Ask MetaFilter questions tagged with cheap

Travelfilter: How to get the cheapest flight from Vancouver - Tokyo?

abbagoochie — Wed, 22 May 2013 15:02:04 -0800

I've wanted to go to Tokyo all my life, and have a few weeks off soon. I've been looking for flights and the cheapest I can find are $1450 all in... but I suspect if I the trip was broken up a bit by not flying there directly, it'd be a lot cheaper. Are there any resources you know of to help with this/have you done this before/do you know a good route that would shave off the $$$? Time isn't overly important as I have three weeks between jobs for exploring. But I don't want to be paying this off till next year. Help!

Cheap, reliable used car or truck with a little character?

Kwine — Wed, 22 May 2013 09:36:16 -0800

I haven't owned a car since 2010, but now it seems like going back to a two-car household might be a good idea. My wife drives a 2004 Volvo S40 daily to work. She often gets home very late on weekdays, and usually takes it to meet her cycling group for the better part of a day on Saturday or Sunday, and I have started to feel like I'm too reliant on her schedule or my friends to get to weekend activities, or to duck out to get another few bags of mulch or can of paint, etc. We live in north Seattle. This would not be a daily driver, I would continue to take the bus to work, so gas mileage isn't a concern. I would drive it once or twice a week to my sports activities (usually golf and soccer) or the hardware store. I would like it to be at least reasonably reliable and not cost a fortune to maintain-I would prefer a car that broke down more frequently but was cheaper to repair, vs. one that was more reliable but required more expensive repairs and maintenance. If it is a car, I would like it to have four doors. It seems handy to have it be a truck, to do truck-type activities, but I don't know much about trucks. I would kind of prefer that it have a manual transmission.

If possible, I would like it to stand out a little bit-for example, I think C3 Corvettes look awesome and can be had reasonably cheaply, but don't meet my practicality requirements. 'Weird' is maybe closer than 'cool'-if there were some little 80s or 90s thing that met the other requirements and would let me be known as 'That guy with the ____', said with a skeptical eye and a shake of the head, that's maybe what i'm after here. Let's say I'll budget a marginal $500 a year for character expenses-if it's got the right sort of weirdness, I'm ok with spending an extra $500 a year over what a Corolla or whatever would cost in maintenance and repairs.

Let's say I have $10,000 in my budget, but I could reach a little for the right vehicle. If you know what to look for to indicate whether a particular specimen of your recommended used vehicle is a good value, that would be outstanding information to know. Thanks!

How can I minimize the cost of moving my family across the country?

mboszko — Tue, 21 May 2013 12:07:48 -0800

My wife and two kids (and our two cats) and I may soon need to move from Maryland to Seattle. What's the cheapest way that we can move ourselves and our stuff across the country? We may be moving if I accept a job offer. They are offering some reimbursement of moving expenses, but we would still need to afford it up front.

We'd be moving a 3BR house, but I am willing to sell furniture and get rid of as much of my unnecessary crap as possible to make the load lighter. I'm working on convincing my wife and kids to do the same.

At the moment, it looks like renting a Penske truck and driving our car across in tandem seems to be the cheapest option. The Penske is only a 3-seater, and we'll have four people, so towing isn't an option, unfortunately. It looks to total around $5K, including gas and tolls for both vehicles, and hotels. If you have any insight into doing something similar, I would be extremely grateful for any alternate suggestions you might have, or any tips on minimizing our expenses.

best starting kit for a dual-lan linux gateway machine

axiom — Fri, 03 May 2013 10:32:32 -0800

I use a second computer set up with Ubuntu server as a gateway/firewall (NAT box) and email server. It has finally died. I'd like to replace it with a new machine. I checked on newegg a bit, but I'm not a hardware geek so I'd like to query the hivemind for their ideas. Specifics:

1) The new machine can be fairly bare-bones, I run it headless 99.9% of the time and it mostly just collects email and passes packets. This means I don't care very much about memory, CPU, or graphics processing.
2) Ideally a dual-LAN motherboard, but I'll buy a five dollar PCI card to add the second ethernet interface if I have to. Only one interface needs to be gigabit ethernet.
3) Ideally x86, but AMD is fine if the price is significantly lower.
4) Has a RAID controller (RAID 1 specifically, but I've never heard of one that didn't support that). I want to add a pair of drives (already have them) as backup storage, in RAID 1.
5) Price is the main factor subject to the above, but I'm willing to pay a teeny bit more for something that will last longer (i.e., something with better-quality components). Maximum ~$300, ideally less.

