Last year I justified the expense of a year-long gym membership as an attempt to get into better shape. I did pay cash for the expense, and because I paid up front I received a few additional months as a bonus. Unfortunately, that membership is coming to an end in August, so I am beginning to think more about frugal ways to continue my exercise program at home. I’ve set a $200 budget for outfitting a home gym with a few key pieces of strength training equipment, and some additional workout gear. Here is a look at the things I’ll need to buy, and my budget for each item.

Shoes ($40). I’ve been cursed with bad feet (thanks Dad). A good pair of shoes is a necessity for me, but I refuse to pay $100+ for a pair of the latest Nike Air “Whatevers,” so I’ve been looking around at various online shoe stores and a few local sports shops. With a good pair of shoes I can find plenty of places to walk, and even run a few intervals for cardio training. I am not normally brand conscious when it comes to shopping, but shoes are the rare exception. I have a wide, flat foot and have found that New Balance (which typically comes in wide) is the most comfortable shoe for my feet. Because I usually destroy the inside of the shoes before the outside, I try to extend their life by picking up a sole insert or two before recycling them as my dedicated “lawn” shoes used for cutting grass, gardening, etc.

Stopwatch ($25). I don’t personally need one because my old Timex Ironman still serves me well. I’ve replaced the battery and the strap from the original, but it is still ticking. And to think some people pay thousands for a Rolex that doesn’t tell time any better than mine! Watches with a stopwatch feature, or a dedicated stopwatch, are a necessity when running intervals, measuring rest between weight lifting sets, etc.

Weight Bench ($85). A sturdy weight bench can be used to perform a variety of exercises, both with free weights and your own body weight. I like to use dumbbells for curls, flies, bench presses, dips, etc. Some benches also come with attachments for leg extensions and leg curls. Though it isn’t necessary, an overhead rack to perform bench presses using a full-sized barbell is a nice feature. However, this usually adds significantly to the price and the space required to store the bench. Since I’ll probably be using a small area of our back patio my options are fairly limited here.

Dumbbells ($50) . Used dumbbells are pretty easy to find on places like Craigslist, or at a used sporting goods store. The problem with dumbbells is that you need a variety of weights to do different types of exercises, but buying ten different sizes can get expensive. I’ll probably buy a heavy set for presses and a lighter set to use for curls, triceps work and flies. Besides, after tearing my rotator cuff a year or so ago and having surgery to repair, I avoid overly heavy weights as a rule.  Eventually, I hope to stumble upon a set of Powerblocks, or a similar set of dumbbells which features the ability to select your desired weight from a single rack and one pair of dumbbells.

Of course, this is not an exhaustive list of potential home gym equipment.  Cardio machines, punching bags, and exercise balls and mats are also popular additions, but the items listed above will at least get you started.  I’d be interested to hear from those of you who have setup a home gym.  What other pieces of home gym equipment have you found to be the most useful?  Are there any other sources of purchasing cheap, reliable equipment?

photo by A_of_DooM

Anyone who has carried a heavy load of debt is keenly aware of its ability to strain your budget and your relationships, but is it possible that being deep in debt has physical side effects as well? New research indicates that owing too much money causes physical stress that is detrimental to our overall health. Add this to the many reasons to make a plan to get out of debt.

Stating the Obvious

The number of families across America saddled with high levels of debt is both staggering, and troubling. Unfortunately, we’ve been part of that statistic since running up debt mostly attributed to my attempt to return to school and finish an undergraduate degree. Since that time getting out of debt has been our number one priority, but for others it hangs around as sort of reminder of past financial sins. Whatever the case, keeping debt around has many negative consequences, and not all of them are directly related to finances.

Limited Options, Missed Opportunities

One of the biggest reasons not to get into debt is because it has a way of limiting your options. At work, those deep in debt are many times forced to stay in a bad job because relocating is simply not an option when living paycheck to paycheck. At home, debt increases the incidents of money fights between couples, many times in front of their children, who ultimately suffer the most stress worrying about their parents’ relationship.

High levels of debt affect our ability to be givers, and many times forces us to pass on the opportunity to donate to a cause we believe in. Think back to when you were in debt, or maybe you are still struggling to climb out, as we are. How many times have you heard of a neighbor losing everything in a fire, or a local child struggling with a serious illness, and think - I sure would like to help them, financially, but I just can’t afford it. We can’t afford it because we are sending the money we would like to donate to banks and credit card companies.

