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History can provide some of the best lessons to help us figure out solutions to today’s problems.
Concerning our finances, thrift, frugality and simple living there are tried and true bedrock principals that we should never forget.
This post is the first of a new series I decided to start that focuses on some of those principals by going to source materials for inspiration.
The Holy Bible
Genesis 41:48
Joseph collected all the food produced in those seven years of abundance in Egypt and stored it in the cities. In each city he put the food grown in the fields surrounding it.
Matthew 14:20
They all ate and were satisfied, and the disciples picked up twelve basketfuls of broken pieces that were left over.
Proverbs 10:4
Lazy hands make a man poor, but diligent hands bring wealth.
Proverbs 10:5
He who gathers crops in summer is a wise son, but he who sleeps during harvest is a disgraceful son.
Proverbs 13:4
The sluggard craves and gets nothing, but the desires of the diligent are fully satisfied.
Proverbs 14:23
All hard work brings a profit, but mere talk leads only to poverty.
Proverbs 21:17
He who loves pleasure will become poor; whoever loves wine and oil will never be rich.
Proverbs 21:20
In the house of the wise are stores of choice food and oil, but a foolish man devours all he has.
Proverbs 31:27
She watches over the affairs of her household and does not eat the bread of idleness.
2 Thessalonians 3:8
Nor did we eat anyone's food without paying for it. On the contrary, we worked night and day, laboring and toiling so that we would not be a burden to any of you.
Lessons
If we combine all of the lessons from the above passages we are taught to stock up our pantries, to save leftovers, work hard, stay focused, moderate our habits and pay as we go. Pretty solid advice from centuries ago.
The Tourism Offices Worldwide Directory “is your guide to official tourist information sources: government tourism offices, convention and visitors bureaus, chambers of commerce, and similar organizations that provide free, accurate, and unbiased travel information to the public.”
If you have hard-to-ship items to move such as cars, motorcycles, horses, heavy equipment, households or boats consider trying uShip. Transporters place competing bids, which brings down delivery costs to make shipping more affordable.
Vacation Rentals by Owner “provides an online space for homeowners to advertise their vacation properties and make it easy for travelers to search 130,000+ rentals in over 100 countries worldwide.”
Post of the Week – A personal finance post I found to be exceptional.
I’m always a sucker for a post about how to find extra money.
Bundle is a new personal finance social media site that lets people see how others spend and save their money. They have a trove of data that allows people to investigate spending trends based on demographic factors like age, marital status, income and location.
You can use Viator to book popular tours and travel experiences at the best value. They hand-select every local travel provider and screen each experience for quality, value and service. Worth a look.
Weekly Reminder – A reminder of a useful article you might have missed.
This is a timely post highlighting six great gardening websites.
The last place I worked at was on the outskirts of downtown, close to some railroad tracks and the river and just a couple of blocks away from a homeless shelter. I was there for over 18 years and it was a traffic corridor for the homeless. They passed by following the tracks, or on the way to the shelter, or heading back to camp along the river.
There were around 35 of us in the building when I started and due to attrition and technological advances our numbers by the end had dwindled to less than 20. If we were outside or had the warehouse overhead doors open we could observe the stream of bedraggled humanity ebbing and flowing along the corridor. They would usually travel alone, sometimes with all of their earthly belongings in a pack and other times just searching for cans and bottles to redeem for the deposit. Some kept to themselves, others would wave or nod as they passed while a few it was obvious had entered a different, distant state of being.
Once in a while one of them would approach asking for a cigarette or money. Some of my coworkers would always dig to find what was requested while others never gave a thing. Before I quit smoking I would usually be willing to hand out a cigarette if requested but I rarely gave money, as the ones asking were usually inebriated and I didn’t want to contribute to their condition. Every now and then a sad story would come spilling out before they asked for what they were wanting and that would serve as more of a connect for me. To be told a tale of woe face to face by a fellow human being who is obviously suffering would usually get me to digging in my pockets to offer some kind of relief.
Thinking back on those times got me to wondering how others respond to these requests. Do you give to panhandlers?
Related Reading:
How to Pick Up Cans for Fun and Profit
Food Banks, Pantries and Soup Kitchens: How to Find Food in Times of Need
Giving to Charities
Once a month I take a different look at some popular but somewhat wimpy frugal tips and try to beef them up. Yeah!
Air Dry Your Clothes
Wimpy Tip: Hang your clothes out on the line to air dry. Not bad, but it lacks excitement.
Tip on Steroids: Secure your wet clothes to the bike you ride to work and they should be dry by the time you get there. A two for one frugal tip!
Homemade Silver Cleaner
Wimpy Tip: Use baking soda as a frugal alternative to clean your silver.
