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31
Aug 2010

Meet Smalltopia Author Tammy Strobel

FrugalBabe

Tammy Strobel was featured recently in a NY Times article about how stuff doesn’t make us happy.  The article went on to explain that Tammy and her husband live very well (and are even able to contribute to family members’ college savings accounts) on $24,000/year.  I find that particularly inspiring.  There are lots of websites out there that talk about how the key to success and happiness is to increase your income in order to have more money available.  While that works for some people (and I can attest to the fact that we do enjoy our increased income now that we’re more than seven years into our self-employed journey), I believe that it’s a lot easier to cut your expenses than it is to grow your income.  And the end result is the same:  you have more money available for what really matters to you if you’re spending less on the stuff that doesn’t really matter.  For people who are interested in starting their own business, I would say that the absolute most important first step is to minimize your expenses (in both your life and your future business) as much as possible, so that your business has the best possible chance of being able to support you.

There are people who are perfectly content with their 9 – 5 jobs and find great fulfillment in them.  If that’s you – keep on doing what you’re doing!  But for people who long for more independence and flexibility, and would like to start working for themselves but don’t know where to begin, today Tammy released a new e-book called Smalltopia: A Practical Guide to Working for Yourself.  I just finished reading the book, and it’s an excellent resource for anyone trying to launch their own little business.  It includes lots of practical tips, ideas, and resources, along with personal stories and advice from numerous successful small business owners (I’m a big fan of real life stories, so I really appreciated that part of the book).  One of the overwhelmingly consistent ideas from just about all of them was that reducing your expenses is one of the keys to success.  Of course that really resonates with me, and it makes perfect sense:  if you set our to start your own little business and your lifestyle eats up $5000/month, your business is going to have to be pretty darn successful right out of the gate.  But if you only need to earn $1500/month to cover your expenses, you’re giving yourself a much greater chance of success, and reducing the chances that you’ll end up working 80 hours a week to make ends meet.

I’m a big fan of small business and self employment.  My husband and I started our little insurance agency in 2003, and it has supported us ever since.  We have used technology to our advantage, slowly making our business entirely an on-line entity by about 2007.  We do not ever have to leave the house for work anymore, and that means that we can work from anywhere we choose.  We would not have been able to pursue our dream of growing our own food if we had been tied to our former location by our jobs.  The fact that we can work from anywhere meant that we were able to find a home that met our needs without worrying about where that home was located.

Of course, not everyone is interested in growing their own food.  Some people have a dream of traveling the world, or volunteering full time, or starting a family, or living on a boat.  Your dream doesn’t have to be the same as anyone else’s, but it’s still worth pursuing.  And if you can lower your expenses, diversify your income, create flexibility in your schedule, avoid becoming a workaholic, and earn enough money to support yourself, you’ll be a lot closer to shaping your future around what you really want.

I could tell from reading Tammy’s blog, Rowdy Kittens, that she and I see a lot of things the same way.  I thought that my readers would be especially interested in knowing some of the details about Tammy’s happy, frugal life, and she agreed to an interview.

Tammy, thanks for being here with us today, and congratulations on the release of your new book, Smalltopia.

FB:  When you quit your job to become self employed, how much of a savings cushion did you have?

Tammy:  Before I left my job, we saved a year’s worth of our expenses (about $25,000). For anyone who is thinking of leaving a “traditional” day job, make sure you evaluate what your expenses are and what you really need. I also recommend reading, Your Money or Your Life and Unautomate Your Finances.

FB:  How long did it take for your own little business to be able to support you?

Tammy:  It took about a month for my little business to start making money. During the first month, I didn’t make a profit. But after I launched my first ebook, Simply Car-free, I was able to pay my bills. And slowly but surely I acquired more freelance writing and web design work.

FB:  People who are considering leaving their jobs to seek out something new are often very concerned about health insurance. Was that an issue for you, and what did you do about it?

Tammy:  Prior to leaving my day job, we thought a lot about health insurance.  I knew it would be risky to leave an organization that had such good benefits, but it was a risk I was willing to take. In my opinion, it’s just as risky to stay at a job you dislike.

