This might not be a hack, but it is useful information.
“The reason that the rich were so rich, Vimes reasoned, was because they managed to spend less money.
Take boots, for example. He earned thirty-eight dollars a month plus allowances. A really good pair of leather boots cost fifty dollars. But an affordable pair of boots, which were sort of OK for a season or two and then leaked like hell when the cardboard gave out, cost about ten dollars. Those were the kind of boots Vimes always bought, and wore until the soles were so thin that he could tell where he was in Ankh-Morpork on a foggy night by the feel of the cobbles.
But the thing was that good boots lasted for years and years. A man who could afford fifty dollars had a pair of boots that’d still be keeping his feet dry in ten years’ time, while the poor man who could only afford cheap boots would have spent a hundred dollars on boots in the same time and would still have wet feet.
This was the Captain Samuel Vimes ‘Boots’ theory of socioeconomic unfairness.”
Along these lines, I asked reddit last week for ideas of things that you can buy which will cost more upfront, but would eventually pay for themselves. My stipulation for the post was that they had to make the money back within one year, didn’t require much more time or skill, and would have to be backed up with a calculation. YMMV based on your habits and climate, but here’s what made the cut:
Switching from disposable razors to safety razors
Buying a weight set off craigslist and ditching a gym membership
Buying a chest freezer off craigslist and buying meat only in bulk or when on sale
Buying the tools for any home project rather than paying someone to fix it
Buying a cable modem rather than renting it (or ditching cable and using a chromecast paired with internet services)
Switching to a programmable thermostat
Buying an electric mattress pad and turning the heat down 10deg in the winter
Insulating your home
Switching to a low-flow shower nozzle
Keeping an herb garden/indoor plant rather than buying fresh herbs
Using a menstrual cup rather than tampons
Using cloth diapers rather than disposable ones
Buying a washing machine rather than going to a laundrymat
Buying a smartphone off-contract and getting a cheaper plan
Using a breadmaker rather than buying store bread
Homebrewing rather than buying beer (probably the most questionable ROI here because of the time and beer consumption needed)
Buying a haircut kit and cutting your own hair
Brewing your own coffee instead of buying it
If you smoke, rolling your own cigarettes or switching to an e-cig
The meta life-hack here is to make personal questions engaging and use the internet to source ideas.
True, some of these require a time investment to learn the skills required (hair cutting, home repair, homebrewing), some require constant maintenance (homebrewing, keeping plants), and some take a bit more time per action (breadmaking), so you should probably discount those. Most of them are purely monetary tradeoffs though.
For some of the original actions (gym, haircuts, coffee, laundromat, going to buy cigarettes/diapers/razors), you should also keep in mind the saved commute time that you are cutting out.
Most of them are purely monetary tradeoffs though.
I disagree. A few are purely monetary trade-offs (e.g. buying your cable modem) but the great majority involve some trade-offs which typically involve time and/or quality of experience.
For example, sleeping on an electric mattress pad and having the room be 10 degrees colder is a rather different experience—one that some people will be fine with, and others won’t. A low-flow shower nozzle saves you a bit on the water bill, but the experience of the shower is different.
I am not saying the experience will be necessarily worse—it might turn out to be better—but I think it’s misleading to think of these changes as “purely monetary trade-offs”.
A low-flow shower nozzle saves you a bit on the water bill, but the experience of the shower is different.
In my experience, this isn’t really true. When changing to a shower with a different water pressure, I will initially notice the difference, but after a few days the feeling of showering with the new pressure is the same as the feeling of showering with the old pressure.
I’d like to see a similar list involving time rather than money. What are things that you can spend a chunk of time on upfront, which will save more time than that within one year?
The question can also be parsed into a cluster of overlapping prompts, some of which transition into general efficiency:
Learn how to do a single task faster.
Ex: Touch typing. Keyboard shortcuts. Find a shorter path. Automate bills. Use a flashcard program like anki.
Figure out how to do a task less frequently (minimize “in-between” time, set-up and tear-down time).
Ex: Learn what items you can buy in bulk. Cook in larger quantities. Schedule errands together.
Identity something you can stop doing, or do significantly less of at modest cost.
Ex: Procrastination? Apply the 80⁄20 heuristic? This category is probably quite personal.
Learn how to better schedule or overlap tasks.
