While driving to our monthly book group discussion on Saturday, Kris and I had a conversation with our friend Courtney. Courtney's family is beginning to feel a financial squeeze. Her husband's employer is cutting jobs. To keep working, he'll have to take a pay cut and move back to the position he left a couple of years ago.
"I've started to read personal finance books," Courtney told us. "We know we're going to have to make do with less money, so I'm looking for advice. I'd really like to learn how to cut back on groceries, for example."
"Oh, you should read Get Rich Slowly," Kris said. "J.D. writes about that all the time."
A bon vivant is a person who lives well — someone who enjoys the best things in life, especially with regard to food and drink. The stereotypical bon vivant is someone who can afford the best (or has generous friends), but that's not the only way. You can be a bon vivant on a budget.
What is "the best" anyway? Your own tastes play the biggest role, but the tastes of family and friends have a strong influence. To a lesser extent, so do the tastes of opinion leaders, celebrities, experts, and others — even fictional characters. Because of this, appreciating the finer things in life makes you vulnerable to serious "keeping up with the Joneses" issues.
Last week, I spoke with personal finance writer Greg Karp about how young adults can save money. We brainstormed ideas for one of his upcoming newspaper columns. "I'm willing to bet that many young people can save money by cutting back on their cell phone," I said. "It's kind of shocking how these have become a Need instead of a Want."
"Yeah," Karp said. "And what about prepaid phones?"
Over the past few months, the mainstream media has been filled with stories about the New Frugals and the return to thrift. People who once lived beyond their means, financing their lifestyle with debt, have "found religion". They've begun to embrace frugality, and have discovered the joy that can come through spending less.
The New Age of Thrift
Not everyone is happy about this. The March issue of Redbook contained an article called "The Upside of Living on Less", which profiled how four women are coping with the recession. The story prompted the following letter to the editor in the May issue:
While I love Redbook, something in your article "The Upside of Living on Less" rubbed me the wrong way. When describing the economic crunch, after rightfully blaming the banks and consumers who were charging more than they should have, the author wrote "Basically, we'd all been spending way more than we could afford." I don't appreciate being in the same category as overspenders. I am frugal with every cent, and I use every item to its utmost capacity simply because I don't believe in waste of any kind. I always will be like that, regardless of the economy. Even though we're all in this together, not everybody contributed to the country's financial mess. — Darcy Bailey, Mount Holly NC
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Today is the last day of Financial Literacy Month. To tie everything together, I thought it would be fun to share an interview my real millionaire next door, a man we'll call John. He used the basic tenets of money management to build wealth and to retire early. Here's how I described John when I first wrote about him last year:
John is a 71-year-old retired shop teacher who lives in a modest ranch house on half an acre, the same house he's had for over forty years. He has an old barn filled with salvaged lumber, outdated appliances, and who knows what else. When he's around, he drives a junkie 25-year-old station wagon. But most of the time, he's not around.
He spends his winters in New Zealand helping friends on a dairy farm. His summers are spent fishing in Alaska. For a couple of months each year, he's home, puttering in the yard. Year-round, he rents his house to boarders. He leads a very active retirement.
This is an article for Earth Day from Beth H., who writes about saving time, money, and the environment at Smart Family Tips.
Going "green" has a bit of a bad rap. As soon as marketers realized it was profitable to be green, suddenly all sorts of products flooded the marketplace with eco-friendly claims. It can be overwhelming. Is it really necessary to buy all this "stuff" to be green? Are these products really as green as they say they are? We're in a recession — I can't go into debt to save the planet!
The good news: At its most fundamental, being "green" is nothing new. It's actually built around a very old philosophy of consuming less, buying only what you need, using things until they're worn out, and wasting not. Unsurprisingly, frugality and green-living are closely tied. You don't have to buy expensive "green" products in order to be environmentally friendly. The real goal is to mind your consumption, and that's good for your wallet and the planet.
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I'm a huge advocate of calling your utilities to ask for rate reductions. But some people are uncomfortable making these sorts of calls. It would be helpful if these folks had a way of using the internet to find better deals. allconnect is a web-based service that allows users to do just that. From the about page:
WhiteFence is a free service that helps people who are moving or looking to find the best deals on phone, internet, television, electricity, natural gas and other home services. By simply entering a street address into the secure site, people looking to save money or start new service can find the most comprehensive list of plans available for their specific address from over 400 nationally recognized partners.
When gas prices were soaring in the summer of 2008, my family was scrambling to find ways to save money. We could not reduce the prices at the gas pumps, we were locked into the lowest interest rate on our mortgage, and our budget was maxed out. I knew the only way we could continue without running into the red each month was to reduce the line item marked Grocery — but I didn't know how exactly to go about doing that.
At that same time, I discovered the world of personal finance blogs and frugality blogs. It was through these blogs that I found myself a "job". It wasn't a job that earned our family any income; it was a job that involved spending less of the income that my husband worked so hard to earn. My new job? Grocery store savings expert!
My new grocery-shopping techniques allowed me to save over $100 the first month, and close to $200 the second month. Our monthly grocery budget dropped from around $500 to $300. (And sometimes less!) Here are the steps I took to save at the supermarket:
In some parts of the U.S., vegetable and flower seeds can be successfully planted directly into the garden. But in many areas, the growing season is too short to allow this.
Cool spring soil temperatures and cold weather can prevent seeds from germinating or kill young seedlings. If you wait until the weather warms, the plants get off to a late start only to be zapped by fall's first frost; they don't get a chance to bear a full crop or to put on a full floral display.
When I was a boy, my father used to buy Mother Earth News from the grocery store. The magazine was filled with stories about self-sufficient country living, the sort of thing my dad aspired to. I'd read the magazine after he was finished, but never really understood the appeal of building your own greenhouse or raising goats. Now, as an adult, it makes a little more sense.
Kris and I are not radically self-sufficient, but we do enjoy growing our own food. (And she recently agreed that we could get chickens!) The content at GRS reflects my interest in the DIY lifestyle. Besides frequent articles on gardening, in the past I've shared stories like these:
Though our own adventures in self-sufficiency are limited, they're edifying, and I admire those who do even more. I'm a strong advocate of the DIY ethic. I believe there's real value in traditional skills, such as gardening and sewing, canning and carpentry. As a bonus, most of these practices save money.
Last week, I spoke with personal finance writer Greg Karp about how young adults can save money. We brainstormed ideas for one of his upcoming newspaper columns. "I'm willing to bet that many young people can save money by cutting back on their cell phone," I said. "It's kind of shocking how these have become a Need instead of a Want."
I'm a huge advocate of calling your utilities to ask for rate reductions. But some people are uncomfortable making these sorts of calls. It would be helpful if these folks had a way of using the internet to find better deals. allconnect is a web-based service that allows users to do just that. From the about page:
When gas prices were soaring in the summer of 2008, my family was scrambling to find ways to save money. We could not reduce the prices at the gas pumps, we were locked into the lowest interest rate on our mortgage, and our budget was maxed out. I knew the only way we could continue without running into the red each month was to reduce the line item marked Grocery — but I didn't know how exactly to go about doing that.
