I’m not in the market for a new car right now but maybe you are. That’s why I thought you would find this information from Cars.com to be helpful.

According to the site, Labor Days is when car dealers and manufacturers are unveiling sales specials to help move what’s left of the 2010 model year inventory. And these are the 10 best deals for consumers based on cash and loan incentives.

1. 2010 Grand Cherokee: $5,500 cash back ($1,500 dealer incentive) or 0% APR (up to 72 months) plus $1,000 cash back
2. 2010 Chevrolet HHR: $4,000 cash back (up to $5,000 dealer incentive) or 0% APR (up to 60 months)
3. 2010 Chevrolet Cobalt, Malibu: $3,000 cash back (up to $5,000 dealer incentive) or 0% APR (up to 60 months)
4. 2010 Chevrolet Impala: $4,000 cash back (up to $5,000 dealer incentive) or 0% APR (up to 72 months)
5. 2010 Nissan Altima Hybrid: $4,500 cash back or 0% APR (up to 60 months)
6. 2010 BMW 650i: $12,500 dealer incentive and 0.9% APR (up to 72 months)
7. 2010 BMW 5 Series (includes M5): $4,500-$7,000 dealer incentive and 0.9% APR (up to 60 months)
8. 2010 Infiniti FX35, FX50: $4,000-$7,000 dealer incentive, 0.9% APR (up to 60 months)
9. 2010 Lincoln Navigator: $3,500 cash back ($6,000 dealer incentive) or 0% APR plus $1,000 cash back for 36 months
10. 2010 Volvo XC70: $2,000-$5,000 dealer incentive and 0% APR 72 months

So what do you think–are these incentives enough to make you want to buy a new car?

It’s been awhile since I last did a hunt around my house for spare change. I know this because yesterday I began noticing how many coins have been piling up in various places in my home.

The timing is perfect to embark on a spare change challenge since we’re getting ready to do the final push of our house renovation–the bathroom that my daughters use, well used to use; it’s been down to the studs for the last two years and simply not on top of our priority list. Since then four of us have been sharing one full bath. With two teenage girls, let me tell you, it hasn’t been pretty.

I figure we’re going to need all the extra money we can find to pay for the renovation and the fixtures we have to buy (toilet, sinks, shower stall, etc.). So this morning I started hunting in the usual places for spare change–the laundry room, my bedroom, the cup holders in the car, the bottom of my pocketbook–and came up with a plastic container full of quarters, dimes, nickels and pennies. I’m going to spend this afternoon counting it all out and then tomorrow I’ll report on how much I found.

In the meantime why don’t you embark on your own spare change challenge. Then post a comment to let us know how much “extra” money you found around the house. It will be interesting to see the amounts of found money we end up, well, finding!

Suddenly Frugal founder Leah Ingram

What does it mean to be suddenly frugal? It’s when a family realizes that everything they understood to be financially sound turns out not to be so and they have to reinvent how they spend money–and reconsider the financial lessons they are passing down to their kids. This was the epiphany I had in 2007 when I started my Suddenly Frugal blog.

Through daily blogging I could hold our family accountable for the financial changes we were making in our lives. For the first time ever, I took an interest in our finances–previously, my husband had handled all the bills and I had stayed happily in the dark–and we worked actively to decrease spending. We started using online bill paying so that we’d never pay a late fee again, and we drastically altered how we fed our family.

Along the way life threw us a couple of curve balls, such as when our car died three months into our frugal lifestyle. We had to take out a loan to buy a new car and that felt like instant failure. But thanks to the frugal habits we’d already put in place, we were able to save enough to pay off that three-year car loan in 12 months. Then the economy tanked and I saw my income drop 50%. Once again our frugal habits helped us know how to tweak our spending so that this difficult time became a little less painful. While things are still tight around here, we’re in a pretty good place psychologically.

Good things happened along the way, too. My fashionista daughter developed a sense of buyer’s remorse, and both of my daughters learned to budget their money. I embraced the challenge of cooking dinner at home every night, which helped to cut spending (natch) but it also brought us closer as a family. Because being able to sit down together for a meal provides benefits way beyond saving money.

In addition, I was able to attract a literary agent and get a book deal based on my blog: Suddenly Frugal: How to Live Happier and Healthier for Less. Then I got a second book deal: Toss, Keep, Sell: The Suddenly Frugal Guide to Clearing Out Clutter and Cashing In.

Truth is we’re not out of the red completely yet. My oldest daughter is a sophomore in high school. My younger daughter is two years behind her. So in the very near future, we’re going to have to find a way to pay for college, and I’m not quite sure how we’re going to do that. This would freak out most people. I’m excited about the challenge. I’m confident that having developed a frugal point of view, we’ll figure out creative ways to find cash for college–and you can be sure I’ll be blogging about it as we go along.

This blog post is part of the submission/audition process for a new reality TV show about mom bloggers.

