Penny Pinching Can Be Fun!
Stay smart financially at home and at work. Here are ideas and education on smart shopping, frugal living, living on one income, and, if times are really desperate – living off the land! Our members found these helpful and we thought you might enjoy them also. If you have a book that has helped you, please let us know by commenting below!
Links*
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Get frugal tips about green living, money management, budget meals, grocery savings, coupons, budget planning, and debt reduction.
Useful money saving tips for living a better life through frugal living. Learn how to make a budget, reduce household expenses, increase your income.
Grab a cup of hot chocolate and catch up on the latest frugal living tips and news.
Money Saving Ideas and articles… Childs Play by Nita Holstine Ideas for extending the life of your kids clothes. … Five Ways to Beat Penny-Pinching Fatigue by Mia Cronan. Coupon Services.
Money Saving Tips – … So here are some ideas to keep us from overspending. … How to Save Money Even with a Baby – One womans methods for penny pinching with a …
Articles for Stay at Home Parents – Nice page with various topics for home bound parents.[/column]
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Blog with practical advice and ideas on how to save money, make the most of what you have.
Better Budgeting – Frugal Living
Selection of frugal living articles – stretching your dollars and resources for a better life! 7 Frugal Fun Summer Tips .
Lots of coupons, tips and links with a Christian theme.
A bulletin board and forum for work at home moms. Post your money saving ideas and ask for help here.
Hundreds of ideas! A great Penny Pinching Resource.
Ron & Debbie’s Penny Pinchin Page
Money saving ideas the old-fashioned way.
Frugal and Fashionable Living Magazine. Worth a visit.
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Books*
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Half-Price Living: Secrets to Living Well on One Income
Ellie Kay
A recent online survey found that 86% of working moms said they would stay at home if they were financially able to do so. Ellie Kay, draws on her financial expertise and experience as a mom to write this step-by-step plan on how to downsize from two incomes to one. Featuring Kay’s trademark wry humor, she gives readers real life stories, comprehensive charts, worksheets, and a plan to make it work. Far from being a book about deprivation, these tips will make living on one income a pleasure. – Amazon Review.
Shop Smart, Save More: Learn The Grocery Game and Save Hundreds of Dollars a Month
Teri Gault and Sheryl Berk
“All the expert grocery savings strategies, in one place.” — Los Angeles Times
“This is what America needs now to keep food on the table without breaking the bank.” — NBC’s The Today Show
Teri Gault’s groundbreaking website, www.TheGroceryGame.com , has already helped millions save serious money. And now she shares the secrets to sensible shopping in one essential volume, so you can feed your family and take care of their needs for thousands of dollars a year less! – Amazon Review.
The Duggars: 20 and Counting!: Raising One of America’s Largest Families–How they Do It
Jim Bob & Michelle Duggar
Readers will learn about the Duggars’ marriage how they communicate effectively, make family decisions, and find quality time alone. They’ll discover how the Duggars manage to educate all their children at home, while providing experiences that go beyond the family walls, through vacations and educational trips. And they’ll see how the Duggar family manages their finances and lives debt-free even when they built their own 7,000-square-foot house. – Amazon Review.
Possum Living: How to Live Well Without a Job and with (Almost) No Money
Dolly Freed and David Gates
This book will not only make you laugh but might actually inspire you to embrace a simpler life. – Oprah Magazine.
After discussing reasons why you should or shouldn’t give up your job, Possum Living gives you details about the cheapest ways with the best results to buy and maintain your home, dress well, cope with the law, stay healthy, and keep up a middle-class facade whether you live in the city, in the suburbs, or in a small town. – Amazon Review.
Written by blogger mom and penny-pincher extraordinaire Mary Ostyn, who prepares three meals a day for her family of 12 for $800 to $900 a month, this book is stuffed to the gills with in-the-trenches tips on savvy food shopping, plus 200 delicious recipes for homecooked meals that make the most of economical ingredients. Selected by Good Morning America as one of the best cookbooks of 2009. – Amazon Review.
The Backyard Homestead: Produce all the food you need on just a quarter acre!
Carleen Madigan
Put your backyard to work! Enjoy fresher, organic, better-tasting food all the time. Grow the vegetables and fruits your family loves; keep bees; raise chickens, goats, or even a cow. And when the harvest is in, you’ll learn how to cook, preserve, cure, brew, or pickle the fruits of your labor. From a quarter of an acre, you can harvest 1,400 eggs, 50 pounds of wheat, 60 pounds of fruit, 2,000 pounds of vegetables, 280 pounds of pork, 75 pounds of nuts. – Amazon Review.
The Urban Homestead: Your Guide to Self-sufficient Living in the Heart of the City
Kelly Coyne and Erik Knutzen
This is the essential handbook for a fast-growing new movement: urbanites are becoming gardeners and farmers. Rejecting both end-times hand wringing and dewy-eyed faith that technology will save us from ourselves, urban homesteaders choose instead to act. By growing their own food and harnessing natural energy, they are planting seeds for the future of our cities. If you would like to harvest your own vegetables, raise city chickens, or convert to solar energy, this practical, hands-on book is full of step-by-step projects that will get you started homesteading immediately, whether you live in an apartment or a house. It is also a guidebook to the larger movement and will point you to the best books and Internet resources on self-sufficiency topics. – Amazon Review.
