The Reader Digests | Blogging, Take Three!

Alrighty, I'm not going to beat around the bush here.  It has been a long time since I have blogged.  I actually forgot how to log on to our blogging site.  That is how much time it has been!  

So let's review my blogging fails...

First, I tried the Short Attention Span Challenge and I couldn't keep it up. It was too, well, challenging.  But truthfully, it's because I went back to school (after this post) and I just couldn't do all those projects combined with working full-time, parenting my kids, and grad school every week. 

Then, I tried Miss Moneypennypincher's money-saving blog.  Here's the deal, I ran out of money-saving ideas.  I guess if I was Suze Orman or Dave Ramsey, I would have more than a blog at ssjcpl.com (not that there is anything wrong with that, mind you!).

If you won't, then I will!

Now (and hopefully forever-ish), I am undertaking a whole new blog!  And here is the premise:

Do I eat food? Yes.

Do I like food? Yes.

Can I talk endlessly about food? Yes!

Sounds like an obvious "blogging win" to me!

My new blog is The Reader Digests! Yum!!!

Every  Friday at 2 p.m. 

Miss Moneypennypincher | Greeting Card Chuckles

Yesterday was my birthday and one of my very creative coworkers made me a handmade greeting card with a silly joke in it.  It got me thinking how much I spend on greeting cards.  

I try and buy the sets they have at Costco for $19.99 but sometimes I want more than a generic birthday/wedding/baby card.  I want something hilarious.  So, I take myself to the nearest greeting card store and find a fantastically funny card for WHOA!!!!! $3 to $6?  Even more for a "singing" card? What?!  I look through the cheap cards, but alas, nothing sticks out.  

Why don't I just make the card myself, as my amazing coworker did for me?  It's personal.  It saves money.  And let's be honest, we have some pretty funny joke books at the library, if I say so myself.  Check one out - free!  Give a joke card to everyone you know!

Courtesy of crazyleafdesign.com

Here's a few...

For your teacher:
What is a light year?
A year with very little homework!
Except your homework is fun (and I really want an A)! Thanks for being awesome, my "favorite" teacher!

For your doctor:
What did the grasshopper say when it hit the windshield?
"If I had any guts I'd do it again."
Thanks for taking such great care of my guts, Dr. ______!

 For your librarian:
What books did the owl like?
Hoot-dunnits!
You're the best librarian around!  Thanks for always figuring out what books I need - even when all I know about it is that there is a girl and maybe a dog or possibly a cat in it.

 For Thanksgiving:
Why should you never talk like a turkey?
Because it's bad to use fowl language!
Especially when you have a mouth full of potatoes!  Happy Thanksgiving!

Miss Moneypennypincher | The Cost of Garage Sales and Legos

I have collected a lot of garbage treasures over the years.  The worst part, is that even when I try and get rid of it, I think, "I could make money off some of this!  I need to have a garage sale and sell it!"  Then it goes in the garage, in a box, where I forget about it, until the next time I clean out my house and find more junk treasures that I collected.  I am sure this stuff could be useful to someone, but the thought of the time and planning that goes into a garage sale is overwhelming to me.  And really, is it always worth it?  

I love sitting in front of my house selling boxes and tires! So fun!

Let's say I have a two-day garage sale,  I make $500 in profit.  I spent the day before planning and pricing all my items, and putting up signs or promoting, from 8 a.m. to 2 p.m.  I also paid my kid $50 to help me.  I open my garage sale at 8 a.m. (ignoring all the crazy garage sale fanatics who showed up at 6 a.m. and knocked on my door) and close at 2 p.m.  So, how much did I really make?  $25 an hour (18 hours of work).  That's pretty good, but I also have to factor in with the cost all the fun things I could have been doing - going to the park, spending quality time with my husband and family, reading a great book, learning a new skill, or just recharging for the busy week ahead.  Those are all important things too!  

I'm not saying garage sales aren't great.  I'm not saying you shouldn't have one. What I am saying, is that sometimes, it's worth it to just donate the items to charity. If you itemize your taxes, you might get quite a bit of that money back - and you hardly had to do anything!  Lots of places could use your stuff.  Teachers need good books, and crayons, and paper.  The Homeless Shelter is always looking for a range of things to use in the shelter or sell in the thrift store.  

And the library is looking for Legos.  WHAT?  Legos?  I mean books right? Well, yes we still need books, but we also really need Legos!  .

