To sum it up into a simple phrase, that would be reduce, reuse and recycle!  Perfect–those are the same thing you do when you are being frugal and saving and moving towards your financial independence!

Whether you shop for gently worn clothing for you or your kids at a thrift store, like Goodwill or you buy second hand furniture to save from trees being cut down, or maybe you  decorate your house with gently used items.  This reusing of perfectly good items saves the Earth’s resources.

Consider how buying a second hand, less expensive car contributes to the health of the Earth by saving all the energy needed to build that vehicle, not to mention all the steel and parts that go into the car.

It is kind to the environment and–best of all for you, it also saves you lots of money!

Everybody wins!

Like the sign says at the local Habitat for Humanity ReStore: Used Saves.  It saves the Earth and saves you money!

Be sure and check out the guest posts I have been writing for the Charlotte Observer Newspaper in a series called “Hot Summer Savings, 2 Weeks to Save You Money”.

Read about  lots of money savings ideas including how to get free money through coupons and discounts, travel the world without breaking the bank, and undertake a fabulous and frugal home makeover.

Read about the terrific items I found on a recent visit to a Habitat for Humanity ReStore.

Included is this brand new pedestal sink for $ 22! Wow!

It’s time to get going on that bathroom project!

I LOVE this fabulous Black chest of drawers I found for $ 25!

Give a room a whole new look for very little money!

Read much more at the Charlotte Observer.

Would it surprise you to know the 2 areas that home buyers focus on most when searching for real estate are the kitchen and the master suite, which includes the master bedroom and the bathroom?

Don’t you think you have a better chance to sell or rent your home if you have a spa bathroom?  Of course you do!

Come along as I show you step by step how I recently achieved that spa feeling for very little money!

Creating the drama of a spa bathroom is simple when you use the same techniques that fancy resort spas and hotels use when furnishing their spaces.

Every elegant spa bathroom must have a beautiful bench beside the tub for holding a luxurious bathrobe or your pjs.  That’s a great place to start!

If you are going to have a spa bathroom, you simply must have candles and warm fluffy towels.  Add some dramatic candles in rich candlesticks to cast a warm romantic glow.  Place the fluffy towels right beside the tub to complete the look.

Green plants give that touch of nature and you are on your way to creating a peaceful oasis!  It is the details that really make the difference!

Not only is your fantastic spa bathroom a restful retreat, it will add to the value of your home since everyone loves a gorgeous bathroom!

Take a look at the frugal yet fabulous ways you can furnish your bathroom retreat!

I started with this dramatic 3-tiered rack that came from Ross Stores and was only $19.99.  Place on the corner of the tub for extra storage and load it up with all the goodies!

The height of the piece gives additional space, allowing you to add everything you might need!

The plants are from Michael’s at $2.99 a piece and the designer towels were purchased on closeout at one of my favorite stores, TJ Maxx for $3.99 each!

No spa bathroom would be complete without a terrific vanity with a comfortable seat! What a terrific addition to the space!

This upholstered bench looks totally custom but was actually found at  TJ Maxx, for only $24.99!  You can’t beat that!

This gorgeous wrought iron bench looks just like one I saw at the luxury store, Frontgate! But this one was only $19.99 at a local Ross Store.

You have to love that!

It’s  great to have a tiered shelf to hold all the supplies you would find in a spa bathroom.

This one was located at Ross Stores for only $39.99.

The wrought iron with wicker design adds texture to the space, something interior designers know adds to the luxury!

Look at the dramatic effect a little effort can give you on your largest appreciating asset– your home!

As you soak in the tub in your new spa bathroom, think of all the money you will make from your elegant bathroom makeover!

**   **

Check out my guest posts in the Hot Summer Savings series in the Charlotte Observer newspaper.

If you are like most people, you have computer equipment, printers and storage that you would like to disguise in your office.  You do not need to spend alot to accomplish that!  Take a look at what I did to create a  fabulous yet frugal office, for very little money!

I built this neat table from wood I obtained FREE,  then I sewed a very easy & inexpensive tablecloth to hide all the stuff underneath it.

The wood was FREE from a construction site near my house.  It is amazing how much perfectly good wood is throw into the junk pile when a new home or office is constructed.

I stopped at the site and asked the workers if I could take some of the scrap wood and they said “Take all you want–It’s going to the landfill otherwise!“  Man–I hate to think of all this terrific lumber going to waste.

Remember when you do things like this, you are not only saving lots of money, you are actually helping the environment, because you reuse and recycle items! How cool is that?

The long skinny pieces were the perfect size, so I grabbed those and made myself a table.

Ok, my husband actually did the hammering, but I gave him the dimensions.

Inexpensive neutral colored fabric, similar to the color of the walls, was purchased and used to make a quick slipcover type tablecloth. Easy breezy!

The 2 drawer cabinet underneath the table was acquired at a garage sale for $1.  It’s perfect for holding printer paper and other goodies for the office.

The next area that needed to be addressed was the carpeting.  We had beautiful wood floors in that room, so I wanted a room rug that accented the colors in there.