Ex: Learn to cook multiple things at once. Learning to schedule errands at low-traffic time. Listen to an audiobook, or call a friend, or practice singing, etc. while doing mentally undemanding things like chores.
Not related to upfront costs per se, but here are some additional thrift tips.
A top-loading freezer loses less heat when opened than a front-loading freezer. Regardless of which kind you have, though, packing all the space not taken up by food with bottled tap water will greatly reduce the heat loss and save you money on your electrical bill.
If you’re in the US, you’re probably using fabric softener when you do laundry. I have experimented with the concentration of liquid fabric softener, and found that you can dilute it with water down to about 5-10% of its original strength and it still softens the clothing. I do laundry for a family of 3, and I only have to buy fabric softener once every six months or so, if that.
Laundry detergent is not quite as extreme as fabric softener, but I’ve found that diluting it (or if powder, just using less) to about 80% of its original concentration works fine, unless your clothes are really dirty or really smelly.
Still on the topic of laundry. Most of the time, there is no reason to wash your clothes with hot water. Unless they are really disgusting, cold water works fine, and save electricity.
If you don’t want to switch from disposable razors, you can greatly extend their life by stropping them (against your arm works fine; just remember not to do it in the damaging direction).
If you eat out (not very thrifty to begin with, but sometimes time is precious), remember that even a non-alcoholic beverage is probably adding $2 to your bill ($2.40 with tip). Switch to water when eating out, and if you do so once a week, you’re saving about $125/year.
Diluting (liquid) laundry detergent instead of just using less sounds weird to me, but maybe your washer works differently than mine.
In similar vein: slightly counterintuitively, front-loading washers are more efficient than top-loading. If water is expensive where you live, selling off the old one and switching is a good fiscal choice. Also consider getting newer toilets, if yours are old and use a lot of water per flush; the new designs are a lot more efficient.
Another perk of the “bottles of water in the fridge/freezer” trick is that it will keep food cold much longer if your power goes out. In some parts of the world (or if you’re just expecting huge windstorms, as apparently much of the US west coast is right now) this is valuable. Just remember not to fully fill the bottles (or gallon milk jugs, or whatever you’re using) and then cap them!
If you drive to work each day and could take the bus (or train or other mass transit), look closely at what you spend on gas, tolls (if applicable), and car maintenance (my rule of thumb: the car maintenance is probably about as much as you spend on gas, though this obvious varies with the price of gas, age of the car, and how good you are at doing your own maintenance). A bus pass may end up being significantly cheaper, even at the cost of some time. If you have to pay for parking at work, the bus is almost undoubtedly cheaper… and all this assumes your employer won’t offer discount or free transit passes, which skews the advantage even harder. If transit isn’t available, look at setting up a carpool. All of these options also mean more time to do things like read a book (or the Sequences, as I’m currently doing), work on a personal project, or get an early start on the workday (by answering email if nothing else).
Alternatively, in good weather, consider a bicycle; even if you have to buy the bike you’ll come out ahead if you can use it semi-regularly (especially if you consider the benefit of the exercise). A serviceable bike for road / paved trail riding is pretty cheap.
If you’re dating, learn to prepare some good / commonly-liked food at home; it’ll cost a lot less than a night out, gives you a chance to give your partner something you made yourself (or together, which some people find fun), and snuggling on the couch for a movie is a lot nicer (and more private) than a commercial cinema.
In an effort to optimize the dressing process, he alternates between two pairs of jeans, and orders nylon or polyester T-shirts from Amazon, wearing them for a few weeks before donating them. When the clothes get smelly, he puts them in the freezer, to get rid of the odor. “Sometimes, during the day, a couple of hours will do it,” he told me. “I’ll wear a towel.”
I tried that over the summer, where I would wear the same black polyester T-shirt as an undershirt every day, then I would hang it up overnight to air it out. It took on the odor of my underarm deodorant, and the freezer trick sort of works. But eventually I would have to launder the T-shirt anyway after a couple weeks and then hang it up to dry.
Because of current economic trends, I suspect our standards of personal hygiene in the U.S. will see regression towards the mean in the coming years, where we’ll learn to tolerate body odor again and wear clothing cleaned less often to match.
Because of current economic trends, I suspect our standards of personal hygiene in the U.S. will see regression towards the mean in the coming years, where we’ll learn to tolerate body odor again and wear clothing cleaned less often to match.
With what probability do you estimate this will occur?
