The Dollar Stretcher Review

That's the name of my new blog on the Dollar Stretcher Community site. Check it out: The Dollar Stretcher Review

It only has one post as of today, but you gotta start somewhere, right? :)

I'll be adding to it as we go. Let me know what you think.

What kind of wealth?

It's interesting to skim through the list of titles under "Finances, Money Perspectives".

One of my favorites is "Poor in Money and Rich in Time"  and the other is the exact opposite, "Is Money Evil?"

Both ends of the rainbow offer satisfactory wealth for different persons. The question quickly becomes very personal. Just where on the scale do you want to land?

Do you want to be rich in goods? Or would you rather be rich in time? Or somewhere in between?

There's no "right" answer, except what's right for you.

And I'll tell you a secret. You can't get there from here until you know where "there" is.

Think about it. It's not as simple as it might seem.

Changing gears and plastic lids

I've handed the forums at Dollar Stretcher over to Brandy, who has been with us since the beginning so she understands how things work and what is required. I have faith that she will keep things rolling, but you can slip over there and let me know how she's doing now and then!

Me? I'm slowing down. Ha! How many times have I said that? Anyway, I'll still be kicking around in the background of Dollar Stretcher for awhile and I might have some news later on. Don't bank on it, it's a "might"!

Anyway, because I had a little extra time today, I rummaged around the kitchen drawers with a vague notion of cleaning them out. One thing I discovered is that there are more plastic lids than there are plastic containers to put them on.

If you know me, you know I don't like to just toss things in the trash, so I had to think about it for awhile, so... here's what I came up with:

• Use them to form patties from bulk ground meat or mixtures like fish patties. They'll be uniform and will cook more evenly.
• If you have a lot of lids, form ground beef patties and leave them in the lid. Put another lid on top of this and form another patty and so on, then put into the freezer. They'll stay separated and will pop right out while they're still frozen.
• Use a plastic container lid as a spoon rest on your stove.
• Not so classy, but they do make handy holders for wet teabags.
• On the same note, they will hold fish bones or other discards as you eat.
• They're easy to cut with a pair of craft scissors so you can make templates or patterns from them.
• Cut holiday decorations from them. Use a small cookie cutter to trace hearts, Christmas trees and so on, cut out and decorate. You can make nice Christmas tree decorations this way.

Got any more ideas? There are quite a few orphan lids in that drawer.

Shortage of canned pumpkin?

I've been hearing this for the last few years. Is there really a shortage of canned pumpkin?

That question was brought about by a tip in the Dollar Stretcher Tips, a weekly newsletter from Dollar Stretcher. (If you don't subscribe, you're missing some cool ideas - go here: http://www.stretcher.com/subscribe/subscribeIF.cfm and scroll down to find it.)

Anyway, the woman who wrote in said that since there was a shortage of canned pumpkin, she had been making "pumpkin" muffins using sweet potatoes because they're cheaper. (Somewhere; not here).

My question is: Since whole, fresh pumpkins are available anywhere in the fall of the year and usually at a cheap price, why would anyone buy canned pumpkin? It's easy to cook and easy to freeze and one pumpkin will yield many, many more cups of pumpkin than a can for about the same price. Besides that, it tastes better and you can use your Halloween pumpkin. Why throw it away, then go and buy pumpkin??

Plastic Bags

I hear they're trying to outlaw plastic shopping bags in California - and the rest of the nation will probably follow California. It may be all well and good for the environment, but what will we use for trash bags? And what will we haul wet swimsuits in?

They do have a lot of uses, you have to admit that. You can knit or crochet or make sturdy and pretty braided rugs by cutting strips from them and you can tie them onto your knees to keep your pants clean when you have to kneel to change a tire or pull weeds. And you can gather up things to take home or send away and you can... well, there are a lot of uses for them.

A discussion on the Dollar Stretcher forums called "Recycling Plastic Bags" spawned yet another one called "Plastic bags - continuing the discussion" has a lot more ideas.

So what are we going to substitute if we no longer get them?

Favorite sites?

What's your favorite frugal living, penny pinching, dollar stretching, cheapskate, money saving sites?

I'm asking because we're going to start reviewing sites at the The Dollar Stretcher Community soon.

It doesn't have to be a big site. As a matter of fact, smaller sites stand a better chance of being reviewed because I want to bring people's attention to resources they may not be aware of.

Do you have a frugal site or blog that's worthy of a little more traffic and that provides interesting content? Let me know. If you don't own it, but know about it, let me know, too. You can post it here: Favorite Sites (Besides The Dollar Stretcher!), then watch the forum for the review.

