Chances Are Slim That I Will Win the Lottery

I will occasionally pick up a lottery ticket if the jackpot is huge. Apparently, if you are one of those people who buy lottery tickets regularly you are throwing money out the window. I was listening to NPR recently and they were interviewing a professor that wrote a book called "Guesstimation: Solving the World's Problems on the Back of a Cocktail Napkin". The guy, Lauwrence Weinstein, put it all into perspective with regards to lottery tickets for me. You know when it says on the ticket "Your chances of winning are 1 in 12, 048, 2837?" What does that number mean? Professor Weinstein put it into layman's term for the rest of us. He said to imagine taking enough lottery tickets to stack them one on top of another all the way from the ground to where the planes fly, so about 40,000 feet up, and then your job is to pull one ticket, only one ticket and one try to do this, you must pull the winning lottery ticket.

Puts things into perspective for me. Chances are slim that I will win the lottery.

[Jerry posted a comment that got me thinking so I wanted to add something to this post on imagery. I love solid imagery to help me wrap my brain around things. You might like the book I referred to in my post. He even talks about the numbers 1 in one billion. If you line the equator with white golf balls and your job would be to pick out the one red golf ball that would be equal to 1/1 billionth. If you line the equator with grains of white sand and then try to pick out the red grain of sand this would equal 1/1 trillionth. Amazing isn't it? Thank you for your comment!)

Money Saving Ideas

I remember when I was eager to get out of debt and save money. I was so hungry for any tips that would help me and motivate me. Unfortunately there is a lot of stuff out there you have to weed through to get to the real tips that you can actually use.

Money Saving Ideas to Get you Out of Debt or increase your savings:

Make a budget - I know I know, everyone says this but it couldn't be more true. Pay everything in list of priority – pay shelter, utilities, food, transportation (PUFT) and first. Then work your way down the list of who gets paid until you are out of money for that month. Pay people in this order:

· Shelter, utilities, food, transportation
· IRS
· 2nd mortgages/HELOCs
· credit cards

Increase your income - take a second job, part time job, get a better job. This is only temporarily.

Sell stuff on eBay – Since you have plenty of time on your hands because you won’t be eating out or going to the movies, etc. collect all the stuff in your house that you don’t use that is taking up space, plus you have to dust it. Recoup some of the money you spent on frivolous stuff and throw it towards debt or savings.

Have yard sales.

Loose the cable/satellite

– you know that you are losing brains cells by sitting in front of the tv for hours at a time don’t you?

Cut back on extras – No Starbucks Caramel Frappicinos. No new red shoes. No filet mignon. Remember this is only temporary until you can get your bearings. That stuff will always be there.

Ditch anything that is not in PUFT – Blockbuster/Netflicks movie rental – you can borrow movies for free from the library, piano lessons, etc.

Freecycle for what you need – Sign up for your area’s Freecycle and post what you need and someone will have it and email you to come pick it up. You can read about my recent success story here. Stuff that you think you cannot sell on Ebay post onto Freecycle so it does not end up in a landfill.

Collect all of your bills and call each company to get a better rate – again you have time on your hands since you are in lock down from yourself and your bad spending habits. Spend this time calling each company and get them to lower your rates to the very best rate they can offer – this includes your cell phone, insurance (life & car), credit cards, power company (see my post here about how to do this). Every company you deal with wants to keep you as their customer and not loose your business. Use this to your advantage.

With a few major and minor adjustments you can get yourself out of debt or increase your savings. Sure it will be difficult. Sure it might not be much fun.

But just as you teach your children that they must suffer the consequences when they make a bad choice the shouldn't the same be for you?

Creative Loopholes

Yes! I love it when things work out for my benefit!! But you cannot just sit around and expect things to happen to you that maximize your savings. You need to take an active role in seeking out creative opportunities.

There are ways to obtain what you need/want in such a way that it makes you smile because you really got a bargain. Always try to look at how you can maximize your potential savings. I always tell myself and the kids "I would rather have money in my pocket to travel, buy things that I enjoy and not have to waste money on things like the electric bill and groceries." This is why I strive so hard to minimize trivial (well, trivial to me) bills. I just don't want to give away my hard earned money. I always try to maximize my savings in any situation.

