Owner: Engineer a debt free life URL:http://engineeradebtfreelife.blogspot.com/ Join Date: Sat, 26 Apr 2008 20:18:55 -0500 Rating:0 Site Description: Frugal living, saving money, paying down debt, bills, free things, freebies and anything cheap. Site statistics:Click here
Free books... 2008-04-26 15:17:00 I know this may be common sense to some, but for me it was a paradigm shift in my way of living. I grew up with the mentality that if you wanted a book or wanted anything like a movie or CD you just went to the local store and bought it (barnes and noble wasn't around yet). My wife is of the opposite mentality, raised to go to the library for everything. A couple years ago she finished her Masters in Library Science Degree and has worked in libraries ever since. Slowly she has managed to de-brainwash me from the consumer mentality. Now whenever I want something to read, I get it from a library, it's free.But what about all the newest and latest books you say... Well, they have those too. What are you telling me that I don't already know you say... here is something most people don't k
Free diapers, seriously 2008-04-25 20:08:00 Ever have a bad experience with Huggies or Pampers???Okay, here is a tip for all of the parents of infants/toddlers from our experience. You can get a TON of freebies from Kimberly Clark and Proctor and Gamble, the makers of Huggies and Pampers. Nothing special, takes 5 minutes of your time. Here is how:On the manufacturers websire, click on contact us, there is usually an email us type thing. Click it and enter your info to send an email. In the comments, tell them how "you are greatly dissappointed with your experience with and that they are inferior products. The do not contain the childs dumps and it runs down legs. They swell up with urine quickly and at night the child wakes up soaked every hour or two. This is basically what we have complained about (nothing that isn't tru Read more:diapers
RME giving $25 just for signing up... no strings attached... 2008-04-25 18:37:00 I think everone and their dog has heard about this, but just in case you haven't, check it out.RME, Revolutionary Money Exchange is like Paypal only better. They are giving you 25 bucks just for creating a free account. No strings
attached.I did it and got my 25 dollars.So check it out...REVOLUTION MONEY EXCHANGE Read more:signing
bulk cooking, an intro to once a month cooking... 2008-04-24 21:07:00 I am trying to save pennies where possible, but with a job and a half in engineering, plus dorking around on the internet, watching the occassional DVR'd NCIS/CSI episode, and looking after a 10 month old boy who is full of piss and vinegar, I have little time to prepare meals. My wife does not cook nor does she like to cook. I do like cooking
so it works out.Lately I have been trying some different money saving techniques and have found one great technique that not only saves money on groceries, but because it makes meals so convenient, we eat out or grab fast food almost never anymore.Here is the premise, once a month cooking, where you spent an entire day meticulously planning your meals for the coming month, making a shopping list, buying your groceries and then cooking and freezing Read more:intro
WOO HOO... 2008-04-23 22:37:00 We looked at our savings for being cheap/frugal on things and found an extra 250 dollars, plus 50 from an ebay auction, plus 110 from a check. I cut a check for 410.00 for an extra payment on our siding loan. AWESOME...This is motivating to save even more... I LOVE IT !
