Campaign Against Financial Myths: Part 8 - Frugal Living

(This article is a part of the series aimed at dispelling some of the popular financial myths. Please refer to the full index for myths related to other financial topics. Oh, and a quick disclaimer: I am not a financial advisor. I have made every effort to research the facts before presenting them here. But, if you have a reason to believe any of the statements are incorrect, please feel free to correct me.)

1. Myth: “Frugal living = Being cheap”

This myth is one of the biggest psychological barriers that prevents people from incorporating the concepts of frugal living in their daily habits. While one extreme of frugal living can mean being very cheap, you need not go to such extremes. Being frugal is a lifestyle choice, and you can choose the degree of frugality you are comfortable with and adopt it. There is a lot written on this topic in the personal finance blogosphere and you can find some interesting reading material here, here and here.


2. Myth: “Frugal living = buying things second hand.”

Frugality means different things to different people. The extent to which you want to incorporate it in your life should be decided only by you. Buying things second hand is definitely a great way to live frugally. But that does not mean you always have to buy everything second hand. Determine what works for you. Maybe buying books second hand is OK, but buying clothes second hand is not. Maybe buying the furniture second hand is OK, but buying a mattress second hand is not. You have to find what works best for you and go with it. Here is a thoughtful article by Golbguru about this topic.


3. Myth: “Frugal living = giving up on all your indulgences.”

Frugality does not mean you have to give up all your indulgences – it just means that you have to get creative about finding less expensive alternatives. Or cut down in other aspects of your life to be able to accommodate the indulgence. For instance, if you like hanging out with friends, you can opt for these frugal things to do, and still have a blast. If travel is your passion, you can use these tips to save for the trip of a lifetime. If you love having some quite time over a steaming cup of coffee, you can still do so – just make sure that instead of getting the coffee from Starbucks, you brew your own cup. Here is an interesting commentary on indulgence and simple pleasures.


4. Myth: “Living frugally will make me rich.”

Frugality is not a magic wand that will make money appear mysteriously! But, getting into the frugality mindset can help prevent you money from disappearing mysteriously :) You make what you make. At the end of the day what matters is how much of it you can keep. If your spending habits are not in control, even without your knowledge, you could end up throwing away a lot. Incorporating frugality in your lifestyle can help you keep more of what you make. So while it may not make you rich overnight, in the long run, you can be richer than what you would be otherwise.


5. Myth: “Instead of worrying about being frugal, I should just focus on making more money.”

There are two flaws in this argument. (a) If you increase how much money you make, but don’t keep an eye on how much you spend, you will eventually still be left with very little money at the end of the day. It is a general tendency for most of us to increase our lifestyle as our income increases. Unless we make a conscious effort to stay frugal and save, it is very easy to wake up one fine day that you are making $100K in income and still have fewer saving than when you were a student. (b) If you need to have $X more, then you would have to make $X + $Y more in order to account for the cut you have to pay Uncle Sam. Depending on how much you make, the value of $Y (the taxes) varies. But as you make more, the chunk of the pie that you have to give away in taxes increases. So, it just makes more sense to keep as much of what you already have than to try and make more and more money to fulfill your desires. Here is a great article that discusses Why Frugal Living Makes Sense than just trying to increase how much you make. Ideally, the best thing to do would be to live frugally *and* try to increase your income :)

That is the list of myths I have on the topic of frugal living. You can check out the myths related to other topics using this index. Watch out this space for more myths on more topics.

The Squeaky Wheel Gets a Better Cell Phone Deal

This is a guest post by Linda Bustos. Linda is the Editor of Creditorweb.com, where you can learn more about credit cards. This article shares secrets for getting a better cell phone deal.

A couple years ago, I was using what some might call a "Zack Morris Cell Phone." It was huge, black and white, heavy and all you could do on it was play crab catch. Although all my friends and co-workers had slick phones that could take pictures and video - I could barely use my calculator. So around Boxing Day 2005, I started reading those colorful newspaper flyers from every cell phone carrier in town. They were all offering some pretty sweet deals and free, funky phones, so I decided it was time to upgrade - finally.

