Category: Saving

Our 5 Best Secrets for Secondhand Shopping Like a Frugal Warrior

Jess Fickett ("Piggy") 8 Comments

Gather ’round, ye children, and I will teach you of an essential moment in Millennial cultural history.

The year was 2012 and a white boy with an egregious undercut was topping the charts rapping about your granddad’s clothes. Not only was this chart-topping song a banger (in fact, it slapped). And not only was the music video a cultural zeitgeist that would define a generation’s visual aesthetic. But the whole moment of “Thrift Shop” was a lovingly earnest ode to what we, the post-Great Recession generation, valued.

It was tacky. It was fun. It was simultaneously both anti-consumerism and materialistic. It was juvenile and absurd and it loved a goddamn deal. Did I mention that it slapped?

Secondhand shopping never looked so incredible.

Anyway that’s how I remember it and I will not be accepting alternate historical interpretations at this time!

The point is that I am still living inside of Macklemore’s “Thrift Shop.” And that makes me kind of an expert on secondhand shopping.

This expertise is more valuable now than ever! It’s been ages since we first wrote about how almost anything can be purchased secondhand. Since then we’ve covered how a lot of secondhand shopping is experiencing a nauseating price hike.

But there is cheap treasure yet to be found if you know where to look. It just requires a little extra time, wisdom, and elbow grease. Here are our five best secrets to secondhand shopping like you want to make an elder Millennial proud.

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Short-Term Disability Insurance is a Waste of Money... With Two Very Specific Exceptions

Short-Term Disability Insurance Is a Waste of Money… With Two Very Specific Exceptions

Lauren Torres ("Kitty") 7 Comments

In honor of Disability Pride Month, we’re coming to you with our hot and sweaty take on short-term disability insurance. We’re going to explain what it is, how it works, and why you probably don’t need it… unless, of course, you’re in two very specific situations. Ooooh, look at me go, building that mystery!

No disability-related topic can ever be simple. But we’ll do our best to make the pros and cons of short-term disability insurance super clear! And since we’re generally not enthusiastic about it, we’ll explain some of your (many) other, better options.

Fun fact: the insurance industry abbreviates short-term disability insurance as “STD.” Unlike my biblical ancestress, I swear to resist the temptation of a low-hanging fruit.

Abbreviating "short-term disability insurance" as "STD" is like a carrot with a giant box held up with a stick and a string for me, specifically.
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How Saving Money Is Like Losing Weight… And How It’s Really Not

Jess Fickett ("Piggy") 20 Comments

In 2024, the second most common New Year’s Resolution is to save money.

The first most common? To lose weight.

Dear readers, I have made both of these resolutions. I slogged through months of dieting—both of spending and of eating—dragging my goals and expectations behind me. And I emerged from the experience wiser, richer… and the exact same weight.

How I felt after dieting for both my weight and my money.

That’s right. Today we’re talking about dieting.

Controlling one’s body and controlling one’s finances are often brought up in the same breath. And I think it’s useful to talk about the ways in which they’re similar—but also so very different!

For the purposes of this article, I’m going to define a diet as a temporary change of exercise and eating habits for the purposes of changing your body shape and weight. Temporarily cutting out all carbohydrates counts as a diet, as does implementing a points system a la the WeightWatchers diet. But we wouldn’t include, say, omitting gluten because you have Celiac disease. Having a diet ≠ dieting.

If that’s not your jam… blame our Patreon supporters! Those gorgeous, charitable, artistically gifted people specifically chose today’s topic. And as they literally pay the bills around here, I’m going to lay my heart (and my cellulite) bare according to their whims.

Today’s topic includes discussions of dieting, weight, fatphobia, and eating disorders. I’m going to use the word “fat” a lot because we believe in reclaiming it as a neutral description so that it loses its power to demean and insult. If you’d rather not read this post, it’s okay. I promise I still love you.

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Life Insurance: Responsible Investment or Waste of Money?

Lauren Torres ("Kitty") 6 Comments

I didn’t understand anything about life insurance until I was in my late twenties. I’d just started a small blog with a friend (you wouldn’t have heard of it), and it was unclear how many people were reading it. Until one day, when a shocking email arrived in our inbox. A company wanted to give us money to recommend a product.

The product was life insurance.

Jess (that’s Piggy to the uninitiated) and I regarded this offer with the confused-yet-intrigued energy of hungry fish watching a worm wriggle on a hook. Obviously we hadn’t had the audacity to make a preemptive affiliate marketing policy. Life insurance sounded like the kind of thing responsible adults should have, right? And it would be cool to offset the cost of running the site, wouldn’t it? We agreed to take a few days and devote our shower thoughts to the idea.

Like many a wise rainbow trout, we decided against the hook. No matter who you are, easy money is always a fat and juicy temptation. But we agreed we’d rather run the blog at a loss than sell random crap to our readers. Happy with this decision, we sat down to our inbox to find two more unsolicited affiliate offers.

These products were also life insurance.

In the years since, they’ve never stopped coming. We get a new one at least once a month. Now, we have the experience to understand why life insurance companies are so eager to pay bloggers to rep their stuff. Today, we’ll permanently burn that bridge by explaining how it works—and why we think most life insurance isn’t worth it for the majority of our readers.

