When Frugal Living Pays Off

It's been one thing after another around here since I posted last. And, most of those "things" have involved unexpected expenses.

1. One of the recliners in our family room broke. My hubby has repaired this recliner (and its twin) several times in its 5-year life, but this time it was done, as the metal frame itself snapped (upon calling the store that sold it to us, we were told they don't sell that brand anymore because of all the defects). It was necessary to replace it so that everyone in the family could sit in the family room at the same time. My hubby shopped around and got a fairly decent deal on what I hope is a better quality recliner (we decided not to get a matched pair--I don't care if my recliner doesn't match his anymore). Price: $435.
2. Our oldest son broke his elbow and wrist in a silly "only a teenage boy would think of this" incident at school. While his medical bills are paid in full by our insurance, I had to buy him a short-sleeved white dress shirt for church and various waterproof cast covers, splints, and braces for him to use while swimming (long story). Price: Approx. $150.
3. Speaking of braces, this same son also had his lingual arch snap off. A lingual arch is a wire that goes on the inside of the teeth to keep them in place. It can be reattached, but he's reached his lifetime maximum on orthodontic insurance coverage through my hubby's insurance. Price: $160 (if my insurance won't cover it).
4. High school swim team clothing (suit, tshirt, jacket) for son with broken bones. Price: $110.
5. The car we bought for our teenage driver needed new tires. It had to be done, the tires were dangerously bald. At least once his injuries are all healed I can let him drive again and not worry about him on the road. Price: $450.
6. I am meeting my mom and sisters in Utah next month for a long-overdue girls' getaway. Technically, this is not the same type of unexpected expense. It was a spur-of-the-moment decision, and I could have opted not to go, buy there are some things worth blowing your budget for, and the chance for forming priceless memories with my family is one of them. We are sharing a hotel room and rental car, and I got a decent price on my plane ticket. Still, travel and accommodations will run around $300. This is our Christmas present to each other.
7. The high school band is going to Disneyland this spring. The band director has done a great job of finding a really competitive tour package. Again, this is one of those once-in-a-lifetime chances that is worth far more than the cost. Still, that is $675 that we will be paying between now and March.

My point in this post is this: by living frugally and saving money on the expenses of everyday life, we are in a position where paying for these sorts of things, while always a bit painful, is not a financial hardship. I'll be racking up my credit card reward points, but not my interest charges, as I can pay the bill in full. We still have Christmas coming up, but that, too, we can handle.

Life will keep throwing things at each of us. Just yesterday we learned that our youngest son is going to be ready for braces in May of next year. But, by doing those small things to save money, we can be prepared when the big expenses come along!

Photo Gifts

One thing I've done for my inlaws (at their request) for several years now is give them scrapbook pages for their birthdays and Christmas. I get doubles of all my prints, and make a duplicate set of pages. It doesn't take much more time to assemble two copies of the same page, once you decide on a layout. I don't do the fancier (and pricier) 12"x12" scrapbook format. I use 8.5x11 paper and I try to put as many pictures as possible on the page without sacrificing content. I give them just the pages, and they slip them into page protectors and put them in their photo album. It's worked out quite well, as my inlaws are the type who are otherwise rather impossible to shop for.

Other fun photo-related gifts:

1. Calendars. I take photos from throughout the year and make a calendar for the coming year. Again, a perfect gift for the grandparent-who-has-everything. In the past I have used snapfish.com to create this digitally. Most of the online photo processing places offer calendars (and all sorts of gift options), and I can usually find a coupon or a sale. This year, I may try doing it scrapbook-style, using prints and the scrapbook-style calendars that you can find at scrapbooking and craft stores.
2. Photo Cubes. One year, I got a great deal on clear acrylic photo cubes at Michael's. I bought out all they had, and have used them for gifts throughout the years. Just trim 5 (or 6, if you want a photo on the bottom) fun photos to fit the cube, and there you go!
3. Framed photos. I have given school pictures in frames to grandparents (and great-grandparents), and one year my son (who was about 9 at the time) took a really gorgeous picture at Red Rock Canyon near Las Vegas. We made 5x7 prints, my son signed them in gold ink at the bottom, and we framed them to give to family.

