The Worlds of Meg Stout » shopping

Being Frugal

megstout — Sat, 22 Aug 2009 18:30:00 +0000

I got a call on my cell phone from my married daughter. She knows we can talk for "free" when we use those phones.

We had a good time reconnecting and sharing stories. Then she said,

"Oh. And the reason I called was to tell you we've topped $1000 saved."

She and her husband are married college students, her husband has a job in a deli, and they've been assiduously stashing away money. So for them having a $1000 emergency fund is quite an accomplishment.

While we were talking, I was putting away food I had purchased from Angel Food Ministries. Angel Food is a Christian food ministry, but you don't have to be indigent to take advantage of their food. In fact, each box processed does two things (besides save money for the person buying the food):

1) The charity distributing the food gets $1, which usually goes towards their own food pantry or good works ministry.
2) Any excess food goes to the charity distributing the food.

As it says in their website, "There are no qualifications, minimums, income restrictions, or applications. Everyone is encouraged to participate. Some churches even encourage participants to apply the money they saved to help someone else in need."

Lastly, I checked eBay, and I did win the grain mill I was bidding on for less than 70% of the price of a new grinder. Milling grain means being able to make our own whole grain bread, etc. Good stuff. Then again, the true coup goes to my sister, who found a Whisper Mill at a yard sale for $1. That's less than 0.5% of the retail price, which beats my 70% all hollow.

Now off to reserve hotel rooms for our end-of-summer vacation at hotwire.com…

Buying a Used Car

megstout — Wed, 12 Aug 2009 02:46:00 +0000

I just bought a new car. New to me, that is.

My husband has a philosophical issue with buying new cars. I think it is bound up with the idea that a car depreciates thousands of dollars the moment you drive it off the dealer's lot. Or maybe he's just allergic to that new car smell.

I thought the $4500 from the "Cash for Clunkers" program would overcome that objection. But it turns out our V8 Cadillac Coupe deVille actually gets 19 mpg and doesn't qualify as a Clunker.

I had resigned myself to driving the Cadillac into the ground when it failed to pass inspection. Twice.

So, how to go about finding a comprehensive listing of used cars?

I ended up going to cars.com and using their Advanced Search function. This lets you search all makes, models, and body styles within range of your zip code (say 30 miles from your zip). You can specify max price, max mileage, year range, or leave these all blank.

Hit return.

For example, today I find 32 cars priced $1000 or less within 30 miles of my zip code.

Wow.

When I'm seriously looking for a car, I'll go ahead and purchase access to carfax to find out the history for cars I'm considering based on their Vehicle Identification Number (VIN). For less than $40 you can run an unlimited number of carfax searches [see a sample report], which will tell you all the intimate details of accidents, recalls, and odometer readings when the car was registered over it's life.

Most of these have pictures of the cars that you can browse and a VIN number. If there is no VIN number, there is a phone number (for example, for listings from newspapers). You can call, chat, and get the VIN number from them.

I ended up finding a clean, single-owner minivan with less than 100,000 miles for under $3000. Wow.

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Shiny New Website

megstout — Tue, 05 May 2009 04:50:08 +0000

One of my New Year’s resolutions was to revamp my website.

Here’s the problem. I don’t do webdesign 24/7. I *can* do html and the like. It’s just not the most productive use of my time. So I’ve been putting off thinking about the website.

Then a friend posted her fabulous experience hiring the multi-talented Eugie Foster to update her website.

I was sold. Eugie not only helped me select and create my pretty, pretty site, she did so in a manner that left me competent to take care of it from here on out.

First she suggested I use WordPress: “both free and priceless at the same time.” I browsed through the hundreds of themes to find one that made me happy.

Eugie was able to hook me up with all kinds of cool plug-ins – getting my twitter feed to show up on a page, and connect my webpage blog with all my blogs and social networks via ping.fm (blog/tweet once, post across all “my” sites).

I suggested the kinds of pages I wanted, and Eugie was kind enough to suck pertinent information from my old website over. Plus she updated the standard header to show my title in lovely lettering. Several different kinds of lovely lettering, in fact.

Here’s where I spent (and forced Eugie to spend) a lot of time. I’m more particular than I realized. When I rejected all the dozen or so designs Eugie came up with, she suggested I go to dafont.com and find a font that I liked (a font I liked that is free and works on PCs, that is). I browsed through hundreds, maybe thousands of different fonts. I even considered making my own font using a service like YourFonts or vLetter. But I finally decided I could live with the lovely Eutemia font:

It’s pretty, looks ‘handwritten,’ leans forward, and reflects the multiple-personality type of feel I think this site will end up having (mother, novelist, physicist, blogger, tweeter, prepper, and so forth). I think it’s adequately legible and mirrors the messiness of the paint border on bottom, the long lines of the white flowers, and the multiple-line intricacy of the fleur de lis.

I’m sure I’ll be tweaking the site over time – I just can’t help it. But at least it’s now adequately ready for public consumption and I’m ready to reinstate my website into my personal e-mail signature. Life is great!