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The Cheapskate Next Door: The Surprising Secrets of Americans Living Happily Below Their Means |  | Author: Jeff Yeager
Publisher: Broadway
Category: Book
List Price: $12.99
Buy New: $9.35
as of 9/10/2010 13:59 PDT details
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Rating:  20 reviews
Sales Rank: 11523
Media: Paperback
Pages: 256
Number Of Items: 1
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.5
Dimensions (in): 7.8 x 5.1 x 0.8
ISBN: 0767931327
Dewey Decimal Number: 332.024
EAN: 9780767931328
ASIN: 0767931327
Publication Date: June 8, 2010
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Product Description
He’s at it again, but this time he’s not alone. America’s Ultimate Cheapskate is back with all new secrets for how to live happily below your means, á la cheapskate. For The Cheapskate Next Door, Jeff Yeager tapped his bargain-basement-brain-trust, hitting the road to interview and survey hundreds of his fellow cheapskates to divulge their secrets for living the good life on less.
Jeff reveals the 16 key attitudes about money – and life – that allow the cheapskates next door to live happy, comfortable, debt-free lives while spending only a fraction of what most Americans spend. Their strategies will change your way of thinking about money and debunk some of life’s biggest money myths. For example, you’ll learn: how to cut your food bill in half and eat healthier as a result; how your kids can get a college education without ever borrowing a dime; how to let the other guy pay for deprecation by learning the secrets of buying used, not abused; how you can save serious money by negotiating and bartering; and how – if you know where to look – there’s free stuff and free fun all around you.
The Cheapskate Next Door also features dozens of original “Cheap Shots” – quick, money saving tips that could save you more than $25,000 in a single year! Cheap Shots give you the inside scoop on:
• How to save hundreds on kids’ toys;
• What inexpensive old-fashioned kitchen appliance can save you more than $200 a year;
• How you can travel the world without ever having to pay for lodging;
• What single driving tip can save you $30,000 during your lifetime;
• Even how to save up to 40% on fine wines (and we’re not talking about the kind that comes in a box).
From simple money saving tips to truly life changing financial strategies, the cheapskates next door know that the key to financial freedom and enjoying life more is not how much you earn, but how much you spend.
Jeff Yeager is the author of The Ultimate Cheapskate’s Road Map to True Riches, and has appeared as a guest correspondent on the NBC Today Show and Discovery’s Planet Green network. He is also the author of the popular blog The Green Cheapskate, www.TheDailyGreen.com
Visit his website www.UltimateCheapskate.com
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Showing reviews 1-5 of 20
 Frugal, Funny, Useful and a Little Bit Gross - Save $25K a year - the Frugal Way! September 9, 2010
Tara-Nicholle Beasley
At the start of the recession, Jeff Yeager became well-known in personal finance circles as the self-proclaimed Ultimate Cheapskate, publishing his first book, "The Ultimate Cheapskate's Road Map to True Riches," and then walking his talk by bicycling the 3,000 miles of his book tour, crashing on couches and in tents the whole route.
Apparently, during all those overnight stays in the rooms of children of cheapskate parents who hosted him, Yeager picked up a few secrets.
He realized, he explains in his latest book, "The Cheapskate Next Door: The Surprising Secrets of Americans Living Happily Below Their Means," that his cheapskate hosts were very diverse in background and how they lived out their frugal philosophies, but they shared in common (a) "a set of vitally important practices and philosophies when it came to money and the role money played in their lives," and (b) they "were sleeping soundly at night at a time when so many Americans were losing sleep in an economy gone haywire."
So, Yeager collected up a set of his fellow American cheapskates' insomnia-preventing frugality secrets and put them together in his take on the now-classic tome, "The Millionaire Next Door" (which paradoxically, was also about cheapskates -- cheapskates whose frugality has brought them undercover wealth).
And voilà, "The Cheapskate Next Door" was born.
If you're interested in shifting to a lifestyle of enjoyably living below your means, read this book -- but know going in that the differentiating element of Yeager's brand is his persona as a raconteur of comedic, bizarre and gross tales from the extreme edge of Cheapskate-land.
I'm talking tales of eating testicles of some unnamed fauna, roasted whole over his pal Clive's cinderblock rotisserie. I'm talking stories of drinking some near-stranger's denture water while crashing on their (generously offered) couch overnight. I'm talking total strangers, uh, "eliminating" on top of Yeager's roadside tent-cum-motel room that wasn't tucked quite far enough under the bridge.