I found this indoor/outdoor type rug at a local home center for only $40! It looks very similar to one I saw at Pottery Barn for much less money!

There needed to be a chair in the office and we had one that didn’t match the colors in the room, so I found an inexpensive  slipcover online & covered it in a classic white canvas.

Nice and neutral and it works in the room beautifully.

Now we can get busy in the beautifully decorated office working and making money!

I thought so!

Did you know that since 1997, up to $250,000 in profit ($500,000 for a married couple) on the sale of a home, is exempt from taxation if you have lived in the home as your principal residence for two out of the last five years?

A friend of mine told me several years ago she and her husband have done this exact thing many times and she showed me step by step exactly how they accomplished this.  These ideas have been incorporated  into my own homes and I will showcase the process I used over the next several weeks.

Basically, the right house must meet specific criteria. The property must have great potential as a primary residence, be in a terrific location and need a makeover.  Increase the market value of the real estate by adding character & value through improvements, landscaping and decorating.  In essence, make it look like a model home.

Live in it for 2 years, market the heck out of it,  sell it and repeat the process!  You can do this too!  Especially in the current real estate market where there are fabulous deals!

Today, we demonstrate great ways to add value to your home with inexpensive & easy to do custom window treatments and blinds.

We purchased these faux wood blinds that fit on the inside of each window segment and are very easy to install.  The length of the blind is adjustable by removing slats from the bottom that are not needed .  This creates the custom look, since they fit exactly.

The US Post Office sent us a packet of coupons when we moved into our new home that included a 10% coupon good at Home Depot, which Lowe’s will also honor.  We purchased all of the blinds with this coupon!

Our front door has a fan shaped window above the door and 2 very thin side windows.  Custom blinds would have been required for this configuration and there was NO WAY I was going to pay $1,200, which is the quote I received from a blind company.

Instead, I bought 2 queen sized white bed sheets for $ 9 total, perfect because they are large with no seams, and I made simple pockets in each end.

I cut a  wooden dowel rod to make tiny custom curtain rods and held them in place with 10¢ cup hooks from the hardware store.

The curved fan window treatment was very simple to make, using the same design with a bedsheet and sewing a rod pocket at each end.  I measured the distance between the top edge of the window to the bottom edge and simply pieced together one long rectangle that I made pockets at each end and threaded through a $ 3 plastic drainage tube.

I used tubing because it’s pliable and it will curve.  Pretty clever huh?  I found this tubing in the garden department of the hardware store.

Voila a custom window treatment!

That would cost $500 to have a designer create that for you!

A door that leads to the patio has a long slender window.  This time I used an aluminum blind purchased on sale at Wal-Mart,  removed the extra slats at the bottom and it looks totally custom!

Home buyers love to be able to walk right into a property that looks like a Model Home and not do a thing!

They don’t know that you used inexpensive techniques to enhance and stage the property, so  the value of your improvements goes right into your selling price!

You are making it easy for buyers to LOVE your property and thanks to a little effort, you are on your way to making great tax free money!

]]> http://frugaltorich.com/2009/06/09/make-500000-tax-free-from-real-estate-makeovers/feed/ 4 http://frugaltorich.com/2009/05/28/frugal-staging-design-to-make-you-money-on-real-estate/ http://frugaltorich.com/2009/05/28/frugal-staging-design-to-make-you-money-on-real-estate/#comments Thu, 28 May 2009 17:22:06 +0000 M.S. http://frugaltorich.com/?p=770 This morning I came across a very interesting article in the online edition of the New York Times called Design on a Shoestring.  I am always searching for articles about decorating to maximize both the comfort and value of my home and investment properties, so this one caught my eye.

The article was about a couple that had completely redone a one bedroom apartment near London and featured a wonderful photo gallery of their great ideas.  I was floored when I read they had spent over $10,300 — to re-do a 1,200-square-foot apartment!   HOW MUCH??

That’s alot to spend on a 1,200 square foot property!  I believe you can achieve the same results for much less money–and we have done it!

When we started buying investment properties 32 years ago, we realized very quickly that if we fixed up the interior and decorated it a bit–we could raise the rents and attract a better quality of tenant!

The amazing thing was- after we were finished living in this property–we were able to rent it FURNISHED for 2 years- and we received $200 more PER MONTH in rent than what we would have gotten for it unfurnished!

That’s almost $ 5,000 extra rent! What a great return on our investment!

Take a look at what elbow grease and almost ALL secondhand furniture and accessories created in this furnished townhome!  You can use these ideas for a rental property or to stage your home to sell in this tough economy!

The least expensive and most effective method we found to accomplish that effect was with paint! You can create a warm and inviting mood with a soft neutral (not white) paint color.

Here we painted the living room a soft tan color.

In one  bedroom, we used a greyish shade of green, which is also a soft neutral, to give us a fabulous warm romantic feel.

The fabulous custom made upholstered  window treatment hanging over the bed was purchased at a Salvation Army store for $10! It matched perfectly!

