Thriftism

If you have an individual phone plan, you've probably noticed your phone bill is hugely expensive. Unless you can add lines and shares the costs of the plan or get a company discount, it is a lot of money to pay every month. I faced this dilemma earlier in the year and noticed that contracts cost more than a monthly prepaid month. In fact, at AT&T if I had stayed on a contract plan, my bill would be about $25 more than it currently is on a month-to-month and with a contract I wouldn't have unlimited minutes. With the monthly plan, I get unlimited minutes, text, and since I have a basic phone, I get unlimited internet as well. I believe it is also cheaper to do a month-to-month for a smartphone. Sprint might be better because it has unlimited everything for $80. This includes unlimited data on a smartphone, which is the better option for those who watch tv on the phone. Many of the contract plans continue to have a limit on minutes, which is not very viable in this day and a...

My sister is moving into her first house later this month and I couldn't decide what I should get for a house warming gift. Usually if you buy something from a store, everyone knows how much you spent. Having said that, it reflects poorly if you spend say $5 when others might spend $20. So, I decided to make my presents. I recently taught myself to knit. It's pretty simple to learn and there are tons of how to guides with pictures and movies online. I didn't say I am great yet, but good enough to make something worth using. I searched for towels or dishcloths, anything that would be fairly simple, but still useful. After some searching I found this great pattern online and it is actually offered as a free pattern, making it even better! The pattern makes two hand towels and three dishcloths. It calls for three colors, but I bought my yarn on sale and only two matching colors were on sale, therefor, I am using only two. You can buy knitting needles fairly cheap on ebay or...

Sometimes, you just need to relax for awhile. For instance, today I wanted to hurry and finish the wood floor in my guestroom. All I had to do was mop on the restore oil and I figured I could do it quick before supper. Turns out glass cleaner and the restore stuff comes in almost the same bottle. About half way through I realized I had just mopped glass cleaner all over the floor. I then got to spend the next hour trying to remove it all from the floor. After that there was no way I had the motivation to work on anything.  I don't feel too bad taking a break though because I can play games to earn magazines, books, or movies to name a few things. On gsn.com, there is a wide variety of games that are short so they don't extend your break too terribly long, but still relaxing and fun. I used my down time last spring to get National Geographic for a year for free! You won't get rich or anything too valuable, but might as well get something while you're taking a rest.

I'm one of those people who needs to eat every couple of hours. When I don't I get plain old crabby and have a lot more trouble working. I always have trouble coming up with decent snacks. Craisins were my solution for awhile and I was bringing the super size bag to work. Trouble arose when I'd eat that whole bag within a week or two. Not such a great plan. I guess I should portion out my snacks better. Lately, I've been looking for different solutions. I love granola bars, but the good ones can get spendy and they also tend to have a lot of preservatives and other things I can't even pronounce. So I found a couple recipes and changed out what I had on hand/left things out I didn't to come up with the items listed below.  I priced this out to be around $0.12/serving. This is way better than the Great Value brand I had been buying which were around $0.40/serving. These bars turned out great- even though I may have cooked them a little too long. They were incred...