Ah what is this magical thing I must learn!?  Is it how to sell things on eBay? (No)  Is it how to  write a blog? (No, trust me on that one).  Today I will teach you enough to where you can save yourself at least part of that money.  The rest will be up to you.

In fact it is nothing you will see on any of those “How to make money/save money/be frugal/whatever” websites.   Its something much simpler.

Ok, I will stop dragging this out, for those of you that get annoyed when I don’t get to the punchline in the first few sentences of my paragraphs (And you would be surprised, some readers get very annoyed with me for that.  C’est la vie, eh?).  Its a little thing called:

Learn to be handy.

I know that there is at least a certain percentage of people that immediately dismissed this as soon as I said it, but its downright true.  A couple weekends ago Lauren’s car stopped driving in the middle of an intersection.  It didn’t die, it simply stopped going.  Instead of immediately calling a tow truck and having the car towed to the nearest garage and having them diagnose and fix the problem (Ill get to shop estimates later.  The Stealership wanted over $800 just to fix it)  I nursed it into the nearest parking lot.

I began to take some mental notes about how the car was behaving.  Since the engine would not rev my first thought was a fuel problem.  This is your first step to saving money.  In order to pinpoint common problems you need to figure out where the problem is originating from.  I did not smell gas and the car was remaining on despite the lack of response from the throttle.  This made me less suspicious of a fuel related problem because generally if there is a fuel problem the car will not run, or will be very sporadic.

I also pushed transmission problems to the back of my mind because of the lack of engine revving, and the gears would still shift flawlessly between drive where it would creep forward and reverse where it would creep backward.  Next (several times) I shut the car off and restarted it.  It labored to start, and the lights dimmed a lot.  Aha! We’re on to something.

If funny things are happening with your electrical there are 2 major culprits: battery and alternator.  Your alternator is the piece of your car that recharges the battery while the car is running.  It has a drive belt hooked to it which turns a wheel, which generates the electricity to charge the battery.  In our case, I had just replaced the battery recently so I had a strong suspicion that it was the alternator.  Which brings me to my next points:

DO NOT PAY TO HAVE YOUR ALTERNATOR TESTED IF YOU THINK IT IS BAD. Places like Autozone will test it for you for free.  I had my dad come and give Lauren a ride home and then use his battery to charge our battery for a while. (Heres another tip: you can recharge a battery just by doing what you would do to jump start a dead battery, hook positive to positive and negative to negative.  This is something that confuses a lot of people, but you want to create a parallel circuit).  Lo and behold, the car would drive after some charging so I drove over to autozone and sure enough, alternator dead as a doornail.

Now we know what is broken, oh Lord, what next?

I will just tell you, I wanted to be lazy about it because we have so much else going on and have a shop do it, so I called around and there was nothing less than $500.  The Stealership as I mentioned earlier wanted $800+ to fix it.  So guess what, time to do some car work.  I know it can sound like an overwhelming task but the truth is working on cars is more method than anything else.  They are very complex machines, but for a lot of common car problems, the fixes are fairly easy.  So if you don’t know where to start, heres some steps for you:

1) Find the shop manual for your car - Most of these can be found online and they are very different from the owners manual, or even the owners repair manuals.  These things are huge, usually thousand pages or so.  I found the PDF for Lauren’s altima online for $10.

2) Determine if it is something you believe you can do - There are some things you just wont be able to do.  For example, anything involving the engine block.  There are plenty of common ones that are very fixable though: alternators, fuel pumps, fuel filters, radiators, brakes, batteries, water pumps etc.

3) Consider the age of your car - As a general rule older cars are easier to work on.  This isn’t to say you cant work on new cars, Laurens car is a newer Altima and I have even done work on my 2007 350Z.

4) If you are nervous, document every step -  A car is just a huge assembly of parts.  Thats all it is.  Note how and where you took everything off, and you will have an easy time putting it back together.

5) Dont get frustrated - There is always 1 bolt that does NOT want to come off.  Make sure to use the right size wrench so as not to strip it.  If you need more leverage, here is a little trick, get a piece of pipe (PVC, copper, whatever) and put it over the wrench handle to essentially extend the size of the lever.  Force over distance my friends.

