Here’s kind of a neat tip.  Mathew over at American Consumer News explains how to make the razors you shave with last much longer than normal.  Just dry them off when you’re finished using them. 

Photo by Billie

He basically explains that the razor dulls mostly from the water and shaving cream deteriorating the edge of the blades, not the actual usage!

Now, I can’t say I have scientific proof here, but I can help make his point.  I shave maybe 3-4 times per week.  Usually I use an electric razor, but once a week I typically use a blade.  Here’s the weird part:  my blades only last a little longer than my wife’s blades even though she uses hers all the time!

Simply drying off the blades when you’re done sounds like a good tip to try for me.  We’ll just have to see how much longer we can make the blades last. 

Something my wife started getting into lately was digging around on the Internet for coupons that give significant discounts, or even completely FREE items with no catch or fine print.  Just print out the coupons, take them to the store and enjoy whatever product it is.

Free Halloween Candy

This week we managed to find a couple that were well worth it.  One was a coupon for a bag of free Halloween candy from K-mart.  (not posting since it’s already expired)  We printed out 3 or 4 of these coupons and went to the store a few times before trick-or-treating started.  Each time was just as easy as walking in, grabbing a bag, and handing the coupon to the clerk behind the checkout counter.

Free Juice

Another great coupon was one for a free bottle of Juicy-Juice.  This thing must have been part of some kind of handout or flyer, but I was able to clip the coupon image and make a page with 3 of them at actual size and use it at K-mart and Walmart both without issue.  Considering that our family can burn through a 1/2 gallon bottle of juice almost every day, this saves us quite a bit if we can manage to grab one from the store every single time we go.

This coupon doesn’t expire until the end of 2007, so I’ve posted my document up for anyone that wants it.  Note that the bar-codes may not scan depending on the quality of your printer, but the checkout clerks can just type in the code to get it to work just fine.  The original source for this coupon was some free coupon site, and I wish I could remember which one it was.  I just spent 10 minutes looking for it and can’t find it because we’ve apparently been to so many.

Coupon Criteria

So, this is just a couple of coupons worth using that we’ve found that have saved us some cash.  We’ll be on the lookout for more catch-free coupons that offer great deals to help save us money.  I’ll post them as I find them in my coupon resource page if there are any more worthwhile ones that don’t expire super-quick.

Do you have any coupon sites that you frequent or find decent deals enough to bring you back?  I’d love to hear of any sites you’ve found valuable.  We had to do quite a bit of searching to find these amongst not-so-good deals.  Please feel free to share any catch-free coupons with me that I can post in my coupon resource page as well for everyone else to use!

During the last Friday after Thanksgiving I saw an ad for a 20" flat-panel monitor for $190.  I was super-proud of myself for having found the perfect display for the new computer I was going to buy with my tax return money for under $200 and it looks sharp.  One problem…it totally sucks when compared to anything else I’ve ever seen AND it seems to be really temperamental less than a year after I bought it.

I have one piece of advice for anyone considering spending a significant amount of time in front of their computer…buy a nice monitor.  Now I’m not talking size being the important factor.  I’m talking quality. 

The Problems

Quality.  I’m used to working on ultra-sharp flat-panel Dell displays at work.  Three of them side-by-side actually with the middle one being 20".  (yeah, you probably think I’m spoiled, but trust me when I say I’m far more productive at work than I am at home on this "measly" little 20" all by its lonesome)  Looking at an ultra-sharp, then looking at this no-name can’t display clearly at high resolutions that has faded lines floating up the screen when you stare at it monitor…it just hurts to even compare them.

Reliability.  So, fine.  The quality isn’t that great.  But now it’s flickering off at random forcing me to push the power button twice to get it to display anything again…only to randomly turn off again.  It was so bad a couple days ago that I couldn’t even hit save on everything I had open before closing windows.

Solution

Use another monitor.  I borrowed a buddy’s monitor to at least get my computer back on so I could at least get caught up with email.  Worst case scenario, I can sit on this spare monitor until I inherit another one.  (Which I happen to have lined up this January from my parents before any of this even happened…)  Super thanks to Emma who offered to send me one.  I’m simply amazed at the thoughtfulness of this offer and am just so grateful that I’m almost speechless.

Try to "fix" it.  Then thought I’d try a few things to get this thing working.  First attempt to turn it on and I got about 3-4 minutes out of it.  *poof*  There it went.  Flicked the power button a couple times and got about 10 seconds out of it.  *poof*  Again.  Ok, smack it around?  No.  That’s the last resort before we trash it.  :)  How about the vacuum cleaner?  I can get bonus points for using the vacuum in here anyway.  (We’ll just let the wife think we’re in the mood to clean…)  That’s a win-win, may as well.  ;) 

So I put do the floor real quick, couple spider-webs on the ceiling…then just suck the heck out of the back of this monitor.  I must have spent a good 2-3 minutes cramming the tube up to the vents on this thing to get the best suction I could on it.  Time to try it out…aaaaaand looks like we may be back in business.  Believe it or not, the monitor is actually working ok right now.

[Update: I’ve had it flick off a couple times since I cleaned it out, but blowing in the back of it a few times before turning it back on seems to work.  Talk about lame.]

The Lesson

Now, when I first plugged this thing in I realized just what I’d done.  I’d traded a measly $150 for the next three years of my life sitting in front of this low-quality knock-off.  Was it worth it?  Am I happy that I went with the super-cheap version of my window into the Internet?  I’ll just answer with a nice fat "NO" and go cheap on something else next time I’m in the market for a computer.  Something I stare at needs to be a little better than this.

I made a big step toward reducing monthly expenses by canceling our monthly rental fees for the Culligan water service.  This is an excellent service, and we’re really going to miss the water softener and filtration system.  However, we’re taking the whole debt-reduction effort seriously and the tap water is just fine the way it is. 

Make it an easier transition

To get the kids used to the idea we’ve stopped letting them use the little filtered faucet and nobody really misses it anymore.  And we’ve not been by to buy salt for a couple months, so after it’s all removed we’ll barely know it’s gone.  This is going to reduce our average monthly expenses by over $30!  That may not seem like much to some people, but we’re really tight right now and will gladly take a few of these types of reductions. 

Another thing we did that really helped was to start using colorful water jugs with straws that can be washed in the dishwasher on a daily basis instead of buying bottled water every week.  We made this an exciting event for the children with each getting a designated color of their own. 

Part of the routine

Every day, we simply fill up the bottles with tap water and leave them on the counter for whenever they’re thirsty.  After dinner, they make their way to the dishwasher as part of the routine to be ready for the next day.  They’re easily portable for things like soccer games, or going down the street to play on a neighbor’s swing-set.

The savings

The convenience of having a bottle is 95% of the cost of bottled water.  I totally understand why you’d want that convenience, but why should you pay $1+ every time you want it?  Reusing the same $4 bottle hundreds of times can save hundreds of dollars over the course of a year.  Your tap water is practically FREE in comparison to other sources.

Between canceling the water service and not buying 50 bottles of water a week, we’re easily going to reduce our normal monthly spending by $50-60.  Maybe it’s time you considered doing the same thing?

So what type of approaches have you taken to avoid buying bottled water?  Where do you get your normal drinking water from on a daily basis and how much do you spend on it?