A No Spend Challenge update! How to have a lower electric bill in summer. I just checked our electric bill and … it’s $150 LESS than this month it was last summer! Is this the best way to lower your electric bill? It sure is simple. How did I do it? I kept the thermostat […]
Carl Richards, author and financial planner, approves of my No-Spend Summer
I found Carl Richards’ articles on the New York Times website and have been enjoying reading through them. Carl is a certified financial planner and author of two books, both of which I’m reading at the moment, courtesy of my local library. Richards excels at making financial principles very simple. So simple they can be […]
Patience is an essential principle in frugality
This summer my family is doing a No Spend Challenge to boost our savings (we’re buying a house in February). Books are a line item in the budget. For reals. So I’m always on the lookout for ways to feed my information addiction on the cheap. This morning I checked my email to find a […]
5 Frugal Things
A No Spend Challenge update! This summer we’re saving for a down payment on a home, so I’ve been documenting black-belt frugal tactics. The back-to-school deals are aplenty this week. I headed to OfficeMax to take advantage (because an important principle of frugality is planning ahead) of penny deals. My younger girls go through crayons […]
Doing frugal stuff when you don’t have to
The other day as I was melting down my lipstick, I thought, “If someone saw me doing this, they might assume I’m very poor and can’t afford a new lipstick.” I do a lot of black-belt tightwad stuff like that. But I’m not poor. I’m quite privileged among the inhabitants of the world, in fact, […]
Hacking my lipstick
Every mom of small children has had the experience of opening a lipstick tube, only to find that its contents have been smashed into the hastily slammed-on cap. A certain 4-year-old has ruined two of mine recently. One I found in my bathroom, the other (empty) tube somewhere in the van, its contents missing. But don’t worry. […]
June’s budget meeting, savings update, and announcement!
Point one: Frugality seems to be catching, like an infectious disease. First hubby told me he was being more careful with items he uses everyday in his line of work, trying to make things last longer and carefully re-using things. It showed, because he spent $586 less in June than in May on work-related expenses, […]
Stress = spendy, broken arm edition
Ruby, my 6-year-old, fell out of a tree. Again. And broke her left arm. Again. Hubby spent a fun night in the ER Wednesday. Thankfully, this break wasn’t as bad as the last one and didn’t require surgery. Don’t let the cute little picture fool you. She’s been pretty miserable. The worst of it is […]
Frugality and investments: calculating payback time
This is update #7 in my series on the No Spend Summer Challenge. Hubby and I are saving up this season for a down payment for our first home, so we’ve enacted a fiscal freeze. Monday I went to a consignment shop to get my teenage daughter, who insists on getting an inch taller […]
No-Spend Summer: update #6
This is update #6 of my No Spend Challenge we’re doing this summer. Hubby cleaned out his work shop and found a ton of tools he didn’t need, so we hosted a Manly Man yard sale. I consider it a success since we got rid of most of the stuff and pocketed a couple hundred bucks […]