 6) Ask for help - If you are stuck or frustrated, you must have at least one handy friend that you can convince to come over and help….after all, a dinner and some beer in payment is still better than an $800 repair bill.

It took me a good solid 8 hours to fix everything on her car, but I managed to do it for parts only.  The total cost?  $150.  If you figure time invested 8 hours for $800, thats $100/hr after tax that my labor was worth.

So for fun, here are the opposites of yesterdays post…things you absolutely don’t want to buy from a thrift shop:

1) Underwear. Buying used underwear from a thrift store is like….right here is where you insert a gross metaphor. Seeing as I try to keep this blog PG I am going to let you use your imagination. Whats sick is my brother swears that he has seen a lot of older ladies buying used undergarments from the salvation army. If you are so down on your luck that you are feeling the need to go out and buy underwear second hand send me an email and I will give you a $1.06 gift card to target to buy a pack of bargain bin undies. Dear Lord.

2) Mattresses. This one might be more tempting than the underwear just because matresses are more expensive but it is even more gross than underwear. Good luck throwing a mattress into the washer with a bunch of bleach. Ill leave it to your imagination to think about all the fun screts a second hand mattress can hide. Oh and then theres bed bugs. Which feed at night. On people.

3) Swimsuits. See underwear, except worse. Plus you can’t bleach them.

4) Cosmetics. This one might be unusual but there wouldn’t be a cosmetic section if no one bought the cosmetics. Just think of all the bacteria and viruses that might be festering in there. Blehck.

5) Stuffed Animals. What says “I love you son” like buying him a used stuffed animal infected with disease, coated with other kids snot, and full of lice? In all honesty, its just not a good idea even if you wash and bleach them.

As a general rule I have always avoided so called “thrift stores” like the plague.  Lets be honest, there is a certain stigma surrounding thrift stores…some of them for good reason.  On the other hand I didn’t realize just what a great resource they can be for some things.  I was talking to my brother the other day and he had just gotten done going to what he called a “red tag” sale.  He was super excited about it, and he is a 21 year old wildman, so I was fairly skeptical.  I figured it had something to do with discount liquor, or possibly another one of he and his friends bizzare outings (like the time they picked up 20 free gallons of iced tea from someones back yard….or the time they left a 70s hot tub in my front yard…or the time they tried to get bronze scrap metal out of an old broken piano…).  He was actually referring to a thrift store sale.

Turns out he was actually on to something.  He came back with some pretty cool stuff.  There are some tshirts for things from the 90s that I was pretty enamored with.  He managed to get a jersey from one of the CSU players from the late 90s.  Seeing as old jerseys are hard to come by, its a great find.  He also managed to grab some workout shirts that are nothing less than awesome… some to be worn as tshirts and some to be cut up into workout shirts.  His tshirt of choice to make into a workout shirt is old American flag tshirts.  I found that I long ago went through my old tshirts for ones I wanted to cut off into lifting shirts so the idea of a huge selection of $2 shirts out there all begging to be worn sounds great.  For the nostalgic among us there are great old cartoon tshirts (mighty mouse anyone?  How about teenage mutant ninja turtles?  )  Not bad for a fun tshirt.  Good luck finding anything new that has quite the fun nostalgic value.

This got me thinking, what things are BETTER from a thrift store than they are brand new?

1) Workout shirts - see above.  Teenage mutant ninja turtles tshirt for lifting in? Priceless.

2) Nostalgic tshirts - see above as well.

3) rags/towels - I need some new shop towels.  I certainly am not going to steal Lauren’s towels and I am sure there are some big ones that would be perfect.

4) Resellable antiques or cool antiques - sometimes gems slip through the cracks.  You never know what you might find.  Can’t buy antiques new now, can ya?

5) Halloween costumes - What better place to find things for crazy Halloween costumes.  Want to be a little old lady? sold.  Crazy costumes? sold. Karate kid? sold.

Heres what I came up with as far as “free” ways to keep cool:

1) Make sure your house is well insulated - Insulation is not free per say, but its not very expensive, and you can get do it yourself home kits to blow in cellulose insulation. Insulating your calls will make a world of difference in the heat (and the cold when you get to winter)

2) Keep the ceiling fans on - not entirely free but certainly not that expensive

3) Open the fridge or freezer for a few seconds and stand in front of it - this one may sound kind of funny but when I was helping Lauren’s family do some interior decorating (she and her mom do it on the side) there was a house that the air conditioning wasn’t working. I was doing a lot of moving stuff around and really getting hot so every once in a while Id go over to the freezer, open it up and stand there. It actually helped a lot.

