Three Main Ways to Save on Insurance

What You Drive Matters

Don't drive a sporty vehicle that can go from zero to 50 in two seconds. Cars that look and act like race cars are in more accidents than others and will cost you more in insurance even if you are a very safe driver. Don't drive an expensive vehicle either, with all the doodads and gadgets you can get. These are prime targets for thieves and carry a higher insurance cost because of it. Besides that, they're more expensive to repair if you get into an accident.

Take All the Discounts You Can

Make sure you get all the discounts you're entitled to. Ask your agent if you're not sure, but read your insurance policy first to see if you already have some discounts. You could be eligible for discounts for being a good student, having certain safety equipment, being in the military, keeping a low annual mileage or having multiple vehicles insured or other multiple policies with the same insurance companies. There are other discounts your insurance may offer and your agent will know about them, but may not offer them unless you ask.

The Impact of a Stable Lifestyle

Someone who changes jobs every year, moves often, has traffic tickets, is in accidents even though they're minor, gets deeply in debt early or even takes out bankruptcy, is not a good candidate for low automobile insurance. It's easy to see why, when all the factors are put together. An unstable lifestyle speaks of a person who is not settled or responsible in mamy areas of life and insurance companies consider that this will spill over into the person's driving style and attitude.

If this is you, you can't change your record overnight, but you can begin working right now to stabilize your lifestyle. Keep that job another year, don't move unless you really have to and keep up on all your bills. Better, get out of debt. Drive carefully and take a defensive drivers's course, both for the discount and to help you be a better driver.

More Than Insurance Savings

All of these things together guarantees that you will have lower car insurance premiums with the same or better protection than you have now. Many of these things will cost you less in other ways, too. Driving less means less gas and wear on your tires. Moving less often saves you money on the move itself (even if you move yourself) and on deposits. Driving a less showy car means that you pay less for it to begin with. Doesn't that make dollars and sense?

Frost advisory and tomatoes

I just brought in the last of the tomatoes that are big enough to ripen indoors, the peppermint plant and the geranium (which should have been brought in sooner). I'm a diehard gardener; I put an old sheet across the tomato plants. If they make it through these next two nights, maybe some of the smaller tomatoes will grow big enough to use.

It wasn't much of a year for a garden for me, due to health issues, but I will make the most of it.

There are pureed tomatoes in the freezer, waiting to be turned into sauce, a dab of wild greens picked earlier in the season and a bag of green beans that was given to me. Now I need to do some canning, since the weather is cooler and the extra heat will be welcome.

The newer breeds of tomatoes don't have enough acid in them to safely can in a boiling water bath, so, since part of the tomatoes in the freezer came from a friend who grows that kind, I will have to remember to add vinegar to each batch. My own few tomatoes are the heirloom kind, so I wouldn't have to worry about that, except that I mixed them together when I froze them.

Home canned tomato sauce is the greatest to make spaghetti sauce or to use in soup, meatloaf or in macaroni. It never gets as thick as the commercial kind, but it doesn't have to. The flavor is much more intense so it doesn't take as much to let you know it's there.

It's sounding better all the time. Maybe I will can tomato sauce tomorrow!

Keeping the Food Bill Down, #1

I've been eating out of the freezer. A small container of rice, a stash of bits of vegetables and a piece of leftover chicken from... I don't know when. Added together with a bit of salt and a little water, it made a filling and tasty soup!

For supper there will be potato soup made with leftover tuna bits and liquid that I have saved over the summer's worth of tuna salad sandwiches and some leftover cornbread.

I went to the store yesterday and I don't know how much I spent. Bad? Yeah... what happened was that two six packs of Zevia Cola rang up as two cans, so I have to go back and pay them and for the life of me, I can't remember what the six packs cost. I went to Natural Grocers, a store limited to Colorado, where the Cola is cheaper than anywhere else and I used a coupon, in case you were wondering.

Other than that, I spent a little over $12 on potatoes, flour and graham crackers, etc. The graham crackers are for my granddaughter who thinks that's why she comes to Grandma's (to eat graham crackers).

'Way Back When...

Something I thought you might be interested in, from the 'Way Back Machine, January 31, 2004

http://web.archive.org/web/20040131115558/http://frugalliving.about.com/

Tightening the Grocery Budget

I used to buy groceries for around a hundred dollars a month, but as prices crept up and up, that rose to $110 to $125 and lately, it's been more than that! As a frugal person, and one who shoots off her mouth now and then, it's kind of embarrassing.

So I'm going to go on a fiscal diet and not spend more than $100 each month on groceries for the rest of the year. I will NOT include extras for Thanksgiving and Christmas dinners, but I will try to hold it to a minimum. Also, I don't eat out very often, but if I should, that will be a part of the food budget.