Just picture all the possibilities for fun-and-frugal photo gifts. Send me your best ideas!

Price vs. Value

There are many times when price alone should not be the driving factor, but value. You might spend hundreds of dollars on something that you value and treasure that someone else might consider a waste of money. As the daughter of a professional photographer, my article about school photos was, quite frankly, thoughtless. As my dad commented:

I hate to say it, but the high school guy, while embracing "new" and "modern" business methods is a perfect example of why making a living as a photographer is getting more impossible.

Many areas of photography are engaged in a "race for the bottom" to see who can do something the cheapest. Stock photography which used to provide us with a good living is basically a skeleton of what it was. Images available on-line for a dime or less. The multi thousand dollar sales I used to have regularly are now few and far between.

I've seen my dad reinvent his career many, many times in my lifetime. But at no time have I ever seen him up against the types of business challenges he faces now. His work is--and always has been--stunning. He truly has a gift. What he offers definitely has value far beyond the price. Art--and I definitely include photography--is one category that value is much more than what you paid.

Back to the topic of school pictures for a bit. I hope that the $20 CD I bought was as good a value for the photographer as it was for me. I hope that his markup was higher on the CD than on the prints I didn't buy. When shopping for a photographer for my son's senior pictures, if I can't talk my dad into driving 1,000+ miles with all his photographic equipment to do the job, I hope to find a talented photographer trying to break into the field who might be willing to work out a deal with us in exchange for effusive word-of-mouth advertising and recommendations.

I hope that none of us are so fixated on the bottom line, and getting something for as little as possible, that we overlook those areas in our lives where value is more important than price. My great-aunt is a wonderful example of that. She used to shop at Deseret Industries (like Goodwill) and was incredibly frugal in her household expenditures so that she could afford season tickets to the ballet and the Utah Symphony. She truly understood the concept of value.

More Frugal Gift Ideas

Here are some more frugal gift ideas from some of my Frugal Readers.

The Grammarphile writes: "Whenever I read magazines, I pull out pages that have interesting backgrounds or pictures or words on them and save them in a folder. I make refrigerator magnets (using the business card-sized magnets), bookmarks, and notecards for people when I need a fun, handmade gift. I'll have to try using some of the magazine pages to make a cool decoupage box! Those little wooden and cardboard boxes are so inexpensive at Michael's and other craft stores."

Not only are the boxes inexpensive at craft stores, both Michael's and JoAnn Fabrics have weekly 40% off coupons good for one item. And, boxes from around the house work great, too. I've even done magazine holders in decoupage.

My sister writes that "this year for the little cousins, I am making Family Memory Games. It is just like the card game Memory only the cards are pictures of family members. Naturally, there are two copies of each picture in the deck. I order the wallet prints from Sam's Club so I automatically get two prints and no further cropping is needed. I'm using heavy double sided printed paper to mount the photos on and I may or may not laminate the cards. I haven't figured out how much each deck will cost, but even after getting some little tins from Michaels' to put the cards in, I don't imagine it will be that much and it will surely be less than what I would have spent otherwise."

I'm sensing a theme here...craft stores (Michael's) are great for the frugal gifter. I'm bummed that my boys are too old to qualify for "little cousin" status. Watch the prices on laminating, that can run up the cost really quickly!

Keep those frugal gift ideas coming! I'll post the best ones in future posts.

A New Way to Order School Pictures

I love school pictures! They are a great way to document your child's growing-up years. I have always bought a large enough package so that I can share them with family and friends. Over the years, though, school pictures have become pricier and pricier. I was spending between $50 and $60 per kid to get all the pictures I wanted.

