Chances are, you’ve had to enlist the help of a notary public at some point in your adult life. A notary public’s job is simple — they oversee the signing of important documents to prevent fraud. Not only do they check a person’s identification to ensure they’re the individual who should be signing, but they take […]
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Boy, did Home Depot serve me with a jolt of reality recently.
I was minding my own business and reviewing my shopping list for my latest DIY attempt. I strolled through the store’s automatic doors and soaked up that swoosh of cold air.
Then, bam.
Inflatable Christmas-themed yard decorations.
From the top industrial shelf, nearly touching the warehouse-style ceiling, they peered down at me.
Looming.
The waving Santa seemed to say, “Hey, guess what month it is?â€
The pink pig with a candy-cane scarf tied around its neck taunted me, “Cha-ching! Where’s your piggy bank? It’s about to be empty!â€
Admittedly, the whole scene wasn’t this dramatic. It was more me saying in a tiny voice, “Wow, Christmas already?†to the nice greeter who handed me a shopping basket.
Still, those inflatables were a not-so-subtle reminder that holiday shopping looms.
If you’ve felt that same momentary panic when walking into retailers lately — brace yourself — we have to say the feeling is justified.
According to new numbers from the National Retail Federation, holiday sales are expected to increase by nearly 5% this year. Although that sounds like a reasonable amount, it pushes last year’s $717.45 billion spending total up to $720.89 billion.
But don’t crumble up the wrapping paper and hide in an empty Amazon box just yet.
Keep in mind you have time to prepare by building an army of savings apps and browser extensions that’ll help you save while holiday shopping online. We found some of our favorites to get you started.
(Or you can opt for DIY gifts, but that’s another story.)
Traditionally, Ibotta is known for its cash-back offers on groceries, but it’s seeping into other markets now — like travel, restaurants and online shopping.
Let me give you a few examples that might help you tackle that Christmas list:
Other online shopping offers hail from Gap, Groupon, Houzz, Kohl’s, Overstock, Target and more.
Just download the app, find your favorite retailer and shop through the portal. After you earn your first rebate, you’ll pocket a $10 bonus.
Bonus: If you don’t have Amazon Prime yet, the service can be a huge lifesaver for last-minute presents. If you decide to take the plunge and sign up, do so through Ibotta. You’ll earn a $20 Amazon gift card!
Have you ever ordered something online only to see that, one day later, the price has dropped? Yeah, that’s frustrating. You deserve some money back.
One of our secret weapons is called Paribus — a tool that gets you money back for your online purchases. It’s free to sign up, and once you do, it will scan your email for any receipts. If it discovers you’ve purchased something from one of its monitored retailers, it will track the item’s price and help you get a refund when there’s a price drop.
Plus, if your guaranteed shipment shows up late, Paribus will help you get compensated.
Calling all Amazon shoppers!
This is such an easy, passive way to rake in an extra $36 a year. ShopTracker, one of the leading public opinion research companies, wants you to share your Amazon purchase history. And you’ll be paid for every month you share!
When you sign up for ShopTracker, it keeps your private information, well, private. All it wants to see is your order information.
To earn your first gift card today:
If you’re looking for a passive way to earn some money throughout the year, a cash-back credit card is perhaps one of the easiest methods.
You just have to be sure you don’t get too carried away with those purchases — and that the card is paid off at the end of each billing period.
Here’s an option we like: It’s the Chase Freedom Unlimited card*. Its claim to fame? You’ll earn an unlimited 1.5% cash back on all your purchases. Plus, if you spend $500 in your first three months of opening the card (hi, groceries), you’ll pocket a $150 bonus.
Get signed up — and 0% intro APR for 15 months — here.
Unfortunately you can’t double dip with Ibotta and Ebates cash-back opportunities, but it’s worth checking to see which platform offers the best deal.
Ebates is an online portal that allows you to find tons of rebates from participating retailers.
Here are a few gift-giving examples:
Ebates also offers tons of coupons, so even if your preferred retailer doesn’t have a cash-back opportunity, you might be able to find a coupon to apply to your order.
The Harris Poll, a well-known survey company that measures U.S. public opinion, operates something called ShopTracker.
Basically, it anonymously tracks what products users are purchasing from Amazon.
It’ll pay you $36 a year for that access and promises to keep your information private.
Before you sign up (it’ll take something like three minutes), here are the basic requirements:
Install the app for free. Then, log into your Amazon account to bank an extra $36 this year. No, it’s not a ton, but it’ll absolutely cover a present for your nephew.
Or at least shipping…
*The information for the Chase Freedom Unlimited card has been collected independently by The Penny Hoarder. Opinions expressed here are the author’s alone, not those of the credit card issuer, and have not been reviewed, approved or otherwise endorsed by the credit card issuer. The Penny Hoarder is a partner of Credible.
Carson Kohler (@CarsonKohler) is a staff writer at The Penny Hoarder. She’s definitely not buying one of those inflatable yard ornaments to haunt her dreams.
This was originally published on The Penny Hoarder, which helps millions of readers worldwide earn and save money by sharing unique job opportunities, personal stories, freebies and more. The Inc. 5000 ranked The Penny Hoarder as the fastest-growing private media company in the U.S. in 2017.
The Penny Hoarder Promise: We provide accurate, reliable information. Here’s why you can trust us and how we make money.
You’re probably already a fan of Amazon as a consumer, since it makes it easy and affordable to order the items you need.
But have you considered how to turn Amazon into your business partner? It’s possible to make hundreds or thousands of dollars a month by selling private-label products.
Before diving in, though, it’s important to understand this isn’t a get-rich-quick strategy.
It takes diligence, patience and a willingness to see an idea through from start to finish. To be most successful, set your expectations accordingly.
I would know. I’ve created a business selling private-label products on Amazon and make a steady, mostly passive income of between $1,000 and $2,000 a month.
