A few days ago, I posted an article on saving money on fuel during your commute. While all of those tips were useful, one in particular can really reduce your fuel costs when commuting – buying a more fuel-efficient car. But what does that really mean in terms of dollars and cents? Before you even

Success in personal finance is really a matter of the mind. It’s about having the awareness to see all of the choices you’re making and having the fortitude to consistently make good choices in terms of your money. One of the big challenges, particularly for people first starting out, is to see the connection between

Anyone who strives to live frugally eventually comes across an experience that makes their frugality seem “cheap.” They’ll serve a homemade meal that someone turns their nose up at because it’s not a prime cut. They’ll bring a thoughtful gift to a party only to find that everyone else paid out the nose for their

Five years ago, I wrote an article about the “flexible casserole recipe” that I found in the wonderful book Complete Tightwad Gazette by Amy Dacyczyn. In my original article, I lauded the flexible recipe as it enabled people to easily fit whatever ingredients were on sale into a simple casserole that would work for dinner.

Whenever I see advice on saving money on commuting fuel costs, the suggestions often revolve around completely giving up your car. I’m as guilty of that as anyone else. It’s a great way to drastically trim your finances. Let’s be honest, though: a lot of people simply aren’t going to give up their car. They

I often meet up with a good friend of mine that I’ll call Dave. You rarely see Dave without his trusty bottle of Powerade at his side. He seems to thrive on the stuff. He’s as thin as a rail and doesn’t seem to eat too much, so I guess he uses it as some

A few days ago, our youngest child celebrated his birthday with a small party. We invited a small number of his friends, had a simple cake and some pizza (which is what he requested), and hosted the entire thing at a local park. For entertainment, we made up a “scavenger hunt,” which involved finding small

It happens to a lot of people – myself included. One day, something triggers a change inside of you. You get really sick of paying money to the credit card companies and finally you reach the tipping point where the drawbacks of living a debt-filled life outweigh the benefits. You’re sick of it. You cut

There are a lot of tactics that you can use to save money on food – coupons, comparison sales, and so on. The biggest problem with many of those tactics is that they work best – or they only work – on items that aren’t particularly good for you. My doctor has two simple rules

A close friend of mine recently introduced me to Live Below the Line, a charity that challenges people to live on a food budget of $1.50 a day for five days. Live Below the Line is run by the World Food Program and actually starts tomorrow (though you could, of course, do the challenge yourself

I’m going to use a long example of a car purchase to start off this post. Bear with me through it. Let’s say, for calculation’s sake, that a car has a life span of 200,000 miles before the maintenance issues catch up with it. For the last 40,000 miles of that drive, the reliability of

Waking up to a two year old jumping up and down on the bed next to you shouting “Daddy! Daddy! Wake up!” and then leaping onto you the moment you open your eyes. Singing a favorite song to yourself while you enjoy a wonderfully refreshing shower. Standing with pride over your repair of that broken

A few days ago, I watched an old recorded episode of Extreme Couponing. I’d caught bits and pieces of the show before and had always intended to watch a full episode of the show. Clearly, the people shown on the program were very organized with their spending – and that organization reaped significant rewards for

My wife is an allergy sufferer. The peak of the pollen season can hit her pretty hard, delivering her a dose of watery eyes and sneezes and some congestion. Because of that, I’m pretty intimately familiar with a lot of the usual treatments to help with allergens. A thorough vacuuming can help, as can taking

I am close to quite a few people who live a “paycheck to paycheck” lifestyle. They drive nice cars and trucks, have tons of expensive toys, and are paying down hefty mortgages. A few of them have student loans and other expenses on top of that. One of these friends in particular works for the

Connie writes in: I don’t see how saving money really works for a family making minimum wage. Let’s say you have two people who make minimum wage at home so they only bring home about $15,000 each. If the family spends $1,000 a month on housing and $500 a month on their automobiles and $500

I live close enough to the Des Moines area that I often shop in the city for groceries. In Des Moines, unsurprisingly, there’s a lot of grocery competition. You can find all kinds of grocery stores there, from Whole Foods to Hy-Vee, from enormous grocery stores to tiny little out-of-the-way shops, from expensive stores to

Like it or not, we all display signs of social status when we go out in public. From our clothing to the car we drive, we give others indications of all kinds of things about us. Quite often, people buy into the idea that expensive items display high social status. If they dress well, have

Storage space is one of the biggest money drains that people have. Think about it for a second. What do you do with storage space? You fill it up with stuff that you don’t have any consistent use for. If you had a consistent use for it, it wouldn’t be in storage. Most of the