Most people know they can find things at thrift stores but I can tell you even cheaper than that! After losing everything and then getting this house we didn't have anything to put in it at first but my husband's job save us. See my husband now works for an apartment complex and he got our furniture there.
See when the evict people then the people's stuff is put on the side of the road. This you can't touch but most of it is stolen anyways. That's not where my husband got our things. He got our things out of the abandoned items. This is when people move out and just leave the things they no longer want for whatever reason. They are given so long to come back after it and if they don't the apartment complex throws these items away. So I advice people to go to local complexes and talk to the rental manager and explain their situation and see if they will call you the next time they are throwing things away. This is how we got our sofa and two non matching side tables. There are all kinds of things left and if you get in good with an apartment complex and haul their things away free for them then you can go through these items and even start selling them at a flea market. I don't do this but know of those who do.
So now you decide you need paint. I can give you a helpful hint in saving money there too!! I'm surprised hoe many people don't know of this but have you heard of opps paint? This is the paint that was mixed wrong for whatever reason and they couldn't sale. They will take the messed up color and tweak the color a little more so people don't screw them and then they sale the paint 1/2 off. You can find opps paint and Home Depot and Lowes just ask where it is at the paint counter. You can't find it at Walmart because they send theirs to claims. Then only problem with opps paint is it limits your color choices. A thing to remember is say you need 3 gallons of paint but they only have 2 opps cans in that color. Well you have two choices, you can get them to color match the third can at full price or you can find a color that's close to it. As long as it's close to it you can dump all three cans in a five gallon bucket and mix it so that it will all match. I've done this so many times over the year it's crazy!
Now you've decided you need new fixtures. Once again I don't pay full price. This is where you need to look for reclaimed stores in your area. I know they have them in Atlanta. Sometimes they're called builder's salvage. Depending on the place they will have either overstock, discontinued items or the can even have salvaged items out of old homes that was donated to them. Some of the donated things can be amazing like the light fixtures and cabinets.
Now you need lumber and I can tell you how to get that free also, if you are willing to work to get it. Pallets! Pallets are needed when transporting cargo. Large companies will sale these pallets back to the manufactures but small companies and little local business can't do that because they don't have large enough amounts. These businesses will sometimes gladly give them to you for free and pallets are made of hardwood, not pine so it's good wood. All you need to take them apart is a sawzall with a demolition blade to cut the nails. Don't try prying them apart it's not happening.
Saturday, December 7, 2013
Free Food
I says free food but truly is anything free in this world?
The next big purchase I recommend is a pressure canner. This is one I would buy because you don't know what you're getting in a thrift store or how good the seals are and you don't want this sucker blowing up on you. You are going to need that canner and freezer after my next post.
Would you like free apples, peaches, oranges??? Do they grow them in your area? If they do it's time to talk to your local grower because if you didn't know, once the fruit hits the ground they can no longer sell it. Because of this a lot of them will let you come in and pick up the ground fruit for free. Now mind you this fruit isn't pretty and is most likely bruised but when you're freezing and/or canning it it doesn't matter, you just cut that part off. Now all farms don't allow you to do this for free but they still may allow you to do it at low very low cost.
Now onto free meat and I'm not talking beef people. This time you need to contact the police department to see if they have a road kill list. NO I'm NOT joking!!! When people hit deer with their cars the police come out to do the paperwork for the insurance. So there's this big slab of venison on the side of the road and if you hit it they are going to ask if you want it. Id not they will call the next person on the road kill list or they will call whatever department is needed to come haul it away.
As long as the deer's gut hasn't been ruptured then the meat is fine. I can't stomach cleaning the deer myself but my husband is a hunter so he does that part. One thing to remember is you aren't used to venison is make sure you cut off any blood shot meat. This is the bruising from the impact. Also when cutting up the meat make sure to remove all the fat you can. Deer fat is what gives it that gamey taste that so many people complain about. Once you have it cut off the bone you can freeze or even can it. We prefer to can ours because it lasts longer.
If you enjoy canning you can find even more free food as small grocery stores and farmer's markets. Ask them if you can have there throw aways. This is the produce that is starting to rot. My mother in law was given 7 flats of strawberries one time. We sorted threw them and were able to save and freeze about 60% of them. The rest went to her hogs.
The next big purchase I recommend is a pressure canner. This is one I would buy because you don't know what you're getting in a thrift store or how good the seals are and you don't want this sucker blowing up on you. You are going to need that canner and freezer after my next post.
