important in the current era of rising food prices. But, there is a danger in using coupons.

Often times we found ourselves buying things we didn’t really need just because there was a great coupon deal. We decided to focus our coupon strategy, taking advantage of store sales, coupon-doubling and eBay to maximize savings on the few items we actually used.

How it Works, a Recent Example

Our family likes adding I Can’t Believe It’s Not Butter spray to vegetables such as corn on the cob. It has zero fat, is calorie free, and is generally healthier than real butter alternatives. It is also expensive, especially in the spray bottle packaging. Our local Kroger store recently offered I Can’t Believe It’s Not Butter 2/$3.00 dollars. The $1.50 price was competitive with other stores, including Wal-Mart and another smaller, regional grocery store. The deal also included larger 16oz. tubs, and smaller double packs of 8oz. tubs.

eBay to the Rescue

Unfortunately, I didn’t have any coupons for I Can’t Believe It’s Not Butter. Luckily, there are many people out there making a small living as “coupon clippers,” selling their time to clip coupons on eBay and other coupon exchange sites. It is important to emphasize that selling coupons is technically prohibited according to the terms of use on most manufacturer coupons.  However, coupon clippers make the distinction that they are merely selling their time to clip them, not selling the coupons themselves.

A quick search on eBay shows several auctions for a lot of 10 $0.40/1 coupons for I Can’t Believe It’s Not Butter, expiring at the end of June. The buy-it-now auction price is $1.00 with $0.42 shipping. I ordered a lot of 10 coupons and they arrived a couple days later. Our local Kroger store doubles up to 3 manufacturer coupons per item per transaction up to $1.00, so we will actually save $0.80 on each product we purchase. If we buy just two products the coupons will more than pay for themselves ($1.60 in savings versus $1.42 cost). But the savings don’t stop there. I picked up three spray butters, and my wife picked up another one along with two large tubs that we will use in recipes. Total savings, $4.80 off the retail price. Take away our $1.42 cost to acquire the coupons and we saved $3.38, or roughly 37.5% off the sale price.

Check the Expiration

Notice in the explanation above we only used 6 of the 10 coupons I bought from the eBay coupon clipper. I could have gone back in for a separate transaction and purchased three more units, but based on our average length of use for each item they probably would have expired long before we could have used them up. The $0.70 spray bottles we did buy, and both tubs, will keep in our refrigerators until ready for use, but it is a good idea to check the expiration for any perishables when stockpiling in the manner I’ve described. After all, the point of being frugal is to eliminate waste from our lives, not add more to it!

Do you have a similar coupon strategy?

photo by: ninjapoodles

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Back next week with the Sunday Conversation.  The following is a guest post from Mrs. Micah. Mrs. Micah writes about personal finances, freelancing, and getting out of debt at MrsMicah.com. She also offers blog consulting services at hire.mrsmicah.com.

Previously in the Be a Blogger series, Frugal Dad wrote about capturing the idea when inspiration hits. Whether you use a cell phone, PDA, or even a scrap of paper, it’s critical to get ideas before they slip away. You will forget them.

But that’s only the first part. I have scribbled dozens of phenomenal ideas on paper or written them down in notebooks only to lose the scrap or forget that I even wrote the idea down in the first place.
The second and equally critical thing to do next is collect your ideas.

Then, there’s the third part. You actually have to find the time to carry them out. If you’ve got them all together, you can always pop in and pick which one you’re going to write about today. I find it easier to get a little reminder at a time when I’m free to write. The reminder is usually a short message like “Write guest post for Frugal Dad on being organized!”

I’m going to explore two useful web tools which I use to store ideas and schedule when I’ll do them. If you’re not a blogger and you’ve made it this far, stick around. These tools are useful for anyone without a perfect memory.

How to Use Gmail’s Filters

If you don’t use Gmail, skip down to using Sandy for another way to store ideas online.

