April 2008

The refinance is here

April 25, 2008

Yesterday M’hijito and I signed the papers on the refinance for the Investment House. It drops our payments about $200 a month, not quite as much as we’d hoped, but better than a hit on the head. It’s a 30/15 loan: the payments are calculated on a 30-year basis, but the balance is due in [...]

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w00t! Frugality works better

April 25, 2008

I just cleaned 1,860 square feet of flooring without using more than a microtherm of natural gas to heat a pail of water…in one hour flat! Not only that, but laydeez and gents, that floor is CLEAN! One idea for the Month of (not-so-)Extreme Frugality was to sweep the floors—which are tile throughout the house—with [...]

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Another moment of fame

April 24, 2008

The 122nd Festival of Frugality is up at On Financial Success, where Funny’s “Five Budget Busters” appears. Aaron has a paragraph theme (wish he could teach my students how to do that…), which is full of great advice. The Digerati Life’s post wherein SVB describes the difference between a frugalist (spends less than he earns) [...]

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How we teach our children to cheat, lie, and steal

April 24, 2008

Why do college students plagiarize? Why do they cheat on their assignments? This is something that has always bamboozled me. After all, they cheat no one but themselves. When you pay to attend classes, it’s your money (or Mom and Dad’s) that you’re shelling out for the privilege. When you cheat to wangle yourself a [...]

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Side jobs, side worries

April 24, 2008

Tomorrow I’m meeting with the editor of a small local press about a freelance job. It’s low-paid, but one of my RAs is freelancing for this outfit and says the work is steady. For the time being, I don’t need much pay. The amount I’d make in a year would be about 1.5 times the [...]

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Ashes

April 23, 2008

The plan to use candles instead of electric lights as a feature in the Month of (not-so-)Extreme Frugality requires me to get out the candle-holders. Among the motley crew is an old pair of silver-plate candle-holders that date back so far I think they were a wedding gift. Badly tarnished, they suffered considerably the last [...]

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