frugality

As I see it, there are two different modes of frugality. One mode is the big action, the one where you do one thing and it saves you a lot of money going forward. I’m talking about things like cancelling a bill or moving to a more cost-effective place to live or making a big energy improvement to your home or switching to a far more fuel efficient car or ditching a car entirely. […]

Sarah and I have been longtime members of Sam’s Club, the only warehouse club within reasonable distance of our home. Since our membership renewal last September, I’ve been keeping careful track of how much money the membership has actually saved us with a pocket notebook devoted to this purpose that I keep in our van, and here are the results, broken down by category. […]

Over the years, there have been certain types of products that I once faithfully bought that gradually slid out of my usual rotation of purchases, either because they were directly replaced by something else or because I simply realized I didn’t need that expense in my life any more. I tried assembling a list of these products and, while the list wound up being pretty long, I found that many of th […]

Over the years, there have been certain types of products that I once faithfully bought that gradually slid out of my usual rotation of purchases, either because they were directly replaced by something else or because I simply realized I didn’t need that expense in my life any more. I tried assembling a list of these products and, while the list wound up being pretty long, I found that many of th […]

Over the last few years, I’ve been recording every tabletop game I play and often adding a few notes about that play afterwards so that I can remember something about the game and whether I enjoyed the play or not. […]

Over the last few years, I’ve been recording every tabletop game I play and often adding a few notes about that play afterwards so that I can remember something about the game and whether I enjoyed the play or not. […]

In Monday’s reader mailbag, Eric asked a great question: I find it interesting that you write about things like time management and philosophy on a personal finance site. The connection seems thin at best to me. […]

In Monday’s reader mailbag, Eric asked a great question: I find it interesting that you write about things like time management and philosophy on a personal finance site. The connection seems thin at best to me. […]

This morning, when I woke up and went through my usual morning routine that revolves around getting myself awake, getting the kids ready for school, and getting myself ready for working, I noticed that there were little frugal tweaks everywhere. […]

When I was a boy, we lived in the country. That is, we lived five miles from the nearest town (Canby) and 25 miles from the nearest city (Portland). We were surrounded by farmland. Life was quiet. Pastoral. Bucolic. The road we lived on was especially quiet, with very little traffic. Even from a young age — five or six, I think — I was allowed to walk the quarter-mile to visit my grandparents. […]

Jamie writes in: What cookbooks do you recommend for someone who is just starting out on their own? I’ve made no secret over the years that I love cookbooks, to the point that family and friends often just find interesting cookbooks (particularly ones focused on more obscure topics) to give to me as a gift. […]

Recently, my family and I attended the Iowa State Fair, as is something of an annual tradition for us. […]

One of the biggest subtle themes of this summer has been teaching our children a number of life skills and encouraging them to practice them. […]

My mother-in-law makes this absolutely delicious lentil casserole. […]

There’s nothing better than an unexpected positive event happening purely by chance. What’s even better? Serendipity when the price tag is very small or nonexistent, or when you’re able to multiply the value of your dollar enormously. The challenge, of course, is to put yourself in situations where serendipity is likely to occur without inherently having to spend a lot of money. […]

Like a lot of people, I sometimes fall into periods of melancholy. I don’t view it as anything like actual depression, which is a serious mental health condition that deserves proper treatment by professionals, but it’s a sense of feeling sad about my life. […]

Jeremy writes in: You have mentioned before that when you’re considering buying something, you put it aside in a list and think it through before buying it by looking for flaws in the item. […]

One of the challenges of trying to minimize one’s spending is knowing which situations where you aim for minimum spending result in unexpected negative consequences as a result of cutting too much spending. I’ll give an example of something that’s a clear misstep: an old friend of yours is coming in from out of town and wants to spend some time with you. […]

We make an effort to minimize the trash we throw away, for a number of reasons. […]

As I mentioned last week, we were recently camping in Colorado when we stopped by a local Safeway to restock our food supplies. […]