Would you like free apples, peaches, oranges??? Do they grow them in your area? If they do it's time to talk to your local grower because if you didn't know, once the fruit hits the ground they can no longer sell it. Because of this a lot of them will let you come in and pick up the ground fruit for free. Now mind you this fruit isn't pretty and is most likely bruised but when you're freezing and/or canning it it doesn't matter, you just cut that part off. Now all farms don't allow you to do this for free but they still may allow you to do it at low very low cost.
Now onto free meat and I'm not talking beef people. This time you need to contact the police department to see if they have a road kill list. NO I'm NOT joking!!! When people hit deer with their cars the police come out to do the paperwork for the insurance. So there's this big slab of venison on the side of the road and if you hit it they are going to ask if you want it. Id not they will call the next person on the road kill list or they will call whatever department is needed to come haul it away.
As long as the deer's gut hasn't been ruptured then the meat is fine. I can't stomach cleaning the deer myself but my husband is a hunter so he does that part. One thing to remember is you aren't used to venison is make sure you cut off any blood shot meat. This is the bruising from the impact. Also when cutting up the meat make sure to remove all the fat you can. Deer fat is what gives it that gamey taste that so many people complain about. Once you have it cut off the bone you can freeze or even can it. We prefer to can ours because it lasts longer.
If you enjoy canning you can find even more free food as small grocery stores and farmer's markets. Ask them if you can have there throw aways. This is the produce that is starting to rot. My mother in law was given 7 flats of strawberries one time. We sorted threw them and were able to save and freeze about 60% of them. The rest went to her hogs.
Save money at the grocery store
Food is where we spend a TON of money. Especially if you have big eaters in your home. I found one of the best ways to curb the over eating and therefore save money is to eat at the dinner table. At the table you can either have serving bowls and people will see how much food there is to go around and eat their share first before going back for seconds or you can fix everyone's plates and no one is dishing out more then they need that will most likely go in the trash.
When I grocery shop on a budget I ALWAYS make a list and eat some crackers before going to the store. People always buy more than they need when they shop hungry. I also pull out my notepad and plan the meals for the week. That way I can see what we have and use it before buying more things to cook.
Next you need to look at the weekly grocery store ads and any coupons you might have. This can now be done online also to save you time and the cost of the paper. One of the most important things about saving money at the grocery store is to forget brand recognition. I can tell you that Kroger store brand cereal is made by General Mills. Most store brands are made by large brand companies. I know this two ways, one I worked for Kroger before, and two I was a truck driver for awhile and picked up those store brands from the large companies.
This doesn't mean you need to switch to all store brand but you need to understand it's an option. When it comes to coupons the paper is not your only source. There are many places on the internet that offer coupons or you can go straight to the product page of the coupon that you want. If they don't have a coupon listed know that you can sometimes send them a message or comment and they in appreciation will send you a coupon. Also don't use all your coupons at once. Only use the ones you need and hold on to the others. Then you can save more if the things go on sale. If not then you can still use them before they expire.
Also know that you can stack coupons. I know you're thinking what the heck is she talking about! Stacking coupons is where you use the manufacturer's coupon, like the one's in the paper and online, then you also use a store coupon for the same product. You can do this because it says only one "store" or one "manufacturers" coupon. It doesn't say you can't use these coupons together. If you are truly gifted you can learn how to do extreme couponing also but I don't have the funds to start that at this moment.
On an average week with a family of four I can spend as little as $30 for all my groceries but I also stock pile sale items. If you have the resources I advice everyone to buy a deep freezer.See if I budget $75 a week for groceries and then spend $30 that means I still have $45 to go into my stockpile. This is great for when they have big sales on meat and frozen veggies because all those things you buy now on sale means your budget will be better another week when you might not have enough money for extra groceries.
There are other great resources out there to lower your food costs but I'll put that in the next post.
When I grocery shop on a budget I ALWAYS make a list and eat some crackers before going to the store. People always buy more than they need when they shop hungry. I also pull out my notepad and plan the meals for the week. That way I can see what we have and use it before buying more things to cook.
Next you need to look at the weekly grocery store ads and any coupons you might have. This can now be done online also to save you time and the cost of the paper. One of the most important things about saving money at the grocery store is to forget brand recognition. I can tell you that Kroger store brand cereal is made by General Mills. Most store brands are made by large brand companies. I know this two ways, one I worked for Kroger before, and two I was a truck driver for awhile and picked up those store brands from the large companies.
