80 Hang up. Ditch your cell
plan if you use the phone only
for emergencies. You can call
911 from any working cellphone,
even if you don’t have a service
plan or assigned number. A mobile phone costs as little as $10.
Check out freebies at www.
americancellphonedrive.org.
81 Penny-wise superfoods.
What foods give you the most
vitamins and minerals for the
least money? In descending
order, the best vegetables are
cabbage, collard greens, mustard greens, turnip greens and
carrots. Top fruits are watermelon, plums, oranges, apples
and strawberries.
82 Free music online.
Internet radio stations such as
nu Tsie, StereoMood and Jango
offer music to fit your taste and
mood. Radio Tuna searches
for online stations currently
streaming the artist or genre
you’ve requested.
83 Try homesteading. To
boost their populations, some
rural communities in Minnesota, Colorado, Kansas, Nebraska
and Iowa provide free land to
build a home, often with tax
incentives. Do a Web search
for “free land” or contact the
Center for Rural Affairs (cfra
.org) for details.
84 Down the drain. Don’t
brush your hair over a sink. Discard cooking grease into cans,
not into the drain. Pour a kettle
of boiling water down each sink
monthly to dislodge grease and
soap scum before it hardens
into clogs.
85 Use every bubble. Don’t
discard slivers of soap. Melt
them in a double boiler and
pour the liquid into a pan to
make new bars. Or put them
into a leg from old pantyhose
and use until the suds are gone.
86 Tomorrow’s soup. When you prepare a chicken, turkey or ham for dinner, freeze the bones to use later for soup stock. And make more than you need for one dinner—the leftovers can be frozen as take- to-work lunch. >>
87 Natural pest control.
Cockroaches hate catnip-simmered water sprayed near
baseboards. To repel mosqui-toes, dab lavender oil on your
skin or drink two teaspoons of
cider vinegar in a glass of water
for a pore-emitted repellent. If
this repels you, check out the
many commercial products on
the market.
88 End postage hikes. Buying “forever” stamps means
you won’t have to worry about
higher postage costs when
mailing a 1-ounce first-class
letter, regardless of future
hikes. And some stamp dealers
will sell you bulk quantities of
old regular stamps at a discount from face value.
89 Cheap textbooks. Cut
the average $1,000 annual book bill for your college
offspring by guiding them to
Bartelby.com or Gutenberg.org
for free downloads of selected
textbooks. To rent books,
there’s Chegg.com, BookRent-er.com and CampusBookRen-tals.com.
90 Return to sender. Reply
envelopes in junk mail can be
slit, turned inside out, and
closed up with a dab of glue.
Voila! A perfectly good envelope for mailing.
GREAT
WAYS TO
SAVE
2011
9 9