Bill decided that he wanted to try to stock up on more items this week, based on what was on sale at Stop & Shop. So I went to this week’s Grocery Game link for the store and made sure I didn’t forget to get the GG (or Grocery Game-specific) coupons associated with this week’s sales.

Except I discovered two things I didn’t expect.

1. GG coupons actually link to external coupon sites, such as the ones I already use–Coupons.com being one of them.
2. GG-linked coupons or rather the microsite that they link to don’t seem to work with a printer affiliated with an Apple computer. Because when I clicked on all the coupons I wanted, at the Coupons.com and SmartSource.com site that GG brought me to, I couldn’t print them out. I expected that the Coupons.com site would. But it didn’t. So I went back and tried again and I got an error message telling me that my “print limit reached.” That had never happened to me before. So I tried logging into my account at the Coupons.com site, and it still wouldn’t let me print out the coupons I was looking for–even though they never actually printed. (Eventually, I got them to print but I was still locked out of my account.)

What this means is this: I don’t need the Grocery Game-specific coupons in order to take advantage of the deals I find, as long as I go to Coupons.com or another site on my own. That’s OK, since I’d hoped that the Grocery Game-specific coupons would have somehow been linked up to that week’s outlined specials, but they weren’t. Once I got to the site, I still had to search for them, then click on them, and then print them out. Well, assuming I could print them out, which in yesterday’s instance, I couldn’t.

Another lesson learned.

A couple of years ago, I tried making money on eBay by buying clothing in bulk at cheap prices and then “flipping” that clothing on eBay. I probably made a couple hundred dollars this way, and then I got too busy to pursue it anymore.

One of the bathing suits I'm selling on eBay

Recently, though, we had the opportunity to buy a box of bathing suits at a wholesale price, which we figured we could recoup by selling on eBay. (We were also able to dress our daughters in brand-new bathing suits, which was a real cost saver right then and there. For the amount we would have spent for almost two bathing suits at retail, they got two new bathing suits each.) In addition, my daughters recently cleaned out their closets and provided some tween-friendly clothing worth selling on eBay.

Which is why I decided to dedicate today’s blog posting to tips I’ve found to be helpful for making the most money when selling on eBay.

1. Always search completed transactions before posting anything. You can do this kind of search using the “advanced search” tool. Not only does this allow you to see what similar items actually sold for, but also it gives you a good sense of where to start your bidding and in which category to post your item so shoppers will actually find it.
2. Make sure that if you’re selling used clothing, they are freshly laundered. No one wants a foul-smelling bargain, even if it is at a good price. If you expect people to bid on your used clothes, note that they’ve just been washed. It can’t hurt. Also, when you end up shipping the goods, you know you won’t get negative feedback because the clothes smelled dirty.
3. Be as descriptive as possible in your listing. I talk about sizes, brands, colors, any sayings on shirts, if a bathing suit has padded cups or lined bottoms or whatever it takes so that a potential bidder feels that he or she is well informed about my item.
4. Pictures really are worth 1,000 words. On eBay they are a must. Bidders tend to pass by any listings without pictures. Just as the descriptions above will inform someone about your item, the pictures will let that person actually see it, too. And that’s important in an auction scenario.
5. Give yourself some wiggle room with shipping. I don’t believe in over charging for shipping but don’t rip yourself off either. Too many times I’ve miscalculated the shipping weight on an item I was selling, and then any profit I may have pocketed on the sale I ended up spending on shipping because of my mistake.

Do you have additional tips for successfully selling on eBay?

When I drove by the local bank’s digital temperature display a little while ago, it blinked 103 degrees. Wow, yeah, we’re in a heat wave. While I don’t enjoy being warm, I hate paying to stay cool even more. Which is why I’m employing the following 7 tactics to keep my family and me cool–and my bills down at the same time.

1. Raise the thermostat. You may be responding to that statement with a “Whatcha talking about, Willis?” look, but think about it this way–72 degrees or 78 degrees, both still feel way cooler than the 103 degrees outside. So I’ve got my air conditioning set at 78 degrees–much warmer than I normally keep it–but we’re still crisp and cool indoors.
2. Keep shades closed. We are lucky enough to live on a shaded lot, meaning the trees provide a lot of protection from the sun during the hot day. But we keep the inside even cooler by not letting any sun shine in during the hot daylight hours by keeping our shades, curtains and shutters closed.
3. Turn on the ceiling fans. Ceiling fans use very little energy but give your body the “illusion” of keeping you cool by running cool air over your skin. So if you got them, keep them spinning on hot days like today.
4. Avoid running hot appliances. You won’t catch me running the dishwasher or throwing a load of sheets in the dryer today. Why would I add ambient heat to my home–via steam from the dishwasher or the hot air in the dryer–to the house that I’m already working hard to keep cool?
5. Drink lots of cold refreshments (the non-alcoholic kind). I’m keeping myself cool by sipping on ice water all day long. I don’t know if the cold water lowers my core temperature but sure does make me feel refreshed. Just don’t try to cool down with ice-cold beer or something else alcoholic–it can leave you flushed and feeling hotter than before you started trying to cool down.
6. Keep the lights off. Unless every single light bulb in your house are compact fluorescent bulbs, which do not emit any heat, you’d be better off on a hot day like today keeping the lights in your house off as much as possible. Same goes with any other electronic that emits heat by being on–kind of like point #4 with the appliances.
7. Go for a dip in the pool–or at least stick your head under the hose. Nothing brings your body temperature down like having your head soaking wet. So if you can’t jump in a pool, why not set up a sprinkler in your backyard or turn on the hose to cool yourself down. In fact, once I’m done with this post, I’m getting my bathing suit on so I can cool down in the water.