Cheap and easy laundry pre-treater... 2008-04-23 22:20:00 We ran out of Dreft pre-treater for the laundry. With the little ones allergies, I did not want to use something else, so instead of paying x.xx dollars for another dreft spray bottle, I noticed the ingredients in the bulk Sam's Club jug and the spray bottle were the same, maybe formulated differently, but read on...So I took the old empty spray bottle, poured one cap full of dreft soap from the huge jug into the bottle, then slowly filled it with warm water and gently shook/rolled it around until it was decently mixed. I shake before every use to make sure its still mixed. I gave it the ultimate test tonight... the boy has been sick and has had several "blow-outs" in his outfits from the daycare. We had about 5 days of such outfits in baggies in the laundry room. I sprayed the poopie Read more:Cheap
Save a ton on your grocery bill... 2008-04-23 16:45:00 If you are like us, you probably have a pretty well stocked pantry/freezer with the basics and spend all too much every week on groceries at the store. Now with the jumping cost of groceries it is becoming more important to be frugal. You know an apple (red delicious) now costs me more than a chocolate bar? Friggin insane. Anyway, maybe you already do it, if you do, leave me a comment, but the big opportunity here is making an mental inventory of your pantry items/freezer items and fridge items and write up a menu for the week. Put down anything you want on it. Now think of the mental inventory and try to see how much of it you can make with what you already have sitting at home. What is left is your shopping list. Add to it staples like milk and bread or cereal or whatever. You
More ways to cut back monthly expenses... 2008-04-23 13:05:00 What is your monthly phone bill from your local telephone company including long distance? If it is more than 32.00 you are wasting your money. We have had vonage for over 2 years now and have nothing but good things to say. My family lives in Canada, her family is in another part of Kansas, needless to say long distance is expensive. We latched on to Vonage and have had great service and a fixed cost now, no matter how much long distance we use or where we call. Check out the vonage website for more details. Seriously, this saves us a LOT of money, not to mention we can talk to our friends and family as many times as we want and as long as we want and it doesn't cost a dime extra. If you do a year contract they do free equipment and a free month or something like that too. If
Save money... buy bulk and re-bag your own snacks... 2008-04-22 15:09:00 In eating healthier (see my other blog) I have noticed that along with the soaring cost of groceries, all of those "convenient" snack packs and 100 calorie packs are actually insanely priced for what you actually get. Talk about rip offs. My habit was to eat a small bag of pretzels in the afternoon. From the vending machine, each pack was costing me about 75 cents, I got smart and saved some money and bought the cases of small bags which brought the price down to like 25 cents or so, which was a huge savings, but then I realized I could go farther. I now buy large party size bags of great value brand pretzels, which to me are just as good, the cost for the large bag is $1.00 even, I then divide it out into about 15 zip loc baggies, which makes each one cost about 6. Read more:snacks
Money saving tips 2008-04-21 16:17:00 Are you a Dish Network or Vonage customer?I am and have had great experiences with both of them, nothing but great reviews here. Ever wish you could save some moolah? You can.Not everyone can afford to do this, I myself find the money is more helpful paying off principal to save interest on my debts at this point, but once I am in the home stretch I will take advantage of these programs. Both Vonage and Dish Network have prepay programs, just call up customer service, prepay for a year in advance and get a discount. How much?Dish network will give you a free month ( in our case thats about 50 bux).Vonage will give you a 59 dollar credit (in our case thats about 2 months of free service).Rock on! As I said, it's not for everyone, but if you have the money available, why not save some m Read more:Money
GreenDimes 2008-04-21 12:18:00 Okay, I know I have been ranting about saving money, but honestly, this is 20 dollars you will feel good about spending. You know all of that trash you get in the mail everyday, along with those stupid credit card offers that got you there in the first place?Well, GreenDimes is a great program that works for you by removing your name from all of the catalog and mail out and prescreen lists for you, ones you don't even know about. Your junk mail will dimish to almost none in the matter of weeks. They have a free signup deal too, but you have to do everything yourself, it was worth the 20 dollars in my opinion to let them to all of it. The best part is that it will save a zillion trees from being deforested and thrown in your trash like my junk mail does. Well, actually I don't have junk
Here is my recipe for getting ahead... 2008-04-21 11:45:00 Okay, this will seem a little long winded, but it is my basic recipe that brought us to the ability to start paying down bills.1. You have to be in control of your finances, by this I mean you really need to know where every cent of your monthly income is going out. Some people use envelopes of cash to budget, etc. I found just a simple spreadsheet works as long as you are truthful to yourself. You can't track your money if you aren't honest to yourself. If you don't have excel and want a free option, download openoffice, it is a great free equivilant to MS Office. Now, you need to show all of your incoming and outgoing monies, get everything in there. Now you can see where your hard earned cash is going. On another sheet, put down a list of all of your debts, including balances, ra Read more:ahead
