Every $1 spent at Kroger earns you 1 fuel point and every 100 points earns a $0.10 per gallon discount at Kroger Fuel or participating Shell stations. You earn double fuel points when you purchase gift cards at Kroger. The selection of gift cards available is extensive. You can buy gift cards for major retail outlets and restaurants. If I am planning to make a purchase at one of those retail outlets, I will buy a gift card in a denomination closest to what I will need to spend at that particular store.

• I buy a $15 Starbucks gift card for myself once a month. I figure that’s a reasonable amount of money to spend at Starbucks in one month. That’s 30 fuel points that I would not have earned if I just forked my cash over to the green mermaid.
• A friend helped me move last month, so I treated him to lunch at Ruby Tuesday. I picked up a $25 gift card and earned 50 fuel points.
• I went to Home Depot to buy plastic sheeting and staples for my staple gun to mitigate the energy-leeching effects of drafty single-pane glass windows in my apartment. Buying a $25 gift card prior to shopping at Home Depot earned another 50 fuel points.
• Panera Bread has some excellent vegan-friendly items, none of which is a plain baked potato and side salad. $25 is a reasonable amount to spend there over the course of two months. 50 more fuel points.
• Do you shop on Amazon.com? Amazon gift cards are available at Kroger too.

Time, just like money, is a resource that must be managed properly. Time is the great equalizer. While there is no limit to the amount of money you can amass, there is a limit to the amount of time we have. We each have the same 24 hours each day, yet why do some people accomplish more?

When you start plugging the holes in your budget, you start to see the holes in your day.”Oh, I’ll just run to the store and pick it up,” turns into “I didn’t realize it takes 40 minutes just to buy a stick of butter!”

Getting In to a Scrum

One way I plug the leaks in my schedule is to employ the principle of “barely sufficient.” It’s a term I came to know while spending time with some software developers using Scrum at their workplace.

The idea behind “barely sufficient” is to do enough to be effective without compromising the end result. It is not permission to slack off and turn in a sub-standard performance. Adolescence may be a little early to introduce this concept to your children.

• It takes longer to use a label maker than it does to hand-write one neatly. The printed label is prettier, but the hand-written one performs the intended function adequately.
• Have you ever tried to design, print, and apply an adhesive label to a CD-R or DVD-R? Isn’t it a royal pain? Those blank CDs and DVDs you can print on directly do a little better. However, they often run on proprietary software that is difficult to use. For presentation purposes, it’s perfectly OK to go the extra mile. But for your own archiving and backup, a water-based marker made for writing on CDs is fine. (You do not want to use a solvent-based permanent marker. This will corrupt the data on the disc).

Some tasks do need to be performed with a degree of precision while other do not.  All process improvements eventually reach a point of diminishing returns. It takes experience to determine what that point is.

Recurring Tasks

“Barely sufficient” can also apply to the frequency of a recurring task:

• Do you really need to wash your car every week or is every-other-week OK?
• I maintain a closely cropped buzz cut instead of shaving my head. I can maintain the buzz cut by clipping my hair every other week while a slick chrome dome takes almost daily attention. A buzz cut is the least expensive hairdo to maintain in terms of time and money.

You can think of “barely sufficient” as the trade-off between speed and accuracy. You can also think of it as being frugal with your time. Just as you find where to trim the budget, you can find where to trim the time it takes to perform tasks. Save your “going the extra mile” efforts for those times when it’s truly necessary. Do baseball players sprint to first base after getting walked? “Barely sufficient” tactics will still accomplish your overall strategy.

What “barely sufficient” methods do you employ?

Photo: alisdair

There is a lot of talk about saving money when grocery shopping right now. But what about saving time? “Grocery shopping” appears as a single line item on your big-picture to-do list. However, it’s made up of several steps. Nothing in life should ever take more than 2-3 minutes. The issue is, we have 4-500 things to do each day that all take 2-3 minutes. Before you know it, it’s 8:00 and you just started boiling water for the pasta.

It’s going to take about 300 words worth of rambling before this little nugget of wisdom is revealed. Don’t be such a lazy ADD’ed-out blog reader! Stick with me. I promise I’ll make it worth your while.

