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Welcome to Tips from a Frugal Housewife.

Today’s tip is one that I discovered rather recently while browsing at one of my favorite stores, Storables. I adore that place, man oh man! I am pretty sure you can get them elsewhere, but that’s where I saw them.

If you have Stainless Steel Appliances, which I do, you need the special “High Performance Cloth” they sell. It is some sort of micro-fiber, and all you do it wet it just barely and wipe down your appliances or anything stainless steel and it cleans it right up. No streaking, no chemicals and nothing to buff off. I was in heaven when I found it, I have two and they work amazingly well, I swear.

They also sell special ones for glass which work beautifully, as well.

Think of the time and money you will save on paper towels and that “special” stainless steel cleaner. You are also helping the environment!

Today’s tip is in regard to something that may be affecting you or someone you know, the big F; Foreclosure, something all homeowners dread. With the economy in distress, more and more homeowners are loosing the homes they have worked so very hard to acquire.

You may have heard of this already, but there is a new stall tactic for people who are at risk of loosing their homes to foreclosure, it is called “Produce the Note”. It forces the bank to produce the original note for the loan, which if it (the Note or Loan) has been sold multiple times, can be impossible or at least take some time for the bank to produce. This can be the difference between keeping your home and loosing it.

You can read more about it here, http://www.consumerwarningnetwork.com/

Disclaimer: I am not a finance professional nor do I purport to be one, I am just an observant and frugal housewife sharing things I have learned over my lifetime.

Today’s tips are not really about being frugal, but about avoiding theft of your identity and credit. I am extremely careful about such things (part of being frugal), and have a few tips that you may not be aware of.

1. When putting your return address on an envelope, omit your name and just have the return address. It will still get returned to you but no one will be able to associate a name with your address. (I learned this from an Engineer about 20 years ago)

2. Have a black wide tip felt pen with you at all times. Check the copy of your visa bill being left at a restaurant and ensure it does not have your credit card information on it, if so use your pen.

3. When they ask you if you “want a receipt” say YES, if you say no, they most likely will pitch your copy into the garbage can. (this question is asked more and more often to me)

4. Make sure you have a “theft proof” mailbox, with the economy the way it is, more and more thief’s are breaking into mail boxes to steal mail and your identity. If you don’t live in a community that has them and you have a regular mailbox, you can get one, my in laws did and it works perfectly.

5. Check your credit reports every year, every 6 months would be even better. You can get free credit reports once per year at www.freecreditreport.com, get them from all 3 agencies and ensure they are correct.

Welcome to Tips from a Frugal Housewife.

Today’s tip is a good one I have been using for many years. Instead of wasting paper towels in your kitchen, use white dish towels.

Once every few years, I buy the plain white bar towels or just plain white hand towels from Costco. They come in a 12 pack I believe.

I keep 2 on hand at all times in the kitchen. When they are dirty, just wash them. I bleach them all quarterly. When they start to fray or are too stained to continue to use, they become “dog towels” and are relegated to the garage.

No waste, and you save a bunch of money on paper towels.

Now if I could get my husband to slow down on his paper towel usage when he cooks I would be golden!

Welcome to Tips from a Frugal Housewife.

Today’s tip is a common sense one which I am sure you are all aware of.

Brown bag your lunch, and you could save up to $1200 per year, and that is if you only spend $5.00 per day (and really who can eat out on $5.00.)

Think of all the money you could save! You could take a trip, or buy something neat!

When making dinner, work on the next days lunch and package up any leftovers for lunches later in the week.

Welcome to today’s “Tips From a Frugal Housewife”

I read about this tip quite some time ago, and totally forgot about it until I pulled out my head of Cauliflower (for the Cauliflower Planks), and it had some of those yucky brown spots!

Instead of throwing it away and/or cutting away some good stuff along with the bad I remembered to use my micro plane grater on the dark spots.

It worked like a freaking charm! It took the yuckies right off and I did not waste a bit of cauliflower!

Disclaimer: I am not a finance professional nor do I purport to be one, I am just an observant and frugal housewife sharing things I have learned over my lifetime.

Welcome to “Tips from a Frugal Housewife”

Today’s tip is something I take advantage of quite often.

When it is on sale, and you can freeze it, buy lots of it. For instance, my local Haggen store had butter for sale with a coupon at 2 for four dollars, and it was a name brand butter. You can freeze butter just fine and that was an amazing deal. It was before the holidays so I stocked up!

I do the same thing with cheese, it freezes just fine and when it is on sale, I buy several packages

Milk also freezes just fine, you just have to shake it very well before serving!

Today’s tip comes from my good friend Debra! She is one of the most frugal people I know, and I have learned a great deal from her over the 25 plus years we have been friends!

If any of you have an old food dehydrator collecting dust somewhere, pull it out!!

Make your favorite tomato sauce, (no meat) and dry it into leather. Roll it up and freeze it. When you’re ready, defrost, and add water to reconstitute.

It tastes as fresh as the day you made it! (Now you can add meat if you wish.)

This dehydrated sauce is great for back-packers! And makes an interesting gift.

Have Fun!

Disclaimer: I am not a finance professional nor do I purport to be one, I am just an observant and frugal housewife sharing things I have learned over my lifetime.

This is a great tip that I used for years and years at my last job!

An easy way to save money! Next time you get your yearly raise, pay yourself first! Figure out how much that raise will increase your paycheck and adjust your 401K accordingly, you will substantially increase your retirement savings and not even notice. At the very least give as much as your company matches!

Doing this year over year is a very good thing. If you cant do your entire raise, think about half!

Happy New Year from this Dunkin family to yours!

This tip came to me from my Brother In Law, and it has saved me a ton of money. We were spending at least 10 dollars per month calling information (411) on our cell phones, in my area it is about 65 cents per usage.

You can use Google 411 for free! The number is 800-466-4411, and we are fairly sure it works nationwide. It is an automated service, and sometimes it can be a challenge to get it to understand what you are saying, but for 100 dollars a year in savings, I can deal with it!

Program it into your phone today and start saving some bucks!

Disclaimer: I am not a finance professional nor do I purport to be one, I am just an observant and frugal housewife sharing things I have learned over my lifetime.

Welcome to the first blog post of Tips from a frugal housewife. This will be my regular Thursday post.

Most of what I will tell you is common knowledge and the rest are things I have learned over the years which have been helpful to my husband and myself.

Tip #1

This is a recent find and was brought to my attention by my husband, I have saved twenty dollars so far. The codes are mostly for online shopping, which I do allot of as I dislike crowds immensely.

Coupon codes, yes indeed there are coupon codes for just about any store imaginable. Just go to your favorite search engine and type in what you are looking for, i.e. Macy’s Coupon Codes and you will find codes for everything from free shipping, to extra percentages off certain items.

You enter the codes during checkout. Pretty neat!

My disclaimer: I am not a finance professional nor do I purport to be one, I am just an observant and frugal housewife sharing things I have learned over my lifetime.