Okay. Hold me to it. It starts this Wednesday, when I get paid and start my month over, for practicality's sake.

I have food in the house that I have avoided using. Don't we all do that? Things stuffed away in the freezer that I will use "sometime." That sometime is now, so I might have some strange meals. Then again, maybe not. I have canned food and dry food and a good variety, too.

I'll try to remember and report, although I may not be too specific about it (crunching numbers and listing prices doesn't sound like fun). I'll try to post at least the totals of my food expenditures and maybe a few interesting recipes!

Wish me luck.

Fall Decorating on the Cheap

I can't help it; I'm ready for the bright colors of fall and I'm done with the heat! Here are a few things I've come up with to brighten up the house while waiting for the weather to settle into a fall pattern.

Take pages of bright, autumn colors from magazines or catalogs and cut leaves from them. First make a few patterns from plain paper (recycle that junk mail!) then use the patterns to avoid the temptation to try to fit in certain lines or patterns from the page. Cut out quite a few, then scatter them on a solid color plate or platter. Add a candle and you've created a one of a kind centerpiece or coffee table display.

Candles always make good displays. If yours is so-so, jazz them up with any or all of these items, warmed then pressed into the wax:
Stray pieces of jewelry or buttons
String, dipped in melted wax and wound in pattern, random or not.
Ribbon tied up in a pretty bow and placed low.
Themed candies like candy corn.

Make a fall bouquet with dried grasses and weeds. Since they're free, you can make them as big and extravagant as you want!  

If you have a garden, you may have things you can use from there. Winter squash, miniature pumpkins, sunflowers and other autumn flowers and leaves all bring fall indoors.

Leave the fake stuff in the store and go get the real stuff. A drive or a walk will yield things you may never have thought of. A spray of seeds or a few bright leaves might set off your imagination to create the most beautiful centerpiece or table top decoration ever. All for free.

How Can We Save on Electricity?

I don't use much electricity. According to some figures I see from here and there, my electric bill is very low. I know that I have better opportunities to save than some people. For instance, I don't use a hair dryer because I don't wash my hair every day and I can plan most activities around it so that I don't have to go anywhere until it dries. Some women have to go to work every day, so washing their hair means using a hair dryer before they go.

There are other things, though, that I do that most others can do to save electricity.

• Use a manual instead of electric can opener
• Use extra blankets instead of an electric blanket
• Microwave things that take a long time in an electric oven or stove top
• If you have a laptop, run it on the battery until it needs to be charged, then unplug it as soon as it's charged.
• Turn off the lights! It's been said so many times that we become numb to it, but it really does matter.
• Keep your freezer full. If you can't keep it full of food, put bottles of water to freeze to fill up the empty spaces.
• Keep the refrigerator door closed, the coils and gasket clean.
• Put the TV, computer and other electronics on power strips, then turn them off when they're not being used.

Those are just a few possibilities and it may not seem like you'd save much, but added together these things can make an impact on your bill.

Some other things I do that not everyone may be able to do:

• Wash dishes by hand rather than paying for electricity for dishwasher
• Sweep my (hardwood) floors with a broom rather than vacuum
• Use fans instead of the air conditioner whenever possible
• Make bread by hand instead of using an electric bread maker
• Use natural light as long as possible to avoid turning on electric lights
• Shower, wash dishes and other activities during the daylight hours to avoid using more lights.
• Use a minimum of electric kitchen appliances like food processors. There are many manual versions available.

If you save electricity in other ways, I'd love to hear about it!

Frugal Crafting: Weaving

This was written a few years ago for a now defunct little magazine called "Homewords."

I have been thinking of how crafting has grown naturally out of our needs, as our mothers and grandmothers found ways to create solutions for the problems they had before mass production made those things cheap and easily accessible.
Today, most of us have the option to buy items already made that fill our needs but crafting still satisfies a basic desire to create. Even more satisfaction comes when we can create something useful and beautiful from materials that would otherwise be ignored or thrown out.

Weaving is one of those crafts that uses these kinds of material. Now, before we get started, let me say that I am NOT a weaver! There may be those out there who are, and we would certainly appreciate any information you'd be willing to give.
Weaving at its most basic, is fun and productive. Almost anyone can weave a mat of sorts without a pattern, simply by understanding what weaving is, an 'under/over' 'in-and-out' process.
You might want to practice with paper first, but soon you will want to try cloth or natural materials. Buying those materials can be very expensive, though, and take the joy out of crafting.

