Save Money On Gift Wrapping

You don't have to buy all your gift wrapping supplies at the store—let your imagination run wild! For example, for gift wrap try cutting up old gift bags or even brown paper lunch sacks or paper bags from the grocery store. In a pinch, they'll work as gift wrapping paper. Use old hair ribbons, yarn, or string to tie up your packages.

For homemade bows, see the earlier Frugalvore posting Save Money With Homemade Bows.

As for gift tags, I recently started using old Birthday and Christmas cards. What I do is get some scissors and cut out an interesting part of the front of the card, for example Santa's face or a ballon, but blank on the backside. Even if it's not blank on the back, you could cut a piece of plain paper the same shape and glue stick it to the back over the existing writing. Write your message in the blank area and tie your homemade tag to the gift bow with a piece of string or ribbon.

For supplies like scotch tape, glue sticks, ribbon, or string, buy in bulk or on sale if you can after the holidays.

Finally, don't be afraid to ask relatives and friends to save leftover scraps of gift wrap or other supplies that they were going to throw away and give them to you.

Save Money With Homemade Bows

When I was around seven or eight years old, my Mom showed me how to make beautiful homemade bows for our presents. I loved that it was something fun and creative that we could do together, and that it only required tape, gift wrap, and a pair of scissors. As an adult, I can appreciate the money it saves too!

It is simple enough to do, but it is one of those things that is easier to show someone than to describe. I decided that the best way to teach how to do it would be a video, so here it is. I was nervous making it, but I hope you will like it and find making your own bows as fun and useful as I have!

Making The Most Of Amazon.com

According to the 2016 Forbes listing of the world’s richest billionaires, Jeff Bezos is the 5^th richest person on Earth. His fortune comes almost entirely from Amazon.com, the online retailer he started in 1994. When it began, Amazon only sold books, but has since grown to sell just about everything.

Their enormous size and purchasing power, and lack of expensive storefronts, means that Amazon often has the best prices to be found on a vast range of products. This has led to consumers, including your trusty Frugalvore authors, to buy more and more "stuff" from them. That said, there are still some ways to save even more money shopping at Amazon and we’ll look at some of them below.

If you purchase a lot from Amazon, and you haven’t already, you should seriously consider signing up for Amazon Prime. At the time this article was written, it cost $99 per year. That annual fee gets you free two-day shipping on most items. In many cases, if the warehouse that ships your item is in the same state as you, you may even get your order delivered the next day. You will quickly get used to this and when you order online from a different retailer you’ll find it drives you crazy when your package takes several days to arrive.

But Amazon Prime doesn’t just stop there, Prime members are also entitled to a long list of other free benefits as well. Many of them will save you money.

After you’ve got Amazon Prime, the next way you can save money is to sign up for the Amazon Prime Store Card. This credit card will give you 5% back every month on all your Amazon purchases, which is pretty darn good. The drawback of this card is that the interest rate (APR) is quite high and is currently about 26%. This means you’ll definitely want to pay off your balance in full every month. There is a way to pay no interest for large purchases for six months, but if you don’t pay it off within that time you’ll get hit with the full deferred six months interest—so probably best to just avoid this possibility and pay in full.

One final way to save money on Amazon is to wait for the best price on an item before purchasing. There is a website called CamelCamelCamel.com, which allows you to view historical price information for most items sold on Amazon, and then enter a target price that CamelCamelCamel will track and then notify you if/when the item reaches that price. Clearly this is only of use if you can hold off purchasing an item until it reaches a better price. If you can wait, it is common to save an additional 5 or 10% on an item using this method.

Improve Your Credit Score

There are several factors that can affect your credit score. The most obvious of these is paying your bills on time. In fact, your payment history is the number one variable used by the credit bureaus when calculating your FICO score. This is closely followed by the amount you owe.

Now, you might assume that the more you owe, the worse it will affect your score, but it’s not quite that simple. In fact, the credit bureaus don’t just look at the amount you owe, but at a percentage that they arrive at by dividing the total amount you owe by the total amount of credit available to you. In fancy terms, this is known as your “utilization ratio,” and in general you want to keep this number under 20%.

Let’s look at the example of a person who has a single credit card. Say they owe $2,100 and that their credit limit on that card is $10,000. This means their utilization ratio is $2,100 / $10,000, which works out to 0.21 or 21%.

As mentioned earlier, most experts suggest keeping your credit utilization ratio under 20% to maximize your credit score. If you can manage it, the best way to do this would be to pay off enough of your debt to get the ratio under 20%. This way you both potentially increase your credit score and pay less monthly interest on your debt—a win-win!

If our example person can manage it, the best thing for them to do would be to pay off more than $100. Let's say they pay $200, which makes the new amount they owe $1,900, and their utilization ratio would be $1,900 / $10,000, which is a little below 20% at 19%.

But if you can’t repay some of the debt, there is another trick you might try. Contact the credit card company and request an increase of your credit limit. If the credit card company gives you enough of an increase, it can bring your utilization ratio below 20%.

Continuing our example from above, if the credit card company increased our example person's credit limit to $12,000, now their utilization ratio would be $2,100 / $12,000, which is below 20% at 17.5%.

Free Learning Videos

We all love free free videos on YouTube, and I was looking for some instructions/videos on how to Make Birthday Cards for anybody out there. I'm always trying to find ways of saving money, and making our Free Birthday cards with just a few affordable supplies from the house: Colored paper, pens, scissors, glue stick, and other supplies. I have some creativity, but I’m so visual. For example I watched a video of Free Happy Birthday Cards for everybody on YouTube.

Next, I was looking forward to using my Brother Sewing Machine, but I didn’t know where to start. Anybody been there like myself? Look I am a beginner and I wanted help just to learn how to see video/instruction videos since I am so visual. I just want to learn the basics of my sewing machine, and then do simple stitches, mending of clothes and more. I can’t wait to finish stitching some runners and a bib and more things to come. I found a video on Free Brother Sewing machine tips and instruction on YouTube.

Erase The Middleman

If you see a great deal from a local business on a website like Groupon or Amazon Local, consider contacting that business and asking if they’ll give you the deal price directly.

They may say yes since this could save them money they would otherwise have to pay to the middleman. This usually works best for smaller, locally owned and operated businesses rather than large chains. With a large chain the person you talk to might not be in a position to agree to such a request.

Hello And Welcome

Hello and welcome to frugalvore.com!

Every blog has to start somewhere—but where to begin? Good manners would dictate some introductions, so let’s start there. My name is David. Along with my wife, Kristi, we will be your host and hostess for this little get-together called frugalvore.com.

But what is a Frugalvore, you ask? We envision a Frugalvore as someone who tries, with each purchasing decision they make, to optimize their spending.

That is not to say that a Frugalvore is a miser. They desire to live a happy and comfortable life just like anyone else, but they try to do it while spending the least amount of their hard-earned cash. When considering a purchase, a Frugalvore considers all ideas that may lead to the best deal. They research, analyze, and test until they find the optimal solution.

Needless to say, that can be a lot of work. So with this blog we will share our ideas with you, our readers, and we encourage you to speak up and tell us what you think. Your feedback will help us tweak our results to be even better.

Some postings will be tiny. Some will be multi-post “story arcs” that detail a long-running research project. But there can only be one first post…and this is it!