The Testy Tightwad -- An Expert Offers Valuable Advice On Pinching Pennies For Fun And Profit

Frugal is cool.

Welcome to the new year of penny pinching. First spotted by the news media in 1991 as a trend and later realized as the recession, penny pinching has become the hottest lifestyle option.

So says Amy "The Frugal Zealot" Dacyczyn (pronounced like "decision"), creator of the national newsletter, The Tightwad Gazette.

The Frugal Zealot is not alone in her quest for the holy sale. After cover stories in Parade magazine and The Wall Street Journal and appearances on Donahue, The Tightwad Gazette's circulation jumped from 1,700 to 80,000 subscribers within the last year. At the moment, Dacyczyn is touring the country with her book, "The Tightwad Gazette: Promoting Thrift as a Viable Lifestyle" ($9.99 paperback, Villard Books), a best-of collection of past Gazette issues.

Dacyczyn is a role model for novice tightwads. In less than seven years and on her husband's $30,000-a-year salary, she and her family (six kids!) saved enough money to purchase a $125,000 dream farmhouse.

Me? I'd rather have a car. But I also have this thing for CD's, lipstick, iced mochas and Pop Tarts. So I gave these up for a week and tried to become a True Tightwad. Did it work? Well, I still don't have a car.

1. Forget your social life. Stop going out. Stay at home. This is a problem if you're young, new to Seattle and all your friends are broke, too. Dacyczyn suggests inviting friends over for dinner. At least my friends can cook. When I tried to pay them back with homemade chicken soup, I forgot to add the salt.

2. The popsicle dilemma and other cheap food tricks. You might have seen Dacyczyn's famous homemade popsicles on Donahue last week. Scrape leftover jelly, yogurt and syrup off the sides of those almost empty jars. Mix with leftover applesauce, ice tea mix, whatever you can find. Add milk. Shake. Use old (but cleaned and emptied) prescription bottles as popsicle molds (snap off the childproof cap's inner plastic circle and cut a hole). Freeze.

So what I want to know is: How do you make Godiva chocolates? Scrape chocolate off of old candy wrappers, add Jiffy Peanut Butter and leftover rum?

Then there's her cheap food trick of interest to Seattleites. Her cappuccino is made from instant coffee, sugar, nonfat dry milk solids and dried orange peels; replace the peels with cocoa and you have Italian Mocha Espresso . . .

I don't think so.

3. Quit staring at the TV and learn more than one skill. Like cutting your hair. "We've now become a culture where we solve problems by throwing money at it." Hair cutting can cost up to $216.67 a year if you go to a fancy hairdresser and tip decently, Dacyczyn says. So trim your own hair and remember to angle-cut if you've got bangs.

I tried cutting my bangs. By the time I got done, the sink was clogged and I had to pay a professional hair stylist 30 bucks (without tip) to fix it.

4. Skinflints just wanna have fun. "It's a challenge to see how I can figure out how to make something wonderful out of the most humble materials." Just don't expect much on your birthday. Typical tightwad gifts: an empty jar labeled "Warm air from Florida" from your tightwad grandparents in St. Petersburg; "Happy Valentine's Day" written in lipstick on the bathroom mirror greets you in the morning from a penny-pinching romantic.

If I ever have a boyfriend who only writes "Happy Valentine's Day" with my lipstick on my mirror, he is out.

5. Tightwaddery is P.C. Dacyczyn reuses her Ziploc plastic baggies. Her defense? "I'm saving the environment." The same can be said for juice can lids (wind chimes, coasters) and secondhand toys (just remove the soiled sticker labels with nail-polish remover, wash with warm soapy water and buff the scuff marks with an emery board).

Hey, we're in Seattle. Who doesn't already recycle?

6. Brainwash your kids with the Tightwad Philosophy while they're young. That way, they won't whine about not having their own car when they hit 16. "It's much easier to start when your kids are very little. When they always get secondhand things, they become accustomed to it." Teach your kids that shiny and new doesn't always mean unbreakable quality."

I don't have kids. But I still want that car. Mom? Dad?

7. Don't be squeamish. Experiment. "I'm not grossed out by very much," she says. (See Tip No. 2.) One reader says she conserves water by washing her baby's cloth diapers in the dishwater after she does the dishes. ("The way I see it, any food particles in the water are basically the same as the material in the babies' diapers." That's the reader.)

8. A few don'ts. Dacyczyn draws the line if a tightwad tip is unethical, too time-consuming, unsafe, not nutritious or illegal. Like steaming and re-using an uncanceled stamp. Or separating a two-ply toilet paper roll into two one-ply roles. Why not? "Because you have better things to do with your life!" Agreed.