What are some of your keep-cool tricks that don’t raise your bills?

I have a story in the July issue of Good Housekeeping on 9 ways to save $4,500 or more this summer–on household spending and back-to-school shopping. I thought you’d enjoy reading some of my “professional” work in a national, newsstand magazine. I’m hoping I’ll get to write more money-saving stories for the magazine in the near future. I’ll keep you posted.

We’re about to go on one of our big outlet shopping trips, and a recent Wallet Pop article on outlet store pitfalls reminded me to keep my wits about me when I hit the stores. This way I don’t drop more cash than I’d intended. Also, I figured it was a good time to revisit this topic, something I haven’t done since 2008.

With that in mind, should you have an outlet shopping trip planned in the near future, here are my 5 tips to save the most when outlet shopping.

1. Choose outlet stores in tax-free states
   While Kittery and Freeport (home to the original L.L. Bean store) have reputations for being great places to outlet shop, Maine is a state that taxes clothing. So should you find a great deal at one of Maine’s many outlets, keep in mind that you’ll have to add five percent, the sales-tax rate, to your purchase. On the other hand New Hampshire does not tax clothing so, in essence, shopping at the outlets in North Conway, for example, will save you five percent over similar shopping in nearby Maine. Similarly, neither New Jersey nor Pennsylvania tax clothing, meaning that when you buy clothes at the outlets at Liberty Village in Flemington or down near Atlantic City, in New Jersey, or near Peddler’s Village or Lancaster in Pennsylvania, you’ll avoid paying each state’s sales tax, which are seven percent and six percent, respectively.
2. Buy when you find a bargain, not just because you’re at an outlet
   I think that too often you can fall into this mentality that because you’re shopping at an outlet, you are automatically getting a great bargain. This is not always true. While outlets may have at one time been the place that retailers sent their overstocks from the clearance rack, these days many retailers make original clothes that are destined for outlet racks only. Of course, there are still stores where their outlets are, in fact, their outlets.
3. Shop with a plan in mind
   Just the other day we talked with our daughters about making a shopping list for our outlet trip. We told them to go through their wardrobes and first identify any articles of clothing that they did not wear this past school year or did not want to wear when school is back in session. We wanted them to pull those out so we could donate them and so they would have a better sense of just how much clothing they actually own. From there we asked them to make a list of “must haves” for the fall season. This will help us to keep our outlet shopping targeted once we do get to the stores.
4. Make sure you purchase rings up right
   Many outlet stores have significantly marked down merchandise, which you may see on the price tag but which may not ring up at the register. Be sure that before you leave the store, you review your purchase–comparing receipt with price tag–so that if you need to make a price adjustment, you’re still there. While these kinds of mistakes can happen at any retail location, the aforementioned WalletPop story seems to insinuated that this problem is much more prevalent at outlet locations.
5. Be thoughtful with your return options
   If you buy something at an out-of-state outlet shop, make sure you can return it at a store near you. I know that Gap Outlet returns are only accepted at those stores–not regular mall locations–so if, like the 18 million visitors who shop at the Franklin Mills mall outside Philadelphia, you pick something up at the Gap outlet there, be sure you won’t have to return it, especially if you don’t live near another Gap outlet.

Have you discovered additional ways to save when you go outlet shopping? If so, post a comment to let us know.

I did an extensive interview with the founder of BeFrugal.com about the history behind Suddenly Frugal–the blog and the book. As I was reading over the transcript of the interview (errors and all), it highlighted five things that you may not know about me or topics related to my book. Here they are:

1. The one thing that has angered so many people who have read my book is the fact that I’m reusing water from my dehumidifier in creative ways. They call it cheap and unreasonable and they think that I should get a well if I don’t want to pay for water (or something like that). Well, that isn’t actually described in the interview but I allude to it when I talk about how one paragraph of my 250-page book is what stands out in people’s mind.
2. I talk really fast.
3. I do a lot of volunteer work in my community (and would be really rich if I got paid for all the time I give to these good causes).
4. I am addicted to coffee (but won’t pay to satisfy my addiction).
5. I, like, say “like” as much as my teenagers do. Like, how did that happen?

Let me know what you think of the interview.

Recently, we spent a long weekend at the beach. While I left my hotel confirmation number at home, I didn’t forget my frugal ways. Here are some of the tricks we used to save about $100 a day on our vacation.