Tip on Steroids: Seriously, you own a silver set? Sell that sucker on eBay or Craigslist and get back to reality with good old stainless steel.
Use Newspapers to Control Garden Weeds
Wimpy Tip: Put down newspapers between garden plants to control the weed population. Nope, still too much work.
Tip on Steroids: Just plant the vegetables in your front lawn with space to mow around them and forget about the weeds.
Related Reading:
Pumped Up Frugal Tips: Change, Shower Water, Bus and Bike Edition
While it works well to keep a baby’s bottom soft and treat diaper rash there are plenty of other uses for mineral oil. This inexpensive product can also be used for the following:
Remove oil based make up
Treat squeaky door hinges with a few drops
Use it to condition leather items
Polish stainless-steel with it
Use a little to treat a stuck zipper
Coat wooden kitchen utensils and cutting boards to prevent moisture absorption
Take it orally as a laxative
Swab it in the ears of animals to treat mites
Use as an alternative to varnish
Apply to prevent eyelashes from breaking
Wipe on tools as a rust preventative
Rub it into oil stains on clothes before washing
Use it to remove adhesive residue
Dab some on a soft cloth to moisturize and buff wood
Related Reading:
The Power of Peroxide
My Free is a fun site to click around on, offering freebies, recipes, sweepstakes, jokes and bargains among over a dozen other categories.
I really like the concept behind Meetup, the self-described “world's largest network of local groups.” You can use the site to either organize a local group or find one of the thousands that already exist. A search result for my area here in Iowa produced 73 groups. Perform a search for your area to see what’s going on around you.
Before buying anything from a car to a cell phone, or any other product, make sure to visit Consumer Search. They provide reviews culled from both experts and users and claim to be objective and not influenced by advertising or other commercial considerations. Based on the reviews I read it looks like they are doing a good job.
Post of the Week – A personal finance post I found to be exceptional.
This post questions whether you really need a credit card.
While looking over this site I got to wondering about the different ways you could make money using it. Shapeways turns your 3D designs into reality and ships them to you within ten working days. Go check it out to see how it works.
Since 1996 Tech Support Guy has been providing computer tech support for free. If you don’t find the answer you are looking for by searching the site you can ask a question in the forum section.
Weekly Reminder – A reminder of a useful article you might have missed.
I wrote this post pointing out some online selling options other than eBay, Amazon and Craigslist.
A few weeks ago I was doing a little spring cleaning in the garage and came across a ten gallon fish tank one of my kids had used for a school or Scouting project. I did what comes natural to me these days when something is no longer needed and put it up for sale on Craigslist.
A guy responded and when he showed up to get the tank I asked him if he collected fish. He said he bought exotic fish cheap when they were young, raised them to adulthood or full size and then sold them for a hefty profit. He gave me an example, of which I can’t remember the amount, but it was large enough I remember wondering at the time who would pay that much for a fish.
The conversation only lasted a few minutes but he also mentioned something about “Blue Jack Dempsey’s” and a site he used called Aqua Bid.
I don’t think this is a money making idea I am going to try (I prefer to catch and eat fish) but I wanted to pass it on to you in case you want to do a little research and give it a go. As the fish dealer was leaving he made the final comment, “It’s not bad money for just throwing in some fish food once in a while.”
Related Reading:
10 Interesting Ways to Make Some Side Cash
Does Fishing Save You Money?
A Changing Relationship with Money
This chicken recipe requires a minimal amount of ingredients and can be thrown together in around 20 minutes. We have found it is not really a seasonal meal but can be enjoyed year-round.
Ingredients
4 cups cooked chicken
1 jar Alfredo Sauce
¼ cup parmesan cheese
½ cup sour cream
A pinch of basil, garlic and oregano
A squirt of lemon juice
Instructions
Mix all of the above ingredients, heat through and serve over cooked noodles.
Further Reading:
Baked Potato Soup
Have a Mustgo Night
Check out Contest Bee for a large collection of free online contests, sweepstakes and giveaways. I have looked at dozens of these sites and I like how clean and streamlined this one is.
Car Care offers a free car care guide, a repair shop search engine, a service schedule and a listing of DOT websites for the United States and Canada.
Have you ever come home after a busy day, opened the cupboards to figure out what to make for supper and drawn a complete blank? Enter Supercook. It’s a recipe search engine that finds recipes you can make with only the ingredients you have on hand.
Post of the Week – A personal finance post I found to be exceptional.
This is a simple, to the point post on four ways you might be wasting money and what to do about it.
Visit Home Away to peruse more than 425,000 paid vacation rental home listings across 120 countries. They say they list properties that rent from $200 to $300,000 per week.
Digital Women offers an extensive archive of tips and advice on business loans, marketing tools, starting a home or small business, credit and debt issues and much more.