Financial Peace

Now imagine for a moment that you are debt free, and you have that 6-month emergency fund in place, and you are saving for retirement and your kid’s college plans, and towards that next car you plan to buy with cash. You aren’t worried about paying the next utility bill, or insurance premium, or prescription refill. You are now able to quietly help those in your community when the time comes. Imagine if entire neighborhoods became debt free. Imagine an entire city. Dave Ramsey was right when he described debt freedom as “financial peace,” because it is this feeling of calm that enters your life that makes all the sacrifices to get there so worth it.

photo by pedrosimoes7

Over the last several weeks I’ve shared our plans to spend the economic stimulus check. Initially, we planned to divide the $1,800 three ways, saving some, spending some, and using the remaining amount to pay down debt. Then we leaned towards just putting it all in our emergency fund. In the end, we decided to scrap both plans. When I opened the mailbox last week and finally saw that check had arrived I made an impulsive decision, but not the kind I would have made ten years ago.

Debt Repayment is a Natural High

People who are clinically addicted to shopping often report a “natural high” experienced when they purchase something. The feeling is usually followed by post-purchase guilt over the expenditure, and is only remedied after buying something else. Well, I’m now addicted to the euphoric feelings produced by paying off debt. I took that $1,800 rebate check, drove right past Best Buy and Target, and immediately deposited it in the bank. The next morning I confirmed it had posted to our account and scheduled an online payment to my credit card in the amount of $1,800. And so after weeks of waiting for the check to arrive it was gone in a matter of hours.

Do I Regret the Decision to Pay Down Debt?

Not one bit. If I had used the stimulus check to buy a new sofa (something we do need), a 42″ plasma television (something we don’t need, but sure would be nice for football season!), or some other material purchase I would probably be writing a different article about buyer’s remorse and the dangers of impulse spending. However, I resisted the urge to spend the tax rebate check on such items, and was excited to see that credit card balance drop by $1,800 overnight.

It All Boils Down to Contentment

We are fairly content with our current possessions, and I would have to think long and hard to come up with something that I really want, or need, that I don’t already have. Sure, my vehicle is seventeen years-old, and the leg on our sofa is broken, and my computer was purchased around the turn of the century, but all those things still serve me well. The truck still runs, I repaired the sofa leg myself, and I’ve made some small upgrades to the computer to extend its useful life. No sense in replacing these things just for the sake of getting something new. So when that stimulus check arrived it was a relatively easy decision to simply drop it on our remaining credit card debt.

photo by: Daquella manera

How do you plan to spend (or how did you spend) your economic stimulus check?

With less than 200 days (185, to be exact) until Christmas it is comforting to know that our budget debacles of previous years will not repeat themselves. For the last several years, the weeks leading up to Christmas were often spent hunting last-minute gifts while trying not to disrupt the delicate balance of our household budget. In the early years of our marriage we frequently turned to credit cards to foot holiday bills, but fortunately we recognized that was not a sustainable habit for financial success. For the last few years we have budgeted small amounts from the paychecks leading up to Christmas, but that means several trips to stores or rounds of online buying, and doesn’t exactly help spread Holiday cheer.

Christmas Savings Fund to the Rescue

A couple days after Christmas last year we decided to do something that up to that point we had never been able to do–save for an event and not touch the money for another purpose. We opened a savings account at our bank (I have since moved it to ING Direct), and scheduled transfers in the amount of $25 per paycheck, or $50 per month, to our “Christmas Savings” account. Next year, when we are ready to do our Christmas shopping, we will transfer the money to our primary checking account and take care of all our Christmas gift purchases at once.

What About Left-Overs?

If you are as frugal with your gift purchases as you are with your own purchases throughout the year, you will likely have some amount left over in your Christmas savings account. With these surplus funds you could get a head start on funding next year’s Christmas savings account, make an extra payment on debt, send a little to the kids’ college funds, or my personal favorite–give it away to someone who needs it more than you.

After reading the inspiring book about the life of Larry Stewart, Santa’s Secret, our family is beginning a tradition of giving away $100 to a complete stranger during the Christmas season. This year, we are planning to go out for breakfast on the morning of Christmas Eve and leave a $100 tip to our server. You never know what kind of impression such a random act of kindness may have on someone, and their family. Imagine a struggling single mom working at a Waffle House on Christmas Eve, wondering how she will fill the stockings for her little ones at home. That $100 could mean the difference in her kids continuing belief in the spirit of Christmas, or disappointment on Christmas morning. For us, that is what Christmas is all about!

When the temperatures outside our approaching 100 degrees it is hard to even think about Christmas some six months away. However, now is the perfect time to start planning for the expense! By spreading out the costs of presents and gift-giving throughout the year, you will feel less of a pinch around the holidays and be able to enjoy a debt-free, worry-free Christmas season.

photo by: krisdecurtis

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