Most of us use Gmail on a basic level. Send e-mail, read e-mail, archive e-mail. Search e-mail when we need something. Until recently I was very very mildly organized and had 2 labels I used for storing links I’d e-mailed myself.

But there’s so much more that Gmail can do. For instance, you can use it as a way to store post ideas. Here’s the skinny.

Let’s assume you use the fictional e-mail address google@gmail.com. Thing is, you have more than that one e-mail address. E-mails sent to google+mrsmicah@gmail.com will show up in your inbox, as will e-mails sent to go.ogle@gmail.com. Let’s say that you decide to send every idea as an e-mail to google+ideas@gmail.com.

Now, suppose you set up a filter in Gmail. The image below shows what the second step of that process looks like. When I first clicked on the filters, I entered a +ideas email address in the “From” box.

Now you see my options. I can have it archived right away (which is fine since I’d probably be accessing them as a group) or star it, forward it…even delete it (in case you want to give out google+spam@gmail.com to sketchy sites that require an e-mail address). However, I chose to have it a) marked as read so I don’t worry about it and b) I chose to apply the label “Idea.” Whenever I want now, I can access all my post ideas simply by going to the Idea label. And I can delete the ones I’ve used.

Why do I like the Gmail system? Because you can do it from your e-mail, which I have open most of the time. I’d suggest scheduling a time during the day to collect all your ideas and e-mail them to yourself. Maybe before going to bed? When you change into your PJs and empty your pockets? Or perhaps when you’ve gotten home from work, you transfer them from your PDA.

Using Sandy to Store Ideas or Schedule Them

Now, you can always use Google’s Calendar to schedule your stored ideas, but I prefer a friendly little assistant named “Sandy.” Sandy is someone (ok, a program) I can e-mail to schedule anything I want, including blog posts. She’ll also store blog posts like Gmail, so stay tuned for that.

Here’s how to get Sandy to remind you of something:

After you’ve signed up with Sandy and gotten a special e-mail address (to contact her) and whatnot, you simply send her an e-mail in a format she, being a non-sentient program, can understand.

For example, here’s an e-mail I’d send to get her to remind me to write this post on Thursday 06/19/08 at 7:35pm.

Subject line: – [I don't use a subject line with her, I suppose one might send the message in the subject]

Remind me to write guest post for Frugal Dad on being organized on
06/19/08 at 19:35.

There are a number of commands she’ll understand. I could have said “7:35 pm.” I could have said “in 3 hours” or in “135 hours.” I could have put just 6/19 as the date. Sandy’s homepage has all kinds of information that you can use and lots of examples.

With my settings, an e-mail would have popped into my inbox at 7:20 (giving me 15 minutes to get anything else out of the way) with the subject line “REMINDER: Write guest post for Frugal Dad on being organized (7:35pm).”

So I can set myself up to write about a post days, weeks ahead of time and then forget all about it until the time comes. I could go through my list of ideas from Gmail and schedule myself for one writing session a day, if I wanted. Or I could send myself a reminder to go in there and pick my favorite.

Now for all of you who need a place to store your info. You can always e-mail it to yourself and stick it in a folder manually. But you can also e-mail Sandy and have her add it to your to-do list.

I’d just change it to “Write guest post for Frugal Dad on being organized @todo.” You can find all your to-dos by logging in to the main Sandy site and going to your to-do list page.
They’re deletable, if you want to when you finish the post. And you can e-mail Sandy directly from the site to schedule events…so you don’t even have to visit your e-mail account.

Sandy is also apparently compatible with texting and twitter, I just haven’t used those yet.

Wrapping Up

I hope this hasn’t sounded overly complicated. It’s quite simple really. I switch to my Gmail tab and e-mail ideas to myself. At some point I send a bunch of scheduling e-mails to Sandy. Then when they show up in my inbox, I write the post. And while I still forget some good ideas because I never wrote them down in the first place, this helps me keep a lot more of the good ones.

