Keeping it frugal...

I have allowed credit card debt to get out of control before and I find myself in the same position again - luckily I know how to solve the problem, sadly I lack discipline once the hard part is over and show a tendency to relapse...
The last time that this became an issue for me, I was tracking my credit card balances on a spreadsheet with graphs to give a visual indication of the debt reducing. It is significant when going over these spreadsheets to bring them back up to date, that when I stopped monitoring on a monthly basis is exactly when the debt started to rise. The conclusion is of course that the monitoring works as a tool to bring down debt - many people do not monitor their debt effectively which is why there is so much debt about.
I must resolve to continue the monitoring of debt even when I think I have it under control, one problem is that the monitoring is manual - I need to manually link the end of month figure into the spreadsheet, if there was an effective way to automate this procedure, I reckon this would help to resolve the problem of losing focus on the debt graph. In fact I reckon if I could work this out, I should probably make the resulting spreadsheet readily available to anyone who needs help in tracking their debt....
Basically, implementing frugal living starts with perception - if I perceive that I have sufficient funds, I will spend money - on the other hand if I am aware that my debt is growing, this should curb the tendency to spend. In economic terms, this is call 'propensity' and describes an individuals willingness to consume - propensity to buy is based on a state of mind, so this is where our quest for frugality begins.

New Credit Card

I have been pretty bad at sticking to the 'frugal living' plan lately having bought myself a few toys and treated the family a few times without worrying about the cost. This has resulted in a growing credit card debt rather than a diminishing one. I need to get back on the wagon again, and found that there are still loads of 0% credit card for transfers available. Of course the credit card won't pay off my debt, but at least I won't be paying huge amounts of interest. I am hoping to be a bit more diligent regarding expenditure, and am really hoping that my income will rise a little in the coming months. Online stuff has not been very fruitful lately, but then I have not been maximising because I have so little spare time (spent 24 of the last 48 hours in work..). The previous 0% deal that I had has now expired, I had brought the principle down considerably on this card because I don't spend on it - however the card I DO spend on has taken a hammering, so I have had to transfer a stack of debt from that one onto the new 0% deal. I am a repeat offender and I know it....

On yer bike

Recently, my frugal living has been taking some serious knocks, and deciding to re-fit the home office didn't help. Really the whole thing is down to attitude and resolve, my resolve has softened somewhat lately and credit card bills have grown again.

I don't really know how this issue will be resolved accept by some 'austerity measures' of my own - however this week (in this glorious weather we have been having) I have been cycling to work. I recently 'invested' in a bike from eBay because my little one has learnt to ride her bike and we have been cycling around the locality. What better then, than to use this 'investment' by using it to travel to work (it takes less than 15 minutes to get to work, regardless of whether I go by car or by bike..). The summer months are ideal for this because the traffic on the roads is quite bearable, the journey to and from work when the schools are in, is a very different matter..

One other way that I can get some capital back is by monetising all the laptop parts that I have after my experiment with laptop fixing. I have a fairly large stock of saleable items that just need sorting out. We are getting another 'free' holiday this year courtesy of a friend with a holiday home - although a free holiday always end up being quite costly because you can't really go on holiday without spending a bit of cash...even if it costs nothing to go in the first place.

Cleaning Vertical Blinds

I have finally finished the very last step of the office refurbishment by cleaning and refitting the vertical blinds. It occurred to me that tips on cleaning vertical blinds might make a good 'frugal living' post.. Our blinds have been pretty much untouched for about 14 years! - maybe the odd dusting, but never a proper cleaning, you can only imagine the state of some of them - and my better half was thinking of throwing them out. I 'googled' for some cleaning tips and weighed up the suggested methods. A few people had put them in the washing machine with varied results - most people seemed to agree that a gentle washing in the bath was the best method.
I used about 4 inches of hot water in the bath with first of all some washing up liquid, and then later some liquid used for hand-washing clothes (the results were the same). I also found a clean nail brush that I used to scrub the worst parts (the top and bottom of each blind - mostly the top). Although they still looked a bit grubby whilst still wet - once they were hung on the line to dry, they looked fairly clean. (they must be hung out straight to retain their shape, not hung over anything)
I should issue a few cautionary notes - don't use too much cleaning solution or water that is too hot as it might adversely affect the glue that holds parts of the blind together. Do this on a day when you can leave them on a washing line to dry for a few hours otherwise you will have pools of grubby water wherever you leave them to dry...
Earlier this week, I took delivery of some bottom chain links for the blinds that I found on eBay, they even have the weights and the tops that you may need for blinds that have parts missing. The links were only £1.65 for 100 links (20 were needed for the blind in the picture above), and they finish the job off really nicely. The blinds have been in place overnight and look fantastic compared to how they looked before, I just have about 7 more sets like this throughout the house to do now....

eBay trading

On the whole eBay is a great place to get a bargain (and to spend your hard-won internet earnings) but sometimes eBay throws up an anomoly. I have noticed that when looking for computers on eBay, unlike with desktops (which you can hardly give away), laptops fetch silly prices.
Even the lowest spec broken rubbish laptops seem to go for a minimum of £100. My advice is to be careful about bidding for laptops on eBay, to get anything half-decent will cost you as there seems to be a lot of people prepared to bid way over the odds. Bear in mind that with a laptop, you will need all the drivers if you are going to re-install the operating system - the drivers for laptops seem to be a lot less 'standard' than for desktops particularly drivers for wi-fi etc.. Also bear in mind that changing a motherboard or processor in a laptop is not a job for the faint-hearted. If you are bidding on a laptop that is not working, you have to bear in mind that if the processor has burnt out, you are probably wasting your money. At least with a desktop you can simply fit a new one.
Laptops are limited in every respect apart from portability, for instance your laptop will be slower, have less memory capacity and a smaller hard-drive than the equivalent costing desktop. It is far more likely to have significant damage after the first year or so, frequently laptops are sold with broken keypads, broken screens - often they are sold as seen as the owner can't even get them to boot up, but yet there are apparently plenty of bidders who are willing to take a massive risk.
That said, I still want one, and I will probably use eBay to get it unless I get lucky and can find someone who has a laptop to get rid of.

Frugality tip...

A 'first adopter' is one of those people who must have the latest gadget - amongst your friends they will have been the first to buy an enormous flat-screen TV and a Blu-Ray player, and then a Blu-Ray recorder. If, amongst your friends, the first adopter is you, then you are going to struggle with 'frugal living'...!
Being at the cutting edge of technology is a very expensive place to be, and although I am interested in all the latest gadgets, I definitely do NOT qualify as a first adopter... The frugal choice is to wait...and wait until the first adopters or even second adopters have moved on to newer toys, then buy their old ones from eBay.
Today's example is a bit extreme even for me... I have just (yes only just) installed a wireless network in my home (I am using it right now!). I have used the excuse previously that a wired network is faster and more secure - facts which cannot be argued. However in an unguarded moment the other day I bid £5 on a wireless router and won it for £2.70! The daft thing is I don't even own a laptop of my own (I use my works one at home sometimes). Anyway the point is that if you are prepared to wait, you can get some real bargains. Hard-drives are another example, today I bought a 1TB hard-drive from eBay for £25 including delivery - something that might have cost me twice as much six months ago.

'All things come to those that wait'

is my frugal tip for the day - that also applies to eBay auctions, sometimes you search for something for months before you find the bargain you were looking for (although to be fair sometimes it takes that long to learn that you are going to have to extend your budget to get what you want).