Thrift-O-Rama

Need to make more money? You can always get naked!

2008-09-08T07:57:00.003-06:00

Our fearless editor over at Pussycatmagazine.com wrote this article about getting naked for money on the Internet. Check it out!

"Need Money? Get Naked!"

The Debt Monster rears its ugly head...

2008-08-27T19:19:00.003-06:00

I used to be OK with debt. But then it took me forever to pay off. This article is a must read for anyone who either has debt or is thinking of getting some.

"Debt Trap"

Credit agencies out to screw us again...

2008-08-24T08:38:00.003-06:00

As if it wasn't hard enough to have a good credit score and qualify for loans with decent interest rates these days, the credit rating agencies are out to screw us again.

Looks like your credit score will now in part be determined by what you spend your money on! I.e. if you use your credit card to pay for a marriage counselor, your score could go down. Talk about big brother. This should be illegal. Who are they to judge?

"Credit agencies are watching you"

Love the library, love the BBC

2008-08-24T08:32:00.000-06:00

I rented more awesome free videos from the library. Apparently, there is an entire BBC section I hadn't noticed before. They have the entire set of vintage Avengers shows, and last night's treat: All the French and Saunders (the ladies that gave us Absolutely Fabulous.) Love it. I watched one last night.

Let me say again how much I heart the library's video room.

Next, I will look for Are you Being Served and Keeping up Appearances. I always liked those shows.

Where to go when you're desperate and broke

2008-08-23T09:54:00.004-06:00

I've had some economic rough times. When I first moved to New Orleans, I was so broke I had to borrow $50 from my mom so I could pay for the uniform I needed for my first waitress job. Boy, did that hurt! I was 20. I should have been able to do it alone, I thought. It wasn't the last slim time I had. But I always managed. The one rule of money and life, and love and everything else is that sometimes things don't go according to plan.

Here is an interesting article about what to do when things go REALLY poorly.

"where to get help when you're desperate"

Trick yourself into saving money

2008-08-23T09:50:00.004-06:00

I ran across this interesting post from Lifehacker. It has some good tips for saving money. It's great if you are saving up for a hopelessly big goal, such as a house!

"10 ways to trick yourself into saving money"

Medeival peasants had more vacation than you

2008-08-23T09:14:00.004-06:00

This article hit really close to home. My first "real" jobs after college offered a paltry 5 days of vacation a year. I had to suffer through that for 4 years. And to make it worse, I had a micromanaging boss who tallied all my days and made me feel guilty for taking them. She never took a single vacation day when I worked there. When I asked her about it, she said "what would I do? I'd get bored and probably just do work anyway."

Don't be like that! Do you want to toil like a peasant or have meaningful adventures and life experiences?

"Peasants get more vacation than you"

Boo... Interest rates are falling.

2008-02-23T23:48:00.002-05:00

I don't have much in my online savings account at Emigrant Direct, but I sure did like earning 5 percent interest on it! Unfortunately, the mess in the mortgage market and falling stock prices have spurred the Fed to cut interest rates. That's bad news for anyone with a savings account.

I watched my Emigrant Direct interest rate go from 5 percent down to 3.5 percent in a month! Boo.

Unfortunately, there isn't much any of us can do about it, except cross our fingers and hope the Fed doesn't cut rates anymore. It's awfully hard to get motivated to save when your money isn't making any money for you!

Some handy reading

2008-02-23T23:45:00.002-05:00

I ran across a blog called the Simple Dollar today. I thought his 31 days to fix your finances plan was worth reading. Also, check out the author's compelling story of growing up poor and all the financial mistakes that led him to start his blog.

"31 Days to fix your finances"

Watch your Bank of America Credit Card!!!

2008-02-07T12:39:00.000-05:00

I just ran across this article in BusinessWeek. Apparently Bank of America is brazenly raising interest rates on many of its credit cards. Those affected received notice in the mail, and instructions on how to opt out, but in a letter that was most likely tossed. Some folks are seeing their rates go from 9 percent to 29 percent for no reason!

So if you have a BofA card and carry a balance, keep your eyes peeled.

Here is the article:

"Bank of America interest rate hikes"

Free DVD rentals, really...

2008-01-28T15:49:00.001-05:00

Inspired by the "Seven painless ways to save $100 every month" story in the Pussycat archive, I've been getting all of my DVDs from my local library. I'm lucky, they have quite a selection and let you keep them for 7 whole days. Turns out I've rented 18 DVDs for free since October. It costs about $2 to rent a movie for ONE night at the local video store.