1. BYOB. That would stand for “bring your own breakfast.” We were able to do that because the hotel where we stayed offered a kitchenette with a full-size refrigerator. Not only did we stock it with a gallon of milk (brought frozen from home), boxes of cereal and the fixings for my morning cup of Joe, but also it was packed with watermelon, bread for sandwiches and much more. Breakfast in the restaurant downstairs would have put our family of our back $30. Instead, we ate for free in our room. Later in the evening we pooled funds with some of the other families that we were traveling with and bought food for a cookout. For $10 a person we ate like kings. Had we gone to a restaurant and had as much food as we did at our home-grown fiesta–appetizers, dinner, wine, dessert–we would have spent at least double that per person.
   SAVINGS: $70
2. Be smart about how you buy your souvenirs. Jen A. Miller, author of The Jersey Shore, Atlantic City through Cape May: Great Destinations suggests hitting up the local CVS or Walgreens for souvenirs. They’ll still “say” the place you’re visiting but just not at the same price–cheaper! Since my daughters wanted custom sweatshirts that the shops along the beach boardwalk offered, drugstore shopping wasn’t an option. However, we discovered that the farther down the boardwalk we walked, the cheaper the prices got. So a sweatshirt that would have cost us $50 in the first shop we visited ended up setting us back only $30 by getting it in a boardwalk shop about a half mile farther down the strip.
   SAVINGS: $20
3. Carpool, park and walk whenever possible. The night we visited the boardwalk mentioned above, we could have parked in a lot right next to the shops. But that would have cost $20 per car. Instead, we found street parking a few blocks away and pumped the meter full of enough quarters (or about $4) to buy us four hours of fun on the boardwalk. Then we walked the eight blocks or so to the boardwalk.
   SAVINGS: $16
4. Travel on an off-season weekend. Though we were at the beach on Father’s Day weekend, that still wasn’t considered to be high season. Had we traveled just a week later, our room would have cost $90 more a night. So when you’re looking to get away, investigate which weeks hotels consider to be “off season” and book for then. You may save as much per night as we did.
   SAVINGS: $90

Let me know some of your tips for saving cash when you go away.

Scratched or cracked CDs or DVDs that won’t play music, a video game or a movie are as good as garbage. Or are they? Before you toss these suckers in the trash, consider reusing them these four ways. You might just save yourself some cash in the process:

1. Cup coasters. They’ll protect your table and save you from having to buy new coasters when you get a new piece of furniture.
2. Bird deflector. I was reading an article on how to prevent birds from flying into your home’s windows, and one of the suggestions was to hang CDs in the window. Supposedly the moving, reflective nature of the discs will deter the birds from continuing their flight path into your windows.
3. Table centerpiece. If you having a party and need to note table numbers, use an old CD and a Sharpie marker to get your message across.
4. Christmas decorations. I’ve hung many an old CD on our Christmas tree, because the underside of the disc casts a pretty prism when the light hits it just so.

Let me know if you have additional and creative ways that you reuse these kinds of discs.

I’ll admit that we’ve never been much of a so-called Hallmark family when it comes to national holidays–buying cards and making a big fuss when it’s Mother’s Day or Father’s Day. But that doesn’t mean that we don’t celebrate or give each other gifts; we just like to do that celebrating and gifting on a more subdued level, and that usually translates into recognizing the day without spending a lot of money.

Maybe you’re like our family or maybe this year you’re just looking to find some affordable Father’s Day gift ideas. If so, you’re in luck, because here are my 4 ideas for frugal Father’s Day gifts.

1. Take Dad out for a free meal. Many restaurants this year will be running Father’s Day freebies (I’ll be doing a roundup in this Friday’s Freebie Friday post), including Denny’s and Tasti D Lite. Both will give dad free dessert.
2. Do his chores for him. I know that many men take pleasure in doing certain chores around the house–something to do with control and whatnot. But I also know that some men just abhor certain chores–for my husband, it’s vacuuming the pool or loading the dishwasher. So on Father’s Day I plan to surprise him by having the kids and me take those chores off his hands.
3. Give him something for his desk at work. OK, raise your hand if you still have this year’s school photos sitting in the envelope in which they came home with your kids’ portraits in them. I know that I do, and another gift idea for my husband–or even one of the grandfathers–would be to frame this school pictures so they can display them on their desk at work or a desk at home. I mean, what good are they doing sitting in an envelope? If you’re low on frames, check the clearance aisles of local stores. You might even be able to snag some marked-down 2010 frames from graduation (minus the mortarboard and diploma images) that you could use.
4. Get him something practical. Forget the tie–does Dad need new underwear? New work socks? Is he trying to pack lunches to save money but doesn’t have an insulated bag? What about things he might need for his volunteer work or hobbies? My husband, for example, just signed on to be the head coach of our daughter’s travel soccer team. A great (and practical) gift would be a “coaches’ kit” of necessities (clipboard, bug spray, sunblock, hat, bandages, stop watch, rain poncho) that he’ll need on the sidelines.

