Eating at home versus dining out.

Learning to cook is a lot of fun, nutritious, and good for your wallet. Eating out is terribly expensive! Plus, when you limit yourself to eating out only a few nights a month, it feels like more of a treat.

When my fiance and I go out to eat, we often go to places featured on Restaraunt.com, because we can use frequent flyer miles I have saved up to get dining certificates. We also like to find quality, inexpensive restaurants in our area. Expensive does not always mean good food OR good service.

When we cook at home, we often have more fun than going out to eat. It is more work, but we get to eat more leisurely, listen to music while we eat, and retire to the couch after a big meal. Thankfully we recently bought a dishwasher too! (Sears was having a sale, with 0% financing for 9 months, plus FatCash from FatWallet with a rebate for delivery...)

For dinner we usually eat:
* Pasta with Classico sauce, the best!
* Stir fry with cashews - yum!
* Chicken marsala, Parmesan, or cordon blue.
* Trader Joe's pizza

For lunch:
* Peanut butter and jelly, my favorite. Teddy Bear peanut butter, nothing else!
* Turkey sandwich with mustard.
* Snack Pak: Cheez-its, Pringles (on sale @ CVS), Goldfish (pretzels or chedder).

For breakfast:
* Granola.
* Coffee.
* Oatmeal.

We also have a lot of bananas, apples, yogurts, oranges, and cookies in between and after meals.

I think we eat exceptionally well for our budget. I clip a ton of coupons and we also use the Chase Rewards Card for an extra 5% cash back in rewards.

My savings strategies

I do about everything I can to save a penny here and a penny there. Here are some of my techniques that I've found effective:

* When you have money, put it in the bank.
* Use online programs like Upromise, FatWallet, and NestEggz to get cash.
* Sign up for every rewards program you can find, such as CVS ExtraCare, frequent flyer miles, and credit card rewards.
* Always trade in your frequent flyer miles for cash through programs like Points.com.
* Always get cash back from credit card rewards programs.

Remember cash is king, and you have to make your money work for you by earning interest in a high yield savings account like ING Direct or Virtual Bank.

What tactics do you employ to save a little dough here and there?

Every penny counts

Whenever I see a penny, I pick it up. If I happen to be going to the bank, I bring that penny to the bank with me and deposit it.

I've been a spender before, and now I sure could use that money that I spent back then on senseless stuff.

I've found about $11 on the ground recently. Not bad, maybe that's good karma because back in the day I would try to create luck by dropping money for other people to find. It's true!

Renting versus buying a house

I would love to buy a house with my fiance, but right now we have such a great apartment at such a great deal, its hard to think about moving. We'll find out whether she will get an REI fellowship in a year or so, and then she'll finish her residency about a year after that. Those dates give us a decent timeline to do some planning on buying a house.

Where we live, the real estate market is way overpriced, in my humble opinion. Including tax incentives, we'd be spending several hundred dollars more per month for a lower standard of living: smaller space, fewer parking spots, worse location.

I've suggested that we continue to rent for the foreseeable future, maybe another two years, and save as much as we can during that time, so that when we are ready to buy a house, and need to buy a house, we'll be in a good position to do so. Who knows what the future will bring?

Stayin' alive!

As an entrepreneur going the bootstrap road, I've had to learn some new financial management strategies. From returning bottles and cans, cashing in rebates, and depositing every last penny into the bank to gather more interest, to borrowing more money than I ever thought reasonable!

Sometimes I think I'm just "buying time" while I figure out how to actually get my business to make money, and other times I really feel like the research and development efforts I'm committing to will eventually bear financial fruits.

Comparing money to sustenance, right now I'm focused on staying alive - creative enough cash flow to carry on, something like a scavenger, or bottom feeder. Next step will be something of a hunter, identifying the right prospects and tracking them through until the sale. And I feel like the final step will be the farmer, growing massive amounts of crops, food, or money.

Get out of debt free card

Wouldn't that be nice? Kind of like Monopoly's get out of jail card, but with more mass appeal.

Rebates can be fun and annoying

I've been grappling with the allure of rebates for a eons. They suck you in with the promise of a bargain, then drag you over the coals to claim it, and finally deliver your rebate check with the speed of a bump on a log.

Retailers like Staples have improved the process, while customers of some other stores never get their money.

What do you think of rebates?