Let’s take a detailed look at this single line item:

1. Take inventory of your pantry and your refrigerator.
2. Plan some meals for the week and make your list.
3. Collect all the plastic bags you’re going to drop off in the recycling bin at the store. You have all these plastic bags because you always forget to bring the reusable bags.
4. Get in your car and drive to the store.
5. Turn around and go back home. You’re not going to forget those reusable bags again!
6. Sit in your car for 3 minutes. Someone is blocking traffic in the parking lot waiting for a parking space 10 feet closer to the store.
7. Find a parking spot close to the cart return area.
8. Do your shopping.
9. Check out.
10. Load up the car.
11. Drive home.
12. Unload the car.
13. Put groceries away.

Whew! Even on my most caffeinated days, it can take up to 3 hours. Shopping during off-peak hours will shave some more time. So will making a list, and planning a week’s worth of meals. If you’re stopping at the store on your way home from work, pre-planning is critical. This is also one of those times when it’s definitely OK to “outsource” some food. You’ll spend more money on unnecessary impulse purchases than you would on a quick snack. Without hunger to worry about, you’ll also perform the task of shopping much faster and with more clarity of purpose.

Organization is The Key

I went through the trouble of mapping one of the two main Publix locations that I shop at. I thought I would make my list according to the sequence of the aisles. How many people actually do that. I know I don’t.

Organizing your pantry and your refrigerator starts at the checkout line. That’s right. You can start organizing while in the checkout line. I load the items on the conveyor belt in the following order:

• Frozen items
• Refrigerated items
• Perishable items
• Non-perishables
• Non-food items

Each main group is also organized further. All like items go together. The items end up getting bagged together. You can put them away much more efficiently.

The benefit of leaving non-food items for last will help you when analyzing what you really buy. In order to create an effective budget, you have to know how much money you’re actually spending on food. Having those non-food items at the end of the receipt makes this accounting much easier.

The beautiful thing about this little trick is that it doesn’t take any additional time or effort to implement. You’re performing one of the necessary steps in the grocery shopping process, but you’re doing it with a little forethought. This advance thinking saves you time at subsequent steps.

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“Crunchy on the Inside With a Soft Suburban Outer Coating” started its life as a lengthy and thoughtfully written article. I decided to split it up into smaller chunks over several weeks. The first installment came out on Earth Day. The mid-section of this article series has expanded due to the timing of events.

Maybe you employ every gas-saving tip out there, but there is more money to squeeze from other areas in our lives without suffering for it. Some tactics even improve the quality of life.

Finally Filling Up Again

The insidious “E” light came on today as I was driving home from work. I know this doesn’t mean “Get gas now or be stranded on the roadside!” but it always imparts a sense of urgency. Besides, I spotted a screaming bargain at $3.73/gallon (15 years ago in Europe or Japan, dozens of cars would be lined up at that gas station).

I made it 27 days between fill-ups. I paid $6 more at the pump this time.

The Real Cost of Gas

Gas prices are an easy target. The per-unit cost has gone up significantly, but what impact does it really have on our budgets? Let’s examine a hypothetical (and realistic) scenario here:

The Almost-Good Old Days

• $3.00/gallon
• 25 mile round-trip commute.
• 25 MPG

Today

• $3.73/gallon
• 25 mile round-trip commute.
• 25 MPG

To keep this simple, we’re isolating the cost of commuting to work. I’m Asian and I got bad grades in math all through school. Let’s keep this simple, OK? Based on the assumptions outlined above, we have a fuel cost of $15/week in the past. At the higher price, we have a weekly fuel cost of $18.65. We’re talking about $3.65. Can you find $3.65 worth of fat in your weekly expenditures? Yes, the percentage of increase is gruesome, but what is our total expenditure increase over the medium and long term? Oh, and BTW, you can trust these figures. I’m not that bad at math.

Think Outside the Pump

I’m not making light of the budget stretching that’s going on. I also recognize that many people have longer commutes or less fuel-efficient vehicles than the scenario outlined above.

I get my share of “woe-is-me.” There’s a teenager living here. If a solution to your problem is within reach, the last thing I want to hear is whining. Enlist your creativity (or mine) and find the money you’re throwing away.

• Chances are, in a 2-car household, one car gets used more. Drive the one that gets better mileage more.
• One can of soda per day represents $10/month. Drink water instead.
• Attention smokers. Cut out 3 cigarettes a day and there’s your $15/month.
• Do I really have to talk about the oft-vilified Starbucks Latte again? Dunkin’ Donuts coffee costs less and tastes better.
• Visit my buddies Frugal Dad and Mike.
• Ride your bike instead of driving.
• Take the bus.
• Buy stuff on Amazon instead of driving to the mall.
• Stay home and read my blog.

