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As I wrote here, I firmly believe that you can be delighted about living a frugal life- as long as you feel that it is a choice.  One way to be a cheerful Frugalist is to consider all of the reasons why frugality is a great thing.  So, here is a list of 5 reasons why I am delighted that I am living a more frugal life. (more…)

In this post at Wisebread, the author presented the story of Person A, a person who had a great job with lots of money and toys; and Person B, a person with a job she loves and enough money to get by without a lot of extras.  The author, of course, was both Person A and Person B and concluded that Person B was happier.  And, that may very well be true- I know I have made the choice to be Person B when my education and background could easily have put me in a position to become person A.  But, would every Person B necessarily be happier?  Or is the key to the happiness of person B the fact that Person B chose that life? (more…)

Are you a delayed gratification person?  When I join survey sites, or sites where you get points for doing things, I almost never cash out at the first ‘level’.  I always decide to wait and save up for a Big Prize.  For three years of law school, I saved up all of my LexisNexis points and at the end I was able to cash out for enough Sears gift cards to almost pay for a 42 inch plasma TV.  I’m doing the same thing now with the new paid-to-search site I am on.  It has been a week of occasional searching and I have already earned enough to cash out for a $5 Amazon gift card… but instead I want to hold out for as long as I can and see if I can earn a big prize like an Xbox 360 or a Wii.

When I used to be in the ’shopping’ mode, I always found myself thinking about all the wonderful things this new purchase would do for me.  The dress would make me look thinner, the new digital camera would inspire me to take more pictures, the new TV would provide me with endless hours of entertainment and I would never be bored again.   (more…)

My dad is a money mess.  He has lived in our home for 28 years and still owes as much on it as it is worth (he refinanced the mortgage twice to pay off credit cards).  He had enough in the stock market to retire from a job he has disliked for the last 20 years, but he kept the money in (somewhat) high risk stocks because he wouldn’t be able to retire and still afford designer clothes and fancy cars (look at the stock market, you can probably guess how that worked out for him!)  He seems completely unwilling to give up spending on frivolous things.   (more…)

I don’t currently have a full time job right now, as some of you may know (for those that don’t, you can read about it here). My days mainly consist of couponing, taking care of the house/dogs, doing some freelance work, and writing for this blog, and 6 hours of these days that used to be ‘taken’ is now free. Yet, I constantly feel pressed for time, like it is impossible for me to get everything done. In other words, as soon as I was given more time I immediately and promptly filled it up with more tasks so I was once again bemoaning about my desperate need for more hours in the day… (more…)

I have reviewed 3 different popular systems of budgeting over the last few days, and I found problems with all of them.  We set up a budget primarily by tracking our expenses for a few months, and modifying and tweaking.  This may not work for everyone, but it definitely was the way to go for us.   (more…)

The Envelope System is not exactly a budget, it is more a way of implementing a budget. But, it is still the way a lot of people manage money so we definitely gave it a bit of thought in deciding how to handle our finances.  Ultimately, we decided it wasn’t the way to go for us, but it is still a pretty worthy way of managing the money business involved in running your day to day life. (more…)

This is probably not feasible and it’s probably not ambitious.  But I am going to set a goal to get my grocery bill down to $0 a year.  Now, this doesn’t mean that I expect to pay nothing and I am not going to become a freegan because frankly that seems a little too hippie and alternative for my conservative taste.  No, my plan is much more complex and devious than that (and no I’m not going to steal from Wal-Mart or slip food into my coat pockets or learn how to smuggle a turkey out of a store).   There’s a bit more work and a bit less risk involved in my plan… (more…)

A lot of personal finance bloggers (myself included) blog about paying off debt, or their struggles to pay off debt, or about surviving on very small budgets.  Now, I’m not saying this is every single blog, but a vast majority of the ones that I read do involve some level of struggle with money.  Why is it that there aren’t a lot of blogs out there that involve people who have always been good with money, people who have plenty of it but are still trying to be wise about it?  Would this be the equivalent of a skinny person with a high metabolism running a diet site, perhaps?  Or is it just a simple fact that people who have some sort of struggles with money are more apt to care about how to be money conscious?   (more…)