Owner: Tight Fisted Miser URL:http://tightfistedmiser.com Join Date: Fri, 15 Feb 2008 13:25:33 -0600 Rating:0 Site Description: This blog is about my experiences practicing extreme frugality and personal finance from a modest earner's perspective. Site statistics:Click here
Using LexisNexis and Westlaw 2008-03-08 08:58:31 *Note-My new posting schedule is for Saturday’s posts to be about law school or law and Sunday to be about goals. Monday through Friday will be about frugality but there will probably often be some overlap in the weekday and weekend subject areas.
If you’re in law school you probably know all about LexisNexis and Westlaw. [...]
More Expensive Does Not Mean Higher Quality 2008-03-07 07:24:58 You do not necessarily get what you pay for. An earlier post “Cheap Wine is Fine” showed how wine enthusiasts rated wine higher when it had a higher price tag but in a blind taste test they ended up preferring the $5 wine over the $90 wine. Now there is a similar example in which [...] Read more:Higher
, Quality
Heating Experiment Successful 2008-03-06 09:07:21 My electric bill came this week and I can now evaluate the results of my heating experiment designed to reduce the cost of my natural gas bill. My previous gas bill was $103 and the current one was only $69 for a savings of $34. Quite surprisingly my use of an electric space heater only [...] Read more:Heating
, Experiment
February Expense 2008-03-05 08:25:30 Here is a breakdown of my expenses for February
:
Household
$382.10
Utilities
$118.68
Transportation
$623.49
Entertainment
$536.83
Food
$110.06
Education/Student Loans
$120.16
Total
$1891.32
My expenses were way too high last month. I spent $440 on a new clutch for my car which made my transportation expense much higher than normal. My vacation in Cancun made my entertainment expense abnormally high. The bad thing about that is I [...] Read more:Expense
February Blogging Wage: $29.38 p/h 2008-03-04 17:13:17 I decided to keep track of my hours spent blogging last month so I could determine my hourly wage for blogging. The resulting figure is very misleading. I spent 21 hours on blogging in February
. That figure includes actual time writing posts and working on the blog. It doesn’t include time spent reading other blogs [...] Read more:Blogging
Top Frugality Pick Plus COPF 2008-03-04 12:44:36 I was pleasantly surprised to see that my post “An Exercise and Frugality
Hack” was a top pick at the Festival of Frugality being hosted by Broke Grad Student. I’ve had pretty good luck at getting my posts in the editor’s picks but this is the first time I’ve had the first post listed. Some [...]
February Income 2008-03-03 14:14:31 Here is a summary of my income for February
:
Online Income
$617.14
Surveys
$5
Interest
$36.87
Cash Back
$8.60
Total
$667.61
My online income was by far my best ever. This won’t be duplicated soon though because I was paid for two year long link placements which likely won’t be repeated. Also I received my Adsense payment which usually takes me a few months [...]
Setback in Goal Progress 2008-03-02 17:18:45 Soon after I wrote about my exercise and frugality hack last month it was sabotaged. I had turned off my hot water at home and took my showers at the school fitness center to motivate me to exercise and save a little money. The school has now closed the locker room at the fitness center [...] Read more:Setback
Concentrate on the Big Three 2008-02-29 12:45:02 In backpacking a common piece of advice to those who want to reduce their pack weight is to reduce the weight of their big three first. The big three consists of a backpack, sleeping bag, and shelter. These are usually the three heaviest items one carries. It makes sense to concentrate on reducing the weight [...] Read more:Three
February Credit Score 2008-02-29 08:26:44 My February
credit score is 787 which is my highest ever. It was 770 last month and 782 the month before that. I’m not sure what is causing the fluctuation. It will likely be going down next month because I plan to transfer $4,900 of my 8.5% Grad Plus loan to my credit card that [...] Read more:Score
A Unique Way to Save on Rent 2008-03-12 14:31:04 This story came out last year but somehow I missed it then. A group of artists built a secret apartment at a Rhode Island mall. Various members of the group managed to live in it off and on for almost four years. The full article and pictures are available at the Consumerist.
Why I Paid Student Loan with My Credit Card 2008-03-11 08:55:57 It appears that I need to give more information on why I paid down my student loan using a balance transfer from my credit card. I’m confident that it was the wise choice. My student loan charges 8.5% interest and the credit card charges 3.99% interest. The credit card is cheaper money. Even with the [...] Read more:Student
, Credit Card
Daylight Savings Time Info 2008-03-10 17:01:48 This is off topic but some of the misinformation I hear about DaylightSavings
Time (DST) irritates me so I’m going to try to correct some of the more common misinformation.
I’ve seen it stated that DST was started to help farmers. If you know any farmers then you know that is illogical since they generally [...] Read more:Daylight Savings
, Daylight Savings Time
Used CC Balance Transfer to Pay Down Student Loan 2008-03-09 16:59:57 I went ahead and used the balance transfer from my credit card to pay down my Grad Plus student loan. The amount of the transfer was $4900 plus a $75 balance transfer fee. Since my interest rate will be over four points lower on the credit card I should easily make up the balance transfer [...] Read more:Student
, Balance
, Balance Transfer
, Student Loan
How I Lived for 3 Months on $450 2008-03-14 19:47:13 In the summer of 1997 I had a plan to travel to Guatemala and teach English. Between the time I booked my flight and my departure date I did an extremely poor job of managing my money and only had $450 left. It probably would have been smarter to change the flight date but I [...] Read more:Months
Measuring the Past Value of a Dollar 2008-03-13 15:33:15 In my Wills and Estates class the other day I learned of a website called Measuring
Worth.com. This site lets you measure the historical worth of a dollar. A dollar from my birth year is worth from $5.01 to $16.63 today depending on what measure you use. Using the Consumer Price Index [...] Read more:Value
, Dollar
Fun and Frugality 2008-03-13 11:33:15 Can you be frugal and still have fun? The answer is yes of course. These posts from the Festival of Frugality
at Green Panda Treehouse can help answer the question.
