My name is Debbie Z and I have joined the Dollar Stretcher community today with a new blog - Kitchen Table Finances.  I hope to share with others the incredible gift I was given by the older members of my family who taught me how to be frugal and watch my spending when the "norm" was to be a spender and not think about how to make stuff and money last longer.  I strayed from their ways for a while in college and afterward, but I came back to my senses when I got out on my own and had to pay my own way!

In our family, at the kitchen table was where lessons of every type were taught and sometimes driven home by a comment of "You were told that would happen if you.., so now what are you going to do to fix this mess?".  Hopefully some of those little tips and tricks of a different way of seeing the world can help others as much as they helped me.  My Grands (grandparents) all lived until I was a young adult or until I was nearly 40 so I received lots of life lessons in the little things that very quietly let you pile up the savings in all the monies you are not forced to spend.

 So to share a few things as examples: 

 My Grands were horrified at the thought of making a special trip for anything.  We kept a fully stocked food and supply pantry.  And you put EVERYTHING on a shopping list so you would not forget to buy it while you were in town.  Your neighbors and friends did likewise, so if you needed something the odds were high you could borrow one and buy them a replacement when you shopped again.  You can still do this today.

An unusual way to save is to never buy any vehicle that is the color of the road or the shadows if you can avoid it.  If you already own one like this, make it a constant habit to always drive with your headlights on so others will see you.  You can replace a lot of extra headlights for what one wreck caused by someone who did not see you and hit your car would cost you.  Never use the so called parking lights - they cannot be seen well enough to let someone avoid hitting you. 

Never just destroy anything out of idleness, I have watched so many people sit and tear up something that they later had to repair or replace.  Isn't it easier to just not tear it up to start with?  Even paperclips, sheets of paper, and pencils are useless once mangled and cost money and effort to replace.  And someone with "monkey fingers" who picks at loose wallpaper, flaking paint, loose buttons, a seam coming unravelled etc means that the item often now requires time consuming repair and you may have it out of service for days or weeks until it is repaired.  And most people today may not know how to repair something that has gone from a tiny problem to the whole item being messed up so they have to buy another.