Essentially, selling private-label products involves finding generic products that are already selling well on Amazon, creating your own packaging and logo and marketing them better than your competition.
Sound appealing? Let’s break it down step by step for an actionable look at how to build your own private-label business.
This is arguably the most important and time-consuming step in the process, but the friendly folks at Amazon lighten the burden a bit by pointing you in the right direction.
That’s because the site releases detailed lists of their best-selling products. While the lists are designed to give consumers a chance to see what’s popular, you can use them to your advantage, too.
The best-seller rankings essentially serve as your pre-market product research. Instead of developing a product and then testing to see if it sells well, you can start by seeing if the product sells well and then make a decision regarding whether or not you want to pursue it.
When mining Amazon’s top-100 rankings for each category, be on the lookout for items that are lightweight, high-ranking and generic.
Generic refers to something like a water bottle, silicone spatula or flashlight — all items that can easily be produced with your own brand and packaging. In other words, you wouldn’t want to select a product that’s brand-driven — such as an iPhone or Nike running shoes — because those are protected products that can’t be private labeled.
Once you find a product that you’re interested in, it’s time for phase two of the product research stage.
During this phase, study your competition to see how they’re doing.
For example, let’s say the product you’ve honed in on is an insulated water bottle. While you might know from the top-100 rankings one insulated water bottle brand sells well, you need to learn more about the competitive landscape.
Using the search box at the top of Amazon, run a query for “insulated water bottle†and review the results.
Open up the first five listings and record the following information in a spreadsheet: price, number of reviews, Amazon best-sellers rank and quality of listing. The latter point is discretionary, but after doing some research, you’ll quickly be able to tell the difference between a good listing and a bad one.
Using the information you gather from these five listings, which serve as your sample of the marketplace, determine whether the opportunity is worth pursuing.
Ideally, you want to see the following in your spreadsheet:
Don’t be afraid if you can’t find a product right away. It usually takes me hours of research to find an opportunity I believe will work.
However, let’s say your research for insulated water bottles met all of these requirements. Now you’re ready to find a supplier.
Once you know you have a good product opportunity, it’s time to find a supplier.
While it’s possible — depending on the product — you could find a supplier in the U.S., it’s highly unlikely that you’ll find a cost-effective one. Trust me on this one and head over to Alibaba to look for an international supplier.
Start your supplier search by entering the same key phrase into the Alibaba search box. In this case, a simple search of “insulated water bottle†will give you thousands of different products and suppliers.
Find the style you’re looking for and research a few different suppliers. Depending on how thorough their listings are, you can usually see the required minimum order quantity (MOQ), price range, style options, lead time and whether they allow for private labeling. However, you’ll need to email the supplier to get an accurate quote for your order.
I’ve found suppliers are willing to negotiate, even on your first order. While they may claim their MOQ is 500 or 1,000 units, it’s entirely possible to talk them down to, say, 250 or 300 units.
Generally, there’s also room for negotiating prices. Just act confidently and pretend you’ve been there before — even if you haven’t!
To save time and streamline the process, you can often work on step three alongside step two.
Once you’ve found a supplier who’s willing to let you private label the product, you have to choose your marketing materials. Don’t worry, though — you don’t have to create them yourself!
Use a website like Fiverr or Upwork to hire professional designers at competitive prices.
On Fiverr, you simply search for designers and then send them your job proposal. On Upwork (formerly Elance), you’ll actually create a project proposal and have designers bid for your project. I’ve used both sites, but prefer Upwork for packaging and logo design.
Assuming you’ve had time to develop a brand name during this process, you’ll want your designer to create a logo that represents your brand and vibrant packaging that sets it apart from your competitors — the ones listed in your spreadsheet from step one.
Once you have your design files, send them over to your supplier and tell them to proceed with your order.
Depending on your supplier’s lead time, you could wait anywhere from 10 to 30 days for your shipment to arrive.
Use this time wisely. Start by focusing on your listing. Follow Amazon’s directions and protocol for creating a seller account and then create a listing for your product.
To create a compelling listing:
While you’ll have to work within the constraints of what Amazon does and does not allow on listings, you should be able to use bolded text and bullet points to accentuate key facts.
As you likely noticed during step one, many sellers don’t do a good job with their listings, yet still sell well. Can you imagine how many more units they would sell with descriptive listings?
This is your chance to set your product apart and differentiate your brand as knowledgeable and informative.
Some of you are probably saying, “This whole process doesn’t sound like passive income.â€
Well, up until now, you may be right. However, assuming you did a thorough job in the previous steps, you’re almost ready to sit back and reap the benefits.
Thanks to the Fulfillment by Amazon (FBA) program, you don’t have to manage the monotony of picking, packing and shipping orders.
While FBA takes a small percentage of your profits, it’s well worth it for most sellers. Your shipping costs are included in the fees and your products automatically become eligible for free Prime shipping, which could help you make more sales.
For detailed information on how to setup an FBA listing, how it works, pricing, success stories and more, check our Amazon fulfillment guide.
Once you set up your listing and ship your products to the distribution center, you can be as hands-off as you’d like. When a customer makes a purchase, you don’t even have to lift a finger. Amazon’s fulfillment centers take care of everything, including returns and customer service issues.
In any business or industry, the first sale is typically the most difficult to make. You don’t have a reputation or any existing customers, so it can be challenging to convince someone to purchase your product.
Many sellers run some sort of sale or discount during a product’s launch. By reducing the price, you lower the customer’s perceived risk and entice them to take a chance on your product.
You can also use Amazon’s internal advertising system, which allows you to pay for your product to be listed in relevant on-site searches. This is a great way to increase visibility and attract an initial burst of sales.
Another option is to use Google AdWords to drive traffic to your listing. While AdWords will be more expensive, I tend to generate more sales from it than from other methods.
