Enjoy your complimentary address labels!

Charities are smart. If they are going to send you requests for money, they're already paying for the paper and postage. It cost them next to nothing to send you free address labels. And then, perhaps you feel guilty if you get and use free address labels from said charity, and so then you send them a little bit of money.

Despite our rampant frugality, Possible Flurries and I have donates some money to charities in the past (mostly environmental and animal rights groups). When you donate money once, every other group that is tangentally related in subject matter to that group starts sending you things asking for money. We'll never have to buy address labels or write our own addresses again (I'm starting to forget our zip code, I so rarely need to write it). Because we keep getting them, hording them, and using them but getting more at a faster rate than we use them.

So here's a long-term bit of frugality advice. Donate money to an animal rights group once. Then you never have to worry about address labels again.

(Of course, it's probably better to actually donate money from the heart, not for the exploitation of address labels. Don't you feel bad taking free address labels from a charitable organization? Maybe you better send them a bit of money, too).

And that's how the cycle continues.