Health insurance is a very complex topic and the type of plan you chose will depend upon your health and the risk you want to carry. I’m not an expert on this topic and strongly encourage folks to talk to a health care broker and examine a variety of health care plans before making any big decisions.

FB:  You’ve made a lot of downsizing steps over the last few years.  What changes would you say had the most impact on your ability to live so well on a reduced income?

Tammy:  By selling both my cars, I save about $12,000 per year. By going car-free we were able to pay off our debt and save a lot of extra money. And that gave me the freedom to leave my day job and pursue an unconventional career path. If I still owned a car, I would be saddled with debt, and stress.

FB:  If your income were to double overnight, would you make any major changes to the way you live now?

Tammy:  First, I would donate more of my income to charity. Second, I’d build a tiny house. Other than that, nothing would change.

FB:  What’s your favorite form of low-cost entertainment?

Tammy:  Having fun doesn’t require spending a lot of money or heading to the mall. Instead, I focus on doing things that make me incredibly happy. For instance, I love taking long walks in the park, going for bike rides, and doing yoga at home.

A few years ago I would have spent the day at the mall shopping, searching for happiness. Buying extra stuff didn’t make me happy and consuming more hasn’t done much for the planet or overall state of “happiness” in the U.S. Thanks to the ideas promoted by simple living movement I’m able to take advantage of beauty in everyday life. I’m satisfied with my possessions and I feel like I have enough.

FB:  What does an average day’s menu look like at your house?

Tammy:  Most of the time, we eat a lot of fruit, vegetables, grains, and bread. Lately, we’ve been making a lot of quinoa. It’s my new obsession. :)

FB:  Do you have any expenses that you consider splurges or luxuries, or do you focus entirely on the basics?

Tammy:  Sure. I think everyone loves to splurge once in a while. I love drinking coffee and eating out occasionally. We don’t eat out often, but I do spend a lot of time in coffee shops. So my monthly coffee budget is fairly large and I’m okay with that. :)

Thanks Tammy!  We definitely see eye to eye on a lot of things.  I’ve found that simple pleasures make me happier than any material possession ever has, and I can’t remember the last time I went to a mall.  You’re an inspiration, and I wish you all the best with your little business!

Category: Debt, other bloggers  3 Comments
18
Aug 2010

Cutting Expenses To Focus On What You Really Want

FrugalBabe

I just came across the story of the house that two incomes built, and although it’s a couple years old, it’s still well worth sharing.  It continues with part 2, and the photographs are what make it particularly interesting, along with the description of the personal struggle involved with deciding whether to go back to work after the birth of a child.

Some parents would rather go back to work, and they feel more fulfilled with both a career and a child than they would staying home full time.  And the opposite side of that is the parents who know that they want to stay home and have planned for it long before their first child arrives.  In the middle are the parents who aren’t sure.  And the ones who would stay home with their kids if money were no object.

The money issue is tricky.  If you’re used to living on two incomes and have expanded your lifestyle to use up all or most of those two incomes, the option to have a parent stay home with a child will require more than just a letter of resignation.  It might mean getting rid of a car, cutting back on shopping trips and vacations, or even moving to a less expensive home.

I’m very fortunate to be in a situation where my husband and I both work from home.  We spent five years growing our business before we had our son, and purposely structured it so that we are both home most of the time.  The most important thing we’ve done though is to not inflate our lifestyle as our income grew over the years.  As a result, a good chunk of our income goes into savings and extra mortgage payments.  The future is never certain, but if our business were to stop making money, we could continue our current lifestyle on less than an average single income (obviously we wouldn’t be able to continue saving and paying off the mortgage at our current rate, but we’d be able to get by).  We could have bought a more expensive house or upgraded our cars, but that would have increased our monthly expenses and put us in a more precarious situation in terms of needing a higher income just to get by.