While these are the most common strategies, there are hundreds of other ways to increase sales and traffic. This is where you can get creative and have fun with your product!
Or, if everything is working on its own, simply sit back and let the passive income accumulate.
Products that rank within the top 100 in their category often bring in thousands of dollars per day in revenue. Products that rank in the top 500 typically produce hundreds of dollars per day. Even a product in the top 2,000 to 3,000 can earn you a steady supplemental income.
Since different types of products have different price points and associated costs, those numbers are estimates.
It’s difficult to specify the initial investment for your own private-label brand, since it depends on your product. But I can give you an idea of how much I spent on my first one, a basic grilling accessory.
I ordered 500 units at a per-unit cost of $3.20. In addition to the $1,600 cost of initial inventory, I spent around $400 to design my packaging and logo, start a website, set up my Amazon business account and pay other minor expenses. So launching my first private-label brand cost me about $2,000.
However, I know people who spent only a few hundred dollars getting their first brand off the ground — and also people who spent many thousands.
Look for a healthy profit margin. I like to aim for a per-unit profit margin of at least 50%. It all depends on the product, but there’s a niche for every budget.
While there’s a lot of information here, setting up your own e-commerce business will take some extra research. Dig around, speak with other sellers and find out what else you can do to make your private-labeling business a successful and lucrative endeavor.
And if you don’t have the cash up front, check out our guide for other ways to make money on Amazon.
Schuyler Richardson is a Greenville, South Carolina-based freelance writer and e-commerce entrepreneur. He’s an avid sports fan and graduate of the University of South Carolina.
The Penny Hoarder’s Adam Hardy also contributed to this article.
This was originally published on The Penny Hoarder, which helps millions of readers worldwide earn and save money by sharing unique job opportunities, personal stories, freebies and more. The Inc. 5000 ranked The Penny Hoarder as the fastest-growing private media company in the U.S. in 2017.
The Penny Hoarder Promise: We provide accurate, reliable information. Here’s why you can trust us and how we make money.
Starting a business is daunting.
There is so much to think about and so much to do.
It’s hard enough trying to figure out how to build and grow a business. The last thing we want to think about is figuring out how to put together an operating agreement or picking the right accounting system.
The good news is that all of the things that need to get done in order to start your business have been done a million times before. You don’t need to reinvent the wheel or waste brain power on figuring out what to do.
There are at least 23 things that you should do when starting a new business and we can walk you through each one of them step-by-step.
I’m going to assume you already have a business idea, and I’m not going to show you how to build or grow your business in this article. These are the practical steps, necessary to begin operations.
Don’t overthink this. You just need to be able to answer two big questions:
If you think long and hard about these questions, you’ll end up with a good starting plan. Be realistic about what it’s going to take. Do your research, and know your numbers. Put it all to paper, and the business plan will evolve into a useful tool and true north for at least the first 6–12 months.
Coming up with a name can be harder than doing the business plan! Your name is…well…your name. It has to be good. It does not have to be perfect and it does not have to be a fancy, made up word like Google or Yahoo. Generally speaking, here is what matters:
Again, do not take this lightly! It is not an area that makes sense to be cheap. We use Namecheap to buy our domains — you can read more about why in our review of the best domain registrars.
It’s tough enough to find a good name where buying the .com is possible. Chances are, you won’t get exact match social media handles as well. Do everything you can to get them, but if that fails — get creative. Your social media handles / urls are much less important than your website, but they’re still worth putting effort into.
It’s nice to have a logo, colors, fonts and a general look and feel to go along with your name. You can always update your brand identity down the road, so the initial run just needs to be good enough. 99 Designs is a great option for a full brand identity package. You can run a design contest that allows you to pick from hundreds of options.
Your brand identity package from 99 Designs will come with business card designs. You can use them to get business cards printed online by Vista Print.
This one is easy to put on the back burner. You’ll save yourself a lot of hassle and potentially save your business altogether by getting ahead here. Line up the legal and tax pros ahead of time. There are lots of great options and your accountant and attorney can both be remote.
We haven’t personally used it, but we’ve heard a lot of good things about Upcounsel.
You can use your attorney for this, or you can use a service like Legal Zoom. Setting up an LLC is simple, so it’s a good spot to save some money by using a service like Legal Zoom.
Getting your Employer Identification Number is something you can take care of along with the LLC. They typically go hand-in-hand. You’ll need that to do just about everything, including business banking.
Even if it’s just you, an operating agreement is needed. Unless you have other people involved with your business, you can definitely get away with Legal Zoom here. Chances are, things will evolve and you will update your operating agreement down the road anyway. If you do have other people involved, have your attorney help out here.
If you’re using a lawyer, they can do all of this for you. Otherwise you’ll need to do some research into the requirements in your state, which also vary depending on the type of business you’re starting.
By now you are starting to see the theme here: Reduce future headache! Set up your systems now and you’ll be able to focus on growth moving forward.
1Password is an excellent tool for managing all of your passwords and sensitive data. It makes it easy to securely share logins with your team — which is key because Centrify estimates that lost passwords cost $416 in productivity per person.
Pretty straightforward. You’ll need that EIN. It’s typically most convenient to go with the same bank you’re already using for your personal accounts.
One thing to watch out for is a the upselling that many of the bigger banks do. For example, with Bank of America, we went ahead and took them up on an offer for Intuit Payroll. It ended up being a terrible user experience. The people at Intuit recommended that we sign up for a new account directly with Intuit because they couldn’t figure out how to solve some of the problems we were having. They put the blame on Bank of America. This ended up working out because instead of signing up for Intuit Payroll, we researched other options and found Gusto, which is much better.
The point here is to use your bank account for a bank account and be wary of using them for other offers or services.
G suite is the most important tool for our business. We do almost everything using G Suite. Our emails and calendars are all on G suite. We also rely heavily on Google Drive / Docs.