Impressive, but electric mattresses probably consume more money than simlpy stacking on the blankets. Also, they do funny things to your thermoregulation.
This might not be a hack, but it is useful information.
Along these lines, I asked reddit last week for ideas of things that you can buy which will cost more upfront, but would eventually pay for themselves. My stipulation for the post was that they had to make the money back within one year, didn’t require much more time or skill, and would have to be backed up with a calculation. YMMV based on your habits and climate, but here’s what made the cut:
Switching from disposable razors to safety razors
Buying a weight set off craigslist and ditching a gym membership
Buying a chest freezer off craigslist and buying meat only in bulk or when on sale
Buying the tools for any home project rather than paying someone to fix it
Buying a cable modem rather than renting it (or ditching cable and using a chromecast paired with internet services)
Switching to a programmable thermostat
Buying an electric mattress pad and turning the heat down 10deg in the winter
Insulating your home
Switching to a low-flow shower nozzle
Keeping an herb garden/indoor plant rather than buying fresh herbs
Using a menstrual cup rather than tampons
Using cloth diapers rather than disposable ones
Buying a washing machine rather than going to a laundrymat
Buying a smartphone off-contract and getting a cheaper plan
Using a breadmaker rather than buying store bread
Homebrewing rather than buying beer (probably the most questionable ROI here because of the time and beer consumption needed)
Buying a haircut kit and cutting your own hair
Brewing your own coffee instead of buying it
If you smoke, rolling your own cigarettes or switching to an e-cig
The meta life-hack here is to make personal questions engaging and use the internet to source ideas.
Some of these assume your time is worth zero.
True, some of these require a time investment to learn the skills required (hair cutting, home repair, homebrewing), some require constant maintenance (homebrewing, keeping plants), and some take a bit more time per action (breadmaking), so you should probably discount those. Most of them are purely monetary tradeoffs though.
For some of the original actions (gym, haircuts, coffee, laundromat, going to buy cigarettes/diapers/razors), you should also keep in mind the saved commute time that you are cutting out.
I disagree. A few are purely monetary trade-offs (e.g. buying your cable modem) but the great majority involve some trade-offs which typically involve time and/or quality of experience.
For example, sleeping on an electric mattress pad and having the room be 10 degrees colder is a rather different experience—one that some people will be fine with, and others won’t. A low-flow shower nozzle saves you a bit on the water bill, but the experience of the shower is different.
I am not saying the experience will be necessarily worse—it might turn out to be better—but I think it’s misleading to think of these changes as “purely monetary trade-offs”.
In my experience, this isn’t really true. When changing to a shower with a different water pressure, I will initially notice the difference, but after a few days the feeling of showering with the new pressure is the same as the feeling of showering with the old pressure.
In my experience it is. I feel the difference and like high pressure much more.
I’d like to see a similar list involving time rather than money. What are things that you can spend a chunk of time on upfront, which will save more time than that within one year?
No specifics, but xkcd has a nice chart on how much time you should invest to automate something.
These probably aren’t the best ones out there, just what came to mind easily:
For people who take a few different medications, those weekly pill box things—it takes less attention to do it all at once when non-groggy.
Keeping one’s workspace clean and organized might be an example; a lot of people say they can pay attention more easily when things are clean.
Keep bicycle tires well pumped—makes you go a lot faster. (Also, having the correct kind of tires. Mountain bike tires are slow on pavement.)
Set up the computer/browser to automatically open the tabs/programs you use the most. (I know some people who do this on their work computers.)
“no ’poo” hair washing makes hair less oily so you need to wash it less often. Also cheaper. (baking soda + vinegar is the usual method.)
buying two weeks’ worth of groceries at once so you don’t have to shop as often
Dvorac and other alternative keyboard layouts
email inbox automation things (I’ve not used any, but people seem to like them)
The question can also be parsed into a cluster of overlapping prompts, some of which transition into general efficiency:
Learn how to do a single task faster.
Ex: Touch typing. Keyboard shortcuts. Find a shorter path. Automate bills. Use a flashcard program like anki.
Figure out how to do a task less frequently (minimize “in-between” time, set-up and tear-down time).
Ex: Learn what items you can buy in bulk. Cook in larger quantities. Schedule errands together.
Identity something you can stop doing, or do significantly less of at modest cost.
Ex: Procrastination? Apply the 80⁄20 heuristic? This category is probably quite personal.
Learn how to better schedule or overlap tasks.
