Just curious who else is living super frugal

[kuntrygirl]

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There are a lot of good articles online that discuss this. Here is an article that you may be interested in reading.

Money and Values
Connecting personal finance with ethics, values, and priorities: frugal living, socially and eco-conscious consuming, and other financial choices for a fulfilling and meaningful life

Friday, October 13, 2006
Slay your energy vampires: Unplugging appliances saves money and cuts pollution
I love finding new ways to save energy, because it's one of those great areas where money and values work in tandem. This week I learned something I totally new to me (thanks to Ideal Bite)-- many household appliances are draining energy even when they're turned off!

According to the government's ENERGY STAR program, 40% of the electricity that home electronics use is consumed while the products are turned off. The impact of this on your energy bill will depend on your particular situation-- one Berkeley study suggests the savings would be 6 to 26% off your total bill.

The "phantom load," as it's sometimes called, is a result of many different household items (sometimes called "vampire devices," leading to perhaps the best-named law ever, California's Vampire Slayer Act of 2006). Some of the most problematic energy-drainers while "off":


Tivo
Cable boxes or satellite dish boxes
Sound systems
VCRs and DVD players
Computers
Computer printers
Cable modems/DSL
TVs
These items often use 10 to 50 watts each while off/in standby (6 to 30 kilowatt-hours a month, if they're off but not unplugged 20 hours a day). The Berkeley study, this graph, and this article have some information on typical wattage of specific items-- but if you really want to know how much yours use, you'll need to buy or borrow a meter like Kill-a-Watt, or try this manual method.

There are also the smaller items; for example, did you know that your cell phone charger is using energy even when your phone isn't attached? It's only a couple of watts, but it's a good idea to get into the habit of unplugging your charger from the wall when you unplug your phone from the charger. Kitchen appliances like microwaves, rice cookers, breadmakers, and coffee pots also typically use less than 5 watts-- but there's no reason to leave them plugged in when you don't have to. The little things add up.

And how much do they add up to? Around 50 to 100 watts in the average house, which is 30 to 60 kilowatt-hours a month (based on 20 standby hours a day). At prices of 5 to 15 cents per kWH in July 2006, that's somewhere between $1.50-$9 a month.

Okay, so doing this isn't going to make you rich (although most frugalites like to trim where we can!). So how about finding another motivation? Every kilowatt-hour is equivalent to 1.55 pounds of CO2 emissions (U.S. average). That means if you use 30-60 less kWh a month, 550-1,100 pounds less of CO2 go into the air every year. (For context, a gallon of gas puts about 20 pounds of CO2 in the air, so this is the pollution equivalent of using 25 to 50 gallons less gas!)

Now that I know about this, I've started right away to change my habits. One easy way to make sure you're not wasting energy is to plug many appliances into one power strip; then you can turn it on and off, which is a little easier than unplugging and replugging everything individually. Maybe half of my relevant appliances are already on power strips, which I've started turning off this week; this weekend, I'm going to think about the logistics to make sure all my vampire devices are either on power strips or are plugged in outlets in convenient locations (the TV's plugged in behind the bookcase at the moment, for example). For curiousity's sake, I'll try to see if there's an effect on my electric bill-- although since my heat is electric, it's going to be hard to be very scientific about it as heating costs go up.​

 

[kuntrygirl]

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[Lydia&Andrew]

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Well done you! Your situation sounds a little like ours.....we will have to make more effort to clear things up.

 

[teach1rusl]

I was so happy to see other Dave Ramsey fans on here. We became debt free two years ago, including our mortgage!! I'd strongly encourage others to look into his program.
What's a bit sad (DH and I were just discussing this the other day) is that despite having no house, car, or credit card payments, there's still so many payments out there: property taxes, insurance (car/house/life/medical), and of course just basic utility bills and groceries. Despite technically not owing anyone, it still costs a lot of money to get by each month

By the way, my first year of teaching, 90% of my dress blouses came from Goodwill type stores, and I was complimented on my wardrobe all the time - you can find many things with tags still on them. I do freeze milk when it's on sale. We buy tons of generic, unless the name brand is on sale at the store brand price. I hardly ever use coupons, because it's usually STILL cheaper to buy the generic. One of my biggest wastes of money is bottled water (plus there are environmental issues), even though I just get the Kro-water. I just can't stand the taste of tap water. I tried the filtered stuff and don't care for it either. That's something I need to work on...
We will never buy on credit again - if we don't have the money for it now, then we have to save up for it. I wish the government would get on the Dave Ramsey plan...lol.

 

[chrissum]

Interesting issue about freezing milk, how long can you leave it in the freezer, and how long adfter it thaws will it last? I never would of thought about freezing milk but sometimes we can get it at a good price but have no place to keep it!

 

[teach1rusl]

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Well, we bought a small deep freezer that we keep in our basement, mostly for stockpiling freezable groceries (make less trips to the grocery store). I'm not sure how long you could keep it frozen??? But once thawed, I keep it as long as I do regular milk. So if I froze it 10 days before the expir. date, then I'd feel confident using it for 10 days (although milk would never last that long at our house). I'll warn you, it does look odd when you freeze it - turns a bit yellowish. But once thawed it looks white again. We freeze a LOT of bread when I find it on sale.
I'd love to know what else folks freeze that's not normally frozen, so I can do with other foods too...

 

[Souperchicken]

Several years ago DH's business went under and we had to live super frugal for a while and still do.
I can't tell you what a blessing it was for our family to have his business go under.

