October Frugal Action Item: Preventative Medicine

This month's Frugal Action Item may cost you money. There's an old saying that, "the first wealth is health." So this month I'm going to recommend that you invest some of your money in safeguarding your well being. There's hardly a safer investment, after all. Come inflation or deflation, the health of you and your family is always going to be priceless.

Tetanus shot Even some of the anti-vaccination folk are accepting of tetanus shots. I don't think there's any downside to this particular vaccine. Puncture wounds can happen to anyone, even those of us who don't travel to faraway places with odd diseases, and even to those of us who don't rub shoulders with hundreds of strangers in the course of a given day. Get a tetanus shot if you haven't had one in the last ten years.

I know not everyone believes in getting a flu shot. Having once had influenza (the real thing, not the common cold that people call "the flu"), I do. I'm not going to argue the pros and cons of flu shots here. I will say that if you have no objections to such things, don't let inattention or procrastination be the reason you go without one this year.

Self examinations This one won't cost you anything. If you've never been one to do the routine but recommended medical self-checks, it's time to change that. In the interest of full disclosure, I'll admit that for too many years I neglected my own breast checks for any lumps that ought not to be there. Nor do I keep track of my moles as well as I should. (I have constellations of moles.) This is simply stupid on my part. Self checks cost nothing but a few minutes of my time on a regular basis, and this sort of negligence could mean the difference between having a small tumor taken care of at an early stage, and death itself. Not to mention the expense. Money ought to be an afterthought when it comes to battling cancer or some other disease for your life, but that's just not a reality for many people. Major medical conditions do no favors to even the best padded bank account. Do your self examinations. It's a matter of valuing yourself and showing fundamental self-respect. If you have dependent children at home, it's also a form of providing them with the best possible future.

How to do a breast self-examination
How to do a testicular self-examination
How to do a skin self-examination

Dental care If you've been ignoring a low-grade dental health problem, now is the time to get on top of it. A few conditions, like gingivitis, can be conquered with improved dental hygiene and perhaps an extra couple of professional cleanings. If you've got a toothache, unattended cavities, or gum disease, these problems are not going to clear up on their own. Get to a dentist and have these problems addressed before they turn into something much more serious. And painful. And costly. I know this is a serious expense for those without insurance. But in this case nothing is gained by delay. Dig deep and find the money in the budget, then keep up with your hygiene.

Speaking of gingivitis, get on top of your flossing. A healthy mouth is an asset, and if you've got a healthy mouth, it's cheap to maintain it. Yes, dental floss costs money. But an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. This is one area where you really should spend the money to maintain your health. Again, it's about valuing yourself. You'll thank yourself later if you start doing this before you're old enough for a sugar-heavy western diet to catch up with your teeth.

You know it as well as I do. Exercise and diet are the cornerstones of good health. We've all heard it so many times before. Every day is a chance to start a new healthy habit. So skip the sugary sodas and chips. Prepare healthy meals based on seasonal vegetables and other real foods. Get outside every day (yes, you'll get a pass for blizzards, hurricanes, and nuclear war) for some productive or recreational activity, or at least an aimless walk. If you live in the city, skip the car or bus and walk as much as you can for your errands. Take the stairs. Park as far out in the parking lot as you can, and always walk your grocery cart back to the store. Or carry a hand basket instead of using a grocery cart for some weight bearing exercise. Walk your dog farther and more often. You needn't pay for a fancy health club membership to add more activity to your life. But I do recommend giving high quality food a very high priority in your monthly budget. Cooking from scratch as much as possible will help you eat well without spending a fortune, even if you pay a premium for fresh, local, chemical- and hormone-free foods.

Routine screening tests, such as a pap smear, mammogram, prostate check, colonoscopy, dental cleanings. Many people make a conscious choice not to have mammograms and other radiological checks, even if their insurance will cover the test. Again, I'm not going to argue health care philosophy here, and I do think some routine annual medical tests are probably unnecessary for a lot of people. But most likely there's a regular exam that makes sense for each individual. If family health history places you at high risk for any diseases, schedule a routine check. Don't put off such tests simply because they're unpleasant. Budget for the tests that make sense for you and get yourself to those appointments.