My Money Blog has also written about Sandy and has some suggestions for using her with another program called Jott. But that’s a whole different post.

My wife and I spent several hours in the emergency room Thursday morning after she took a spill and rolled her ankle. We were fairly certain it was broken, but thankfully the x-rays proved otherwise. She’s in a boot and on crutches, which has left most household duties to me. I’m behind on writing and reading from my feed reader, but I did find a few gems this week around the web.

Marc and Angel put together a great list of 30 Useful Tools Everyone Should Own. Would you believe the only thing I don’t own is a portable GPS? OK, you probably would guess that. With prices coming down on these gadgets I’ll probably pick one up some time this year, but I’ve managed pretty well with Google Maps and an atlas.

The Simple Dollar shared How to Write an Effective Thank You Note. In today’s world of instant, electronic communications, thank you notes are an antiquated way to express thanks. They are also the most effective

Moolanomy has jumped on board the 100 Pushup Challenge. I should probably do this myself as I continue to rehab my shoulder from last year’s rotator cuff repair surgery (what a nightmare that was!).

Simple Mom breaks down how to put together a Zero-Based Budgets for the Home: A Primer. I’m such a sucker for a great budgeting article, and this one doesn’t disappoint! We’ve been on a zero-based budget for well over a year now and for us, it is the best way to go.

My Dollar Plan gives us a rundown in What is Credit Card Arbitrage. I still don’t have the guts to try this, but doesn’t sound quite as scary after reading more.

My Super-Charged Life gives us 7 Ways to Take Personal Responsibility and Live a Better Life. I’m so weary of the lack of personal responsibility in our society.

PT Money shares All-Inclusive Resort: My Experience. I’ve got vacation on the brain, and this one didn’t help!

The Wisdom Journal reminds us that Creditors Have Better Memories than Debtors. I’ve been on both sides of the lending fence, and he’s right!

Cool Site of the Week
Pop Top Ranks – Track your favorite blogs from a number of categories. Here’s a look at Frugal Dad’s stats page.

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photo by: bradleypjohnson

The following is a guest post from Miranda Marquit. Miranda edits information about debt consolidation for DestroyDebt.com.

There is a lot written about the benefits of frugal living, and even tips on how to save money and live frugally. But one of the things I had trouble with as I began to live more frugally was getting started. Just ending the bad habits wasn’t good enough — and it was overwhelming to go “cold turkey.” Here are some things that helped me start living frugally:

Know the difference between needs and wants.

This is one of the most important aspects of living frugally. My husband and I tracked our spending for two months, just to see where all the money was going. Then we analyzed our spending habits. Were we buying things we didn’t need? Of course we were! We also discovered that some of our “needs” — things like the most expensive juice or eating out twice a week — weren’t really needs at all.

One way we learned to distinguish between needs and wants was to have a “waiting period.” Could we do without it for the waiting period? If we bought it, how long did we think we would actually need the item? If it turns out that we can get by easily without the item, we don’t buy it.

Pay for wants with money you already have in hand.

Life without a few wants would be a little grim. A few well-chosen, unnecessary, pleasures can make life more enjoyable. But when one lives frugally, one doesn’t spend a lot of money on extravagant wants. And one certainly doesn’t pay for wants with borrowed money. Part of our journey to get started living frugally was to institute a rule that all wants had to be paid for with ready cash — and only after our needs (and this includes setting aside money for an emergency fund and for retirement) had been taken care of. This meant that when we wanted a new video game system, we had to save up our ready cash for a couple of months.

Another thing that can help is to have an “allowance.” If you can count on regular income, and if you have enough extra after your needs, you can give yourself an allowance. But once that money is gone, you have to realize that it is gone. My husband and I have an “allowance” for an annual summer art fair with vendors from all over the country. We take cash, and leave the cards at home. Once our “allowance” is gone, it is gone. This helps us carefully consider our purchases, so that we only get what we really like, rather than coming home with a bunch of “stuff” that does little more than clutter the house.

