First, the frugal fail! Recently I’ve been guilty of throwing away too much food. (The horror!) Food waste, according to this study from Penn State, costs the average American family $1,866 annually. Ouch. I needed to get a handle on this, quickly. For a few weeks after we moved into the new house, I had […]
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Welcome, friends of Kristen The Frugal Girl!
Hi there! Kristen’s The Frugal Girl blog is one of my favorites. I’ve been a fan since the beginning of her blogging journey. So I was stoked when she published my interview. Instead of responding to the reader comments on Kristen’s blog, I thought I’d answer some questions here, and link to some articles that […]
Frugal Wins, trash picking edition
When a neighbor discarded some household belongings on the curb, my daughter-in-love and I decided to take a peek. Trash picking is the ultimate frugal practice. Not only is all the stuff free, but it helps keep good stuff out of landfills. We snagged a brand new dog crate, which is now Willie’s bed. We […]
Frugal Wins, May 26 edition
Sharing my frugal wins helps me stay accountable, and I hope you find benefit too! Feel free to share how you’re saving money in the comments. I packed lunches for work Due to a recent and fairly drastic change coming in my life, I got a part-time job. One of the reasons I applied with […]
Meal Plan Monday
Because food is my biggest expense after housing, meal planning has been an important frugal habit. In order to keep myself accountable for meal planning and hopefully share some family friendly, frugal and fast (my ”name what matters” in Lazy Genius parlance) meals, I’ll start posting Meal Plan Monday each week. I have the day […]
Frugal Wins, May 7 Edition
I like to share my frugal wins occasionally on the blog. It’s a way for me to stay accountable and share good ideas too for fellow penny-pinchers! I bought a 40 pound bag of pine pellets for $6.88 to use as kitty litter. I got it at the Tractor Supply (less than a mile away!). […]
Five Frugal Wins
In an attempt to keep myself accountable to frugality and to inspire readers, I present Five Frugal Wins. FFW is a collection of things I did in the previous week to save money. (Btw, FFW will become a regular feature ’round these parts, in case you’re interested.) Real quick though, let me declare that I […]
Cheap Homeschooling (with Several Kids)
Considering homeschooling your kids? If you worry that you’re going to spend a lot of money on educating your children properly, read on. This post shares my tips for cheap homeschooling, even with several kids. A bit of backstory if you’re new. As of late 2019, my family has two grads (21 and 18), two […]
Lowering food costs (for a family of 9)
Groceries are my family’s biggest expense. Even higher than our mortgage. Interestingly, we spend roughly what the government says is reasonable for a family of 9. So I guess it’s not terribly bad. Still, it’s a huge figure and I know I can do better. What I Won’t Do to Lower Food Costs In the […]
How I’m Saving Money Lately
I used to talk a lot about frugality here. In the last couple of years, that changed. In my own life, I realized I hadn’t focused enough on earning more income. So I wrote about why frugality isn’t enough, I shared that I was reading 17 books in 2017 on personal finance. And I wrote […]