This year, I spent more than $60 on the picture package for my 8th grader. That's ridiculous. I also don't like the fact that I had to buy lots of sizes I didn't want in order to get enough of the sizes I did want. Expensive AND wasteful. However, the high school photographer offered the image on CD with a full copyright release for $20. I jumped at the chance, thinking that I could surely get prints made far cheaper. I was right. I spent $6.94 at winkflash.com to get all the sizes I wanted, from 8x10s down to wallets. I got only the sizes I needed. The prints were every bit as good as the ones from the middle school photographer that I paid THREE TIMES as much for (also counting the price of the CD).

Next year you can bet that I will be ordering the CD again for my then-to-be 9th grader. But, I'll also have to deal with senior pictures for my oldest. I'm already looking for frugal options.

Meaningful Holiday Gifts

Christmas is two months from today. Does anyone else shudder in terror at the thought? Trying to figure out Christmas gifts is always a Herculean effort, especially if trying to add smart spending into the mix.

Some of the best holiday gifts are those that don't require money, but require some time. They are more meaningful to the recipient, and especially to the giver, because you have a little more invested than the time it took to shop for it and wrap it up.

Gifts I have given in the past that took more time than money:

• Cross-stitched items such as table runners and holiday decorations (this was BC--before children)
• A recipe book full of favorite recipes collected from family members
• CDs of old family pictures that I scanned and turned into JPGs
• Decoupaged boxes (and initials) made with recycled page-a-day calendar illustrations.

I especially like giving presents to family members that have some significance. Everyone has really enjoyed and used their recipe books. This year, I have a couple of fun Christmas projects in the works. And, no, I won't tell you what they are, as some of the recipients read this blog!

Have you made (or received) a great holiday gift that would fall in this category? I'd love to hear about them. And, after Christmas, I promise to tell you what I made this year.

Teenage Drivers

This past May, my 16-year-old son got his drivers' license. I don't know who was happier, me or him.

My husband and I decided that the best thing to do would be to buy a third car, call it a family car, and let him drive it. OK, that is not entirely true. My husband, who did not have the luxury of his own car to drive when he was in high school, did not think a third car was entirely necessary. I, on the other hand, did, seeing as I was the one doing all the chauffeuring.

We did our due diligence when shopping for a car. We made sure not to get a make or model that would be more expensive to insure. We got a great deal on a newer, lower-mileage car by buying through an auto auction (thanks to a cousin who is part owner of a car dealership). We set a budget ($5000) and did not go over, and we paid cash. Granted, it hurt more than a little when our insurance premium more than doubled. Thank goodness for the good student discount, which saves us about $500 per year (I kept trying to get my insurance company to give him an Eagle Scout discount, too, with no success). We do not have comprehensive coverage, and we have a fairly high deductible.

So, how does shelling out $5,000 for a car and an additional $1,600 annually for car insurance rate as being frugal?

It saves me time (and sanity). No more do I have to run him to and from swim team practice, work, Scouting and youth group events, early-morning seminary (a church class that meets before school every day). Gone are the days of picking him up after a band practice or performance. I can send him on his way to swim team practice every afternoon, and instead of having to race home to throw dinner on the table after picking him up, I have it waiting on the table when he gets home. This makes a huge difference in what I can serve for dinner each night, especially if there is something else we have to attend in the evening, and as a result, cuts down on the number of times we feel we don't have time for anything other than fast food. He can also take his brother places for me (he can't drive anyone other than family members for the first 6 months). Again, a huge timesaver for Mom.

It saves gas. Instead of me making two trips to pick up and drop off, he is only making one trip. Over the course of a year, that saves a lot of gas and greenhouse gases. And, he is doing it in his car which is more fuel-efficient than my mini van. It also saves wear and tear on my mini van, which is the more expensive of the two vehicles.

It teaches him some responsibility. He needs to follow the provisions set forth in his provisional license. (Our state sets limits and guidelines for the first 2 years of driving.) He knows that if his grades fall below the good student discount threshold (3.0 GPA), he gets to pay for the difference in the insurance. Likewise, if he is ticketed or at fault at an accident, he gets to pay not only the difference in the insurance premium, he gets to pay it all. If the car is damaged or totaled in an accident, he gets to pay to replace it. So, it is definitely in his best interest to be a safe, conscientious driver, and to keep his grades up.