As I have mentioned before, my late grandmother was the most frugal person I have ever known. She lived on nothing more than Social Security income, yet always had new clothes, plenty to eat, cooked and baked for the whole extended family and even purchased a new car once in awhile.

How did she do it? Well, she did two different things: she lived below her means, and she saved for things that she wanted. Sounds simple, right?

It turns out that many of us don't live like my grandmother did. Back in her day, people didn't use credit cards. If they didn't have the money to pay for something, they saved their extra money until they had enough to buy what they wanted. My grandmother cut back on her monthly expenses and deposited the money she saved in the bank. After about 2 years, she had enough money to buy a car that was only a couple of years old...and she paid with cash.

How many times have you found yourself the day before payday, and your bank account is at least $10 in the hole? That's not living below your means. Having extra money in the bank at the end of a pay period is living below your means.

My family takes one vacation each year. This year, we are going to San Diego, and the trip is coming up next month. It will actually be cheaper for us to fly to San Diego than it will be to fill our minivan with gas multiple times during a road trip, so I'll need to purchase three airline tickets. I'll also need money for food and entertainment expenses while we are in California. I figure I'll need about $1,200 to make all of this happen. So, I have about 45 days to save $1,200. Can I do it? Well, I guess I'm going to find out.

My wife and I plan to hold a garage sale to raise money for our trip. We also plan to sell some items on eBay, and I'll make about $400 extra this month from freelance writing. I have the possibility of making another $400 next month, but I don't know if I'll get that check before we leave for our trip so I'm not counting on that.

That leaves another $800 we must raise. A garage sale and some eBay sales may not total anything near that, so we are also going to have to cut back on some of our monthly expenses and save the extra money, just like my grandmother would have. I recently got a raise at my job which will give me an extra $200 per paycheck. Instead of using that money for household expenses, I plan to act like I never got the raise and stick the extra money in my trip account. I have two more pay checks before our trip next month, so that's an extra $400. Between the raise and the freelance earnings, I am now up to $800 for my trip. That leaves another $400 I need to raise for our vacation. Between the garage sale and eBay, I think that is doable.

And I won't need to charge any of my vacation expenses. Sure, the vacation will be great, but do I really want to spend the next year paying for it...with interest?

By following the teachings of my grandmother, I won't need to.

One of the biggest expenses in my household is prescription drugs. My wife, my kids and I all take prescription medications. The drugs my wife takes are the most expensive. She has diabetes. Until recently, we had no health insurance at all. With prescription drug bills totaling more than $1,000 a month, we were in serious trouble.

A lot of families in the U.S. find themselves in a similar situation. How did we survive on one income and still manage to get our medications? I don't want to say we did it easily, because it certainly was not easy, but we did find some ways to save money on prescription drugs.

1. Buy generics whenever possible. Ask your doctor if there is a generic equivalent for your medications.

2. Bargain shop. The price difference from store to store can be huge. In fact, Wal-mart recently lowered the price of many of the most common generic drugs to just four dollars.
Making a few phone calls can save you a lot of money.

3. Shop online...but only on reputable sites. Drugstore.com is a good option and it can save you some cash.

4. Mail order. If your health plan offers drugs by mail order, take them up on it. You can usually get three month's worth of medications at a time, and it comes at a cost savings.

5. Check out your state's prescription assistance programs. Many of these are based upon your income, but you may qualify.

6. Check out the web site of the company that makes your medications. Many pharmaceutical companies have their own prescription assistance programs. These are also income-based, but you could qualify for low priced or free drugs.

7. Partnership for Prescription Assistance. This site is a clearinghouse for prescription assistance programs.

A post entitled "How to Become a Millionaire" might seem out of place on a blog about frugality, but it's really not. A Canadian man who calls himself "Frugal Trader" is on a quest to become a millionaire by the time he is 35 years old. He's 28 now.

He hopes to accomplish this financial goal by investing wisely and living below his means. In other words, he is living a life of frugality to accomplish his goal of becoming wealthy.

Mind you, Frugal Trader and his wife earn about $105,000 a year, so their income certainly makes it possible for them to become millionaires one day. Can they do it within 7 years? That is the focus of Frugal Trader's blog, Million Dollar Journey.