But don't let this deter you. If you're on the prissy side (like myself), you might read the first few pages of this book and think, "Egads! Whatever that dude is doing is the opposite of how I want to live." But these tales are included for their entertainment value.
The entire point of the book is to underscore that whoever you are -- whatever your personal style is -- there's a way for you to live well below your means. And Yeager proceeds to share how your fellow Americans are doing it -- most of them, without getting peed on.
Who are these people? He tells of interior designers who live cheaply, yet in high style. Yeager speaks about cheapskate parents of large families, and 30-somethings planning upcoming retirements -- all powered by their frugality. He mentions college students and pastors -- all cheapskates. So, what makes them all cheapskates?
They're used-car-buying, student-loan-eschewing, early-mortgage-paying, debt-avoiding folks who tend to use what they buy until the wheels fall off, get divorced at half the rate of non-cheapskates and are 100 times more likely to adopt a stray animal than to buy one.
Yeager starts out by exploring the 16 idiosyncratic mindsets of a cheapskate, from not giving a rip about the Joneses, to preferring to shop for value, not for bargains -- because bargains cost time, and time is more important than money -- in the land of the cheapskate. He moves on to the habits and meticulous money management practices that characterize the personal finances of these cheapskates: "Admittedly, the cheapskates next door know far more about how to stay out of debt than they do about how to get out of debt."
Next come chapters on how cheapskates raise financially savvy families, live green while minimizing the green they spend, avoid wasting food, and find freebies on everything from Internet access to foreign language instruction.
Yeager walks readers through the basics of dining out on the cheap, bartering and negotiating, homeownership -- cheapskate-style, and the common food shopping and cooking philosophies shared by the cheapskates he encountered. Whether clothes, cars, health insurance or recreation, Yeager shares the cheapskate way of life when it comes to all these essentials.
"The Cheapskate Next Door" is an enjoyable read with an extreme take on living frugally -- it offers hundreds of tips on saving every nickle and dime (including carrying around a yardstick to grab the fallen quarters beneath the vending machines you come across -- no joke).
If that's not your style, though, it contains many very sound basics on how to approach the larger purchases and recurring expenses of life in a way that eliminates the debt monkey America seems to be tiring of carrying on its back, along with the inspirational stories of members of "The Cheapskate Next Door" community who are loving living their lives in this way.
This review originally appeared here: [...]
Reprinted with permission
A Humorous Take on the Joys of Not Spending Money September 8, 2010
Professor Donald Mitchell (Thanks for Providing My Reviews over 97,000 Helpful Votes Globally)
2 out of 2 found this review helpful
"Why do you spend money for what is not bread,
And your wages for what does not satisfy?
Listen carefully to Me, and eat what is good,
And let your soul delight itself in abundance."
-- Isaiah 55:2 (NKJV)
I must admit to being one of those people who enjoys not spending any more money than necessary to accomplish what needs to be done. It's a sort of challenge for me. In my family, I have a reputation for finding unusually low air fares, five-star hotel rooms for $35 a night, and rarely throwing anything away that can be used again. For example, I have a razor-blade sharpener so I don't have to buy new blades.
Yet among my peers growing up, I was a wild spender compared to many. I assumed (and was pleased to find that I was correct) that Mr. Yeager is someone who knows fewer limits to thrift than I do. I was right. He sleeps on couches while traveling (when he can find a free one), carries a tent for other occasions, and does his book tours by bike. Now, there's a really frugal person!
I found myself laughing in many places, being reminded of the looks on other people's faces when I disclosed some key fact about my own thrift (I don't think of myself as a cheapskate . . . I'm willing to share what I have with others).
Although the book is intended to be as much good advice about not becoming too materialistic as it is to be a source of good humor, I didn't find much advice that I didn't know already. So I suspect the book will be of more value to those who grew up in environments where throwing money around was the norm.
I think one of the key lessons here is that you can use whatever money you save to do something that has lasting value. I often donate, for instance, to groups that do Christian witnessing. A group that can help lead someone to Salvation for $0.20 is going to get a lot more of my money than one that spends $20.00. Those who spend $1,200 can forget my support. Yet many of the least efficient witnessing organizations collect the most money. Most donors just look at what percentage of donations is used for the intended purpose rather than how frugally that money is applied. The latter is a much better test.