I got my husband back. He was working over 80 hours a week. We moved to a small town where the standard of living was much less expensive and such a better place to raise our children than in Las Vegas. We are paying half of what we owe each month in our mortgage to live in a larger house and larger yard and found someone to rent our home in Vegas. I found we could live on much less than most people can imagine and still be healthy and kids happy. We had quite a large food storage that really came in handy.
We made it a point not to declare bankruptcy(we are still paying on bills from the business), ask government help, or family - though I'm sure they would.

Here are some things we did and a lot of them we still do

-no eating out, pack food for traveling.
-rarely using meat
-drinking water rather than other drinks, milk for the kids- not buying juices.
-using dry milk for the kids that are old enough
-making snacks, treats, bread, rolls, etc from scratch
-buying bulk
-Washing out ziploc bags and reusing them
-kids taking sack lunches to school
-we usually got hand me downs from relatives, but when I did have to buy something it was second hand unless it was underwear or socks. I remember I had to buy a pair of shoes once and bought a white pair that was unisex so I could past it from my son to my daughter. We passed on unisex t-shirts, the solid color ones. We still use hand me downs and rarely buy clothing.
-walk the kids to and from school every day rather than drive them(when in Las Vegas, we don't live there now).
-We saved some of our kids Halloween candy for Christmas.
-We had $15 dollars to spend on Christmas gifts that year and I was able to shop ebay and get something for each of the older 3 kids. I made homemade gifts that year. My husband had gone to a retailer show earlier that year and had gotten "freebies" from the booths(this was before the business went under), the week before Christmas I found the box of stuff in our storage. Water bottles, zip bags, and note pads and key chains, we stuffed the kids stockings with these.
-not buying clothing for myself, I wasn't growing.
-only free entertainment, walks around the block, to the park, we read a lot of books(another blessing, my two oldest are avid readers now)
-sending homemade cards for birthdays, etc.
-planning out shopping trips and shopping once a month
-we freeze milk, butter, shredded cheese and bread, etc.
-not buying boxed cereal but eating oatmeal, wheat, cornmeal or eggs for breakfast.

 

[ChikeeMomma]

So I'm excited! I went to two nearby garage sales this morning. I needed a new canning rack. I found a canning rack (looked pretty new) and a big open pot (looks like you'd use it for making jam) packaged together for $1.00. Also found 4 yds x 60 inches of flannel girly fabric for $3.50. I have two girls so it works out perfectly! Probably will make jammies, blankets, and burp clothes (gifts) with it.

 

[GiddyMoon]

I have lived super frugal my entire life so it isn't "hard", it's kind of a game to me and we see what is going on with this awful economy but many people who are on the govt payroll or don't rely on any type of private industry sales really have no clue to how careful people are about spending now. We have been doing antiques for about 13 years. We are working 4 times as hard, making 4 times as less and our costs have gone up 4 times as much as well. The economy is really messing with people.

We homeschool to keep our kids out of govt hands and we have 4 teens, 3 on the Autism spectrum so not being home is NOT an option.


When the economy really started to show itself a few years ago, we decided to sell everything and move from CA to AZ where we have more family, politics are better and our housing costs dropped by about $800 a month. It was a very hard decision..we still have kids sleeping on air mattresses and need things but it was the right decision.

We never buy new cars. The most we pay is $2500 and our insurance is like $14, reg $65 or so and repairs cheap. You can find very nice cars for dirt cheap if you look. All this junk about "safety and green" is a total crock. We have driven a $2200 car for over a year and we still have no problems with it...and our cars rust back into the earth.

We no longer have our $75 Direct tv..we only have $10 Netflix..even the boys don't miss the cable and there is so much crap I don't watch anyway..we just couldn't justify keeping it. We have skype for long distance at $3 a month at home for the kids to call people. It is cheaper than getting them a cell and much cheaper than long distance plans.

We eat very simply based on what is on sale and we stock up on meat and such when prices are dirt cheap..like $1.50 per lb and under.....if they aren't..we don't buy it.

We go without and wait until we find what we want at a price we are willing to pay. This is a great lesson in what needs are compared to wants for the kids..and they are growing in patience..thank God I don't have kids who want to hang out at the mall and who are learning how valuable a $1 can be if you wait and shop right.


I never go to stores and buy our clothes..we hit hundreds of garage / yard, estate, private invite sales a month so 90% of everything that we need, we buy this way. I just paid $80 for a $1500 Ethan Allen buckskin couch, we got a 30" flat screen for $10..we wait and fulfill all our needs this way.

Our house is apx 3000sf on an acre with a separate 3 car shop and this month, even with having to use the air conditioning at times, our total electric bill for both is only $110....with 4 people home all day.

We bake most of our own bread, I don't get my nails or hair done every 6 weeks, we do not have expensive hobbies, we don't smoke, etc.

Our country has been living off a fake economy since credit cards got popular in the early 80s..with everything going on, it has finally come to a head. WE NEED to get back to necessities and knowing what that means.

When "poverty" in this country STILL means a 3 bedroom house with 2 bathrooms, air conditioning, at least one car and food on the table everyday..we are SERIOUSLY out of touch.

 

[heather112588]

I just wanted to comment that this post is great!

I grew up poor (It was my mom, dad, me and 4 siblings in a 1 bedroom, very rundown shack)! Me and my sister slept in a closet. I remember many things like that we never had heat or AC and were encouraged to hunt and fish as much as possible bc sometimes it would be the only food we would have. I believe our grocery budget was $40/month for a family of 6...not joking. Our family didnt have govt assistance...i think my dad was too proud. What was really bad was that my mom couldnt work bc she took full time care of my sister who had cerebral palsy and brain damage from a hospital mistake. Things changed after the lawsuit from the reason in the last sentence. Me and my older sister are the only ones who remember that experience but we value it emensly and know how to go without.