Hello Cheapskaters, Welcome to Spending Freeze February (also known as Essential Spending month). This is the month to get budgets  back on track and spending under control. Christmas has been and gone, the holidays are over and school has gone back. All that beginning of the year spending has been done so now is perfect time to stop spending and start building up those Peace of Mind accounts, Emergecy Funds and paying down debt. To help you get started, we are having a sale on Platinum memberships. Yes, I know that joining is going to cost you some money and it is Spending Freeze February, but if you are not already a Cheapskates Club Platinum member then $29.20 is essential spending. You'll have full access to the Member's Centre, with all the tools and tips you need right at your fingertips.  Click here to upgrade your membership now. This sale ends on the 11th February 2010, so to avoid missing out, join now. "I used to spend just over $300 a week on groceries but since joining the Cheapskates Club and adopting many common sense ideas I'm lucky if I spend $150 a week feeding a family of four and I'm hoping I can keep it under $50 per week for February."  Adrianne "I've been waiting for Essential Spending month, so I'm definitely in. We had a massive blowout in January when we went on hols, but it was all cash that we spent.  Good luck everyone, I wonder how much we can all save......"  Janes "LOVE $2 Tuesday! My hubby hasn’t even noticed! I am thinking of doing a ‘thrifty Thursday‘ too."  Tracy PS: Love our site? We love referrals! Send a note to your favourite newspapers, magazines, radio stations, TV stations, friends and relatives, and tell them about us! PPS: You can read this newsletter and past copies on the website in the Newsletter Archive.

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Cheapskates Tip of the Week

This week's winning tip is from Julie  Gillottie.  Julie is a Platinum member of the Cheapskates Club so her membership has been extended for one year for submitting a winning tip. Menu Planning Breaks the Grocery Spending Habit and Saves $60 a Week Approximate $ Savings:     $40 - $60 a week    After reading the hints and tips for menu planning and shopping our family made a monthly menu plan with meals we all like and eat. I then made four weekly grocery lists to go with the planner. This took less than an hour. The lists contain all that is needed to make each meal for that week. I costed out our shopping using the Aldi site so I know what the weeks shop will cost approximately. Now each week all I need is to get my list and shop. Wanting to save money I decided to shop at home the night before I went to the supermarket. Most weeks we can cross off a 1/3 of our list by shopping in our pantry, saving anywhere from $40 - $60 a week. Our grocery bill is now down to about $90 a week for 5 people including extras for lunch and brekkie. We started at $150 and as I had a $150 that was always what I spent out of habit.  Congratulations Julie, I hope you enjoy your Cheapskates Club membership.

The Cheapskate's Club website is over 2,000 pages of money saving hints, tips  and ideas. Let's get together and make the Cheapskates Club Australia's largest online hint, tip and idea library. Share your favourite money saving, time saving or energy saving hint and be in the running to win a one-year membership to The Cheapskate Club. We publish a Winning Tip each Tuesday, so enter your great money, time or energy saving idea now!

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Submit a Tip

Share your favourite hint or tip that saves money, time and energy and be in the running to win a one-year membership to the Cheapskates Club valued at $29.20. Remember, you have to be in it to win it! Enter your tip here

