artofthecoupon.com

If you're new here, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed. Thanks for visiting!

I was in line at Walgreens today and there were two older women behind me.  As always, I had my stack of coupons and my coupon binder was resting in the baby seat.  They started to talk to each other, commenting on how organized I was.  Then, one of them went on to say “I just wouldn’t do that… it’s not worth the time to save a few cents on paper towels.”  This is a common comment from coupon-haters.  And I’m here to tell you that it is very very misguided!   (more…)

Dave Ramsey places a lot of emphasis on the Debt Snowball, or paying off smaller debts first so that you keep up your morale.  Obviously, since Dave Ramsey is a financial God to many, I’ve heard a lot about this.  I can’t quite wrap my head around the idea of paying more interest then necessary.  Plus, if you have one large financial burden (like $100K+ in student loans) then this wouldn’t help you in making progress because there are no smaller debts.  So, I’ve been considering how I want to set my goals as far as debt payoff. (more…)

I’m currently making one of the cardinal mistakes of personal money management… I’m not saving for retirement.  Instead, every extra cent is going towards debt.  My reasons for doing this are many… the debt bothers me psychologically, the stock market is terrible right now and I don’t want to invest, I do already have about $5000 in IRA/Roth IRA so I feel like I have a start, my employer doesn’t offer a 401K or a match, and so on and on.  The biggest main reason is that my Fiance feels really strongly that we need to pay off our debt NOW so that we can start our lives (buy a house, get married, have kids, etc.) and he doesn’t want to put that goal off for anything, even for retirement savings.  I’m still in my mid-20’s so, for this year at least, I’m not going to argue this point (although I may argue it more strongly next year once all the credit card debt is gone).   (more…)

I mentioned to a friend the other day that I got a really cute sweater at a thrift store.  Her response was “why, you can afford to shop elsewhere.  And you are taking clothes away from someone who might not be able to.” I had to think a little bit about her second point- was I really taking away the opportunity to buy that sweater from someone who really needed it?  However, the Goodwill Store isn’t a charity in the sense that they give away clothes or provide clothes to the needy… so its not as if I’m going to a food bank and taking food out of the mouths of the needy or anything like that. Goodwill is open to everyone, with no income requirements or requirement of impoverishment.  In fact, I think that when I buy a sweater at Goodwill, they put that money towards helping people (right?)  So I was able to answer that issue relatively easily.  Even more thought went into the idea of whether I could, in fact, afford to shop elsewhere. (more…)

I’ve had a rather lax posting schedule for the past 2 weeks and I apologize.  I am transitioning form part time work to working closer to full time.  Last week, I was away for labor day weekend and didn’t return until Monday.  I worked on Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday and then Friday and Saturday I had a garage sale.  Hopefully, now that I am more used to full time work and my garage sale is over, I’ll be getting back to 5 posts a week!  Don’t give up on me

I set some goals for August in this post and some of them turned out a little better than others :).  I also have some goals that I’ve set for September. (more…)

Well, I wasout of town for a labor day weekend (and only spent $10 the whole time!) and then I had some crazy catching up to do when I returned.  But, here is my August roundup, only 3 days late.  It was a pretty good month, except for some unexpected car expenses and our annual trip to the vet.  But, we still managed to pay off the credit card from last month, almost in full and to cut our grocery spending. Yay! (more…)