We vote with our dollars.  Every time we spend our money, we aren’t just getting a hamburger or pretty new sweater.  We’re saying, “I support the way this product was made.  I support the way the animals and humans involved in the production of this thing were treated.”  Each dollar is a nod of approval to the practices that go into the production of these items.

I know we don’t really think this way when we’re doing our shopping.  But as we turn more and more to cheaper products as the economy worsens, now is really the time to be thinking of where our dollars are going.

A few easy adjustments in the way we shop could make a few small strides. 

First, consider buying locally made foods at your grocery store.  If your grocery store doesn’t offer local products, ask them why.  Why, for example, can’t I buy tortillas made at a small local business but I can get tortillas from huge factories thousands of miles away?  Or why can’t I get handmade ice cream made in the next town over, but I can get fifty selections from the other side of the country?  I try to make an effort to ask these questions.  If businesses don’t know what the customers want, they won’t change.

Second, you may consider some Christmas shopping at these sites where individuals sell their homemade products.  I was recently given an apron here.  It cost the same as the apron I would have chosen from my favorite purse maker except it was made by an indiviual.  I knew that the profits were going to her and not a CEO who doesn’t even touch the sewing machine.  There are prints, sculptures, holiday cards, decor, clothing, gifts…  

• etsy.com  “Your place to buy and sell all things handmade”
• dawanda.com  “Products with love” and “DaWanda is the place for unique and individual products and people. Buy handmade and hard to find goods, share your discoveries with your friends and create your own collections.”

Quite a few entries in this Festival of Frugality, and not quite all of them made the cut! But here are some of those that did make it. Next week’s host is going to be Mighty Bargain Hunter. Enjoy.

Cash Money Life believes that Your Credit Score is About to Become More Valuable

Ready for the holidays? R presents Reining in Holiday Spending and Stress

Speaking of holidays, Ashley presents A frugal Halloween: homemade costumes

And since Halloween isn’t here yet, FFB presents Before You Buy That Halloween Costume.

Squawkfox presents Recipes: Gross, Easy, and Frugal Halloween Foods for Kids

The days are getting shorter, and the nights colder so Kelly from Almost Frugal presents Stay Warmer in Cold Weather: Five Frugal Tips.

What exactly is quality of life Daphne Lim asks? Three Times As Good, One-Third As Much.

Check out Cade Krueger’s offering to learn How Do I Find And Choose A Good Franchise Business Opportunity?

Ready to axe some taxes? Sam presents How to Lower Your Taxes

Amy @ The Q Family presents 13 Ways to Save on Gas to help you be more efficient with your fuel consumption.

A popular topic this week, RC continues with How to Save Money on Gas- Fact vs. Fiction

Redd Horrocks-Maier presents Frugal Food – Three Ideas for Frugal Dinners

Heather Levin presents some great Tips to Lower Your Monthly Bills.

Along the same vein, FIRE Finance presents 12 Tips To Lower Your Heating Bill

Sam presents 10 Smart State Income-Tax Saving Strategies.

Michael Bass presents a sneaky little trick How to get a cell phone with no i.d., no passport, and no credit card.

Tiffany Washko presents Helping Each Other During a Recession.

The Shark Investor lets us know how to Build Wealth By Moving Away.

Terence Gillepie presents How To Sell Your House Without Using A Realtor.

Lise gives us her results from a study on female frugality with The results: women spend more on personal appearance.

Check out this project from fwp DIY clothesline from (past) hobbies

David G. Mitchell wants to give us some perspective on how to Change Your Eating Habits to Save Money

Frugal Dad presents Being A Full-Time Parent Has More To Do With Sacrifice Than Luck and helps us take a look at what is actually going on with parenthood and money issues.

If you’re going to rent movies, you might as well be smart about it. Cash Money Life presents Blockbuster vs. Netflix

There are a lot of useful things that people leave by the curb side in the hopes that someone else will adopt them. Shadox presents Curb-Side Freebies

Wenchypoo brings us Frugality as a Recession Fighter and Depression Killer (L-O-N-G) over at Wisdom From Wenchypoo’s Mental Wastebasket.

Save On Travel: When and Where To Go for the Cheapest Travel Rates is brought to us by The Smarter Wallet.

Super Saver presents Finding Lower Gas Prices

J. Money shares his tale about how Bananas and Hair Spray tought me everything on inflation

It’s not just a fad! LAL presents Growing up frugal

“Wouldn’t it be great if, just like a fat-cat banker on Wall Street, you and I could call up the Secretary of the Treasury and say “Well Mr. Secretary, it seems like the risk analysis I ran for the cost of my child’s college education was WAY off, and gosh, thanks to that forecasting error, the amounts I reserved to cover tuition and other costs just aren’t going to be anywhere near enough. So… how about one of those bailout thingies you guys are so good at?” Tushar Mathur presents Looking For A College Fund Bailout

Jim presents Butcher Your Own Chicken.

Sun presents Keep My Money Safe and Let It Grow.

Ready to get a good deal on something? Free Money Finance presents Six Times It’s Easy to Ask for a Discount.

Rich Leverage presents How Much Does Your Money Matter to You?

Ryan Suenaga has a heck of a manual, The Internet: Repair and Do it Yourself Manual for Everything

Dorian Wales reminds us that The Credit Crisis Presents a Rare Opportunity for Learning and Experience.

sherin asks us How do you prepare for losing your job?

At one point or another, everyone needs to know How To Save Money As A Student.