"Bulrush is a very light material and there are approximately 60 rushes in one half pound.  Price per half pound is $9.00."
Willow, starting at about seven dollars a pound...how much is a pound of willow, anyway? Can I get a whole place mat out of 60 rushes? Is 9 dollars a place mat too much to pay?? Will a pound of willow make a clothes basket?

To get around these kind of questions, look first at what you can find naturally. For instance, wheat weavers use a special, hard to grow wheat that bends easily when wet, and holds its shape when dry, but any kind of wheat or wheat-like plant will substitute when you are learning this craft.

Any kind of long stemmed grass, or slender pliable branch will substitute for bulrush and willow, respectively. If you are experimenting (isn't all crafting without a pattern experimenting?) almost any material will give you an idea of what happens when you do this or that.

One year we had quite a bit of a slender, very tall grass that grew along the ditches in abundance. Its always been there, but this particular year, its abundance caught my attention, and I cut some of it and put it to dry in bundles. When it dried, it became brittle, so I soaked it overnight, and the next day I began to braid a strip, winding into a coil as I went. It was easy to work with, and surprisingly sturdy.

As you poke around looking for things to use, remember that plants act differently when dry than when green. Allow for shrinkage as well as loss of pliability.

If you'd like to try to make a circular mat, first gather several bundles of any long grass like blades, the longer the better. You can use it green, but you might want to put some away to dry and work with later.

To begin, cross six blades at the center, and, using another one, fasten them together. This is much easier said than done, so be patient and wind the grass around several times in different ways. Once this is completed, you should have what looks like a wagon wheel without the wheel..in other words, spokes. Using a seventh blade, attach it at the center by pushing it into the grass knot you created. You'll need an uneven number of spokes to weave on.

Begin weaving your blades from the center out, being careful to keep the strands close together. When you come near the end of one blade, insert a new one between it and the next 'spoke', and weave with both a few times, until the ends are hidden.

As you work, the area between spokes will become too wide, so at more or less even intervals, insert another one simply by pushing a blade into the mat a few rounds deep. Don't trim the ends exactly until you are through.

A project like this will take some time with narrow blades, so think about it as you look and gather. You might want to look for the widest blades you can find.

Another weaving product is cloth, and I'm sure you've all seen the potholder looms that come with jersey loops. A loom of this type is simple to make from a flat piece of board or an old picture frame. Whichever you use, it needs to be the same size as the piece you want to create. Simply line up small tacks along each edge, then begin by tying yarn or string on one corner tack, and looping it back and forth from one side to the other, around each tack. When you are finished in one direction, go the other direction. Weave under one strand and over the next, pushing each strand firmly against the last one.

Of course, this can be adjusted many different ways. One idea is to make a loom large enough for a floor mat, using nails instead of tacks, and cloth strips instead of yarn. At the other extreme, use a small soft wood board and gently tack in straight pins, then use thread to create a fine piece of cloth, which could be used for a small needlepoint picture, or a special pocket or collar.

The applications of weaving are endless, it seems. No matter what your tastes, you can find something to weave, and make something special out of nothing at all, as our mothers and grandmothers did.

Image courtesy morguefile.com

Three Frugal Steps to Get Rid of Ants

1. Ants create and follow scent trails. That's why when you see one ant, you see many ants. If you disrupt or remove this trail, the rest of the ants can't follow it. You can do that by washing the area with soap and water or putting something on it that will interfere with the scent or the physical properties of it. Successfully used are: cinnamon, black pepper, baby powder and salt.

2. Remove anything that attracts them. Sugar and other sweets, grease and fat of any kind will attract them. A lid on the sugar bowl won't stop them as you probably know. Close everything up in air tight containers and immediately was greasy pans and dishes.

3. Go on the attack by finding the hills outside. Pour boiling water down them to kill the larvae. You may have to do this two or three more times, but they will give up and move away if you don't destroy the colony altogether.,

Getting Ready for Next Year's Garden!

Planning ahead can make the road seem a little smoother in a lot of ways because making the most of what we have now can help us save money in the future! For instance, saving seed from this year's garden for next. If you have grown heirloom or open pollinated vegetables or flowers, you can save the seeds and not have to buy any next year. That can save quite a bit.

Save seed from mature squash (let a summer squash mature on the vine), tomatoes, cucumbers (treat like squash), pumpkins, melons,
beans, and more. Most seed saving is just common sense. Let beans dry on the vine - that's seed. Pick a ripe tomato and put it in a dish and let Mother Nature take it's course. It will ferment and smell bad, but when it's rinsed off and dried - that's seed for next year.

Look up how to save seeds for what you grow. Some seeds must be refrigerated for a few weeks to produce the dormant stage, some can go straight from the garden to storage as long as they're dry.

Why buy seed next year when you already have it for free this year?

Image courtesy of morguefile.com