4) Use evaporation - When I was younger my family didn’t have AC so I used to take a spray bottle and spray my self with water…especially my feet which for some reason are always hot. I know some people like to put on wet bandannas.

5) Go to the basement - If you have one, even if its unfinished, use it. Its always going to be cooler in the basement so when it gets super hot, head on down.

Bonus: Come to my (or to a friend’s) house that has AC. As long as you bring beer, of course…

There was a government study a while back that showed that less than half of American adults can correctly calculate the most economical size of packaged rice to buy at their local grocery store. How scary is that? The majority assumed the biggest bag of rice was the best buy. In the same study only 20% of adults could calculate a taxi fare trip correctly.

Lets do a little math test. Lets make a margarita. It calls for varying amounts of lime juice, grand marnier, and tequila. You need twice as much tequila as grand marnier lime juice. The ratio is 2:1:1

Now, how many pints of each do you need to make a gallon of this margarita?

Measures:

8 ounces (oz.) = 1 cup
2 cups = 1 pint
2 pints = 1 quart
4 quarts = 1 gallon

So whats the answer?

I will tell you at the end of the article.

So I want you to stop for a minute and think about how much money could possibly be going down the drain by not really paying close attention to economics at the grocery store. Here is a great example that I can think of. When I was in college I lived in a house with 5 guys. Yeah, 5 guys. We had a pool of house money for things like milk, bread, and toilet paper. When there are 5 guys living in a house, they go through a lot of toilet paper. One of the roommates downstairs’ girlfriend basically lived at our house and so we essentially had 6 people in the house. One day my roommate who normally did the shopping and I went to king soopers and in the TP aisle he grabbed the huge pack of the TP we normally bought. It was 16 rolls for $6.50 ish. Well as it turns out for this particular brand of toilet paper King’s has a special on their 4 packs that makes them almost perpetually $1.00 per 4 pack with soopercard. I of course smacked him and so we started throwing packs of toilet paper at each other back and forth in the aisle. Im sure KS management appreciated that.

The moral of the story is that is $2.50 that we could have been wasting every week for a year (I honestly can’t remember, nor would I expect to remember the specifics of what TP package we had at any given time). Thats $130/year. Assuming you make similar mistakes with milk and other products even with smaller margins and you are talking hundreds(thousands even if you’re a name brand buyer) of dollars every year.

There is some good news

Most supermarkets have a “price per ounce” little marker in super small print on their tags. Voila, they do the hard work for you! Failure to look at these crosses the line over into lazy. So what excuse do you have now?

…But Jesse, Im in a hurry
Seeing as you could save $2 by spending 30 seconds looking at prices that comes out to $240/hr return on your time. That good enough for you?

…But Jesse you said yourself that you don’t buy cheap toilet paper
I didnt say buy the cheapest toilet paper, I said buy the most economical size for whatever you like.

…But Jesse, Name brands are better
When it comes to most things, check the ingredients. Are the ingredients the same? Ok then its not better.

…But Jesse, bulk is just easier to deal with than a bunch of individual packages
Terrible excuse

And now for the answer you’ve all been looking for:
4 Pints tequila, 2 pints grand marnier, 2 pints lime juice

You got it right, right?

Super Frugal:  my new goal for the month.  As I have been sitting here tonight watching the olympics (Michael Phelps is ridiculous) I have been thinking about how nice it has been this month having my house rented out and all the money straight to equity and it made me think: exactly how far can I cut back for the rest of the month?  I am the kind of person that likes to spend money in the sense of keeping quality of life.   I like to save, but I also, for example like to buy my gatorades for workouts.

Ive been slowly ramping down my spending over the course of the past few months but I thinking I could cut down even more.  No more morning energy drink, no more gatorade for workouts (I have always bought a gatorade to drink while I workout since water gives me stomach cramps), bring lunch every day, eat dinner in almost every night, accelerating slower in the Z (heh heh),  and last but not least I am going to attempt to bike to work at least once.  This last one is tricky because there is literally no where to ride a bike into work and work is a long ways away.  Ill report back on that one.  Im going to try this and see what I save myself for the rest of the month.

