What are your frugal and sustainable tips and tricks?

[Sally PB]

It would take a lot, and I mean a LOT of money to get me into one of those stores where people stand in line for hours (or all night) before the store opens on Black Friday. I don't do crowds for shopping, or for many other things, either.

The news footage of people stampeding into a store... No. I won't be there.

 

[Molpet]

The news footage of people stampeding into a store... No. I won't be there.

When I throw treats to the poultry, it reminds me of this.



I don't go shopping during the weekend even because of too many people.

 

[Sally PB]

When I throw treats to the poultry, it reminds me of this.

Yes!!!!

 

[Smokerbill]

When I throw treats to the poultry, it reminds me of this.



I don't go shopping during the weekend even because of too many people.

That's where internet shopping comes in handy.

 

[Sally PB]

That's where internet shopping comes in handy.

I agree for some things. But I like to look at some in person.

It's GREAT for books, when you know exactly what you want. I still love to browse in a bookstore. Which, sadly, are going away because they can't compete with online shopping.

 

[gtaus]

I still love to browse in a bookstore. Which, sadly, are going away because they can't compete with online shopping.

We lost our bookstores ~15 years ago in my town. I don't know what happened, but our main mall used to have all kinds of small shops that were fun to shop. They all left/closed down/were forced out. Now, our mall is mainly empty and hardly anybody goes there anymore. Back in the day, I always went to the bookstore, looked around, and probably picked up a book/magazine or two. I can't do that anymore.

Even our library is getting out of the book business. Used to be I would go into the library and spend an hour or so pulling magazines from the racks and reading them. Now, almost all those magazines are gone. You can get a digital edition of some of the magazines, but it's just not the same thing for me as having that paper in hand. I found more value in a hardcopy. Digital copies certainly have some advantages, but it's just not the same experience for me.

We still have a nice children's section in our library, full of colorful and interesting books for kids to read. That section of the library has more than doubled from years ago. However, for us adults, we have less than half the books on the shelves these days. True, we have access to digital editions of books and that probably far exceeds our physical copies in the past, but, again, it was fun to browse the bookshelves and look for interesting books whereas going digital just does offer the same experience.

I wonder how access to digital books and magazines really has affected us? I suspect many people of my age don't really enjoy reading stuff on a small electronic device. Maybe the younger kids are more open that concept. I'm just not.

On the plus side, it's a lot less expensive for our library to buy into some of the digital books and magazine services, offering us a much larger selection of works then they could ever afford to put on the shelves, so, in theory, we have better options today than ever. A person can certainly have a personal library of books on their electronic reader that was unimaginable back in the day when I was in college. And at a far lesser cost. I guess that is good for some people.

 

[fuzzi]

I wonder how access to digital books and magazines really has affected us? I suspect many people of my age don't really enjoy reading stuff on a small electronic device. Maybe the younger kids are more open that concept. I'm just not.

The younger kids don't read

We're losing our last and only used bookstore in town. I'm very sad.

 

[gtaus]

The younger kids don't read

Well, I spent 5 years in Elementary Education teaching children to read. Most of them, at that age, were all excited about learning to read. But we heap lots of tests on them and somewhere along the way they seem to lose interest in reading for pleasure. I always looked for ways to make reading time more enjoyable for the children. I like to think some of my programs helped a few kids.

We're losing our last and only used bookstore in town. I'm very sad.

That's too bad. I don't think those bookstores will ever come back once gone.

I read a lot of books when I was growing up. All the way through college, in fact. But I think kids today have many more resources like cable TV and internet which take time away from reading.

Although I do spend time on TV or the internet for entertainment, most of my YouTube watching is on DIY channels where I learn how to do stuff, or maybe do stuff better. Sharing ideas on the BYC forums has helped me a lot. I live out in the country, but the internet opens the world to me. I guess I am thankful for that even though I miss the gold ole days of browsing in our local bookstores (which are all gone now).

 

[gtaus]

Amazon Woes

I have been an Amazon Prime member for a number of years. I live in a rural area, and our biggest town 15 minutes aways is only 10,000. So, far too often, I end up ordering stuff from Amazon because that item is just not available locally. Rarely do I order from Amazon to save money, so it's not like a frugal purchase, but often times they are the only ones selling an item that we need. We just don't have many specialty shops where I live. Amazon fills that void.

We don't have any computer stores in our town. Most of my computer gear has to be ordered. I'm OK with that. I just need to check prices online and go with the best deal I can find. With Amazon Prime, I get free shipping, and that is often the deal maker for staying with Amazon on those purchases.

