Frugality beyond your family......

Frugal can apply to more than the individual or family…..

Instead of blogging about any savings we Frugals have uncovered; there are more and more out there as you look, Frau Frugal and I spent Wednesday and one of the kinder’s school at their annual Field Days put on by the PE department. This was the fourth such Field Days we have volunteered and this was by far the best.

The time we spent at the school was extremely rewarding because not only did we help out his school by being a parental volunteer and fill in a need, we spent the day together, doing something we love together, namely being parents. Now with any type of organizational activity, you will have the doer’s and the watcher’s. Frau Frugal likes to refer to the watchers as “helicopter parents’. I thought that meant parents that swooped down and dropped off the child and then flew out of there because they did not have the time to be bothered by participating, but it is a term of endearment for those parents that will ‘participate’ to say they did, but then just ‘hover’ over their child. To get off track, we had one such helicopter parent that was there and actually did the activities with their child while other children waited for their turn. They then came to the provided lunch, got their meal and then left to eat with their child….what a waste.

Our participation allowed the school to rely on volunteers to supplement their staff. By supplementing their staff they are able to fund resources that otherwise may have been allocated to hiring and not always getting the return on the dollar, through performance or skill. Our kinder’s school is fortunate to have such a strong base of volunteerism….oh yeah there is always the same group of parents that are the doer’s but the we hope the ‘watcher’s’ group will grow smaller. (It was nice to see more Herren out there then in the past!)

In addition, the PE department shared their philosophy for character development through their involvement with our kinder. It is simply this…provide an opportunity for the kinder to learn social skills, athletic skills through peer to peer relationships and move around and exercise. All this is done through character development. The kinder will become more self sufficient and rely on themselves to seek out the opportunities as they realize the rewards. Not be dependent on others for the basics….an underlying principle of frugality in my humble opinion…

Open Letter

Thanks for checking in!


This is an open letter to those Homeowner Associations that have absolutely no control or desire to regulate their water consumption watering common areas. We are currently in a drought, or are experiencing drought-like conditions. In my commute, I drive through a number of neighborhoods and cannot believe the absolute waste of water watering the pavement or ill managed sprinkler heads just streaming out water.

The St. Petersburg Times put it pretty plainly: http://www.tampabay.com/news/environment/water/article983732.ece

The Frugals are trying to condition our lawn to survive with minimal water and it just frustrates me to no end to see the abuse and neglect of these associations. We live in a neighborhood with deed restrictions and combined with severe frost burn and insects, are yard is not in the greatest shape. We will probably get a letter, but we would rather get a letter than have to water and water for the sake of "maintaining our property values". I'll stick to weeding the weeds, trying to limit the pests from eating what's left and continue to stew over these selfish associations.

Time to live on a compound for us!

Do your own energy audit....

One way, a frugal way to look at maximizing your energy conservation in the quickest way is to complete an energy audit. Check with your local power company as it more than likely is a free service they offer.

Although, Herr Frugal is not a tax expert, there are some energy savings or tax breaks that are available during filing time. Here in Florida, there are state programs to assist with modifications made to your home to upgrade to current standards.

I was looking around the house and we had replaced our water heater about two years ago. We thought we were doing a good thing by upgrading the size of the water heater. Longer showers! However, what I just discovered, the option we went with is very near the worst of the energy efficient models. A quick fix or assistance to this plan may be a thermal blanket. Another, but don't tell Frau Frugal, but the thermostat for the water heater may go down to conserve a bit.

Will report to you any savings or if the theory is a bust! Leave a comment if youv'e tried this as well. Thanks for reading.

Curbside Recycling anyone?

Frau Frugal and I were dropping off our weekly recyclables at the collection center near our haus over the weekend. I was encouraged to find the dumpsters there to be pretty full, which is a good sign. While there another patron stopped by and began a 10 minute tirade as to why she did not understand why we did not have curbside recycling (mandatory) in our area. 'They had it down in Sarasota, why not here?", she said.

Frau Frugal and I kept our mouths shut as we have a canned argument as to why curbside recycling is NOT a good solution to recycling and a positive impact to our environment at this time.

Think of it this way, as I heard a reinforcing argument on Florida Matters on WUSF.org last week. The same type of trucks pick up the recycling contents as they pick up your refuse. The average stop for refuse is about 50 to 60 lbs of garbage. Recycling is 4 to 8 pounds per stop. Think of the amount of CO and CO2 and hydrocarbons being released into the air just for those stops. The expert on this program stated the city of Los Angeles uses over 800 trucks for both refuse and curbside. Eliminating curbside would cut that fleet in half!

