December 2008

Hoppin’ John: Black-eyed peas for New Year’s luck

December 31, 2008

My father, being a Texas boy (he used to say the best thing about being from Texas is being as far from it as you can get), loved black-eyed peas. I was never nuts about them, because Southern recipes overcook them to an unappetizing state of sogginess. But in my grown-up incarnation, I learned that [...]

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2008 Financial Strategies: What worked and what didn’t work

December 30, 2008

As the year winds down, this is a good time to take stock of the various events, schemes, and impulses that drive our personal finance strategies, to consider which ones worked and which failed, and to think about how we can use experience to plan next year’s financial direction. We all had our ups and [...]

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Moments of Fame

December 30, 2008

The 158th Festival Frugality is live at the Well Run Dry, whose proprietor leads with a nice discussion of what “frugality” really means. Funny’s post on “real wealth” appears in this week’s round-up, along with a number of posts that suggest Well is not alone in thinking about the meaning of wealth and frugality. I [...]

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Read your credit card statement carefully!

December 28, 2008

Whoa! Here we are, just getting our Christmastime bills. What should we notice on our Costco American Express bill but that the closing date has magically advanced from the usual 20th of the month to December 21. Isn’t that cute? If you are one of the retrograde frugalists, like me, who budgets a specific amount [...]

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Frugal Household Hack: Conserve dish soap

December 28, 2008

Dish detergent comes in a soft-sided bottle with a squirt nozzle for a reason: so you’ll use plenty of it and soon have to go out and buy a new bottle. When you tip the bottle into the sink and give it a squeeze (and maybe another and another for good measure), you use several [...]

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Making less…less

December 28, 2008

Is there no end to merchandisers’ ingenuity in dreaming up ways to get us to pay more for less? We all know that many a 32-ounce container no longer contains 32 ounces, even though we still pay for 32 ounces. But here’s an improvement on that angle: make the stuff inside the container weaker, so [...]

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