For some time now it’s been difficult to get rid of old electronics such as televisions, computers, and stereo equipment. When I was young, we could just put these things out in the regular garbage and they would be taken away. In most places, garbage collection refuses them now (for good reason) partly because of the environmental concerns. For quite a while there was a mishmash of businesses and government-run facilities that would take old electronics for a fee. These fees vary wildly. The services that are highly advertised and come to your home can be expensive. I had been hearing rumours that some stores will take old electronics free of charge. Until recently, I had no corroboration of this rumour, but my mother has tested it. She loaded up her trunk with an old computer monitor and scanner and headed off to Best Buy. Sure enough, they came out to her car and took them away for free. She hadn’t bought them at Best Buy and was never asked where she bought them. The ...

Those of us whose home position is to be frugal need to examine our behaviour sometimes to see if it makes sense, such as when I decided that mouse traps are disposable . This time I look at humidifier pads. I have the type of humidifier that attaches to the furnace and forces air to flow through a water-soaked pad. This pad seems to be made mostly of metal and a residue from the evaporated water builds up over time. For many years I didn’t realize that it was normal to buy replacement pads. I thought the pad was an integral part of the humidifier and I struggled to find ways to clean it. What seemed to work best was soaking it in CLR. Worried that maybe it wasn’t really getting cleaned properly, I decided to see if the pad could be replaced. On my first attempt at a big-box store, I learned not to call it a humidifier grill. They didn’t have those and I shouldn’t waste this very important employee’s time. Fortunately, I persisted and found that humidifier pads are a sta...

A while back I discovered that there were mice in the drop ceiling of my finished basement. After cleaning up the mess they made, I set some mouse traps with some peanut butter in them. Mice really seem to like peanut butter and it lasts forever in the traps. The first time I noticed that I’d caught a mouse, it had been there for a while and didn’t smell too good. After disposing of the mouse, I proceeded to try to clean up the trap to use again. The cleaning was unpleasant and the trap still stunk afterwards. It wasn’t until after I reset the trap and put it in place that I thought about how foolish it was to do all that work. The last time I checked, mouse traps at a local store range in price from about 50 cents to $2 for a “deluxe” model. So now I consider mouse traps to be disposable. If there is the slightest bit of unpleasantness in trying to dislodge a dead mouse from a trap or clean it up, it goes in the garbage with the mouse. Now I catch 3 or 4 mice per year and ...

Even though the swine flu hasn’t caused the devastation that some predicted, it has still harmed many people. Widespread concern over this flu has had a curious financial side effect that I didn’t know about until my wife pointed it out to me. A couple of nights ago my family enjoyed a large pork roast that fed four hungry people and left enough for lunch for two. I wasn’t too surprised to find out that the roast cost only $5.50 because my wife routinely finds good deals on meat . But this wasn’t a case of a pork roast that was a day from its expiration date. My wife tells me that pork is almost always on sale now and that this roast would have cost more than $10 a year ago. Many factors go into the pricing of goods, but the dominant factor for pork right now is the swine flu. For some reason, people are avoiding pork because of this new flu. This makes no sense at all; experts say that you can’t catch swine flu from eating pork, but people are avoiding pork anyway. So the...

You don’t have to look too far to find examples of young people making poor financial choices such as plunging into debt with a car loan. However, a small choice by one of my sons brightened my day. He received a $25 movie theatre card for his birthday. Those who give bad advice about found money might suggest a mini-splurge. Perhaps he could go to a movie and buy enough popcorn and chocolate to wipe out the card in one evening. Instead, he noted that movies cost only $4.25 on Tuesdays, and he can see almost six movies with his card as long as he eats before going. Bravo! A great many adults would do well to show this kind of financial restraint.

My wife is quite frugal and often comes home from grocery shopping with a cut of meat sold at half price that has to be cooked within a day. We don’t seem to have had any problems eating these cuts of meat, but they leave me a little uneasy. I presume that the reason for the price discount is that these cuts are older than the full-price cuts. Presumably this means that the odds of getting sick from eating discounted meat are higher. I’m wondering how much higher. I’d like to say that we’ve never had a problem eating discounted meat, but it’s hard to know for sure. We don’t seem to have had any serious incidents of food poisoning, but minor bouts of stomach upset are common and hard to attribute to any particular cause. Most likely the risk from eating discounted meat pales in comparison to the risk of driving a car. I’ll probably continue to have a flicker of uneasiness when I’m told that dinner includes half-price meat, but only a flicker, and then I’ll dive in.