What about you? What are some of the ways you plan to make your Father’s Day celebration frugal this year?

Thankfully, my rent-paying days are long over. But for some of you, they may be your current reality. This guest post comes from Chris Thorman, who blogs about landlord software at Software Advice. It’s based on a post he wrote called How to Negotiate Your Rent in 2010 | A 10-Step Guide. Here are his 10 steps to pay less rent.

1. Find out what others are paying. Rent-O-Meter is one of many online resources that will tell tenants if their rent is reasonable based on comparable properties in their city. Web sites such as Craigslist.org and newspaper classifieds are two places that tenants can find specific information about properties in their area. By searching these sites by zip code, a tenant can get a good idea of what the rent is of nearby properties. Neighbors are also a great source of information. They’ll know the insider deals, as well as any concessions the landlord typically gives.
2. Consult the local tenants’ council. Many cities have a local tenants’ association or council that lobbies for tenant rights. They’ll have resources specific to their area, including information about rent increases and even mediation services should a tenant need them. Tenants will also be able to get first hand rental information about certain areas from experts.
3. Know the trends. One of the oldest sources of online information about apartment living, ApartmentRatings.com, has a database of average rental rates for dozens of cities and towns in the United States. It’s called “What The Neighbors Pay.” Tenants can use this online resource to see if rents are falling or rising in their area. If the rent has been falling over the last few years in an area, that may be a good point to bring up during negotiations.
4. Take note of vacancies. As the end of a tenant’s lease nears, they should take note of the number of vacancies in their complex, as well as how long those units have been vacant. If a landlord has trouble filling their current empty units, it’s likely they will have trouble filling a newly empty unit too. A landlord may not care about a $50 a month increase in rent if it risks the possibility of leaving a unit vacant for a month or two.
5. Check local advertising. If a landlord isn’t advertising heavily, or at all, it may mean that they feel confident they can fill their units quickly. On the other hand, if a tenant notices the same Craigslist ad appearing every couple of days, they can assume that the units aren’t being filled fast enough.
6. Choose the right time to renew. Depending on when a tenant’s lease is up, they can take advantage of the natural ebb and flow of the rental market. Most property management companies are busiest in the summer months, while demand for rental properties drops off significantly in the winter. Take early advantage of the summer rush by negotiating a new lease in March or April, if possible.
7. Point out the positives. If a person has been a model tenant, now is the time to mention that. Paying rent on time; having a good credit score; and being a loyal community member are all things a tenant wants to mention during the negotiation process. Landlords know that model tenants can save them money over the long term, even if they aren’t able to increase their rent.
8. Bring the homework. If a landlord’s offer is more than the market rate, a tenant can counter with the information they gathered before the negotiation. Having up to date information about what the market actually looks like, as well information about other rental options nearby, puts a tenant in a strong negotiating position. Also, if a tenant is able to cite rates or concessions other tenants received, there is a possibility a landlord will give them the same deal.
9. Ask for a longer lease. If a landlord won’t meet a tenant’s offer on a 12-month lease, it’s possible the landlord will budge if the tenant is willing to sign a longer lease. A landlord will be motivated by not having to pay for advertising and cleaning up the unit for one more year.
10. Ask for a trade-off. If a landlord absolutely will not back down from their offer, and the tenant wants to remain in that complex, a trade-off may be a good idea. If the landlord can’t meet a tenant’s offer, perhaps the landlord can offer another concession, such as free parking. The important thing in the negotiation is to get something out of the deal, even if it’s not a lower rate.

It’s that time of year, when parents start thinking about end-of-year gifts for teachers and family and friends of graduates wonder what gift can they get without breaking their budget. I’ve put together five “themes” for gifts, as I discussed on my “10! Show” segment earlier this week. Here are the details, with links, of some of the products I discussed.

Note of thanks for teachers (note from child and/or parent) or a box of notecards as a gift

• Many teachers tell me that the best gift they can receive from a student is a note at the end of the year, letting them know what kind of an affect that teacher has had on the kid’s life. A great way to be frugal when it comes to giving someone a handwritten card is to buy them in bulk, like the Set of 40 Pop Up & Accordion All Occasion Cards that I got from QVC for about $25. (You can never get cards this cheap in a card store. That’s about $.63 per card!)
• If you don’t mind spending a bit more on cards that happen to be handmade, there are the Hope for Women, fair trade notecards made by disadvantaged women in India and El Salvador.
• A terrific way to package your note is to slip it into a reusable bag, like the Envirosax kind. One website sells a five-pack of Envirosax bags for $35. Pull one out for each teacher, at $7 a pop.
• Want to give your favorite teacher a gift of actual notecards or personalized stationery? Check out what photo site Shutterfly has to offer. I found a personalized notepad for $17.99 and personalized notecards about 12 for $2–no, that’s not a typo.

