My Two Favorite Penny-Pinching Resources

• barrieabalard
• October 15th, 2009

I was traveling from October 6 through 13, and am traveling again starting today, this time for a college reunion. So, Part Three of my continuing series on health insurance must be postponed until next week, October 22. In the meantime, I hope the following resources will help you if you need to restrict your monetary outflow for whatever reason.

My favorite, most useful resource is The Dollar Stretcher, and it is free! I have been a subscriber to their weekly ezine for twelve years, which ought to tell you something about how highly I value them. They have many free ezines, but my favorites are the original weekly Dollar Stretcher, the Dollar Stretcher Tips (twice-weekly), and one of their newest ezines, Surviving Tough Times: Inflation Fighters by TDS. I don’t look at the actual web site very often, but if I need advice on how to save money by doing or buying <blank>, it’s where I go first. The weekly ezine is especially recommended if you are new to squeezing that eagle until he screams. :-)

A less-useful, mostly because it is so dated, but still quite worthwhile resource, is the complete compilation of all issues of The Tightwad Gazette by Amy Dacyczyn, which existed as a paper newsletter in the early to mid Nineties. This book, almost a thousand pages, will be useful to those who are ready to earn their black belt in frugality. Be warned that some ideas in the book may strike you as too much work, or possibly gross (such as dumpster-diving). To Ms. Dacyczyn’s credit, she includes a wide range of suggestions for saving money, which is one of the things I like about it—there’s a lot to choose from to try. I also enjoy her philosophy of frugality, which is inherently good for the environment because it is all about consuming fewer resources/generating less trash. I re-read the entire book every January, just to hone my skills. You can pick up a used copy online or possibly at a yard sale or thrift store, but if you like the book as much as I do, you’ll eventually want a newer copy to refer to time and again. It’s cheaply-printed (newsprint) and therefore a bit fragile—I assume this was on purpose, to make the book as low-cost as possible—and I’ve had to mend several well-thumbed pages.

If you want to look at a copy of the book to see if it’s for you (and I admit it very well might not be), then try your local library or pick up a cheap, used copy.

Next week, we hit the health insurance discussion head on again!

Tickers: frugal living, saving money, The Dollar Stretcher, The Tightwad Gazette

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