Beating Broke

Personal Finance from the Broke Perspective

Frugality and Brand Names

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The words Frugal and Frugality have been some very popular words lately.  With the economy the way it is, it’s not very hard to see why. Even so, I still know people who claim to be frugal, but refuse to buy anything but the brand name products.

There is very little room for brand names in a frugal lifestyle.  The good news is that many of the non-brand name products are very similar products.  In some cases, they are the exact same product.  In other cases, they are not even close to the same thing.  In those cases, you have to weigh how much you want that exact product against your desire to save money and live frugally.  Is the extra $1 worth it?  Depending on the product, you might make an exception.

If you decide it is worth it, here are some things you can do to try and help cut that cost.

  • Coupons!  Check the manufacturer’s website.  Many have customer loyalty programs that you can sign up for and get occasional coupons.  Look through the Sunday paper.  Or, see if you can find a coupon train to join up with.  Swap Mamas has one, and I’m sure many other sites do as well.  There are also coupon trading sites that you can make use of.
  • Buy in bulk.  If you’ve just got to have it, buying in bulk can sometimes help cut the cost.  My favorites are Sam’s Club/Costco and Amazon.  If the item is perishable, maybe you can find a friend that will split it with you and you can still reap the frugal benefits.  Sometimes it’s worth the cost of a Costco membership.
  • Cash back rebates.  If you have a credit card that gives cash back, you can use it to help cut the cost of the item.  Just make sure you’re paying off that card every month, or the interest will eliminate any benefit.
  • Supermarket Loyalty programs.  Some supermarkets have a loyalty program.  Spend $XXX and get $X off!  It’s usually not anything spectacular, but every little bit helps.

Sometimes the brand name is worth it.  But, I encourage you to try the generic stuff too.  You just might be surprised to find that it is a very sufficient replacement.

Photo Credit: http://www.flickr.com/photos/thisisbossi/ / CC BY-SA 2.0

SwapMamas.com: Mother’s Little Helper

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One of the side effects of my wife’s entrepreneurial adventures has been that we have a very unstable income on her side of the balance sheet.  And part of how we’ve dealt with that is to try and save money in as many ways as we can.  Frugality has become the modus operandi in our household.

Anyone with kids will tell you that there are certain things that you cannot go without.  For example, kids need clothes, and lots of them.  They’ll go through several outfits a day depending on the messiness of their meals and the level of dirt outside.  Kids like to have toys too!  And being frugal and buying your kids toys don’t always go together.

But, we found a site that helps us a little with both.  It’s called swapmamas.com and it is pretty darn cool.  In a nutshell, it is a social networking site for moms where they gather together and swap/barter for items.  Say we have  some formula left over after our youngest moves up to real food.  We can list the sealed cans on swapmamas.  Another mama comes along and uses that formula, and has some clothes that will fit one of our kids.  Or some DVD movies that her kids no longer watch.  She offers the trade to us, we accept and all that’s left is the shipping.  We pay for the shipping for  the formula, and the other mama pays for the shipping for whatever it is that she traded us for.  She gets a can of formula that she can use and that would have done absolutely nothing for us except sit on a shelf and we get a new movie or some new(ish) clothes.  Win Win.

Swapmamas.com is worth a look if you’ve got kids and want to try and be frugal as well.  It might even be worthwhile if you don’t have kids.  I can’t attest to that since I would have never known the site existed if it weren’t for having kids. 😉

Save a Little Money with PaperBack Swap

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One of the sure fire ways to save money that is touted here and everywhere is to cancel cable service.  Whether you cancel the whole thing or just pare down to the smallest package for network stations, you’re left with a fair chunk of time to do something else.  Again, another suggestion to take up that time is to read a book.  I completely agree.  Depending on the book, it can be entertaining or educational or both.

One of the downsides to taking up reading is that even a paperback book can cost almost $10 at most of the bookstores.  Amazon is slightly better, but not by much.  The all time cheapest way to read a book is from your local library.  The downfall there, of course, is that you have to return the book in a set amount of time.  That puts the pressure on to read the book or to remember to go in and re-check-out the book.  I don’t like to be rushed and I have a horrible memory for errands like that, so I prefer to buy the books that I read.

With our current situation, I am unable to buy as many books as I once did and now depend largely on gifts for my new book purchases.  Yay Amazon gift cards!  Another way that I’ve found to get my hands on a book cheaply is to swap it.  I think there are a few places to swap books, but the one that I’ve been using is PaperBack Swap.  It works on a credit system, so each book that you list and send to someone else gets you a credit to request a book from someone else.  All you have to do is pay for the shipping to get it where it’s going.  You get a new book for about $2.38.  That’s  quite the deal if you ask me.

So far, I’ve only gotten a few books, but I’m picking up steam and I may start looking at my local thrift store for books to swap for books that I want to read.  If there are any of you who are using a different service, please let me know what they are.  I’d like to check them all out.  They’re just another way to become a Frugaler!