This doesn't mean you need to switch to all store brand but you need to understand it's an option. When it comes to coupons the paper is not your only source. There are many places on the internet that offer coupons or you can go straight to the product page of the coupon that you want. If they don't have a coupon listed know that you can sometimes send them a message or comment and they in appreciation will send you a coupon. Also don't use all your coupons at once. Only use the ones you need and hold on to the others. Then you can save more if the things go on sale. If not then you can still use them before they expire.
Also know that you can stack coupons. I know you're thinking what the heck is she talking about! Stacking coupons is where you use the manufacturer's coupon, like the one's in the paper and online, then you also use a store coupon for the same product. You can do this because it says only one "store" or one "manufacturers" coupon. It doesn't say you can't use these coupons together. If you are truly gifted you can learn how to do extreme couponing also but I don't have the funds to start that at this moment.
On an average week with a family of four I can spend as little as $30 for all my groceries but I also stock pile sale items. If you have the resources I advice everyone to buy a deep freezer.See if I budget $75 a week for groceries and then spend $30 that means I still have $45 to go into my stockpile. This is great for when they have big sales on meat and frozen veggies because all those things you buy now on sale means your budget will be better another week when you might not have enough money for extra groceries.
There are other great resources out there to lower your food costs but I'll put that in the next post.
First tidbit of advice
There are many many ways to cut back on spending and you have to figure out for yourself how much you need to cut back, but stop a minute and look around you, at the things around you. All those things cost money. Money that you don't have and now need. Did those things really change your life? Are they making it better? If you lost everything today could you live without them?
When we first hit rock bottom in that little one room apartment we couldn't fit all our things in there. Not even if we stacked it to the ceiling a called Hoarders in to film us. So instead we made a big financial fopa, we got a storage building. Every month we paid money on the apartment, utilities, and that big white elephant storage building. Looking back I can now see that if we had gotten rid of so many things we could have used that money to rent a place that had more than one room and wasn't over an auto repair garage.
This lesson took me nine years to learn. As humans we love our junk but does it really love us? Does it help us get through the day? Does all of it have a function even? My lesson was learned at the beginning of this year. I'm now disabled but in January I was still waiting to hear if I would be or not so I wasn't working and hadn't been for a few years. Then my husband lost his job. That's when we started selling all that junk around us. Thanks to Craigslist.com we were able to sale enough stuff to keep the utilities on until the beginning of March. By then we were living in an empty shell of a house and my husband got word that he couldn't go back to his former career. We couldn't pay the house payment and we had nothing else to sell. We were facing homelessness.
I instantly started researching how to live in your car, living in tent cities, and so on. I wanted to be prepared. Yet we still had junk around us! We couldn't take it with us so we packed everything we needed to live on in one pile, what our pets needed in another pile, what we couldn't afford to replace once we found a way to get back into a home in another pile, then we looked at what was left. You would be amazed on what you can live on when you half to. All that extra junk that we felt we had to have in the past, we it either went to the pawn shop, thrift store, or we gave it away. Things we needed to survive fit in the back of our truck, and the other essentials fit in a 10x10 storage unit which amazed me because the white elephant was 14x20 and was crammed full.
We however didn't become homeless. We were blessed by an RV park that offered us a place to stay in exchange for work. But that's another story. The lesson is not to allow your possessions to dictate and control your life. I'm sure if means a lot that that was your grandmother's trunk but do you really need it to remember her? Would she want you to starve so you could keep it? Or could you sell it and buy the groceries that you and your family truly need.
I can honestly say that yes I sold my great great grandmother's steamer trunk to pay the bills along with our wedding bands. Now that we are slowly getting back on our feet people find it odd that our house is so empty but I must say I don't ever want it to be full like it once was.
When we first hit rock bottom in that little one room apartment we couldn't fit all our things in there. Not even if we stacked it to the ceiling a called Hoarders in to film us. So instead we made a big financial fopa, we got a storage building. Every month we paid money on the apartment, utilities, and that big white elephant storage building. Looking back I can now see that if we had gotten rid of so many things we could have used that money to rent a place that had more than one room and wasn't over an auto repair garage.
This lesson took me nine years to learn. As humans we love our junk but does it really love us? Does it help us get through the day? Does all of it have a function even? My lesson was learned at the beginning of this year. I'm now disabled but in January I was still waiting to hear if I would be or not so I wasn't working and hadn't been for a few years. Then my husband lost his job. That's when we started selling all that junk around us. Thanks to Craigslist.com we were able to sale enough stuff to keep the utilities on until the beginning of March. By then we were living in an empty shell of a house and my husband got word that he couldn't go back to his former career. We couldn't pay the house payment and we had nothing else to sell. We were facing homelessness.
