Thrift Store Shopping

Most of the clothing that I purchase for my 15 month old comes from a thrift store. I also purchase clothes from garage sales and consignment stores and I shop clearance deals at stores like Target. The bulk of what he wears, however, comes from a thrift store. Children's clothing are, in my mind, one of the easiest ways to save money. Children do not stay in one size for very long, so if you're paying $10 for a shirt, you aren't going to get the same value out of that 2T size shirt as you would a shirt for yourself simply because your child won't be wearing it more than a few months to a year. I've been surprised at how quickly my son grows into the next size clothing. If I were buying his clothing at full price, I'm sure I'd be paying hundreds of dollars for something he'll only wear for a short time.

Though thrift stores are a great way to buy inexpensive children's clothing, not everything is a sparkling deal at a second-hand store. It's important to locate the thrift stores in your area and make several visits to each one, taking time to get a feel for how their items are priced, what kind of items they sell, and when or if they ever have discounts and specials. After doing this, you'll probably find one or two that seem to have better deals and carry more items. You'll also begin to learn what really constitutes a good deal for a piece of child's clothing. I've seen thrift stores charge upwards of 2 and 3 dollars for a simple shirt, but I won't pay more than $1, and typically I can find them for 50 or 75 cents. I will, however, pay $2 for a good pair of pants or shoes. It's worth it to me because I know those are harder to find.

It took me some time to learn where to find these deals. Also, I've learned that I can't wait until I need an item and expect to find it immediately at a thrift store. So I'm typically looking for clothing in the next size up for my child. I visit the thrift stores I like at least once a month and when I find items that are a good deal, even if they're too big for my kiddo, I'll purchase them and put them away for later. This method has worked really well for us. And it doesn't feel like a huge investment because I'm typically paying 75 cents or $1 for each item.

Capri Coupons

So, we left the wonderful Williamsburg where awesome coupons were in abundance (and relatively affordable-$.75 per paper) and moved to the coupon wasteland of KY. I was quite discouraged for the first few months here as the coupons in the paper weren't nearly as good as the ones in Williamsburg (there are a lot of regional coupons) and a Sunday paper cost $2--more than twice what I was used to paying!!!! Oh the indignity! Well after some research, I found a coupon service that seemed to fit me well. I hated scouring eBay for individual coupons and then having to calculate what the actual cost was and if it was really worth it. I would like to introduce you to capriscoupons.com She sells whole inserts (in sets of 5) Then you can clip what you want/need. We decided to join her $50 a month plan. It gives us 5 sets of each insert and this includes shipping. So for roughly the same cost of newspapers, they are delivered right to our door, and the coupons are better than what I can get here. I hated going out on Sundays to the little boxes and stuffing in $10 in quarters to get my inserts, especially because most of the time the boxes woudl be empty by the time we got home from church. Furthermore, she sends out a preview every week of what the next week's inserts are going to have in them, so If there are some that I won't use at all, I just tell her not to send them to me for that week, or I can substitute in her region 2 inserts for the region 1 inserts (that come with the standard plan). By all means if you are couponing in The Burg, keep going on Saturdays to get the The Gazette, but once you leave, this site is a great tool to get coupons.

Gardening

I could never understand why my mom enjoyed gardening so much until I had a job sitting behind a desk. It dawned on me that gardening, and seeing the fruits of labor, gives us the chance to feel satisfied about having achieved something substantive. It’s a feeling that can be missing from school and white collar day jobs.

And of course gardening is also a great way to save money. I’ll admit that it’s not something I do well, but it’s something I’d like to do well. Fresh fruits and veggies taste better than stuff from the store and growing your own costs much less.

With pretty minimal effort, we’ve had success with tomatoes and peppers, but I’d like to expand that to carrots, broccoli, potatoes, onions, squash, lettuce, strawberries and others. At some point, it’d be cool to have some fruit trees too—peaches, pears, and apples. Maybe even a pecan and or walnut tree...

The next step would be canning— another skill I need to acquire, but which I think pays off pretty quickly.

I’d love to hear gardening success stories and advice for what grows well in Virginia or other areas where readers are located.

Craigslist

Probably at this point, most people are familiar with Craigslist. Last year, we had an awesome success story with using it. I had been wanting to get Little People toys for my two little boys. A building for Little People costs around $40 at Walmart. The people come in a pack and a pack costs about $20. It's the type of toy that's fun to have quite a bit of to play with, but the cost to get enough for my boys to share well with (okay, well that's like 50 million toys . . . but anyway, that's another issue) was too excessive for me to be able to justify.