So it looks like I've not only saved about $36 in rental fees, I've also managed to avoid late fees. Let's face it, I never make it back the next day to return the movie. And, I got to see a lot of the movies I managed to miss in the theaters. Not too shabby.

If you, like me, are on a budget, it's time you perused the video section of your local library. You can't beat free!

Saving money on groceries?

2008-01-28T14:27:00.000-05:00

I always used to roll my eyes when I'd hear about people keeping detailed notepads logging every price at every store for the items they buy. Well, I may have to become one of the converted.

I went to Aldi's for the first time tonight. I needed a lot of pantry-stocking basics and a friend of mine swears that shopping there has cut her grocery bill in half. That's nothing to sneeze at, especially if you are on a budget.
At first, I wasn't impressed. The prices seemed very similar to those at Wal-mart on most items.

But the small savings must have added up. At the checkout, I paid a little less than $54 for an entire cartload of groceries. I'm guessing we can eat on that stuff for more than a week. I even bought "luxury" items-- meat and fish, which I don't normally cook at home. Geesh.

Maybe it's time for me to start that price book-- although it probably won't be as detailed-- so I have more than a vague idea of what things cost.

Just from some preliminary calculations
Cereal at Aldi's, about $1.66 a box. At the store where I usually shop? about $2.50 a box. Hmmm. Almost a buck a box saved on cereal. I eat a lot of that...
Milk for all that cereal? Actually 50 cents cheaper at the regular store than at Aldi's. Good to know.

It may seem like small change, but I'm convinced that you can in fact nickel and dime your way to riches. And I think I migth have to start paying more attention to those nickels and dimes...

$55.97 closer to a tiki bar!

2008-01-28T14:24:00.001-05:00

Thanks to some craft sales and another Amazon book sale, I'm adding another $55.97 to the Tiki Bar fund. It isn't a lot, but it sure feels good to make some progress! I've also decided to raise the Tiki Bar Fund savings goal to $1,500, since I'm almost half way to my original goal of $1,000.

Post, post and hope the cash rolls in!

2008-01-18T16:00:00.000-05:00

Today was productive. I just set up an eBay auction for some very nice perfume I won at a holiday raffle. I also put 4 like-new books up for sale on the Amazon marketplace and posted two listings on Etsy.com, the craft Web site, for some tote bags that I made out of vintage Transformers and Batman fabrics. Hopefully some of these will sell in the next few weeks so I can pad the tiki bar fund! (although, not as much as I'd like because auction fees really add up. What a racket!)

Emptying the change jar

2008-01-10T14:55:00.000-05:00

It's that time of year again. Time to empty the giant plastic beer bottle "piggy" bank. It's the receptacle for all of my spare change, linty pennies I picked up on the street, as well as my go-to guy for bus fare and parking meter money. When it gets overwhelming, I empty it out. It's been about a year.

This year, with my honey's blessing, I'm putting that money in the Tiki Bar Fund. This will probably be the last big "easy" boost the fund will get this year. A sad thought considering it's only early January. I'm actually going to have to go out and (somehow) earn the rest.

I rolled as many coins as I could last night while watching television. Holl-ee cow. When I counted, I had $112. I also cashed in pennies at the Coinstar, for a total of $26.19.

I know, I know. Coinstar charges like 9 percent to sort, but I ran out of wrappers and my bank won't take loose change. I wrapped all of the silver, so it's worth it to me to pay $2 or so just to get those pennies off my hands. I guess that isn't very thrifty of me, but I'm choosing my battles.

I went to the bank this morning to deposit all of my ill-gotten gains. This afternoon, I'll transfer it into the official Tiki Bar Fund online savings account.

The grand total: The pennies came to $26.19, for a grand total of $138.19 in change. Plus, I found a bonus $4, by cashing in a lottery ticket that my mom gave me for Christmas, so I'm adding $142.19 to the fund. Yay! I'm now up to $392.19!

The first $250 in a high-interest savings account

2008-01-10T12:51:00.000-05:00

I have opened a high-interest online savings account for my initial $250 "investment". This is money I earned selling handmade indie crafts in December. (If only every month were as good!)