You’ll need to get this set up as soon as you have your domain name. Then you can easily get your business accounts set up.
Your website can be a very big project depending on your business. In some cases your website could be the business. That’s why the focus here is simply on a basic, foundational website.
It’s good to have a one-page site live with information about your company. Then you can build further from there.
You can be up and running in the matter of minutes with Wix. Once you’re ready to do a full feature website, it’s easy to switch over to WordPress.
We like Gusto. They are very good. We use them and find their service to be superior to Intuit Payroll.
You won’t need to worry about this until you start paying employees or contractors. It’s good to have it ready and on deck though. Not only will the service automate your payroll, but it will also take care of taxes and forms that need to be filed.
A Quickbooks account is essential from day one. This is how you’ll manage your books and ensure you always have good records. Going back and importing historical data isn’t fun. The sooner you get it set up the better.
The best bet here is to work closely with your accountant. A good approach is to ask your accountant what you need to be doing throughout the year to make things easier when tax season comes and to make sure all quarterly obligations are met.
Quickbooks does all of the heavy lifting, but there are still things you’ll need to stay on top of. There is some crossover with what’s already been outlined here, but Shopify put together a good guide on small business accounting.
This is easy but often overlooked. 1Password is great for keeping track of your subscription logins. You still need some way to quickly see everything you have and what you are paying for, especially as you grow and have more people using and signing up for different tools and subscriptions.
A simple spreadsheet is all you need. Track the subscription, cost per month or year, terms (if any), payment method (what account or card is it tied to?), and renewal date.
The biggest thing here is to get in the habit of tracking all of your work. Even if you are the only person in your company, you should operate like an organization because someday you will have no choice. The other benefit besides creating good habits is the historical information and data that will come from working like this starting day one.
It’s very valuable for new people to come into your organization and be able to look back at what work has been done in the past. It’s context that will help them (and your business) be successful going forward.
It doesn’t matter what tool you use. You’ll likely change it a bunch of times anyway. We use Trello. There are dozens of great tools.
Just as you should use a project management tool from the very early stages, it’s extremely valuable to start documenting everything right away.
If you ever want to scale your startup, you’ll need your brain to scale too. Your internal wiki is like your brain. Giving your future team instant access to your brain is huge. If you already have a disciplined approach to documenting things in the wiki, your team will follow suit.
It’s not fun figuring out the value of a wiki system 3 years down the road, 50 people deep. You’ll think of an endless number of documents you wish you’d have written out as you went along.
We use Confluence.
Everyone loves Slack. It just works. Mobile communication is key.
Like your business plan, your strategic plan doesn’t need to be complicated.
Even in a one-person shop, taking the time to do this will force strategic thinking and purposeful action. It will help you avoid being reactive and randomly doing whatever comes your way.
It becomes even more important when you have a team that needs to know what direction to march. They will need that context in order to do their jobs.
Other guides written on how to start a business are pretty general. I don’t see a lot of value in reiterating what is already out there, so here is a list of guides that I would recommend for further reading on how to start a business:
When Val Breit graduated college in January 2012, she picked up her diploma and a bill for $42,000 in student loans.
Val had been saving for her wedding, but now out of school, she felt the weight of her student loans more heavily than before.
As she looked at her repayment options, she saw that if she stuck to the plan she was automatically assigned to, she’d pay an extra $32,000 in interest for her master’s degree in school counseling.
“I started bawling,†she remembered. “How am I ever going to repay that?â€
It was the moment she decided to stop ignoring her debt and prioritize paying it off.
Val and her now husband, Nathan, had been engaged for over a year when she graduated. They were planning a small wedding that would cost $10,000. After help from family and her fiance, Val was left with $2,500 to fund on her own.
So she started living frugally while in school to be able to save for the wedding. She would eventually cover most of her portion with those savings.
Nathan, who had about $9,000 in student loans himself, admired what his bride was doing but didn’t feel the same urgency about paying off his own debt. He’d maybe put an extra $20 per month toward paying it off, but he was always supportive of Val’s mission.
Even in marriage, Val and Nathan didn’t combine their incomes. So instead of working extra or starting a side hustle, Val decided that to pay off her student loans, she’d just continue the frugal lifestyle she’d adopted to save for her wedding.
Val had just started a job as a school counselor making $36,000 per year. Even though her student loans were more than her salary, she was determined.
“We really looked at things through the lens of, ‘Do I want this thing now — like a new couch set, for example — or do I want to get rid of this debt?’†Val said. It was this perspective that influenced all her day-to-day decisions.
Here are some of the things she did to cut expenses.
She carpooled to work. “I had a 35-minute commute each way to work, and I carpooled with co-workers almost every day for two years to save on gas and car maintenance,†Val said. “My husband also carpooled on his one-hour-each-way commute for two years.â€
She used a flip phone. Val tried to get a smartphone with a data plan, but it never fit in their budget. “My friends had smartphones in college. My co-workers had smartphones at work. My mom even had a smartphone before I did,†she said.
They got hand-me-down furniture. “We had a kitchen table with ugly plastic paisley that was probably from the ‘80s,†Val remembered. Their bed, barstools, recliner, end tables, coffee tables — almost everything was stuff their family members wanted to get rid of.
They drove old cars they could pay cash for. Val’s was used with 100,000 miles, and Nathan’s was an old beater they bought from an elderly woman who could no longer drive. “He was still driving it when it was a ‘collector’ at 20 years old!†Val joked.
She made manual loan payments. “Since my lender could never get my autopayments right, I ended autopayments, sacrificed the whatever-percent reduction and made every single payment manually.†Val usually made two per month: the first for what was due, and the second for whatever was left in her checking account that would allow her to keep a $1,000 balance.
