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Archive for the ‘News’ Category

My post, Make Your Own Cereal: Bargain or Not?, was featured in the Carnival of Finance: third anniversary edition. A big thank you to Flexo for putting that together as there were a ton of articles. Definitely go check out the carnival for a good cross-section of posts about personal finance and to discover new blogs on the topic.

I also like Millionaire Mommy’s article called I Want More Money. It is one of those motivational pieces so give it a quick read! Another article featured in the carnival is called Associating with the Appear to be Rich Folks and is right down my alley with my other posts on image and wealth. There’s definitely something to the idea that the mere look of success can breed success by enabling more successful people to be drawn to you, etc. Have you ever noticed that people who are wealthy live in very clean homes? I often wonder if having a super-clean home is something they can afford or if it is something that helped them become rich in the first place (you know - having the discipline that goes with cleaning also with your job and finances). Whatever the reason, I do try to keep a clean home as I feel it does lift the spirits and that children can learn and grow and be proud of themselves in a clean environment. My 2 cents!

Additionally, I really like ConsumerismCommentary’s latest post on target date retirement funds. I agree with the idea that target date retirement funds are often too conservative. I hold my own retirement funds in 6 low-cost index funds, including a hefty proportion of emerging markets. That isn’t to say that this allocation would be right for other people, just that I don’t think people are best served by target date funds. That said, I guess a target date fund is better than plopping it all in the company stock or a money market fund.

CNN just released a new article called Ireporters End Splurges to Pay for Food on their front-page. While I am not into sensationalizing the news, I like that it brings to the forefront that many people are adjusting their habits to accomodate the new food-price reality.

I really like the bit where they summarized one Ireporter’s reaction to higher food prices:

“Impulse buys, name brands and expensive smoothie drinks are out. Simple, healthful and carefully planned meals are in.”

That really sounds altogether much better than before anyway. So food prices go up and we eat healthier? Wonderful! Hey, if food prices go up, say, 5% in a year, then will there be a commensurate decrease in our obesity rates over the same year?

There’s a lot in the article about going local and buying things from, for example, your local dairy or other local farms. There’s also a nod toward starting your own garden at home.

It is great to be featured again in the 129th Festival of Frugality! This week it is hosted by Money Ning who challenges us to try a little harder this week to save some bucks. 

One of the other features in the festival is “The Unlikely Way to Save Money“ This is a great little story about the possibility of getting rid of almost all your living expenses entirely in order to finally become financially free. I really like the concept. It reminds me of a couple I read about recently who live off of a very small nest egg (I think it was around $400,000).  They spend only $400 a month total. They grow and raise their own food, don’t buy clothing, etc. Interesting! It is just refreshing to hear that there are people who do things differently from the “accepted norm.” 

Along these lines, I’ve chosen two blog articles to feature here, one from the festival of frugality and the other from a completely different type of blog altogether. I think they are both worth a read and a good think!

First up is Why You Should Focus on Spending Less Over Earning More. Shannon Christman writes here about how saving is really quite easy compared to earning more. There really are some concrete steps you can take to spend less, but there definitely aren’t fail-safe steps you can take to earning more, says Christman.

Second is The Poverty Mentality by Alan Weiss. Now, while this article focuses mainly on how a professional organization for high-power consultants ought not to advise its members on how to save a few hundred bucks for fear of loosing credibility, there is an idea here worth going over for those of us who aren’t consultants: people do want to hang out with people who project success and confidence, people who are enthusiastic, people who inspire you. Are you this type of person? This reminds me of my post on image versus frugality. If you’d like to weigh-in on this please leave a comment! (You have to click “read more” to get to the comments - I’ll have to fix this soon!)

I like to browse the Yahoo Finance columns from time to time and today I was fortunate to catch a great article by Laura Rowley called “How to Save $400 a Month on Groceries.”

In it, she runs through several websites that help consumers figure out where the best deals are on groceries. First there’s The Grocery Game, and then there’s myClipper.com. The best one, though, in my opinion is Coupon Mom, who’s motive is to give people the information they need to save money and then encourage them to donate some of their cheap groceries to charity. This last one reminds us that even if we have the means to spend a lot on food, we ought to consider paring down and then forking over the savings in order to help other people out. Combining a simplified, frugal lifestyle with helping others sounds like a great “recipe” for living!