Books make a great gift for teachers and grads

• My Orange Duffel Bag is a book about triumphing over odds from an executive at Franklin Covey company ($24.99). It’s a great inspirational gift for a grad.
• Freshman in the Kitchen: From Clueless Cook to Creative Chef is from two Michigan brothers who take college fare above ramen noodles (about $15).
• In our day and age of electronic gadgets, sometimes an old-fashioned journal is the perfect gift. I showcased journals from Ecosystem, available at Barnes & Noble, and made from 100% post consumer recycled paper. (They retail for $6.95 – $20.95.)
• Parents may want to send their kid off to college with a digital book, so to speak, such as the Sony e-Reader, which holds hundreds of books. It’s about the size of a paper back and as thin as a cellphone. ($199)

Here are some tech gifts with a twist

• If you’ve ever worked with a laptop on your lap, you know how hot they can get. That’s why I was thrilled to learn about the Targus Lap Chill Mat, which cools your laptop. Best of all it’s powered by a USB cord so you don’t have to worry about plugging it in somewhere. ($39.99 available at Best Buy, Staples etc.)
• Surprise an iPhone user with a fun Paul Frank phone skin that features a money in a mortarboard hat. ($34.95 at Apple stores)
• USB engraved silver-plated memory stick (from Things Remembered, engraved $25 to $30)

Go beyond posting photos on Facebook only and give them some photo memories from high school

• Choose frames with 2010 on them to commemorate the graduate’s year.
• To print out photo-shop quality pictures, consider surprising the graduate with a Kodak ESP 7250 All-in-One printer ($199). It has one of the lowest ink replacements costs, at about $20 per ink cartridge. (I pay about $60 for my Lexmark inkjet, a machine and company I have been so unhappy with. Did you know that my scanner can’t actually scan multiple pages to a single file, allowing me to resize each page in the scan? It’s ridiculous. But I digress…)
• Jostens, the people who do high school class rings, has gotten into the photo book business. For $35 they’ll put together a great commemorative book of your photos so you can give this one-of-a-kind collection as a graduation gift.

Send them off with school spirit–gifts of apparel and accessories from their future college

• A great gift for a guy who likes to dress up: school cufflinks and tiebar with the logo of his college on them. Cufflinks.com has these for 170 different schools! (Cufflinks cost $50; tiebar costs $35.)
• Decoration a dorm room with a desk lamp with the school’s name on it.
• Give them attire they can wear that shows off the name of their college.

Finally, for an out of the box graduation gift, there is the Slouch Back inflatable couch. It turns any dorm bed into a couch, with cup holders, and will make your kid the most popular person on his or her dorm floor! ($99)

I was on the “10! Show” on NBC 10 in Philadelphia again on Tuesday. This time I was offering frugal gift ideas for teachers and grads. You can watch the video below. Tomorrow I’ll post the text version of the segment, in case you want more information on the suggestions I made or products I mentioned.

My husband and I have this joke about the $100 Target “tax.” That is, you can never get out of a Target store for under $100–even if you’d just stopped in for a few things. Well, the same can be said for warehouse clubs, but the “tax” can sometimes be a bit steeper. And I’m not just talking the hundreds of dollars you’re likely laying down at the checkout counter. I’m talking about after-the-fact waste that is money down the drain or just unnecessary spending overall.

Here are 3 ways I’ve lost money at my local warehouse club:

1. Bought a multi-pack of something that expired before I could use it all up. Just tonight we were having pasta with dinner, and as I was sprinkling on the warehouse-brand parmesan cheese, I happened to glance at the expiration date. It was from nine months ago! This past weekend I had a similar experience with a half-full bottle of vitamins that I’d also bought in a multi-pack but then I noticed that the vitamins had expired back in 2009. Now, I realize I’m not going to die taking past-their-prime vitamins, but I know I’m likely not getting their full benefits. So next time around I’m buying a small bottle of vitamins that I know I can use up before they go “bad.”
2. Purchased super-size packages of food my family probably doesn’t need around the house anyway. So I was making chocolate chip cookies and needed the chocolate chips. I could have gotten away with a 16-ounce bag at the local supermarket but the five-pound bag at the warehouse club was only marginally more expensive. And I got so much more that way. But did I really need five pounds of chocolate chips in my house? About as much as I needed a hole in my head.
3. Decided to get single-serving packages of some foods because they were convenient. Now we all know that paying the money for someone else to make those single-serving snack packs is a waste of money. But sometimes that’s the only way you can buy certain kinds of food at the warehouse club. So if you want those ice cream sandwiches or graham crackers, that’s your only choice. (Of course I also have the choice to walk out the door empty handed but that’s harder to do than you might expect.)

All of that said there are two items that are likely to be a big savings for you at the warehouse club–milk and eggs. So if you only need those two things and you live near a warehouse club, you can stock up on them there guilt free.

What about you? Do you find warehouse clubs to be your frugal downfall?

I am just so sick about this whole oil spill thing that I want to do something about how we heat the water in our house–and our house in general. Currently, we have an oil boiler/furnace that heats our water and a baseboard heating system.  And it is all oil-dependent.