“The manual payments made me a little more angry at my loan and motivated me to just pay it off faster,†she said. “I didn’t know it at the time, but by being active with my payments instead of passive, I always knew exactly how much I still owed and how much was still going toward interest. Both made me sick and fueled my debt-payoff fire.â€
In May 2013, after almost a year of being married, Val and Nathan bought a house in a small town outside of Madison, Wisconsin, and finally combined their finances — and their efforts to become debt-free.
They continued to live frugally, budget and live without smartphones. In the fall of 2014, they were down to the last $9,000. They found out they were pregnant, and Val knew she didn’t want to still be paying off debt when they brought home their baby.
After taking a look at their sinking funds for things like cars and traveling, they realized they had enough to pay it all off. Then they could rebuild those funds as if they were paying off the debt. So in November 2014, she made her final student loan payment.
Val had her baby in May 2015. And without debt payments, she was able to afford to quit her job — the job that provided 60% of the household income and the family’s health insurance — and now gets to stay home with her.
“I fully believe paying off my student loans and getting us together living this lifestyle of living below our means, budgeting and knowing how to tighten things up is the reason I can be a stay-at-home mom.â€
Val has since written a book to help others pay off their student loans quickly, even without a six-figure income or the time to start 100 side hustles.
“It all started with paying off debt,†Val said. “That really changed our lives and our family’s life.â€
Jen Smith is a staff writer at The Penny Hoarder. She gives money-saving and debt-payoff tips on Instagram at @savingwithspunk.
This was originally published on The Penny Hoarder, which helps millions of readers worldwide earn and save money by sharing unique job opportunities, personal stories, freebies and more. The Inc. 5000 ranked The Penny Hoarder as the fastest-growing private media company in the U.S. in 2017.
The Penny Hoarder Promise: We provide accurate, reliable information. Here’s why you can trust us and how we make money.
Yesterday, to start off the reader mailbag, I offered up this little riff:
When I was younger, the idea of paying for a service to do an ordinary household task for you seemed silly. Why would I ever pay for someone to wash my laundry or do the dishes? I can do those things myself for free.
As I have gotten older, I have begun to realize that an hour or two of free time without undone things hanging over my head has a lot of value. How much value? How much would I pay to have an hour of additional free time to do something I cared about deeply? $5? $10? $20?
I know that I’d rather have an hour of free time at this point than most things I could buy for $10.
It’s become an interesting question. The reason this has come up is that we had an offer in the mail to do laundry by the square foot in our town. They give you a box of a certain size upon your request and you fill it with laundry with a lid that you have to be able to lock into place, so they assume you’ll jam it full. They wash it and fold it and return it to you and you pay by the cubic foot based on the initial container size. A friend did this and was really happy with the results.
I’ve been doing a lot of “back of the envelope” math to determine if it’s worth it, which involves me estimating how much actual time doing laundry and folding it takes me. The sorting, the washing, the drying, and the folding per load – how much time does it add up to, and how much is that time worth? Then how does that compare to a cost per cubic foot?
This little bit sums up something that’s been weighing on my mind a great deal as of late: a change in my sense of frugality.
I have always defined frugality as striving to allocate one’s resources most effectively, with those resources including time, money, energy, focus, and any other resource we may have available to us. In any given situation, I want to spend the least total amount of my resources – time, money, energy, focus, patience, decision space, and so on – to get the results I desire, so that I can use those resources to achieve other things in life.
It’s a great ideal, but it presents a few problems.
First of all, money and time are far and away the easiest to quantify out of all of those resources. You can glance at a clock or set a timer whenever you want to quantify time; it’s easy to figure out how much time something takes. Almost everything has a price tag, so it’s similarly easy to figure out how much money something costs.
Now, how exactly do you measure how much energy something takes? How much focus? How much patience? How much mental clarity? It’s basically impossible to do that with any real accuracy.
Second, because they’re much easier to quantify than other resources, it’s easy to vastly overemphasize money and time. It’s easy for me to figure out how much time it takes me to do a load of laundry. It’s also relatively easy to figure out how much money it costs me to do a load of laundry. It’s much more difficult to figure out how much energy it takes or how much of my patience or how much of my decision space is gobbled up by doing a load of laundry.
I can easily plan out my day with a schedule so that I use my time resources very effectively. I can easily make a grocery list so that I use my money resources very effectively. I know exactly how much I have and exactly how much I’m aiming to spend. With energy? With focus? With everything else? It’s somewhat possible, but much harder to really quantify without a lot of work.
In general, whichever resource feels more pressing to me in the moment tends to get my focus, and because of the ease of measuring them, time and money tend to get my attention the easiest and the most frequently.
Finally, converting between the various resources is really hard. Even converting between time and money, the two easiest ones to measure, is pretty hard.
How much is an hour of my time spent doing laundry at home worth? I think everyone reading this would happily pay someone a quarter to do an hour’s worth of their laundry for them. What about $10? What about $25? What about whatever your hourly wage at work is?
It’s not an easy question. It’s going to be different for everyone. That’s just the two easiest to quantify resources.
The truth is that all of this adds up to mostly focusing on money and time, and often letting money wins out. When I’m uncertain about how much money to spend for some extra time, I usually just end up passing up on that opportunity and conserving the money.
That’s really what the laundry story is about – I’m really uncertain how much that service is worth to me in terms of the time saved (and the energy saved), so because of that uncertainty, I just say no.
When I do the laundry myself, I’m spending just a little money, but a fair amount of time and at least some energy (our washer and dryer are in the basement, while our bedrooms are mostly on the second floor of our home). If I were to hire out that service, I’d be spending quite a bit more money, a lot less time, and somewhat less energy. I don’t know how to do that exchange in a clear way, so I simply shrug, give up, and usually choose the route that has the lowest financial cost.
The problem with elevating money to the prime position when thinking about frugality is that it quickly lowers the value of all of your other resources to close to zero. There are times where it is extremely obvious that you’re saving a huge amount of time and energy for mere pennies, like using a washing machine to wash clothes or a dishwasher to wash dishes, but most of the time, when it’s not as starkly clear, we default to maximizing money and, to a lesser extent, time.
