Ending on the right note

After 16 years, Skip Cassady is stepping down from his role as Stroudsburg High School marching band director.

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Campus notes: Tepper inducted into honors program

Tepper inducted into Assumption College into Prestigious Academic Honors ProgramWorcester, Massachusetts — Samantha Tepper of Stroudsburg was among 61 students inducted into the Assumption College Honors Program recently before an audience of administrators, faculty, and families.The Honors Program at Assumption College is a demanding, in-depth curriculum that seeks to challenge students to achieve their full potential. The Honors Program enables [...]

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St. Luke's Monroe campus exceeding early expectations

The Bartonsville-based hospital has had more patients than projected in its first month open.

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Here’s Who Won The Penny Hoarder’s Purple Friday Giveaway

Did you enter our Purple Friday giveaway?

We received thousands of amazing entries, and it was incredibly tough to narrow it down to 50 winners. We’re inspired by how many of you plan to spend time, not money, this holiday season!

Want to know who won?

We’ll also update this post every day with the list of winners and their prizes. Here’s what these people and families will enjoy on Purple Friday:

1. A Trip to the Franklin Institute

Like many of our readers, Annamarie from Pennsylvania works a “crazy amount of hours” to provide for her and her son, so they don’t get to spend a lot of quality time together.

Not to mention, “after bills and food, there never seems to be enough left over.” So, on Purple Friday, she asked to take him to the Franklin Institute to “share in his love of robots.”

We can’t wait to see photos!

2. Hearing Aids

Matthew from Delaware is the father to two girls. At 20, he was diagnosed with cancer — and went through eight rounds of chemo.

Though he’s been cancer-free for 13.5 years, he still has hearing loss in both ears. We’re delighted to buy him hearing aids so he could hear his wife and daughters normally on Purple Friday!

3. Lots of Yarn

In an altruistic entry, Laura from Illinois asked for a whole lot of baby yarn — not for her, but for her mom, who spends a lot of time crocheting baby hats for babies in need.

“My mom lost her baby at 22 weeks and this helps her grieve,” she said. “We would love to be able to help the organization by having a family party on Purple Friday and help her make stuff for angel babies.”

4. A Spanish Cooking Class

Jason and his sister, who are from New York, never really got to bond until they went on a trip to Spain several years ago.

“Through that experience we learned to understand each other and I now cherish my relationship with her,” he explained.

So he asked to take a Spanish cooking class with her.

“Nothing would mean more to me than to surprise her with a culinary classes of Spanish food so we could recreate some of our fondest memories,” he said.

5. Lawn Furniture and a Fire Pit

How better than to spend Purple Friday than getting cozy around a fire?

“After living in an apartment for so long, we finally have a yard,” wrote Michele from North Carolina.

“With our youngest daughter’s intellectual disability and other needs, this would be a priceless way to get her outside and away from electronics. We will spend our Purple Friday together connecting and counting our blessings being able to sit in our back yard for the first time ever.”

Getting away from electronics? With family? Love it.

6. Groceries for Soldiers

Though Andie lives in Texas, it’s not where she’s from. Like many military families, she and her husband are stationed far from her family. She’s making the best of it, though, and hosting a “friendsgiving” for all the soldiers who can’t make it home.

“I want to give them a nice home-cooked Thanksgiving dinner since they can’t be home with their families enjoying it,” she said. “Feeding 10-15 soldiers can get very costly, which is why I’m asking for a gift card for groceries.”

We can’t imagine how much that many soldiers eat — and were so happy to fulfill this honorable request.

7. Movies and Lunch with Her Sister and Friend

Last December, Jillian moved out of state for a new job. A few unexpected expenses popped up, and money became tight. But her family and friends helped her out, and now that she’s returning to Minnesota for the holidays, she wanted to pay them back.  

“My sister and best friend even used their airline miles and some extra savings to buy me a flight home for Thanksgiving so that I would not have to spend it alone,” she says.

“I am incredibly grateful for all they do and want to find a way to say, ‘thank you’ and give a little something back. I’d love to spend this #purplefriday surprising them with lunch and an afternoon at the movies!”

8. A Meal and a Clean House

Meg’s from Texas, and said her mom is “bonkers.” By that, she means she’s cooking dinner by herself for 32 people. 32!

“She’s 75 and Dad is 82, and their house is teeny tiny but she ALWAYS makes room for anyone who has nowhere else to go,” explained Meg. “People who were strangers at the beginning of the day are now friends and will be sent off with a huge bag of goodies.”

Sounds lovely, right? Meg wanted to surprise her mom with a day of cleaning service and a meal at her favorite restaurant — “something she’d never do for herself!”

9. Transportation Home for Her Dad

Kelly’s dad is a disabled veteran of the Marine Corps. He’s undergoing rehabilitation and living in a medical center away from home — and Kelly said, “the one thing our whole family wants is to be together.”

