Sometimes you find clues of your kids' financial education progress in the strangest places.

"Dear Santa" - began my seven-year-old daughter's letter, published in our local newspaper - "May I have more money? I will save it to buy a house or car." (I know. I still can't believe she wrote it, either.) "I want for my brother a horse that is real..." and "For my baby brother; he needs more clothes. Can you bring my Mom and Dad more money to buy food?" (Uh, what?)

So the letter ended with her first name, but since her school is so small and her name is slightly unique, most of our friends and family knew who had written the letter. Within a few days, I got a text asking whether we had enough to eat at our house, in addition to many in-person comments. We even got a note in the mail with $5 telling us to buy a couple of loaves of bread. I thought it was funny how this got so distorted, but I wondered if I had somehow passed on the wrong message to our kids.

Recently, my sister and I were discussing our love/hate relationships with exercise when she told me something that struck me as funny. Apparently, she has trouble convincing herself to jog as long as she should, so she devised a plan.

"When I know I'm not very motivated, I'll have my husband get in the car and drop me off a few miles from home," she said with a snicker.

Once dropped off, she had no choice but to push through whatever issues she was trying to overcome that day, she explained.

There's something to be said for spending more on a quality item. If frugality is about getting the most value out of something, spending more on quality can actually be thrifty. In a recent post, I admitted that I once splurged on a $200 coat. A couple of readers rightfully pointed out that an expensive purchase isn't always a waste of money. If it is a high-quality coat that lasts years, it may be a better purchase than a cheap $50 coat you replace every season.

Still, there is a fine line between buying quality and using quality as a justification to spend more. Here are a few things I consider before I plop down a bunch of money on a so-called quality item.

Can I find it cheaper?

Apologies for sounding like an infomercial, but quality doesn't have to be expensive. Ever found a big discount on something you know you will use often and that will last years? It's a great feeling! Here are a few ways to spend less on quality:<

How to save for a house? It's a common question among newly married couples, but this was not our first marriage milestone. My wife and I didn't wait too long after our wedding to create a family.

We were parents one week before our first anniversary. Our apartment was too small for a third human, so we endeavored to buy a house. Unfortunately, we didn't have a lot of cash on hand since we moved from Florida to Virginia six weeks before we got married, and we footed most of the bill for the wedding.

However, we were still able to buy a house, though barely in time for the birth, but amassing a down payment relatively quickly. If you're also scrounging for a down payment, here are some ways you can save and reach that goal faster.<

Though our family has already had one sneak peek, cold and flu season is about ready to really get started.

Because I would like avoid as many sick visits to the doctor as I possibly can, I decided to check out our medicine cabinet and make sure it is ready for this winter -- and beyond.

What you should include in your medicine cabinet

Obviously, what you should include in your medicine cabinet depends on your needs, but here is a list to get you started. Oh, and I am not a doctor. Obviously. Read the labels. Use common sense.

I get frustrated when people don't understand what it means to be frugal. A few criticisms of frugality I've come across:

• Frugality is a waste of time.

• Frugality distracts you from earning more money.

When I was a child, we lived on a farm that had a grape arbor loaded with Concord grapes. Each September, my mom would can jars upon jars of grape juice, and I have fond memories of evenings around the kitchen table as our family ate popcorn and drank that delicious stuff (which doesn't taste like anything I've ever purchased from a store).

Well, apparently, nostalgia set in this year, and I ordered 1.5 bushels of Concord grapes. (And if you're wondering how much that is, it felt like a whole vineyard.) The grapes came earlier than I expected, so I texted my husband that morning: "The grapes are here and they're RIPE. We need to can the juice tonight."

He texted back: "Sounds grape." Yes, he really did.

It's both fascinating and useful to calculate the value of your time. Financial freedom gives you options and flexibility. But without time, that means nothing. Time is a precious resource that we should spend wisely.

Knowing the value of your time is helpful for a variety of reasons:

• If you're a freelancer, it can help you decide on gigs.

I recently discovered the book "Scarcity: Why Having Too Little Means So Much." To be honest, I don't even remember how I came to find out about the book. Maybe someone recommended it; maybe I read about it somewhere. Lately, I've been overwhelmingly busy, and, as a result, my short-term memory is shot.

Coincidentally, that's what the book is about. Authors/researchers Sendhil Mullainathan and Eldar Shafir explain how our mental bandwidth changes when we don't have enough of something -- namely, time and money.

Contrary to the belief that poor decision-making leads to poverty, the book's authors sought to prove that it's actually the other way around: poverty (or scarcity) leads to poor decision-making. What's more, scarcity creates an awful cycle of bad decisions. The authors point to study after study that proves this to be true.

In an ideal world, you wouldn't need to go negotiate. In an ideal world, the weather would be perfect, there would be no war, and your employer would simply say, "Hey, your value to our company has increased. Here's ten thousand dollars."

If only, right? When it comes to earning more, negotiating is usually a necessary part of the equation. The negotiating masters among us have a serious leg up.

I do not have a leg up. In most circumstances, I dread negotiating. I'd rather watch paint dry than negotiate. I'd rather eat a chard smoothie. I'd rather give someone a ride to the airport at 8am on a Monday.