I've assembled systems from components before, so I can put anything together that needs be.

Cheap lunch in Manhattan!

millipede — Wed, 10 Apr 2013 12:45:09 -0800

Yesterday, I found a delicious and huge banh mi on Broome street for $4.50. This made me think: there have to be, in my general vicinity, other good lunches that don't cost a lot. I generally pay $8 to $15 for lunch, and I'm tired of it, and I'm also fatigued from all the places I currently go. Tell me other (cheap) places to try! Location: I work on Broadway and Houston. I want lunch to be walking distance. Walking distance, for me, is "a fifteen-minute walk."

Cuisine: Anything, but I'm not looking for fast food chains or a hot dog on the street. I already know about halal carts and smoothie carts. I already know about Gray's Papaya and Mamoun's. I'm looking for recommendations that are similar to this hole-in-the-wall banh mi place I found--something delicious and not-entirely-unhealthy.

This is more about lunch boredom than about saving money, so "why don't you bring your lunch from home?!" is not what I'm looking for here.

Little-known Northern CA getaways?

smirkette — Sun, 10 Mar 2013 16:55:06 -0800

Where to go for a cheap, pretty, short vacation in Northern California? I've done and am fond of Tahoe, the Russian River, Stinson Beach, Monterey, and Carmel. However, given the sheer size of this state, I'm sure there are great places I'm missing for a 3 day getaway. Looking for something within 5 hrs driving time of SF (less is better). I love Humboldt and Mendocino, but outside the obvious towns, I'm coming up dry (and really, as dear to my heart as it is, Humboldt is a bit farther than I'd like to drive for this). Looking for 1) towns and 2) small rental properties (cottages, condos preferred; will do hotels/motels/B&Bs if needed) for under $120/night. Pretty, low-impact walking/hiking areas nearby a huge plus!

Inexpensive, safe hotel/B n B/hostel near the Walker Art Center in MN

Prairie — Thu, 07 Mar 2013 21:11:35 -0800

Inexpensive and safe place to stay near the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis? I've been on TripAdvisor already. I'm not familar with the good and not-so-good areas of town. I don't need a four-star hotel, just a clean and safe place to lay my head. I'm not adverse to using public transportation but within walking distance of the Art Center would be nice. Alternatively, any other hotel sites you use and find helpful?

Help us eat healthy and save money with an infant

ThaBombShelterSmith — Fri, 08 Feb 2013 18:44:29 -0800

Mrs. Thabombshelter and I have a four month old son and would love to eat more meals that aren't takeout. Plus, with a baby, money is obviously a valuable and precious commodity. Easy prep and inexpensive ingredients are a priority. So please, help us with some suggestions for easy-ish, healthy-ish, cheap-ish meals that can help us avoid Papa Johns or Chinese takeout. Both of us love eating well and making food at home. Before the boy came, we cooked about 4 or 5 meals at home a week, but now we're lucky if we can manage 2. We love using the crockpot (and have a great crockpot cookbook already), but can't really manage more than about 1 crockpot meal a week.

Here are some snowflakes:

-Thanks to our exersaucer, I have found that some light prep is possible, like: chopping an onion or two, chopping carrots or peppers or celery. However, deboning an entire chicken or chopping stew meat from a 3lb roast is too much.

-We both really want to avoid prepared/processed ingredients like frozen meal starters etc. I also want to steer away from the old school casseroles that involve canned soup-like methods.

-We ARE vegetarian friendly, but we're also happy meat eaters and enjoy our protein. Tofu isn't really in our wheelhouse, but beans and other legumes are awesome.

-We are NOT looking for "Make a huge batch of X on Sunday and eat it all week," or "Make all of your meals for the week on Sunday and freeze them." I'm okay with meals that cook for an hour or so, as long as the prep is simple. I made a great baked pasta dish on Wednesday that took about 45 minutes to cook, all told, but the only active prep was chopping two onions and tossing in a can of pureed tomatoes.

-If I can take any of these meals to lunch the next day, that would be an added bonus.