What would change if I focused everything on maximizing relationships and I focused my money, time, energy, and other resources on activities that provided the most “value” in terms of relationship building? What would my life look like if I were extremely frugal about everything in order to build up my roster of relationships?
What would change if I focused everything on maximizing my free time and I focused my money, energy, focus, and other resources on activities that provided the move “value” in terms of maximizing my free time? What would my life look like if I were extremely frugal about everything in order to build up my free time?
I can ask those questions about every single significant resource I have. Obviously, I’ve spent many years thinking about it in terms of money and, to a lesser extent, time, but what about things like energy? Relationships? Knowledge? Health? Virtues?
I can be “frugal” about each of those things. I can make choices to minimize my necessary use of those things so that I have a surplus of them for the things I want in life. I can aim for efficiency for each of those things.
The problem, of course, is that maximum efficiency at one of them generally means inefficiency at other ones. That’s where the whole laundry issue comes into play. If I’m frugal with regards to time, then it’s obviously better to hire someone to do it. If I’m frugal with regards to money, then it’s obviously better to do it myself.
All of this thinking has led me to a new focus for my frugality. I’m trying to seek out the absolute “home runs” in terms of bang for the buck for each of those resources in my life. I am looking for ways to do things that are extremely efficient uses of one resource to conserve a bunch of another resource.
In other words, for every resource in my life, I want to know what the most efficient ways are to vastly increase my available reserves of that resource without spending a lot of another resource.
What’s the most efficient way to vastly increase my available reserves of money without spending a ton of time or energy or another resource in my life? That’s the traditional question of frugality. But I have other questions.
What’s the most efficient way to vastly increase my available reserves of time without spending a ton of money or energy or another resource in my life?
What’s the most efficient way to vastly increase my available reserves of energy without spending a ton of money or time or another resource in my life?
What’s the most efficient way to vastly increase my available reserves of health without spending a ton of money or energy or time or another resource in my life?
What’s the most efficient way to vastly increase my number and quality of relationships without spending a ton of money or energy or time or another resource in my life?
What’s the most efficient way to vastly increase my understanding of the world without spending a ton of money or energy or time or another resource in my life?
What’s the most efficient way to vastly improve my personal character without spending a ton of money or energy or time or another resource in my life?
In each of these, I’m asking the basic question of money-focused frugality except that I’m focusing on another intrinsic resource. Those are all areas I’m really exploring lately.
The thing is, this journey is still rooted in maximizing that bottom dollar. One of the big resources I want to minimally use in each of these areas is money. You could even rearrange those questions a bit to make them somewhat more money focused.
How can I find a lot more free time without spending a lot of money?
How can I feel a lot more energetic without spending a lot of money?
How can I feel a lot more healthier without spending a lot of money?
How can I significantly enhance my ability to focus without spending a lot of money?
How can I significantly improve my relationships without spending a lot of money?
How can I significantly improve my understanding of the world without spending a lot of money?
How can I significantly improve my personal character without spending a lot of money?
Each of those things are resources I want to have more of in my life, but I don’t want to simply sacrifice other resources to get there. Instead, I want to find the really efficient exchange rates between those resources. It’s tough because it’s hard to really quantify some of those resources, but it’s usually fairly obvious when something offers a huge surplus of one resource for just a little bit of another.
So, let’s talk tactics. What have I found when looking for those really efficient exchanges? What are the “home runs” when it comes to being frugal about resources other than money? Here are some of the ones I’ve found.
The most efficient strategies I’ve found for maximizing free time without spending much money is time blocking and frequent reviews. I tend to block off my time use most days by keeping a daily calendar where almost every minute is accounted for, but many of those time blocks are set aside to engage in leisure activities that I really want to have time for. Doing things this way ensures that I always do have time for those things. I also do a daily review of things done and things left undone, with bigger reviews each week and month and quarter. Going back over things to see what works and what doesn’t and what loose ends I still have makes everything else way more efficient.
The most efficient strategies I’ve found for maximizing energy without spending much money is to exercise and to eat lots of raw fruits and vegetables as part of your diet. Do something each day that gets you panting and sweating and maybe a little sore the next day. You don’t need to be an extreme athlete. What you’ll find is that if you do it consistently, you wind up just feeling better and having more energy. Similarly, eating a diet that has a lot of fruits and vegetables in it – raw ones, not ones that are part of some other dish – makes a huge difference, at least for me.
The most efficient strategies I’ve found for feeling healthier without spending much money is to go outside and move around frequently throughout the day and to exercise portion control with meals. I try to go outside for multiple walks each day even if the weather is awful. Having a dog gives me an excuse to do that, but I’d do it anyway. I also find that whenever I overeat, I feel awful and I end up in the long run gaining weight, so if I focus on eating just enough so that I don’t feel hungry, I feel better throughout the day and my weight stays in a good place, too.
The most efficient strategies I’ve found for improving my ability to focus without spending much money is to meditate daily and to eliminate easy distractions from my life. A daily meditation routine, repeated over many days, drastically improves my ability to focus. I also find that eliminating distractions as much as I can – leaving my smartphone elsewhere, using “do not disturb mode” as much as possible, listening to “focus” music – also helps a ton in terms of being able to focus and sometimes achieve a flow state.
The most efficient strategies I’ve found for building and improving relationships without spending much money is to keep in touch with people very regularly and to actually speak up at social events by asking questions and being humble. I actually schedule touching base with people with whom I want to preserve a relationship, so that I don’t let it slip my mind out of complacency. This is incredibly powerful at keeping relationships alive. For building new relationships, simply going to social events and starting conversations by asking questions is incredibly efficient at building new relationships, and as the conversation grows, being humble is about the best thing you can do.