It occurred to me to check out Craigslist. To my surprise there was a huge listing of different Little People sets all by the same lady! My husband emailed the woman who had listed them and suggested an amount for all of them. She brought up the price a little and said if we took it, it was a deal. (Note: This was back in August some time, so I can't remember the amounts now.) I believe we paid about $40 for the airport, bus, airplane, carnival, carnival rides, a tea time set, and a bunch of people. This is an incredible deal! So this find covered for both our boys' birthdays last year and will do for this year's birthdays too. Hey, and if we're really good at spreading out the presents, maybe we'll make it do for next year too.

Of course, I realize this was a great, lucky find (how likely that there would have been all that great stuff from one lady of just exactly what I wanted?!), but I figure one person's success story can lead to someone else seeking success too . . . and possibly having the good fortune to find it. So my advice is to check out Craigslist when there's something you want.

A few things about Craigslist:

1. It's not necessarily a better price than in stores, but you can often bargain down. A year and a half ago, we compared prices on toddler beds compared to a bed at Walmart and found that what people were posting on there was equivalent to the price at Walmart anyway. We didn't try to bargain, but looking back, we probably should have.

2. You have to take into account the gas money required to get the thing you're purchasing. The woman with the Little People products turned out to work in our city, so I just went to her work and got them from her there. When we were expecting our second baby, we learned about a deal on Craigslist on the double stroller we were interested in. The woman with the stroller lived a distance away. Going to get it might not have been a good deal for us. A friend-- Gordon actually--was regularly commuting past her city on weekends, though, so he met up with her and picked it up for us.

Now, good hunting, and may you have all the Craigslist success that you desire!

Living the Student Life after Graduation..sort of

As recent grad school alum, I wanted to do a quick post to give those of you still in school a little heads up. :) However, this is not a Debbie Downer post it is simply some really useful information! We have discovered that our student way of life has not really ended. The reality of the debt you rack up officially hits about 6 months after graduation. Our house payment and our student loan payments differ by about $200.....It is important to remember this when you take that first job. It is also really important to remember to plan for this payback well in advance. I guess my main point is that for the first 6 months in a new job, you can be feeling pretty financially secure. Secure enough to maybe make some big purchases. But don't strap yourself down to things until after you see how your loan repayment is going to fit into your budget. Some things might be a year long contract on Internet or signing a contract for housing--we lived in my parents basement for the first few months we were in KY. I would suggest calculating what your loan payment is actually going to be (there are a lot of calculators online and we have found them to be pretty accurate) and budget this in from the get go. Another suggestion is to put this amount in savings for the first six months (before the government actually asks for it back). Then when you first payment is due, hit your loans with this amount as a big down payment. All of that goes to principal and you have just taken a chunk out of your loan with out much extra effort. In addition, you have been living in "payback" mode from the start so there is no false sense of security in the beginning.

One other thought on payback: put as much of your extra income into getting those loans paid off as you can. The interest rate on Rick's student loans is is double the interest rate on our mortgage..hence the very close numerical value on the payments. The more you put towards those the quicker that debt can be eliminated. An extra $100/month turns into $1200 a year and can cut your payback down by 10 years!

Printer Cartridges on Amazon

We've had a couple of good posts in the past about using Amazon to its full potential. I just discovered yet another product—one crucial to us students—that's significantly cheaper from the online retail beast: ink cartridges for our printer. They even include Amazon's "free super shipping." They're still outrageously expensive but much less so than at Walmart.  I can't say whether that holds true for every brand and model of printer, but I'm guessing it's probably often the case. It's worth checking.

Trim the Cell Phone Bill

Last year we decided to reevaluate the $100/month we paid to our cell phone company for unlimited minutes and texts. It turned out that most of our minutes were to family, most of whom had the same carrier and thus wouldn’t count against minutes. So we called up our carrier and asked to be switched to the 750 minute plan, where we would share the 750 minutes between our two phones. They were obnoxiously persistent that we needed more minutes, even after I repeatedly pointed out that we always used less than the 750 after accounting for nights and weekends and the minutes with other customers of the same carrier. We were stubborn though and finally got switched to the cheaper plan. It has saved us about $30 a month.

It’s worth noting that there are certainly even cheaper options. We considered using MagicJack or other similar technology for a home phone, and then switching to prepaid cell phones. We also considered switching to google voice. For a variety of reasons (perhaps a topic for another post) we went the route we did. The point, though, is that the phone bill is often an expense ripe for restructuring.