Blog
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DIY Experiment: Starting Simple With Toothpaste
After the post about finding local, home-made lotion for my parents I was inspired to venture into making my own toiletries. I had a couple reasons to want to try: often the containers that toiletries come in aren’t recyclable, frequently they have scary sounding chemicals or ingredients that are animal products, and really, it just…
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Stretch Your Food Dollar: Making Your Own Stock
Happy Wednesday! I hope everyone had a wonderful Thanksgiving and is starting to recover from the frenzy of eating leftovers. Two weeks ago I mentioned that you could save your turkey bones to make stock, so I thought this would be an excellent topic for this week’s edition of Stretch Your Food Dollar. Quality stock…
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Equity Line of Credit: Seek Other Financial Shelter
‘œAs long as the music is playing, you’ve got to get up and dance.’ ‘“ Charles O. Prince, III, former CEO of Citigroup Earlier this year, the HELOC on our Newport Beach home was reduced to practically nothing and the line on one of my rental properties was suspended completely. Both notices came as a…
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Surviving Financial Infidelity: Cleaning Up the Mess
Last week, I wrote about how my wife and I assessed the damage caused by her financial infidelity. Although I can consider myself fortunate that the amount she spent was relatively small, it still had an impact on our family finances. To clean up the mess, we used a 4-step process: Prioritize Debts Whether this…
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Joys and Perils of a Luxe Life: Schadenfreude and Conspicuous Consumption
I’ve purposely abandoned what I anticipated to be my next posting in this series because of current events and the reader response to my previous post’”especially the concept of frugality veiling. I described that as that attempt to appear virtuous by balancing our luxury purchases with seemingly frugal (and futile) gestures. I was delighted that…
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eBay is becoming impossible for the frugal…
What brought this on you ask? Just the latest in eBay’s new policies for the sellers. To begin with eBay has always been a stopping point when I’ve been looking for something… be it clothes or anything else. If for no other reason than it gave me a feel (or used to anyway) for what…
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Real Estate Role Reversal: With reverse mortgage, lender pays homeowner
Reverse mortgages – which are a specialized type of home equity loan available to Americans age 62 or older – offer the homeowner a chance to get paid by the mortgage company, instead of the other way around. A reverse mortgage is a great tool for those who have paid off a home or have…
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The Dysfunctional Marriage of eHarmony and Gay Money
For those of you who don’t know, eHarmony has come under a lot of pressure in the last year, both from Chemistry.com advertising and lawsuits, because the company does not provide services to gays and lesbians. While it’s clear that the matrimony-centered dating service has strong Christian roots, their stated reason for not accepting gay…
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The Best Frugal Books and Movies
This is my list of books and videos I have read or watched and would recommend: The Complete Tightwad Gazette This is the book that got me started about keeping my own list of ways to stay frugal and then moved me into the blogging world and to the blog you are now viewing. So,…
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Black Friday Sales Up Over 2007
Although many of us at Queercents vowed to “Buy Nothing” on Friday, sales reports are showing that this year’s Black Friday sales were up from last year, giving the much beleaguered economy an injection of cash. According to the LA Times, “Nationwide, more than 172 million shoppers visited stores and websites over the four-day weekend,…
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