Free and Nearly Free in Philadelphia and Beyond

I came across this wonderful blog this morning and thought I'd share it with you. It's called the Family Penny Pincher: Free and Nearly Free Family Activities and highlights all the low-cost, no-cost family friendly events going on in Philadelphia and locations beyond. It's a nice blog perfect for out-of-town families planning a vacation together with the kids and for local families who want to save money while enjoying the city they call home.

On the left side of the page, there is a nifty daily calendar powered by Google. It features only the local events happening in Philadelphia, but the blog posts cover Philadelphia and more.

How many of you are planning a family vacation for the winter holiday season? How are you managing to save money?

Pushing the Financial Reset Button a Little Earlier This Year

People have a great tendency to overspend during the holidays. Sometimes the spending takes the form of buying gifts for others. Other times the spending comes from a lack of discipline during a time when all the outer stimuli in the world says, “Buy, buy, buy!” It’s hard to stand up to that sort of social and societal pressure. Then on top of it all, spending behavior rather than saving behavior is encouraged for three long months, from the end of October to the start of the new year.

Too often it is not until the new year starts that people have the opportunity to breathe and escape the pressures of encouraged spending behaviors. It doesn’t have to be that way. You can push the restart button on your spending and finances any time of the year. And for those feel that they need a milestone holiday or event to help them jumpstart their saving behavior rather than spending behavior, they can look to a holiday like Thanksgiving for help.

Thanksgiving is all about family and friends. It’s all about caring for and being thankful for what little we have. Even millionaires do not own the world and they can be thankful for what little part of it they do have just as the beggar can be thankful for what he has received. More so than New Year’s Day is it a grand opportunity to resolve to reduce one’s spending and put first what is most important in one’s life, those things that we acquire without money and that all the spending in the world could not buy us.

Rather than wait until January 1st to make yet another resolution that will be hard to keep, begin your commitment to being a saver rather than a spender on the last Thursday in November, Thanksgiving Day. Start the habit to save just at the point every year when you're tempted to begin spending the most.

Black Friday doesn't have to be the retailer's Christmas. You can take the day back and reclaim it as a day to save. Even if you do go shopping, you can make conscious decisions about how much you will spend and when you will spend it without being cajoled by the marketplace into believing that you have no real alternatives. Take the holiday season back a little earlier this year and begin on Thanksgiving Day to refocus and reset your spending. Go into the new year with money in the bank and a different resolution that will keep you prosperous all year. 

Happy Thanksgiving, everyone!

Car Sharing With Zipcar

Zipcar is one of the more popular car sharing companies now gaining a large share of consumer interest in major cities all across the country, including at over 100 college and university campuses. You can also find Zipcar in some not so major cities like Frederick, Maryland and Carlisle, Pennsylvania. There are also Zipcars in Canada and London.

How it works

To reserve a Zipcar, you just go online and choose the time and location where you’d like to pick up a car. The cars come in various sizes and colors and can fit many driving needs. If a car with your selected criteria is available, you can put in a reservation. If a car isn’t available, you can choose from other nearby locations or different times. When your reservation is over, you return the car on time to avoid any penalties. That’s it.

Membership benefits

For an annual fee, you can become a Zipcar member. The membership allows you access to rent cars in any location around the world. This means that if you are a Zipcar member in Florida and take a trip to DC in July, you can get a Zipcar to use while you are on vacation. It would be good for a weekend trip from DC to Fredericksburg, Maryland, for example, since commuter buses and trains to that area do not run on the weekend.

Being a member of Zipcar also affords you additional benefits. People who use Zipcar a lot can save money by registering for one their frequent user programs. If you know for example, that you will use a car often enough to spend $125 each month, you can enroll in one of the programs for that rate and receive discounts every time you rent a Zipcar. Members are also privy to special discounts at area businesses. In San Francisco, you can get discounts from the Bend Yoga studio, Fog City News, Lombardi Sports, SixFlags Discovery Kingdom and more. Each city has different offers.

Despite all those benefits, the best perk about renting with Zipcar is that there are no hidden fees. Let me say that again: There are no hidden fees. Included with your rental is insurance, roadside assistance, and gasoline. That’s everything you need. You don’t have to worry about maintenance fees, oil changes, or keeping air in your tires. The vehicles are kept clean and they run well.

Is there a downside?

While Zipcar is terrific, I will admit that it would be nice to have the vehicles vacuumed a little more often (I always seem to get the cars with pet hair left in them), but really I can’t complain. Besides, buying a hand vacuum cleaner to carry with you is a lot cheaper than buying a whole car. I can live with that.

What Is Car Sharing?

Car sharing offers all the benefits of owning your own car without all the burden. The concept is like renting studio space. You have 24 hours in a day, and people can sign up to rent that space in 30-minute increments. You can rent the space for as long as a day or more. Then when you’re done, the space is free and open for someone else to reserve. The difference with car sharing is that the “space” you’re renting is not just space but an entire vehicle that you can use to drive as far and long as your time permits.