This isn’t about whether parents should stay home with their kids.  That’s a decision that has to be made by each family, and is a highly personal one.  But if you focus on keeping your expenses (especially for the biggies – housing and transportation) as low as possible, you give yourself more options than you have if you spend everything each month.

I wanted to share the story of the house that two incomes built because I find it inspiring to see people making drastic changes in their lives in order to focus on what they want most.  Obviously this sort of thing is not limited to staying home with children.  It could be about starting your own business or retiring early or setting out to travel the world.  What matters is that we actively choose our path and make decisions with our goals in mind, rather than falling victim to advertising and debt.

Would you move to a much less expensive home/area in order to be able to work part time, stay home with a child, focus on volunteering, travel, etc?

Category: Debt, baby, family  16 Comments
09
Aug 2010

The Math On Refinancing

FrugalBabe

Even though it’s only been a year since we bought our house, we had been hearing so much about how low interest rates are right now that we decided to look into the possibility of refinancing.  We spoke with a close family friend who works at a bank in the mortgage department.  Our current rate is 4.625, and she told us that she could get us down to 3.75%.  She said we could roll the closing costs into the loan and still end up with payments that would be about $200/month lower than what we pay now.  Sounds great, right?

We decided to sit down and crunch some numbers to see if this would really be a good idea.  We loved the thought of a 3.75% interest rate, but would refinancing really save us money in the long run?

You’ve probably seen personal finance websites that caution against looking just at the monthly payments when financing a car.  Instead, they advise that you look at the total purchase price plus total interest and consider the total cost of the vehicle rather than whether you can afford the monthly payments.  We do the same thing with our house.

The total cost of the house (principle amount plus total interest over the life of the loan) is more important to us than the monthly payment amount.  We plan to stay here forever (I know, we said that before… but this time we mean it!) or at least for a very long time, and paying off the loan is one of our top priorities.

We used a mortgage calculator from Bankrate, which I like because it allows you to enter odd numbers for the total length of the loan.  Here’s the nitty gritty:  We currently owe about $152,000 on our house.  Our interest rate is 4.625%, and we have about 12.5 years left on our 15 year loan (we’ve been in the house a year but we’ve been making extra payments ever since we moved in).

We can refinance at 3.75%, but it would start our loan over again at 15 years, and it would add about $4500 to the outstanding balance (refinancing would cost between 2 and 3 percent, and I’m going with the higher end to err on the conservative side).  So we would then owe about $156,500 on the new loan.

We pay extra on our loan every month, but there’s no way to be sure that we’ll always be able to do that.  So I wanted to look at both an early payoff scenario as well as the total interest we’d pay if we kept our mortgage for its full term.

In our current loan, if we stop paying extra and take the full 12.5 years to pay it off, we’ll pay about $48,400 in interest between now and the time we pay it off.  If we have the loan paid off five years from now (our goal), we’ll only pay $18,600 in interest between now and the time we pay off the house.

If we refinance and don’t make extra payments, we’ll have a payment about $200/month lower than what we have now, but it will be for 15 years rather than 12.5 years.  And over the course of that time, we’ll pay $48,400 in interest.  Yep – the same amount (I rounded my numbers, but the actual values were within $70 of each other).  If we refinance and then add the same amount of additional payment that would allow us to pay off our current loan in five years, it would take 5.5 years to pay off the new loan (because of the extra $4500 tacked on for closing costs).  And the total amount of interest paid would be about $16,900.  That is less than we’ll pay over the next five years with our current loan, but only by about $1700.  That is far less than the closing cost of the refinance, even if we were able to get a new loan with a 2% closing cost.

So basically, even though the monthly payment would be $200 lower, we’d still be paying the same amount of interest if we kept our loan for the full term, and we’d be paying for the closing costs of the loan too.  If we continue to pay extra each month in order to pay off the house quickly, we’d save about $1700 in interest with the new loan, but that doesn’t make up for the closing costs that would be tacked onto our loan in order to refinance.

So… we aren’t going to refinance.  Sure, it would give us a lower monthly payment, but that payment would be set for the next 15 years rather than the 12.5 years on our current loan.  And refinancing won’t really save us any money in the long run.

