Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: MONDAY, March 16, 1992 TAG: 9203140188
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: EXTRA 1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: JEFFRY SCOTT COX NEWS SERVICE
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
To free-spenders horrified by the thought of reusing aluminum foil, snitching sugar and salt packets from the company cafeteria, or freezing leftover scrambled eggs, take courage from Amy Dacyczyn.
She lives in Leeds, Maine. She's the publisher of The Tightwad Gazette - and she may be the tightwaddiest person in America.
And proud of it.
Hers is a rags-to-riches story that also includes recycled juice-can lids, egg cartons and homemade baby wipes.
Since Dacyczyn launched her monthly newsletter in June 1990, its circulation has shot from 12 to 91,000. At $12 a pop, that translates into a very neat - and very untightwaddy - income of about $1 million a year. Add to that another six figures from a book deal she's negotiating with a division of Random House.
But it's not like Dacyczyn needs the dough.
Before she launched the Gazette, the homemaker and graphics artist was able to wring riches from her husband's $30,000 Navy salary. On that alone, in seven years, she and Jim Dacyczyn and their four children lived so frugally they were able to save $49,000 for the down payment on their dream home: a $125,000, rural pre-1900 New England farmhouse.
Today her husband is retired from the Navy and is chief executive officer of the Gazette. The couple has two more children - twins who are 8 months old - and they've become America's royal family of life on a shoestring. They've appeared on network television - the "Today" show and the "ABC Evening News" - and on the cover of numerous publications, including Parade magazine and The Wall Street Journal.
The Dacyczyns' world, of course, is a place where, instead of time, cheap is of the essence. So if you're a person who doesn't have two hours to make saltine crackers you could buy for 79 cents, then maybe you're not tightwad timber.
But in any case, you're safe. The Dacyczyns not only have taught us to pinch a penny until Lincoln hollers, along the way they've helped make the world a place where skinflints aren't social outcasts.
"During the 1980s a lot of people were saving, but they were kind of in hiding," Dacyczyn said. "Now they're coming out of the closet. It's getting more respectable not to be a spendthrift."
by CNB