The most efficient strategies I’ve found for improving my understanding of the world without spending much money is to read challenging books in small bites on a very frequent basis and to have meaningful conversations with people, particularly those different from myself. I read a lot of very challenging books, but I read them in very short bites throughout the day and think about them as I go through the tasks of the day. I’ll read for five minutes here and then five minutes there and let the thoughts percolate in my head. I also try to have meaningful and thoughtful conversations with people where I’m trying to learn something or see something from their perspective, and few things clarify the world better than that.
The most efficient strategies I’ve found for improving my character without spending much money is to focus on specific virtues rather than trying to be better all at once and to constantly check in and remind myself of the virtue or two I’m working on. I think of one or two things I really want to improve in myself right now and focus on those things for a while. I do that by checking in constantly throughout the day on those things to remind myself to keep being humble or to be positively honest or to be a better listener. Doing that for extended periods (weeks? months?) is incredibly efficient at making oneself a better person.
To me, those strategies are as important in terms of frugality as anything I might do that strictly saves money. Why? If I’m able to inexpensively have an abundance of those resources by doing things that are obvious home runs for me, then I have plenty of those resources to spend on things that are financially efficient.
I have the time to take on money saving projects like caulking a window.
I have the energy to spend Sunday afternoon making meals in advance or making homemade gifts rather than staring at a football game.
I have the health to be able to go play soccer at the park with my family which keeps me from having to buy tickets for them to expensive activities.
I have the focus to take on challenging work projects and succeed at them which improves my income and my time efficiency at getting them done.
I have the relationships in place so that I can rely on friends when I need them and have really low cost social activities like game nights and dinner parties at home all the time.
I have the understanding of the world that helps me efficiently process new situations rather than having to pay for help in getting through challenges.
I have the character to not have to spend money to have a good presence in the community; in other words, I don’t have to spend to have a positive impression on other people.
It all cycles around. If I actually do the things that are the “big wins” in terms of every major resource in my life – in other words, if I practice frugality and take care of the low hanging fruit for resources besides just money – I end up doing well in every dimension of my life, and that ends up helping my finances, too.
Don’t just focus on being frugal with your money. Instead, look for the big wins in every aspect of your life, because securing those big wins will often end up helping your finances just as much while making your life as a whole that much better.
Good luck!
The post Defining Frugality Through Life’s Other Resources appeared first on The Simple Dollar.
From making reusable loo paper to paying only for the ingredients you need, living a sustainable lifestyle can save you money. Read our guide to creating your own eco home
A few changes to your home and habits can cut your impact on the environment and save you money. To get you started, we’ve highlighted 10 ideas that can easily be carried out in your spare time.
This is one of the quickest and easiest ways to make big savings fast. Although renewable energy used to come at a premium, half of the cheapest tariffs now come from green fuel, with companies such as Bulb, ENGIE and Octopus often beating the Big Six energy giants including British Gas and EDF. Households can save £273 a year, on average, on a typical standard variable tariff by switching to green fuel. E.ON and Npower now offer a green tariff, which is cheaper than their equivalent standard tariff.
Rather than assuming something is beyond repair, try fixing it yourself. Search on YouTube and you will probably find a step-by-step guide on how to repair your particular appliance. Or find out if there is a free repair café in your area via Repaircafe.org and pick up some tips at the same time. Make sure you repair them safely though – especially if they’re electrical. If you do have to replace an item, make sure it is built to last by using sites such as Buy Me Once (UK.buymeonce.com), where products are tested for their longevity such as cooking pans with a lifetime guarantee.
Don’t assume an item is beyond repair and try fixing it
Swishing is a fun way to swap clothes with friends and get a whole new wardrobe without spending any money or throwing fashion into landfill. Get a group of friends together, ask them to bring along any clothes they are bored of or that don’t fit and provide some drinks and nibbles. Alternative ways to find cheap secondhand clothes, or to sell on your own items, is to join local Facebook selling groups or make use of apps such as Gumtree and Shpock.
The average UK household loses £470 a year on avoidable food waste, so planning your meals before your weekly food shop will prevent impulse buying and ensure you only buy what you need. Portion planning, batch cooking and freezing leftovers are also cost-effective ways to ensure your meals go further.
Zero-waste shops, such as Refill Revolution’s shop in Market Harborough, Leicestershire, enable shoppers to buy recipe-size portions, such as a teaspoon of cardamom, for a few pence so they don’t end up with a jar of unused ingredients.
Smartphone apps, such as Good to Go, can help customers pick up takeaway, restaurant and hotel food at massive discounts before it is thrown away. Similarly, Olio (Olioex.com) connects neighbours and shops so surplus food can be shared for free.
Shoppers are now adept at bringing their own bags, so the next step is to shop with your own reusable containers. Plastic containers, glass jars and vacuum flasks can all be used at a growing number of zero-waste shops, market stalls and coffee shops where great deals and discounts can be found.
“It is the traditional way of how our grandparents shopped. It is about thinking ahead and looking back to what we did before plastic,” says Georgina Wilson-Powell, editor of sustainable living magazine Pebble. And if you are attending an event or meeting with hospitality don’t be embarrassed to turn up with containers to take home unwanted food. You will get a free meal and prevent food from being thrown in landfill.
There are many inventive recipes online to make haircare and skincare products out of items in your kitchen cupboards. Meanwhile, bicarbonate of soda, lemon and vinegar are great cleaning products and cost less than £1 each.
Jen Gale, sustainable living champion of Asustainablelife.co.uk, also recommends using white vinegar instead of dishwasher rinse aid. Five litres can be bought for £10 on Amazon compared to £1.30 to £3.50 for 100ml of rinse aid.
“I also make my own deodorant from coconut oil, cornflour, bicarbonate of soda and essential oils. It is so much cheaper than buying it,” adds Ms Gale.