Getting our last “budget” oil bill for the season today helped push me over the edge, especially after I’d figured out that we’d spent about $7,000 in oil last year. Since we don’t have gas on our dead-end, dirt road, that’s not an option for us to consider. And I don’t think that electric heating/water heater would be much better either.

I know that installing a solar system isn’t cheap and I don’t really have the cash on hand right now to make the change, but if I’m already spending four figures annually (broken up into 10 “convenient” payments, as my oil company calls it) to heat my house and water, I imagine that a one-time payment to get a solar system going would hurt, for a little bit, but then pay off in the end.

So I did a little research and found out a few things–even if in the process I couldn’t find out anything:

• My state, Pennsylvania, isn’t very solar friendly. Whereas there are tons of resources for our neighbors across the Delaware River (i.e. folks in New Jersey) if they want to install a solar system, it’s the proverbial needle in the haystack trying to figure out how to go from an oil-based system to a solar system here in the Keystone State.
• We’ve already done a ton of proactive things to make our house more energy efficient. We keep our heat in the mid 60s during the winter and the a/c in the low to mid 70s during the summer. When we completed our recent renovation, we paid a bit more upfront for the super energy-efficient Andersen windows and the good insulation, too. (This helped us to get the maximum $1,500 in tax credits on our 2009 tax return.) We also upgraded to energy-efficient appliances in the kitchen–dishwasher and refrigerator.
• It’s possible that our energy-sucking culprit is our water heater, which went on the fritz in January. The “rod” that is submerged in the tank to regulate the temperature corroded beyond repair so we are no longer able to keep the water in there at a set temperature. I’m thinking that this is where all that oil money is going–burning through the hot water. (According to the U.S. Department of Energy, 25% of a home’s energy expenditures come from heating water. And if we’re not heating our water very efficiently, this could explain why we’ve been paying so much for home heating oil.)
• If we decide to purchase a new water heater, it seems that residential-quality water heaters do not qualify for the energy-efficient tax credits. That stinks. We would have to somehow upgrade to a commercial-quality water heater but I don’t know if the extra money we would have to spend would be worth the amount of one-time tax credits we could get.

If you have any advice, suggestions or anecdotes with regards to this topic, please post a comment.

It isn’t just the boomerang generation that’s moving back in with their parents after college. In this day and age, many family members are moving back in together to make everything affordable for all involved. And when you put related adults under one roof–after they’ve lived apart–well, things could get dicey, especially when it comes to money.

To the rescue is Susan Newman’s new book Under One Roof Again: All Grown Up and (Re)learning to Live Together Happily(Globe Pequot, 2010).

“Money questions can either be a constant thorn or a non-issue in the relationship, depending on the family’s financial circumstances and, more importantly, the agreements you work out,” she says. “Whether your new housemates are your son and his children, your in-laws, a wealthy parent, a jobless sibling, or your penniless college graduate, once you’ve made a plan, drop the money discussions.”

Here are four tips from Newman on how to discuss the ever-sensitive topic of money, if you happen to find yourself in this situation:

1. Talk through money difficulties early on and reach reasonable agreements so that dollars-and-cents conversations can fade into the background.
2. Keep money issues in the family. Don’t discuss your family’s financial agreements with your boyfriend or book club.
3. Don’t allow money to define or dominate the relationship.
4. Separate money problems from other problems you may have with your relatives.

I’m all about finding creative ways to reuse items on my quest to live frugally. I know I get that from my mother, who still saves plastic containers that something store-bought came in so she can reuse them for storage. Take one look at my rag bins and you’ll see I have a hard time getting rid of anything that could help me clean my house–for free.

This way of looking at things is why this tip sheet from IndependentTraveler.com caught my eye. (This site is devoted to providing tips and practical advice for travelers.) It’s all about taking items you might have thrown out and making them work as travel or packing accessories. Here are their 7 ways to turn trash into a travel essential:

Trash: Old Pillowcase
Travel Essential: Travel Laundry Bag or Shoe Bag
Don’t throw away old pillowcases — travel supply stores sell similar sacks and pouches for $10 or more. Use your old pillowcase as dirty laundry bags or shoe bags. (You know from my recent post on reusing pillowcases that I love this idea.) Secure the top with rubber bands if you want some closure.

Trash: Old Wallet
Travel Essential: Dummy Travel Wallet
Hang on to your worn-out wallet, and use it as a decoy when you’re traveling. Keep most of your money and credit cards in a second “real” wallet or money belt, and then put some small bills in the dummy wallet. If you run into thieves in a foreign land, throw the criminals your dummy wallet, and make a quick getaway.

Trash: Bubble Wrap
Travel Essential: Protective Wine Bottle Sleeve
To protect packed bottles from breakage, travel supply companies sell protective sleeves that retail for around $10, but you can easily make your own. Put a bottle of wine on that sheet of bubble wrap that has been hanging around in your closet. Fold over the bubble wrap so it covers the wine. Cut the wrap to fit the wine, and staple the side and bottom, leaving an opening at the top.

