My family wasn’t a religious one, so my Mother kind of substituted the Girl Scout Laws for the ten commandments. One was “a Girl Scout is thrifty”. When I first ran into this, I didn’t even know what ‘thrifty’ was.” It’s when you don’t waste your money on frivolous things”, said Mom. “What’s ‘frivolous’, I wondered…but I eventually figured out the thrifty thing. It was actually easy to be very thrifty on 10 cents a week allowance! This has carried over into adulthood and a few years ago my daughter introduced me to saving a bundle by making my own laundry detergent for just pennies, which I have done ever since. The site I found the recipe on had actually tested it against major brands and found the homemade version is a winner. See the tests at https://cornerstoneconfessions.com/2013/11/laundry-detergent-comparision.html. This laundry detergent is not hard to make and I’m happy to include it as the first Third Age Thoughts money-saving tip:
By the way, the old Girl Scout laws that I grew up with seem to be retired. Modern Girl Scouts don’t have to be ‘thrifty’, per se, but they do need to ‘use resources wisely’.