Tightwad Gazette Tour | active and passive frugality

I finally had a moment to flip through the Tightwad Gazette again!

We’re starting on page 343 in my big blue Tightwad Gazette book, with an article Amy wrote about active and passive tightwaddery (or frugality, if you’re part of my crew. Heh.)

Amy tells how TV crews would want to film her and her family doing frugal things, but she sometimes had trouble coming up with such ideas because a lot of her tightwaddery was the passive sort (such as NOT going to McDonald’s) vs. the active sort (such as DIY-ing).

She points out that even when we are in a stage of life where we do not have time to do things like, say, can 24 jars of homegrown pears, we can still manage to pull off passive tightwaddery.

So then I started thinking about things I do that are passive moneysavers, but I got a little stuck. Maybe more of my frugality is active?

I came up with:

• I don’t dye my hair.

• I don’t get my nails done.
• I don’t go shopping very often (except for groceries!)
• Ummmm….I don’t get cosmetic procedures done? (that might be a reach. Ha.)
• I don’t take the money out of my savings account?

I could say, “I don’t go out for coffee.”, but it feels more accurate to say, “I make my coffee at home.”

I could say, “I don’t go out to eat very often.” but again, it feels more accurate to say, “I cook my food at home.” or, “I pack my lunches.”

I don’t know…maybe I am missing some obvious passive ways I save money!

Dangerous frugality

You know that tin can Christmas tree angel we chatted about in a previous edition? I thought it seemed like a slicing hazard!

Well, the Tightwad A to Z has a barbed wire wreath suggestion for the letter B.

I don’t know if this is tongue-in-cheek or not, but I pity the person with poor spatial perception* who accidentally bumps such a wreath.

*me. That would be me. I routinely stub my toes and bump into things, and I would not trust myself around a sharp wreath!

For G she has “grocery store scale” because those are useful for things like a 5-pound bag of oranges.

Some bags have more than five pounds in them, so if you use the scale to find the heavier bag, you get more bang for your buck. I wrote about this tip back in 2018, but I don’t think I remembered reading it first in the Tightwad Gazette!

 R is for rubber spatula, which I also wrote about in a Tuesday tip. Ha.

(The bright blue spatulas are by Tovolo.)

S is for stamps, a largely unnecessary household item in this day and age. Amy suggests getting them by mail from the USPS, using their “stamps by mail” envelopes. Who knew this even existed back then? I didn’t!

I like her T: a thermos with ice water whenever you leave the house. Then you never need to buy a soda or bottled water. I think when this was written, it was slightly less common practice to always have a water bottle with you.

Interestingly, I kinda think this money-saving thing has morphed into a money-spending thing, where it is common to own a zillion water bottles and to be always upgrading to the newest kind.

The basic idea is still solid. Just don’t be forever buying water bottles!

Supermarket vs. Stock Market: I disagree

Amy wrote an article in which she argues that tightwaddery can give you a similar return for your time as compared to investing.

I don’t know if this perspective was informed by the time (she said stock market returns were poor), or if all the investment options then were time-consuming, but I cannot imagine how tightwaddery could outperform an automatic investment in an index fund.

I spend zero minutes each month on my investments because they are set up to auto-deposit, and I rarely check on them. They are almost completely passive.

So, I see no reason to choose between investing or being frugal; I can do both because the investing costs me no time at all.

I do understand her argument for why she didn’t want to write articles about investing (lots of the same reason I don’t do that here!) and I also appreciate her pointing out that if you spend money willy-nilly, your investment returns will do you little good.

But I still solidly support automatically depositing money into a low-cost index fund, and I really, really, really support doing that through your work if your employer does a match (as my hospital does.)

As proof that my investing takes up a minimal amount of headspace: until I typed this post, I’d totally forgotten that I even HAVE an investment account through my hospital job. Ha.

Baked potatoes as a main dish

Amy suggests serving baked potatoes for dinner, topped with homemade cheese sauce (basically a white sauce with cheese added in), broccoli, and some crispy bacon pieces (which does sound good!)

She also suggests topping them with chili. And I’ve made a buffalo-chicken style baked potato meal, which you can see in this post.

At the end of the article, Amy says that a fast food place called Mr. Potato sold broccoli cheese baked potatoes similar to her homemade ones for the breathtaking price of $3.39 compared to her homemade version which costs $0.20.

(I don’t know if this is the same Mr. Potato??)

Anyway, this article popped out at me because I sometimes walk by a little local restaurant that mainly sells baked potatoes, and there a single potato topped only with garlic butter and cheese costs about $10. Amy would REALLY be gobsmacked by that price.

I do like potatoes as a base, but I kinda prefer mashed potatoes.

I often make a meal for myself with either mashed sweet potatoes or mashed yellow potatoes as a base.

Zoe doesn’t like mashed potatoes (a texture thing for her), so I’m usually just making them for myself.

For the sweet potato kind, I just roast sweet potatoes in my toaster oven and then store them in my fridge so I have the option of eating them mashed or not mashed.

And for regular potatoes, I cut them into small pieces, boil them, and then mash them with butter, salt, pepper, and half and half. It really doesn’t take long; by the time I’m done sauteeing the veggies and protein, the potatoes are ready to be mashed.

Regardless, whether they’re baked or mashed, potatoes make a good frugal base for a meal, and the possibilities for topping them are pretty endless.

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Boy, I’m at 1100 words and I only made it through a few pages of the Tightwad Gazette this time!

We’ll pick up around page 357 next time for those of you following along at home.

Talk to me! Passive frugality, investing, potato toppings…anything in the post is fair game.