Common financial advice is to pay yourself first; set aside your own savings before you pay any bills.  Yet, what happens if you don’t have enough money to pay yourself first?  What if you can’t set aside $100 or more each month?  How can you continue to save for your goals whether they are establishing [...]

What if everyone in the world was as frugal as the most frugal?  Inspired by conversation on the Early Retirement Extreme forums about the ethics of the Early Retirement Extreme lifestyle.  So, the beginning of that linked conversation (if you haven’t read it) is based on the premise that if everyone did as Jacob does [...]

That’s right.  Bull.  All these experts go on and on about calculating the opportunity cost of something and adding that in to your cost analysis when deciding whether you should do something yourself, or hire it out.  Heck, even I have used it before.  But, we’ve all taken it way too far. Let me ask [...]

If you’re reading this blog, chances are you know all the tips and tricks associated with spending less. But everyone needs to spend money sooner or later. So when you know you’ll have to open up the wallet, spending smarter is your last defense against wasting your hard earned cash and maintaining a contribution to [...]

We talked last time about why you should create a menu plan.  Today, we will tackle how to menu plan.  Honestly, there is no correct way to menu plan, but here are some of the most common methods: Assign a Meal to a Day of the Week Some people make it very easy on themselves and create [...]

Does this sound familiar?  It is 5 p.m., and you stop by the grocery store after work.  You don’t have much time to make dinner before you have to go to a parent/teacher conference at 7 p.m., so you buy some carrot sticks, a pound of meat, whole wheat buns and sloppy joe mix from [...]

I like to read.  A lot.  Not as much as some people, but I still manage to read somewhere between 30 and 40 books a year.  As you can imagine, that gets a little bit expensive if you’re paying full price for all of them.  Swapping and borrowing books only gets you so far if [...]

Supply and Demand.  We all learn about this tenet of the capitalist market at a rather early age.  It’s a pretty simple concept really.  When one increases the other decreases.  As supply grows, demand diminishes.  As does the price for that product.  As demand grows, supply diminishes.  And price goes up. It’s a function of [...]

I’m not a very outgoing person.  I have a hard time going up to people I’ve never met.  I have a hard time even talking to people I’ve never met.  So, I have a very hard time following the old advice that you have to ask for the real discount.  Luckily, not everything has to [...]

I don’t want to panic you or anything, but Christmas is just around the corner.  Inf act, it’s only a hair more than 10 days away.  Some of you are way ahead of the curve and have had your presents bought and wrapped for months.  Others, like myself, are still finishing up your shopping.  For [...]