Frugal trader maintains his anonymity while disclosing financial details such as the amount he has in savings, stocks he has purchased and Net Worth Updates.

I'm not that forthcoming, but from the information I have gathered from sites like Million Dollar Journey, this seems to be the formula for becoming a millionaire:

1. Live below your means.
2. Invest your disposable income in a mix of stocks and bonds. Do not sink all of your money into one investment.
3. Pay yourself first. That means taking 10 or 20 percent of your take home pay and investing it or saving it. Make it automatic through payroll deduction and you won't miss it.
4. Have an emergency fund. Emergencies can kill your finances. Be prepared.

That's it. Give it 10 or 20 years or even more and you too can become a millionaire. That doesn't seem like very exciting advice, and it's not. You won't become a millionaire overnight with this method, but that's not the point. The advice also seems a bit simplistic, and it is. However, how many people actually follow the four steps listed above? Not many...and that's why they are not millionaires...nor are they in a positive financial situation.

Live a life of Savvy Frugality and you CAN become a millionaire...someday.

Just one day after my post on AuctionAds they have sweetened the deal for new publishers. If you have a blog or web site of your own, you can now sign up for AuctionAds and they will deposit $25 into your account to get you started. The payout amount has been raised to $50, but with this new promotion you're halfway there! All you have to do to get started is click on AuctionAds and fill out a form to get your account. Also, for six months after you sign up, you will make 5 percent of the sales from every additional AuctionAds account you refer. For example, if five people sign up for AuctionAds from your site, and they generate sales from their ads, you get five percent of all their sales for six months. Sweet! Joining AuctionAds is free, and they'll give you $25! Not bad!

A couple of days ago, I decided to try out a new sponsor for this blog... AuctionAds. AuctionAds features live eBay auctions and displays items that might be of interest of visitors to the blog, but I believe you can also click on the banner and search for other items or register on eBay if you don't already have an account. My attempt to monetize this blog is twofold: I'm doing an experiment to see if it's possible to actually generate any kind of income with a blog and I'm giving a "test run" to different sponsors and affiliate programs to determine which are the most effective.

So far, AuctionAds has been pretty good. They deposited $5 into my account just for becoming an affiliate. Unlike some other affiliate programs, which require you to hit $25 or $100 in income before payout, the payout at AuctionAds is just $10, and they'll deposit the funds directly into your PayPal account. If you are interested in trying AuctionAds for yourself, just click on any of the AuctionAds links or on the banner and get signed up. It takes only a couple of minutes to fill in the form.

After all, writing about saving money and actually MAKING some money while doing it would have to be the ultimate in savvy frugality!

One of the best ways to sample new products without actually forking over the cash for it is to request free samples directly from the manufacturer. I have tried this over the past couple of weeks, and I have just started receiving the free samples I requested.

In order to receive the samples, you usually have to fill out an online survey of your impressions of the product. Other times, you simply fill out an order form with your name, address and information like gender and age. This is not to be confused with companies which promise you IPods for filling out long surveys and requiring you to sign up for other "participating" offers, like a credit card or a magazine subscription. These free samples really are free.

There are some great links to companies offering free samples over at Free Stuff Times. So far, I filled out a few offers there, and so far I have received a free sample of Dunkin' Donuts coffee (it brewed one pot, and it was delicious!) and some Listerine Whitening Strips. I have completed many others, but those are the only two I have received so far. It usually takes 6-8 weeks to receive your free samples.

Free Stuff Times also has some good suggestions for requesting free stuff, such as not using your phone number (unless you really want telemarketers to call you) and creating a "junk" email account on Yahoo or Hotmail to use when you sign up for the offers, so you don't flood your "regular" email with a bunch of SPAM and other marketing offers.

Another site I have visited to request free stuff is Totally Free Stuff. You have to be kind of choosy here, because they do include those "participating offer" deals I mentioned earlier, but they also include plenty of truly free stuff.

Another way of requesting free stuff is to contact the manufacturer directly through their own web site or by actually calling the number listed on the product packaging. I recently bought a Pur water filter for my kitchen faucet, but it wasn't working properly. It wasn't switching between filtered water and "faucet water" the way it was supposed to. My wife called the customer service number from the packaging, and they promised to send a replacement right away. Total savings: about $24.