Today on National Public Radio (NPR) they are having a drive to raise money. If you donate $200.00 to their drive they were offering two free tickets to a huge amusement park. Now we were already going to buy season passes to this amusement part which are $68.00 each. For a family of 6 that is $408.00. We usually buy either those amusement park season passes or water park season passes each year. Now I usually do not donate to NPR when they have these fund drives but I am a loyal listener, every day of my life in fact. But we just do not have "extra" to give away in this season of our lives.

Since we were already going to buy the passes to begin with my husband and I both donated $200.00 to NPR. This equals four free season passes. You're sitting there thinking well didn't you actually spend more for the tickets? Here's the sweet part of the deal. You can deduct the amount that you donated to NPR off of your taxes. So in essence, I will be able to deduct the $400.00 off my taxes lowering my taxable income for this year. Nice, huh? I thought so too.

Always look for way to maximize your savings so things will work out for your benefit.

Savvy Shopping Report! Detergent!

Normally I do not buy detergent. It has all kinds of junk in it and you can easily make some yourself. Here is a recipe for homemade laundry detergent. But sometimes I get bogged down and need to buy detergent. But yesterday I was smitten by a deal at Walgreen's. In their sale ad they had Gain detergent for 2/$10 which is a horrible deal. But since you get $4.00 off your next shopping order (these are called Register Rewards) and if you buy $50.00 worth you get an extra $5.00 RR. I decided to buy $50.00 worth. Here's the math:

2/$10 - I bought 10 things of detergent - the big 48 load ones!

$50.00

-$25.00 Register Rewards

-$7.00 previously earned RR's

_________

$18.00 OOP (Out of Pocket)

$20.00/10 = $1.80 each

I won't need detergent for a year! Yes it is obnoxious to walk out of a store with 10 things of detergent! And you do need to have some flexibility in your budget to be able to drop extra money on a really good deal and not have to worry that you cannot buy eggs this week. Pad your account with a little extra so you can take advantage of deals like this. You can either have surplus in your regular checking account or budget envelope or have a totally separate account for "extras". Just make sure that you have a little extra so you do not have to pass up a good deal. Pre-planning makes all the difference.

Do Pets Really Need a Skirt?

I post under the name Chou Chou. Chou Chou is the cat. Well the favorite cat out of the three cats in the house. I picked his name as my blogger name. This leads me to some interesting ideas on frugal pet care. Obviously having animals costs money. I think that it is worth it for the contribution they bring to my life and to my children's lives but that doesn't mean I want to spend a lot of money on them.


Here are some tips for frugality when it comes to pets:

1. Feed them the right food so they don't get sick - This is the most important element to having a pet. As anyone with a pet knows, one visit to the veterinarian puts you into the poor house. You can easily avoid unnecessary visits by feeding your animal decent food. By decent food I do not mean the most expensive that is out there. I am talking about food that does not have fillers or preservatives in it. Just as people shouldn't be eating food with this junk in it because it gunks up their system the same goes for animals. There is a relatively inexpensive product at Walmart that is called Maxximum (blue and black bag) that is the store brand that is decent with no additives or preservatives and no fillers. Look at what you are feeding your animals and find a better alternative to junky food. Your pocketbook will thank you later. So will your animal by living and loving you for many years to come.

2. Search out alternatives - We recently adopted a hurt chicken. She was a major layer in her flock but got hurt and was getting attacked by the other chickens so a friend of ours let us keep her until she was healed and then we ended up keeping her. My daughters love this chicken. They named her Roxy because, as we all know, once you name an animal your dad cannot butcher it. The woman that gave her to us gave us a bag of feed to give to her. We had already decided that she would be free ranging in the back yard and that we would add to her meal by supplementing with feed but I did not run out and by her some feed which was certainly overpriced from the feed store. I made my own. Since we buy grains in bulk for the family it was not difficult to come up with a mixture that would be good for a chicken. I combined in a container millet, steel cut oats, regular oatmeal, flax seed, flax meal, corn meal, and sunflower seeds. These are all organic so she is eating organic feed. She also eats scraps from the kitchen. Since she is a layer she is giving back to us for our caring for her. Great symbiotic relationship - like it is supposed to be. Again, don't just run off to the store to spend money - seek out alternatives first.

