Category: Frugal Living

  • Rules to Lifestyle Inflation

    Tweet Since I run in the circles of frugal living and personal finance blogs, I’ve seen a theme over and over again that I just had to speak out against a teensy tiny bit.  You see, the theme is this:  Lifestyle Inflation is bad.   If you get to the point where you pay off your…

  • Shroomin with Babci

    Tweet This past weekend, actually this past month, I’ve been feeling rather horrible.  I finally got put on some antibiotics, but they weren’t strong enough and after they wore off my virus came back with a vengeance on Friday night.  That in addition to the rest of my family being under the weather as well,…

  • Uncle’s Story Part 2: Digging out of Poverty

    Tweet Today, I’ll be sharing the second part of my uncle’s story.  If you missed, Part 1 you can read it here.  Once my uncle was scooped up by the red cross and resettled in the US, he started to rebuild his life with his new bride Sophie.   The two of them worked about 10…

  • Inept Craig’s List Sellers

    Tweet The past few weeks I’ve been on the hunt for several second hand items.  I’m currently on the lookout for a food processor, a chess set and some pre-finished hardwood floor remnants (for a tiny hallway area and small room).   Lately I have been extremely amazed at the total lack of price awareness…

  • Adventures in Canoeing

    Tweet My husband is a big fisherman and last year he decided we need a canoe so that he could fish the local ponds here and in his hometown which we often frequent in the summer. I scored a great deal on an old town canoe on craigslist for $150 and we haven’t looked back.  …

  • Poor vs Rich on the Lake

    Tweet After a very long winter followed by a very very wet spring, we’ve finally had some nice weather over the last couple of days. It’s really been glorious.   My oldest is finishing up kindergarten this week and his teacher gave him a shovel and pail as his goodbye present.  Well, when I picked him…

  • When Babci’s Frugalness Goes too Far

    Tweet   I spent most of Sunday mudding my mom’s hallway and while I was there, it got me thinking nostalgically about all the hours I’ve spent doing this or that around here home.  Since our fixer is mostly fixed (knock on wood), the bulk of our home improvement efforts have been at Babci’s 120…

  • Karma – Posting Free Ads on Craigslist

    Tweet So the other day I wrote how an old lady scammed me by overcharging me for some ratty old t-shirts. I was annoyed, but I vented on the blog and moved on.  I didn’t seek revenge or egg her house. I was over it but wouldn’t you know things have a way of working…

  • Frugal Knives: Babci Loves Shivs

    Tweet Yesterday, my husband reminded me that I should write about one of his favorite topics, Babci’s Shiv collection.   Back when we were still dating, my husband and a few of our friends liked to make up stories about babci’s past based on their observations about her and her surroundings.  For example, they were convinced…

  • Babci and Talking about Money

    Tweet How many home computers does it take to toast a router in 7 months?  Apparently 3.   This week has been plagued with connectivity issues which is a killer when you have Vontage and work from a home office.  What’s worse is that I didn’t even suspect the router at first because it was still…