this post was submitted on 13 Oct 2023
104 points (98.1% liked)

Frugal

5109 readers
1 users here now

Discuss how to save money.

founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
 

I've noticed sometimes that there's some half-baked videos or blogs or whatever that purport this or that frugal trick, but if you look at the time or math, it's not actually frugal for you.

What are some examples of that you've come across? The things that "aren't worth it"?

For me it's couponing. (Although I haven't heard people talk about it recently--has it fallen out of "style", or have businesses caught up to the loopholes folks used to exploit?)

top 50 comments
sorted by: hot top controversial new old
[–] [email protected] 55 points 1 year ago (5 children)

Businesses have caught up and fixed the exploits.

For me, it's dried beans. Beans are an excellent source of protein and fiber, and it doesn't get much cheaper per serving than bulk dried beans.

But rinsing, soaking over night, and then boiling, only to end up with way more beans than we will consume, and canned beans are almost as good and almost as cheap.

[–] [email protected] 23 points 1 year ago (1 children)

We use a pressure cooker for our dried beans. 20-40 minutes depending on the bean. You don't have to soak them overnight when using a pressure cooker. I ensure that each batch we make is consumed within five days.

Canned beans are considerably more expensive based on the amount we eat.

If you only eat a can here and there, it's probably not worth making them from dry.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 year ago (2 children)

I've found pressure cookers are the only way I can get beans tender. (I'm not a great cook.)

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Do you have hard water? That can make beans not get soft if you’re boiling them.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Soaking the beans with baking soda also help tremendously to get softer beans.

load more comments (2 replies)
load more comments (1 replies)
[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Probably not frugal, but instant pot changed my life, in regards to soaking beans. What a time/effort saver.

load more comments (2 replies)
[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago

Soaking and cooking too many beans? That's just like opening a big can of beans when a small one would suffice.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Agreed. I only keep dried puy lentils and adzuki beans. White beans, kidney beans, garbanzo... nah fuck that.

And even then, I'm making a batch and freezing half.

Also: fuck broad beans entirely. I have no room for that double shelling nonsense.

load more comments (1 replies)
[–] [email protected] 46 points 1 year ago (8 children)

It's more of a generalized rule but:

Assume that your own time has value.

A lot of "frugal" tips operate off the assumption that you can spend your own time and it doesn't cost anything. But your time is valuable. Time spent trying to save a few bucks should be considered working time; ask yourself how much you would get paid by your job for the same amount of time. Maybe you enjoy doing whatever the thing is, so it can be considered recreation, but if it's some difficult or mind numbing slog, then that doesn't necessarily mean that you actually saved yourself anything, because you weren't getting paid to do work, and you could have been doing something more rewarding instead.

load more comments (8 replies)
[–] [email protected] 35 points 1 year ago (4 children)

Cloth nappies/diapers. Cleaning them is a black hole for personal time.

[–] [email protected] 15 points 1 year ago (7 children)

The manufacture of 2.5 years of disposable diapers has a lower carbon footprint than the energy usage to launder cloth diapers over the same time period.

https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/291130/scho0808boir-e-e.pdf

load more comments (7 replies)
[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 year ago

I personally don't mind much using cloth diapers.

We quickly rince them after use so it does not smell unlike dirty diapers in the bin that start smelling after a day (we live in a hot country)

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Do you have to do more than toss them in the washer?

(I know nothing about the topic, lol.)

[–] [email protected] 21 points 1 year ago (1 children)

You need to de-shit them (it can be quite runny).

You don't want to wash them with anything else. But you need enough to justify the run.

You need to store them till they can be washed (smelling the whole time).

Babies need a lot of nappies.

All of this is at the most exhausting time in the parents lives!

load more comments (1 replies)
[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 year ago

Not really, no. That’s one that’s definitely worth it.

load more comments (1 replies)
[–] [email protected] 27 points 1 year ago (7 children)

Searching for the cheapest gas station. Too much time and gas.