I was in a powerful position as I was not on a contract at the time (my original airtime provider was swallowed up by a behemoth telcom but my old plan was grandfathered). So I was able to swing a sweet deal from my current provider by notifying them I had found a more attractive offer. The phone call went something like this:

"Hi, my name is Linda and my cellphone number is XXX-XXXX, I found {deal from "competition"} and I'd like to end my plan with you now." When asked what about the offer I wanted, I detailed all that was offered by the other company. My cell phone company not only matched it but they gave me free caller ID and voicemail service for a whole year - $96 savings right there. Plus they threw in a free phone with no hardware switching fee, a phone that regularly cost $99 with a 3-year contract. (Although they thought I wouldn't notice when they tried to charge me the hardware fee anyway).

So if your contract is ending or you're currently not on a contract, this tactic should work for you. But what if your stuck in a contract for another year or more? You could try sites like Cellswapper or CellTradeUSA that help you find people to take over your remaining term of your cell phone contract. Once you're free you can sign up for any deal you want and get a newer, free phone (though you lose your cell number).

You could also take over someone else's contract for as little as one month. You'll save activation fees and when your contract takeover expires, you'll be able to try this little trick with the cell phone company.

Cell phone companies are not the only service companies that this trick works on. Long distance, Internet and credit card companies are equally as desperate for your business.

For example, if you want to get a lower interest rate on your credit cards, just call up your credit card company and tell them you'd like to close your account as you've found a better rate elsewhere. Say "I'd really like to stay with you but I found ." The credit card agent will most likely offer you a lower rate card right away (with an annual fee, of course). But before you jump to the phone, consider whether you really need a lower interest rate. If you don't carry a balance on your credit card, then there's really no point in paying an annual fee for a lower interest rate -- you pay no interest anyway. You'll also want to make sure the low interest credit card doesn't waive your grace period and charge you interest from the day of purchase. But if an annual fee of $25 will save you way more than $26 on interest charges per year, it's in your best interest to make the switch. Your credit card company won't offer this to you - you've got to take the initiative!

The Best of Finance Blogosphere: "I M BROKE" Edition

OK. Now onto some really great posts that I came across during the past couple of weeks.

Pinyo @ Moolanomy has started a great meme called the My One Money Advice meme and collected the response from all the different bloggers in one place. Frankly, this is the best collection of "one-liner" advice on money I have ever come across.

Jim @ Blueprint for Financial Prosperity has a thought provoking article about how you should compare salaries. If you can spare a few minutes I highly recommend that you stop by and read the whole article. If not, here is a tiny nugget from the article to mull on later when you are driving/cooking/cleaning etc. "You’re competing with folks with different educations, different skill sets, and different career paths. [...] You shouldn’t be comparing yourself to anyone else other than yourself. That’s the secret to being happy."

I have been trying not to look at my investment accounts during the past few weeks with the market down turn. And so when Sun @ Sun's Financial Diary started out an article by asking "There are sellers, there are buyers, and there are investors doing nothing. In this stormy market, who are you?" I was hooked. Highly recommended read.

Another really good article definitely worth taking out the time for is a guest post on Get Rich Slowly where the author shares how she and her new husband handled the situation where one is a saver and one is a spender. Any marriage in itself is not easy, but when two people with different financial philosophies get together, things get exponentially more complicated. I was very impressed with the way the author (and her husband) handled the situation!

With the whole sub-prime mess, everybody is busy pointing fingers either at those who offered interest only mortgages or those who accepted it. In the middle of this blame game, I found this article by Clever Dude explaining why they had chosen to go for the interest only mortgage 3 years ago quite refreshing.

Tempted to use the money in your emergency fund to [put your temptation here]? Then this article on the we are in debt blog that helps sort out the excuses from legitimate reasons is for you :)

Every one around me is either pregnant or working hard at it :) So I found this article by SVB @ Digerati Life about all the costs associated with raising kids very interesting (and scary :).

Planning to upgrade your home? The saving with me blog has a great article for helping you sort out the needs from wants while upgrading your home and has also gone the extra mile by soliciting advice from different bloggers on this matter.

Finally, winding down this "Best of" edition with a post from one of my favorite blogs - Money, Matter and More Musings. In this post, golbguru muses about why people accept wedding gifts? During our wedding, we had the "Presents in Blessings Only" printed on the wedding invite too, but frankly, I doubt that helps in any way! Would you *really* go without a gift to a wedding, if you were to receive an invite that says so (especially if it is pretty much a norm for everyone to add that to the wedding invite like it is in my community)?

