Value For Your Life plays host to Festival of Frugality #145, the Gratitude Edition.  The world may feel like it’s upside down on it’s head, but there is still plenty in each of our lives to be grateful for.  The editor’s picks include:

• The Life Less Traveled tells us the uplifting story of a family that downsized to a camper and hit the open road.
• Sound Money Matters makes a compelling argument in The Case for Frugality: Now and Forever.
• MoneyNing gets both creative and practical in Save Money by Cooking Even When You Are Not Home .
• Master Your Card presents The Costs of Apartment Living.

Thanks for doing a great first time hosting job!  Next week the festival travels to Dollar Frugal so get your entries in!

Either under or behind your refrigerator, condenser coils lurk. And if yours are like mine, they haven’t been cleaned in a very very long time. And that’s not a good thing. When your condenser coils are dirty, it makes your refrigerator work harder to do the same job.

Therefore, an easy way to reduce your refrigerator’s energy usage is to clean those coils every 6 to 12 months. There are some pretty good instructions here, but you can also search for them yourself. Make sure you unplug your refrigerator first! Cleaning mine for the first time since we bought our house over a year ago was not fun, but it made me feel accomplished by the end of it. And I am pretty sure that the previous owners hadn’t cleaned them in a long long time.

You might not think that cleaning the coils makes much of a difference, but the refrigerator is one of the biggest energy hogs in the typical home. Don’t encourage it to work even harder. Clean those coils.

And if your refrigerator is like mine and made in the dark ages (pre 1990) another way to reduce your energy usage is to replace it altogether. Which is on my list of things we need to do…

This frugal tip provided by paidtwice of I’ve Paid For This Twice Already…

The festival this week is up at My Two Dollars - the scheduled host did not post the festival today so David stepped in at the last minute to get it out there. Stop by and show your support and read the frugal insights of the week. Thank you David!

Since there were not editor’s picks this week, I am going to be silly and say you should read mine and Jim’s first

Jim presents Home Grown Vegetables Taste Better posted at Blueprint for Financial Prosperity

paidtwice presents Just Because You Clip It Doesn’t Mean You Have To Buy It posted at I’ve Paid For This Twice Already…

Make sure to stop by the festival to read the rest of the great entries! Next week the Festival travels to Value For Your Life (I hope!!) so get your entries in!

An oft overlooked part of saving money is the power of simply asking for a better deal, or for an unjust situation to be set right. Often we accept what we are told at face value, and if a car repair is quoted at $500 we assume that is what we have to pay. Likewise, if something breaks or stops working long before it seems reasonable, we might just shrug our shoulders and move on.

But don’t. Don’t accept the status quo. Don’t assume that whatever happens or is offered is the best you can get. Negotiation goes a long way. In the past, I have negotiated to get a better interest rate on my credit card, a discount on new tires, and a number of upgrades for our furnace. It doesn’t always work, but it is definitely worth a try. And the more you try it, the easier it gets.

Right now I am working on getting my defective computer monitor replaced as well as my child’s stroller that showed wear too quickly in my opinion. We’ll see how those go, but I am glad that I am trying. So speak up! Be assertive. It can have a bigger effect than you think.

This frugal tip provided by paidtwice of I’ve Paid For This Twice Already…

Or at least, it is at Living Almost Large!  Check out the great festival this week starting with these editor’s picks:

• Smart Spending: Make your own hot-flash spray, and other frugal hacks
• SimplyForties: Frugality vs Charity
• FruGal: The Top 5 (Evil) Tips for Frugal Living - FruGal
• Frugal in the Fruitlands: Coupons vs. Generics, Round One: Contact Solution
• Super Gas Saver: Mercedes Smart Car – Smart Car, Dumb Idea?? | Super Gas Saver

Thanks for hosting, LAL! Next week the festival travels to Frugalous so get your entries in!

Coupons are great by themselves, but sometimes just holding on to a coupon and waiting for the right time to use it is even better.  If you pair a coupon with a sale, it makes your dollar go even further. This can be accomplished by keeping track of prices on things you like over time and figuring out the pattern for when it is at its lowest price, but it also can be a combination of patience and checking out the weekly circulars before you shop.

For example, I got a register-printed coupon for Activia yogurt last month that expires in October.  I have been wanting to try it, but I have waited.  And this week, I looked in my Kroger circular, and Activia finally went on sale.  So instead of just getting the value of my coupon, I get the sale price too (and end up paying less than $0.25 out of pocket).

Hurrah!

This frugal tip provided by paidtwice of I’ve Paid For This Twice Already…

Frugal Babe makes her post-baby hosting debut with the latest edition of the festival!  Here are her favorite picks:

• Jennifer from Saving Advice has a list of ten things that money can’t buy.
• Grey from Frugal Fu is challenging us to pay it forward.
• Jacob from Early Retirement Extreme is moving into an RV, which will drastically cut monthly expenses.
• Jaime from Cheap Healthy Good has a great post about easy, inexpensive meals for one.
• Miss Thrifty has a post - complete with pictures - about her Thriftymobile.
• Colin from The Truth About Credit Cards tells how you can stop getting credit card offers in the mail.

Thanks for hosting!  Next week the festival travels to Living Almost Large so get those submissions in!

Money isn’t the only thing that makes the world go round.  Money, after all, is just a symbol we use to place value upon things we want or need.   Do you have a specialized skill?  How about possessions that could be of value to someone else?  Before taking out your wallet the next time you need something, think about if you could trade for it.

Some things I have bartered for in the past include lessons (I teach taekwondo at my local studio partially in exchange for my own classes), clothing (I have traded baby clothes with other mothers who have a need for the ones my kids have outgrown) and food (in grad school my friends and I would make big batches of food and share amongst each other).

And if you need something and aren’t sure what to trade for it, check Craigslist.  Lots of trading going on there. 

This frugal tip provided by paidtwice of I’ve Paid For This Twice Already…

Or at least, that is where this week’s festival can be found!  Kelly hosted Festival #141 at Almost Frugal this week and did a very French and Fabulous job!  Here are her editor’s picks:

• Fire Finance offers us an in-depth, back to school, super-savers resource!
• Free from Broke shares his experience in saving money by not going with an online travel agency.
• Kris presents Life Skills 101: A Curriculum for Food, Finance, and Other Real World Basics posted at Cheap Healthy Good.
• Silicon Valley Blogger talks about a subject that’s on everyone’s lips at the moment in Smart Cars, the Aptera and Other Ways To Say No To High Gas Prices posted at The Digerati Life.
• Grey presents Revisiting the Fashion Debate: The Environmental and Fiscal Impacts of Fast Fashion posted at Frugal Fu.

Next week the festival travels to Frugal Babe so get your entries in!