Sharing vs. Renting

Getting a rental car differs from car sharing because rental cars require you to pay for your own gas and insurance and limit the time you can rent a car to full-day increments. You could not just rent a car for an hour or two, and those items that are included with car sharing—insurance, roadside assistance, and gas—are additional costs when you rent with a rental car company.

Car sharing can save you money if you need to have a car only sporadically. Taking day trips or using a car to transport heavy purchases or moves are ideal uses for a car sharing rental. These are trips that take only a few hours to complete and no more than 24 or 36 hours at the most.

People who will need a car to drive around for an entire weekend or more are better off getting a rental car. The savings generally begins to level out after the first 24 hours. Then the cost of car sharing becomes more expensive than renting. It is likely that the car sharing system was designed that way on purpose. It is best used for local and shorter term trips.

Pros and Cons

The benefits of car sharing are its convenience and low cost. However, because you are sharing a vehicle with hundreds of others, you do run into the following problems:

--Not having a car available at the time and place you prefer
--Ending up with a car that is not up to your own standard of cleanliness

The workaround to these obstacles is, of course, planning. Reserving a vehicle well in advance reduces the likelihood of not being able to reserve a car when you need or want one. Brining a hand vacuum or some baby wipes to spruce up a car before you drive it can resolve the cleanliness issue for most people.

Car sharing is catching on with a lot of people, and those who remain flexible can enjoy the benefits of it the most.

Life Without a Car

Since my last post, I did actually sell my car. The process was relatively simple. This is not to say that going without a car has been all cherries and roses. I've had my fair share of feeling too lazy to walk from a bus stop to a friend's house on more than one occassion, but all in all, I feel great about not having the extra burden of car payments, parking fees, maintenance costs, and the like each month.

Yesterday, in particular, was a moment of truth for me. I was to meet a friend at a location in the city that was not readily accessible by public transportation. I had agreed to do it, and I knew in advance that it would require me to walk about a full mile. I was up for it...until I actually started walking.

My trip was set for midday, at the peak of high summer temperatures and high weekend traffic on city streets not designed for pedestrians. As I walked, I thought about how much faster I'd have gotten to my destination if only I had driven a car. I doubted for a moment whether selling my car was actually the right thing. I complained internally about the heat, about the food I was carrying that had to be refridgerated, about the sweat dripping down my back, about how terribly foolish I must have been to sell my car. I could have avoided all the discomfort and worry if only I were driving.

When I spotted a 7-Eleven, I went in for a Slurpee. Then I realized that I was at a crossroads. I was at a six-way intersection and I didn't know which way to turn. I was lost in a way. I knew the street I wanted was just one block away, but I didn't know which one to take.

My thinking about how I sold my car was like being at that crossroads. I had two options:

--Accept and embrace my decision to sell my car.
--Fret and go back into debt to buy another car.

I knew I did not want to go back into debt, so I just accepted what lay before me. I embraced my decision and came out on the other side of that day alright. I made it to my friend without any trouble (using my GPS) and I freed myself from having to feel any regret.

After having lived through the process of selling a car and continuing to live by that decision today, I wholly recommend going carless to everyone who lives in an area with good public transportation. I'm living the life to tell you about it...with no regrets.

Selling Your Car Can Save You Hundreds Each Month

It's been a while since I've written. That's surprising really because I've been thinking a lot about this blog and all the great information and ideas I want to share with you.

Recently, I finally got around to thinking about selling my car again. I've been toying with the idea for several years, but when living in the nation where the automobile was built, it is sometimes difficult to garner support for such a move from friends and loved ones. I know Americans are dependent on their cars because we're still buying gas like it's free-flowing tap water. It's nearly $5.00 a gallon, and many people have yet to break their stride or their dependency on oil and gasoline.

I have been dependent on my car for a long time, too, but I'm beginning to make more use of public transportation, car sharing, biking, and dozens of other alternatives to owning and driving my own car. If I think about it and remain honest with myself, the only time I use my car these days is when I'm feeling lazy or when I want to do something at the spur of the moment. Yet, as I continue to research alternatives to driving, I am beginning to find that there are even options available that can counter both my occassional laziness and the impromptu errand to the other side of town.

The next few posts will explore the journey I'm taking to sell my car and whether at the end of it all I'll actually do it. I think I will though, and I'll walk you through the process.

The most compelling reason for my considering the sale of my car, of course, is all the money I'll save. I am very excited about not having to pay $5.00 for a gallon of gas and not having to make car payments, insurance payments, parking storage fees, etc.

Now, as I go through this journey, I'd like to hear from you. Have you ever thought about selling your car? What was the defining factor for you that made you decide to keep it or sell it?

Evaluate Your Hobbies and Save

One step toward achieving a more simplified life is to examine your hobbies. If one of your major interests is something that requires expensive memberships, high-priced gadgets, or large amounts of time with little intrinsic return, then you may need to reevaluate how you spend both your money and your time. There is a saying that the best things in life are free. There may be some truth to that, and it could be, for many people, the key to living a simplified and prosperous life.

While many people may already be familiar with this concept, it is much harder to implement than preach because it requires thinking of and adapting to alternatives to things that you may have grown accustomed to doing in a certain way. Let’s take exercise, for example, and our hefty health club memberships.