Ex: Learn to cook multiple things at once. Learning to schedule errands at low-traffic time. Listen to an audiobook, or call a friend, or practice singing, etc. while doing mentally undemanding things like chores.
The electric blanket/programmable thermostat combo means that you don’t need to wake up cold in the morning.
/r/buyitforlife is dedicated to this (though durability is the focus above frugality).
Not related to upfront costs per se, but here are some additional thrift tips.
A top-loading freezer loses less heat when opened than a front-loading freezer. Regardless of which kind you have, though, packing all the space not taken up by food with bottled tap water will greatly reduce the heat loss and save you money on your electrical bill.
If you’re in the US, you’re probably using fabric softener when you do laundry. I have experimented with the concentration of liquid fabric softener, and found that you can dilute it with water down to about 5-10% of its original strength and it still softens the clothing. I do laundry for a family of 3, and I only have to buy fabric softener once every six months or so, if that.
Laundry detergent is not quite as extreme as fabric softener, but I’ve found that diluting it (or if powder, just using less) to about 80% of its original concentration works fine, unless your clothes are really dirty or really smelly.
Still on the topic of laundry. Most of the time, there is no reason to wash your clothes with hot water. Unless they are really disgusting, cold water works fine, and save electricity.
If you don’t want to switch from disposable razors, you can greatly extend their life by stropping them (against your arm works fine; just remember not to do it in the damaging direction).
If you eat out (not very thrifty to begin with, but sometimes time is precious), remember that even a non-alcoholic beverage is probably adding $2 to your bill ($2.40 with tip). Switch to water when eating out, and if you do so once a week, you’re saving about $125/year.
Diluting (liquid) laundry detergent instead of just using less sounds weird to me, but maybe your washer works differently than mine.
In similar vein: slightly counterintuitively, front-loading washers are more efficient than top-loading. If water is expensive where you live, selling off the old one and switching is a good fiscal choice. Also consider getting newer toilets, if yours are old and use a lot of water per flush; the new designs are a lot more efficient.
Another perk of the “bottles of water in the fridge/freezer” trick is that it will keep food cold much longer if your power goes out. In some parts of the world (or if you’re just expecting huge windstorms, as apparently much of the US west coast is right now) this is valuable. Just remember not to fully fill the bottles (or gallon milk jugs, or whatever you’re using) and then cap them!
If you drive to work each day and could take the bus (or train or other mass transit), look closely at what you spend on gas, tolls (if applicable), and car maintenance (my rule of thumb: the car maintenance is probably about as much as you spend on gas, though this obvious varies with the price of gas, age of the car, and how good you are at doing your own maintenance). A bus pass may end up being significantly cheaper, even at the cost of some time. If you have to pay for parking at work, the bus is almost undoubtedly cheaper… and all this assumes your employer won’t offer discount or free transit passes, which skews the advantage even harder. If transit isn’t available, look at setting up a carpool. All of these options also mean more time to do things like read a book (or the Sequences, as I’m currently doing), work on a personal project, or get an early start on the workday (by answering email if nothing else).
Alternatively, in good weather, consider a bicycle; even if you have to buy the bike you’ll come out ahead if you can use it semi-regularly (especially if you consider the benefit of the exercise). A serviceable bike for road / paved trail riding is pretty cheap.
If you’re dating, learn to prepare some good / commonly-liked food at home; it’ll cost a lot less than a night out, gives you a chance to give your partner something you made yourself (or together, which some people find fun), and snuggling on the couch for a movie is a lot nicer (and more private) than a commercial cinema.
As far as boots go, is there a good guide on buying shoes for nerds somewhere?
The article about Eric Rheinhart in The New Yorker says the following:
http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2014/05/12/the-end-of-food
I tried that over the summer, where I would wear the same black polyester T-shirt as an undershirt every day, then I would hang it up overnight to air it out. It took on the odor of my underarm deodorant, and the freezer trick sort of works. But eventually I would have to launder the T-shirt anyway after a couple weeks and then hang it up to dry.
Because of current economic trends, I suspect our standards of personal hygiene in the U.S. will see regression towards the mean in the coming years, where we’ll learn to tolerate body odor again and wear clothing cleaned less often to match.
With what probability do you estimate this will occur?
Impressive, but electric mattresses probably consume more money than simlpy stacking on the blankets. Also, they do funny things to your thermoregulation.