If you happen to have a box of Legos in your garage, and you planned on selling them, consider donating them to the library for the Ripon Branch's Lego Club (you don't have to come to Ripon to drop them off, we can send them from your favorite branch).  Why a Lego Club you might ask? This club - for tots through teens - is a great way to encourage fine motor skills, inspire the next great engineer or architect, promote books AND learn through the power of play!  So come on in, and donate your clutter Legos!

Miss Moneypennypincher | Musical Stylings

There are many ways to listen to music these days, with some great free options.  I myself, often listen to Pandora, the radio, and my personal music library.  Sometimes though, when I am shuffling through multiple songs - often times from different genres - it doesn't always seem like I am getting the "full story" from musicians I like, or think I might enjoy more.  And it's true.  Not all, but certainly a good number of albums really should be enjoyed from start to finish.  We (some library staff and I) came up with a list of some of our favorite albums and artists just off the top of our heads: Exile on Main Street, The Lumineers, Elephant, Abbey Road, Dark Side of the Moon, Mumford and Sons, Bruce Springsteen, American Beauty.  Listening to a few songs from the album are okay, but listening to the whole thing, all at once, is a different experience entirely.  However, albums are expensive.  The cheapest ones I find are usually still $9.99.  I don't want to shell out $10 for an entire album only to discover I didn't like most of the songs, or worse yet didn't like the whole thing.  

 Once again, the library comes to my rescue.  I can check out music here, figure out if I like it, and decide whether I want to commit to making that purchase.  One time (okay maybe more than once), I listened to every album by The Black Keys in order, some albums requested from SSJCPL and the others through Link Plus - a great way to find some more obscure stuff.  Listening to albums in order reminds me of reading books by a specific author in the order they were written.  It gives you much more insight into the person (or musicians) who wrote them.

"Why don't you like my overplayed song, Tara?!"

Not only that, I don't know how many times I have purchased a single song or CD thinking, " I could NEVER get sick of this!", only to listen to it over and over, and over again for weeks, until I never want to hear it again.  There are some songs I want to listen to again about as much as I want to stick nails in my ears.  I am not going to embarrass myself by calculating how many songs in my library are like that, and how much I have spent on them total (but I am pretty sure it is at least $500, easy).  However, I will never get sick of The Black Keys, ever.  I bought every single one of their albums.  They passed the repeated listening test, hands down.


Of course, I am not suggesting you take our CDs home and burn them (either with a fire or with a computer), because that is illegal, BUT, use the library to make sure that you REALLY want to download that song, or album, before you commit to spending that $9.99 on it. 

I want more suggestions though.  What is your favorite album to listen to from start to finish? 

Miss Moneypennypincher | Book Traveling

This week I should have been thinking of great ways to save you money, or maybe embarked on a new Short Attention Span Challenge task, but I have been so incredibly engrossed in this book, The Orphan Master's Son by Adam Johnson, it is leaving me unable to think of anything else but getting back to the book.  This is the most recent Pulitzer prize winner (and actually part of another one of my personal challenges - reading all the novel and fiction Pulitzer Prize winners).  The story is about Pak Jun Do, a North Korean orphan turned professional kidnapper, who loyally serves the "greatest country in the world" and the "supreme leader", Kim Jong-il . The book has plunged me into the mysterious and horrifically dark world of North Korea, and as far as I know, a book is probably the only look (difficult as it is) that I will ever get. 

As it is now, North Korea is not on my list of places to visit, but the book's explicit description and the author's attention to detail makes me think about some other books that have done the same thing: taken me to another place or time.  Unless I win the lottery or achieve immortality (I wonder which is more likely?), I will not be able to visit all the places in this world that fascinate or interest me.  There are not enough resources to make that happen.  However, books can get me close.  Isn't it amazing how we can take each other places, by accurate details and description of a setting?   

So anyway, this post might seem random, I am going from Pulitzer Prize winners to North Korea to descriptive settings.  I can tie this back to economics, I know it!  Here we go...My point, readers, is that you can travel into the library and use books to take you places, free! (P.S. I also checked the book out for free---saving myself around $14. Just thought I'd throw that in there too.) 

Here are some suggestions from library staff:

Ulysses by James Joyce (June 16, 1904 Dublin, Ireland)

My Antonia by Willa Cather (late 19th Century, Nebraska)

The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini (Afghanistan)

The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck (The Great Depression)

Fires of London by Janet Law ("You feel like you are walking through the suffocating and confining blacked-out streets of WWII London during the 1939 Blitz. It also evocatively explores the seeding underground of London life." available through Link Plus)

Lonesome Dove by Larry McMurtry (Texas, late 19th century)

Into Thin Air by John Krakauer (Mount Everest)

Daughter of Fortune by Isabel Allende (19th century Chile and San Francisco)

Girl with a Pearl Earring by Tracy Chevalier (17th Century Delft)
Winter of the World by Ken Follett ("I have been in Germany as Hitler takes power, in the homes of the rich and famous in the U.S.  I have been in the Parliament of Great Britain.  And, unfortunately, the brutal chambers of the SS.  The world is changing right before my eyes and the way people and nations are impacted takes your breath away")

Redwall by Brian Jacques This is fantasy, but here's a great quote from the author.

