Dr. Venue's Frugal Tips

Like my new layout? It's all thanks to Summer, who is both talented and surprisingly affordable.

It's been awhile since I let my cousin write a post, so I agreed to let her write for WFMW this week. But I also wanted to plug in my own tip, so here it is in brief.

I'm really picky about my vitamins. The prenatal vitamins I use, Rainbow Light Just Once Prenatal, cost about $30 at local health food stores for a bottle of 90. I recently found this website, which sells them for $14, plus $4.99 shipping. I browsed a bit, and they really have incredible prices on all their nutritional supplements. I worried that maybe they'd be expired or otherwise damaged, but they turned out to be perfect. So I saved $10 and a trip to Whole Foods. Next time you need vitamins, check them out!

Okay, now here's Electrica. I apologize in advance...

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Dr. Electrica Venue has a PhD in Extrapolation from the prestigious University of the Principality of Sealand, where she also minored in both Nullification and Obfuscation. She now serves her Alma Mater as the dean of her field, and has made several televised appearances, on shows such as "Good Morning Sealand!" and "Great Sous Chefs of the North Sea." Look for her book, The Proper Care and Heeding of Wives, at a bookstore near you!

We're living in troubled times. The economy is terrible. Prices are up, pants are down, and lubricant seriously lacking. Everyone's looking for ways to save money, even here in Sealand. My cousin Marie shared some recipes with you last week, and I passed several of them on to my chef. I'm very much looking forward to saving some money in that area. Like many of you I too have been looking for ways to cut costs, and the information I've found out there is disappointingly obvious. To save gas, make fewer trips! You don't say! To save money on food, eat out less! Such insight!

So I put together some tips that you may not have thought of. They have certainly saved me oodles of money!

1. Instead of keeping both a cook and a maid, fire the cook and send your maid to a cooking school. I actually fired both and put Darren, my pool boy, in charge. I'm now only paying out a third of the payroll I was before and the results are quite satisfactory. In fact, I've finally lost those last ten pounds! In this picture he is trying to figure out where he went wrong with my breakfast. Naughty boy!

2. Re-think your next vacation. I was planning on doing space tourism this year, but when the economy got sour I made some new arrangements and decided to take several frugal vacations throughout the year instead. I went to Belize in February, and at this very moment I'm in Cannes for this quaint little film festival. In August it's Kenya (safari time!), and in December, Dubai. All of these vacations combined do not equate even a fraction of what space tourism would have cost me. Staying closer to home really does save!

3. I don't have children, but many of my friends and neighbors do. My BFF Saffron's daughter, Marlynn, turned 11 a few months ago. Saffron was very concerned over the extravagance of children's birthday parties, which really have become ridiculously overdone in recent years. She decided to do something low profile and save some money. So she booked Miley Cyrus to come out and play the party, and she was able to negotiate nearly $500 off of the fee by agreeing to cover all travel expenses for Miley and her staff. And she remembered the story about some airline saving millions by simply removing one olive from every salad, so she had her caterers do the very same thing, cutting nearly three dollars from her total. Next time a birthday approaches, think of the many ways you too might be able to cut costs.

4. If you're planning to get married and have any amount of wealth, make sure to have a pre-nuptial agreement drawn up. My husband failed to do so, and now he lives in his attorney's casita in Fresno while we finalize the divorce. And I'm in Cannes! *wink wink*

5. Here's a tip I actually got from Marie's husband, who is a car salesman. I wanted to trade in my decripit 2007 Cabriolet (which gets excellent mileage by the way, and has plenty of room for both Darren and Perez, my Goldendoodle puppy) for a 2008. Since the 2007 wasn't quite paid off, Brad advised me to ask my insurance company about something called Gap Insurance. I tried to tell him I would never shop at Gap, but he insisted. He said it covers the difference between what the car is worth and what you actually owe, so the difference isn't tacked on to the price of your new car. That little tip saved me nearly $20,000. I was so grateful I sent him a Hallmark e-card, thus saving money on a stamp as well. See, I'm on a roll!

You know, during the Depression, there were still plenty of millionaires. It's all a matter of personal economy. A penny saved is a penny earned, I really believe that.

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