Kris who happens to be in the know tips us off to Five Ways to Save on Wedding Food: A Guest’s View

Need to get out of the house? Aryn presents 9 Frugal Fall Entertainment Options

Until Debt Do US Part lets us know about how Renting is better than buying and here’s why

Mercedes wants you to know that living frugally and cheaply are entirely different things. So with that, here is Please Don’t Call Me Cheap

Those of you who clicked www.makingthishome.com after my last post when I told you I lost the address may have been a little confused.  In Part 1, I told you someone else had purchased the domain name when enom central placed me on their fraud alert and canceled my domain purchased.  But I got the name back, and the website is running.

HOW I GOT MY DOMAIN NAME BACK BY PICKING UP THE PHONE

I hate to admit it, but I had become attached to the idea of calling my blog “Making This Home”.  It sounded perfect, and it was tough to believe that someone else would have thought of the exact same name only four days after I had.  So I decided to call the man who had purchased the name.

“I was wondering what you were planning on doing with that domain name,” I told him.

He laughed nervously and said, “Umm.  Make some money?”

The interesting thing was that he had no idea which domain name I was talking about, though he seemed open to the idea of selling it back to me.  I launched into my sad story instead.  It didn’t make sense to pay the guy for something neither of us had invested anything into.

He took a little time looking up www.makingthishome.com on his computer and said it hadn’t been making him any money.  It didn’t seem like his goal was to sell the website.  I almost wondered if he was seeking profits from residual traffic.  I really have no idea.  But he was very kind to me and said that he would give up the domain name; I could have it back.

The next morning, just as he promised, the domain name was available again.  I bought it, and now www.makingthishome.com is mine, and I do hope you’ll come visit me!

Last week I decided on a new domain name and purchased it at www.enomcentral.com.  I had chosen the company after browsing through the internet, reading about people’s experiences, and speaking with people about their experiences; the company sounded impressive.  I registered www.makingthishome.com, and I never suspected that anything could go wrong.  From there, nothing went right.

I guess my account was placed on fraud alert and my domain purchase was canceled.  The problem was that Enomcentral never contacted me about any of this.  All I had was a confirmation email about my successful purchase and a locked enom account.  As far as I knew, I owned the domain name.  When I called enom to see why my account was locked, the representative I spoke with said I had to email their risk management team.  I asked to speak to the risk management team instead (we all know how well emails to big businesses go).  The representative said e-mail was the only option.  

I emailed risk management immediately.  At the end of the day, they sent me a generic letter requesting a list of three documents to verify my identity.  They would accept this information by fax or email, and no other information was provided to me.

Faxing stuff like that isn’t really an option for me right now–I’m in Germany, so I emailed the requested information.  But I wasn’t totally dumb.  I sent the information Friday morning in an encrypted message.  To open the document, they would have to call me for the password.  I never heard back.

I kept calling their customer help line.  The representatives kept promising that the risk management team was working on my paperwork.  That’s one thing about Americans that drives me crazy–when we don’t know the answer, we make one up.  Wouldn’t you say that’s true?  We’re afraid of saying, “I don’t know.”  In this case, I knew the answers I was getting were wrong.  There was no one working on my documents because no one had the password to open them.

LOSING MY DOMAIN NAME

When I typed in www.makingthishome.com into the webhost, it said it was in process–meaning someone had bought the address and it was being established.  Naturally, I assumed that someone was me.  I’m not a techy person, and I’d been given no reason to believe otherwise.  (I suppose domain name savvy people would know something is up, that it shouldn’t take several days, etc.  But I am not a domain name savvy person.  This was my first time buying a domain name.)

On Sunday, I went to look at www.makingthishome.com and saw an advertisement.  It was clear that someone had bought my domain name.  Someone who wasn’t me.  My husband showed me how to look up the owner–someone named Chad in California.  It was pretty obvious that he didn’t buy the website for the same pretty-picture and girly reason that I had in mind.

The weekend enom representative told me to call back on Monday and ask for customer service.  So I did.  But then the new representative said that she could not forward me to them because my account was locked.  I asked her how to get my account unlocked so that I could speak to someone.  Anyone!  Risk management was being completely unresponsive.  Again, I was told that I should relax.  Risk management was “working on it.”  I resolved to stay on the phone until I was certain things were being handled.

GETTING OFF THE FRAUD LIST

Maybe an hour later, I received an email from risk management.  They requested the same information that was asked of me before.  But now they would only accept a fax of it.  Like I said, faxing wasn’t an option for me.  I wrote back and said I had already sent the information via email on Friday.  As with every email I wrote, I included my phone number, so it wasn’t a matter of risk management being able to reach me; it was a matter of whether they wanted to.

I have to say that putting a password on a document is the PERFECT way to get a real person on the phone with you.  When a risk management team member called for the password, I was absolutely shocked.  I gave it to him, and not even a moment later, he had the document open and said okay–my account was unlocked.

But what about my lost domain name, I asked.  He didn’t seem to care, and he didn’t seem interested in revealing any information about why I was placed on their fraud alert.  

It turns out that anyone using a US credit card outside of the US is automatically placed on fraud alert.  They don’t contact you about anything because then it alerts frauds.  What about the people who aren’t frauds?  Well I guess they haven’t thought about that part.

NOW WHAT?

It’s great to know that I had chosen a company that takes such detailed measures to monitor fraud.  Except if you land in the fraud pile, it’s near impossible to swim back to shore.  They need to work on that.

And they need to work on it fast.  Now I’ve been trying to think of a new domain name ever since.