Under the Energy Company Obligations scheme, eligible customers can apply for thousands of pounds’ worth of energy-efficiency improvements, including replacement boilers and loft and cavity wall insulation.
Free loft and cavity wall insulation is easier to come by, and even if you are not eligible for a 100% grant you will probably only have to pay a tiny amount for the work, often less than £30.
Homeowners can also get money towards the costs of renewable heating, such as biomass boilers, solar water heating and heat pumps, via the Domestic Renewable Heat Initiative. And if you are elderly, disabled or on a low income, your local Home Improvement Agency may help you to repair, improve, maintain or adapt your home.
Being able to darn clothes and stitch hems is a great skill to have and will prevent you from throwing away otherwise good clothes. Sewing ability also comes in handy for making kids’ costumes rather than buying them and creating items to keep the house warmer to avoid spending more on fuel, such as draft excluders or lining curtains with old blankets.
Reusing and upcycling items in this way cuts down on the energy used to make and transport bought goods and reduces plastic packaging.
On average, women menstruate for around 40 years, having approximately 480 periods, costing an estimated £4,800, according to the charity Bloody Good Period.
Ella Daish, a campaigner to end period plastics, says there are huge financial benefits to going green with your flow.
“Reusable products, such as menstrual cups, have a 10-year lifespan so women only need four in a reproductive lifetime. Each cup costs around £20 so that works out at just 16p per period with an overall saving of £4,720.”
Other alternatives are reusable pads with a lifespan of five years. These cost around £5.50 each, and an initial pack of 15 pads for a cycle would cost £82.50. Over 40 years, this would cost £660 – a saving of £4,140.
Only buy items you need and try not to spend any cash for a day
Being aware of your consumption and only buying new items when absolutely necessary can have the biggest impact on your wallet and the environment.
Buy Nothing Day, which took place on 23 November this year, is the antithesis to Black Friday and advocates spending no money for the whole day.
Ms Gale and her family spent a year buying nothing new and saved £2,000. “Being thrifty is not about being tight with money it is about being careful with resources and more thoughtful about your consumption,” she says.
Investing in an electric car and solar panels has meant that Susanna Riviere (pictured right), 64, has reduced her monthly outlay and is an investment in the planet she feels passionate about.
Her net annual fuel bill is £500 for a three-bedroom, semi-detached house in London and, after almost 10 years, the solar and hot water panels have paid for themselves.
“It cost us £10,400 for the eight panels, but we got a grant of £2,500 from the Energy Saving Trust and we get £800 a year back from the feed-in tariff,” she says.
The panels are also used to charge her electric car and bicycle, which she does when the sun is out so the electricity is free.
“I got a £4,500 grant towards the cost of the car and a free home charger. The car was a similar price to a non-electric model, so in the long run I will be saving money.”
The running costs of Susanna’s car are low because the insurance is less and there is no road tax or congestion charge to pay.
The retired solicitor and meditation teacher also advocates refusing to buy goods just for the sake of it.
“If I want to acquire something, I think do I actually need it? We buy a lot of stuff we don’t actually need,” she adds.
From making her own “foof wipes” to cultivating yoghurt and cooking popcorn, community exercise assessor Kelsey Sprintall (pictured above with her two daughters, Neve, aged 10, on the right, and Willow, aged eight) is doing everything she can to reduce waste at home.
“You tend to spend out a little bit at the beginning but then you save from that point on,” says Kelsey, who lives with her husband and daughters in Market Harborough, Leicestershire.
Her most radical creation has been homemade toilet paper.
“The girls and I made them out of terry towelling. We spent about £10 on a metre square and cut them up. We use them just for wees, and the kids and their friends have just adapted to using them. We make a joke out of it and call them foof wipes. Now a pack of toilet roll lasts for months,” she explains.
The wipes are deposited in a small bin scented with essential oil and then washed inside a mesh bag alongside a regular dark wash.
“It is just like having a few extra pairs of socks to sort out,” says the 41-year-old.
The family has also invested in a yoghurt maker for £30 and they forage for fruits and scrumping for apples to get their flavourings.
And instead of buying multi-packs of crisps, they now spend 35p on 100g of popcorn, which they flavour with household spreads such as Marmite.
“A bag of popcorn kernels goes far so that’s a good saving. I also make my own butter with cream from the dairy, which is comparable in price with the supermarket but is much better quality,” she adds.
Lily Canter is a freelance journalist who writes for a wide range of publications including Metro, The Guardian, The Daily Telegraph and The Times
Moneywise helps a reader hoping to recover cash from a pre-paid card
In 2013, I loaded money on to a Euro cash passport with Sainsburys ready for a holiday. When I came back, I had €150 left on my card.
I have not needed to use it until now, but found out that it had expired. So I rang Sainsbury’s Bank and it told me that my €150 had been used up in non-use fees over the past five years.
I knew nothing about these fees, but it responded that it was all in the terms and conditions on the booklet I received when I signed up.
However, who reads these? I had expected that all the money would remain until I used it next – if anyone had mentioned non-usage fees when I took the card out, I wouldn’t have done so.
The company now refuses to return my money, saying that I had notice of the fees in the booklet. Is there anything I can do?
MS/Walton-On-Thames
I’m afraid not. You’ve fallen victim to the hidden-fees syndrome. I was a victim myself some time ago when I left a currency card languishing in a drawer for a couple of years.
Many of the cards have these stinking, non-use fees, which means your cash simply disappears.
A Sainsbury’s Bank spokesperson explained: “Pre-paid travel money cards can be very convenient as you can track your spending and add more cash at any time. If you don’t use your cash within 18 months, a small monthly fee will be applied. Our terms and conditions can be found on our website and at the point of purchase. There are a number of options to re-activate the card and avoid incurring the fee such as topping it up, using it at an ATM or arranging a buy-back.”
It’s a lesson for all readers: check the charges if you don’t want to lose the cash on a currency card.
