Frugal Babe

We spent all day yesterday working in our front yard.  We used to have mostly grass with a small perennial garden.  Now it’s the other way around.  We have a little peninsula of grass wrapping around from the side yard - the rest is mulch and hardy perennial bushes and plants.  We spent a couple [...]

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 [...]

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 [...]

We live near a wonderful Habitat for Humanity thrift store.  They sell all the usual thrift store stuff, but they also have a home improvement section, with appliances, windows, doors, lights, plumbing fixtures, etc.  In January, they had a bunch of storm doors, still in their original packaging.  I’m not sure if they were overstock [...]

In addition to being frugal, another hobby of ours is being as toxin- and chemical-free as possible.  We eat almost exclusively organic food, we use non-toxic laundry soap and dishwasher soap, we use hydrogen peroxide as a mouthwash, we use lavender oil, orange oil, vinegar, water, and baking soda to clean, we installed a reverse osmosis water filter [...]

J and I have all of our bank accounts with one big name bank.  We have a checking account, a home equity line of credit (the second mortgage we needed in order to qualify for the loan on our house), a credit card, a business checking account, and a business savings account.  I’m not particularly [...]

Last year, we went to New Zealand in October to visit friends. We had just bought our first digital camera, and J spent lots of time testing the various features for taking close-up pictures. His subjects were generally flowers and plants, which seem to bloom with very little effort all over NZ. [...]

I sat down to write about my favorite cheap food, and ended up reading all sorts of other pf blogs.  Before I knew it, I’d been clicking from one to another for well over an hour.  Wow, time flies when I’m reading lots of stuff from people who think like I do.  I just discovered [...]

J and I are not that far along on our financial planning path.  He’s 30, I’m 28, and we’re still in the early years of being self-employed.  But even though the net worth numbers aren’t huge yet, we feel like we’re on the right path.  We each contribute $200/month to an IRA, and we put [...]

Yesterday I was at the library, and I noticed a magazine called Real Simple in our library friends bookstore.  I’ve seen this mag before, but had never really paid much attention.  Since the library friends store sells magazines for 10 cents, I figured I might as well part with a dime and look at their [...]