She asked for a wheelchair-accessible van to pick him up and bring him home, as well as a grocery gift card so she could cook for him when he arrived.

“I really miss our family Thanksgivings and it would mean the world to have him home,” she told us.

10. Trip to Disney World!

Judith, who you may have seen on our Facebook Live broadcast, asked for a trip to Disney World for her family.

The reason why? They lost her brother-in-law almost a year ago.

“It was a complete surprise,” she says. “He meant the world to our girls — he always wanted to take them to Disney and just was never able to… [Going there] would maybe help us see what it’s all about and make their uncle’s wish come true.”

Stay tuned for 10 more winners tomorrow… we’ll first announce them every day this week, except Thanksgiving, at 12:30 p.m. EST on our Facebook Live broadcast. And we’ll be surprising winners around the country!

Susan Shain, senior writer for The Penny Hoarder, is always seeking adventure on a budget. Visit her blog at susanshain.com, or say hi on Twitter @susan_shain.

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An Ode to Old Furniture

When I was about 10, my parents bought a brand new glass table for our living room. Even at 10, when my idea of cool was Chicago Bulls wallpaper, I could see that this was a cool table. Plus, my parents let it be known that by our standards, it was expensive.

I was told to be very careful around this table, which is why I briefly considered fleeing Southern California and going to live with relatives in Oklahoma when I accidentally scratched the glass. After my parents discovered the damage, they reacted like I’d been caught simultaneously selling drugs and flunking all of my classes. The punishment was swift and unrelenting. I love my parents to death, but in this instance they clearly fell victim to the “my expensive thing I bought is the best thing ever and should be treated like the Mona Lisa” syndrome.

By this age, of course, I’d already stained or damaged multiple other pieces of furniture. But my parents hadn’t batted an eyelash, because those items were either quite old or hand-me-downs – stuff they hadn’t spent much, if any, money on.

That old furniture was the stuff my parents were hoping to upgrade. In reality, that old furniture was saving them money, making them healthier, and decreasing their stress levels. Let’s dive into all the reasons old furniture is to be treasured.

Less Stress

As we’ve mentioned before when talking about paid-off cars and old computers, one of the best reasons to have old furniture is that it’s less stressful than owning brand new stuff. It’s not the end of the world if you scuff the arm of a 10-year-old sofa, or if you get a small scratch on a 30-year-old wood table that’s been passed around your family for years.

If you have young kids or a pet, it makes even more sense to rein in your spending on furnishings. You already have enough to worry about — worrying whether your baby or furry friend accidentally stains a sofa cushion is only going to add to your stress. Get stuff that’s meant to be used.

Low Cost

This is the obvious reason, but it still must be mentioned. As long as you’re not buying it from the estate sales of million-dollar homes, used furniture can be found at a steep discount, and often for free. New furniture, meanwhile, is going to burn a large, loveseat-sized hole in your wallet.

The average American spends about $1,800 per year on “household furnishings,” according to 2015 research from the Bureau of Labor Statistics. If you consider that the average person spends 40 years in the workforce, that’s $72,000 spent on furnishing your house over the course of a working life.

Using data from the websites of IKEA, Target, and Pottery Barn, I calculated the average costs of furnishing an apartment in 2016 using mid-level items from each store: a sofa, chair, side table, coffee table, lamp, dining table and chairs, bed, dresser, nightstand, and a desk lamp.

At IKEA, this standard assortment would run you about $2,000; at Target, $2,500. At Pottery Barn, it was a whopping $8,000.

Luckily, there are many ways to hunt for awesome, cheap, used furniture.

Where to Look for Used Furniture

If you live in an area with an active Craigslist community, finding free, gently used furniture is a breeze. A quick search of my area for free furniture yielded a treasure trove. Clean-looking sofas, beds, tables, chairs, dressers and TV stands populated my screen within seconds. I could even get a used trampoline. Unfortunately, I wasn’t able to convince my fiancée that it would be fun cramming one into our NYC apartment. We settled on a boring old free bed instead.

If you aren’t a Craigslist fan, you can check out Freecycle.org as well. Freecycle is a community where people actively try to find new homes for their used furniture and other goods. There’s never a price attached. All of my interactions through this site have led me to believe the users are good, honest people who want to do their part to keep perfectly usable items out of landfills. It’s definitely worth checking out.

Another option is to see if there’s a building reuse center in your area, or if your local chapter of Habitat for Humanity operates a ReStore — these shops accept and resell donated building materials and home furnishings. You can also find used furniture at many larger thrift stores, neighborhood yard sales, and Facebook yard sale groups in your area as well.

