Canadian Personal Finance Blog

Is this thrifty? Frugal? Cheap? A while ago I wrote about how I had become my mother and yet I continue to do things like pictured above. What is this a picture of?

When you have bought a new bottle of Fabric Softener but there is still a little left in your old bottle, what do you do?

• Throw the old bottle out and don’t even think about the small amount left because it is insignificant and unimportant?
• Keep attempting to use the old one and then throw it out?
• Do what this picture shows, decanting the remnants of the old bottle into the new bottle?

Do you do this for Ketchup and other condiments?

Have you ever seen there were only a few Cheerios left in the box so you just dumped them into the new box of Honey Nut Cheerios (thus creating an amalgamation)?

Is this being cheap? Frugal? Crazy? Question for your Saturday.

A holiday here in most provinces in Canada, so let’s ask an important question, just how cheap are you? What is the cheapest thing that you do or have done (and are proud of it too)?

I have a cell phone for work that I have had charging at work for a while, and never thought twice about it. Then one day, I realized, “Why am I charging only my work cell phone here?”, so now I charge my personal cell phone at work as well. Is this fraudulent use of company resources? Don’t think so, but it is being darn cheap!

Why is cheapness frowned upon? Isn’t it our money, so trying to keep it, shouldn’t be a bad thing, but holy cow, the funny looks you get when you tell someone just how cheap you are, and the “I’d never do that” looks you get? Lighten up folks!

The other thing that I still do, that I learned from my mother that I have spoken about before is the emptying of old ketchup bottles into the new one. Yup, I sit there and decant the remaining dregs of the old ketchup bottle into the new one. How much ketchup am I saving? I don’t know, but it makes me happy. Now my mother also used to mix old cereals together into the new ones as well, so you’d end up with Cheerio/Shreddies/Puffed Rice in your cereal in the morning as well, but you get used to it, and you save a little money too.

So what cheap things do you do?

Carnivals

• Debt Consolidation Lowdown is hosting Carnival of Debt Management #19 has my posting Bill Surfing The Next Generation

Relevant Postings

• New Pay Day Loan Regulations in Ontario
• I have become my Mother

That is the code phrase a friend of ours has for when she goes to the Salvation Army thrift store to buy clothes, “I’ve been shopping at the boutique”. Why do folks like me shop at the thrift stores that seem to be opening all over the place? Because we are cheap? I can’t afford to shop at the Gap every time? I think the answer is YES to all and a few other reasons too.

If you have four kids (and three of them daughters) keeping them in new clothing could easily bankrupt us (if our kids were insane clothes horses like the ones on MTV, luckily they aren’t). They are growing and active kids and a lot of times clothes are grown out of or ripped so quickly, I’d go insane if I’d bought them brand new.

My wife has made shopping at thrift stores almost a science, and her only comment to me was that you need to be very patient and know when new “deliveries” come in. My kids have not made too many complaints about wearing “used” clothes, in fact they are starting to go there themselves, which is a good thing. They also buy new clothes but mostly with gift money from their relatives.

Most of these thrift stores have a charity component to it, so that is a good thing as well. We typically dispose of our “lightly used” clothing in the Salvation Army red boxes or whoever is collecting at the time.

Somehow I got mentioned in the Festival of Under 30 Finance (given I am well over 30, I am impressed that they listen to an old codger” like me). It was my posting about using Quicktax and asking what financial tools you use.

Finally if you ever see me complaining about it isn’t cold enough in Ottawa, please feel free to leave a very rude comment. I can only say I thank my mechanic every morning this week for convincing me to put a block heater in my Honda! –C8j

Yes, I caught myself doing something that as a kid drove me quite insane. My mother and father grew up in a completely different world than I did, and have very different ideas about the importance of saving (their attitudes are much better than their son, I freely admit). My mother was always saving a little bit here and there, and one of her tricks was taking left over cereal from old boxes and adding them to the new boxes (because her lazy sons would open the new cereal before the old one was finished). Now that may not sound too bad to you, but it didn’t matter if the old box was Puffed Rice and the new box was Corn Flakes. This meant that you ended up with some very interesting hodge podge cereals, and you never knew what would pour out of the box in the morning.

This morning, I did the exact same thing. I must admit, I finally had it with my daughters not finishing the cereal, and we have 5 boxes of cereal open, so I started to merge boxes together. I am very interested to see what they think of it tomorrow morning, when they get their “special mix” cereal?

Another thing Mum liked to do was to pour the remnants of Ketchup bottles into the new ones, and I must admit I do that one, and I also do that with Laundry Detergent as well.

Thanks for the lessons in life Mum, your ways are sometimes the best!