I know that it’s a great time to refinance if you’ve got a higher interest rate, but since our rate is already pretty low, the math just doesn’t work out.  Are any of you considering a refinance right now?  What’s more important to you – the monthly payment, or the total cost of the house?

Category: Debt  17 Comments
20
Jul 2010

Simple Inexpensive Fitness

FrugalBabe

Being healthy and fit are very high on my list of priorities.  I’ve mentioned many times how important our diet is to me, and exercise is just as important.  I thought I’d share some of my favorite ways to stay in shape that don’t require much in the way of money, special equipment, or specific locations.

1.  My all-time favorite exercise is push ups.  They rock.  They are challenging for everyone, no matter how strong you are… a beginner might struggle to do five, while a person with great upper body strength might have to do 50 or 100 to reach exhaustion.  But trust me, exhaustion does come for everyone relatively quickly with push ups.  If you’re maintaining proper form, push ups are great for the whole upper body and torso.  You can do them anywhere, and they don’t require any equipment at all.  No planning needed either… just drop down and do a set of push ups, and then carry on with your day!  (You can start on your knees and work your way up to doing them on your toes).

2.  Bicycle crunches.  I do a variety of core exercises, but these work a lot of muscles all at the same time.  Again, no equipment required.

3.  Planks and walking planks.  These are great if you just have a couple of minutes and want to work on core strength.  You can also incorporate some push ups in with your walking planks for a little variety.

4.  Tricep dips.  These do require a chair or other stable surface about the same height, but that’s relatively easy to come by.

5.  Calf raises.  Basically just rise up on your tiptoes and then lower down again.  Go fast or slow, and point your toes inward or outward to vary the exercise.  Like all the others, you can do these anywhere, and they don’t require any equipment.

6.  Yoga.  I took classes for several years thanks to the free gym membership I got when I worked at the library, and now I do it on my own at home.  All that you need for yoga is a mat and comfy clothes.  I do have several DVDs of yoga classes that I use quite often.  I got them at a thrift store for about two dollars each, and I’ve done them all so many times that I have them memorized.  But I still find it helpful to have the voice of an instructor to help me stay focused.  If you’re looking for any sort of workout DVD, thrift stores usually have tons of them.  We no longer have a TV or DVD player, but my laptop is a great substitute, and I can take it anywhere I want for an instant yoga session.

7.  Walking.  As a long-time runner, I never though walking would be on a list of my favorite exercises.  I ran for about 15 years, both competitively and for fun.  But last fall I decided to try walking instead.  I was starting to realize that my knees and hips might not appreciate the constant pounding, and I was also trying to gain some weight.  I used to run for about an hour, three or four days a week.  So I switched to walking for an hour instead.  I go about four miles, and since it’s a lot easier on my joints, I’m able to go every day.  Walking is much lower impact than running, so I don’t worry much about my shoes anymore.  In fact, unless you’re wearing a pencil skirt and stilettos, you can probably head out for a walk in whatever you’ve got on right now.  So again, very little gear required.  A hat, some sunglasses, comfy shoes and clothes, and you’re set.  As a bonus, you can take dogs and kids along too.  Our dog twitches with excitement when she sees me putting my shoes on, and our son rides along in his hand-me-down jogging stroller or in the wagon that my parents found at a thrift store and refurbished for us.

8.  Biking.  I use my bike to run errands in town.  It never feels like exercise to be cruising around on my bike, but I know it is.  We also go on long family rides every once in a while.  Those do feel like exercise because my rear end is sore when we get home!  We got our bikes used.  If you’re looking for a bike, check Craigs list or a used sporting good store, and you’ll find tons of options.  Don’t forget a helmet!

The first five exercises I mentioned can be done anywhere, anytime, and take only a few minutes each.  Have 60 seconds to spare?  Get down and see how many push ups you can do in a minute.  I do them all throughout the day, a minute or two here and there is all I need.  It doesn’t require planning a trip to the gym or scheduling anything – you can just mix them in with your day as you go.