Conveniently, I received my Men's Health magazine last week and the city of St. Petersburg received a grade of "F" for their efforts. Sounds bad, but I completely get Mayor Baker's stand on curbside service. Here is the article for your review: http://www.menshealth.com/cda/article.do?site=MensHealth&channel=health&category=metrogrades&conitem=8033017eecf1f110VgnVCM10000013281eac____

So, the Frugal's opinion on curbside recycling is this: Curbside recycling can only be effective if done so in a responsible manner and is not done as a matter of conscious driven necessity. In otherwords, create/foster/mandate an environmentally friendly collection system, then I am on board. Use an electric or natural gas powered vehicle. Do NOT use the same type of transport as the refuse collection. Until then, we choose to go to the center as part of our routine, not a special trip, just incorporate the stop into our errands.

Thanks for visiting our haus!

What I didn't spend money on this week....

To capture the potential impact of frugality I decided I would keep track of items and activities I either did myself or found a solution or an alternative to the expense.

I've attached an article for you to review. Basically with the economy slowdown, more of us are saving. Personal savings are up 2.9% in the last quarter of 2008. That even includes Christmas with all that negative savings going on!!

Here is the article: http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2009/02/01/frugal-americans-hurt-economic-recovery/

So, for instance, I just ironed/starched 17 dress shirts. I didn't spend over $25 to bring them to the dry-cleaners. The Queen of Frugal (QoF) cut my hair with our clippers a bit ago. I didn't spend $15 for the haircut. (the clippers had already achieved their ROI). We buy our produce from a farmer's market or produce stand exclusively. We have sampled about half a dozen places and just found today's to be a great one. It is every Sunday at the Palm Harbor Historical Society Center at the corner of Belcher and Curlew Roads. Based on our $12 purchase, we didn't spend another $13 if we went to the grocery store. You should see the Romaine lettuce we got! We even shop a bit of green as we brought our own bags as referenced below!

Basically folks, if we just put some thought into your purchases and choices, you too will be in a position to say, "I know I didn't spend $xx on this, because I did this...." Save a week of groceries by emptying out and getting creative with your pantry and refrigerator. How much didn't you spend then?

Just some thoughts from Herr Frugalmeister and the Queen of Frugal. Talk to again soon!

Paper or Plastic?

We hear that or a variation of that each time we go to the grocery stores. In the book referenced below, "50 Simple Things You Can Do to Save The Earth", #5 is about New Ingredients. According to the book, "If just 25% of American homes used 10 fewer plastic bags a month, we'd save over 2.5 BILLION bags a year."

We have all seen the new wave of "recycled plastic bags". Commercially suggestive guilt indicators, you need to buy these to be "green". Each grocery store, super store, even the bulk stores have them (they're bigger too!). Usually sells for about $1 each.

If you are fortunate you can obtain a few of them at shows or conferences. In a few weeks time, we Frugals collected about 10 of them. We have some in each of our vehicles and try our best to use them each time we go to the store. We do get some plastic bags when we need to get just one item, but we recycle them here at home as trash bags.

One of the tags on a washable nylon bag we obtained (yes, nylon is petroleum based), states by using these bags, "..can save the average American 300 to 700 plastic shopping bags per year, which will save 3 to 7 gallons of crude oil." That means each of our households can contribute significantly to not only the manufacturing of these bags, but prevent them from entering into the wastestream and not decompose at all!

Putting it on a larger scale, there are 300 Million people in the US. (I know Nancy Pelosi said we were losing 500 Million jobs a month, you do the math or was it the work of alarmist speech writers?) If 100,000 frugals used the bags regularly for a year, there would be a savings of over 5.4 Million gallons of gas. How many gallons of gas do you use each year? Figure it out and leave me a comment. We estimate, our current usage in the Frugal household with three vehicles and a motorcycle to be about 2500 gallons a year. That's a figure we are going to work on in 2009.

It's not that hard to use the bags, the hardest part is remembering to bring them into the store when you get there. If you are packing the bags yourself, it may take some practice, but you can do it. Stick the frozens groceries together, boxes in another and fruit in another, you'll figure it out and hopefully won't crack some eggs in the process.

Enjoy the read and leave a comment or two as Herr Frugalmeister continues to shape this blog.

50 Simple Things You Can Do To Save The Earth *

*50 Simple Things You Can Do To Save The Earth *. This is a book by The Earthworks Group I picked up at a local thrift store a few months ago. Yes, call it book recycling, but it looked good and actually has some useful items to consider. The book was printed (on recycled paper and recycled ink (?)) in 1989.

I either heard or read somewhere Ed Begley Jr, saw the book, read the book and challenged himself to try each of the 50 things. I'll try to do the same, not because of Ed, but as a challenge to myself. I consider myself pretty green and responsible but know I can do more myself. The goal here is not to produce a number of converts, but just to show folks that what can be done easily by one person can be multiplied by others. It is not necessarily a "Save the Mother Earth" type of hype, but an increase in personal responsibility.

Anyway, I'll share with you the results on the things we Frugals try and adopt in our household.

http://www.amazon.com/Simple-Things-You-Save-Earth/dp/0929634063