Poor Man’s Odd Ways to Save a Buck

Poor Man Survival

Self Reliance tools for independent minded people…

www.poormansurvivor.net

ISSN 2161-5543

A Digest of Urban Survival Resources

The art is not in making the money, but in keeping it. – Proverb

Many of our readers are concerned about becoming more resilient without spending a lot of money. After all, it’s no secret that the economy hasn’t quite rebounded and the increasing rate of inflation certainly doesn’t help either.

It’s important to remember that money is simply another form of exchange. We have talked in detail about local sharing economies in previous posts and it is one of our main themes. It is also a perfect example of how we can become more resilient without breaking the bank.

For instance, we can just as easily trade an item we don’t need for something we do. You can literally trade anything that has value to someone else. If you think about it, this isn’t much different than our currency system anyway.

Here are just a few ways I saved money this week…

   My AAA Auto Club membership renewal came in the mail this week…I didn’t renew it.

I have AAA’s top tier plan with a 100-mile towing deal but the price in MI goes up every year and I seldom use it. My price for the same plan in AZ was $98, in MI it’s $145!

I started looking around and found pretty much identical plans available through AARP and AMAC in the $70 range. Needless to say, I chose another plan which is run by Allstate.

Something else I picked up on. Milk by the quart (about all I ever use) runs nearly $2 or more at our supermarket.  At our area Dollar Tree store I found milk (in whole, 2% and 1%) aseptic packages for .99 cents.  These are good for longer term storage as well given the ones I purchased don’t expire until nearly 2016!

Although I rarely eat lunchmeat anymore [too much sodium] I found slicing my own bologna and other meats was cheaper than buying it pre-packaged at the supermarket. However, if you purchase lunch meats that are on sale at the deli counter, you can save up to 31%…just avoid their fancy pre-made salads as they are expensive.

Of course, you can save further by purchasing store brands and researchers recently discovered in many cases, supermarket store brands offered bigger savings over Costco and Walmart, even on household staples and beauty products. Use coupons to save even more on items you regularly buy.

With Christmas rapidly approaching, buy ribbons and wrapping at dollar stores to save money. One year my mother had saved the comic sections from newspapers and used them to wrap gifts…better than lining the birdcage!

You can learn more about saving money, creating your own community currency and the art of bartering by visiting our main site and browsing through our many categories.

www.PoorManSurvival.com

Hackett Makes His Own Post-apocalyptic Currency [Video]

When civilization collapses, this hand-built coin press could mint money to buy goats, grain, or even a spouse.

Money makes the world run—but without a stable government, paper bills will be little more than fire starters, and coins chips of cheap metal. Bartering is inconvenient: If I desperately want the cat food you’ve stockpiled, but you have no need for the fine moonshine I can produce, it will take multiple trades to satisfy us both. A more efficient solution would be to mint a new currency.

Coins are manufactured by squeezing a disk of soft metal, or planchet, between two harder dies—typically cylinders with images cut into their faces. Given enough energy, the planchet briefly acts like a liquid, flowing into the nooks and crannies of the dies. I chose to mint my coins out of copper, which can be reused to make electrical parts, giving them real-world value. For the dies, I used saltwater and a battery to etch patterns into two hydraulic pistons. Then came the hard part.

http://www.popsci.com/article/diy/hackett-makes-his-own-postapocalyptic-currency-video?dom=PSC&loc=poprail&lnk=7&con=hackett-makes-his-own-postapocalyptic-currency-video

Do more & spend less with the Poor Man’s top tips

To develop your Self-sufficiency, Homemade & DIY skills…

http://poormansurvivorblog.blogspot.com/2014/10/poor-mans-odd-ways-of-making-dime-do.html