Unhelpful Money Saving Tips

• Cut the fat from your budget, not your diet. Fruits, vegetables and organic foods cost a lot and are generally less filling than frozen and fast foods. For example, the same amount of money you would spend making a salad and some kind of casserole for your family could buy eight Whoppers with fries from Burger King's value menu

• Make your own clothes. If your child says he wants the trendy new surf dragon t-shirt, give him a needle and a thread and tell him to stitch it himself. If he complains, tell him that there's a kid half his age in Bangladesh who makes a hundred of those shirts a day and doesn't cry about it

• Create your own desserts. With nothing more than a box of tongue depressors, tap water and some food coloring, you can make your kids their own popsicles for almost nothing

• Replace your friends with online pals. Over time, keeping real friends costs a fortune in obligatory birthday, wedding, and Christmas presents. On the other hand, online pals don't know where you live, and if one IMs you that he/she is getting married, a simple, "Hey, good for you :)" will suffice

• Fuck the Joneses. Instead of mimicking their lavish, materialistic spending behavior, you can keep up with them for much, much less by destroying the expensive, flashy things they buy. Just don't get caught

• Another valuable tip: don't tip. Regardless of your religious orientation, stock up on religious tracts that exalt the virtues of following Jesus to leave for waiters in lieu of monetary gratuities on those rare occassions you visit a restaurant where the ketchup comes in bottles. Also, if the guy objects to your creative substitution, remind him that greed is one of the seven deadly sins

• Instead of spending big bucks and a lot of time and energy making your own holiday meals, have your family dress in their shabbiest clothes and head down to your local Salvation Army to eat for free

• Avoid costly trips to amusement parks, ball games, etc. while instilling discipline in your children by citing any lapse in their behavior as a reason to cancel the trip you disingenuously promised to take them on. Even the most trivial infraction could be used in case your children are especially well heeled. For instance, if they talk with their mouth full the week before the big trip to Disneyland - no trip to Disneyland

• Look to the future. Unlike animals such as snakes and camels, people lack the ability to consume enough calories in any one sitting to sustain themselves for much more than 12-16 hours before becoming hungry again, which severely limits the money saving potential of an all-you-can-eat buffet restaurant unless you bring a backpack full of tupperware

• Save on your energy bill by creating your own blackouts. On nights you're feeling especially tired, pull a fuse from your fusebox, tell your kids it must be a power outage, and go to bed early

• Instead of running your air conditioner or heater on especially hot or cold days, stop being such a pussy and suck it up

• Make your own porn. Save thousands of dollars on expensive videos and internet subscription fees by recruiting some fellow savings-minded friends in your neighborhood to make and swap your own homemade filth