Category: frugality
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Emergencies and the Funds Who Love Them
Last year, freaked out by the US Presidential election, I set a goal to have 12 months expenses as cash savings in my emergency fund. Both Mr. G and myself work in sectors that have had substantial uncertainties in the past year – he in the energy sector, and me in public higher education. Sales…
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My Year of 30-Day Challenges + January Reflections
I’m a a New Year’s Resoluter, I’ll admit it. Some years I’ve really stuck to my resolutions, some years I have not. But it will come as no surprise to anyone in the PF community that, like many of you, I like setting goals for my personal and professional development and I find satisfaction in…
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Getting Rid of Your Stuff – Ethically!
Trash is an ethical quandary. Americans produce a shocking amount of it – 4.4 lbs per person per day, or about 260 million tons of trash in 2014. Thankfully, the per capita trash production has leveled off in the last two decades, with about 34% of our municipal solid waste now going into recycling or…
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Getting My Shit Together – With Money!
Phew, it’s getting a little dusty around here. What’s been up the last few months? Well, my ramped up emergency savings certainly came in handy. This year, as it turns out, has not been kind to my mental and physical well-being. After a couple months of aggressive saving and a couple of months of significant…
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Frugal-ish Jetsetting and Kinda Minimalist Travel
Hello, friends. It’s been a while. The last few months have been very emotionally difficult, and the non-stop news cycle has, admittedly, gotten the best of me. Six billion in NIH cuts? That’s a sleepless night. Drastic cuts to the DOE Office of Science? Pass the Tylenol PM. The persistent drumbeat of war and unrelenting global human…
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Uber Frugal Month: Wrap Up and Reflection
Well, we survived January! This last month was very challenging for me, both professionally and personally. My big work project occupied the first half of the month, and left me feeling stressed out after working insane hours. The second half of the month brought an entirely different set of stressors from things mostly out of my…
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An Uber Frugal January: Halfway There
The first two weeks of 2017 were rather bananas for me, with a big work deadline looming and everyone demanding my time after they returned from the holidays. Thankfully, that’s in the past, and the three day holiday weekend offered an opportunity to refresh, regroup, and finally put away the Christmas decorations. So, how’s my…
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An Uber-Frugal January: Getting Ready
I had the Uber-Frugal Month talk with Mr. G over the Christmas weekend. We’d already contemplated doing another month of not eating out, but I set the parameters for this month as “no buying stupid stuff and no eating out.” To mentally prepare myself for a month of renewed austerity (and to jumpstart a more…
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A Gift-Lite Christmas
Although Christmas has come and gone and this advice won’t be much use to you this year, I wanted to reflect on what I consider our family’s first real success at a “gift-lite” Christmas. I wasn’t able to muster the courage to go completely no-spend this holiday season, but it seems I was able to…
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The Adventures of Austerity Girl
Anyone who’s ever lost weight knows that the “maintenance” phase is the hardest part. Getting out of debt and pursuing life-long frugality is no different. Just as dieting is not deferred eating, frugality is not deferred spending. I read posts all of the time from folks who have managed to chip away at some of their debt,…
Little Green Revelation 