Use a list

Every week before we do the shopping, my husband and I go through the house and make a list of things that we need. When we go to the store, we buy only what is on the list. If we have some “want money” available, we can use that for things not on the list. Shopping with a list can help you cut down on impulse buys. Another thing that helps? Look at the items in your cart before heading to the check-out line. Did some unplanned wants find their way into the cart?

Replace more expensive habits with less expensive habits

One of the best ways to develop new habits is to replace the old ones with better. Think of the expensive things that you do, and replace them with less expensive options. Instead of eating out, plan a special dinner that you make at home. Buy slightly more expensive ingredients, or ingredients for a more exotic meal than you normally eat. It makes the dinner special, but doesn’t cost near as much as eating out. My son loves “movie night” at home more than going to a theater. We make popcorn and sit on a blanket in the living room. It’s a little bit different, and doesn’t cost near what going to the theater does.

There are many less expensive activities that have the bonus of creating quality time with the family. Walks, bike rides, camping, trips to the park, sledding and other activities are inexpensive and promote family togetherness. Also, look for free and inexpensive activities locally.

Frugal living is a lifestyle. It can be hard to get started, but if you take the time to plan your moves and take a hard look at your needs and wants, you can change your habits so that you are living in a way that not only saves you money, but also provides you life satisfaction as a family.

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Student loan debt in America is becoming an ever increasing crisis. The average student leaves college with over $45,000 in debt and in 2007 students borrowed $18.5 billion, up 6% from 2005-2006. This growing trend is causing many young Americans to question if college is worth the investment all together. Also, many graduates can not afford to pursue social, teaching, and civil jobs after college because their incomes are just too low to pay off the large loan debts needed to graduate. Charity for Debt is a new non profit, which hopes to help with this alarming trend by decreasing student loan debt in America through a unique process.

Charity for Debt connects students who have large student loan debt with sponsoring donors who will pay down their debt at $20 per hour in exchange for time spent volunteering at a local charity the donor chooses. Sponsored students work an average of 5 hours per week, earning $100 per week, paid directly to the student’s loan company. Donors usually give $1,000 to sponsor a student for 40 hours of volunteer time and are typically individuals or small businesses. Students compose weekly journals describing their activities, positive outcomes, and takes photos of their experiences. This content is then captured on the student’s online volunteer portfolio where sponsoring donors can easily see and comment on the results of their donated dollars. The student gets their debt paid off for helping a great cause and the donor can help the student and the charity at the same time, doubling the good will of the donated gift!

The Charity for Debt founders (Jonathon and Brandon) are two young, IT oriented individuals with entrepreneurial backgrounds who hope to positively change the world with their model and business expertise. They have already been contacted by a NBC Today Show reporter about a potential news story once a pilot program has been started. Jonathon and Brandon are currently trying to raise $10,000 to begin two pilot programs in Washington, DC and Dallas, TX. They have raised $6,000 so far. This unique approach to helping the student debt crisis, supplying reliable volunteers to charities, and creating transparency for its donors could bring them the success they deserve.

The preceding content was a guest post by Jonathon Lunardi, co-founder of Charity for Debt. Jonathon and I shared a few thoughts via Twitter, and then email, on the student loan industry and his mission at Charity for Debt. I asked him for some information I could pass along to my readers, because this is such a fascinating concept.

To view more about this model and become involved by donating, signing up as a volunteer, or partnering as a charity/non profit, please visit CharityForDebt.org.

Is sneaking in candy to a movie theater being frugal or being cheap (and dishonest)?

I posed that question to the Wise Bread forums a couple weeks ago and received some interesting responses. It seems a majority of people there think the practice is acceptable, as long as there aren’t signs posted specifically forbidding the practice.

I’m interested to get your feedback as well, and I’ll share a few of my thoughts on the subject.

