Frugal Babe

A lady I worked with at the library retired last week.  She’s 50, and her husband is 55.  He’ll be retiring in May from the Postal Service.  They have two twenty-something sons who are out on their own.  My friend and her husband paid off their mortgage “years ago” and just finished paying off the [...]

Tired but Happy recently wrote a post about dining out with older, wealthier relatives, and the money dynamics that come into play.  I love how insightful she is about the psychological nuances of money.  I am the oldest in my family, and my parents would always rather cook (our place or theirs, they’d rather stay in).  My husband [...]

Wow, what a long week this has been.  I just got home from my library job after my first full week of working 32 hrs there and as many hrs as I can at our insurance agency (I think I got about 20 this week).  I’m exhausted, but I feel great.  I’ve started working out [...]

We spent last weekend visiting friends who live a few hours from us.  My husband and I each have friends we’ve known for years who happen to live in the same town, so it’s always a two-for-one trip when we visit.  It’s a beautiful resort (expensive) town in the mountains, and we love spending time there.  [...]

My new job at the library started today.  I had a meeting with human resources to get all my benefit info sorted out.  It’s amazing how excited I got over benefits - I guess I’ve gotten very used to having to make my own benefits (one of the non-perks of self-employment), and getting them from [...]

The Festival of Frugality is up at Fire Finance.  They did a great job of weaving all the posts into the story of Joe - a pretty frugal guy.  I liked the Simple Dollar’s post on how he and his wife watch all their favorite tv shows without paying $50/month for cable.  They have a pretty [...]

The Carnival of Personal Finance is up at Young and Broke.  I just spent an hour reading most of the posts, which inspired me to keep chipping away at my own financial goals.  I agree with Lazy Man when he talks about how so many personal finance articles have the same stuff - once you’ve [...]

Last week we got a letter in the mail from American Family, our home and auto insurer.  Turns out they use our credit info as part of the rating factor for our home owners insurance.  I’m not sure if they’ve always done this, but we’ve never gotten a letter like this before… Anyway, the letter [...]

Like most females, I have always loved clothes.  I love shopping for new (used) clothes, trying them on, bringing them home, wearing new (to me) stuff.  Since I buy 95% of my clothes in thrift stores, I’ve never been a big spender when it comes to my wardrobe (a huge shopping spree for me is [...]

Happy New Year!  2006 is in the books, and it was a good year.  I just calculated our net worth, which went up by $939 in December.  December is a tough month, because estimated taxes are due in January, so I always have to keep lots of money in reserve to pay the quarterly tax [...]