Cheapwad Finds--Opposite of Blow That Dough!

I've been using Wahl clippers for 20 years or more at this point. Once every month or two, I buzz my head all over with the shortest attachment (1/16"), and am good to go. I recently mislaid them while in the process of packing for a long campervan trip. In a hurry, I bought a new pair of Wahl clippers, with all sorts of fancy attachments and accessories, in many pretty colors - far more than I need.

Then I found the original 20 year-old pair :facepalm:

Now I have 2 pairs of clippers. I may never buy another pair!
 
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I've been cutting my own hair since the beginning of COVID. I wouldn't say it looks nice, but my hair is kind of long and I often put my hair in a ponytail, so it's easy. It would be different if I had short hair and had to style it, etc.

I guess I'm saving some money, but I never paid a lot for haircuts, so the savings are pretty minimal.
 
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Idnar7 said:
Afriend of ours brings an individually wrapped slice of cheese with him to McD's and puts it on their plain hamburger. Now that is frugal.
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I remember my father making us do something similar when I was kid. "He said, the hamburgers are 19¢ and cheeseburgers are 29¢; no way am I going to pay a dime for a slice of cheese." So we got the hamburgers, went home and put our own cheese on them.


Major Tom said:
I've been using Wahl clippers for 20 years or more at this point. Once every month or two, I buzz my head all over with the shortest attachment (1/16"), and am good to go. I recently mislaid them while in the process of packing for a long campervan trip. In a hurry, I bought a new pair of Wahl clippers, with all sorts of fancy attachments and accessories, in many pretty colors - far more than I need.

Then I found the original 20 year-old pair :facepalm:

Now I have 2 pairs of clippers. I may never buy another pair!
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I have a 15yo Wahl clipper and recently bought a new one I found on sale as insurance if the first one fails. With the money I have saved over the last 15 years ago I could by dozens of Wahl clippers.
 
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DW started cutting my hair during the pandemic with the Wahl clipper set bought on Amazon and although she isn't quite as good as the barber she is getting better with practice. She's also much, much prettier. And the price is right so we'll keep that going.
 
Last day of a church rummage sale where everything was 1/2 off. I couldn’t resist snatching up a handmade two story wood dollhouse from, apparently, the 1940s, complete with handmade furnishings, for $12.00 total. This will be a fun winter project to fix up, then give to a little girl or donate.
 
The list price for my 18 year old college student's books at the bookstore was $750. I got them all used on either ebay or Amazon for $155 including access codes for online course work.
 
ugeauxgirl said:
The list price for my 18 year old college student's books at the bookstore was $750. I got them all used on either ebay or Amazon for $155 including access codes for online course work.
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Unfortunately there are quite a few subjects that use textbooks that will come out with updated editions about every 3 years. Previous books would be discontinued and the bookstore would not buy them back. The book that I used when first teaching was <$100. 20 years later books for that course were close to $250.
Every time a new edition came out I was given a teachers edition by all the publishers for consideration for the course. Since I had dozens of text books saved I would give one of the older texts (3-9 years old but all the same information) to students who could not afford one.
Text book prices, especially anything science with their huge amounts of color pictures and graphs, have become way too expensive. Many publishers have gone the way of renting online texts. The cost is still expensive at about half the price. After a couple of years the access disappears and there is no one to sell to like you had with a physical book.

Cheers!
 
50+ years, and I'm still angry about the cost of my textbooks in college. I can remember several courses where the professor insisted we had to get the most recent version of the text, only to later learn the text's author was of course the professor. By the time I was a Junior I bought a used text regardless of what the course guide demanded. They were too high priced as well, but at least I could re-sell them for 20 cents on the dollar, if I was lucky.
 
ugeauxgirl said:
The list price for my 18 year old college student's books at the bookstore was $750. I got them all used on either ebay or Amazon for $155 including access codes for online course work.
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And the best part is you can resell them as soon as she’s done with them. Our net cost for DD’s books for all 4 years was practically nothing because I resold almost all of them, a few for more than I had paid.
 
mystang52 said:
50+ years, and I'm still angry about the cost of my textbooks in college. I can remember several courses where the professor insisted we had to get the most recent version of the text, only to later learn the text's author was of course the professor. By the time I was a Junior I bought a used text regardless of what the course guide demanded. They were too high priced as well, but at least I could re-sell them for 20 cents on the dollar, if I was lucky.
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I have heard of people who buy the textbooks from book sellers in Europe and have them shipped to the USA. The shipping cost is extra but they still claim to save a lot of money.

This is similar to filling an Rx in a foreign country at a fraction of the USA price.
 
Got a "free" bag of coffee from Starbucks with our points.
We have been accumulating them for a long time, finally had enough to get some coffee for home. Got a bag of their Reserve Vietnam Da Lat, it is quite good and mellow. Not bitter at all.
 
We stocked up the freezer at Grocery Outlet yesterday and saved over $200 off the supermarket prices. We also realized GO's frozen stir fries are a lot cheaper and healthier than getting Chinese carryout when we need a fast meal or don't feel like cooking. Like they had some grass fed beef stir fries for $5, compared to $20 - $30 for carryout and a pad thai dish for $5 that is $13 at Whole Foods.

Checkbook.org does a price basket and compares grocery store prices. GO comes out the best in our local area. Costco generally has 33% off supermarket prices, but overall GO usually averages out to 50- 70% off, even with buying a lot of organic food.
 