[–] [email protected] 12 points 1 year ago (1 children)

In Australia there are apps that show cheapest prices near you, so at least there's not too much time and effort involved.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Ah good. Sorry. I'm traumatized by parents driving obsessively around for hours looking for best prices on things...obviously there are better ways now.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 1 year ago

There was a trick with the Caltex app where you can do a price lock and then get the fuel from any other Caltex station

What people would do is find the cheapest fuel in the country, use a fake GPS app to make the app think you are close by and lock in the price, then go to their local servo and use the locked in price. Saving 15/20c per litre.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

Yep my wife will drive 8 miles to Costco…if you’re going anyway it might be fine. But 16 miles at 22 mpg with $4 gas means it costs $2.80 drive there and back. Saving 8 cents a gallon would be $1.28 in a 16 gallon tank.

I buy gas at the station 1/4 mile from our house…I don’t look at the price. It’s always reasonable.

load more comments (4 replies)
[–] [email protected] 25 points 1 year ago (4 children)

Growing your own food. The only way to make that shit pay is to groom a cult to do it for you, large-scale.

[–] [email protected] 13 points 1 year ago

The only way to make that shit pay is to groom a cult to do it for you, large-scale.

They're called grand parents

[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 year ago

Growing your own greens and herbs is super easy with a hydroponic setup, but obviously you have to invest the time into getting it set up. There are a lot of pre-made options available these days, though, so it's not as much work as it used to be even just a few years back. Saves me a lot of trips to the grocery store.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago (2 children)

I still buy the vast majority of my own food, but:

I've been eating the same $0.99 bell pepper going on three years now.

A $3 packet of jalapeno seeds has made a year's worth of taco tuesdays.

I'll never buy Mint again; I couldn't get rid of my patch of peppermint if I wanted to.

I can grow much better tomatoes than what you'll find at the local mega mart.

A $3 packet of okra seeds will thicken a year's worth of gumbo.

My little vegetable garden, which is smaller than my living room, yields somewhere in the neighborhood of 100 pounds of produce every year.

load more comments (2 replies)
load more comments (1 replies)
[–] [email protected] 24 points 1 year ago (3 children)

Not sure if this counts, per se, but Solar Panels. Specifically, via a loan.

My electric bill is insane, thanks to the powers of capitalism and monopoly. So I figured installing solar panels would be a good investment. Sure it takes ten years to break even, but I’d rather be paying my way through that than paying my electric utility.

Well, the problem I ran into was that the interest on a loan would effectively negate any headway I was hoping to make per month.

I still plan on doing solar, but not before either interest rates at least quarter themselves or I save up enough to practically pay for it up front.

[–] [email protected] 13 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Depending on where you live, the feed in tariffs are a scam as well, so you better make sure you use any power you generate instead of feeding it back to the grid (either by shifting use or installing a battery).

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I don't know much about residential, but I've been watching battery/solar setups for vans and RVs, and the cost of batteries to store power has been going down a lot.

I wonder if there'd be savings if one set up a "house battery" that only charged at night, then you use the stored electricity during the day.

Maybe hiring an electrician to do it would eat any savings, though.

Although, if one is more of a prepper than simply frugal, setting up a big "house battery" to smooth out electric outages due to thunderstorms or whatever might be nice.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

Batteries could definitely be used to use cheap night time electricity during the day without solar. I think in some places you could even use it for arbitrage (use the grid market to get power when it's cheap, feed it back when there's more demand, etc).

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Are you in the US? Are you factoring in the federal rebate? Are there any other state or local rebates you might also qualify for?

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

The rebate is only as good as my taxes… so it helps, but not enough to make it a financially wise decision at this time. Similar story with the state incentives.

load more comments (1 replies)
load more comments (1 replies)
[–] [email protected] 23 points 1 year ago (1 children)

The cheapest food is always a massive rip off. It doesn't matter if you're willing to settle for something that doesn't taste as good. The cheapest food has been stripped down to such nothingness that you need to eat 3x more to stay alive. It doesn't work for the same reason you can't just drink water and feel full.

[–] [email protected] 28 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Depends on what kind of food you’re talking about. Whole foods like potatoes, lentils and beans are filling, nutritious and inexpensive. Cheap processed foods frozen pizza are basically edible polyester.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago

I'm not talking about frozen pizza. I bought the cheapest bagels a few times, and they skimp on them so hard they're like Sonic rings, and I had to eat two or three at a time. But they're not half the price. So despite being cheaper, the daily bagel expense is higher than if I buy real ones.

