This catchall category covers general services (eg drycleaning, etc.), electronics, office services and supplies, pets and transportation.

Phoning Using The Computer

Get A Free Phone Line With A Dedicated ###

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With this free service, you can use a dedicated number to make and receive long-distance calls from your computer—and have incoming calls rerouted to your landline or cell. Sweeet!

Phoning Using The ComputerWASTE NOT | Living Rich by Spending Smart author Gregory Karp says telecom- munications, along with food and insurance, are three of the biggest recurring expenses in every adult’s life, so to achieve “financial fitness” you should avoid waste in these areas first.

In an effort to staunch the telecommunications hemorrhaging that goes on in our house, I signed up for Google Voice (CLICK HERE for our story), a software program that allows those with a Gmail account to make free long-distance calls (through 2011, anyway) all over North America via computer. I’ve used “GV” to make free calls to the U.S. but found the sound quality so hit and miss (I’m told it’s Beta software) that it prompted me to try another free software for calls in Canada. This one has provided me with consistently clear reception—plus some bells and whistles. Read more

Skunk

Skunk Got The Pooch? Here’s What To Do

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It’s that time of year, when spray-happy juvenile skunks wreak havoc on pooches everywhere. Here’s our popular recipe to get rid of the stink.

SkunkBE PREPARED | Sometimes it’s impossible to determine the genesis of an urban myth, but there is good reason to believe that David Cassidy and the rest of the Partridge Family clan either started or fanned the flame of fallacy by suggesting tomato juice removes skunk scent from dogs. The truth is it doesn’t, though it might temporarily mask the odour. In a now famous 1970 television episode, the family dog, Simone, and all the kids wound up bathing in gallons of the red stuff after a run-in with a certain Pepe Le Pew. Eeeew.

With skunk season now in full force and the air filled with the scent so familiar to Metro Vancouverites, Frugalbits decided to put together what we call a (pre)-Catastrophe Kit. The ingredients are small (and inexpensive) and the instructions are few, but preparing a deskunking kit in advance will save you time and stress should an altercation ensue. Read more

James Perce Long Sleeve White Tee

No Sweat (Marks)! How To Remove Them

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It’s the bane of white tee shirt lovers everywhere—fabric discolouration due to perspiration. Frugalbits asked an international expert how to remove this pesky stain—and he told us what to do.

James Perce Long Sleeve White Tee

 

DO IT YOURSELF | Many general stain removal charts do not even include underarm perspiration as a category. Google “how to remove perspiration/ deodorant stains from clothing” and you’ll find a confusing number of disparate solutions. If there’s a rule of thumb for dealing with this universal problem, who could rightfully claim to know what it is: Martha Stewart; Linda Cobb, the self-proclaimed Queen of Clean; Heloise? Learned as these ladies are, they are home-keeping generalists, not laundry stain specialists. For the definitive answer, Frugalbits asked a leading light in the stain removal industry. Read more

Dryel Home Dry Cleaning - Casey Phaisalakani

Why Not Give Home Dry Cleaning A Shot

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If you’ve never tried it before, why not give home dry cleaning a shot.

Dryel Home Dry Cleaning - Casey PhaisalakaniDO IT YOURSELF | So this is what it feels like to be taken to the cleaners. For the tidy sum of $17.25, I had a beloved blouse ruined by the professionals. It came home from the dry cleaners with an unusually strong chemical smell that no amount of airing out seemed to diminish—it was enough to finally make me try a home dry cleaning product. Read more

Nisqually, Washington 2001

It Could Happen To Us: Make A Disaster Kit

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Mother Nature’s on a tear, and seismologists say it’s only a matter of time before we feel her vengeance here. Take the edge off any worry with an easy-make General Disaster Kit.

Nisqually, Washington 2001BE PREPARED | Though it looks almost identical to an image we saw on the Internet of the 6.3 magnitude earthquake that rocked and tumbled Christchurch in New Zealand recently, the picture shown here was taken just 200 miles south of Vancouver in Nisqually, Washington. It shows the destruction caused in 2001 when a quake with a magnitude of 6.8 ripped through this tiny community south of Seattle, sending tremors hundreds of miles in every direction. Read more

Lady Gaga

How To Always Get The Event Tickets You Want

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How to ensure you won’t lose out on tickets to the concerts and events you most want to see.