This past August, I ordered an 18TB USB HDD enclosure from Amazon. What they shipped me was a 12TB USB HDD enclosure that was at least 4 years old inventory. Not what I ordered at all. I notified Amazon and they agreed to send me out a replacement 18TB USB HDD enclosure like I ordered. The second one came in and it too was a year's old 12TB model. To be clear, a 12TB model of that unit was probably made around 2020, not 2025. In no way did it match the current listing and specs of the newer 18TB model.

Amazon agreed to cancel the order, stating that they had no control over which models were being sent out of their fulfillment centers. I did not have to return the enclosures due to low cost of the item(s). It would have cost me more in time and money to return those items than they were worth. Also, it would save Amazon money on the return shipping and not having to deal with yesteryear's stuff.

So, the order went bad but at least I thought Amazon took care of me by cancelling the order and giving me a full refund. Turns out, the fun was only beginning. Over the past 4 months, I started receiving notices that I would be charged for the items if not returned. I contacted Amazon a number of times and they assured me to ignore those emails because they had taken care of the refund and cancelled the returns.

I had a feeling that things were not taken care of by Amazon. Yesterday, I got an email notice from Amazon that they were retroactively charging me for that order. I checked my credit card activity, and the charge was there. Once again, I contacted Amazon and they stated it was an error and they would issue me a credit for the charge. Ok, next day, and I still have not received any notice that my account has been credited. I should have received that notice yesterday, but it never came.

I filed an official complaint about that order, detailing the item(s) I received never matched the listing on what I ordered. The order was for less than $20.00, so the money was not the big issue, for either me or Amazon, but I was frustrated that I have had to spend the last 4 months dealing with this one bad order that they could not fill. I also called them out for sending 2020 tech inventory but listing it as new 2025 computer gear.

Will they respond to my complaint? Probably not. Eventually, I am confident I will get my money back on this order, but I will never get the time I spent on this issue back. Also, even though I still need that 18TB USB HDD enclosure, I have not submitted a new order because I have no confidence that I will get what I ordered and probably end up with more headaches in the refund process if they send me out another old model.

Frugal Tips with Amazon:

1) If you live in rural area, you can sometimes be granted a waiver for not returning low value items. Amazon does not want to send the UPS truck out to your house to pick up that return, and you probably don't want to have to drive into town to make a return. Especially if the item was received broken or damaged. But you have to ask for the return waiver because it's not always automatically granted. You might have to chat with a live representative to get your issue resolved. The Chat AI Autobot is very limited.

2) If you receive an item with incomplete hardware, sometimes you can ask for and get a reduction in the price if you agree to buy the missing hardware yourself. I ordered a nice 6.5-inch bench vise. It came with the box ripped open and missing one of the nuts and bolts for mounting. At first, they wanted me to send it back and ship out another one. That makes no sense. That vise weighed about 50 pounds. Can you imagine how much it would cost for return shipping by Amazon and then reshipping another vise for replacement? Plus, I did not want to wait another 3 weeks for a replacement. So, I suggested that give me a $5.00 credit on the order and I would buy the nut and bolt next time I went into town. Amazon agreed. Saved me a lot of lost time and saved Amazon a lot of money on shipping those 50-pound bench vises back and forth.

3) Amazon Prime had gone up to $164.00 per year. Back in the day, it only cost me $100.00 per year. Dear Wife and I don't watch much Amazon Prime videos, so a Prime membership is not worth it for us for watching TV. But we do end up ordering enough stuff every year that we get free shipping on (plus free returns), so the membership fee pays for itself for us.

I would love to hear what others do to save money by ordering online, if you do. I prefer to buy locally when I can, to support our community, but many items we want are not available in town. Amazon has been one of our main sources for those items we cannot buy locally. Later...

 

[Smokerbill]

I've been ordering a lot of stuff from Walmart and with a Walmart Plus membership you get free shipping on most things, plus they pick up returns at your home. You get free Paramount Plus or Peacock with the membership among other perks.

There's usually a half off deal on membership around Christmas, so it's $50 instead of $100 for a year. I think if you get the membership through AARP it's also $50.

I got a Black Friday deal on Mobil 1 motor oil from Walmart, three 5 quart jugs with a savings of $9 total. Enough oil for two changes and two years of driving.

Home Depot also ships a lot of items for free too, no membership needed. I got a 5 pound box of torx head 2 1/2" deck screws delivered from them today for the new chicken run I'm building. It would've been free shipping tomorrow but I wanted them today, and that cost me only $2.99.

Home Depot and Walmart are both 18 miles away from my house, and I've saved a ton of money on gasoline by not driving and having things delivered or shipped. I've driven only 15 miles in the last two weeks.