Trash: Sheet/Bedding Packaging
Travel Essential: Case Organizer
Most comforters, sheets and pillow cases are sold in sturdy, rectangular, clear, plastic casings. These casings, which are quite durable and usually have a zipper, closely resemble “packing cubes” — zippered containers, which cost around $20 for a set and help travelers organize luggage. (You could also reuse these in your carry on to hold any of your liquids or other items that might cause a problem when you go through security.)

Trash: Egg Carton Tray
Travel Essential: Jewelry Box/Disguise
A half-dozen egg carton tray makes a good travel jewelry box that doesn’t appear enticing to thieves and protects your jewelry during your travels. The plastic container in which wet wipes are sold also makes a handy jewelry box, without the separate compartments.

Trash: Nylons
Travel Essential: Mesh Bag, Luggage Spotter, Laundry Line…
You can use old nylons to bind up a broken suitcase, to tie around your luggage for easy identification at baggage claim, to use as a laundry line in your bathroom or to use for washing delicate items (instead of a mesh bag).

Trash: Yogurt Container
Travel Essential: Tie Protector
Save $7, and make your own tie protector. Roll up a tie, and pop it in the empty pot to prevent it from getting creased in your case. Just make sure you wash the container thoroughly. (This assumes you buy large yogurt containers with actual tops to them. The smaller ones, with the foil top, probably wouldn’t work well in this regard.)

What about you? What kind of creative uses do you find for things when you pack?

Here is the video version of yesterday’s post, which grew out of my appearance on Monday on the “10! Show” on NBC10 in Philadelphia. (Looks like I’ll be going back in June to do another segment!)

The wacky weather is at it again. After feeling like summer last week, the thermometer is reading like fall/almost winter.

I’m sitting here in long pants, long sleeved shirt and a down vest, typing this blog post. Yet I refuse to turn the heat back on. I feel like we’ve passed that threshold of needing heat and can only consider the air conditioning on really hot days. Nonetheless, everyone in our house was freezing today. So what’s a frugal family to do? Here are five ways we’re fighting this spring chill:

1. Dress in layers. Sounds so simple yet people often forget that the more layers you put on, the warmer you’ll be. And it’s important to layer your core (you know where those six-pack abs should be? Yeah, that’s your core). All winter long I live in Gap undershirts under my regular clothing, and now that the mercury has plummeted once again, I’m back to my undershirts.

2. Throw open your shades and sit in the sun. You don’t have to go outside to sit in the sun–might be too chilly for that. But there’s nothing stopping you from opening the shades or curtains on your windows, and warming yourself up in a pool of warm sunlight. There’s a reason you find cats and dogs napping in these spots–they’re onto something when it comes to keeping warm.

3. Boil up some hot tea, cocoa or coffee. The date on the calendar may say it’s time for iced coffee, tea or some other cold drink. But when you’re chilled to the bone, as I was this past weekend, there’s nothing like a cup of a hot beverage to warm you up. Now that we’ve got our kitchen back and functioning, I was able to dig out a teapot and put it to good use.

4. Get moving. A day that’s too cold to go outdoors is the perfect day to stay indoors and get something done. Once you get moving, you’ll warm up. Just vacuuming or sweeping the floor may be all you need to get your blood flowing, and I’ll bet that after 10 minutes of activity, you won’t be cold at all.

5. Find someone or something to cuddle and snuggle with. You could put your warm, furry friend on your lap, or snuggle up with your significant other on the couch. Your body heat will work together to keep you guys warm, and it’s a lovely way to spend time together, too.

Recently, my daughter’s soccer coach and math teacher (she’s the same person) did my daughter a favor, and I told her that I would have my daughter make her cookies as a thank you. I think the teacher thought we were kidding, but that night I had my daughter bake a dozen chocolate chip cookies.

The next morning we were running around, trying to figure out what to put the cookies in, since a plastic bag seemed too ho hum and all the cookie tins I had were festive holiday and so wrong for giving a teacher gift. Instead, I dug into my school supply box (the place where I stockpile school supplies after I find them on sale) and pulled out an empty, unused plastic pencil box.

And voila, instant gift box for cookies for the teacher.

This got me thinking about other off-beat ways I like to package gifts, some of which I’ve discussed on the blog here.

• Put the gift in a reusable shopping bag. At $.99 each these reusable shopping bags are a bargain compared with the disposable and traditional gift bags. So why not go green and save yourself some green by using this very practical gift-holding solution.
• Find a basket you can use. It’s so easy to wrap up a housewarming gift in a cloth napkin inside a basket. Like school supplies I stockpile baskets that I can get dirt cheap, and either use them as props when I do a product table on TV or as the aforementioned gift holder.
• Transform something practical. I really love this idea of using a plastic pencil box to hold a teacher gift, and I think I’ll tap into this next year when giving gifts at the holidays.

What about you? What are some off-beat ways you like to package a gift?