"In our imaginations we can go anywhere. Travel with me to Redwall in Mossflower County."

Miss Moneypennypincher | REALLY Cheap TV, Contract Free

I hate cable.  I hate how much they charge.  I hate how arbitrary the prices seem.  It really burns me when you sign up for a promo price and then the promo period ends and the price goes up, but I'm pretty sure the cable company made money either way.  I know I am a cheapskate, but I just really hate cable.  And I really hate cable contracts, because there is nothing worse than being FORCED to pay someone with the threat of a cancellation fee.

So, I cancelled cable.  For a couple days my family was in shock, but here's the thing:  I use the library.  We have free DVDs. My kid can watch all the Thomas the Tank Engine I want her to, and my husband and I can rent Skyfall for our weekend movie, free.  Plus we all read (shocker!!!).  So, we made it awhile with no cable.  Then How I Met Your Mother and Modern Family started up in the fall, and football season began, and I knew I had to figure out how to get TV cheap, without contracts.

This is what I did:

Courtesy of blurokr.deviantart.com

I kept the internet service in my home. (It was $19.99 per month)

I bought a digital antenna (it was about $36). +
I bought a Roku, a device to stream internet onto my TV.  ($94.99, even cheaper if you have a warehouse membership) +
I signed up for Netflix app on the Roku (no contract) $7.99/month +
I signed up for Hulu app on the Roku (no contract) $9.99/ month +
I got a Playon subscription for $39 per year (it was on sale, no contract required. This is a great way to watch HIMYM, since CBS is not available on Hulu.) = 

If we did this for only a year, calculating the price of the Roku device, and the Playon, we would pay $31.22 per month for TV.  No contracts required.

For any show that we absolutely MUST have (like Mad Men), we can buy them per episode ($1.99) on the Amazon App on the Roku.  We don't have to have a cable contract for the whole year just to watch one show.  Plus when our shows are not on, we can cancel Hulu, cutting an additional $7.99 out of our budget.  We can still catch TV, through the digital antenna.  Netflix is also optional, since the library carries most movies and television shows, either at the library or through Link+.
To put this in perspective, it is predicted that in 2015, the average cable bill will be $123 per month.  Not internet, just TV.  With that price, someone can save approximately $92 per month by streaming TV and using the library for free DVDs.  You can get $1104 back in your pocket every year just by changing the way you watch your TV.

 Knock Knock
---Who's there?
Will
---Will, Who?
Will you take me with you on your family vacation that you got to go on because you just saved $1104???  You will?  YAY!!!!  I can't wait!

Miss Moneypennypincher | Don't buy junk!

My husband likes to joke that I spend more time researching the things I buy than actually using the things I buy.  I guess he has a point.  If I spend my money, it is going to be on the best of something.  There is nothing worse than purchasing a piece of junk.  One of my favorite research tools is Consumer Reports, the magazine that researches and reviews pretty much everything, from juicers to Jaguars.  Growing up, I remember my family subscribed to the magazine and got it every month (and I always thought it was SO boring!).  Now that I have a family of my own, I find myself using the magazine all the time to make sure that I am spending my money wisely.  But, the magazine is not free.  Having access to all that info costs money  What if it is money you don't want to spend?

Once again, the library is at your service!  Perhaps the most obvious way you can access Consumer Reports at the library is to come in and look at the magazine.  Many of the libraries keep copies in the reference section, so that they cannot be checked out.  It's here for your viewing pleasure.

However, maybe you don't want to drive to the library and just want to access the magazine from home.  Should you shell out the $30 a year to get access to consumerreports.org?  You could, OR you could hop onto the library website:

Drag your cursor over "research"

Select "Databases"

Click "All databases"

Click "Masterfile Premier" (and then enter your library card number and PIN)

then "Publications" and type in "Consumer Reports".
Look over on the right ---every issue since 1991.

Voila!  Free access to Consumer Reports from home, for free! You just saved between $6.95 and $30!  Plus, you can use the money you just saved to buy something awesome!  Enjoy!

Joke of the day:
How do you make a money pizza?
----With all the dough you just saved getting Consumer Reports for free from the library!!!