How we got where we are... 2008-04-21 11:03:00 When we first got married, life was simple, no house payments (we rented), no car payments, no student loan payments, just our income to use how we wanted. Fast forward 8.X years and its the opposite end of the spectrum. At 135k in debt, we can't afford to do anything with our income but try to cover the bills. The sad part is that at 135k left, this is already after paying off all of our credit cards, some of my wife's student loans and a 15k private loan. For many years we lived on only my wife's income and my part time income as I was in college working on my engineering degree. I have to say that it is probably my fault alone as to how we got where we are, years of untreated depression and an addiction to the evils of the internet (ie buying stuff online) and an addiction to ebay
The list... 2008-04-21 10:56:00 Okay, so here is what is left to pay. We just finished paying off a private student loan, so now we are putting that extra 200 a month towards our siding loan ( more on this later).Debt focus(we put every penny we can here now):Siding loan 7,000 remaining (we put vinyl siding on the house and financed it)Other debts on the chopping block:My 2006 Ram Truck 18,000 remainingMy Federal Student Loans 39,000 remainingMortgage 34,000 remainingWife's Student Loans 32,000 remainingMisc dr. bills 5,000 remainingTotal debt left: 135,000 left... *OUCH*
First post, what this is all about... 2008-04-21 10:30:00 Hi there, thanks for stopping by. My goal in this blog will be to journalize my journey to a life without debt. I am an engineer and solve difficult and nearly impossible tasks for a living, so why should our finances be any different. I have already been working at this for a couple months and have made great progress. I will enter my progress and hopefully I can help motivate any readers, just as I have been motivated by others. I will also post up my tips and some great links and resources to saving money, paying off debt and getting back control of life. Read more:First
FREE ICE CREAM ! ! ! 2008-04-28 12:11:00 Ben and Jerry's ice cream is giving away free ice cream... & jerry's is giving free ice cream cones tomorrow april 29, but at their ice cream shops only (not in stores like walmart). It has to be in one of their scoop schops, you can find one near you on their website.SWEET> I love B&J ice cream.
Making meat go farther... 2008-04-27 13:20:00 I have talked about the savings from once a month cooking and bulk cooking as I call it. Today I am making a HUGE batch of sloppy joes so we can have supper tonight and freeze seveal meals for the future. It is absolutely sickening to see how much things have gone up in the grocery stores. I always enjoy adding peppers/onions/etc to my meats to add flavor so I thought I would kick it up a notch and "water down" the expensive meat with cheap vegetables to make it go farther. I say cheap, but even veggies are getting expensive. The best part is that it offers even more flavor to the meat and insteaf of getting 6 meals, I should be able to get 9 or 10 meals out of it.5# tube of ground beef (80/20) - 9.982 hearts of celery chopped - 2.681 really large onion, chopped -1.003 green peppers choppe
Uber-cheap eyeglasses... 2008-04-29 18:07:00 I love to support my local eye doctor, but the prices of eye glasses are outrageous. Check out offer eyeglasses from 8.00 and all they charge for shipping is 4.95. Even their more expensive stuff is only like 25.00. I ordered two pairs of glasses in the fall and was really impressed. The only bad part is that you have to know what style looks good on you before hand, and check the size to make sure they will fit. I have a big head, so the width was important to me. The other bad part is that they take about 2-3 weeks to come in. But they are super cheap and really nice quality, so who can complain.I had a good experience, I got a pair of regular glasses and a pair of prescription sunglasses for like 25% of what one pair would have cost me at the eye doctor.
Clark Howard 2008-04-29 18:04:00 There is a great radio show by a guy named ClarkHoward
. Unfortunately we can't get it on our radio station here, but you can listen online and they have a great website with ideas. the best idea I have seen is drying your razor to extend the life of it. It is the corrosion that dulls the blade, not the use. People are making their disposable razor last for years. Talk about saving some money. This adds up.
ideas for saving money on ultilities 2008-04-29 12:32:00 I know a lot of this is pretty basic, but hey, some of it is stuff I picked up and maybe someone out there would like to know. Here are the utility saving methods I use around our house, we have effectively knocked down our utilities by about 30% from what they used to be in comparative months. Keep in mind that every little bit stacks up, don't discount a minute savings, those all add up.1. You refrigerator is a huge energy hog. If you have an old fridge in the basement for keeping the beer cold, chances are you could save a bunch of money by unplugging it and just putting a 6 pack at a time in your fridge in the kitchen. Since you are in the kitchen, open your fridge door and see how the temperature is... if you were like me, you kept it unecessarily cold. Most fridges have dials yo Read more:ideas
Stamps going up again... 2008-04-29 12:28:00 Personally I try to pay everything online or with my visa so I get rewards, but when I do have to mail a check I use a stamp like anyone else. I guess what I am saying is the best way to save money on stamps is to find ways not to use them at all. Beyond that, here is a good article I got from the bargainist...USPS - Forever Stamps
41 centsPenny pinchers beware: Postage stamps are slated to go up in cost to 42 cents on May 12, 2008. Until that time you can stockpile the Forever Stamp at the current rate of 41 cents, and it will be good for mailing one-ounce First-Class letters anytime in the future. Visit your local USPS for purchasing or more details.