The deposit cleared today, so I am officially earning interest. I chose EmigrantDirect.com. I already have a savings account with them and have been very happy. The Web site is easy to use and getting your money in and out is fast and easy. It currently has an interest rate of about 4.5 percent-- much higher than the measly .05 percent my normal bank offers!

If you're shopping for an online account, Bankrate.com has an easy to use tool listing the highest paying accounts, their minimum balances, etc. Here is Bankrate's guide to high-paying savings accounts.

A new year, a new focus

2008-01-09T16:23:00.000-05:00

A bottle of wine can make a big difference in your life.

This New Year's, about 1/2 way through a bottle of Fuki plum wine, I finally admitted to myself and the world my deepest desire. To be my own boss, and how? By opening my own Tiki bar. I've always been a tikiphile. Collecting mugs at thrift stores and online for years. I have hundreds. I also used to be a Bourbon Street bartender, so I've slung a few drinks in my day. Throw in that I've quit just about every day job I've ever had after two years because I can't stand having overbearing bosses, or slaving away all day to make someone else rich.

So Eureka. Tiki bar it is.

What does this have to do with your blog, you ask? We're changing the focus. The title will be the same, but now I am going to chronicle my quest to turn any extra money I have into enough money to achieve my dream.

I'm naturally thrifty, which is why I love second-hand shopping so much. But the real question is can you achieve big goals through small, incremental actions? Well, we'll find out won't we?

Along the way, I hope to come up with some ideas you can apply to your own life. We all have dreams, big and small, and maybe we can reach some of them together.

Oh, don't tune out and think this is going to be another boring, preachy personal finance blog. I personally hate that stuff. I'm not going to suggest buying 50 lb bags of bulk oatmeal to save money. Pah-lease. No rinsing out of plastic bags, either.

Here is my plan. I can't afford to use my regular paycheck to save for this project, so I am going to use "extra money".

Just what that is, I'm not sure yet.

I do sometimes sell indie crafts and such, so that will be one source of extra money. Over Christmas I earned $250 selling my handmade items. It was just sitting in my Paypal account. This is the seed money to get this project started.

Change on the street? That too.

I'll probably dabble in some eBay auctions and selling books and videos on Amazon and Half.com. Anything I earn from Google Adsense will go to the cause as well. (So start clicking, folks!)

This "extra money" will go into a high-interest savings account, that way my little bit of money is out there working for me. Once the balance grows, I may move it to other investments. We'll figure it out as we go along.

This is going to be a long, hard challenge. But I hope a fun and interesting one. Won't you join me on my journey?

Old pairs of socks= one rad gift?

2007-12-14T17:06:00.000-05:00

I went thrifting last week, surprise, and found two colorful pairs of toe socks in the 99 cents bin. So I bought them. Personally, I hate toe socks. Maybe because I have large feet and my toes never seem to fit in them. I didn't buy them to wear. I had recently popped by the library and found a book called "Stupid sock creatures" in the craft section. I just had to try it out.

So, for a total investment of $6 and one night of hand sewing in front of the television, I made two sock creatures that will be Christmas gifts for two friends. Not too shabby!

For love of lamps

2007-11-01T15:01:00.000-05:00

You used to be able to find awesome lamps and paper shades at thrift stores all the time. Alas, those days have been gone for a while, hastened by eBay speculators and folks holding on white-knuckled to the good stuff hiding in their attics.

So when I ran across these two beauties-- a matching set, even rarer-- at a second-hand store in Logan, Ohio, I couldn't pass them up. They're green and gold ceramic, about 24 inches tall. There's no mark or indication of what company made them, but I'm fairly certain they're from the 1950s, when lime green was a hot color for housewares. Oh, if we could only go back to the days when beige wasn't the design standard...

Starburst clocks rock!

2007-09-18T14:07:00.000-06:00

This is my chance to brag on my pal Denise. She found this totally awesome starburst clock for $15 at a swap meet this weekend. It is battery-powered ( because who of us really remembers to wind their old-school style clocks each week??), and is called the "Arabesque". I think it looks pretty awesome with that wallpaper, don't you?

Thrifters get ready!

2007-07-30T13:55:00.000-06:00

This weekend heralds the return of the World's Longest Yard Sale. Time to break out the piggy bank.

It runs along Highway 127 from Alabama to Ohio, and if you live within 100 miles you have no excuse not to go searching for treasures. Expect a bevvy of new posts next week, as my sister and I plan to make a two day pilgrimage through the flotsam.