If there's an herbal cold remedy or immune system booster that you believe in, stock up on it now. Cold season is coming for us northern hemisphere types. If your home gets very dry during the winter months, think about ways of adding some moisture to the air of your home without resorting to an electric humidifier. Dry air probably contributes to the common cold by drying out the mucus membranes in the nasal area. So keep a pan of water on the woodstove or the radiator. Or hang your laundry to dry inside. After a shower, set up a fan to blow moist air out of the bathroom and into the rest of the house, rather than venting it outside.


Advanced Frugal Action Item: If you're an ambitious sort, or simply enjoy gardening, consider planting a few medicinal herbs to have on hand for your family's use. I recommend you begin with safe to use and easy to grow herbs such as peppermint (used to treat fevers and headaches), chamomile (stomach aches, ear and eye infections), lemon balm (insomnia and tension), comfrey (skin conditions, burns, and wounds) or sage (sore throat, canker sores, digestive complaints). Obviously, this is an enormous topic that I cannot begin to cover here, and you should consult a professional herbalist or health care provider to address any serious medical situation. But there are many resources to guide those with an interest in herbal medicine. Growing a few of your own medicinal herbs is a great step on the road to both self-sufficiency and frugality. As with the food you eat, it's always nice to know where your medicine came from.


New to these Frugal Action Items? More here:

January: Compact Fluorescent Bulbs & Hot Water Pipe Insulation
February: Kitchen Competence
March: Rein In Entertainment Spending
April: Go Paper-less
May: Solar Dryer
June: Increase the Deductible on Your Auto Insurance
July: Stay Cool Without Touching that Thermostat
August: Repair It!
September: Insulate
November: Frugal Holiday Wish List
December: Plan Next Year's Garden

A 10-Day Supply of Moisturizer

I'm in mind of tiny tips these days, during the season of cold weather. All sorts of small economies that I didn't employ over the summer are coming back to me. But today's tiny tip can be used year round. It will seem like old hat to the veteran frugal folk. I offer it as a hint for those new to this path.

Use up every drop of your toiletries and cosmetics. These products are, almost without exception, wildly expensive. The high end cosmetics lines frequently tempt customers with tiny samples of their products sized to last for ten days or less. And yet, how often does a similar amount simply get tossed away because it's not easy to get it out of the package? If it's enough to bribe you into making an expensive purchase, surely it's enough to use up.

I use a mid-priced moisturizer that comes with a pump dispenser. When I get near the end of the bottle, the pump no longer works so well. Yet there's still quite a lot of moisturizer in the bottle. I counted this time, and I got enough moisturizer out of the bottle after the pump no longer worked to last me ten more days.

Consider the price of any cosmetic or toiletry you use. Go ahead and actually crunch the numbers, using the unit price of the product. I spend about $10 for a bottle of my moisturizer, which contains only 70 ml. You know what that works out to? Almost $34 per cup! Now granted, a little of this particular stuff goes a long way. One bottle lasts me about three months. So let's estimate that I use only 11 cents' worth of this stuff every day($10 bottle/90 days). (The application cost of your cosmetics is another number worth crunching.) If I throw the bottle out when it will no longer easily dispense the product to me, I'm throwing away $1.10.

Visualize this: would you throw a dollar and a dime into your garbage can? Didn't think so.

So what to do? Well, in this case it's pretty easy. I take a knife to the plastic bottle and scoop out the rest of the product, as needed, with my fingers. I coax the little bit of moisturizer stuck in the pump tube out by smacking the bottom end into my palm. The cut open bottle stays in a ziploc bag for the few days it takes for me to use it up. I know women can be very particular about what skin care and cosmetic products they'll use. I settled on this moisturizer mostly for how it performed on my skin, but also partly based on its plastic bottle. I knew that I could cut it open and use up every last bit of it.

