Evolving Personal Finance » frugality
I’m Working Out for Free at a Community Center Gym
A couple months ago, my PCP “prescribed” me a Whole30 and lifting heavy weights, and I was eager to comply. Kyle and I embarked on our Whole30 in mid-July (and have largely continued since officially completing it), and I started searching for a gym to join. (It didn’t seem feasible to buy the equipment I needed to continue working out at home.) At first, I thought that I would prefer to work out during the day … Read entire article »
Filed under: frugality
An Unexpected Benefit of an Almost Non-Existent Commute
When Kyle and I moved to Seattle, we decided where to live based on proximity to Kyle’s workplace. (I work out of our apartment when I’m not traveling.) Luckily for us, his workplace is adjacent to a residential area, and we secured an apartment just 0.2 miles away. Kyle walks all of three minutes to and from work. This is awesome for many reasons. 1) We only own one car (instead of two), which stays with … Read entire article »
Un-Frugal Cloth Diapering Pitfalls to Avoid
I thought cloth diapering was an inherently frugal activity, but my eyes have been opened. For some people, cloth diapering might be even more expensive than disposable diapering! But if you avoid just a few pitfalls, cloth diapering will remain a frugal strategy. The cost of disposable diapers are pretty much all up front: the retail cost of the diapers. Frugality in disposable diapering is all about finding the least expensive diapers that work for your … Read entire article »
Filed under: frugality
Incorporating New Frugal Strategies
In February we incorporated two new frugal strategies into our wheelhouse of natural frugality in Seattle. Even though we’re earning more than we ever have before (hello 25% tax bracket!), we haven’t outgrown the frugality we practiced during grad school. Having a baby threw things off for a little while, but we’re getting back on track. A New Type of Grocer We heard a tip a few weeks ago from one of our friends here about a … Read entire article »
Filed under: frugality
Outfitting our Baby with Hand-Me-Down, Borrowed, and Used Stuff
It’s quite challenging to maintain our frugal nature with DPR on the scene. During my pregnancy, we collected items slowly and with an eye to their cost by shopping consignment stores and sales and judiciously accepting hand-me-downs from friends and relatives. But when DPR arrived five weeks early, we went on an Amazon spending binge to finish obtaining what we thought was the bare minimum of stuff that she would need immediately upon coming home. … Read entire article »
Cloth Diapering in an Apartment
Kyle and I are cloth diapering our new baby DPR despite living in an apartment with no washer/dryer hookups. I met another apartment-dwelling new mother recently who is using a cloth diaper service because it hadn’t even occurred to her that she could try washing her own cloth diapers, so I decided to share our solution here. Our six-unit apartment building has a coin-operated shared washer and dryer in the basement ($1 per machine each load). … Read entire article »
Natural Frugality in Seattle
I’ve made no secret of the fact that Seattle is not a great home for us in terms of its financial value – it’s a high cost-of-living city, but what it offers doesn’t match up well what we’re looking for in a city. (I have to say that we are really warming up to Seattle with the wonderful spring we’ve been having!) But despite Seattle’s high cost of living, I’ve observed that we have easily fallen … Read entire article »
Filed under: frugality
Looking on the Bright Side of a Tough Financial Situation
After my Eeyore post from Wednesday on the reasons I’m experiencing financial ennui, I thought it would be nice to kind of give myself a kick in the butt to try to re-energize about our finances in a minor way while we’re still here in Durham. In this post, I’m going to list the positive things we have done in our finances since our defenses last summer, however small they may be, and some tiny goals. Good … Read entire article »
Filed under: budgeting, frugality, goals, income, side income
What Triggers Frugality: Net Worth or Income?
My mindset toward frugality has changed quite a bit even during the few short years I’ve been blogging. While I’ve never felt poor, Kyle and I used to be very careful with our money. I mean, we would still do a lot of things like travel domestically and pay for entertainment, but we would be very deliberate and tight in how we went about it. We traveled to Chicago to attend a wedding, for instance, but road-tripped … Read entire article »
Filed under: frugality, funemployment, income, net worth, targeted savings
How to Work Out without a Gym Membership
One of the benefits I’m losing as I transition out of graduate school is free access to my university’s gym. Apparently the graduate school no longer completely pays for the gym membership for students in their seventh years and above. I could buy the membership for $120 per six months, but that price is too rich for my blood as I tend to prefer to work out at/near home anyway and the cost per use … Read entire article »
Filed under: frugality
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