<Sarcasm>Ah... The Joys of Home Ownership </Sarcasm>

Last weekend our microwave went bust. It was fine the night before while I cooked. But in the morning when I tried to get some milk hot for the coffee, it started making really loud noise. I need my morning coffee to turn into a human being again... so I let it continue to make the sound. As long as it heated the milk, I didn't really care if it woke up the whole neighborhood. When the timer timed out and I reached for the milk, it was still as cold as a little Eskimo puppy's nose.

We warmed up the milk on the stove (gasp!) and cleared day's calendar to "take care of" of the microwave. Oh, how I missed out old apartment where all I had to do was pick up the phone and call the maintenance folks! Our old apartment had a 24 hour maintenance guarantee - any service order that was not fixed within 24 hours qualified us for free rent until the service was complete. They had a very handy crew and I was so pampered. But sigh, those days are long gone.

I was still not too bothered though, at this point. I mean, if something *had to* break that morning, I am glad it was the microwave. After all, how much can a microwave cost, right?

We have a built in wall unit microwave over an oven. So we had to buy something that matched the oven. We decided to keep it simple by getting the exact same brand of microwave again. Just to be on the safer side, we noted down the dimensions also.

Our first stop was Home Depot. We could not find the same brand as our old microwave. Nor were there any other microwaves with the same dimensions! Even though we hate talking to a salesperson in a store, we decided to give up our reservations and call one. The messenger of our bad news. Turns out, *none* of the companies make microwaves of the size we were looking for and our only option was to buy a new microwave and a new trim for it. Hey, wait a minute, we have a perfectly fine trim at home... this guy is just trying to sucker us in. Let's go look in Lowe's.

Off we went to Lowe's. And then to Sears. Everywhere we heard the same story. It was almost as if every five years or so, the manufacturers of all the microwaves get together in a secret convention and decide to change the "standard" height, width and depth by 3/4 inch. Not so much that it will be obvious, but just enough that anyone who wants to buy a new microwave *has* to buy a new trim too. For those of you fortunate enough to not be in this situation, here is a picture of the microwave with the trim (from home depot website).



There really is nothing to that trim other than the slits for ventilation. And there are some accessory sheet metal pieces inside that hold the microwave in place. And for this "trim kit", they charge the same as the microwave! Any way you look at it, you still have to agree with me that it is extortion!

We refused to buy it that day.... the only other time we have bought a microwave was while we were still students, and we remember we had gone to a Walmart and picked one for $50 or so. And now, it looked like the *cheapest* model would cost us around $300. We got back home to do our research online.

The past few days without the microwave felt like I was forced to cook with one hand tied behind my back. We finally ordered one online. Total damage? $320! (Oh, I have to mention, at one point we were *seriously* considering fitting the old broken microwave back in the hole in the wall, and getting a countertop one from Walmart for ~$50. Somehow, that made us feel a bit like cheapskates and so we decided to just suck it in and cough up the $320.)

When the package arrived, we first checked if we can still fit the microwave in our old trim. Since there is not much value to our old trim now, we decided to unleash our DIY skills on it. After two hours of hammering, plier-ing and generally mutilating the accessories of the old trim, we finally got the new microwave to fit in the old trim. We could make do with it, provided we never wanted to open the the door of the microwave. (Or tried prying it loose with a screw driver). Finally, disgusted, we decided to use the new trim. So now our good old kitchen has a brand new microwave. And a brand new trim. Look how nice they look together!

Do You Treat Missed Opportunities as Personal Loss?

While reading the book "One up on Wall Street" by Peter Lynch, I came across this concept of "regarding somebody else’s gains as your personal loss". While this concept is discussed in the book in the context of investing, it stuck a cord with me because of the way I treat the financial aspects of my personal life. My problem isn't exactly treating somebody else's gain as my personal loss. Rather, I view all missed opportunities (usually highlighted by somebody else's gain) as my personal loss. Let me explain –

I came to the US to get a Master’s degree and when I completed my degree I had two very lucrative job offers on my hands. At that time however, I had absolutely no concept of the importance of money and chose to turn down these offers and go for a Ph.D. In the decision process, money was not even a consideration. I have absolutely no regrets about this decision in general, but every now and then the financial implications of this decision strikes me with pangs of misery. I am quite sure every person out there who has chosen to go for a Ph.D. (or any other degree for that matter that requires a person to be in school for several years earning a little over minimum wages) can relate to a certain extent.