[–] [email protected] 19 points 1 year ago (1 children)

This is a little different from the others on this list, but a lot of DIY stuff for parties/weddings. The money you're saving is negated by time lost, not to mention unless you have unlimited time/ no job and are able to thrift everything, the components for DIY aren't that inexpensive. For my sister's wedding, we did everything ourselves. Everything from literally painting the venue, collecting/creating every table scape, my dad built the stage and dance floor, all the way through setting up the hundreds of little desserts on the day of. It was all wonderful and lovely. And took a massive amount of time and labor across several families. When you factor in the value of people's time, it was not less expensive than mine. We rented everything and it was so nice not to stress about dressing every corner of the room or decorating the bar, or making sure we didn't run out of ice on the day of. We still chose super frugal options because the wedding industry is a scam, but we just paid for everything.

Sometimes it's worth it just to pay people to do stuff. Value your time and mental health more than money.

[–] [email protected] 16 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I always thought couponing looked obnoxious.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (2 children)

I don't care if I save $0.35 per grocery trip or $35. I really don't. And I'm definitely not wealthy! But when it comes to all those valuable pieces of paper, I've decided I'm not making the cashier scan and verify them one-by-one, the people behind me in line wait the extra time, the bookkeeper add them up and send them in, and then whatever clearing house wage-slave collect and destroy them.

I realize that sounds judgemental, but that's just my threshold. I genuinely feel everyone needs to decide how they want to live their life...

[–] [email protected] 11 points 1 year ago

I worked for a big chain store. Like, a really big chain store, but not that one.

At the end of the night, they would collect all the coupons from the registers, weigh them, and throw them away.

The store would get credited based on the weight.

load more comments (1 replies)
[–] [email protected] 14 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (3 children)

The cheapest option is always cheapest for a reason. Incrementally so the amount cheaper it is than the average.

load more comments (3 replies)
[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago (4 children)

Cutting sponges in half. It just makes them harder to use, and then already last a long time and cost like $1 each. I'm not going out of my way to save ~$1/month.

Unplugging electronics. I have a kill-a-watt meter and did some math. It took more power for my computer to run the spreadsheet than I'd save by unplugging everything in my house. Electronics have gotten way better at managing phantom power draw.

And I'll second coupons. The only coupons I look at is the monthly Costco mailer, and I only really look at things I'll buy in bulk. I try to buy enough to last until the next sale, which has worked out pretty well so far. But I literally don't look at any other grocery store coupons because I just don't find much value there.

In fact, most of these frugal "tricks" are worthless. Just focus on the high value lifestyle choices (cooking at home instead of prepared meals, learning to DIY common repairs, etc), and ignore most of penny pinching. In other words, don't be penny wise and pound foolish.

That said, here are a couple of things that I do think are worthwhile even if the money savings isn't huge:

  • cut my own hair - takes 15-20 min once a month, which is less time than I'd spend getting to and from the barber; it's essentially free ($20-30 for clippers, which I've used for dozens of hair cuts), but $20/month saved isn't why I do it, I just hate going to the barber, it just seems to take so much time
  • change my car's oil - same as hair, it takes ~30 min, and most of that time I'm just sitting inside waiting for oil to drain; I don't save much money, but I do feel like I save time vs driving to/from the oil change place, and I use high equality OEM filters
load more comments (4 replies)
[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (2 children)

Using things outside of their intended purposes. I live in a gated community with my folks. Our house borders an apartment complex community, the border is a fence followed by a hedge in our backyard. We have several fruit trees in our backyard including avocados and mangoes. During fruiting season, avocados will drop and fall over the fence. My mom uses a pvc pipe with a kitchen knife taped to one end to use as a spear to retrieve avocados over the fence on the other community's side. 5+ kitchen knives have been broken by doing this. I recently bought a 30ft fruit picker to collect fruit before they drop, so hopefully that helps to alleviate the problem.

DOCAZOO DocaPole 7-30 Foot (30 ft Reach) Fruit Picker and Telescopic Extension Pole for Apples, Avocados, Oranges, and Other Fruit Trees https://a.co/d/hZUlhHK

load more comments (2 replies)
[–] AttackPanda 2 points 1 year ago

I used to change the oil in my cars myself but stopped since it really isn’t expensive at a shop and the price of oil brings it close enough to break even that I don’t want to lay on the ground anymore.

load more comments
view more: next ›