Here's the Web site, complete with maps!

http://www.127sale.com/

Disco homemade ceramics projects

2007-07-25T21:46:00.000-06:00

Every kid in the 1970s with a remotely crafty mom was dragged kicking and screaming to the ceramics shop to pick out something to paint. In my town, the shop was a one-car detached garage. It belonged to the lady who lived next to the drive-in theater where I saw Star Wars (yes, the 1977 one) when it first came out.

The new, fancier incarnation of this kind of place is the "Art & Clay" studio. Those places where kids host birthday parties for giggling friends or moms and daughters go to bond while painting commemorative plates or robot piggy banks.

And I admit it. I loved going there. Not the new fancy places-- the junky 70s one. Perusing the flimsy, dimly-lit metal racks of figurines-- cats, bats, ghosts, Thanksgiving turkeys-- whatever you could want. We'd take them home and fish out mom's tote full of cermaic glazes. We'd sit around the kitche table, eyes slanted, concentrating. Getting the perfect finish. Then we'd take them back to that lady's garage, and she'd fire them until they were nice and shiny.

All of those memories came flooding back when I saw this obviously home-painted ceramic pineapple. Then I noticed it was a lamp. Price tag? $3.99 = SOLD!

It's ugly. It's weird. And I don't know what they were thinking when they glued the amber marbles onto it, but it is definitely one of a kind!•

Double Swag Heaven

2007-07-25T21:43:00.000-06:00

I'd heard that Suite Lorain, a vintage store in Cleveland, was pretty awesome. Of course, I wanted to check it out and see if it was true. And yes, Suite Lorain is awesome. So pa cked with awesome that I felt like a wide-eyed stunned idiot who couldn't even say a word, let alone process all of the cool I was seeing. It's like my "have to have" list evaporated from memory, and I was left wandering aimlessly through 8,000 square feet of reasonably priced retrobilia. I almost walked out with nothing. Then, I snapped back into coherent thought when I saw this 1960s, floor-to-ceiling double swag lamp leaning, neglected, in a corner behind some magazines and plastic dinnerware. It was dusty, yes, but had a lot of potential. And of course, no price tag. My palms were sweaty. I had to have it. It belonged in my friend's basement (the lady who write the 1950s ranch house blog!) and Christmas was just around the corner. AAGH. The lady that owned the place came by, gave it one look and said. "Well, it's dirty. I can let it go for $40." $40. 10 years ago anything above $3 was a travesty. Maybe I'm at a different point in my life now. Without thinking I blurted out "Sold!" and it was in the back of my car in no time. Yes, I know. Second hand is supposed to be cheap, and I strayed from the path. But sometimes, you have to decide what you are and aren't willing to pay "full price" for, and I knew this double swag gem was one of them. It's got two 18-inch high lamps, both appear to be made of thick plastic, and covered with a transparent aquarium-gravely plastic stone and some larger blue and green plastic stones. It has kind of that mid-century modern Flintstones quality. It's also on a tension mount 9-foot pole, so it's meant to stand freely from floor to ceiling. You just press the rod down, and pop it up to the ceiling when it's in place, which is actually a lot harder than it sounds. But, once installed, it's blue-green cast really adds pizaz to the room. And as a gift, it was a total hit.•

My kingdom for a TV lamp

2007-07-25T21:42:00.001-06:00

Sometime in the mid-1950s Americans went bananas over television. And having a giant, 1,000 pound black and white TV wasn't enough. Oh no, they wanted to back light the walls above them, too.

Enter the TV lamp. Originally, people were concerned that watching too much TV in a dark room would ruin your eyesight. The jury is still out on that. But TV lamps hit the market with gusto, touted as a way to reduce eye strain and ensure safe TV viewing.

Of course, they mostly just looked good. That was probably the main drawn. Having one of these puppies on your TV was like having a Jaguar on the hood of your car-- it said the War is over, the Depression is over, I want an aqua glazed mermaid and I'm not fooling around. America is on the up and up, and hundreds of companies started churning out TV lamps covered in cats, dogs, antelopes, panthers, you name it.

The trend, like most, fizzled within 10 years, but not before it left behind a bevvy of ceramic whatzits, still worthy of shelf space today. I'v eonly found two decent books about them, and the coolest of the two of them appears to be out of print. Boo-hiss! Here they are, in case you're like me and you really want to know the sordid past of that crazy lamp down at the flea market.

