Frugal alternatives to more expensive ingredients

Posted by on Jan 26, 2009 in Food, Frugal Tips | 1 comment

866005_peppers_4.jpgIf you enjoy cooking as much as I do, then there are always those recipes that you’re dying to try.  The downside is that you might not have the ingredients on hand, or the recipe might include expensive ingredients.  If you only need a tablespoon of red wine vinegar, for example, it doesn’t make sense to buy an entire bottle if you don’t think you’ll use it in everyday cooking anyway.

This is where substitution comes in.  Sometimes, expensive ingredients can be replaced with cheaper, easy-to-find alternatives.  Here are some examples:

Sour cream.  This costs around P75 if you buy it from a store. If you just get the regular cream (P35) and gradually add vinegar or lemon juice as you stir it, you’ll get the same effect.  Just use your taste buds to judge the quantity, but 2 to 3 tablespoons of vinegar to one cup of cream should do the trick.  Sometimes I add a bit of mayonnaise if I’ll be using the sour cream in a dip.

If you don’t want to do all this mixing, you can also use yogurt in the same amount as the sour cream.

Cream cheese.  It’s P115 a block, so if you’re only going to use small quantities, you can use these suggestions from AllRecipes: the same amount of yogurt, strained with a cheesecloth overnight.  I haven’t tried this yet, though.

According to the article I mentioned earlier, you can puree some cottage cheese (same as the needed amount of cream cheese), but the price difference would be smaller, because the last time I checked, cottage cheese was P95/cup.  I generally just buy cream cheese rather than do substitutions, since it goes well with almost anything.  If for some reason you can’t find it (they don’t have it in the grocery nearest my house), then by all means try these substitutes.

Parmesan cheese.  If you have some leftover queso de bola from the holidays, you can grate that and use it instead of buying parmesan.

White/red wine vinegar.  The substitution depends on what you need the wine vinegar for.  If it’s the acidity that’s needed, then you can simply use any vinegar you have – just add it gradually and judge it with your tastebuds until it has the level of acidity or sourness you need.  Since red wine vinegar is generally milder, you can halve the quantity required in the recipe.

White/red wine.  For white wine, you can substitute chicken or fish broth (depending on what you’re cooking). According to an article I found at About.com, you can also use ginger ale, or canned mushroom liquid.  If you’ll use it as a marinade, you can mix 1/4 cup vinegar with 1 tbsp sugar and 1/4 cup water.

For red wine, you can substitute grape juice.  If you’re using tetrapack or powdered juices, they might be too sweet, so diluting them with broth or water might help.

Here are some additional ingredient substitute lists I found online:

Do you use substitutes for expensive ingredients?  Are there any tips you’d like to share with us?

Image by Steve Woods from Sxc.hu

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Online money-making opportunities: Jan 19-24

Posted by on Jan 23, 2009 in Online Job Listings | 0 comments

Happy Thursday, everyone :)   Below are some online job opportunities this week.

Note: I try to list legitimate job opportunities as much as possible, but some illegitimate ones might fall through the cracks.  Please use your best judgment when communicating with prospective clients, and make sure you get a signed contract before doing any work.

Internet entrepreneur Yaro Starak is also looking for competent individuals to hire.  He’s willing to pay $15-$35 per hour, depending on the work.  Basically, he’s looking for copywriters, PHP developers, graphic designers, project managers, and a virtual assistant.  For more information, click here.

Now, let’s move forward to the other online job opportunities available:

Blogging and Online Writing:

Web Design & Development:

Miscellaneous:

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Protecting Yourself Against Layoffs

Posted by on Jan 20, 2009 in Earning and Income, Financial Tips, Saving | 0 comments

371px-tiger-1.jpgRecent items in the news must sound depressing for Filipino employees.  An outsourcing firm laid off 500 workers, many OFWs lost their jobs, and even the Intramuros Administration laid off some of its workers.

Since I work as a freelancer, there’s no danger of layoffs in the strictest sense.  But I need to prepare myself in case my biggest clients close up shop or decide to cut off my services from their annual budget. In times like these, we all need to protect ourselves from sudden unemployment.  Here are some ways we can do this:

Build up your emergency fund.  I’ve written about emergency funds so many times, which just goes to show how important they are – especially in times of financial crisis.  For the uninitiated, here’s a definition of an emergency fund:

“It’s basically a collection of money that you can access whenever there’s an emergency. And only an emergency. Emergencies may include the following: the sudden loss of a job, unforseen medical bills, a natural calamity, sudden home or vehicle repairs, etc.”

