Wednesday, February 29, 2012

Happy Leap Day

We are certainly selecting a trendy topic to consider for the new direction for our De-Clutter Club. On the Today Show this morning, they had a segment about 11 ways to get free stuff. This is a link to the article: http://lifeinc.today.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2012/02/29/10536606-11-offers-for-free-chocolate-business-cards-more

Their list is primarily to get free things on your birthday from restaurants and shops if you register as a fan or frequent customer, so if today is your birthday, you had better get going since your birthday won’t come around again for another four years!

This is part of the concept that I talked about in my blog a few days ago, that customer loyalty is often rewarded with free things and coupons for discounts, so make a list of your favorite products and check the manufacturer’s website or Google the product name, to see if they have any offers or, if you don’t see something, then ask for something!

Our favorite De-Cluttering Expert, Jamie Novak, has developed a perfect plan for the direction that we are planning for our group. In her book Stop Throwing Money Away (Wiley, 2010), she introduces a concept for creating a support group for the process of trimming down your life – such as de-cluttering and making money. Her group is called a “Moneyize” group. I have written Jamie to see if she still has a call-in about Moneyize and if she might do some kind of new program about getting rid of clutter and at the same time making money and spending less. I will bring a copy of her book to the meeting tomorrow evening for our discussion on how we can expand our discussions. She has some steps for starting and running a Moneyize group and she has a ten-question self-assessment Clutter and Money (CAM) quiz that will help determine where we all are along the road to self-improvement in this area. I will have the quiz and the scoring instructions at the meeting.

I will also bring a copy of The Cheap Book by Robin Herbst and Julie Miller (Cincinnati, Ohio: F&W Publications, 2008) which takes a humorous look at the way you can approach “your inner cheapskate.” On pages 3 and 4, the authors describe the rating system applied against certain behaviors from Cheap Factor 1: Sensible (like buying your college textbooks used) to Cheap Factor 5: Cheap (you use a coupon on a first date and make your guest pay their half of the bill). There is also an extreme category called Cheap Factor 10 that makes Scrooge look like Santa Claus (you save your calendars so you can reuse them ten years later!)

I spoke with Kathy, who will be our group leader for discussions about living well on less, last week about our group and we are both very excited about the way the group is headed. I hope to see all our “regulars” there as well as some new faces. I will pass around a sign-up sheet for contact information so that we will be able to share information in email blasts and through this blog.

See you tomorrow evening at 7:00 p.m. – we have both halves of the Program Room (1A and 1B) so we can handle a larger group.

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