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Save those envelopes to write your shopping list on. Then you can stash your coupons inside.

Even in this impaired state, I can still offer you one quick cooking tip. It’s an oldie but goodie with a new twist.

We all wish our children would eat more vegetables. Some parents have better luck than I do. A trick favored by many resident chefs is to puree vegetables and add the mix to various sauces.

The other night, I pureed a pound of carrots, added some to the spaghetti sauce. The remaining puree was poured into a couple of freezer bags. Next time I need some vegetable puree, I’ll just break off a piece and add it to the sauce.

For the next round, I’m going to use the ice cube tray to make things a little easier.

It’s so simple, a caveman can do it.

If you saved a bunch of money on your car insurance by switching to Geico, please make a donation.

Parent Hacks a collaborative effort of multiple contributors plus a ton of contributions from readers. There are hacks for infants all the way up to those 20-somethings who still live at home. It’s broken down even further by topics of interest such as potty training, toys, behavior, etc.

Graphic designer is one of the many hats I wear, so I appreciate the effort was taken to really brand their site with something clever like the “Swiss Army Knife.” The tips contained within their expansive archive are equally clever. We recently tried out the homemade baby wipes to great success.

I have my own series on hacks too, but any help is appreciated. In a web2.0 world, it’s all about information and easy access to it.

Go check it out. There’s tons of useful stuff on Parent Hacks.

If you find this information helpful, please help me continue helping others.

At 5am on Friday morning, I was happily asleep. I have never been out shopping on the day after Thanksgiving, and I don’t plan on braving crowds like that without a really good reason (like a Dream Theater concert). I avoid crowds whenever I can. The closest I ever got to a Black Friday shopping experience was through my friend Val.

A few years ago, Val was drawn out by the $99 deal on the digital camera she had been wanting. This was enough to lure her to the Target parking lot at 5am. She reported that several shoppers do this every year! Every year?!!?!?!?!!??! Retailers are always doing plenty to feed this by conjuring better deals and opening earlier and earlier.

It is becoming an American tradition. People are lined up as if they are about to start a race. This is just another brand of rush for a particular type of adrenaline junkie. Perhaps it’s the promise of unadvertised deals on Black Friday that keep people coming back year after year.

E-Commerce To The Rescue

I often retreat from retail during the month of December. If I want to buy something, I’ll buy it online.

Shopping online has transformed our lives. It’s easy, safe, and convenient. We have access to just about anything we would want and at great prices too. E-commerce has changed our lives and I’m sure it has changed yours:

• It saves you time – Ever think about how much time it takes to go to the store? You will be as shocked as I was when I discovered that it takes 40 minutes just to buy a stick of butter at the grocery store.
• It saves you money – Shopping online saves you money. In many cases, you don’t pay sales tax. You don’t use gas to go to the store.
• It’s safe – credit card information is encrypted online. It’s far less likely that a human will see your credit card number when you shop online. There is actually a bigger risk when you whip your card out at the store. The holiday shopping season also sees an increase in retail crime.

What About Shipping Costs?

Shipping costs are negligible when compared to your time. Shipping is often a point of contention, especially if the shipping costs approach or even exceed the cost of the item, or if the item is shipped locally. Shipping is cheaper than you think.

The cost of shipping is recouped by the deals you can score by shopping online, not paying sales tax (most of the time), and saving yourself a trip to the store. Every time you start your car, it costs money. It takes a significant chunk of time to go to a retail store locally. There’s more to it than the round-trip time. You have to park, walk into the store, find the item, check out, and walk back to your car. It took me 40 minutes to buy a stick of butter once. The supermarket is a mile from my house. You’ll save even more time by avoiding holiday crowds.

If you shop on Amazon, you can sign up for Amazon Prime. For $79 a year, you get unlimited free 2-day shipping on most items. Upgrading to overnight shipping is only an additional $3.99!

Shop Online

At our my blog, Renee And Elliott, we’ve set up a Shopping page just for you. When you shop at our partners’ sites, it doesn’t cost you an extra penny and it helps us out. You might even save money, or something more valuable, like your time.

This works great for the most stubborn caked-on, baked-on, crusties on the bottom of your pan, casserole dish, or wok.

If you found this information helpful, please consider helping me, so I can continue helping everyone.