Right now, I have 6 months worth of living expenses tucked away in my emergency fund.  If I lose a big client or all my clients, I can go by without work for 6 months.  Of course, I won’t wait until my emergency fund runs out before I look for new jobs, but it gives me a sense of security knowing that if I have no income, I can still support myself and my family.

Have multiple streams of income.  Whether you’re a freelancer or a corporate employee, it helps to have multiple ways to earn money.  Freelancers should have more than one client at a time.  Corporate workers should have businesses, investments, or part-time gigs that will be able to support them in some way when they get laid off.

For me, I have more than one client, but I also have other streams of income such as ad and affiliate revenue from my other blogs.

Why not hit two birds with one stone by having streams of income that you can add to your resume? Apart from getting extra income for yourself, you’ll also increase your worth as an employee or freelancer by having income streams that will reflect well in your resume.  Did you write and sell an ebook about your industry?  Did you work as a virtual assistant for an internet mogul?  Did you start your own business?  Having these experiences usually gives you the right to charge a bit more than others who only depended on their corporate jobs to learn new skills.

Cut down expenses.  This is always a must, even if there’s no financial crisis.  Be aware of how much you spend each day and see if there are areas you can cut back on.

Have a plan.  If you do get laid off, what are you planning to do with your time? Sure, you can take a couple of days to rest, but after that, you need to take some action even if you have an emergency fund that covers your expenses.  Why?  Because it’s never a good thing for the mind to be idle.

This would be the perfect time for you to polish your resume, get an online presence (such as your own professional website or blog, or even just a LinkedIn account), and find other ways to make money.

Use your brain, not your heart.  Most money decisions are emotional decisions. This is why many people fall prey to scams, get-rick-quick schemes that don’t work, and failed investments.  Don’t just jump at every possible income source you can think of without being informed first.  If you just join every PTC (paid-to-click) site, invest in stocks you know nothing about, and participate in multi-level marketing schemes, you’ll just be wasting both your time and your money.  Making logical, informed decisions is the only way for anyone to survive job loss.

Usually, layoffs are sudden and outside your control.  But this doesn’t mean that you should be financially powerless if you lose your job.  By doing the 5 things listed above, you’ll be able to cushion yourself from some of the financial effects of being laid-off.

How secure do you feel with your job?  Are you doing anything to protect yourself from job loss?

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My Biggest Money Mistakes

Posted by on Jan 16, 2009 in Financial Tips | 6 comments

1078182_failure.jpgI’m proud to say that I made only a few money mistakes ever since I started earning.  It was my mother who made all the money mistakes in our family, and I mostly learned what not to do by just watching her.   She hasn’t saved enough for her retirement, she incurred so much debt that it’s impossible to repay, and she lived beyond her means even when she had no job.  Her mistakes were a financial nightmare for the entire family.

I guess you could say that I became smart with money because I was so afraid of ending up like her.  This fear made me educate myself about saving and earning so that I would not have to repeat her mistakes and make my children pay for them.

But this doesn’t mean that I’m free from mistakes.  I am perfectly human.  I’ve made some money and business mistakes that I wish I never made.  Here they are:

Lending money to others.  Sometimes, even when it comes to relatives, lending money actually means giving it without expecting anything in return.  For years I said “yes” to lending money to family members, and I rarely saw a centavo of my money back.  This led to tense family relations, which weren’t worth the money I “gave away”.

The bottom line?  Involving money in your family relationships tends to be messy and destructive.  Learning from my mistake, I’ll be avoiding this situation again.

Doing everything myself.  When I started my online business, I did everything myself.  It’s perfectly normal to start a business as a one-woman show. The problem was that it stayed that way for 3 years.

One of the most important things about running a business is that you should work on it, not in it.  I got this idea from a book called The E-Myth Revisited.  You should get others to work with you, whether it’s a business partner, a contractor, or in-house employees.  This allows you to focus on the more important aspects of the business as well as the tasks you enjoy.

