When you’re trying to be frugal, one of the hardest things is figuring out where you can make cuts in your budget. For most people, one of the first places is in the grocery aisle. But, if you’re trying to cut grocery costs, don’t fall into the trap of thinking that you have to eat only canned foods. In fact, the opposite is true: you should be...
If you are familiar with how to create a budget, you probably know the three components: fixed expenses which are the same every month and do not change, variable expenses that may change some from month to month and are often bought from a store, and savings or financial goals! Today I’d like to discuss a basic guideline for budgeting, the 50/30/20 rule. The...
One of the hardest places to trim your budget has to be in the grocery section. Eating is a necessity, and it’s possible to spend an exorbitant amount of money at the grocery store. But it certainly doesn’t have to be that way. If you’re looking for a way to save a bit of money without sacrificing too much, then check out these 11 tips: 1. Stop...
Making your own salad dressing takes only about as long as it would to open your store bought dressing, and with the possibilities of saving your hard earned money, there really is no reason to get store-bought dressing ever again! Here are 5 easy salad dressing recipes that you can make at home to save some money! 1) French 1/2 cup extra virgin olive oil 1/4 cup...
Part of being frugal is being able to make the most out of what you have, and no one can deny that making food at home is going to save you a lot of money, and it tastes better too! One of my favorite biscuit recipes is drop biscuits, also called baking powder biscuits. The best thing about these biscuits is that they take ingredients you probably already have, are...
While it’s important to have an emergency fund, one of the biggest mistakes that I see people making (and believe me, I have done this myself at one point) is using a credit card for emergencies. I think most people have this mentality, but if you’re serious about getting your finances under control and preparing for the worst, then a credit card is the...
Before we can dive in to ways to simplify your finances, we should probably go over some ways that your finances are getting, well, complicated. Here are a few ways that can happen: Too many bank accounts and credit cards Multiple outstanding debts Too many transactions— some regular, some irregular Too much paperwork It’s probably not going to be something...
Being frugal is hard. There is constant pressure to spend money and more and more things in our consumerist society, and it can be easy for people to quickly lose track of where their money is actually going. I’ve been there, and I’m sure you have too. But it doesn’t have to be that way. If you are conscious of what you’re doing, you can quickly...
One of the biggest parts of living a frugal life is creating a budget and then sticking to it. We have already gone through a step-by-step process of how to create your budget and even how to stretch your budget, so as a continuation today I would like to talk about how to budget for irregular expenses. When I say “irregular expenses” I’m talking...
So, you’ve got that perfect gift and you know that whoever you bought it for is going to be super excited about it. But, now you have to wrap it, somehow. But, if you’ve looked at gift wrap recently, you know that most of the non-creepy wrapping papers are upwards of $3 for a single roll. Talk about crazy! Sure, you could buy the weird deformed snowman...