PS- Assume we have a fully stocked kitchen, and while we have a pressure cooker, I'm not 100% comfortable with relying on it as a primary cooking tool (plus, we have a crappy glass-top electric range)

PPS- We also have access to ANY ethnic or exotic ingredients and we are located in Cincinnati, OH, USA

Where are some good value for money strip joints in London?

dougrayrankin — Thu, 24 Jan 2013 16:33:00 -0800

I am a man with certain needs, and yet I am constrained by my most unfortunate financial condition. Where might a discerning gentleman go in London to see the most flesh per pound exchanged? Preferences are given to those establishments with some standards, although if an establishment is less than reputable but has great character, I would be willing to give it a go. One for the memoirs, you understand.

24x40 poster frame on the cheap and easy?

rainbowbrite — Tue, 22 Jan 2013 13:38:56 -0800

I have a 24x40 poster that I would like to stick in a frame. I am reluctant to go to our local custom framing shop, because while they do very nice work, the price is usually in the >$100 range, which is more than I can spend right now. I've done some searching online, and haven't found great results, plus it is hard for me to assess the good vs. bad websites to purchase. Any recommendations on where I can get this size frame (or another size that my poster would look okay in - does not need to be super professional-looking), hopefully for less than $50? I can swing by a store like Target, but don't want to get into anything too complicated like looking at flea markets.

(Very, very) cheap and hopefully safe

titantoppler — Sun, 20 Jan 2013 03:06:57 -0800

Inspired by all these threads (1, 2, 3) I was wondering which products are much cheaper than other products in the same class, but offer comparable, or exceptional performance. Generally, I would suppose these would mainly come from Chinese companies that aren't very well-established internationally. For example, FiiO is generally regarded as making some very bang-for-buck amplifiers and DACs, and the recent rash of pendroids are very cheap and offer good performance for the money.

Criteria:

Much cheaper than other similar products

While cheap, it must be good - comparable or class-beating performance, essentially

Ships internationally

Reliable

If it's a tech product such as the pendroids referenced above, software updates and technical support

The Best Gear for the Rest of Us.

lekvar — Thu, 03 Jan 2013 12:53:37 -0800

What forums do you know of that discuss good gear at budget prices? I'm aware of Budget Light Forum for flashlight aficionados and Poor Man's Watch Forum for watch junkies. What else is there? To be specific, I'm not looking for deal-of-the-day sites like woot; I'm more interested in in-depth discussions of the very best in budget gear.

Cheapest possible automobile

Etrigan — Thu, 27 Dec 2012 10:25:48 -0800

The cheapest car, period. Don't care about safety, looks, frills, country of origin, or anything else except as to how it relates to cost. So I'm thinking of buying a new (to me, at least) car, and I want to make sure it's the most affordable-over-its-lifetime that I can find. Everything I can find online seems to be full of caveats ("Cheapest in class") or doesn't visibly balance purchase vs. operational cost very well, or recommends a lot of things without giving good numbers to differentiate among them, so I'm turning to the hivemind to ask: Counting purchase price, cost of maintenance, and cost of fuel, what is the very cheapest car that I can drive for, say, the next 5-10 years?

I have a 30-mile one-way highway commute around Detroit, but occasionally, Google Maps tells me that a route that's about 1/3 surface street is faster. I presume this will be the case for the foreseeable future.

I know that used cars are way cheaper, and there will doubtless be argument about it, but for sheer ease of finding and pricing, I'd rather not go back more than a couple of years.

I can drive stick. I had a bunch of other pre-answers listed here, but it's easier to assume that my answer to any follow-up question will be "I don't care if it doesn't make the car cheaper."

Seattle iPhone carrier recommendation

carterk — Sun, 23 Dec 2012 14:51:23 -0800

We want an iPhone. We want to pay as little as possible for the service and can buy the phone up front. But we don't want to sacrifice good coverage (in Seattle). Please recommend whether we should go with ATT/Verizon or one of the much cheaper alternatives (Virgin, TMobile, etc.) My wife's not a heavy phone user and is unlikely to use a whole lot of data. On the other hand, she'll use this phone for her business and can't handle crappy service, lots of dropped calls, and etc. Getting an iPhone5 would be nice, but she could handle using an older phone. We're particularly interested in hearing from other Seattle users who've gone with TMobile, Virgin, or one of the other cheapo providers. Thanks!

Do, a deer, a female deeeeeeeeeeer.......

