From the category archives:

Frugality

Post image for Lifestyle inflation is no joke

Lifestyle inflation is no joke

by Karen on April 23, 2012

I started my new teaching job at the beginning of March, but due to the pay schedule I didn’t receive my first paycheck until the first week of April. It’s been two years since the last time I had a regular paycheck of my own, and it was quite a thrill when the money showed [...]

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This post was originally published on February 10, 2010. Happy Valentine’s Day! I’ve never been a Valentine’s Day believer. I’ve always believed that you don’t need a special day to celebrate love. We should be celebrating every day, right? It’s hard to avoid the Valentine’s Day hype, though, and any excuse to do a little [...]

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With gas prices pushing $4, I knew it was only a matter of time. And now it has finally happened. Our amazing gas rewards program will soon be no more. For the past 4 years, we’ve put all fuel purchases on a branded credit card. We always had to fill up at the same station, [...]

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Post image for Strategies for kicking the paper towel habit

Strategies for kicking the paper towel habit

by Karen on January 30, 2012

I’ve written about kicking my paper towel addiction before, but it’s one of those things that I never got around to doing. I convinced myself that I still needed paper towels for cleaning up things like raw chicken in the kitchen or wiping down toilet seats when cleaning, and so I continued buying them in [...]

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Post image for Building a professional wardrobe on a budget

Building a professional wardrobe on a budget

by Karen on December 13, 2011

My exciting new teaching job starts in January (yay!). There’s a business-casual dress code, and unfortunately, all of the clothing I wore in my previous life as a professional was also worn in my previous life as a thinner woman who never had a baby (not yay). That means I’m in the market for an [...]

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Homegrown dried herbs

by Karen on December 5, 2011

My first garden was sort of hit or miss. The herbs grew beautifully, and I harvested quite a few cucumbers before the plant succumbed to wilt. The red peppers were too shaded by the gigantic tomato plant to ever do much of anything. And that tomato plant? Pfft. It grew probably about 20 GIANT tomatoes [...]

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First things first, thank you so much for all the kind wishes for my birthday! I meant to post a thank you yesterday, but our power was out most of the day. I wasn’t about to type a blog post letter by letter on my phone’s screen. Anyway, those of you who left well wishes [...]

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Habit has always been one of my biggest money drains. There are a lot of expensive things that I buy just because I always have, but when I really think about it, I could probably survive without them. I’ve already broken my habit for a few of them, but I’m still working on others. Here [...]

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Post image for Giving prefolds another chance

Giving prefolds another chance

by Karen on September 19, 2011

You may recall last month when I wrote about the problems I was having with prefolds, and the fact that I was considering switching to expensive pocket diapers. Several of you gave me some helpful hints in the comments, so I decided to give it a few more weeks. First I stripped my diapers to [...]

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