What does this have to do with money?  Well, if you do everything yourself, your time will be consumed by tasks that anyone else can do.  You won’t have the time or energy to do other tasks that will bring in more money such as expanding your business, doing guerrilla marketing, and creating other means to diversify your income.

Undercharging for my services.  I used to be afraid to charge higher for my writing services, thinking that clients would hire some $1 writer from other countries.  I used to charge  $5 to $20/article.  It took a very generous client before I realized that I could charge much more than that.  Now I get paid around $30 to $100 for most of my work.  This means that I get paid more per hour and can actually relax about work a bit, rather than spending every single waking moment writing articles.  I may love my work, but there are other things I want to do as well.

Also, getting paid more made me become more serious about improving the quality of my work.  I guess both my clients and I won in the end :)

Not applying the 80/20 principle.  One of my biggest business mistakes was giving all my clients and projects equal time and effort.  Why is this a mistake?  Because some ventures, clients, and projects will be worth more than others.  What should you spend more time on, the difficult and demanding client who pays you at a low rate, or the low-maintenance client who pays well?  It took me a few years to learn to focus on the latter.

This is where the 80/20 principle comes in. A short definition of this principle is that 80% of your output/income, should come from 20% of your input/effort.  Of course, you don’t follow this idea literally, counting every percentage.  The point is that you should focus on the things that give you the best results with the smallest amount of effort.

These are only the top 4 mistakes I can remember off the top of my head.  How about you?  What financial mistakes have you made in the past?  What could you have done to avoid them?

Image by ilker from sxc.hu

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Does Frugal Pinoy Apply to You?

Posted by on Jan 14, 2009 in Frugality, Site News | 3 comments

“Your site doesn’t apply to me.  I can’t use your advice.”  I hear this comment a lot, especially from friends and family.

837127_question_mark.jpgIt could be true.  The blog posts here at Frugal Pinoy may not apply to you, especially if you’re…

  • feeling so secure in your finances that you know you can provide for yourself and your family even if you lose your job and have no income for 6 months,
  • a multi-millionaire who wants to learn more about aggressive stock market investing rather than saving,
  • or someone who thinks “I know all of this already!  In fact, I can write a book on it!” every time you see a new blog post here.

If you’re any of the above, congratulations!  You might not need this site.  In fact, feel free to contact me and send a guest article containing advice that other Frugal Pinoy readers could use.  (I’m serious about this.  Guest articles are welcome.  Just click here to send me a message via the contact form.)


But if you hear yourself saying or thinking the following lines, then this blog will definitely be beneficial to you:

  • “I want to make more money.”
  • “I need to get out of credit card debt.”
  • “I hope to save more money so I can afford the things I want.”
  • “I want to save more money so I can afford the things I need.”
  • “I still accept financial help from friends and relatives.”
  • “If I get laid off tomorrow, I won’t be able to pay for my living expenses until I get another job.”
  • “I want to have the financial freedom to travel and pursue my passions.”
  • “I’m spending too much on clothes/food/entertainment/etc.”
  • “I want to retire early.”
  • “I want to leave the rat race and start my own business.”

What is Frugal Pinoy really about?  Why is it relevant to the people who can relate with these statements?  In one sentence, Frugal Pinoy is a blog about defining financial freedom and the steps you need to take to get there. I’m willing to bet that almost anyone who is earning an income (or wants to) would benefit from defining the word “financial freedom” in their own terms, as well as take the steps to get to this freedom as soon as possible.

Personally, I want that financial freedom myself.  The good news is that I believe I’m on track to financial freedom, even with the economic downturn (in fact, I’m thriving).  If you want to be on this journey yourself, then you’re welcome to use the advice on this blog.

The best part? It doesn’t cost you any money. It doesn’t make me any money either*, so you know I’m not out to sell you multi-level marketing products and other scams.

That’s all :) This post just serves to remind both myself and the readers about what Frugal Pinoy is for.

If you want to receive Frugal Pinoy updates in your email, please click here and fill up the form. (It only takes 3 seconds.)

Happy Wednesday, everyone! :)

Photo by: Melodi T

* UPDATE: As of December 2009, I started using ads here at Frugal Pinoy to help support the maintenance of the site. But they are secondary to the content. I’ll always be putting the reader first.

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