Kamelot123 — Wed, 19 Dec 2012 22:51:30 -0800

I am in Japan and miss playing piano, and so am in the market for a quality - but cheap! - keyboard. Is this possible? Details inside. I need your help, Metafilter musicians!

I am far away from home, and will be here for a while. I did some major rearranging of my room and I have a perfect space to put a keyboard, and am ready to tinkle some keys! (that doesn't sound right...)

I'd love to hear suggestions, since I have never bought a keyboard before. My maxium budget is $500, but I'd prefer paying around $300-$400. I am not too concerned about different voices and sounds; I would like it, though, to have midi and decent touch sensitivity. It might help if it was smaller since my apartment is rather tiny.

Finally, as I am living in Japan - if it was something I could purchase off Amazon Japan or at a store in Japan that would be extremely helpful.

Looking forward to the responses!

Boston on the Cheap

xenization — Tue, 18 Dec 2012 07:45:54 -0800

Know how to have a fun weekend in Boston on a budget? Details within. About a month down the line, a friend and I will spending a weekend in Boston. We've never been to the city, so we're looking forward to exploring.

Caveats: We're both students who don't have a ton of money to throw around, and we're not too fond of the bar scene. She's a musician; I'm a writer. (They fight crime!)

Does anyone have recommendations for things to see/do in Boston that are kind of artsy/offbeat/geeky--or just cool in general--and cheap? Free's good too, of course.

Thanks in advance!

Help me find a cheap computer

kittensofthenight — Sat, 08 Dec 2012 18:09:37 -0800

What is the best computer I can get right now for ~200 bucks? Wifi and FireWire port are the only requirements. I'll be using this to replace my 2006 MacBook pro which fulfilled all of my computing needs.

Help me rock out with the minimum possible financial outlay.

Scientist — Wed, 05 Dec 2012 22:20:59 -0800

I'm looking to assemble a home stereo for dirt cheap. What do I need to know and how can I get the most ♪ for the least $? OK, my total budget from start to finish is maybe $200 at the most. Yes, I realize that that's a laughably small amount of money for a good sound setup, but that's what I've got to work with. $200 is a hard limit, less money would be a lot better but I know that one can only do so much.

Anyway, I'm trying to put together a decent home stereo system. You know: receiver, subwoofer, a couple of towers, that kind of thing. I am definitely looking to go used here since that seems like the best way to get something decent for cheap. I mean, speaker technology hasn't *really* advanced that much in the last 30 years, right? Surely not.

What I am looking for is advice on what to, well, look for. And where to look for it. I already have a receiver lined up I think, a Pioneer SX-6 which is supposed to be a really nice (and durable) unit from the early 80's. It's running $45. So I have $150 left to work with, basically.

What should I do? Craigslist doesn't seem to be much help in my area, it's pretty much nothing but car audio stuff there. Should I start cruising thrift stores? eBay? What am I looking for in terms of making sure that I get something of reasonable quality, and how should I distribute my money? What are the signs of good vintage audio gear, and what are some of the considerations and pitfalls that I need to keep in mind?

Help me out MetaFilter, I'm tired of listening to everything through this crappy iPod dock thing.

Non-gross sex shops?

Anonymous — Sun, 02 Dec 2012 12:35:46 -0800

Where can I buy cheap lingerie and not feel uncomfortable? My boyfriend is pretty into lingerie - like bustiers and such, but my collection is pretty much limited to (pretty!) H&M bras. Fine, whatever, I'll get some.

Problem is, I'm too poor for any classy establishment where that would be purchased, and all stores and websites that are closer to my price range feel...sleazy. Any recommendations? Brick and mortar (NYC) or online suggestions welcome.

My taste isn't really sex-shop lingerie, but his kind of is, so I'm willing to indulge him to a point. But quality and comfort (although not at too high a cost) would also be nice.

One person's trash is another person's treasure.

aniola — Wed, 28 Nov 2012 16:55:09 -0800

One person's trash is another person's treasure. What do certain industries throw out that can be repurposed for free? Example: I walked into a bike shop and asked for a flat bicycle tube because I needed a bungee cord to strap groceries to my bicycle. They gave it to me, because bike shops don't need punctured bicycle tubes.

