Customer Reviews

Yankee Magazine's Living Well on a Shoestring: 1,501 Ingenious Ways to Spend Less for What You Need and Have More for What You Want

5 star:		(5)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

The tips offered in this book fall into two categories:

1. Things you already know if you have a bit of common sense (Example: Fix the toilet if it leaks, or else the water will cost you money)

2. Things that do not make sense (Example: Disassemble you flashlight so you have a place to keep pens in the flashlight cylinder and don't need to buy a pen holder. Keep the flashlight parts somewhere, so you can put it back together in a power outage)

I admit, I am not an expert in frugal living. If you are, perhaps you will find the second category useful. With this book, we were looking to find some advice on how to save money. Out of the "1501 ingenious ways", there were two or three I found I could use. I will donate my copy to the local library. If you are interested in this book, I recommend you follow the advice of another reviewer and check it out from your library first.

For over a decade I have loved reading YANKEE magazine and this book from the editors of YANKEE magazine is a gold mine of useful information.

Close to 400 pages that cover everything from Secrets of a Debt Free Life; Easy Ways To Increase Your Income; Spending Less on Furniture; Personal Care for Pennies; Frugal Ways to Deal with Financial Emergencies; Celebrating On a Budget; Holiday and Gift Giving on a Budget and Thrifty Travel and Vacation Ideas.

Now I cant use everything in the book, but I picked up enough helpful ideas I never knew about, to consider it a good investment and the nice thing is the Library now owns the book so think of all the others who will get advise as well.

If you think you'd like to decorate your home with cardboard tubes, construction paper, and glitter, this is the book for you. Otherwise, you might not find it very useful.

The book does have some hints that I found helpful, especially in the section on home remedies (the things you can do with vinegar!). Also, some hints on saving money were sensible, if obvious (if you don't read a magazine, quit your subscription -- sounds obvious, right? If only I could follow that advice...)

But for the most part, I didn't find much I could use. For example, instead of simply saying "have a garage sale and advertise for it" as an idea to make some cash, they give five or six ideas for advertising for a garage sale, some of which are just absurd (eg, painting footprints on the sidewalk leading to your house).

Some advice just seemed ill-advised to me, such as using your 401(k) as a savings vehicle for college or a first-time home. Sure, you're allowed to tap it for those purposes, but you shouldn't plan it that way!

And a lot of the advice just seemed to lead you down the road to a more cluttered life, for example, the tip to fill a 5-gallon bucket with sand and motor oil to clean off the metal parts of your gardening tools. How are you supposed to dispose of that properly? Who's got space for a bucket of oily sand? Ugh.

If all the examples I've cited really excite you, then by all means, buy this book. Otherwise, just check it out of the library. Or just check it off your to-read list altogether.

Once you start acquiring a few of these frugality books, you see some overlapping of content. However, I consider this book part of the "Thrifty Canon," along with Amy Dacyczyn's Tightwad Gazette and Larry Roth's Living Cheap News. Covers lots of territory--from eating on a budget to spending less on entertainment.

Do what any good tightwad would do--borrow it from the library first to see if many of the advice could apply to you. If you find you'd like to keep it as a reference (mine is filled with highlighted words and passages), go ahead and buy it--it's money well spent!

This book has a great variety of ideas for frugal living without sacrificing quality. I keep mine as a catalog, so to speak. Not all of the ideas apply to me, but many of them do. This book was money very well spent -- which I am sure will make the authors happy!

As you may have been reading in the other reviews, this book is very different. Most of the suggestions are wacky, and really could only save you pennies to say the least. Once in awhile, the suggestions are okay, if you own a home (which I don't because I don't have money) but if you followed every suggestion in the book you would be the laughing stock of your community. There are much better books on the market for the purpose this book is supposed to serve. If only they would update it, it wouldn't be half bad. I mean, they talk about going to the library to use internet when almost everyone has internet on their phones nowadays and other wierd "hints" that just don't make sense. They spend a whole section on just organizing your bills and putting them in places like a shoe organizer or an empty cereal box because this will help you save money.

Real frugal people would just save their money and skip the book to read something that will actually help you.

This book suffers from trying to cram too many ideas into a small space. Each chapter is divided into small sections which are then further divided into very brief tips. Amidst all that are margin notes and quotes from readers with frugal suggestions, and it makes for a very cluttered read.

The ideas given in the book range from common sense to handy new ideas to the downright silly and unfeasible.

Here's a few examples: One suggestion for creating a savings is that book lovers borrow books from the library instead of buying them, and then putting the price of the book in the savings account. Another tip is to pay attention to the cash register receipt immediately after making a purchase and deal with overcharges right there. Those are good ideas.

Then there's common sense ideas such as making your own coffee/food or doing your own repairs. But does anyone really need to be told that it's cheaper to do it on your own? What if certain repairs are beyond your capabilities?

One so-called helpful hint suggests saving the change that falls out of pockets in the laundry: "When you save enough change, you can buy more laundry detergent." If I was to wait until I got enough stray change to buy detergent, I'd never have any soap. It's a silly idea, not practical in the least.

Too much weight is placed on the cleverness of some ideas. One suggestion is to trim your hedges around your home instead of buying alarms or locks. While it's a good idea to reduce the hiding places around your home, one shouldn't rely solely on a neat yard for theft protection.

However, there are some good ideas in the book, and if you're serious about learning new ways to be frugal, it's worthwhile to check this book out. It's a quick read and occasionally entertaining.

This book is an excellent source for anyone who is trying to accomplish their goals which require a great amount of money. Not only do they offer tips and experiences, they also make the reader feel more at ease without the fancy grammar used in some books for living well.

I was trying to battle my way out of debt, and needed all the help I could get. This book was full of resources, and I'm using quite a few of the ways presented. Still fun now that I'm out of debt to see where I can spend even less.

This book is packed with ideas on how to live frugally and economically. It shows how to keep more of the money you earn by spending less. It covers most areas involved in playing financial defense from budgeting, earning extra money, getting and staying out of debt, to saving on purchases of cars, vacations, and grocery trips plus many more areas. The book will with no doubt pay for itself if only one of the many tips are followed. This book is for the truly penny pinching and frugal, it is Spartan and many people who are use to spending because they think they "deserve" things will likely find this book to extreme for their tastes. But the tightwad will find this book very informative and full of new ways to spend less while living well on a shoestring budget. Also check out the book "Tightwad Gazette" for even more money saving ideas.