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Money Saving Meals

Yummy Treats for Valentines Day This Valentines Day say I Love You with some extra special  homemade biscuits, decorated especially for Valentines Day. Use our Bargain Bikkies recipe, you'll get around 100 decent sized biscuits from this recipe for approximately $3.10! Bargain Bikkies Ingredients: 7 cups SR flour 2 cups sugar 500g margarine 4 eggs, beaten 1 dessertspoon vanilla essence Method: Cream butter and sugar until very light and fluffy. Mix vanilla essence with eggs and add to butter/sugar, mixing well. Add the flour. The mixture becomes quite stiff at this stage but make sure all the flour is thoroughly mixed in. Now comes the fun part – creating different varieties of bikkies. Divide the dough into portions – 4 is a manageable number – and flavour each portion before rolling and freezing or shaping and baking. Variations: Cornflake:  Take spoonfuls (tea- or dessert- depending on how big you want them) of dough, roll into balls and then roll in crushed cornflakes. I have also used the Weetbix crumbs from the bottom of the box too. Choc Chip: Mix ½ cup choc chips through the dough. Then either roll into balls and freeze or bake, or into a log. Thumb Prints: Roll into balls, flatten out and then poke a dent in the middle of each bikkie with your thumb. Add a dollop of red jam. Sultana: Mix through a handful of sultanas Sugar Cookies:  Brush the tops of the biscuits with a little milk or beaten egg white and sprinkle generously with coloured sugar.  To make the coloured sugar just  put some sugar in a plastic bag and add food colouring, a drop at a time, massaging well into the sugar until the desired colour is reached.   Apricot & Almond: Chop a few dried apricots and add with ¼ cup chopped almonds. Cherryripe: Add a packet of glace cherries, 1/4 cup choc bits and 2 tbsp coconut. Coconut & Cranberry:  Add 1/2 cup dessicated coconut and 1/2 cup Craisins to the mix. Roll into logs or shape into balls and flatten. Bake in a moderate oven for 10 minutes or until golden. Watch with the choc chip variety that they don’t burn on the bottom – the chocolate melts and may catch on the tray. Heart shaped cookie cutters will turn these biscuits into creations of love. Roll the dough out to about 5mm thick and use heart shaped cookie cutters to cut the biscuits. Kids don’t only like hearts. Let them experiment with other shapes in the cookie cutter arsenal if they want to. They can even design shapes of their own with the dough pieces that are too small to cut. This mixture freezes really well. You can simply flash freeze the individual bikkies and then bag them, ready to bake. Or you can roll the mixture into logs and freeze. Then simply thaw a log, slice and bake. There are over 700 other great money saving meal ideas in the Recipe File

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Last Weeks Question

  

Last week's question was from  Joy asking for ideas for a budget friendly thirteenth birthday party. There were so many suggestions, I wish I could have a few more thirteenth birthday parties of my own! Suggestions included pizza parties, make-over parties, beading, roller skating and a roving yum cha! You'll find them all in the Tip Store, under Special Occasions. Linda Stapleton answered When I was a single parent on a low income I couldn't afford to compete with the  other girls birthday parties. I decided to do a haunted house party for my daughter. I dressed up as a witch to wait on them for dinner but it was the 'cocktail hour' that proved a hit. I made dip, one dyed green with plastic bugs in it. One dyed red with an eyeball floating in it. There of course were drinks... red blood, green slime and black(cola) was vampire blood. Home made cake and treats with a similar theme. They watched Buffy..popular in its day. All you need to do is update the theme to present day, maybe 'Twilight'. You would be surprised how a video night with themed junk food goes down. The party was a success and the 'witch' outfit was so effective one girl refused to enter the house without her father.  Bron Taylor Joy, I don't think girls this age need you to organise too much as they tend to make their own fun and spend most of the time laughing and talking! Last year we had 6 girls for a sleepover party. We hired DVD's and then picked up pizzas from Pizza Hut at around $6.50ea. For dessert we used the birthday cake and ice cream. Snacks were popcorn (popped at home), a few blocks of chocolate and mixed jubes etc. I bought a few bottles of home brand soft drink and once that was gone I had individual bottled water that we put each girls name onto and simply refilled when they needed more. Our total costs were under $100. Having done the pizza thing though, next time I would seriously think about cutting back even more and just doing a sausage sizzle - cheaper and simpler! In the morning we had pancakes (prepared by my hubby). My daughter was turning 12, but on the off chance that by 13 girls have become more fussy and suddenly more health conscious (a good thing), then other options would be things like home made chicken kebab wraps (the chicken could be cooked on the BBQ), and dessert could be fruit skewers. hope this helps.  Lisa Pearce answered My daughter recently turned 13 and I had the same issue, especially since all her friends had recently had huge parties. Have it away from meal times and a really late Friday or Saturday night is perfect and the 'in thing' - also means less food! Dip and veggie sticks (she asked for them), chips and watermelon wedges, fruit platter with chocky dip. Limited lollies and drinks. The more you can make the cheaper it is. She made and decorated her own cake. We borrowed a PS2 and Singstar game which provided tons of fun. They watched a couple movies (ask the friends to bring them). Her older brother brought out the archery set. After dark, we lit a fire in the brazier for toasted marshmallows and sparklers - they are never too old for some things, however, they don't do games at that age and really just want to hang out for some fun together with friends and some yummy treats. The kids really enjoyed themselves and I got the 'cool mum award'. Keep it simple and keep out of the way for teenagers. My youngest son turned 11 in January, and with all the expenses this time of year, he opted for simple action. Again, keeping the food simple yet yummy with home made cheese and pineapple pizzas and watermelon, he played soccer, had a homemade piñata and played the Wii. The boys were very tired and had heaps of fun - and it was seriously cheap! They are too old for party bags now, although still get a cake. Each party would have cost less than $100 and had up to a dozen kids who all had tons of fun.   Anita Champion answered When my daughter turned 13 she had a survivor party and they all loved it. Two teams face-painted and made up a team chant then did a number of challenges such as an obstacle course around the garden, crawling through a toddlers tunnel and running through a toddlers pool of slime (soap flake detergent with water and food colouring). We also had a blindfolded eating challenge (foods such as noodles that we said were frogs legs and sheep's eyes that were lollies etc).  I found a lot of these ideas from Googling 'survivor party' once we decided on the theme. Babette Page answered This time of year a pool party would be fun especially turning 13.. Arrange a theme e.g. best dress/pink ladies/favourite things etc.  Invite 10 friends to your local pool, ( pay for each girls entry) make your own survival packs for each guest (homemade cookies, popcorn and drink). Arrange for a couple of adults to watch over the girls while at the pool. Make some cupcakes and bring an esky full of cold drinks and some sandwiches/wraps. Parents drop their child off and pick them up and you, don't have to clean up any mess, plus your daughter will thank-you.  Kelly Waldeck answered Hi Joy, I have 4 girls, so coming up with new ideas for a birthday party, with minimal cost is not an easy thing..... For my daughters 13th Birthday I involved my mum and sister in law plus friend and had my daughter choose 7 friends and then did a progressive dinner between all the houses. We started off with drinks on the balcony at our place (mocktails), then Entree's at the sis in laws (plus she downloaded music and burnt it to CD's and put them in gift bags for all the girls, my mum did the main meal, with music, streamers etc and then we met at baskin and robbins for ice creams all round. It was a hit! All the girls still talk about it being the best party and that was over 3 years ago. Everyone gifted their meal as a present, so the only cost was the ice cream! Good Luck!

