Frugal Babe

Our baby is five weeks old today, and we’ve settled into a pretty happy little existence with him at the center of it all.  Can’t really remember what life was like before we had him, and that’s just fine.  In the last five weeks, we’ve spent very little additional money compared with what we were [...]

JD at Get Rich Slowly has posted an article about what his life and finances were like ten years ago, and has invited other bloggers to share their stories as well.  I think it’s interesting to look back over where we’ve been and to think about where we’re headed, so here goes…
Ten years ago, I [...]

I was looking at our business credit card statements today, to make sure that everything was in order after our fraud incident last month.  They had cancelled my husband’s card and issued a new one, which was done as soon as we reported the problem.  We paid all the legit charges on the card, and [...]

An update on my attempts to better secure our credit card:  I called our bank yesterday and got them to make a note in our file saying that balance transfers cannot be made from our credit cards to any bank account, regardless of who is asking for it.  We would never do this, but a [...]

Money, Matter, and More Musings has written a great pollwith 20 questions everyone should ask themselves regarding personal finance.  I feel like I’m pretty much on top of our finances, but I was not able to answer yes to every question.  There were five questions that made me realize that I still have work to do:
Do [...]

Earlier this summer, my husband had a dermatology procedure done in a local office.  We had picked that office because they offered the best price - we knew nothing about them beforehand. 
Over the last few months, we’ve gone back and forth with them about the bill.  Basically, they quoted about $300 plus pathology over the [...]

I just got back from taking my card samplesto the store I found on Sunday… now I have to wait a week for them to look over my stuff and get back to me about whether they want to carry my cards in their store.  I decided to hold off on the other two stores [...]

EDIT:  during the three years that we’ve been paying off this debt, the highest total before-tax income we ever had was $56,765 for the two of us together.  That was in 2006, and was considerably higher than the previous two years.  We paid off the debt by being frugal, not by earning big bucks. 
This week I’ll be sending $500 to [...]

Yesterday I read an article in a magazine about people who had been getting by just fine until a serious illness put their finances into a tailspin.  (sorry, I can’t remember what magazine I was reading - it was during my break at the library and I looked at several) Every one of the people [...]

We have a huge maple tree in our front yard.  It’s a great shade tree, and sitting on our front porch feels like being in the forest since the tree obscures most of the street from view.  But it’s getting a bit out of control.  My husband has climbed on the roof a couple times [...]