In another bedroom, we used the same soft tan color that looks marvelous with the elegant duvet cover we bought at TJ Maxx.  All the furniture, lamps, headboard, pictures etc in this room were purchased secondhand for practically NO money!

After our tenant of 2 years moved out, we decided to take everything out of the property and rent it unfurnished.

Because we have been so very blessed, we decided that rather than have a big sale and make some money–we gave away every single thing to a charity that donates to people that cannot even afford to buy their items at a Goodwill type store! 

They sent a large empty truck and we filled it to the brim!

How cool is that–to be able to share the wealth?  I still wonder who is sitting on those chairs now and sleeping in those beds!

]]> http://frugaltorich.com/2009/05/28/frugal-staging-design-to-make-you-money-on-real-estate/feed/ 5 http://frugaltorich.com/2009/05/06/returned-rug-results-in-rich-reduction/ http://frugaltorich.com/2009/05/06/returned-rug-results-in-rich-reduction/#comments Wed, 06 May 2009 09:27:51 +0000 M.S. http://frugaltorich.com/?p=323 Wouldn’t it be amazing if, just because you asked, you were given a 25% reduction on the exact item you wanted to buy?

Well, that is precisely what happened to us recently!  My husband and I had been searching for just the right rug to go in our kitchen.  It had to be a certain style and color and lo and behold, we came upon it on our weekly trip to Costco.  There were numerous rugs of this style and type, all wrapped up in a tight package, and then we spotted the exact rug in the color we wanted!

This rug was unrolled and our impression was that someone had purchased it, then returned it.  It had no label and clearly had some lint on it, which indicated it had been tested out at someone’s home.  As anyone who shops at Costco knows, you can return items to Costco with no questions asked.  We assumed this was the case with this beautiful rug.  We laid it out on the warehouse floor and looked it over carefully.  It was flawless!

My husband said, “I wonder if they would give us a discount on the price since it is out of the original wrapping and has no paperwork with it?”  We learned a fabulous maneuver long ago, after reading that Donald Trump said “He who mentions a price first, loses!” That meant we did not say how much we wanted as a reduction.  We would leave that up to them.  We could always attempt to negotiate the price if they didn’t offer to reduce it enough.

So, we found the store manager, who looked it over and said “I couldn’t take anymore than $ 75 off!” We were speechless! This was a $300 Wool 8′ by 10′ rug with nothing wrong with it except that it was out of the package– so that amounted to a 25% reduction!

My husband casually responded, “Well, I guess that’s okay. We’ll take it!”

It looks fabulous in our kitchen!

Are you beginning to see how easy it is to save money and gain wealth?

I had the extreme good fortune of having a very creative and fun mother-in-law, who happened to LOVE going to garage sales with her friends for cheap entertainment and to get GREAT bargains.

The impression I had of garage sales at the time was not favorable–alright, I admit it–I had a very negative image of them. I thought the stuff was all JUNK no one wanted. Boy was I wrong! (Although there is almost always some junk in each garage sale.)

My negativity evaporated when my mother in law pulled out the cool items she had purchased on her latest rounds of “rummaging” trips. I was floored at what she could buy for a nickel, 25 or 50 cents!  She had items from Crate and Barrel, Pottery Barn and Williams-Sonoma that looked BARELY used and she had paid 25 cents for them!  She snagged high-end clothing items for herself and grandchildren that were 50 or 75 cents!   She had a wide variety of stuff she had gotten for practically NO money–and I was intrigued!   I had to find out what this was all about!

I started to tag along on her treasure hunts and was delighted to learn I could get all the furniture and accessories I needed to decorate and upgrade our duplexes at garage sales!   I got an even better deal because I drove up in  my older, unassuming “ugly” car- so it looked like I needed a super cheap deal, driving this old car (see earlier post).

Remember—we were trying to aggressively save—so every PENNY mattered!  The less we spent—the more we saved and the more we could invest!

Tables, lamps, dishes, clothing—you name it–they are all available at garage and estate sales for practically NO money!  I was HOOKED!

Over the years, these treasures increased the comfort and value of our personal home, as well as the rental real estate. Soon, my overflowing home loaded with frugal treasures caught the eye of the Discovery Channel and they featured a tour of our home on their top ranked Decorating Show.  They even flew me to Hollywood, where I demonstrated my frugal decorating techniques in their studio!

In 1998, I discovered eBay as the perfect place to sell the overflow of my accumulated treasures, and I have operated a successful eBay business ever since as a stay at home Mom,  making money, generating over 4,000 Positive Feedbacks and shipping goodies all over the world.

I continue to sell on eBay and am now one of the top ranked Education Specialists in the U.S., trained by eBay, as I  teach other people how to sell on eBay!  eBay is a terrific business for me and it is for YOU too!

Garage sales were a super deal back then–and they STILL are a fabulous source for great stuff for almost NO money!  And you are being kind to the environment by recycling!

Spring is here!  Get going to the garage sales!

I’ll see you there!