Biking, walking, and yoga all require a bit more of a time commitment than the other exercises, but they’re all fun!  And you don’t have to go anywhere specific to do them.  As long as you live in a relatively safe area, you can walk or bike right from your home.  And you can do yoga anywhere too.

I hope this gives you some ideas for ways you can incorporate fitness into your life without spending money or making it a stressful experience.  And if you have other favorite low cost, low maintenance exercise ideas, please share them in the comments!

Category: Debt  11 Comments
18
Feb 2010

A New Pantry

FrugalBabe

Remember that wood that I fished out of a dumpster a couple months ago?  Now it’s a pantry.  Our laundry room is just off the kitchen, and it had a closet in it.  There was one high shelf and a hanging rail, but other than that, it wasn’t a very useful space.  We didn’t need it as a closet, but we did need a pantry.  So we transformed it.  We used the wood that I diverted from a landfill to make shelves, and I scrubbed them with vinegar before we put them in.  My husband took out the hanging rail and mounted it under a set of cupboards in the laundry room – right where a dryer would go if we had one.  Now I have a place to hang things like shirts as soon as I take them out of the washing machine, and everything else can go out on the clothesline or onto my drying racks.  Here’s the pantry, which will be a lot more crowded after I pick up our first bulk food order this evening:

100_8032

Category: Debt  8 Comments
17
Feb 2010

When The Going Gets Tough

FrugalBabe

Dawn at Frugal For Life has written an article about overcoming frugal fatigue.  Given the economic problems of the last couple years, chances are a lot of people have been frugal by necessity for a while now, and Dawn’s article is aptly timed.  Ever since I was a child, opening my first savings account, I’ve gotten more of a thrill from saving than from spending, so I’ve never had a problem with frugal fatigue.  But I do remember the early years of our self-employment, when we were deeply in debt from starting our business (a combination of business debts and debts incurred to buy things like groceries while we were earning diddly squat for income).  I had huge amounts of debt fatigue.  I had all of our debt amounts listed on a yellow legal pad, and I would sometimes just stare at them for ten minutes, wishing that I could get the numbers to go down faster.  Each month was like a puzzle, and I would figure out how much we could put towards each debt, and where it would make the most sense to put extra cash.  We were completely focused on paying off our debts, preferably without needing a cash advance, and it absolutely resulted in fatigue.  I would imagine how amazing it would feel to see zeros all across my legal pad, and mentally fast forward ahead a few months to picture reduced debt.  On one hand, being so focused was what got us out of debt relatively quickly (we paid it all off in about three years), but it sure was mentally tiring.

These days, our only debt is our mortgage.  While it’s a much larger debt than our business debt was, it doesn’t feel as oppressive – although we still want to be rid of it, and are working to pay it down as fast as we can.  But the mortgage is just one aspect of our long term financial goals now; the rest is focused on retirement savings, cash savings, college savings, etc.  We’re just as focused on saving now as we were on paying of debt several years ago, but saving feels like fun.  There’s no fatigue from working to grow our nest egg, the way there was when we were digging out of a hole.  Both are satisfying, and both have the effect of increasing our net worth, but what we’re doing now feels a lot less stressful.

If you’re feeling fatigued by frugality – especially if you’re focusing on paying off debts – maybe it would help to divert a little bit of your extra money away from debt repayment and into a savings account.  For the first year that we were paying off debt, we didn’t save a dime – no emergency fund, no IRA contribution – everything went towards debt.  I wonder if maybe it would have been less exhausting if we had opened a savings account and put a little money into savings at the same time.  In the end, it all evens out, but if you’re considering giving up on frugality because you’re tired of it, taking a mini break now and then might do the trick to keep you on track long term.  Same goes for debt repayment:  As long as we keep the long term goals in sight, a little deviation now and then might be just what we need.

