Drawing The Line At Crazy

Finding new ways to save money on almost everything you buy is the equivalent of getting a raise or bonus. Maybe it's even better since some of the savings can be carried over from month to month.

Look at saving money this way, when you save twenty dollars on a coat you get to keep the whole twenty bucks. When you make twenty dollars more on your paycheck, you lose five dollars or more of it to taxes.

Finding ways to save money can go a bit too far though. In a recent newsletter I read on how to save money, one contributor suggested getting free flowers for weddings by picking up the leftover flowers at a cemetery. She did not specify how you can tell which are "leftovers"!

Man, and I thought I was cheap sometimes! The following money saving methods are taken from real suggestions on how to save money sent in to certain "frugality" websites. Some cheapskates seem to be uncapable of calculating that just 1 extra hour at work might put them much further ahead than many hours of penny-pinching would.

Ways To Save Money - Please Don't Try These At Home

One mother confessed that she makes her kids stuff their pockets with free condiments such as ketchup, salt, pepper, and mustard every time they went to a fast food restaurant. Ok. That's not that weird... Only that wasn't all. She also has her  kids come home and squeeze the contents of the packets into the regular jars of ketchup and mustard at home. She proudly claims that she hasn't bought these condiments in years.

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Another creative penny pincher found a way to save money on car washes. He claims that he washes his entire car using the squeegee at the gas station. I wonder if he is also the guy that takes the toilet paper rolls home from their restrooms too.

Would you like free umbrellas for life? One man suggests alway picking one up at the lost and found department of any large public library. You simply tell them you lost a black umbrella. They will almost certainly have several different ones, from which you can pick the best one and claim it as your own.

What if they have no black umbrellas, you ask? Shrug it off and suggest that someone else must have picked it up for themself.

The list goes on and on...

I don't recommend that you employ any of these techniques as ways to sace money. Apart from the ethical issues with some of these suggestions, they can all be lumped into one categoty - a time wasting frugality. In other words, you waste more time by doing these things than they cost.

On the other hand, they are pretty fun to read, and I suppose we could view such measures as cheap entertainment. Perhaps you should turn off the lights and tell the the kids it's a game of hide-and-seek.

On second thought, I wonder how many people of these people actually pay for advice on ways to save money?