In the past I've tried and liked moisturizers from department store cosmetic lines. It always infuriated me that I couldn't get every bit of the product out of glass bottles. So I gave up on those. If you're still shopping around for your preferred toiletry items, consider the packaging as one factor in your decision. I hope it will go without saying that a $10 bottle of moisturizer is not necessarily inferior to a $35 bottle that will last you the same amount of time. Put aside the marketing, the hype, and the image, and select something that will work for your skin without breaking the bank.

If you are stuck on a product sold in a glass bottle, at least you can recycle the glass. Use a cotton swab to retrieve the last bits of product before you do so. It's not perfect, but it's better than not making any attempt to use up the product completely. If you're really stuck on using high-end skin care products that come in glass bottles, you might try being a squeaky wheel about it the next time you visit the cosmetics counter. Given the state of the economy, companies selling luxury goods just might be in the mood to listen.

I'm About to Run Out of Toothpaste

Last fall I cracked open a new tube of toothpaste, the last of three 6.5 oz. tubes I bought in bulk at our local not-worth-the-membership-fee warehouse club. (I've since let the membership lapse.) On a whim, I wrote the date on the crimp at the end of the tube. I wanted to see how long it would last me. And it is just me, because I use a different brand of toothpaste than my husband does. That date, in case you can't quite make it out, is 9/17/07. That's more than ten months ago, and there are still a few portions left in the tube.

My toothpaste portions are tiny. And usually I only brush my teeth once a day. Before I get reamed about this, I'll lay out a little personal medical history. In the time since I opened that tube of toothpaste, I've seen the dentist once. At my last cleaning this spring, I finally got some great dental news: my gingivitis was gone! I've struggled with chronic gingivitis for years. I took up daily flossing about five years ago to combat it, but it's been a long struggle. Other than that, my mouth is in great shape. I have all the teeth I was left with after extractions for overcrowding in my teen years, have never had a root canal or crown, and I haven't had a cavity in at least 25 years.

So what gives? I use a small amount of toothpaste only once a day. But I brush my teeth for at least three minutes, and that's after flossing - every single evening without fail. I don't use any mouthwash on a regular basis. I'm no medical authority whatsoever, but I believe this longer brushing routine was what allowed me to clear up the gingivitis problem. This is great because the dentist had suggested that I consider buying a sonic toothbrush if the problem didn't clear up soon. I looked into it and the cheapest I could buy one of those for would have been $100. That would have meant using electricity to run my toothbrush, and more expensive replacement brushes. Still, gingivitis is not a completely trivial problem, and I was seriously considering buying one of those brushes until I got the good news. The best news is that it doesn't cost me anything to brush a little longer, manually.

So what are the frugal angles here? Well, aside from avoiding or at least postponing seriously expensive and painful dental work, and saving on a fancy-dancy toothbrush, I made a tube of toothpaste last the better part of a year. And when it's finished, here's what I'm going to use before I buy any more.



These are all from little courtesy toiletry packets my husband picked up while traveling, and that one Burt's Bees tube is from a sampler pack that I got in my Christmas stocking last year. But there's a point here. I'm writing this silly post on toothpaste to make the case that little things add up. "But it's only toothpaste." you say. "That won't get me out of debt!" Alright, that's true. The savings from using small amounts of toothpaste and little free tubes isn't going to amount to a whole lot.

The larger picture is that I've made a game out of frugality, and this is one little part of that game. I feel rewarded, and sometimes even smug, by these tiny feats of frugality. And psychologically that's very important, because it keeps me going. It helps to pat myself on the back and feel a sense of accomplishment. Maybe it's silly. Maybe all those tubes of toothpaste are only going to save me a dollar. But it works for me. The value of that dollar saved is more than a dollar earned because of the intangible bonus of motivation to continue conserving our financial resources, to continue looking for new ways to save a little bit here and there.

I'm not going to grandstand on appropriate portions sizes for toothpaste. But I am going to encourage everyone who reads this - all six of you - to have faith in the little things. To quote Gandhi on a much more serious subject, "Almost everything you do will seem insignificant, but it is very important that you do it." And my addendum is that it's also important to give yourself a lot of credit for doing it, day after day.