Category: Debt, other bloggers  6 Comments
28
Jan 2010

Opposing Views On Frugality

FrugalBabe

Apparently I’m a bit behind on reading personal finance blogs, because I just came across a couple of articles from February of last year.  They’re old, but make some great points and are very interesting reads.  Trent at The Simple Dollar wrote an article about how a media interviewer called him a cheapskate.  And then Him from Make Love Not Debt wrote about his thoughts on the topic.  I found both articles very interesting, along with the comments from readers.  It seems like everyone has an opinion, and two people can see another person’s frugality in very different ways.  My personal opinion – and we’re all entitled to one – is that I’d much rather hang out with Trent than Him.  I think Trent’s values are a lot more in line with my own, and from the articles I’ve read on his blog, he seems very happy with his life and choices.

But the articles brought up a deeper point than just the choices we make in our own lives and whom we choose as friends.  There was a lot of talk about judging others and self-righteousness – from both sides of the frugal – spendy spectrum.  I think that it’s somewhat natural to tend to think highly of others who are most like ourselves.  Most people tend to choose friends with whom they have a lot in common.   I would say that I’m probably the most frugal of my friends, but they’re all pretty focused on saving for a rainy day and for retirement, and none of them think less of me for shopping in thrift stores and driving an old car.

I do think of myself as frugal.  And I am happy almost 100% of the time.  For me, the connection between those two things is strong, and I believe that the simple life my husband and I have created for our family plays a large role in our happiness.  But I don’t think less of people who make different choices in terms of how they spend their money.  As long as those choices don’t impact the rest of us.  If a person chooses to spend all of their income each month (and I’m not talking about someone working for minimum wage who barely has enough for rent and food), that is none of my business.  But when I started hearing about mortgage bailouts after ARMs began to reset a couple years ago, I’ll admit to being irritated – especially when I read article after article about people who purchased houses that they could barely afford, even at the low introductory interest rate.  Bankruptcy is another example of something that drives up costs for everyone else, and it’s frustrataing when the bankruptcy is caused because a person consistently made choices to spend instead of save.  Yes, there are lots of cases where bankruptcy is caused because a person became too ill to work or suffered some sort of catastrophic circumstances, but there are also plenty of people who live paycheck to paycheck (despite having a good income) and are thus putting themselves in a situation where they have no ability to weather even the slightest financial storm.

What do you think?  Do you agree more with Trent or with Him?  Do you care about how other people choose to spend their money?  Are you more or less frugal than your friends?  Do you friends care?

Category: Debt, just my life, thrift stores  10 Comments
11
Jan 2010

Frugal Decorating

FrugalBabe

We recently bought a hanging plant for our dining room, but it came in a cheap plastic hanging basket that was both ugly and non-functional, since it had drain holes in the bottom but no tray to catch drips.  Inspired by the Thrifty Chicks, I went shopping for a lightweight enamel pot, and found one at Goodwill for three dollars.  A few holes drilled in the bottom turned it into a planter, and the lid turned upside down worked as a catch tray underneath. 

To hang it up, I used an old pair of my husband’s jeans that he had donated to my fabric stash.  I cut strips out of the legs, folded them over to make them double-strength, sewed strips together to get the length I needed, and then threaded them through the handles on the pot and the lid.  I sewed loops in the ends of the strips and threaded them through a carabiner that I found in the garage. 

Here’s the finished product, which cost a total of three dollars since all of the other supplies were things we already had:

100_7936

Category: Debt  5 Comments
14
Sep 2009

Keeping Track Of Our Spending

FrugalBabe

Recently I got an email from a long-time reader, asking me if we still keep track of our monthly expenses.  I guess the answer is both yes and no.  We do pay close attention to what we are spending, and I check our bank balances and credit card transactions on a daily basis.  But we no longer keep track of every penny, nor do we break our spending down by category anymore.

