The Tightwad Gazette and Other Delights

Marc Eisenson knows how to get free magazines, free paper clips and free garden mulch, and he’s glad to share the information. Four times a year, at irregular intervals, he puts out a newsletter telling consumers that an idling motor gets 0 m.p.g., that some five-pound bags of prepackaged potatoes weigh six pounds or more, that property taxes can be appealed.

Most of all, he wants them to know that an easy way to buy financial freedom is to pay more than the amount required on their monthly mortgage, credit card or installment loan. Thus they pay down the principal and shorten the term of the loan, Eisenson says, and “the more you prepay, and the sooner, the more you’ll save on interest.”

Eisenson’s frugality tip sheet is hardly alone in its field. Thanks to the advent of desktop publishing, there’s been a great increase in newsletters, defined as “informal, utilitarian publications on a specific subject area,” says Howard Penn Hudson, publisher of Hudson’s Subscription Newsletter Directory in Rhinebeck, N.Y.

Like everything else, they follow trends. The early 1970s saw a rash of energy newsletters, the late ‘70s a rash of them dealing with antiques and collectibles. The current recession has created a little boom in thrift newsletters, with names such as the Tightwad Gazette (Leeds, Me.), Cheapskate Monthly (Garden Grove), Living Cheap News (San Jose), Penny Pincher (Kings Park, N.Y.) and the Banker’s Secret Bulletin, put out by Eisenson and his partner, Nancy Castleman in Elizaville, N.Y.

Small circulation (the Tightwad Gazette tops all at about 80,000) and small income, these newsletters are just rinky-dink operations to the financial world. So are the consumer households that they serve. But “there’s a lot of interest again in getting closer to basics,” Eisenson says. “People don’t want to deprive themselves, but they want to know how to get the same gratification with lower bills.”

Not just thrifty chic, these publishers often live as they preach. Eisenson and Castleman, for example, raise their own produce in an 8,000-square-foot garden, buy their clothes at garage sales, and their cars, appliances and even computers well used. Eisenson, 49, once owned a home, but paid off the mortgage, a little at a time, in five years.

That led to a magazine article on financial tips from bankers and brokers, with a sidebar on mortgage prepayment. The sidebar led to a pamphlet called “A Banker’s Secret,” the pamphlet to a book, and the book, in 1990, to the bulletin.

In many ways, it’s typical of its genre, wedding the practical and the personal. There are penny-pinching tips on everything from growing sprouts in a mayonnaise jar to finding cheaper air fares. There’s philosophy, guiding a life of “no debts, few desires--and lots of ‘spit and glue.’ ” There are references to other newsletters, other books, to friends, family, even “our wonderful landlords, Tom and Louise.” There’s a lot of “Nancy and I,” with order forms for their bulletin, books and software.

But Eisenson and Castleman have a cause beyond mere thrift. Penny-pinching is fun, but they’re “more interested in larger-scale saving, in trying to spend more effort on things that make a lot of difference.” They promote “debt management,” particularly through the prepayment of loan principal by regular additions of “pocket change” to the required monthly payments.

On a $75,000, 30-year mortgage at 10%, they say, one normally ends up paying out more than $230,000. Regular overpayments of only $25 would save almost $35,000 of that; $100 a month would save $78,000.

In fact, Eisenson’s philosophy of debt management is as much vision as viewpoint, with a little echo of the ‘60s in its 1990s emphasis on saving money. In the Banker’s Secret Bulletin, unlike other newsletters, cutting debt and watching expenditure doesn’t mean more-for-your-money or greater wealth, but freedom. People could spend less time working, says Eisenson, and have “more time to devote to their own lives instead of chasing things to buy. They’d have time for their children and family, time to do some good for the community.”

It works for him and Castleman, who “don’t have a lot of money, but enough to buy anything we want.” The money comes from their books and software, but not yet the bulletin (sample copy available, notes Eisenson), which goes to several thousand newspapers, magazines and TV and radio stations and gets a lot of attention, but has fewer than 1,000 paid subscribers.

He and Castleman are still among “the few people in this country who can’t use our own tips because we have no debts.” But with their help, the number is growing.