Daily Archives: March 27, 2009

Frugal Lexicon

March 27, 2009
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Believe it or not, my Suddenly Frugal book will be at the publisher next week, and on the road towards bookstores for the fall. As I spend this last week before my deadline finishing my proofing and editing of the manuscript, I’m also putting together the “back matter” of the book. In this instance that would be the two Appendices for the book. One is a frugal glossary; the other is frugal resources for readers to use.

As far as the glossary goes, this is where I’m going to list various words that are a part of the frugal lexicon, and which I think will be entertaining for the reader to learn about. I haven’t attempted a glossary related to my blog topic since the first year I wrote this blog–and at that time, I wrote a green glossary, since my focus then was on green and frugal living.

I’d like to make the glossary Appendix as useful as possible, and so far here are the words I’ve come up with (in no particular order):

  • frugal (natch)
  • miser
  • cheapskate
  • spendthrift
  • tightwad
  • staycation
  • thrift or thrifty
  • lifetime guarantee
  • warranty
  • Freecycler
  • Yankee

What additional words would you suggest I include?

***UPDATE***I posted something about this frugal lexicon on Twitter. Already someone suggested I add these words:

  • freegan
  • frugalista/recessionista
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Avert Your Eyes in the Checkout Line

March 27, 2009
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I’m doing a final proofing and editing of my Suddenly Frugal book, and yesterday I focused on my chapter about grocery shopping. Some of my advice included not going shopping hungry or with you kids in tow. Because if you do either of these things, I’ll bet that you’ll end up buying much more than what’s on your shopping list–either because something smelled good to your hungry self and you made an impulse decision, or your kids are good negotiators and they got you to make an impulse purchase on their behalf.

Now it seems that there’s another impulse-inspiring situation that you have to watch out for in the supermarket: Checkout TV Network, you know those TVs that have popped up in grocery store checkout lanes. (The ShopRite I used to shop at had them right above the cash register.)

I just read about a study–the 2008 CheckoutTV Recall Study–in Mediaweek magazine–and it cited a scary statistic: of those surveyed “70 percent of consumers who viewed ads reported it influenced their intent to buy the product in the future.”

Yikes. Now I have no idea if the products that these folks ended up buying were already on their shopping list, were on sale that week, and the consumer had a coupon–and, oh by the way, they saw it on Checkout TV, too. But now I’m thinking that when you go food shopping and you want to stay on budget, you make sure you have your shopping list, a full stomach, no kids around, and you avert your eyes in the checkout line!

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