3. Animals do not need "things" - Does your dog really need a skirt? Does your cat really need a jeweled collar or that complex jungle gym thingy- ma-bob taking up space in your living room? Do you really need to provide a lavish pet bed or fancy walking gear or a pet stroller for your animal? Do you think that it increases their quality of life? It doesn't. Buying animals things does not do anything for the animal - the things are for people. So people can show off their pet or feel better about their pet or perhaps it makes the person feel better about themselves, who knows? Let me tell you before you think I sound like some bitter pet owner - I spoil my pets rotten, but with love and not things. Kind of how we should treat our kids don't you think? (Rant for later)

4. Let's say your animal does get sick - Try, if it is not an emergency, to wait until business hours to get treatment for your pet. If you go to an after hours emergency vet you might as well leave your first born child as payment because you will be in debt if you weren't already after you leave that place. Try to comfort your animal until regular hours and then take them in.

5. Weigh the options of treatment - We lost our dog of 14 years two years ago. We loved that dog. He was the healthiest dog. never went to the vet except for shots. Again I believe this is because we fed him the right things and loved him with all our hearts. He was heading down hill and when it came time to decide what to do we elected not to do all the expensive tests to see if there was an "out" and they could stabilize him. His body was failing him and so we had him put down. That was probably one of the hardest decisions we ever had to make and as bad as I wanted to spend whatever the amount to see if he could be saved, if there was a 1% chance, I knew we couldn't do it. He was in renal failure and we just needed to let him go.

This has nothing to do with frugality but I will share it just in case anyone out there who reads this blog (does anyone read this blog?!?) has pet that they lost or if they lose a pet explaining it to children can be difficult. We heard comments like "I never want another animal again" or "I cannot love another animal" or "We should have never gotten him in the first place if he is just going to die and we feel bad." These are all valid feelings that children will experience. We told our children that yes, it would be easier if we did not have to say good-bye but we would never trade those years that we had Jake because he added so much to our lives. Our lives were better because of him. (I am starting to cry) We would have missed out on a lot if we did not have him so it was worth it even though he had to leave us. We buried him in the back yard and had a funeral for him. The children stood at his grave and threw flowers into it before we buried him. We also buried him with his tennis ball because he loved that stupid ball. The children planted a tree over top of him in his memory. And they can "visit" him anytime they want to by going to his resting place.

Perhaps some of these things can help you and your family whether the grief of losing a beloved pet.

Dedicated to Jake - 6-23-06

[Disclaimer - I'd like to add that Augie left a comment about there being a true need for some pets to use strollers. I agree with this wholeheartedly! I believe there are cases where it does add to the animal's and the owner's life. I was merely speaking of people who buy strollers for animals that do not NEED such devices to make their lives complete. Thank you Augie for helping me to remember that I need to clarify these things.]

Using Coupons- Crash Course - Part II

Now that you have your coupons in order time to start scanning the ads for sales. There are three ways that you can do this. You can either get the Sunday paper and make your shopping list to coincide with your monthly menu plans that we talked about here. Once you have your shopping list then you can pull the approriate coupons. The is the cheapest by being free as you can access the paper from a friend or some other free method.

The second way is to look online at the sale ads for your favorite stores. Another free way to get the informaiton but you need to be comfortable with scanning websites and copying information down. I did this before and it is somewhat time consuming but worth it in the end.

The third way and the one I recommend is using the Grocery Game. This site lets you access all the sales and coupons ofr your stores. What I love is that it is color coded with best lowest prices in blue and free items in gree. All the items are listed with the price, sale price, the coupon that you can apply and the new price. All you need to do is check the items that you want to print on your list, pull the coupons from your handy coupon binder and you are all set to shop. This is reasonable - $1o.00/8 weeks for one store and $15.00/8 weeks for two stores. I personally only shop at two grocery stores so this seems like a good price to me and a time saver at that! Right now you can try the Grocery Game for $1.00 for 30 days and if you don't like it cancel. I recommend at least trying it.

Yes, if you find it works you will have to spend some moeny to obtain this service but look at it this way:

• This will save you a bunch of time that you do not have - time = money


• You will easily recoup this amount in savings - she has a staff that monitor all the possible deals. If you are doing it you are guaranteed to miss something. Let the experts do it. Kind of like changing the oil in my car. Would I attempt to save money by changing it myself? No, becasue I would have no idea what I was doing and I would probably mess something up, not to mention I would spend twice as much of my valuable time doing it. I think the money would be well spent letting the "experts" do what they know how to do.