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You Have the Frugal Right to Repair Your Shit. Or Do You?

Jess Fickett ("Piggy") 40 Comments

Let me tell you about my favorite pair of boots.

They’re calf-high brown leather with a one-inch heel that makes this short Bitch feel just a little more powerful. They’re the kind of boots you can wear with a dress, with leggings, with jeans—they’re exactly as dressy or as casual as you want. I got them almost five years ago for about $200.

Recently, the heels broke. I’d worn them down to the point that chunks of the sole had snapped off and gotten trapped inside the heel so they rattled when I walked. So I took them to a cobbler. $50 later, I had new, beautiful heels attached to my favorite boots. Good as new!

Now let me tell you about my last phone. It was a magical pocket-size computer that did everything from calculating tips to playing music to oversharing on social media. (Note: it did not call home often enough, which was a major design flaw as far as my mom’s concerned.) After three years, I noticed the battery failing. Soon it could barely hold a charge for a few hours, let alone all day.

I brought it in for repairs. And they told me that replacing the battery was so financially and technically inefficient that they simply… wouldn’t. But, they assured me, I could upgrade to a newer, better model for only $24.99! Per month, that is. Which is way cheaper than replacing the battery, promise!

I couldn’t get anyone to replace my phone battery. There was no cobbler-equivalent phone artisan wearing a leather apron and bifocals in a musty shop lovingly repairing old phones.

Out of options, I bought a new phone. And just to spite the fuckers, I paid the total cost up-front.

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How To Protect Cash Savings During High Inflation

Lauren Torres ("Kitty") 23 Comments

We’ve gotten a TON of questions recently from readers trying to protect cash savings during periods of high inflation.

Usually, having mad cash and not being sure how to spend it is a fun problem to solve. (Index funds + a nice seafood dinner at a non-chain restaurant is our default answer.) But right now, high inflation is sucking the pleasure out of Scrooge McDucking on a big pile of cash.

Now is a terrible time to be holding onto cash. Cash savings during times of high inflation are guaranteed to lose value. For example: if you had $1,000 saved a year ago, our 8.5% inflation rate means that money can only buy $915 worth of goods today. It sucks for everyone, but especially so for people who’ve been saving up for a long time to hit a life milestone.

We know how hard our readers work and sacrifice to put money away. And it’s so painful to watch it lose its value because of reasons outside your control. So if you’ve got money sitting idle in your checking account, listen up! We’ll do our best to help you take the sting out of shrinking cash savings during high inflation.

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How to Save Money on Your Beloved Pets

Jess Fickett ("Piggy") 43 Comments

Here at Bitches Get Riches, we don’t just think pets are better than people—we believe it with every fiber of our ornery little hearts. Down with the anthropocene! We welcome our fuzzy lil’ treat-obsessed overlords!

Here are 23 ways you can save money on pets, from food and toys to veterinary care and boarding.

I’ll be the first to admit it’s pretty dog-and-cat-centric, so your mileage may vary. But in my defense, I treat my chickens like queens. I’ve even gone so far as to build them the Taj Mahal of chicken coops and feed them organic heirloom kale straight from the garden. So when it comes to barnyard animals, I have exactly zero experience in being frugal.

Save money on pets... unless they're a flock of spoiled, entitled, lazy egg sluts.
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How to Start Small by Saving Small

How To Start Small by Saving Small

Jess Fickett ("Piggy") 9 Comments

“If you don’t start saving your money when you’re young, you’re going to die impoverished, overworked, and alone!” says every personal finance guru ever to young people just starting out in the world.

And while it’s only a slight exaggeration, this kind of enormous pressure can be overwhelming and demoralizing when you’re just starting to get your financial life under control and barely bringing in enough money to make ends meet.

So what’s a young, financially inexperienced person to do? What’s anyone with bills and debt to do with the specter of an empty savings account looming and no solution in sight?

The answer, as with most personal finance, is to start small. Because when saving, your little savings really do add up.

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How to Avoid Lifestyle Inflation … and When to Embrace It

Jess Fickett ("Piggy") 32 Comments

A strange thing happens every time my income increases. My life magically gets… easier, better, and happier.

Getting my very first raise at work made it easier for me to pay off my student loans ahead of schedule. That meant the money I used to spend on student loans could instead be spent on making my life more comfortable. And that meant moving out of the house I rented with six roommates and finally buying decent food.

Getting a job that cut out my daily commute allowed me to spend more time doing things I love instead of impotently cursing the traffic. I could get drinks with friends after work, or go to the climbing gym, both of which cost money. Or, for free, I could stand by the highway yelling “SUCKERS!” at passing commuters at 5:30 p.m. every day!

And getting a new job at almost double my previous salary meant I could afford things I previously thought would take years of saving. Plane tickets to a friend’s destination wedding in Mexico. Drywall for my unfinished basement. Eating at a shmancy restaurant without checking the menu for prices.

If all of this sounds suspiciously like lifestyle inflation, that’s because it is! And yet I feel no guilt over inflating my lifestyle from time to time when my income significantly increases.

This is generally considered a cardinal sin of personal finance. It’s right up there with buying lattes or taking the name of Dave Ramsey in vain. So let’s unpack that.

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