Finally, if you live near a college, you can always take advantage of student move-out days, usually around the end of classes in late spring or early summer, and student move-in days, when classes resume in late summer or fall (or when apartment leases renew on September 1).

Student moving days should a national holidays for working adults who live near a college campus. When students move out of their dorms and apartments, a lot of them tend to leave their furniture and other unwanted items on the curb for lack of space in their vehicle or their new apartment.

If you live near a school with high tuition costs (which is pretty much every school these days), you’re in luck. On one or two weekends a year, the streets will be lined with more Swedish furniture per square foot than an IKEA. Shelves, beds, chairs, dressers, couches, and lamps will all be there for the taking. They will all have been owned for at least a year, so the off-gassing process should be well underway.

But, as TSD editor Jon Gorey recently pointed out to me, “Allston Christmas” — when the streets of Boston’s biggest student neighborhood are lined with U-Hauls and apartment cast-offs — has been less enticing in recent years because of a tiny, nightmare-inducing scourge…

The Bedbug Issue

You can’t start a conversation about the awesome futon you pulled in from the side of the road without a skeptical friend asking, “But… what about bedbugs?” And it’s a fair question. Bedbugs have grown to be a bigger and bigger problem since the 1950s, and – ask anyone who’s had them – getting rid of them is a time-consuming, costly, and often emotional nightmare. The problem boiled over into the national consciousness about five years ago, when there were many reported cases making the news.

Thankfully, the fear has died down, and research has shown the phobia was overblown to begin with. Even at the height of the bedbug mania, you were still as likely to get bedbugs from staying in a hotel as from used furniture, and they don’t carry disease.

Still, when buying something used, do your due diligence in searching for bugs:

• If you’re at a thrift store, ask the store owner directly if they have had any bedbug issues. Don’t automatically take their word for it, but asking is a good place to start.
• Consider your location. Dense cities with lots of young people, like New York, San Francisco, and Los Angeles, have had resurgences of bedbugs in recent years.
• Bring a flashlight with you and inspect the items thoroughly before purchasing anything.
• Check the undersides, joints, and creases of the couch. This is where bed bugs tend to hide out. Check under the upholstery if you can.
• If you see any black or red spots throughout your investigation, it’s time to keep searching. Don’t worry, you’re bound to find good, clean items sooner rather than later.

Moving Made Easy

I have moved four times in the last 18 months. I changed states with every move. Yes, that’s crazy, but no, that’s not where I’m going with this – the point is that it’s a pain to sell furniture.

Unless your items are very high-end, your ability to sell your old furniture comes down to hoping that someone with your exact same sensibilities will be cruising Craigslist at the exact same time. The IKEA couch you thought was worth at least $150 might languish online for weeks, even though you paid $250 for it just six months ago.

Alternatively, if you picked up almost all of your furniture for free – who cares? You have nothing to worry about. If you have a truck or van, you can easily donate it to a Goodwill or other thrift store so that it can find a happy new home. You can also leave it by your trash and order a bulky item pick up. In New York, my current location, you can call for a bulk recycling pick-up and recycle your old furniture.

• Related: 10 Reasons Moving Always Costs More Than You Think

New, Cheap Furniture Is Not Built to Last

Older stuff typically lasts longer because quality materials were used — stronger wood and higher quality fabrics. Whereas today, thin wood and synthetic materials are used, increasing the likelihood that the furniture tears, sags, or color fades sooner. Medium density fiberboard, or MDF, has become increasingly popular as a wood replacement over the last few decades. It is notorious for being used in low-quality items.

Along with mass production comes the use of cheaper materials. High-quality furniture that lasts a long time is expensive, so most people go for the cheap “flat-pack” couches from place like IKEA and Target. While they’re a cheap option to get you through in a pinch, they’re not built to last.

The Health Issues

The glues, solvents, and chemicals used in making furniture produce VOCs, or volatile organic compounds. These compounds escape from the furniture via a process called off-gassing. Such compounds – most notoriously formaldehyde, one of the worst known carcinogens – can be inhaled, causing a medley of health problems.

Thankfully, through off-gassing, the levels of VOCs produced by furniture go down over time. A piece of very old furniture will have had a long time to get these compounds out of its system. Another feather in the cap for buying used.

Summing Up

Don’t beat yourself up if you’ve spent quite a bit of money on furnishing your home. Furniture stores do over $100 billion in sales per year, and they know all the slick marketing techniques to keep you wanting that next great kitchen table set. But, once you realize that used furniture can be cheaper, sturdier, and even healthier, you can take small steps towards becoming a savvier consumer.

Related Articles

• The Life-Changing Magic of Buying Used Stuff
• 10 Things You Should Never Buy Used
• Elves in the Attic: Making Old Toys New Again

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We Asked 10 Food Bloggers to Share Their Best Recipes Under $10