Lady GagaWORK THE SYSTEM | Has this ever happened to you? Your favourite performer or sporting event is coming to town and you want to make sure you get great seats the second they’re up for grabs. You know that buying tickets in person at a Ticketmaster location or over the telephone will not be faster than purchasing them online, so on the day they become available, you access your Ticketmaster account and begin refreshing your computer screen repeatedly in the minutes leading up to their release, pouncing like a tiger on its prey when the Find Tickets button goes live. Even with your lightening quick reflexes, every ticket is gone in a matter of minutes, and not one of them sold to you.

What can you do to ensure this will never happen again? One thing would be to try to buy tickets before they go on sale to the general public. For that you will most likely need a presale password or code. Read more

Crowd Scene - 123RF

How To Crowd Fund Your Creative Project

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If you want to raise money for your own charitable endeavour or creative project, crowdfunding is the white hot way to do it.

Crowd in Vancouver - RootsAFFECT YOUR CAUSE | Last month, when popstar Adam Lambert asked his then 860,000 Twitter followers to help him raise $290,000 in under two weeks for his current favourite cause Charity: Water, even his own father expressed skepticism. But fans, in a testament to Lambert’s power to mobilize the troops, crashed the charity’s website on the last day to donate, and Lambert wound up just $10,000 shy of his goal.

Last week Lambert tweeted fans to visit kickstarter.com and check out his pal guitarist Monte Pittman’s campaign to raise funds for a self-published album. That shoutout helped Pittman surpass his financial goal in less than a day.

Both Lambert and Pittman were tapping into the power of crowdfunding—Lambert for charity, Pittman for working capital—and you can tap into it too, to support a personal cause or a creative project of your own. Read more

2009 Lexus

How To Buy A Pre- Owned Car In The U.S.

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Ever thought about importing a pre-owned car from the U.S.? This could be a good time to do it.

2009 LexusMONEY SPENT WISELY | Buying a pre-owned car in the U.S. is not the sizzling topic it was in 2007 when the price of relatively new used cars was much higher this side of the border (I’m told Canadian dealers have made an effort in the past few years to mitigate the disparity). Still, the Canadian dollar is at par right now and could go higher, while the U.S. economy remains in a slump. One can only imagine that a larger than average number of U.S. car owners are defaulting on payments, and that lots of auto dealerships are staring at overstock—circumstances that could work to the advantage of Canadians car shopping down south. Read more

Small Parcel - iStock

How To Receive Parcels At The U.S. Border

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It’s dead simple to have U.S. companies that don’t ship to Canada ship to the border instead.

Small Parcel - iStockSHOPPING AROUND | Last week we ran a story on down sweaters and discovered that some of the best-value models come from the cheap-chic Japanese fashion house Uniqlo, which does not ship to Canada. Uniqlo will, however, take orders for anything in its online catalogue over the telephone from the store in Manhattan and send it to any address in the U.S for a flat rate.

This got us thinking about how we might use the services of any of the parcel-receiving companies that operate just over the border in Blaine, Washington. We contacted four of them—Automated Mailing Services, Mail Boxes International, Pacific Mail and Parcel, and Security Mail Services—and found out the process is simple. Read more

Boxee Box -dLink

TV + Internet: Thinking Inside The Boxee Box

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This digital receiver provides a dead easy way to stream FREE Internet content—in glorious HD—on your big screen TV.

Boxee Box -dLinkSHOPPING AROUND | When Apple TV relaunched last fall, I rushed out and got one and hooked it up to my television with an HDMI cable so I could gain easy, seamless access to Netflix and whatever other premium—a.k.a. paid for—audio/video content ITunes can persuade me to purchase from their online emporium. Now I’m wondering whether a Boxee Box would have been the smarter buy.

What Is Boxee Box? Read more