Some of her commenters do point out that in order to save a lot of money on groceries, you do have to put in the time. One even says that it is impossible to do if you are employed full time (in their words: “not a SAHM or SAHD”). I’d like to know if anyone else is doing well with cutting coupons and staying on top of deals despite having full time employment. I work full-time, and I am writing a book, and I still am trying to save on groceries. Of course, I do not have the time to meticulously go through every Wednesday circular for adds, and I also appreciate my local store’s lack of lines at check-out despite their higher prices, so perhaps I am not the best example.

I am a new blogger, as evidenced by the fact that this blog was started a month and a half ago. I think I became addicted to blogging the minute I started this thing. Not only have I spent a lot of time researching and writing the posts themselves, but I have spent a lot of time figuring out how to get the word out to people about the blog. That second part, getting the word out, I told myself I wouldn’t do much of because it takes time away from all of my other responsibilities. You know - like my day job and my family! But then I get sad when I take a lot of time to write a post that not many people will read. So I start looking for ways to promote it and bam, there I am, addicted to blogging.

I also can’t get enough of going onto Google Analytics to check out how many hits I’ve gotten (now that must be narcissism or something), or see where on the world map people are reading from, or to see what I’ve made off of Google AdSense. Uh, yeah, not a lot.

If I am to keep up this blog then I need to set some limits for myself. Like maybe 45 minutes to research and write a post, 5 minutes to check stats, and 10 minutes to read other relevant stuff for material, all adding up to 1 hour a day. That was my original intent with this blog and I need to stop going WAY past that in terms of time! I am sure I can write good stuff, pass on my wisdom, research recipes, and whatnot within my time limit. What I will have to cut out is all of the stats checking and blog-promotion stuff.

I do want to make sure, though, that I shout out a big THANK YOU to all of the readers who have ventured to read this new blog and who, I hope, will continue to read it. Some of you are even coming back to read things on a repeat basis! I hope I can keep providing you with the information you need to feed your family well on a limited budget!

It was really nice to see my post on the cost of lunch salads featured in the 125th Festival of Frugality! One of the other posts featured on there, The Top Five Frugalicious Desserts was really great too! I would only add to it that homemade ice cream is really easy and cheap as well. I’ll put that down on my list as a topic for a future post.

Going right along with the salad discussion from my previous post is this article on CNN today about building a healthier salad. This is ridiculous. I mean, come on, our real problem with eating is not that our salads aren’t healthy enough! If everyone had a salad, and nothing else, for dinner, then we would be a whole lot healthier. And I really don’t think it would matter if people put in 1 tablespoon of shredded cheese or 1/2 cup. Our problems with eating are not that we eat too much cheese or eat ranch dressing instead of vinaigrette! Our problem is that we go to fast food joints 2 or 3 times a week and consume 1000 calories there at one sitting, then go home and have a dinner consisting of another 1000 calories on top of the snack and breakfast we already had. That adds to about 300-400 calories more than most people need per day. Let’s focus on the real problem!

It is nice to see gourmands making fun of themselves, as in this piece yesterday by Daniel Gross in Slate. (By the way, does anyone else constantly confuse him with Bill Gross of PIMCO?) Anyway, I think a lot of gourmands were getting a bit full of it over last decade or so; the new term “foodie” was even popularized during this time (more on the origins of the word). 

So that’s why it was so great to see a funny piece on the price of food and how it will affect all those people who spend enormous amounts at places like Whole Foods for imported wine, cheese, seafood, and the rest of it. Gross says…”Alas, the cost of being precious about food has also never been greater.” I took particular note of this part of the article:

When you journey to a food-snob haven—be it the local farmer’s market, a wine store, or a Whole Foods—you’ve already decided that you’re going to pay far more for foodstuffs than you would at the Stop & Shop across the street.

Farmer’s markets are usually extolled as great places to go for cheap produce while helping your local economy, the environment, and your health to boot. But I had always had a hunch that prices were much higher there than at the grocery. I couldn’t say for sure since I haven’t gone to our local farmer’s market in years but was interested to read this, which seemingly justified my absence from the market.

Today’s front cover of The New York Times has a story about how Americans are spending less on a lot of consumer goods. It mostly focuses on food cost-cutting in the typical household. Now, I do think the media has a big role in scaring people into spending less even if they have enough money to buy the food they’ve always eaten, but it is an interesting article none-the-less. Especially the part about people continuing to spend money on consumer electronics like TVs even while they are buying 85 cent bottles of generic-brand A1 steak sauce instead of the name brand. (”But if I spend $2,000 on a flat-panel TV I will save money because I won’t be going out to the movie theater!”)