There is plenty of free stuff out there...you just have to ask!

One of the biggest expenses in my home, after rent and my car payment, is cable TV. Yes, I hate to say it, but until recently my monthly cable bill was about $130 per month. I have recently trimmed that back to $80 per month.

How? Well, I realized there were plenty of cable channels I just wasn't watching, yet I was paying for them. So, I called my company and asked for "expanded basic cable". This gives me all of the local broadcast stations, along with news channels like CNN and Fox News Channel, as well as channels I do like to wach, such as the Food Network and the History Channel. My monthly cable bill also includes broadband Internet access, which I use for work purposes. I also have VOIP telephone service with Lingo, which also requires broadband Internet service.

But, this broadband connection also allows me access to some great television viewing which is available for free on my computer. If I wanted to cut back on my cable TV service even more, or altogether, I could. However, my kids also have TVs in their rooms, and I think they would revolt if I forced them to use antennae on their TVs (although that is quickly becoming the preferred choice for people with High Definition TVs who use High-Def antenna to pick up the High-Def signals from their local broadcast stations).

For example, most of the major broadcast networks now stream their programs online. These include CBS's Innertube service, NBC, ABC, FOX On Demand, and the CW.

AOL makes episodes of classic TV shows available on its In2TV service. The kids can also watch full episodes of TV shows from The Disney Channel online. You can watch TV channels from around the world at the Web TV List.

If you are a movie fan, you can check out old cheesy B movies that are now in the public domain at Public Domain Movies. Has your favorite TV show been cancelled? You might find it at Brilliant But Cancelled.com. They even have episodes of Roar, with a young Heath Ledger!

For documentaries and shorter video shows and clips, there is of course Google Video, YouTube, and Blinkx.com, which bills itself as the world's largest video search engine with more than 14 million hours of content. That should keep you busy!

All this TV rotting your brain? Find something educational at Science Daily, the History Channel (just clips, unfortunately), or PBS's Frontline, Nova, or Learner.org.

There's a lot of free TV to watch out there...and it's all on your computer!

I had received an email from another user of Freecycle that they had a twin bed frame they were willing to give me just to get rid of it. However, later in the day she emailed back and said her husband had already given it away.

But there was another email in my inbox from another Freecycle user who had something even better. It was a wooden captain's bed with two drawers underneath, and it was made for an extra long twin mattress and box spring, just like the set I purchased for $50 from somebody on Craig's List.

My son and I went and picked it up today. It's a decent piece of furniture, is going to give my younger son some much-needed storage in his room, and best of all...it was free!

The downside: the thing weighs about 300 pounds, but with some help we should be able to carry it into the house. I guess you can't complain about an item when it's free!

If you are looking for furniture or household items, I can't recommend Craig's List or Freecyle enough!

Every now and then, you just have to break down and spend money for the things you need. I'm talking about expenses other than monthly bills like rent, electricity, food, etc. This week, my youngest son needed a new bed.

He had worn out the futon we got him a few months ago, which we actually got off a curb. It was actually two futon mattresses with a sign on them which read "free - take me!". I knocked on the door and talked to the owner of the futons to ask why she was getting rid of them. She said she was moving and just didn't want to take them with her to her new place. So...free futons!

But, the mattresses had gotten dirty and a bit flat, so we decided to put them on the curb ourselves. My son has been sleeping on a camping cot for the past month or so, and it was definitely time to get him an actual bed. The camping experience got old real quick.

Enter Craig's List. My wife found a twin bed listed on the web site for $50...a much better price than the $129 we would have to spend to get it new. We drove over to the owner's house, and the mattress and box spring looked brand new. No stains, no odors...they didn't look like they had ever been used. My wife tried to haggle but the owner stuck to his $50 asking price, which I was happy to pay. It was good deal.

I then clicked over to Freecycle.com and posted a want ad for a twin bed frame. Within a couple of hours, I received an email from someone who said they had one they wanted to get rid of. Cost: free, of course! Total cost of a twin bed for my son, including mattress, box spring and frame: $50.

I supposed I could have picked up a mattress and box spring for free on Freecyle as well, but I didn't want a dirty or stained used mattress, so I was happy to pay the $50. It was steal a great deal...and my Best Buy of the Week!