Why Reading is Frugal posted at Sound Money Matters . It is my favorite hobby and almost completely free.
11 Practical Ways to Spend Your Money was [...]
March Credit Score 2008-03-19 12:30:28 My credit score for March
is 781 which is down from 787 in February. I’m not sure why it went down but that small change would be unlikely to make any difference if I were to apply for credit. Next month my credit score will likely go down quite a bit since I transferred $4,900 [...] Read more:Score
FOF Is Up Plus Update 2008-03-18 15:15:48 Sorry for not posting the past few days. I was lazy this weekend and then yesterday I couldn’t access my site. I’m not sure what was causing that since from my stats it appears other people could see it.
The latest Festival of Frugality is up at Paid Twice. It includes my post How I [...] Read more:Update
Spring Break Frugality 2008-03-21 16:04:35 My spring break is now through the next week. Since my school is strange and I already had a week off in February which I used to travel to Cancun I’m just going to spend this week at my mom’s house. I can’t really justify taking a vacation both weeks when I’m earning very little [...] Read more:Spring
, Break
, Frugality
Accounting for Student Loans 2008-03-20 15:56:41 My student loans are messing up my monthly total of income and expenses. I don’t include my student loans as income because they aren’t income. Right now though some of my living expenses are being paid from my student loan surplus. When I pay back my student loan this will result in the surplus being [...] Read more:Student
, Loans
, Student Loans
Goals Grade Card 2008-03-23 21:56:16 Analyzing the progress I’ve made on my goals this year I gave myself the following grades.
Don’t incur any debt other than student loan debt- This goal I either meet or don’t so it doesn’t really correlate to a letter grade. Grade
-Pass
Improve my blogging- I have done better at posting more consistently and made some other [...] Read more:Goals
One Final Done 2008-03-22 10:20:02 One of my finals is out of the way now. My Professional Responsibility class was only half a semester as it is designed to finish right before the MPRE exam. I didn’t take the MPRE since my law school future is still uncertain. It looks like I’ll probably take the MPRE this summer which means [...] Read more:Final
, One Final
Haggling for Health Care 2008-03-25 14:02:39 One of the ideas behind the spread of health-saving accounts combined with high-deductible insurance is that it will make consumers more aware of what health care actually costs and they will make more responsible choices. One problem is that it can be very difficult to compare the costs of different health-care providers.
I don’t have an [...] Read more:Health
, Health Care
Aldi v. Supermarket v. Wal-Mart 2008-03-24 17:29:50 It is often debated as to where is the cheapest place to buy groceries. I decided to do a price comparison of 10 common grocery items.
Items
Aldi
Supermarket
Wal-Mart
Peanut Butter 18oz.
$1.29
$1.29
$1.64
Grape Jelly 32oz.
.99
$1.55
$1.06
Wheat Bread 20oz.
$1.49(24oz)
$1.49
$1.47
Oatmeal 42oz.
$1.69
$2.05
$1.98
2% Milk ½ gallon
$1.76
$1.99
$1.98
Large Eggs
$1.75
$1.89
$1.85
Lettuce 1 head
.99
$1.29
$1.48
Bananas 1 lb
.37
.69
.67
Chicken Breast 3lbs.
$5.99(2.5lbs)
$5.85
$5.00
Ground Beef 1lb
$1.89
$1.69
$1.83
Totals
$18.21
$19.78
$18.96
The results came out as I expected with Aldi being cheapest [...]
No Spending Days 2008-03-28 15:35:59 One way to help reduce the amount of money you spend is to have no spending days. These are simply days on which you don’t spend any money. Some will complicate the concept and state that you are always spending money since you use electricity and eat every day then you are spending. Or they [...] Read more:Spending
Frugal Travel Tips 2008-03-27 12:54:59 Travel is one of my favorite things to do but it can be expensive. There are ways to keep the cost down though. On my recent trip to Cancun I spent less than $300 on airfare,lodging, and food for a 4-night,5-day vacation. Here are some more money saving travel tips from the latest Festival of [...] Read more:Frugal
, Travel
McCormick & Schmick’s $20 Off Coupon 2008-03-26 10:52:27 McCormick & Schmick’s is offering a $20 off coupon when you make reservations online through 4/30/2008. Visit the promo page for full details. They had a similar deal last year which I took advantage of and had no problems. I probably won’t take advantage of it this year since I don’t have anyone to take. [...] Read more:McCormick
, Coupon
March Expenses 2008-04-02 07:40:27 Here is a breakdown of my expenses for March
:
Household
$378
Utilities
$107.11
Transportation
$151.90
Entertainment
$335.85
Food
$121.96
Student loans
$100
Health Insurance/Medical
$170.22
Total
$1365.04
My expenses are too high mainly because of my entertainment expense. I really need to cut that one back. My health insurance is paid for three months so I shouldn’t have any medical expense this month. Other categories should be roughly the same. My goal [...] Read more:Expenses
Latest Festival of Frugality Picks 2008-04-01 16:54:11 The latest Festival
of Frugality
is up at Consumerism Commentary. It includes my post Aldi v. Supermarket v. Wal-Mart. There were a lot of posts I liked this week. Here are some of my favorites.
The Lazy Cheapskate’s Guide to Saving the Planet, posted at FiveCentNickel. I’m lazy and a cheapskate and want to save the [...]
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