Welcome! This weeks Festival of Frugality is over at “Money Walks“. Andy has arranged a minimalist version of the Festival-the 37 entries are listed in 7 categories.
(Thanks Andy for starting out with the number of entries and listing bullet numbers next to your categories, you made my life easier)
I always like to highlight a few posts that really caught my attention. Here are the articles from this week:
My Simpler Life writes about “House Obsession“. Her point that the older generation decorated the house and pretty much left it that way and was happy really hit home-this week I viewed a house that was for sale in our town. The outside is gorgeous and has always been extremely well maintained. The inside was very well maintained, but the interior decoration, while obviously of quality, had not been updated since about 1954. It was like stepping into a time machine! I’d like to keep up with the times more than that-but since I became a frugalite, I have reallized how many times I’ve wanted to buy something new just for a “change”-I’ve tried to ignore that urge and am still sitting on the same, good quality couch, using the same perfectly serviceable bath towels (which don’t particularly go with anything anymore)-ditto with the kitchen towels, etc etc etc.
ISPF over at Grad Money Matters always has well thought out and informative posts. This week’s “10 Commandments of Frugal Living” is no exception. I do pretty well at living up to these!
Nature Moms has been running a series on how to pinch pennies while living a more natural life. I’ve got an interest in natural and organic (although I haven’t fully jumped on board yet I’ve implemented some changes) -and the frugal lifestyle natural lines up with some of that, especially when you are buying used items, a key point in her post. Also she has a nice review of “Garage Sale America”, a book by Bruce Littlefeild. What frugalite wouldn’t love a book about garage sales (especially if you can get it from the library).
Mony Ning says “libraries are not as bad as you think“. Until I read this, it didn’t occur to me that EVERYONE doesn’t go to the library, and that many folks haven’t been since they were kids. I’m such a bibliophile that I’d go broke feeding my reading habit if I didn’t use the library-I typically read 1 or 2 books a week, sometimes more! Opinion Mom talks about the same thing (Hey, did you guys call each other or what?)
Longtime readers know that I love the dollar stores-they are one of my big downfalls (as in The Evil of the Dollar Store“), so when I see a post entitled “The Dollar Store” I just have to click through. She offers a sort of primer for those who normally turn up their noses at dollar stores. Her list of good quality items you can buy is a good reminder if you haven’t been recently.
Living Behind the Curve has a great list of Free Software! Personally I use Open Office for all my word processing and spreadsheets, and have been considering downloading GIMP as a Photoshop alternative.
Well, those are the six articles that really caught my eye-but you should head on over to Money Walks and read the other 31 articles. And don’t forget to head on over to The Frugal Law Student next tuesday to check out the 83 Festival.
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festival of frugality
There’s a good show “Design on a dime” on cable and they have that show where they will help people make over thier homes. That one is great!! You can do it yourself and get creative they say. They have designer copies at Target stores if you want to keep up with the Joneses!! Good luck to all. Annette and family Oh you can always go to consignment shops too for the latest stuff!!!
The best store for deals is the .99 cent store. It has brand name stuff for cheap. Dollar Tree is ok too. Annette
Since you changed your format, my computer always freezes for a while when reading your post. Any suggestions?
Upgrade your service is what I would do. The telephone companies have provided the best service for me. The cheapest connections gave me more problems. DSL is the best!! Good luck to you and this sight too. Annette P.s. You can always try free trials before you buy to compare.
Annette-I like that show, but have found that I’m happier when I don’t watch too much HGTV-it makes me plan too many projects that I don’t have time for 🙂 And I agree about the Dollar stores. You just need to be careful about the quality of some things.
Anon-I’m sorry you are having problems viewing my page. You are the first person who has told me that. Honestly, I’m not much of a computer guru so I’m not sure what to tell you. One thing you could try is signing up for a blog “reader” service like bloglines.com (free) and then add all of the blogs you read into their “feeds”. This makes a private account that only you can see, which will have all of your blogs you read listed on the right, along with how many posts there have been on each since you last read them. When you click on the blog, on the left side you will get a copy of the “feed”-IE just the text, pictures and links of the posts themselves, not all of the color and graphics and sidebars. I’ve found that before I got my new computer, when I used a feed reader for blogs that loaded slow, they popped right up!
Good luck.