Does conserving water save real money? Never mind the environmental questions. What does it cost your wallet if you waste a gallon of water? The EPA reports that the national average cost of water is $2.00 per 1,000 gallons. This varies greatly from area to area: in some dry areas, you’ll pay much more, for

A few years ago, I received a Kindle as a gift from my wife. It’s a pretty nifty little device, perfectly designed for reading the text of books. The problem is that in order to read a lot of books, you have to buy them from the Kindle bookstore. Yes, there are other options out

I absolutely hate it when I throw things away. Few things frustrate me more than having a full trash can. Why? I know that, on some level, I paid for the things that are being thrown away. If I’m tossing the box that a prepackaged meal came in, part of the cost of that prepackaged

I can make a really good loaf of bread for about two dollars, all told. That includes the cost of water, of flour, of yeast, and of the electricity used to make that loaf. I’ll invest about twenty minutes of actual labor into this loaf, with a lot of stops and starts to allow for

Recently, I took a weeklong vacation to South Dakota with my wife, my children, and my parents. As always on such trips, Sarah and I try to look for the value. What things did we discover on the trip that were really enjoyable that were also free or nearly so? Here are some of the

Last week, I traveled with my wife, my children, and my parents to South Dakota and Wyoming for several days. (I’m planning an article later this week outlining some ways to save money on a vacation to South Dakota.) One of my big ideas for planning the trip was to look for ways to take

Over the next two months, our family is going to be doing some vacationing in various places in the Midwest and Great Plains. The longest trip in that period will be nine days spent in South Dakota and Wyoming with my wife, my children, and my parents. Vacations can be a lot of fun, but

I get emails and comments and tweets from people all the time who seem almost disturbed by the idea that I incorporate frugality into my life. The implication behind those comments is that my life must be incredibly austere and boring in order to pull off all of these things. Here’s the truth: the things

Monica wrote in with a question that I thought deserved a detailed answer. I’m going to be driving from northern Minnesota to Dallas, Texas for a week this summer, then returning home. I own a 2008 Toyota Corolla with 34,000 miles on it. I’m trying to figure out if it’s more cost effective to rent

Let’s say a reputable friend came up to you on the street and said, “If you make this one simple change in your life and follow it every day, I’ll give you $365 in one year’s time.” You’d probably be interested in that offer. $365 is $365, after all. That’s a healthy paycheck for a

A few days ago, I ran across some older videos that I made during some of the work-related trips I took early in the last decade. Most of them were merely videos of presentations done by me or by coworkers, but some of them were quite nice, such as a long shot of a ship

For the last twenty months or so, I’ve been switching back and forth between a vegan and vegetarian diet for health reasons (also occasionally eating fish). Sarah has more or less adopted the same diet, although we do often make vegetarian and non-vegetarian variations of the same meal. The result of all this is produce

Every Sunday, The Simple Dollar reviews a personal finance or other book of interest. Also available is a complete list of the hundreds of book reviews that have appeared on The Simple Dollar over the years. I’ve had the blog Money Saving Mom bookmarked for years. In fact, it’s been a permanent mainstay on the

A couple days ago, I watched a program on TLC called Extreme Cheapskates, which featured people doing things like using reusable toilet paper and cooking goat’s heads in order to save money. It was pretty obvious after just a few minutes of watching that the point of the show was to make frugality look ridiculous

If your family holidays are anything like mine, you’re left with piles of remnants: torn-up wrapping paper, empty boxes, and extra food litter the house. It might be tempting to throw it all away, but there’s a lot of value in those leftover items. Here are some of the things I’ve done with leftover Christmas

I’ve mentioned quite often that I tend to shop at Goodwill/consignment shops/secondhand stores for various items. Whenever I mention this, I tend to get a bunch of responses along the lines of this message from Tessa: How do you find anything good at Goodwill? Whenever I go into one, all I find is a lot

As many of you know, I sometimes buy shirts and other items of clothing at Goodwill, thrift stores, and consignment shops. I don’t have too much luck finding tall things (I’m six and a half feet tall), but I do find a lot of clothes for my children and my wife sometimes finds items for

When I was a child, my father used to grow plants in our basement all year long. I remember going down there in the middle of the winter with several inches of snow outside, only to find tons of tomato and pepper plants thriving under an array of grow lights. I remember how the basement

One of the most empowering things I do on a regular basis is to create a detailed sketch of what I want my life to be like in five years or so, and then I repeat this exercise with periods further down the road (ten years and twenty years and then when I’m about 70).