Here's a tip that's in the book: You can order this book to read from your local library. Then, it doesn't cost you anything. That's what I did.
Secret surprises September 1, 2010
C. Wagner (On the banks of the Wabash far away)
2 out of 2 found this review helpful
This is a good book, well worth the read, albeit with a few minor questionable exceptions which I will cover later.
"Cheapskates" spend less than they take home, drive older vehicles, live in smaller homes, etc., etc., etc. They consider their time more valuable than money, but stress the importance of an emergency fund.
They are more likely to have a stay at home parent than the spendthrifts, giving them more freedom to do what they want. (And, also helps to insulate their children from their peers. This is also cited as a reason some go with home schooling.)
Cheapskates do not own a television as frequently as the mooing rest of the U.S...more great advice if you have children. The cheapskates' children learn money management by watching their parents and by actively participating in the family financial matters. Accelerated mortgage payment is an excellent goal.
Now, for my disagreements. The average single income family was cited as about $32,000 in today's (2010) inflation adjusted dollars. (p. 83.) The average single family gross salary was probably about $6,000 - $8,000 at that point. I could buy a gallon of gasoline for 29.9 to 39.9 cents a gallon. This means gasoline has gone up about ten times and incomes have probably only gone up four times. The cheapskate existence was difficult then, but now the average income in my county is substantially less than $32,000 gross, with a lot more taxes taken out.
It was also easier to pay more of your way through college four decades ago, when there were jobs paying a larger percentage of college costs. Now, there are frequently not even minimum wage jobs available for college bound students. College cost has accelerated at a rate substantially higher than the alleged inflation rate and text book costs have accelerated at obscene rates, and there is usually no paying job at the end of the costly rainbow.
While the author suggests high deductible health insurance, try to buy something that works from your pitiful salary. His kind seems more likely to be without coverage, thus further shifting the cost and further eroding the effectiveness of the insurance of the few still covered. But, I must agree with his lamentation that even the Amish seem to have a form of universal health insurance and that the U.S. is the only industrialized nation (although we are really not anymore) in the world without health coverage for its citizens. (p. 204.)
I found the use of buying clubs and box store purchases to be personally offensive. The box store mentality coupled with the Chicago University School of Business One World Economy model is responsible for the closure of Main Street shops and the loss of manufacturing jobs. The factory model of animal production is an immoral abuse of animals, air, soil, and water. These cheapskate rewards are job loss and worsening soil, air, and water quality. Seeking out co-ops that pay their employees an adequate wage and treat their resources with the respect they desire would be a small gesture to improve the U.S. Sometimes, it costs more than money to save money.
Still, the book is more informative than all the televised economic gurus and makes more sense than most of the financial self help books being cranked out by overpaid authors.
And, as an apprentice cheapskate, I checked the book from the library, rather than making the purchase. Sorry about the royalty
Fun Book to Read! August 31, 2010
Christopher Bahr
Jeff Yeager writes a very good book. It has very helpful information for everyone, and even if you're a personal finance know-it-all, he writes in a funny way, so it's worth the read.
Should Be Required Reading August 26, 2010
Susan Ryan-Vollmar
The Cheapskate Next Door will inspire you to live more sensibly in these uncertain times. Pack your lunch. If you must buy a car, purchase a used vehicle. Don't buy something unless you can afford it. Bottom line? Live below your means. Obvious stuff, right? Well, no, not really. The book is packed with stats about how so many of us are living lives we literally can't afford: "U.S. household debt is at a record 133.7 percent of disposable income."
Not that I needed to read those stats to understand the problem. Yes, I'm one of the stupid ones who lived beyond my means for more years than I care to admit. All that changed three years ago and I'm in a much better place now. Yeager's book is a generous, encouraging nudge to stay in that better place.
What I like so much about this book are the examples Yeager weaves in from other cheapskates he has met. My favorite characters are Bruce Ostyn and Daniel Newman, the interior decorators who wash their dishes by hand, using their dishwasher to store ramen noodles. My least favorite? The "table poacher." But you know what's great about this book? It is refreshingly free of dogma. In order to be a cheapskate, I don't *have* to be a table poacher (nor do I need to eat ramen noodles, for that matter). And neither do you. You just have to be mindful of what you're spending, and why. Oh, and make sure that what you're spending is less than what you're making.
Showing reviews 1-5 of 20
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