Frugal Living

How much do you spend for dry cleaning every month? If you are serious with taking care of your office clothes- expensive suits, silks and other delicate garment, here’s something else to consider.

How to wash and iron delicate garments

1. Handwash delicate garments like rayon and silk with little powdered soap and water.

2. Rinse liberally with water and never wring the material. Instead,

3. Hang it using a plastic hanger and air dry it. Do not leave your garments under direct sunlight. Instead, hang it somewhere shady and cool.

4. In case your garment is seriously wrinkled, instead of taking the risk ruining the garment, use a an aluminum foil to help straighten the garment out. According to this tip from Real Simple, “to get wrinkles out of silk, wool, and rayon clothes that can’t take direct heat, place a piece of foil on your ironing board, then lay the garment flat over it. With the steam button down, pass the iron three to four inches over the fabric several times. Wet heat radiating from the foil helps smooth out wrinkles.”

If you have removed gym membership from your budget with the goal of saving more this year, here are a few tips on how to stay fit–on a budget.

• Walk more. If you are one of those people who drives to work or commutes to work, you might want to ditch the car for awhile and walk or sprint from the parking lot to your office. While sprinting might race your heart rate like brosk walking, you might want to change or wear appropriate shoes and be wary of potholes lest you injure yourself.
• Instead of riding the elevators or escalators, use the stairs instead.
• Eat healthy. Increase your vegetable intake and lower your carbohydrates from your diet.
• Keep tabs with your health by having an annual check-up.
• Instead of snacking during break times, eat a fruit or two instead.
• Ditch the softdrinks, coffee and alcohol. Opt for more healthier beverages like some fresh fruit drink or better yet, increase your water intake!
• Stop smoking. Not only are you helping yourself, you are also helping to protect your immediate family who could suffer from passive smoking.

Do you have other smart tips in staying fit on a budget? Make your comments below or email them to me at frugal.pinoy@gmail.com. Interesting tips will get free cellphone loads from me.

Do you have some old denim jeans lying around unused for months in your closet? Here is another way of making something out from old clothing! Thanks to Green Daily, here is a DIY tips on how you can create your very own quilt using old clothing.

Do you have other frugal tips? Share them with us at Pinoy Frugal Living.

Have you tried making pizza by scratch? I have and I did it only once, and never attempted to try again. The kneading is just too much for me, and it is ven easier to just use the phone and call in Pizza Hut for delivery then making my own pizza at home.

But that was before I have learn from Life Hacker that there is a more simpler way of making your very own no-knead pizza dough! Here is the link to Tasting Table.

Keeping yourself healthy and strong is necessary especially when costs of medicines and medical care continue to rise.

Here are some health tips:

1. Take tabs of your children’s vaccinations and medical check-ups. Get your necessary flu shots, vaccines and other screening tests. I suggest once a year papsmear for women over 35.

2. Befriend a doctor. I actually manage to save time and expense keeping abreast with my children’s pediatrician. I sometimes text my doctor whenever I get some confusing symptoms and immediate advice is needed. But I only do this when necessary…

3. Keep a reliable health book on your bedside. I have a reliable health which usually comes in handy when confused with several symptoms. I like checking my health books before calling the doctor.

4. If you are okay with generic medicines, then you are actually saving more just taking them, however, there are a vast of fake drugs lurking everywhere, so if you want to go generic, buy them from reliable drug stores.

5. Lastly, exercise and exercise. And if you are a smoker, ditch the stick and start the year anew.

I always encourage my children to eat vegetables. One of the surefire way to get them to eat variety of vegetables is to keep on serving them on the table even when they said they hated it. One of the advantages of living in a rural area is that local vegetables are cheap. I can buy a huge bundle of pechay here for P5.00, and a kilo of camote for P10.00. These are just some of the cheap vegetables organically grown here.

Green leafy vegetables are generally cheap. They can be versatile too. I usually like to saute those chinese kangkong with garlic and a dabble of oyster sauce. To add some punch on the vegetable dish, chop one sili, but scrape the seeds out if you are serving the dish to children.

Eggs is something I cannot live without in the kitchen. Eggs generally cost P5.00 here in my rural town, so I tend to buy eggs by the tray from those huge egg stores in town. Rather than buying eggs from the sari-sari store, you can save more than P20 if you buy them by layer.

Fish is still cheap in our part of Mindanao. One can still find a kilo of galung-gong for P70 here. Since we live in a coastal town, fish is generally the main source of protein. In our home, I cook fish generally 80% at most time. We have avoided chicken altogether because my children are allergic to them.

Fruits. You can buy the fruit in season to save money. You can save more from buying bananas, papaya, pineapple from the local fruit stands as against to imported grapes or apples.

As for rice, we have cut down our consumption by 1/3 because I started dieting again.

Do you have other frugal tips to share?

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Source: CNET

I honestly was not born into a frugal family. My parents were the typical family– they live from paycheck to paycheck. This behavior came about the fact that my father had a secured job in a multinational company and holding a mid-level position as an engineer. My father was employed in that company for more than 30 years. Everything was provided for us there– housing, electricity, water, food, cheap private schools, and a safe environment.

Suffice to say that when my father retired, he thought that his SSS pension will be enough to tide the family over. He was wrong…Since my mother was sickly, and my sister and myself were all in the university, my father took in consultancy jobs to help us with the expenses. One of the obvious mistakes were they never invested into anything– no real estate, no businesses… just a tiny Time Deposit in the bank that they thought would be sufficient. It was not, and they were wrong.

