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Saw this tip over on WalletPop.

Most of us have probably ended up with one of those Entertainment Coupon Books that are loaded with valuable coupons for places in your hometown that you will never use. The last one we purchased was a pity buy from some kid club, team, or other organization and ended up stuck in a drawer somewhere without a single coupon ever being used. Not exactly the epitome of frugality.

Think about this, though: you can go online and purchase one for any city. Why would you want to purchase one for a city in which you do not reside? Vacation!

I’ve heard about those vacation things, but the closest I get is a yearly, yet planned at the last minute, weekend at the beach. Even though it’s short, that summer weekend at the beach costs us many hundreds of dollars. A coupon book could substantially cut down that cost. Meals would probably be the biggest savings, but event admissions like go-karts and water and theme parks would also add up.

I wonder about hotel costs, though- there are probably exclusions during the busy season, so make sure you check the fine print. You might even have to go off-season to get any significant savings with a coupon book. Be sure to check the online comparison sites to make sure you’re getting the best possible deal. Also, don’t forget to check alternatives to hotel lodging as well; a friend found that renting a house for a week was the same price as a hotel room for 3-4 days.

Probably not something I will take advantage of, but it certainly is an interesting re-purposing of the Entertainment Coupon Book.

I should have gotten to this a week ago, but that’s how it goes. Anyway, both of the following pages have an insane amount of posts on saving money and reducing debt, enough so that there’s not much point in me picking out a few favorites, so scroll through and give them a look.

The Carnival of Debt Reduction covers a lot of ground. I particularly like the debt reduction back-to-basics posts and tax ideas now that April is right around the corner. The Festival of Frugality is another encyclopedia on saving money. It overlaps the CDR in some areas, such as tax advice, but the slant is more towards frugal choices in budgeting, the home, shopping, etc.

Definitely plenty of gold to be found in both, so start panning my friends!

Talk about finding a silver lining! Homeowners who are feeling the pinch of falling real estate values and rising adjustable rate mortgage payments are weighing the consequences of foreclosure and finding it may make more financial sense to take the default. Recently

A homeowner who can’t sell his house [told] the L.A.Times, “Foreclose me. … I’ll live in the house for free for 12 months, and I’ll save my money and I’ll move on.”

According to Calculated Risk, that response is exactly what is keeping bank execs up at night: people who are current on their credit cards and have the ability to pay their mortgage, but walk away from their homes because it doesn’t make financial sense to keep paying on a sinking ship. Says a commenter:

I am one of these people. My condo has dropped in value from $520K in 5/06 when I bought it to $350K now. My ARM payment will probably go up $900 per month in June.

But the bank won’t work with him, so he’s taking his finances into his own hands:

I have purchased a cheaper place in a nearby area now, while my credit is good, and will stop making payments on house #1 after house #2 closes. I know the foreclosure will be on my credit for 7 years, but I will have saved a lot of money.

What about his obligation? Well, he makes a good point:

I realize I agreed to the deal when I signed the mortgage papers, but I am within my rights to walk away from a bad deal and suffer the consequences, just as many corporations write down billions of dollars of debt, lose money for their shareholders, and lay off people as a result of their bad decisions.

In certain situations, a 7-year ding on the credit report might save money in both the short and long run. This is not a decision to take lightly. If you are in trouble and thinking about doing this, make sure you thoroughly think through the ramifications and consult a professional to figure out the pros and cons you probably didn’t think of on your own.

See Walk Away From Your Home Part II: Resources for sites to help you review your options to keep your home.

I recently attempted to access my emergency fund due to an auto fiasco I’ll cover separately. I say attempted because I found out that I couldn’t transfer funds out of my emergency fund! Not exactly the most useful of emergency funds, but luckily I found it out before a serious emergency hit and know how to resolve the issue. Here’s what happened:

I opened my emergency fund in August of 2006 with ingdirect.com because of the great interest rate they have on savings accounts. It takes a couple days to transfer money in and out, but I normally keep a buffer in my regular checking account and I thought receiving the money in my regular checking account within a couple days would be fine.

Unfortunately, because of the holidays, my normal checking account buffer had run low and, to put it mildly, my savings account at ingdirect was not as responsive as I needed. Due to a technicality, while they have been happily accepting my deposits for almost a year and a half, they won’t let me withdraw any funds until I confirm the secondary accountholder on my account. Nice that I find that out in the midst of a minor emergency. Even more ludicrous is that I was the one that added the other accountholder (the wife), and the confirmation process, because we share checking accounts, is simply logging in under her name and entering the same amounts with which I confirmed the primary account.

Apparently, I must have missed this step when I added her account because they refused to release my funds until she calls them and gets them to deposit a new amount for verification or until I can figure out from my bank what was deposited by them a year and a half ago. Unfortunately again, the wife was out of town when I needed this, and our regular bank does not go back that far online, so I had to accept that I was not going to be getting my money for this emergency.

Fortunately, the “emergency” was my car imploding and my need to buy another one. Good thing it wasn’t something really serious. On the other hand, this inability to access my funds really added to the stress of the situation.

So: Make sure your emergency fund is accessible in whatever manner, including timeframe, that you might need to use it. I suggest doing a test run, simulating an emergency (on the weekend for the worst case scenario) and see how long it takes you to get cash in hand. I don’t expect you’ll run into a problem like mine, but when an emergency arises, you’ll want to know exactly how long it will take you to have your emergency cash in your pocket.

BTW, I still recommend ingdirect, and I still use them, so if you want a free $25 for opening an account, send me an email through the contact tab up top and I’ll email you a referral link (and I get $10).

That’s right, you can save a lot of money by avoiding the replacement razor blade scam perpetuated on the shaving public. Let me explain:

First, I picked up an old-fashioned safety razor at the flea market for two bucks. The design is similar to this one:

This thing is pretty simple: you rotate the base and the top opens, allowing you to place a double edge razor blade inside. After closing it, you have a razor which allows you to shave with a different edge on both sides.

The razor itself is not where you save money, however. After all, the razor and blades business model has long dictated selling razors at a loss to make all their profit on the blades. Razor manufacturers, once the patents on their latest razor model run out, bring out a new model to keep a monopoly on their proprietary replacement blades.

The classic safety razor is the solution to the outrageously priced proprietary blades. I stopped at the local Walmart to pick up a pack of blades. I glanced at the 10-packs of the currently marketed razor blades from the big manufacturers and the prices ranged from around $15-$23 per ten blades. In other words, anywhere from $1.50 to $2.30 per blade. For me, at an average cost of $2 per blade, that means I used to spend maybe $50 or so a year just on shaving blades.

I bought a ten pack of double edge blades at a total cost of $1.54, or 15 cents per double-sided blade. That’s a new cost per year of less than $4, down from $50.

I gave them a test spin and found they did a fine job at a cost of less than 1/10th what I was previously paying. I did find that shaving with the safety razor requires you to keep your wrist more rigid, but other than that, everything went very smooth, including the final result.

For some tips on the old-fashioned shaving approach, try here.