Further thought on this matter reveals that if everyone I know had made the same decision and was in the same financial boat as me, it probably would not bother me as much! But, on the contrary all my friends chose to take on well-paying jobs and start stabilizing their financial lives. During the course of the 4 years in school, I did realize that my friends were better off than me, but it did not really bother me much. When I completed my degree I had multiple job offers and while evaluating the different aspects of the package the huge gap between my financial situation and that of all my friends started to sink in. Among my offers, one company had no 401K match at all and the other had a 6% match. While I was reading up about whether this should be of any importance in my decision to accept an offer, I started to draw parallels between me and my friends. If all my friends had contributed the max to the 401K and had received at least a 3% match and earned an annual interest rate of 8% on their savings, then during the 4 years that I was in school, they had managed to put away around $75K towards their retirement account. That’s a *HUGE* head start when you consider the power of compounding and I don’t know if I can ever catch up.

Frankly, I don’t know if all my friends did contribute to the 401K or not. But I started to regard the lost opportunity as a personal loss. It was (and is to this day) a source of discontentment for me. While I have no regrets about spending the additional time in school (and view it as one of the nicest phases in my life), the fact that I did not know about 401K or IRA and did nothing to put away any money, is a thorn on my side. It is a great motivator for me to stay frugal and save as much as possible now. And maybe because of this keen sense of the “personal loss” I have a better appreciation for every penny I manage to save.

In the very long run, by the time we actually retire, I don’t know if it will really matter. Yes, I started late, but if I stay sensible from now on, maybe I can catch up eventually. Even if I don’t, I doubt if that will really bother me. Growing up in a middle class family, I am used to being surrounded by richer friends and have learnt to automatically disregard it. And, at this point in my life, I have come a long way from my childhood financial situation, and am quite content with what we have and feel blessed. So, why this sense of personal loss over lost opportunities? Why this self sabotage of the peace and happiness over a choice I made consciously (and will likely make again, knowing all that I know now)? Peace, happiness, contentment, joy – it seems human psychology has a masochistic tendency to destroy them every time you feel you have started to achieve them.

Do you treat missed opportunities as personal loss? Is it a real loss or is it a game your mind is playing with you? There must be a reason you missed those opportunities and in non-financial terms, maybe they mean a lot more to you than the money you could have made if your took those opportunities. So why fret and lose your peace of mind over it?

My One Money Advice

I generally only post on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays. But Loonies and Sense tagged me for the my one money advice meme over the weekend and coincidentally, there is this one piece of advice (a reminder actually) that I have been repeating to myself over and over during the past couple of days. So I decided to go ahead and jot it down. Here we go -

Never ever decide to do anything when you are not emotionally stable.

It's not necessarily "money advice" per se, but it applies very well to financial decisions as well. When we are disappointed, frustrated, depressed, angry or just plain blue, we generally tend to make silly mistakes that we later regret. When applied to our financial lives this could result in a shopping binge, dumping a stock before its time, paying a premium to take an impulse flight, banging a door so hard that it requires expensive repairs, whatever.... A split-second action can lead to a long period of regret. That's just not worth it. Wait it out - do what it takes to while the time away - go have a good cry, stuff your face in a pillow and scream, vegg out in front of the TV, write abstract blog posts, anything. Like everything else, this will also pass. Once you calm down, if it still feels like it is the right thing to do, then you can go ahead and do what needs to be done. For now, the only decision should be to put off a decision. Sometimes, procrastination can be a good thing.

What I Do to Live Frugally

A long time back, Mapgirl tagged me to write about what I do to live frugally. That was right around the time when my cyclical behavior was in the most unfrugal part of the cycle. What's worse, it was followed in the next few days by our old car dying and us deciding to buy an un-frugal car (which was still pre-owned but cost us more than what we thought we would ever pay for a car). With all this going on, I couldn't bring myself to write a post about what I do to live frugally! But now, the dark days are behind us (hopefully) and we are striving hard to get back to our old selves. Frankly I am not much of a person for memes and tagging, and I don't really know what the rules for participation are, and it is probably too late for me be part of this meme anyway. But writing about what I used to do to live frugally seems like a good exercise to make me think about what I need to do in the future to stay on track, so I decided to write about it anyway.

