Ms. Cheap's Money Saving Tips

I'm still working my way through my first December book, but I tend to skip around from topic to topic and generally read more than one book at a time. The second book that I started this month is "Ms. Cheap's Guide to Getting More For Less"  by Mary Hance, 2001.

I pick up books with titles like this ALL the time; in free boxes, library book sales, yard sales, etc. It's like an obsession. Most of them read like the every month column in the grocery aisle magazines; with tips like "Don't go grocery shopping when you're hungry." or "Always go to the store with a list, you're less likely to make an impulse purchase."

My all time favorite books in this category are "The Complete Tightwad Gazette" because it's filled with real-life tested and specific, practical advice - loads of it! and "Your Money or Your Life" because these authors have a great way of bringing the concept of how and when we spend money and explaining it in a way that represents the amount of your life that you gave to earn that money and using that as the standard for deciding whether or not the purchase is worth it. In fact, I think that these two books are so fabulous that I pick them up whenever I see them just so I can give them to people.

I thought Ms. Cheap's would be more of the standard magazine article fare, but so far it has proven at least a little more interesting as that. It is more along the lines of the Tightwad Gazette with specific tips, many of them reader contributed. Below are a few of my favorites so far:

1. Buy formal gowns at thrift shops and use the expensive fabrics to make fancy pillows.

2. Newborn clothes are usually found like new at thrift stores and yard sales since babies grow so fast, they may not get to wear them even once. Pick these up and hold on to them for the next time you get invited to a baby shower.

3. Yard sale tip: Leave your name & number with a low ball offer for an item just in case the item is still sitting around at the end of the day and the seller decides they would rather take your money than haul the item back inside their house.

4. With all the different sizes and varieties of toilet paper, it is nearly impossible to compare them. But, here's a practical tip from a reader contributor on page 55; take the TP to the produce section and weigh it to see which one offers more for the money.

5. Oatmeal makes a great thickener for soups. This tip appears on page 60 and was passed along from a 1959 publication of 1003 Household Hints and Work Savers.

6. Another reader submitted suggestion from page 68, is to tape perfume samples to ceiling fans as an air freshener.

I'm only about half way through this book, and a lot of the tips are things that we already know and do, but it does have a few new ideas, even to me.