Seems like all anyone wants to talk about these days is how freakin' affordable Philadelphia is. To read the papers or listen to the news, compared to New York and Boston and San Francisco and D.C., Philly's this magic happyland where coffee is still just $2 and a pack of smokes will only set you back five bucks! To listen to these pundits, you'd think they were also giving away McMansions in Northern Liberties and that you could pluck sawbucks from our stinking gingkoes.

Sure, maybe we have it a little better here. But that's no reason to throw fiscal responsibility out the window with the bathwater, or whatever. Besides, maybe the reason things are so (relatively) cheap here is because we, as a stubborn, pigheaded populace, refuse to pay any more than we do.

We're cheapskates. There, I said it. You're probably holding this paper in part because it's free. Build us a new football stadium and we bitch that we can't bring our own hoagies. (Okay, we actually paid to have the thing built, but you know what I'm saying.)

Right about now, with summer winding down and everyone broke-as-a-joke from vacations and weekends downashore, we figured it'd be a good time to share a few of our best money-saving, rip-off-avoiding, free stuff-scoring tips. Inside you'll find tips ranging from the grand (install your own hardwood floor) to the mischievously devious (sign up for hotel credit cards for the reward points, cancel, repeat) to the downright petty (swipe artificial sweetener from the diner).

There's a shitload of money to be saved out there, people. Sure, some of the tips are of the "you gotta spend to save" variety, and others are of the "try this at your own risk" nature (i.e., don't come to us if you get towed for parking in one of those "authorized personnel only" spots). All told, you could save more than 5,000 bucks reading this issue. Results may vary, but even half that beats the hell out of those coupon inserts in the dailies.