On the news yesterday they said its a record how many days we have had in a row over 90 degrees in good ol sunny Colorado. Along with the heat which I do not mind so much is the skyrocketing water bill, which I do mind. If the grass doesn’t get water daily, it immediately starts to brown up. Since here in colorado we get roughly as much rain as kapiti plain that means having to run the sprinklers daily. Joy. Before I get into some tips here is a question you might ask…

Why dont you just stop watering your lawn/garden?
We like our lawn and we’ve worked our butts off to make it nice. As far as the garden its been producing like mad and we literally are getting to the point where we have enough tomatoes and jalapeños for salsa every night and enough cucumbers for a cucumber salad every night. That is of course if the grasshoppers don’t eat everything first…I’m almost read to go inorganic and spray the damn things. Its not quite to the biblical locust storm proportions but its getting there.

So what can be done about the huge water bill? Here are some ideas…

1) Water the lawn at night
This is multipurpose, first of all you don’t lose a lot of water to evaporation and secondly you dont want your grass to burn.

2) Make sure your sprinklers are all aligned and adjusted
Why waste water watering the driveway or street or neighbors yard?

3) Buy some drought resistant shrubs
Instead of regular shrubs we bought some drought resistant rose bushes and they are doing really well. Plus they look great.

4) Use a bucket to wash your car instead of letting the hose run

5) Use a broom to sweet the patio instead of spraying it off with the hose

6) Don’t cut grass too short, the shorter the grass, the faster it dries out

Inside

1) Take shorter showers

2) Dont leave the water running while you brush your teeth

3) Make sure dishwasher loads are full loads
4) Repair leaky faucets, toilets and pipes

5) Do full loads of laundry

6) Keep some water or tea in the fridge instead of running the water for a long time waiting for it to get cold

I have a cousin who is one of those guys who is always doing some sort of crazy project so when he told me recently that he was going to run a car on vegetable oil I thought he was insane. Turns out he’s crazy for sure, crazy like a fox (ok ok no more cliches).

Sure enough, last week we went up wakeboarding with him, his brother and our significant others he showed up with a new Mercedes Benz. Now, when I say new, I mean new to him. It is without a doubt the ugliest mercedes I have seen since I saw a mercedes garbage truck in Europe. As I approached the car I got a nice whiff of something frying. Not the pleasant french fry smell you get from those biodiesel buses but something that smelled like a kitchen fire. In any case, he did it and is now paying absolutely ZERO for gas…and here is how it works:

Step 1) He bought an old diesel engine car. In this case a mercedes benz from the mid 80s that was beat all to hell. Any diesel engine will do, though apparently you should avoid buying one that has rubber in the fuel system because vegetable oil tends to corrode it after a while. Total Cost: $1500
Step 2) Build a centrifuge. He build one in his garage out of an old riding lawnmower engine and spare metal parts from a junkyard. More on this later. Total cost $350.

Step 3) Find restaurants to give you used fryer grease. Total cost $0.00

How it all works:

As it turns out good old Rudolf Diesel introduced his signature engine at the 1900 Paris Exposition, he said his new engine ran on, get this, Peanut oil. He’d designed his engine so farmers could grow their own fuel. Most diesel engines were indeed run on vegetable oil until the 1920s, when it was disovered that the byproduct of gasoline (what we call Diesel) could be used instead. The irony being that now with clean air laws, diesel is actually MORE costly to produce than gasoline…but I digress.

The fryer oil is brought home and put in the centrifuge. There is a hole in the top that the oil runs out of and into a holding cell, while the dirt particles collect in the sides. It is then poured through a filter and into his gas tank. Pretty simple.

Ill try and get some pictures and write more on it later.

Where has Jesse been?
I didn’t want to write an entire article on it, but the truth of the matter is that I have been simple to busy to blog. I apologize to my regular readers and to everyone else stumbling on my page. Rest assured I am rested, work has died down a bit, and Im dedicated to bringing back TPS better than ever.