We paid off the last of our non-mortgage debt in 2007.  Our income has slowly increased over the years without an increase in our living expenses (actually, as we paid off debt, our expenses went down).  And neither of us liked keeping every receipt for every purchase.  It was interesting to keep track of our expenses, and it did provide some motivation for keeping our spending down.  But we’re pretty far along on our frugal journey at this point.  Frugality is second nature around our house, and we never spend money mindlessly.  We ponder our purchases, buy used whenever possible, and avoid buying much of the time.  We use homemade cloth diapers, prepare pretty much all of our food from scratch, ride our bikes instead of driving, read books from the library, and we don’t even have a TV anymore.  Our cars are nearly 20 years old (no payments, and very inexpensive insurance and registration fees), and everything we wear comes from thrift stores.  We’re spending so much time trying to turn our little plot of land into a mini farm that we don’t have time to go out and spend money (we have spent money on things like fruit trees and berry bushes, but we planned for those expenses).

So we stopped keeping track of every penny spend quite a while ago.  Instead, we use a pay-ourselves-first approach that we like better.  Our only debt is our mortgage.  That means that each month our bills amount to current living expenses plus the mortgage.  In addition to that, we’ve created “bills” for several savings accounts.  Some are automated, some are not, but they are all priorities.  We have our son’s 529 plan, our HSA, our IRAs, and our emergency fund.  We also pay an additional amount towards our mortgage principal each month (it varies, but we try to make sure that each month we pay a little more than we did the month before).  Once we pay all of those “bills” we can use whatever is left over for current living expenses.  If there is a higher-than-usual amount left over, we tend to stash it in one of our savings accounts – we don’t spend it just because it’s there, but that’s probably a result of being frugal for so long that the habits are ingrained.

This is what works for us.  It guarantees that we keep making progress with our savings goals, but it also allows us some flexibility with how we spend our money.  Now that our checking account is paying more interest than our on-line savings accounts, we’ll be keeping more money in checking.  This means that we’ll have to do a little more keeping track, since money that is in our checking account will technically count as savings, and thus be untouchable for day to day expenses.  I do like having our savings in a separate place (out of sight, out of mind), but the extra interest in the checking account is enticing, and we’ll make it work.

What about you?  Do you prefer to keep track of every penny? (my mother started doing that in the early 70s, and still does to this day, even though she and my dad don’t need to anymore)  Do you use the pay yourself first method?  Do you have a budget at all?  Have you started keeping more careful track of your money since the economy headed south last year?  I’m curious to hear what other frugalites (and not-so-frugalites!) do.

Category: Debt, goals, investing, net worth, savings, the simple life, thrift stores, tracking expenses  6 Comments
31
Aug 2009

Grow, Little Orchard, Grow

FrugalBabe

We spent the whole weekend digging, and our little homestead is coming along nicely.  On Friday, we went to an end of season sale at the local tree nursery.  We had been waiting all summer for that sale, and were there as soon as they opened.  All plants were 25% off, and when you’re putting in an orchard and berry patch, that 25% amounts to a pretty good savings. 

We ended up with 11 fruit trees (cherry, peach, apricot, and apple) and eight berry bushes (raspberry, grape, blueberry, gooseberry).  We also got some weed blocker, peat moss, and drought-resistant decorative plants for areas of our front yard that we plan to cover with mulch and/or rocks – all for 25% off normal prices.   I normally hate to spend money, but we had been planning that shopping trip all summer (and saving for it), and were thrilled with what we got. 

We spent all day Saturday planting trees and bushes.  By the end of the day, we were sore all over, but our orchard and berry patch are now in place… they just need to grow a bit.

Sunday was devoted to planting some grass seed around our back patio in order to reclaim a bit of the yard back from the industrial weeds, and moving gravel from one side of our front yard to the other.  It’s like going to the gym but with an added bonus of getting stuff done.  We were exhausted by the time we went to bed last night, but it feels great to be making such good progress towards our goals.

I’ll leave you with a picture of diapers drying on our new clothesline.  The clothesline was rescued from a scrap metal bin by my husband, and he did a great job of making it new again.  I love looking out the window and seeing our laundry drying on it, and I adore seeing our son’s little homemade diapers flapping in the breeze on the line.

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Category: Debt  9 Comments
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