1. Cook at home as often as possible: I love cooking exotic dishes once in a while. And I *hate* regular everyday cooking. I am a foodie and at the end of a busy day spending an hour in the kitchen to fix a plain (aka “healthy and nutritious”) meal just doesn’t feel like it is worth the effort. But I have been trying hard to get into the habit and before this last break down, I used to cook 4-6 times a week! I need to get back in that mode. Since the last couple of week I have started getting back on track and have cooked about 5 times each week – just need to make sure that the habit sticks and I do not give in to the temptation to just pick up some food on my way home.


2. Take lunch with me to work at least 3 times a week: This is one thing I am really proud of. Even during my bleakest unfrugal days, I have stuck with this schedule. It has been a little over a year since I started working, and in the entire period I think I have gone out for lunch more than twice a week only 4-5 times, and even during those weeks, the max I ate out was 3 times a week. My next goal is to see if I can go for another year with less than 4-5 slip-ups.


3. We have coffee and breakfast at home, rest of the time we drink free coffee available at office. We don’t entirely ban coffee houses or starbucks, but usually reserve it for occasions when we meet old friends. Over time, we have come to associate coffee houses, with lazy leisurely evenings spent catching up and swapping old stories. And being loathe to spoil that association keeps us away from running in and out for an overpriced cup of coffee that is drank in a hurry at the desk or while driving.


4. We don’t have a telephone land line: We have gone for over 4 years now without a phone land line and have not missed it a bit. We both make sure that our cell phones stay charged all the time, so we are never at a loss of an instrument to make calls from. On the cell phone we have the least expensive plans with fairly low minutes, but since many of our friends have the same service provider, we get to talk to them for free. Only once in the past 4 years have we paid for extra minutes.


5. Shop for pretty much everything during “sale” and after researching the prices thoroughly. Avoid impulse buy. One of the first lessons someone told me when I landed in the US is that if you pay full price to buy anything, you are a sucker. At first I thought it was a joke. But now, I firmly believe it. As long as you can avoid impulse buying, you can get pretty much anything on sale.


6. Drive our cars to death: People who are regular visitors to this blog may be surprised that I have listed this here since I recently confessed that we bought a fairly unfrugal car. Over the long run though, our car ownership turns out to be quite frugal. We take good care of our cars (regular oil changes, get necessary repairs done as soon as we possibly can etc.,) and drive the car until the wheels fall off – literally. The car we just replaced was 14 years old and had 165K miles on it and we drove it until the engine finally quit on us. Both our current cars now are pre-owned and we plan to use them (hopefully) past the 150K mile mark too!


7. Hang out with like minded friends: It’s not just how frugal you are, but who you hang out with. If all the friends around you are spenders, then some time or the other you will crack up and give up being frugal. In our case, we have been fortunate enough to have friends who are fairly like-minded. Even though frugality is not the core of our conversation or anything, we still end up making choices that do not require too much expenditure, and still end up having a blast.


8. Watch movies at discount theatre, or watch it before 6:00pm if it is a regular cinema hall. Both the better half and I like watching movies in the theatre. Since it is something that we really enjoy and it helps us unwind, we don’t bother to curb this indulgence. Instead, we try to wait for the movies to screen on the discount cinema ($2 per ticket). And, if we really don’t want to wait for 3 months for a particular movie, we catch it before 6:00pm when the tickets are less expensive.


9. Go to the movies on a full stomach: We very rarely get popcorn or soda at the movies. I mean, what’s the point in watching a movie in a discount cinema for $2 per person, if you blow $6 per person on pop corn and soda?


10. I go grocery shopping when I am too hungry or too tired: Basically any time that I really don’t want to be doing grocery shopping. And I go only once a week, no matter what I remember/forget to bring. Believe it or not, this is the most efficient and money-saving way to shop. At least in my case, since I am ever curious and if I have the time, I will walk through all the aisles looking for new and strange items and buy them so I can “try them out”.


11. Make a list before going shopping: This is particularly important when I go to Costco! Like I said earlier, I get easily tempted to buy something that looks new and interesting. And at places like Costco, that can be quite damaging since the portion sizes are large and so, even though the unit price may be less than the regular store, the large portion sizes make buying unnecessary junk a big costly mistake.


12. Stock up non-perishable items on sale: When I find the things we use often go on sale, I generally stock them up. That particular grocery run my bill will be pretty huge, but I make it a point that during the subsequent trips, my bill is small so the average is around what I have budgeted for.