Wouldn't it be cool to have all of the frugal internet sites reviewed? I know... I dream. I do wonder though, how many real frugal sites and blogs there are. Or maybe I don't want to know, going into this project!

This and That and That, Too

Besides the "work" (thanks, Timothy) at the DS Community, I've been doing some writing on the side (mostly just so I can sound off) for Associated Content. Lately, debt and credit cards have been on my mind, maybe because I know so many folks finding themselves deep in debt and not knowing how to get out.

The overall unsettled economy makes me want to keep warning people to get out of debt now - but I do write about other things, too. Some of it doesn't even have anything to do with frugal living, believe it or not.

Anyway, here's my "Content Producers" page, in case you'd like to see. Content Producer: Pat Veretto.

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Many of you have been to The Dollar Stretcher Community by now. What did you think of it, candidly? We're still in Beta and there are things that do go wrong now and then (sometimes more often than that), but what is your overall impression of it?

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And thirdly (were you counting?) my yardwork is coming along nicely, although the rain/snow stopped it for a couple of days. A jonquil is blooming alongside a few lilies of the valley and the grape hyacinths peeked from under a layer of snow yesterday morning.

The grass is green, the leaves are coming out and I'm dreaming of real tomatoes already. It's springtime in Colorado, where the tornadoes roam...

Just another day in the life of a frugal...

...whatever I'm being called this morning! I tried to list them all, but it looked too funky even for me.

I should have had this picture on St Patrick's Day. We got a little snow (it's snowing as I type) that set off the green of spring. I was struck by the green on green of the varying trees, but the grass growing up through the snow really shows up. It's not a good picture, but the best I could do, as the snow kept getting on the camera lens and it was cold out there!


What's frugal about this? Snow is good for the lawn and garden. For those who don't live in a semi arid zone, you may not understand how we rejoice to see spring snow. It's very wet, it sticks and it melts into the earth.

I may be stretching it here, but anyway, that's my frugal thought for the day.

Things are popping at the DS Community - forums, in case you missed the announcement. If you haven't been there yet, check it out. It promises to be great fun as well supportive and educational, frugal style.

Something Really, Really BIG

If you've surfed around the frugal side of the internet very long, you know of the Dollar Stretcher site. When I was a Guide for About, Dollar Stretcher was considered my "competition."

Now, I don't think there's much real competition among the frugal community, but that's a discussion for another day.

So... if it really was my competition, I'm a traitor.

But I'm not, because all that time, I found inspiration there as well as common sense articles from Gary Foreman and many, many frugalistas around the internet. I don't know how many times I found awesome sites through there that were buried in search engine results.

After saying all of that, this is not about lauding Dollar Stretcher, although I'd gladly do that, but it's about me.

Yep. I'm going there to do something. Something BIG.. ;)

Really.

Can't tell you yet, but watch this space. Or, as they say on TV (do they still say it?) Stay tuned.

Rambling About Food, Money and Benjamin Franklin

What would Ben Franklin think of our modern economy?


Our economy has changed drastically since Benjamin Franklin lived. He, with his frugal wisdom, would go into shock if he could see the way we spend money now. An economy built on debt?? A chicken in every pot, maybe, but paid for with dollars that are already owed to someone else.

And that "chicken in the pot" has most likely been processed into chicken "nuggets," or boneless, skinless breasts that makes nuggets (and other "waste" products) possible by leaving 2/3 of the chicken unused.

No, I don't want to make you feel guilty for eating only chicken breasts. How else would we get all those buffalo wings?

But back to Mr. Franklin. He always advocated wise use of money, and people were a lot more frugal back then than they are now. What would he think if he could see us now? The picture hurts my mind.

Our world is far different from the world Benjamin Franklin lived in, both economically and technologically, so it's kind of cool to see how things work out to help us actually do what Franklin advised.

Case in point: Two web sites, Mygrocerydeals and Dollar Stretcher, brought to you via a great network not even dreamed of when Benjamin Franklin was alive, have teamed up to give you a chance to win back the money you spend on groceries. I won't say more, just go to either site and look for the "Ben." (If you read the story linked above, it will explain it.)

It's wise, Ben Franklin style, to use applications like Mygrocerydeals to help you save money and time on grocery shopping whether you enter the contest or not. If spending a morning sorting through grocery store ads over and over and making and remaking lists doesn't sound like fun, Mygrocerydeals.com will do it for you. If you do enjoy poring over ads, this site adds new depth to the game and you'll enjoy that!

And last but not least on my mind this morning: "An investment in knowledge always pays the best interest." That's the way Benjamin Franklin said it. The Book of Proverbs from the Bible says it this way: "A house is built by wisdom and becomes strong through good sense. Through knowledge its rooms are filled with all sorts of precious riches and valuables." (NLT)