Frugal Babe

I just read a post at Get Rich Slowly about raising a family on one income.  The post was written by GRS’ cousin, Mrs. Darling.   The post was not unusual - most of the things that Mrs. Darling and her family have done over the years are not new to frugal folks.  They have lived within [...]

When we bought our house in January 2003, we got a 30 year mortgage at 6% interest for $152,000 (the balance on that one just dropped below $140,000 - yay!)  We had $10,000 for a down payment, which was far less than the traditional 20% (our house cost $190,000).  At the time, we were stoked [...]

The Festival of Frugality is up at Money, Matter, and More Musings.  Golbguru did some good work, including tidbits and comments about each post.  I liked the post from Debt Free about how small expenditures take a big chunk out of long-term savings.  Everyone has heard about the “latte factor” but seeing the big picture [...]

When we Incorporated our business last year, we decided to use a payroll service.  We used Payroll1 for the first three months of this year, and they were great.  They took care of everything, got our checks to us right on time, handled all the reports, and sent our quarterly tax payment to the IRS [...]

We got our tax refund this week - $615 was the grand total.  That’s good, because it means we were pretty darn close with our estimated payments last year.  Yeah for us.  Anyway, now we have to decide what to do with it.  We can put it towards our HELOC, we can put it in our [...]

A few days ago, I was telling my husband about all the research I had been doing on ETFs for my new Roth IRA.  I said “In 30 years, you’re gonna be so glad that you married me!”  He laughed, and agreed that yes, maybe in 30 years he would be glad he’d married me.  [...]

When we installed our new storm door recently, we threw away a few strips of plastic that were left over after we had everything in place.  It looked like they were meant to go on another door (the instructions were for several different doors), and we pitched them with the packaging.  Bummer.  The door had [...]

The Festival of Frugality is up at No Credit Needed (thanks for hosting, NCN).  I was inspired by the post about keeping a lawnmower running - our mower just barely made it through last summer, and we had been talking about taking it to a repair shop, but now I think we’ll see what we [...]

The 96th Carnival of Personal Finance is up at All Financial Matters for your reading pleasure.  Since we’ve been doing so much work on our house lately (with more to come, including a new roof and exterior paint job…) I was drawn to the five steps to get your home in shape for summer.  Seems that we [...]

We ordered my new engagement ring last night.  It’s slightly different than the first one I had picked out - we both like the 4 prong setting better than 6.  It cost $231 - and they have free shipping, so that’s it - $231.  The guarantees that they provide sound just about identical to the [...]