• This is money spent for something useful. You are not buying a new shirt. This is something that will help you save, a tool - that makes it worth the money coming out of your budget.

Stay tuned for Part II of this series.

You Still Have Your Arms and Your Legs

In light of the economy many people are having to make some financial cuts in order to stay atop the rising costs of day to day living. This is a good lesson is wants versus needs. Needs are food, shelter, & clothing, the bare necessities to keep a human being alive. Many could argue that in America we could also lump transportation so we can get to/from work as a need to be able to get food, shelter and clothing. I believe that is valid. However cable television is not. When we speak of wants we all know that this means things that you could live without - cable, a new Wii, designer clothing, etc. So in today's economy, how can one discern between what you really need and want?

Ask yourself these few questions:

1. Can I get by without it? Let's use the example of cable television. Some could argue that this is actually a need because they are trying to save money by cutting out any outside entertainment whatsoever. You could reason that this is actually less money than going out to eat or a movie or some other form of entertainment. I believe this could be deemed logical reasoning if you were not having your house foreclosed on you. If you are trying to cut back and do so by eliminating all other forms of entertainment including eating out and settle for just keeping cable so you can be entertained at home for an amount that you can expect and budget each month I think this is feasible. But not so if you cannot pay your fixed bills. You need to cut the cable out completely.

2. Do I want to trade my time for this item? I have always looked at a purchase in terms of how much time it would take for my husband to work to earn that amount. Let's say that you are looking at buying a $15 sweater at Target. Great deal right? $15 sweater! Yay that's a bargain! But what if your husband, the sole breadwinner of your family, makes $15/hour at his job? Your husband would have worked an hour of his life, an hour he cannot get back, for you to have that sweater. Is it really worth it to you that your husband, or you for that matter, worked an entire hour for that sweater? When you look at your purchases in these terms you might find yourself hanging things back on the rack.

3. Are you having to choose between a want and a need? Let's say you have a few kids and would like them to take soccer lessons, or piano, or whatever they want to do. Granted it is nice to let your kids take lessons but not if it means paying for the lessons or the power bill. 60 years ago kids rarely took lessons like they do now and still they turned out alright. Your kids are not going to suffer just because they don't play T-ball this year. Perhaps they will develop their imagination since they will have to find things to do for themselves outside while they play. I can think of worse things for a child to develop rather than their imagination.

4. Can this be temporary? So what if you have to cut the cable? So what if you can't let your kid play soccer this year or get that new sweater you like? This is only temporary. Once you have your financial bearings then you can let yourself breathe a little bit and add back in some of the things you are cutting back on now. Nothing is forever. You'll like another sweater. You'll probably read more or devote time to getting your financial life back on track when you cut the cable. Your kids can play soccer next season because by then you will have put aside money to plan for that expense (hopefully).

5. Finally, and most importantly, look at how others live - I'm not talking about the Joneses either. I just read this book "Three Cups of Tea" about the plight of one man who goes into remote regions in the last 15 years to build schools in little villiages where young girls never had the opportunity to be educated. All I could think of was how blessed and fortunate we are to live in a civilized country. They did not even have clean water and the infant mortality rate was so high that 1 in 3 infants died before age 1. Many mothers died in childbirth. The man, Greg Mortenson, brought medical care, vocational training and built schools for $12,000, so nothing fancy and these people were able to haul themselves up by their bootstraps and begin to work themselves out of poverty. They would have loved to have what the person on government assistance in the US has now. Yet people who are poor in this country complain that they cannot get ahead. Try living in a mud hut and drinking dirty water all the while living in a harsh climate near the Himalayas where temperatures hover around 0 degrees and make a living. Someone is always more worse off than you. Not that you should take comfort in this but let this be your snap back to reality - as bad as it seems you are still not as bad off as you could be. You still have all your arms and legs, since they have not been blown off by a landmine. You have a source of income and if you don't then you can get assistance from your government to help you so you don't starve to death like those children you see on television in Africa. Let's hope you have a car and don't have to walk 12 miles to the nearest town to get supplies for your village. You have heat or air conditioning. The next time you feel pity for how your life is progressing take a look at how others live. It will put things in a new perspective for you and perhaps you might become grateful for the position you are in currently.