Fabulous Financial Solutions

Today, I made a pot of split pea soup. It consisted of a couple of cans of chicken broth, the rest of a leftover onion, salt, pepper, a ham hock and of course, the split peas. I simmered it on the stove for about two hours. Shortly before dinner, I steamed some brown rice. We ate the split pea soup over the brown rice, and spiced it up with hot sauce. I figured out how much this cost me to make, and it was only five dollars! That’s $1.25 per person! Actually, it’s even less than that, because I have leftover soup to eat for lunch tomorrow. And that’s in spite of two people getting seconds!

Last year, getting a summer vacation rental didn’t even cross my mind…until May. At that point, there wasn’t really anything left, well, except for extremely expensive properties that obviously no one else wanted to rent either. So, we didn’t get a vacation rental last summer–all due to my poor planning. This year, I fully intend to do things differently.

I’m going to start by booking something NOW, as opposed to waiting until the last minute again. I learned my lesson there! One site that I’m using to look at
vacation rentals Rentalo.com. Type in the name of the place you are planning on vacationing, and you’ll see a list of rentals. For example, type in Fort Myers, and you’ll get a list of numerous
fort myers beach condos. Some of these properties are pretty luxurious too! I typed in “Miami” to see what they had available, fully expecting the prices to be majorly expensive. To my surprise, a luxury condo was available for $119! That’s much better than hotel prices, and much more comfortable to boot!

The thing I like about renting condos for a vacation is that you have the opportunity to eat in. You can save so much more money on a vacation by simply having a decent refrigerator, never mind an entire kitchen! Also, think of the money you are saving by renting a condo that will accommodate four people instead of TWO hotel rooms! You can literally cut your vacation expenses by more than half!

So now, the decision is simply where to go. I hope that we decide sometime before May.

I’m finally getting more comfortable with traveling, thank goodness. Doing my work in the car on the computer helps pass the time, which makes traveling much more enjoyable. So I’ve been doing a lot of thinking about cheap accommodations. Or free accommodations. I like the idea of free accommodations the best! At any rate, I’ve been checking out sites like couchsurfing.com for free places to stay when we travel. It is just so fun to do the work in the car instead of while sitting in the house. Then, when I’m done, I’m magically in a different location!

I wrote two articles on how to find cheap accommodation and have free travel adventures. They have a lot of resources in them that I’ll bet you’ve never thought of! Here they are:

How to Find Cheap Accommodation

AND

How to Have Free Travel Adventure

These are articles that I’m going to refer back to myself in case I forget and wind up wanting to stay in an expensive hotel! I’m only human…

Sometimes you can find good bargains simply by looking at unconventional sources for what you need. If you’re a firefighter or a police officer, you’ll certainly love what LA Police Gear has to offer. However, if you simply need a good backpack, perhaps you should head over there as well. I was looking at the
511 Fire Gear Bags, and was totally shocked by how inexpensive they were. I imagine that a backpack for a firefighter would hold up far better than one for your average schoolkid, so if you have a kid who tears things up easily, this may be where you should go. I saw all kinds of bags that looked like they would be excellent for travel.

The bags are bright red, so if you’re a firefighter, you’ll love them. But I can’t help thinking how easily they would be found on a luggage carasol at the airport! The airport is another way that bags get torn up, so a heavy duty firefighter bag would be a good, and unique, way to travel. Buying luggage that is marked up as such can be very expensive. Thinking outside the box when you buy things you need can certainly save money, in almost every circumstance.

If you decide that these bags are a good choice for your firefighting, traveling or just everyday needs, be aware that if you purchase two, you get free shipping. Shipping is so expensive these days that a lot of times, it is like getting a HUGE discount on the extra item that you buy in order to get shipping free. You also get free RETURN shipping, just in case it isn’t what you need. How many companies offer that? Not many, in my experience. And, just for a bonus, you get a free hat. They really hook you up over there!

One thing I do with extra freebies that I get is put them in my gift closet. The same thing goes for extra items that I buy in order to get free shipping. Around Christmas or birthdays, I “go shopping” in the closet. It saves tons of money!

I am absolutely loving this new trend towards prefab buildings. The reason? They look really, really cool! They totally have this “Jetsons” look that I just adore. I’m not sure if glass is cheaper than other materials (I suspect it may be), but the numerous windows on these models definitely enhance their design! They also provide passive solar that will save you money on your heating bill!

Read my eHow articles that I wrote about these awesome prefab buildings! I think I’m in love. How often do you find housing that is super cool AND inexpensive?

Prefab Buildings
AND
Modular Offices

The latest issue of Dwell magazine has a lot more information on these prefab buildings and homes. If you’re into this, definitely check it out. Just don’t end up paying nearly a million dollars for a designer one!

One thing that I believe is underestimated in our society is the importance of spiritual beliefs in a relationship. Lots of people don’t want to bring up this subject, and might be on the third date until they realize that a relationship would never work due to directly conflicting religious ideologies. One way around this is to look for individuals who share your beliefs. If you are a Christian, you might want to try checking out a
Christian Chat Room, where you can meet people who share similar beliefs to yourself.

Ultimately, can meeting someone this way save you money? Yes! Studies show that many divorces are due to conflicting belief systems–if you meet and marry someone of the same religion, your marriage is more likely to last, and we all know how expensive divorce can be!

Our trip to Houston was amazing as far as gas prices go. We drove three hours there, and then drove around the city for three days, and only spent about $30. I certainly hope this lasts, because if it does, we can afford to go on many more trips! Next time, I want to go to Dallas and check out the Galleria there. Check out. Not shop at. The prices are out of this world, and that goes totally against my money saving philosophy! It’s always fun to look, though.

I have some land near Taos that I bought for a really low price. It is beautiful land, but the reason it was such a good deal is because it’s “off-grid,” which means that the land is not connected to a power company or water company. People there use catchment systems for water, but electricity can be a challenge. One of the things I’m looking into are
Natural Gas Generators. Bowers Generator Systems is a site I found that offers everything you could possibly want in this area for just about any use–residential or commercial.

While I won’t be needing a
Generator Transfer Switch, I can see how they would come in handy for folks who use the generator as a back-up to their usual electrical source. The switch enables you to switch back and forth between power sources. We have had two hurricane (not a usual occurrence, I hope!) in the past three years where I live, and my husband and I are thinking about getting a residential generator, because when those suckers hit, the electricity is out for days and you need some sort of
Power Generator or you are going to be very hot and be forced to cook all of your food on the outdoor grill, which gets old after a day or two, believe me!

Whether you’re off-grid, or simply need a back-up system, check out all of the generators available at Bowers.

When we were staying at the Hotel Derek in Houston, we rented a movie on two of the nights that we were there. The movies cost $9.95 each, which seems outrageous for something that I could have rented from Netflix for much less. Still…there were three of us, and by staying in and renting a movie, we ended up saving a lot of money. We ordered pizza and had a “slumber party” both of those nights, and our son loved it waaaay more than going out. We saved money on movie tickets (or other entertainment) and it made eating the pizza seem like a treat, rather than a way to save money on dinner that night. I’d say the movie rental ended up being a pretty good deal!

There are a lot of dating sites out there on the Internet. You can save time, money and possible heartache by deciding exactly who you are looking for in advance, and then choosing a dating service that matches you with the appropriate profiles. I love the idea behind
Latina Chat, because it’s so specific. I wish that these specific dating services had been around when I was “on the scene” so to speak. I would have saved a lot of time!