I instantly started researching how to live in your car, living in tent cities, and so on. I wanted to be prepared. Yet we still had junk around us! We couldn't take it with us so we packed everything we needed to live on in one pile, what our pets needed in another pile, what we couldn't afford to replace once we found a way to get back into a home in another pile, then we looked at what was left. You would be amazed on what you can live on when you half to. All that extra junk that we felt we had to have in the past, we it either went to the pawn shop, thrift store, or we gave it away. Things we needed to survive fit in the back of our truck, and the other essentials fit in a 10x10 storage unit which amazed me because the white elephant was 14x20 and was crammed full.
We however didn't become homeless. We were blessed by an RV park that offered us a place to stay in exchange for work. But that's another story. The lesson is not to allow your possessions to dictate and control your life. I'm sure if means a lot that that was your grandmother's trunk but do you really need it to remember her? Would she want you to starve so you could keep it? Or could you sell it and buy the groceries that you and your family truly need.
I can honestly say that yes I sold my great great grandmother's steamer trunk to pay the bills along with our wedding bands. Now that we are slowly getting back on our feet people find it odd that our house is so empty but I must say I don't ever want it to be full like it once was.
Promises
No one promises that life will be easy, fair, or fun. At 39 years old I may be jaded but I can say it doesn't get easier. How many times was I told it would? If I only had a dime for each one then I wouldn't be making this blog.
Although there wasn't much money when I was growing up I can say we were never thrifty. I'm sure my mother thought she was by giving us her friend's hand me downs but she didn't even have a clue. My father didn't help the finance any either considering he never paid child support, but that's another story.
I started learning to be thrifty after dropping out of college. I ended up moving back in with my shopaholic mom so someone needed to figure out how to make ends meet. That's when I discovered dent can stores. Those were wonderful. The buy all the grocery stores rejects and then sale them to you cheaper.
Then I got married and it was like cold water being thrown in my face. Not only did I take on a husband but I also took on stepchildren, and ex wife, and child support. To make it worse the ex thinks we are her personal ATM and we were, are, and probably forever will be broke.
Right after getting married we lost our jobs after requesting time off for a family emergency. There went another cold slap in the face. My husband found a crappy job and I became a waitress in the grossest coffee shop in America so the tips sucked. We ended up moving into a one room apartment and I mean one room, not one bedroom. The whole apartment would fit inside the kitchen of our house now. For five months we loved on ramen noodles and cheap tv dinners. The ex even chipped off a piece of her stone cold heart and gifted us more ramen noodles which I'm sure was to rub it in our face but I was happy to get them. This is when I learned to become more frugal. However I'm not as smart as some people and it's been a learning process that I've learned over my 10 years of marriage and I'm still learning today.
I'm hoping that my misfortune and heartache will teach others that are in the same boat that there are ways to survive when you're living on empty. I also hope you learn from my screw ups too.
Although there wasn't much money when I was growing up I can say we were never thrifty. I'm sure my mother thought she was by giving us her friend's hand me downs but she didn't even have a clue. My father didn't help the finance any either considering he never paid child support, but that's another story.
I started learning to be thrifty after dropping out of college. I ended up moving back in with my shopaholic mom so someone needed to figure out how to make ends meet. That's when I discovered dent can stores. Those were wonderful. The buy all the grocery stores rejects and then sale them to you cheaper.
Then I got married and it was like cold water being thrown in my face. Not only did I take on a husband but I also took on stepchildren, and ex wife, and child support. To make it worse the ex thinks we are her personal ATM and we were, are, and probably forever will be broke.
Right after getting married we lost our jobs after requesting time off for a family emergency. There went another cold slap in the face. My husband found a crappy job and I became a waitress in the grossest coffee shop in America so the tips sucked. We ended up moving into a one room apartment and I mean one room, not one bedroom. The whole apartment would fit inside the kitchen of our house now. For five months we loved on ramen noodles and cheap tv dinners. The ex even chipped off a piece of her stone cold heart and gifted us more ramen noodles which I'm sure was to rub it in our face but I was happy to get them. This is when I learned to become more frugal. However I'm not as smart as some people and it's been a learning process that I've learned over my 10 years of marriage and I'm still learning today.
I'm hoping that my misfortune and heartache will teach others that are in the same boat that there are ways to survive when you're living on empty. I also hope you learn from my screw ups too.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)