Grow your own... 2008-04-30 12:26:00 With the price of produce lately, I am working on getting things together to make a raised bed garden in our side yard for the usual veggies. Nowadays it is costing me more for an apple than for a chocolate bar. Since I am trying to eat healthy, this is hard since fruit and veggies are getting so expensive. Since it is going to get worse, I figure it will be another hobby for me to play with this summer anyway. I never had much of a green thumb, so hopefully everything won't die 3 weeks into it. I used to loathe tomatoes, but here lately I have actually taken a liking to them and eat them regularly. I decided that for the cost of these I should plant my own. Wanting a good crop, I have ordered some of those upside down planters like my dad uses.&n
Save a bundle on cell phone service 2008-04-30 21:37:00 My wife and I used to each have a cell phone
, not fancy ones, just plain ones. Not fancy plans, just plain old plans. For the two phone service, taxes and all the made up phone company fees it costed us around 68 dollars a month. Therefore talking on the cellphones was not only convenient, but it was costing us over 800 dollars a year. For what? Hmmm... we don't even spend 800 a year on our home phone and its free long distance to US and Canada (we use Vonage). But when we looked around, the best we could do was a basic emergency type plan for 19.99 a month each, plus activation fees, plus all the taxes and made up fees they have. So in the end the cheapest we could do was about 50+ a month.We decided a couple years ago that we just are to dependant on the cell phones, we don't need to use
WOOT! Efforts are starting to show. 2008-05-02 12:04:00 I will say one thing... blogging has helped so far to keep me focused from spending money and more so on saving money and making money.Last week we were able to send a check for 410.00 extra towards our vinyl siding loan, bringing the total down from 7000 to about 6590, then yesterday the monthly payment came out at 375.00 , which knocked like another 325 or so off, leaving 6240. Last night we looked at some of the extra income we had over the last two weeks since sending the last extra and we have managed to come up with an extra 300 or so from our efforts of selling things we don't need on ebay and getting 25 each from revolution money exchange (that was 50 bucks for doing nothing special). If you don't know what I am talking about it, I posted on this previously and have a link on my si
Review: Foodsaver vacuum machine 2008-05-03 23:35:00 Welp, I had the chance to borrow a foodsaver vacuum machine deal and thought I would post my opinions in case any of you all were in the same boat as me. I have seen these things for years in the stores and kind of thought "seems like a good idea but also seems like another one of those as seen on tv gimmick deals". So I never bothered to buy one. I borrowed one for the weekend with some bags to try out because I could and figured with the bulk cooking I have been doing it could be useful if it actually worked, but I wasn't going to waste any money on it without trying one first.I must say, I opened the box up and looked it over and it seemed too simple. But after using it, thats all there is to it, no engineering degree required. I vacuumed up some hamburgers, fruits and even a bunch of d
Uber-cheap bathroom remodel project -Part 1 2008-05-03 22:51:00 My wife and I agreed long ago that our bathroom
is in really sad shape and needs remodeled very badly. However neither her nor I can see the sense in paying someone thousands of dollars to do it. Being a handy guy who put himself through college working in building maintenance, I figured I could tackle it, do some cosmetic things and at least make it not look so crappy while only spending very little dough. We also decided that any money for this project would come out of our economic stimulus check.Part 1 - I spent this afternoon yanking out the nasty old tub surround, it was a million years old, was stained and had faded from white to a nasty yellow/brown color. I picked up a new surround at the local true value hardware store in town, they had cheaper ones to pick from, but they were re
Debt tally update.. Only 131,238 left... SWEET! 2008-05-03 18:06:00 Well, as I mentioned yeserday, we have been doing our dangdest to pay everything off and live debt free as soon as possible. Our debt tally has been updated, since last month we went from 133,000 to 131,238 overall.Here is the breakdown for those who wonder how we are that far in the hole. Most of our debt is truck loan, house loan and student loans (the biggest).House Balance: 34,000Truck Balance: 17,500Wife graduate school loans: 31,900My undergrad school loans: 38,888Vinyl Siding loan: 6000Medical bills: 2950Grand updated total: 131,238Still hurts, but at least we are seeing progress.
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