Category Archives: Frugality

Frugal Activities

Using the Library As A Mobile Office

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Recently, I’ve made a discovery that’s worth talking about, “Using the Library As A Mobile Office”

To have an office and all the expenses that are associated with having such an office may be able to obtained at your local library for free!

At this very moment, I’m in a small 12 x 12 room (with five chairs and a table, not like the larger meeting room in the picture below) in my library, writing this article while enjoying the view through a 6 x 10 window.  I find myself imagining what it would be like to come here everyday to do my blogging, online website, and rental investment property work.  Why pay for a full-time office, when you “the taxpayer” (including me too, of course) are paying for the room and nobody is using it?  If you are a starting out entrepreneur, perhaps this is an option worth exploring!

Let me describe the benefits of using the library as a mobile office!

  1. There are meeting rooms that site empty 90% of the time during the “business hours” time slots per day.  I’m sitting in one right now, and I have to say, it has the same feel as my regular employer’s office that is provided to me.
  2. There are regular options here that a normal work office would have like: air conditioning, heating (in the winter of course), restroom facilities (which are even nicer than my employer’s), water fountain, wireless internet access, fax machine availability (although I wouldn’t use it), copy machines, and even a phone in the room that I’m in (again, I wouldn’t use it because I have other alternatives), and many other perks too.
  3. Silence, in this office room, it’s even more quiet than my office at work, but if I wanted some human background sounds, I could just shift to the general area instead.
  4. Access to free electricity.  Currently, this library office has an electric outlet, so I’m charging my cell phone and I have my laptop plugged in too.
  5. Mobility!  In my state, practically all of the surrounding libraries have free internet access and meeting rooms such as the one that I’m currently in.  I could call ahead and schedule a meeting room at a different library each and every day if I wanted a change in scenery, whereas with my employer’s office, I’m stuck with the same grey short walls (cubicle walls) throughout the entire building.  In some ways working in my office employer’s site reminds me of the movie “The Shawshank Redemption”.  Shoot we even have restrictions on how many plants we’re allowed in the office (2 small ones).

Now some of you might say “What about phone services”?  Well, google handles that for me!  With Google Voice, I have a number that I use for all of my calls, and the beauty of this number is that it can be setup to forward the call to four devices at once.  And once one of the devices take the call, the others stop ringing!  The kicker is that Google Voice is currently free (although this will probably change in the future at some point).

Of course, I won’t stay her the entire day.  I have a lot of the same options at home, but using the Library as a Mobile Office is an option to break the monotony of strictly working at home in an extra bedroom.

Have you considered using the library system as a mobile office?  I see a lot of advantages in doing so.  Plus if you travel to different states, why not use the facilities at the location that you are at?  Assuming many libraries are the same, this seems to be a perfect option to me.

Bests,

MR

Save Your Money and Youth – Stop Paying For Tanning

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Believe it or not, I still know people that pay to go to a tanning salon, to achieve the year round tan.

While some think having a tanned body is attractive (or is it?), I don’t think that it’s healthy to be in a perpetual state of remaining unnaturally tan, day in and day out all year round!  Yet, I know of a few women that pay to go to a tanning salon, just to accomplish this feat.

 

 

Unfortunately, as they age, such damaging exposure give (both women and men) that leathery look that we’ve all come to associate with such long term tanning effects, not to mention the potentially worrisome skin cancer results.  It seems kind of odd to pay a tanning salon around $50 a month to get such damage done to your skin.  It’s kind of like paying the school bully to punch you every other day in the mouth to have fuller lips.

So from a bit of research, it sounds like 1 tanning session can run you an average of $8 for one session.  Many pay a flat rate of about $50 per month though.  So using the $50/month figure, that would be $600 a years.  While $600 a year won’t break you, it’s still a decent chunk of money to plop down on something that is unhealthy for you…

I use to laugh at the spray on tans that I watch as celebrities on TV would go through, but considering the risks of tanning salons, perhaps they were more clever than I imagined…

Given that you believe that a “golden” tanned look and make you more attractive, do you still think it’s worth it given the risk communicated through the media these days?  Or do you think it’s better to save your money?

MR

Losing Weight Frugally?

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I’m down over 20 pounds to date.

It’s been a hard time losing weight because I’ve been sick with vertigo like symptoms for the past month.  Even so, I’ve still manage to lose at least 5 more pounds since my symptoms started.

So the question is: “Am I Losing Weight Frugally“?  After all this was and still is part of my goal!

The answer is: “Yes“, but I’m not doing it as frugally as I had hoped that I would.

I started out being very frugal, eating both very healthy and inexpensive foods like eggs, peanuts, cheese and broccoli.  And those worked out well at first, but eventually they got boring.  So I decided to spice it up with some grilled hamburger, and that was a good and welcome change, but that got old too.  So that’s when I started cooking salmon burgers!  Good but on the pricey side, but to make matters worse I started craving chocolate, and I bought some Atkin’s low carb bars (peanut butter and chocolate crisps).  Those last two were getting on the pricier side, especially when I went through the Atkin’s bars in two days (the box cost about $6.00).  The salmon is very heathy for you but the chocolate bars isn’t but at least it’s crunchy!

white egg

Actually I’ve been craving fish a lot lately, and too much tuna isn’t good for you…  Oh Well…

I’ve made the eggs less boring by warning up my eggs in the microwave (be carefully since they will explode if you aren’t careful!).  Of course I remove the shell first and only have the egg in for a few seconds (just enough to take the chill off and give them some warmth!  It’s not great, but it’s better than cold hard-boiled eggs.

So if you have any tips, for low carb foods, please comment!  I need to keep myself in check from a cost perspective!

Cheers,

MR

P.S. Remember to take a good vitamin while you are on a low carb diet.  It slipped my mind this last time!

Beyond Frugal – Fixing My Son’s Broken Bike

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An unfortunate thing happened last week… my wife ran over my son’s bike!

Actually she was backing up the car and my son left his bike behind the car.  As she was backing up, she heard it fall and stopped immediately.  Even though she basically just tapped the bike and if fell, it was enough of an impact to cause a slight misalignment with the handlebars and break one of the brake levers.  The brake levers were plastic so I guess I shouldn’t be too surprised…

Now we debated about going to the store and just buying another bike (at around $200+ a pop), but I thought I could fix it for less (plus it was only about 1 year old).  So I asked Mr Google if he could help and sure enough I found an excellent video on replacing brake levers.

Here it is cost saving video that showed me how to do this DIY project:

 

So the brake lever cost me $17.00 and the handle grips cost me $8.00 for a total cost of $25.00.  So by fixing it myself, I was able to save about $175!   The surprising thing was that it was very easy to do, and the system we now have in place is actually better than the previous system that was on the bike!

I was surprise how easy it was to do it myself and fix the brake levers!  I ended up replace both brake levers with some nice metal ones that I got on eBay, that way they look like they were meant to go together and give the bike a better look than having two different brake levers.

I also was surprised that I found that replace the broken parts was kind of cool because I learned a few things I didn’t  known before!  So not only was the replacement frugal, it was beyond frugal because I learned something cool in the process!

While replace my son’s brake levers wasn’t too difficult, I’m sure you could google other parts that need fixed on your bike…

Cheers,

MR