I didn’t actually set out to become a tip aficionado. But that’s exactly what’s happened since the day I began publishing Debt-Proof Living newsletter (formerly Cheapskate Monthly) and invited readers to share with me their best money- and time-saving tips.
Three or four fascinating tips came pouring in those first few months (two or three more than I expected), and because they were great, I shared them with my readers. The more tips I published in subsequent months, the more readers responded with new and better tips. In time, I began to go out of my way looking for tips and was amazed at how many turned up. I’m not sure if I was more attracted to the tips or the tips to me (sometimes I feel like a tip magnet), but the result was clear: I loved tips. I can read a tip, digest it quickly, mentally file it for future use, move on to the next one, and never get bored.
Before long, tips began arriving at my office faster than I could figure out what to do with them. I couldn’t throw them away. And because of the way they arrived (and still do)—printed on napkins; buried in the recesses of long, detailed letters; salvaged on snippets torn from newspapers; phone, fax, and email messages—I had a logistical challenge from the very start.
I was able to stick with a simple filing system for about three days until I discovered a much easier method: piling—which took hardly any time at all. And then piles began to grow and spill into each other at an unprecedented rate into what I would eventually name Mt. Tip.
I knew I was headed for trouble the day I spent hours searching for one wonderful tip I knew was in there somewhere. And that was the day I conceded that I had to either find a way to move mountains or call a rubbish-removal contractor. I couldn’t go on living like this.
First published in 1997 under the title Tiptionary, this book was a big hit. Apparently I wasn’t the only one who loved handy tips! Readers told me that reading the book was a lot like being faced with a bag of potato chips: It was almost impossible to stop with just one tip.
In the years since Tiptionary was released, the world has changed a lot! And that meant this book needed a radical update to make it current. Sections on banking, computers, and travel, for example, needed overhauls.
Enter Revell Books. All I had to do was mention the availability of a really awesome collection of handy tips to my editor, Vicki Crumpton, and the best publishing team in the world was mobilized into action.
What you have here is a revised and updated, fabulously fun collection of tips—short, to-the-point suggestions for ways to do things cheaper, better, and faster. Many of these tips are timeless; others we know were current and relevant five minutes ago, but who knows about next month!
Some of the best tips you will read have completely unknown origins because they’ve been passed from generation to generation, and someone along the line sent them my way. Some tips were left out because they turned out to be nothing more than myths—legends people believe with all their hearts, but when put to the test, fail.
One rejected tip had to do with bread and wallpaper. No foolin’. The tip was to discard the crust from a piece of bread, wad it up into a tight dough ball, and use it like an eraser to clean dirt and marks from wallpaper. I tried it and “erased” with all my might, but that little dirty spot on my wallpaper would not budge. I threw the bread ball in the trash, grabbed a bottle of laundry stain remover, and took care of the smudge in a flash.
Some entries were discovered quite by accident. I think of the woman who wrote to me so excited because she no longer needed to scrub the toilet on Saturday since her husband had started dumping his denture-soaking liquid into the commode each morning. Bingo! A great household tip (page 63).
Surely there’s a long story that goes along with the tip that arrived on a postcard without a return address or signature, simply a postmark from somewhere in Alaska: “Have your head examined before you attempt to build your own home. Unless you are a developer or professional contractor, you are in for a few surprises, not the least of which is that it will take twice as long as promised and cost twice as much as estimated.” There you go, for what it’s worth.
The criteria for whether a tip made it into this collection were fairly simple: If it didn’t insult my intelligence, included a reasonable expectation that it saved time or money, and prompted a response anything close to Wow! What a great idea!—it was in. This means you won’t be reading any tips that tell you to brush and floss your teeth, because we’re smart and we already know we should do that every day. But floss a turkey? Now that’s a great tip (page 125). Or floss that winter coat? You’ll be glad you did (page 69)!
You’re about to learn that there are many different ways to accomplish goals. And that’s good, because if you need to polish the copper in your kitchen and you don’t have any lemons on hand but you do have a jug of vinegar, you’ll be able to get the job done without running to the store to spend money needlessly (page 40). When there’s more than one way to achieve the same result, Cheaper, Better, Faster will give you the choices.
And now to answer the question you will ask if you haven’t already: No, I do not do everything recommended in Cheaper, Better, Faster. There’s not a person on the face of the earth, myself included, who could do all of these things in a single lifetime, nor would I want to. Some of the tips are just not applicable to my life. And some won’t apply to your life, either.
Think of Cheaper, Better, Faster as a grand smorgasbord loaded with every kind of delicacy you can possibly imagine—even some things you can’t. As you pass by, look at everything, consider most things, and fill your plate with what suits your taste.
The best thing about Cheaper, Better, Faster, just like your favorite smorgasbord, is that you can come back again and again and again!
Mary Hunt
California
2013