Do you have a question that needs an answer? Send us your question and receive the combined knowledge of your fellow Cheapskates to solve your problem! Ask a question

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This Weeks Question

Malcolm asks "The family car was struck with many raw eggs during the end of school celebrations by the local high school. We were not in a position to wash the car that day and the eggs dried onto the duco-despite many hand washes without chemicals (just soap) we are unable to shift the egg waste. Could you help with a method to wash the egg remains off without harming the dark green duco please?"

Do you have the answer? If you have a suggestion or idea for Malcolm let us know, and your answer could be published in our next newsletter. You'll also be automatically entered into our Tip of the Week competition, with a one-year membership to the Cheapskates Club as the prize. Click here to send your answer

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Join the Cheapskates Club

Join the Cheapskates Club for just  $29.20 for the first year ($18.25 to renew) and get exclusive access to the Cheapskates Club Platinum Member's Centre containing thousands of ideas to save you money, time and energy. Join the Cheapskates Club today

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Frequently Asked Questions

How do I change my email address? This one is easy. If you area Platinum member login and click on the Edit Profile button, then on Change Password. If you are a Silver member use the Change Your Address form (under Customer Service in the menu) and fill it out. Once you've filled it in click the send button and we'll do the rest. Please remember to include your old email address so we can find it in the list as well as the new one. How do I know when my membership should be renewed? When you login to the Member's Centre you will be told how many days of membership you have left once you have 30 days left. Just click on the link to renew and your membership will just continue on, uninterrupted. What will you do with my email address? We never rent, trade or sell our email list to anyone for any reason whatsoever. You'll never get an unsolicited email from a stranger as a result of joining this list. How Did You Get on Our List? You signed up to receive our Free Newsletter at our Cheapskates Journal Web site or at the Channel 9 Money Expo. We never add names to our list unless you have voluntarily opted in.

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Contact Details

The Cheapskates Club - Showing you how to live life debt free, cashed up and laughing! Cheapskates Club PO Box 4232 Ringwood Vic 3134 www.cheapskates.com.au info@cheapskates.com.au