Good to know about Grocery Outlet. We have one nearby, but I have never looked at their frozen aisle before. Sounds like it’s worth checking out.
 
swakyaby said:
Good to know about Grocery Outlet. We have one nearby, but I have never looked at their frozen aisle before. Sounds like it’s worth checking out.
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I think they operate like a franchise, so some are better than others. But definitely worth checking out if you have one close by.
 
We also shop GO and are pleased with them and their very common $5 off $25 sales slip coupons. They have a lot of odd stuff, some of it very good, some horrible. We've found that we really have to watch their pull dates more than other stores - getting dairy with three days to going bad is not real pleasant.
 
Badger said:
Unfortunately there are quite a few subjects that use textbooks that will come out with updated editions about every 3 years. Previous books would be discontinued and the bookstore would not buy them back. The book that I used when first teaching was <$100. 20 years later books for that course were close to $250.
Every time a new edition came out I was given a teachers edition by all the publishers for consideration for the course. Since I had dozens of text books saved I would give one of the older texts (3-9 years old but all the same information) to students who could not afford one.
Text book prices, especially anything science with their huge amounts of color pictures and graphs, have become way too expensive. Many publishers have gone the way of renting online texts. The cost is still expensive at about half the price. After a couple of years the access disappears and there is no one to sell to like you had with a physical book.

Cheers!
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Ah, the textbook scam. I had almost forgot about how ridiculous this can be. I always wondered why a MATH book had to be "updated" every 2-3 years. I had a business accounting book (an older edition) that had the EXACT same problems as the "new" edition...the only thing changed was the the scenario based problems that used a fictitious business name would be renamed. So every single word/number in the problem would be the same except "Delta Widget Co" would be changed to "Echo Widget Co".

Law case books were bad too. Much of law school is the study of law that has been "settled" many, MANY years ago. So, most class textbooks are nothing more than a collection of old case opinions. Of course, they would add a few "new cases" to the book to make the old one obsolete...what a scam.
 
Last minute tickets and Facebook / email specials are another one of our big money savers. Like on my seat filler list this week were major league soccer tickets and a stadium venue rock concert. In email there was an offer for half price tickets for a very good local theater company for $13. It probably depends where you live but we found that some of our local and college theater groups actually have better productions in nicer venues than some of the corporate Broadway touring plays and the money we do pay for tickets goes back into out local community and helps support local performers. Another email offer was $20 for a major ballet company production backed by a symphony orchestra. The higher restaurant prices go, the better these kinds of deal look for a night out.
 
Came close to getting $500 airfare credit from United Airlines. Flight was oversold, and the clerk asked for a volunteer to change flights to get the $500 credit. Someone popped right up and claimed it. But I got all the details from the clerk, anyway, and it would have been OK for me, but I would arrive the next day. Might have voluntarily slept on an airport sofa one night for $500, lol.
 
ExFlyBoy5 said:
My FIL is good friends with the local beer distributor and often has beer "left over" for some reason or another and so the family *always* has lots of beer...at no cost to us. :D
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That, my friend, is as good as it gets!
 
John Galt III said:
Came close to getting $500 airfare credit from United Airlines. Flight was oversold, and the clerk asked for a volunteer to change flights to get the $500 credit. Someone popped right up and claimed it. But I got all the details from the clerk, anyway, and it would have been OK for me, but I would arrive the next day. Might have voluntarily slept on an airport sofa one night for $500, lol.
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That would be doable, but dang those airport chairs are about the least comfortable chair to ever be manufactured.

I slept in my car down in the mountains near Breckenridge in a Silverthorne wal-mart parking lot one night and I'll never do that again. The seat reclined nicely, but it got down to -10 degrees and I had to run the car all night to stay warm. Surprisingly I only used about a half a tank of gas at $30. Only reason I did it is because I couldn't find the entrance to the fort collins base where I had booked a room so I decided to just drive straight into the mountains that evening instead of leaving early in the morning.

Mtns got a bunch of snow and they shut down the highway that day for a while so I made the right call, but I should have rented a cheap room...it..was...COLD!
 
Aldi had Hoffman (a local quality sausage maker) hot dogs for a bit over $2 a pound, usually about $7 lb. Bought 5 lbs. They'll make an easy meal next time I host beer night with the friends.
Aldi is my go to for my daily spinach smoothie ingredients. I've learned to check the meat case for some super deals even if im not shopping for meat.
 
Today I found some one pound USDA Prime NY strip steaks marked down to $12/lb at Walmart. Grabbed two and will freeze them for later consumption. Also picked up a pork Butt Roast (7 pound) for 2.89/lb). Going to put that in the smoker next weekend.
 
I found some very good quality chocolate bars that normally sell for 3.49. Sometimes they are reduced to 2.99 during a sale. Today they were 1.99 and I bought a half dozen.

I also noticed that my favorite Greek yogurt is now $6 for a large 32 oz container. It used to be $4. So I bought a $2 half gallon of milk, poured it into my Insta-Pot and pushed the yogurt button. In a few hours I will strain out the extra fluids and have some what more than 32 oz of Greek yogurt for about 1/3 the price.
 
I purchased fish oil on separate receipt in case it's HSA eligible (great additional retirement account) but unfortunately it is not.
 
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