Only in America could this happen: A housewife in Maine raked in more than $1 million last year from putting out a little tip sheet that tells people how to live on the cheap.
Not that all those big bucks she has stashed in the bank have gone to Amy Dacyczyn's head. The Frugal Zealot - or FZ, as the 80,000 readers of the Tightwad Gazette affectionately call her - is still stringing wind chimes made of frozen juice can lids, making her own jewelry from the wires in telephone cables and cutting up old jeans to turn into potholders.For a fun Saturday afternoon, the Dacyczyn family jumps in the car and heads for the junkyard to go "treasure hunting."
Saving money is in fashion in these shaky economic times. It also is kind of a trendy hobby for the affluent who are feeling guilty about all their conspicuous consumption in the glitzy, ditsy '80s.
I suppose, then, that as a fashion writer I should be passing along some nifty ideas to you for scrimping on clothes and cosmetics. But frankly, I'm not very good at that sort of thing.
I have tried. In my younger, leaner (speaking for both my budget and body) days, when one of the legs on a pair of pantyhose would get a run, I'd cut it off and toss it out but save the remaining good leg to match up with another in the same shade. I had to quit doing this when I started wearing support pantyhose, though, because it felt like all that spandex was rearranging my internal organs.
Then there was the hint I read somewhere about getting every last nickel's worth out of your worn-down lipsticks. You put them in the microwave to melt so that you can pour them in a little plastic compact. I rounded up about eight tubes, set them on a paper towel, and turned on the microwave. When I went to retrieve them, I knocked one down - which had the effect of a bowling ball. The melted lipsticks fell over, spilled all over the bottom of the oven, and I spent the rest of the day trying to clean bright red goo out of the cracks with Q-Tips.
Then there was the disastrous do-it-yourself facial I concocted from a recipe supposedly favored by Frenchwomen who are not only naturally fashionable but frugal. Its key ingredients were beeswax and lanolin, and while they might be on every Parisian's shopping list, I didn't have the faintest notion where to get the stuff.
It took about three hours and I don't know how many drugstores before I finally found them. The next thing I needed was a double boiler. Not being a cooking person, I have limited my kitchen equipment to only the most basic utensils, so I had to improvise. I set a small bowl in a pan of boiling water and dumped in the beeswax and lanolin to melt. Where was something to grab it with? I didn't own a potholder and all the dish towels were in the wash. Oh, well, the bowl couldn't be THAT hot.
The next thing I knew, the bowl was in smithereens on the floor. My major activity the next few days was painstakingly scraping the messy wax off of the stove and the kitchen tile. And the new black cashmere turtleneck I had been wearing was totally trashed. So much for saving money.
Thing is, if I had read the Tightwad Gazette I would've had a dandy set of denim potholders.