Where do I buy cheap clay?

oneous — Sun, 25 Nov 2012 17:04:45 -0800

This question is as simple as it looks, and in my case I'm specifically interested in the Sacramento, California or SF Bay area. Where should I look to buy lots of really cheap pottery clay? I'm interested in 10-50lbs, and all different kinds of clay, but cheap is the key word.

sockitome

threeants — Sun, 18 Nov 2012 16:50:01 -0800

Where can I buy colored/patterned men's socks for cheap? (extra points for somewhere on Amazon.) I like socks that are other than solid black, white, or gray. Is there somewhere I can buy, maybe, a big ol' grab bag of such? I can't afford to pay $4-5 for a single pair of socks. I have a gift card for Amazon, so anywhere there would be great.

Like meetup.com, but without the $12/month fees?

scruss — Sat, 17 Nov 2012 13:42:53 -0800

What alternatives are there to meetup.com? I'm looking for the RSVP and calendar functions, but without the $144 annual fees to run a group. I'm a member of a small but active OpenStreetMap group. We get maybe six regulars to the monthly Mappy Hour, and a couple of visitors. The visitors always find us through Meetup.

We don't make heavy use of Meetup's other features, so the fees are a bit steep for a small group. Are their cheaper alternatives to Meetup that people might still be able to use to find us? I'm aware of BigTent, but am unsure about how well known it is.

Winter Tiiiiiiiiiiiiime / And the livin is eeeeeeeasy

NolanRyanHatesMatches — Fri, 16 Nov 2012 13:30:59 -0800

Help me find my hibernation spot! NYCer in search of a winter (roughly Dec/Jan -> March/April) apartment somewhere in the Deep South in a city that A) has much warmer weather; B) offers drastically cheaper rent; and C) is a small town (basically, anywhere that isn't a big city). And, once I have a few city/region options, what's the best methodology for finding a place to rent if there aren't active Craigslist listings for the city/region? Details: Variables, in order of importance:

*Warm Weather*
Any place with a High/Low that hovers around, at minimum, 60º/40º. After a lot of weather-table searching, it looks like this would limit me to coastal areas of Louisiana, Alabama, Mississippi, Georgia, and Florida. Basically, I'd like to go outside around noon and be comfortable wearing jeans/button-up shirt (or, if possible, shorts/t-shirt). Sweater-weather at night is fine, although obviously it'd be nice to avoid (though it seems this would limit me to southern Florida).

*Really Cheap Rent (and How to Find It)*
In NYC, I'm used to paying between $600/mo - $900/mo in rent, and I'd really love to take a break from that :)

Basically, the cheaper the better. As long as I have a semi-reliable internet connection, I can do my work remotely, so city/region job economy doesn't matter. I'm willing to give up as many amenities as possible for cheaper rent in return. There's a strong likelihood that I'll have another person with me, so that will help keep things on the cheap side.

For more populated regions, I've noticed that I can open up PadMapper (which mashes up Google Maps and apartment rental listings from Craigslist, among others), scroll around certain cities/regions and find quite a few listings. However, outside of the larger Southern cities, Craigslist isn't actively used. What would be some good methods for finding housing in many of these smaller towns? Aside from focusing on a certain city/region -> finding the local newspaper online -> searching classifieds, I'm basically stumped. What are some housing-search hacks to help me find stupid-cheap lodging?

I'll mostly be focusing on a new creative project while I'm away from NYC, so I'm kind of looking to hole up for a while. This means that cultural activities I normally look for (great bars/nightlife, museums, fancy food markets, theaters, left-leaning political climate, etc.) would gladly be exchanged for extremely cheap rent.

Right now, my worst-case scenario is Savannah, Georgia: warmish weather and cheaper-than-NYC rent w/ apts I can find via PadMapper (although I'm really looking for much, much cheaper); but, it's also a pretty big city and has waaaaaay more diversions than I'm looking for.

So, any help? If anyone has any incredible suggestions involving Texas/Southwest/Southern CA, I'd definitely be open to hearing about them, although I'd rather stay on the East Coast. Thank you, everyone!

Holiday Project Time!

Ys — Wed, 07 Nov 2012 09:58:23 -0800

Hello crafty-folks! It's 2012 & once again I have realized that I have not learned to knit in time to give everyone handmade scarves for the holidays. So what new awesome projects can you suggest for holiday gift-giving? I know the question's been asked before, and I loved the ideas that were put forth last time I asked, but it's been two whole years & I would love to see even MORE cool gift-giving ideas! What creative, fun, cheap, and specifically useful projects did you all get up to last year for your gift-giving occasions?