13. Keep an eye on expiry dates: I hate throwing out stuff because they have expired – so while buying stuff, I check to make sure I buy something with the farthest expiry date. This is true particularly with meats and milk – the grocery store always puts the stock with the closest expiry date at the front. And every once in a while I have a “clearance week” when I do minimal grocery shopping and clear out the fridge, freezer and some of the canned goods.


14. We don’t buy anything at the vending machines. Neither of us have the habit of snacking, but in Texas if you spend some time outdoors, it is usually very tempting to grab a coke at the vending machine. To avoid this temptation, if we plan on staying out for long, then during the previous day, we fill a bottle of water and shove it in the freezer. Next day we take the frozen bottle of ice in the car and generally we get to drink cold water (or at least “not hot” water) for the better part of the day.


15. Buy second hand when possible: I do not like buying some things second hand (eg. clothes, mattress etc.) but I have no hassles buying some other things second hand (eg. books, car etc.). So whenever, I have no stigma against something, I try to buy it second hand. Maybe not as frugal as a lot of people out there, but still every bit helps.


16. We throw away the advertising mailers left in our mailbox without even looking. We only make an exception when we need something and know that it is possible to get a discount using the coupon in the mailer (e.g., haircut coupons – (gasp!) Yep, I use a coupon to get a haircut).


17. We have a habit of switching off electric items when they are not in use. For instance, when we walk out of a room, we make sure the lights and fan are switched off. When I am not watching TV (which is most of the time), I keep the TV off. When we go out for work we switch off the A/C (the jury is still out on whether this is good or it is better to keep it on at a constant temp, but we just do this out of habit).


18. We DIY things when possible: The lawn is taken care of by the better half, and home cleaning by me. In the 2.5 years of owning the home, I have had the maid service come in once to help me with the cleaning. The temptation is very strong to let them come in and help again. Until now, I have not given in and have stuck to keeping the house clean myself. Currently, my plan is to have them come over once every 3-6 months to do a thorough cleaning (particularly bathrooms, over side of fans, window blinds etc. that I don’t do often) and do incremental cleaning by myself during the rest of the time. Additionally, small repairs around the house are handled by the better half with me acting as the able assistant :)


19. When we travel, we usually search for discount airfares and in the nights, don’t hesitate to crash in Motel 6 or Super 8. Or any place with or without a numeral in the name for that matter as long as they let us stay for cheap and don’t look like they could be a candidate for the set of a scary slasher movie. And if they throw in the breakfast, all the more better :)


20. Every now and then we love going to a good ol’ buffet place. All-you-can-eat buffets are great ways to have a frugal feast. No they do not serve gourmet food in buffets (unless you are in Vegas), but when you are hungry, there is no better way to get the best value for the buck than to go for the most extensive buffet place around. We have tried out a few in our area and now know the ones we like best and on days that we feel like packing in a lot of food, we skip the restaurant and go get in line for the buffet. (As a side note, if you are a fellow buffet-lover, you should read this post by Nick @ Punny Money – funny and informative – can it get any better?)

That’s all I can think of now. As you can see, I don’t particularly deprive myself of anything, but when possible, I try to incorporate little bits of frugality in every day things. Every small bit helps.

I will not tag anyone in this post, but I do encourage those of you on the unfrugal part of your cyclical behavior to go ahead and do this exercise. Just thinking about it and writing it down, has filled me with renewed determination to stay frugal during the coming days. As I have mentioned before, for some people living a simple and frugal life comes naturally. But for the rest of us, it takes conscious effort, determination and a fair amount of discipline to incorporate frugality in our lives. And an exercise like this goes a long way in helping us stay on track.

PS: If you don’t have a blog, feel free to use the comments section below as a scratch pad, or send me an email with your list and I will publish it here.

And if you are looking for inspiration about what others in the blogosphere are doing to stay frugal, here are some good reads –

• What I Do to Live Frugally @ Mapgirl's Fiscal Challenge.


• 25 Things We Do To Save Money @ Money, Matter and More Musings


• Strategy - being frugal @ Savvy Saver.


• Four ways I live frugally @ Stop Buying Crap.


• 3 Ways I Live Frugally Without Feeling Deprived @ My Money Blog.


• Green Living is Good for the Pocketbook @ Suddenly Frugal.


• Things I Do to Save Money @ Cal Girl Finance.


• What can one person really do to make a difference? @ The Good Human.

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