The alternative to exercising at a gym is exercising at home or outdoors. The principle is simple enough, but why don’t more people do it?

One reason is that fitness machines make the work of exercise a lot easier than it is real life. People accustomed to jogging on a treadmill sometimes comment how much harder it is run on asphalt. The conveyer belt we run on in the gym gives us a little boost of speed that we don’t get when there’s nothing between us and the ground.

Another reason is that people feel like they’re not exercising alone when they exercise with others in a gym. Just being on the elliptical next someone makes people feel they are in a crowd even if they are exercising alone, isolated by the music blaring from their iPods.

Adapting to the alternatives to exercising in a gym requires more thought and effort. People who feel a little slow running on asphalt might try modifying their exercise program to develop their speed rather than giving up or going back to the gym. People who would like to exercise or run in the company of others can join a free outdoor running group, walking group, or yoga class.

Exercise and gym memberships are just one example, but people whose hobby it is to buy the latest techno-gadget, collect stamps, or download the latest novel to their reading device all have options and alternatives to excess spending. Perhaps a common theme to many of these alternatives is the power of collaborating with others.

The alternatives are out there, but it does take some time and effort to make them work.

Simplifying Requires a Lifestyle Change

Simplifying one’s life requires a lifestyle change if you want to make it last. Lifestyle changes are often the hardest to make when you do not have social support. It can be difficult to say to friends who know you as someone who does one thing and tell them that you are trying to change your life to another.

Without trying to trivialize things, I liken the process of trying simplify one’s life to that of a substance abuser trying to stay on the straight and narrow. She has made up her mind that she will no longer resort to substances and old ways of thinking to solve her problems or find emotional or physical relief. So, instead, she works hard to set up her life for success: putting in place mechanisms that she can default to in times where she feels like she wants to go back to the old way of doing things.

Having social supports like friends who do not use substances and family members who will encourage her to stay on track are critical. The same is true for someone trying to make any other sort of lifestyle change.

Part of developing a simple lifestyle requires thinking about things in a different way. If a simplified life is to include elements of financial discipline, then one must begin to think differently about money. If it includes elements of reducing clutter, one must think differently about “things,” all the stuff surrounding a person that when left unchecked becomes a massive stagnating pile. If it includes being better about one’s impact on the environment, one must think differently about waste.

Having supportive friends and family can help you make the transition to a simple lifestyle. What makes things most difficult is when you have well-intentioned folks in your life who have not made the same commitment change as you have. These are the people who, for example, remember you as someone who did not recycle. They now think you are being a fanatic when you refuse buy yet another bottle of water and choose instead to refill old bottles and carry them with you everywhere.

“Stop being cheap and just buy another bottle,” some will say. “Look, I’ll even buy a bottle for you if you can’t afford it today.”

While well intentioned, these people, who may well be or have been your friends, fail to realize that it is the principle of not buying another bottle of water that helps you stick to your commitment. It will not always be easy to say no to friends and other acquaintances, but it will be worthwhile in the end.

There is also something else to remember. Like-minded people tend to find each other in a crowd. So, while for a season or two, it may seem that you are the only person in the world who wants to live a simplified life, the truth is that there are thousands, if not millions, of others who are living that life successfully. Just live the simplified life—shop where they shop, eat what they eat, do what they do—and soon you will find more than enough kindred folk who are equally as passionate about simplifying their lives as you are.

One major tenet of having a simplified life is having a supportive network of others who also share your goals and philosophy.

Ensure a Healthy Diet with an Open Mind

Recently, I began a challenge to see whether it were possible to save money at the grocery store with coupons while also maintaining a healthy diet. The journey also led me to think about other ways I ways could save.

First, stay away from packaged goods. This principle was, in fact, the impetus for beginning my coupon challenge. I found that most coupons advertised discounts on foods that were packaged rather than fresh or natural alternatives. Staying away from packaged foods keeps you away from the high sodium, high fat, and loaded “preservatives” in foods you often find a box.

Next, be open minded about what you eat. By now, most people realize that cooking at home is healthier and cheaper than eating out at a restaurant or buying packaged foods. An extension of that principle is opening one’s food palate to include a broader range of meats, grains, and vegetables while cooking. The concept is simple enough, but, unfortunately, many Americans are afraid to try new foods. They spend more and have poorer diets.

Lentils, quinoa, chickpeas, and other hearty but seldom used foods are great additions to a healthy diet and, for now, they are cheap. Grocery stores in many areas carry these items, and those stores that do not are a short trip away from those that do. The convenience of online grocery shopping also makes it possible for people in remote areas to have access to these foods.

Some people might say, however, that even with access to better food options, they still would not try new foods because they do know how to cook them. My response is that learning how to cook comes with practice. It can begin with a simple trip to the library. Trying a new recipe a week starts by just pulling a book from the shelf.

Upon finding a recipe you like, write it down on a card and create a home library of recipes. There really are no excuses for not experimenting with foods, cooking with new foods, and adding them to your diet.