One of the obvious mistakes were the fact that they never set aside partial of my father’s salary. Nor did my parents invest in an educational plan for my sister and myself. My father was lucky enough to have wonderful skills that companies were interested in keeping him as a consultant. They thought that my father’s retirement pay would be enough, they were wrong. When he retired, all the pay went to pay for our house in Manila since they never thought of buying a house or a lot when my father was working.

* * * * *

Now that I am alone and separated, I have taken it on myself to prepare primarily for my children’s future education. Since my husband is not supporting for their education yet, I am beginning our savings account so I can set aside as much money as I can for my children’s education. I know this is a huge task to take on, but I can always try and prepare. I am lucky that currently, my children are scholars in my Aunt’s private school. This will give me enough time to build my children’s educational fund.

Having a limited income, I have decided that one of the ways I can begin my children’s fund is to become frugal. Wikipedia defines frugality as:

Frugality (also known as thrift or thriftiness), often confused with cheapness or miserliness, is a traditional value, life style, or belief system, in which individuals practice both restraint in the acquiring of and resourceful use of economic goods and services in order to achieve lasting and more fulfilling goals. In a money-based economy, frugality emphasizes economical use of money in meeting long term personal, familial, and communal desires.

Clever Dude is right, the main core of frugality are:

1. Living within your means;

2. Being conscious of your income;

3. Not wasting;

In order to reach my goals, I have begin to incorporate and learn the behavior of living a frugal life. This I believe is a behavior that we can learn. Having lived a more frivolous life during my married life, the ultimate breakdown of my marriage and later separation from my husband has brought me to the real economic and financial situation my children and I are in. I came face to face with the fact that I needed to begin now and fast.

Having decided to make a real life makeover and live frugally in order to have a more fulfilling future, I started to define and recognize my long term goals and my short term goals. One of the most important aspect of my future success is the fact that I am able to recognize my goals and had created steps in order to achieve them.

There are more than one in this world to create more income. I have chosen to continue in nurturing my children and continue to stay at home until they my youngest is at least 6. Since my youngest is still one, I am trying my quest to writing as a way to create more income for the family.

I decided that I needed to incorporated frugality in order to help us achieve our short and long term goals. Not only that, frugality is a behavior that I know will benefit my children’s future and their relationship with spending and money in general.

What about you? Were you raised from a frugal family? Share your thoughts with me…

How do you usually prepare for the celebration of any of your family members?

I know this is a hasty generalization, but most Pinoy tends to break the bank in order to celebrate their birthdays. But with this strained economic time, lavish birthday parties is simply out. So how does a frugal mom plan and celebrate their children’s birthdays?

Honestly, not counting my children, I do not celebrate my own birthday with food anymore. Since children are still enamored with birthdays and cakes, I plan and celebrate my children’s birthday to the tee and ofcourse, breaking the bank is not an option.

Plan ahead.

Like any event of the year, I allocate funds for birthday celebrations 3 or so months before it happens. Since my children are still young, their social circle is smaller and the number of guests are minimal. And since it is my children’s birthday, I do not control the invitation list. Meaning, the guest list only contains my children’s close friends. No extra acquaintances. This is your children’s birthday– not yours. You will save more this way because I promise, if you have your own set of friends and your husband’s set of friends in your children’s party, the number of mouths to feed will increase not to mention the booze. A children’s party should remain a children’s party.

Make a Realistic Spending Plan.

Create a menu and allocate for them, then base your future birthday plan on the menu.

Example: (DAUGHTER’s BDAY)- estimated guests- 20 children

Allocate Funds and Stick with It.

Since you have a spending budget for the birthdays, you can allocate funds for it 3 or so months prior. Since the budget is P2,670 or P3,000 for the food, you might want to allocate and save for P3,000 per birthday. In my case, I have 4 children, so I have to allocate for P12,000 a year for birthdays.

I have opened a savings account for celebrations like these. Since P12,000 is alot, I pledged and allocate P1,000 each month for the birthday funds. To make things easier also, I have automated my contributions, and I have authorized my bank to deduct P1,000 every 7th day of the month from my main account to the events fund. This makes everything hardly noticeable. You can make the same plan for Christmas noche buena celebration and other celebrations for the year. Darn, if I can do this, anyone can…

Do you have other spending and saving tips? Share them with me at frugal.pinoy@gmail.com

One of the key in having a successful budget spending plan is having a weekly menu and following it to the tee. So, how can you effectively make a weekly menu? In my case, I only shop once a month, so instead of a weekly menu, I make a one month flexible menu. Flexible meaning I am amenable to inter-changing the menus since I have 4 children to feed and sometimes I heed to their requests once in a while.

To avoid protests during meal time, include your children with the menu planning. Make the menu planning a family affair. Give each of your children a chance to suggest their special dish. Not only that, you can include a kitchen helper schedule in the menu. You might also want to include your children’s favorite dish once or twice a week. Just make sure they know that you have the last say on this. And to be able to accomodate your children’s wishes, make sure you make your meal combinations wisely to avoid overspending.

The advanatge of menu planning is simply staggering. Having a plan not only removes the stress of not knowing what to cook for dinner, but it will also help you from not eating out or ordering dinner over the phone. Not eating out will obviously help you maintian a healthier and leaner budget. Menu planning will also make shopping easier, not to mention, time saving and yes, cheaper since you will only buy what you will need for the duration of your menu. Having control with your day to day consumption will free you from the stress of meal preparation daily. Not to mention that when you have a shopping list to follow, the risk of impluse buying can be avoided.

If you are busy mother, one of the advantages of meal planning is that you can cook some meals ahead of time and save time doing so. You can prepare your stock in the freezer. Or in my case, I marinate my daing na bangus and keep it in the fridge ready for frying. Doing so will save me spices and seasoning. Not to mention that hey, the bangus cooked this way will guarantee clean plates and tons of rice…