Here’s a copy of my original Wise Bread post:

My wife and I went somewhere last weekend we had not been in a long, long time – a movie theater! I hit the boxed-candy-for-a-dollar section at a nearby Target and picked up a couple boxes of our favorites to “sneak in” the theater. My wife said I was a cheapskate.

Normally, I would thank her for the compliment, but this time her comment had me thinking. Is sneaking in candy to a theater being cheap, or being frugal? I don’t normally think of myself as being cheap, but in this case maybe she’s right. But $3.00 for a box of M&Ms?!

After giving this scenario some thought I’ve come to the conclusion that sneaking candy into the movies is cheap, and possibly dishonest. After all, concessions seem to be where most theaters make their money (along with a percentage from ticket sales). While bringing in your own candy may appear to be a smart frugal move, and it is admittedly much cheaper than buying from the concessions stand, the smarter move would be to simply skip the candy altogether. And if I just had to satisfy a sweet tooth I should suck it up and buy a box of $3.00 M&Ms from the theater.

Some of you are probably shaking your heads wondering how the “Frugal Dad” could come to such a conclusion. Well, maybe it is the eternal capitalist in me that sees that a business has the right to sell refreshments and request outside refreshments not be brought in. After all, if I don’t like that policy I can stay home and wait for the DVD from Netflix.

I also think this folds into my way of thinking – live frugal, but stop to smell the roses. In the grand scheme of things, a box or two of movie candy or a large tub of popcorn is really not going to make or break us. As long as we budget for the expense, and pay cash, there isn’t any reason why I can’t treat the family to a few splurges every now and then.

If you do decide to take in your own candy and snacks it helps if you have an oversized handbag or purse available.

Ask the readers: So what’s your take on this issue, moviegoers?

“The best time to plant a tree was twenty years ago. The second best time is now.” Chinese Proverb

I won’t pretend to be happy about paying higher prices at the gas pump. I know there are many families that are really struggling and many industries, such as shipping and travel, that are being particularly hard hit. Politicians are using the opportunity to invent new catch-phrases that insult our understanding of basic economics in the name of getting votes.

Taxing “Big Oil” is a Big Mistake

I’ll attempt to keep this post mostly apolitical, but I can’t make any promises. One of the two remaining contenders for president recently said, “I’ll make oil companies like Exxon pay a tax on their windfall profits, and we’ll use the money to help families pay for their skyrocketing energy costs and other bills.” Oh really? That sounds an awful lot like socialism to me. After all, it was Karl Marx himself who said, “From each according to his ability, to each according to his need.”

Besides, taxing oil companies to reduce profits only hurts the very constituency politicians claim to be protecting. 98% of these companies are owned by shareholders. The large majority of those shareholders are mutual fund investors belonging to the middle class (or institutional investors managing retirement wealth for that same class). If we begin taxing an oil company’s “windfall profits,” causing a decline in shareholder value, aren’t we simply cutting our noses off to spite our faces?

So What is the Answer?

The answer is buried beneath us in places like ANWR, the Gulf of Mexico and the Midwest. The answer is domestic drilling. It is the fastest way to increase supply and reduce our demand for foreign oil. Many of the same politicians who today demand an answer to our energy crisis are the very ones who for years blocked attempts to increase domestic drilling. Environmental concerns are real, but efforts have been made to improve drilling technology to lessen the effects on the environment.

Is It Enough?

No matter what we do as a country, world-wide demand for oil continues to skyrocket. It is this world-wide demand that is driving up the international price of oil. Places like China and India are consuming far greater amounts of oil, per capita* (see comments for correction), than the United States. So even after considerably reducing our consumption of oil domestically, we still may not see any easing in pricing as other countries continue to increase consumption.

*I’m including a banner below that links to the website, AmericanSolutions.com, which is sponsoring a grass roots effort to collect 1 million signatures to present to Congress demanding something be done to “further exploration of proven energy reserves to reduce our dependence on foreign energy sources from unstable countries.” At the time of this writing some 843,000 citizens have already signed their name.

photo by giblee