Turned on: Decorative Lamps of the Fifties

50S TV Lamps: With Price Guide

You can also go to tvlamps.net, the online Museum of vintage TV lamps. That'll solve the mystery of what you actually have. It solved mine. The museums says this guy is a "cool cat," and a rare design for a cat lamp of the period.

I found this it at an outdoor flea market in southern Ohio last summer. I paid $10, to me a princely sum, thinking it was a vase. It wasn't until I got it home and gave it a good once over that I realized it was actually a lamp, not just an awesome wicked cat planter. The back is marked Miramar of California 1956.

Unfortunately, my sassy feline seems to be missing a small black light bulb and electrical box, so if you have one lying around...•

It ain't no Elvis: The other 1970s find, the velvet matador painting...

2007-07-25T21:38:00.001-06:00

Velvet painting were all the rage in the 1970s. Maybe because velvet has always screamed "classy." Well, until you paint an Elvis, a bullfighter, or a naked lady on it and sell it out of the back of a van. Of course, those paintings didn't become declasse until after the 1970s were over. Many an upscale establishment was bedecked in velvet painting (and probably mirrored tiles, but we won't go there...yet).

One of my favorite places, El Matador, a now-defunct rock 'n' roll bar in New Orleans, had plenty of these, so when I walked into the Goodwill and saw this puppy hanging on the wall, I had to have it. I was scared to look at the price tag, and when I finally got up the nerve, my jaw dropped. But in a good way. Ever since eBay hit the scene, a lot of thrift stores have raised prices, assuming everything old is some hidden treasure. Not this store. Velvet Matador Painting: $4.

Into the cart it went. If I get motivated, I thought, maybe I could recreate part of El Matador in my house, complete with this painting and a red velvet booth. Funny how we rationalize purchases. Honestly, I'm probably not that motivated. But I am captivated enough to go home and find out more about the art of velvet paintings.

Turns out, that isn't easy to do. History is pretty slim. This is what I came up with: Artist Edgar Leeteg turned velvet into an art form in the 1930s. The fellow apparently lived quite a rowdy life and inspired James Minchener's book "Rascals in Paradise." Leeteg moved to Tahiti in the 1930s, because he couldn't find much work as an artist during the Depression. He began painting on velvet, trading paintings for bottles of whiskey. Eventually, he was discovered, and now there's even a photo book of all of his paintings, called Leeteg of Tahiti: Paintings from the Villa Velour

He is known as the "Father of the American velvet painting." Quite a title. Apparently, velvet art was not considered art before he came along, but instead fell under the country craft distinction. It seems velvet painting has fallen from grace once again. And on a fun note, Running Press did release a DIY kit called Black Velvet Artist for wannabe velvet painters,with instructions and mini velvet paint by numbers canvases with a matador, a clown and a beach scene.

My hunt for the artists and origins of this painting hasn't turned up much. The signature says R Hernandez, and someone wrote "24X361625-02"in pencil on the back of the frame. It's rather well done. I don't think it's as shabby as some other matadors I've seen, and it's giant, at about 3 feet wide and 2 feet tall. But no luck. Although, finding a painting as cool as this for only $4 , for me, is luck enough. •

About me, and about this blog...

2007-07-25T21:37:00.000-06:00

Some of my earliest memories-- besides Blondie singing "Heart of Glass" on Friday Night Videos -- are of shopping at Goodwill with my mom. Then, it wasn't about treasure-hunting. We were poor. Goodwill was what we could afford. Mom would get store credit for turning in our clothes, and she'd use that to get us "new" ones. I'd play underneath the racks, amid the polyester miniskirt ruffles and corduroy pant legs, while mom picked stuff out for me. Maybe that's why thrifting and buying used always seemed so natural to me. I've always done it. In high school, flush with my first paycheck, I went thrifting. All my clothes were used. Rummage sales got me flustered. I loved it, because it was very clear to me early on that you can find much cooler stuff at estate sales, garage sales, rummage sales, flea markets and thrift stores than you could in any big box retail store. And the bonus was the you didn't have to pay a fortune for it.

And that's why we're here. The thrill of the hunt, and finding good stuff used. My goal is to not only chronicle my favorite finds, but to learn more about the origins of some of the weird stuff we all run across on dusty card tables in someone's yard, or tucked at the back of the bottom shelf at the thrift store. And, how to reuse and remake junk into something fabulous. •