With the new house in the works and everything going on Ive been trying to really crack down on spending habits while still eating healthy….and I have very little time each day to put towards preparing and eating.  This kind of leaves me in a rough situation at times.  Its easy to get two out of the three but the third piece is always the hardest.

-A5 B12 in the vending machine doesn’t count as healthy

-Packing a complicated lunch at home is great, but a lot of times I just don’t have the time

-Getting quick healthy food is pretty expensive and hard to find

Ive come up with a program to keep myself as satiated as possible while still taking very little time and remaining in budget.

1. Eat Breakfast
This solves way more problems than you would think.  Not only does it reduce cravings for bad food later in the day, it keeps you more full so you have less to eat later on.  I can eat a bowl of kashi in like 4 minutes and let me tell you, thats a filling bit of cereal right there.

2.  Stock up your desk
Get some healthy snacks and put them in your desk.
-Nuts
-Crackers
-Canned Tuna
-Protein Bars

3.  Stock up your fridge and freezer at work
My personal favorite is lean cuisines.  They are cheap, fast, and healthy.  Plus there are all different flavors so you don’t really get bored of eating the same things.  Buy some fruit for the week and toss that in there too.  If you don’t have a fridge at work, get a mini fridge and put it in your office or cube.  When I worked at HP I had one in my cube and I never once had anyone complain about it.  Infact, people always wanted to borrow some space - my manager included.

4) Meal shakes
I personally drink protein shakes, but you can go even further and drink entire meal replacement shakes.  They tend to be inexpensive and can be bought (and stored) in bulk.

5) Drink a lot of water
As Americans we consume way more daily calories than we need and so it wouldn’t hurt to eat a little less throughout the day.  We tend to mistake hunger sometimes for slight dehydration.  Plus drinking water is free and good for you.

6) Forget everything you know about 3 meals a day
Its wrong and unhealthy.  Most people are surprised to know that snacking and mini meals throughout the day is healthier and will make you feel better.  Bulk healthy snacks and meals also tend to be cheaper than going out for some huge meal at lunch…not to mention it takes up much less time.

Its been a while since we’ve gotten back to basics here so I thought I would go over something really fundemental to anyone starting down the financial journey.  In order to turn things around you have to save money and you have to pay down debt.  I know it sounds like an overwhelming task for the uninitiated but it’s not.  I promise you can do it.  If you have been ignoring the problem, guess what?  Its not going to get better on its own.  Take control.

Pay Down Debt and then avoid it

• If you use credit cards, pay off the balances every month. If you don’t, you’re paying interest—often 20 percent or more a year—on everything you purchased.  If you already have balances pay more than the minimum payment.  Pay as much as you possibly can.
• Limit the number of credit cards you have. Use your lowest-interest credit card, and then only for emergencies.

• Set a monthly limit on charging, and keep a written record so you don’t exceed that amount.

• Pay bills on time to avoid late charges.

• Avoid using blank checks you receive from financial services. These checks are cash advances that may carry a higher interest rate than typical charges.

• Pay cash.

Monthly Steps to Saving Money

Most Americans do not have much in savings, and lets face it, unforeseen circumstances happen. To help you prepare for them, you should have at least three to six months of living expenses stashed in your rainy day savings account. You can take steps today to build an emergency fund, save for a home, save for an education, or save for retirement.  Heres a little chart I found and added to:

Finding Money to Save Every Month

Can you list at least five more things to do to save money?
Manage Loans to Save Money

Remember that loans are a liability that reduce your wealth, so choose yours carefully. By shopping for and negotiating the lowest interest rate, you can build wealth by investing what you saved on interest payments.

$15,000 Car Loan for 5 Years

How much money would you save if you chose Lender A vs Lender C?

You can also save interest expense by increasing your monthly payments or choosing a shorter payment term on your loan.

$15,000 Car Loan at 10 Percent Interest

You can choose a shorter payment term with higher payments. By budgeting enough money each month to make the higher payments, you will reduce the amount of interest you ultimately pay, which means – even more savings!

By making wise choices, you can develop strategies and take immediate steps to control debt and build a nest egg for yourself and your family.

Nothing changes in one day

Remember it is the little steps that eventually make the biggest difference.  Rome was not built in a day, and your financial situation will not change in one day so don’t despair and don’t give up.  With time anything can be fixed so get to it!