Weekly Reminder – A reminder of a useful article you might have missed.
This article offers nine ways to find a job or work from home, as well as links to many previous posts I have written on the subject.
With the advent of cheaper and cheaper digital cameras and other devices with built in cameras there are a whole lot of photos being stored on a whole lot of memory chips. My nephew has thousands of photos on his computer and phone and my daughter just bought a new chip for her camera because the original is full. Not too long ago we bought my mother-in-law, who does not have a computer, a digital picture frame as a gift and loaded photos of the family on it.
If you, like many others today, find yourself overwhelmed with an ocean of digital photos it might be worth considering an online storage site to not only help you sort them out but also to share them with others. After a little research I found the following sites for you to check out. Leave a comment at the end if there is one you think should be added to the list.
Post My Image - Files must be under 5 MB in size, there is not a set limit for bandwidth and each image has its own URL for linking.
Tuzulo – You can use Tuzulo for uploading pictures and files linked from emails, blogs, forums, eBay listings, craigslist, MySpace, etc. They have an automatic size editing feature and claim there are virtually no limits of any kind on the site. Register for free but be aware the site is ad supported and they place a leaderboard ad on user content pages.
XTupload – With this free site you get an unlimited amount of folders with unlimited images within a folder. Their FAQ page makes it sounds like you might want to edit your photo sizes before uploading while their main page claims they have “one of the most advanced image editors.”
Photobucket – Share and link photos, videos and graphics for free. You can create group albums that friends and family can contribute to and they offer a photo editor to fix photos and create special effects. There is a lot more on this site such as scrapbook and slideshow builders as well as an online photo gifts and prints store.
Picasa – Sign into Picasa Web Albums with your existing Gmail account, or open up a free Gmail account to gain access. Download their free software to edit and upload copies of your photos while leaving the original files on your computer.
Snapfish – Upload photos to your free account with the option of sharing just a few photos or entire albums with friends and family. They can then order prints and add comments to your Guest Book. You also have the option of installing their free software that uploads photos directly from your camera or USB drive.
Shutterfly – They offer free photo storage and sharing, free photo software, more than 400 borders and, of course, printing options.
Flickr – Upload your photos and videos to your free account and share them by invitation on the Flickr website, in RSS feeds, by email or by posting to outside blogs.
My Photo Album – They offer free accounts, unlimited storage of photos and videos and hundreds of themes and styles to choose from as well as a large number of printing options.
To spend or to save, that is the question. My wife and I have almost always tucked away our income tax returns to serve as an emergency fund. There have been a few times we have used it to pay down bills, but usually it is added to our rainy day savings account.
We know people that do the same as us, and others that treat a return like a windfall. They adjust their tax withholding situation so that Uncle Sam keeps as much of their money as possible during the year (interest free) to assure a lottery like tax return.
I’m curious as to what you will do with your tax refund if you receive one this year. Has The Great Recession changed your plans? Are you going to pay down bills, stash it away or treat yourself to something you have been wanting?
I am currently reading a biography of the almost supernaturally gifted inventor Nikola Tesla. Most of the devices he invented he would envision fully functioning in his mind before he built them. In this passage he describes one of his visions and his formula for success.
“The pieces of apparatus I conceived were to me absolutely real and tangible in every detail, even to the minutest marks and signs of wear. I delighted in imagining the motors running…When natural inclination develops into a passionate desire, one advances toward his goal in seven-league boots.”
If you have some time on your hands and like to click around on the net you could try Bux3 to make a little extra money. By clicking on a link and viewing a website for 30 seconds you earn $0.01. They also offer a referral plan. The minimum payout is $10.00.
If you are a college student or you know of one looking for a part time job or an internship opportunity check out Urban Interns, “a national marketplace that connects small businesses with people seeking part-time jobs and internships.”
Clark Howard has a website that offers advice on how to “save more, spend less and avoid rip-offs.” While there make sure to check out his Video Minute archives and the Free and Cheap List.
Post of the Week – A personal finance post I found to be exceptional.
This post offers some good advice on how to save money by ignoring your inner 5 year-old.
Do you have an old or new dinnerware set that is missing a piece or two? Visit Replacements, Ltd. and peruse their inventory of over 300,000 patterns of replacement dinnerware including china, stoneware, crystal, glassware, silver, stainless, and collectibles.
Founded in 1998, Computer Hope is “a collection of free services that allows any user to access its database of…free technical support, computer product information, free online forum, computer product buying tips, third-party computer company information, computer dictionary, weekly computer newsletter, daily computer news, and much more.”
Weekly Reminder – A reminder of a useful article you might have missed.
This is a list I came up with of eight useful and free phone apps.