SAS Survival Handbook: How to Survive in the Wild, in Any Climate, on Land or at Sea
John Lofty Wiseman
The SAS Survival Handbook is the Special Air Service’s complete course in being prepared for any type of emergency. Real strategies for surviving in any type of situation, from accidents and escape procedures, including chemical and nuclear to successfully adapting to various climates (polar, tropical, desert), to identifying edible plants and creating fire. Extremely practical and is illustrated throughout with easy-to-understand line art and diagrams. – Amazon Review.
Extraordinary Uses for Ordinary Things: 2,317 Ways to Save Money and Time
Reader’s Digest
Save the day with over 2,300 clever, ingenious, smart ways to use everyday household products all guaranteed to save you time and money! Did you know that tea can hide gray hair? Or that aspirin can revive a dead car battery? How about the power of table salt to make panty hose last longer? Or that shaving cream can remove rug stains? Yes, there s a treasure trove hidden in your pantry, medicine cabinet, garage, and basement. This remarkable book shares amazing secrets to save you time and money and shelf space in the process. Fully illustrated and written in a clear, down-to-earth style. – Amazon Review.
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Everyday Cheapskate’s Greatest Tips (Debt-Proof Living)
Mary Hunt
Mary Hunt is the founder, editor, and publisher of the popular national subscription newsletter “Cheapskate Monthly,” which premiered in 1992, author of 13 books, and an expert on “Debt-Proof Living.” Here is a collection of tips on saving money and time in the areas of home, auto, travel, clothing, cooking, shopping, finance, kitchen, gifts, special occasions, kids, yard and garden, laundry, health, organizing and more. It contains sound advice for getting out of debt, managing money, curbing spending, finding creative solutions, and “bringing dignity to the art of living below your means.” – Amazon Review.
10,001 Ways to Live Large on a Small Budget
The Writers of Wisebread
Tips for living the good life in a bad economy from WiseBread.com. This is a compilation of the juiciest tips from the #1 personal finance blog filled with savvy tips on how to live, eat, shop, and have fun on a small budget. Too many frugal living books focus on the negative, throwing around words such as “sacrifice” and “responsibility” like there was a fire sale at the Boring Store. These writers believe the key to financial wellness isn’t a ramen-eating, vacation-skipping, fun-depriving life. Rather the best way to ensure that readers will stick to a budget is to help them create a lifestyle that is as much fun as it is practical. – Amazon Review.
America’s Cheapest Family Gets You Right on the Money: Your Guide to Living Better, Spending Less, and Cashing in on Your Dreams
Annette and Steve Economides
Of all the how-to-do-it books ever written, the best and most constructively useful are the Bible, Voltaire’s Candide- and this one. The time is right, right now, for somebody to give us all a top sergeant lesson in practical economics: There is no free lunch. Congratulations, Annette and Steve Economides: I pray your readers will practice what you teach. – PAUL HARVEY, legendary American radio broadcaster and host of The Rest of the Story on the ABC Radio NetworkReview.
Penny Pincher’s Almanac: Hints & Tips on Living Well for Less
Reader’s Digest
Here are over 1,700 ways to save on everyday expenditures and big-ticket items alike. Get low-cost, high-quality medical care, buy tickets to the hottest shows and sports events at discount prices-with down-home household hints and clever “tightwad tactics,” learn how to get smart about health tips, home repairs, housekeeping, vacations, work, and much more.
The Complete Tightwad Gazette
Amy Dacyczyn
Though tightwadseems like a derogatory term, author Amy Dacyczyn wants to assure you that it’s okay to be a penny-pincher. You’ll find literally thousands of ideas for saving money, from the simple or practical to the difficult or bizarre. On the simple, practical side, Dacyczyn advises would-be tightwads to keep track of price trends at several stores in a “price book” and to buy in bulk when prices are low. More helpful are inexpensive recipes for making homemade versions of pricey, well-known products and ingenious ways to fix broken or damaged items… She even reminds her readers that it’s okay to “sweat the small stuff”–because this small stuff is the essence of frugality. –C.B. Delaney
365 Ways to Live Cheap: Your Everyday Guide to Saving Money
Trent Hamm
Use cold water for most clothes washing and save up to $63 a year. Minimize your carload and reduce your gas mileage by as much as 5 percent. Invest in a deep freezer and fill it up with meat discounted at 30 percent or more. Take a look at your life and you’ll realize that there’s almost always a way to make do on less. This book offers up a bevy of ways to cut down on costs and still enjoy a satisfying lifestyle in any situation. From practicing good gas conservation habits to learning to love leftovers, this book will help every aspiring penny pincher stop the unnecessary spending and find the fun in frugality! – Amazon Review.
The Penny-Pinching Hedonist: How to Live Like Royalty With a Peasant’s Pocketbook
Shel Horowitz
So often we think that living frugally means deprivation or going without the fun extras of life. Shel Horowitz dispels that notion right from the start in this fun and helpful book. The book is jam-packed with inexpensive (and often free!) suggestions for fun in every area of life: food, hobbies, entertainment, travel, children, gifts, and more. If you’d like to add some fun to your life without adding the burden of high expenses, This is a great resource. – Amazon Review.
Penny Pinching 101: Live Better for Less and Stay Out of Debt
Jackie Iglehart
Discover painless ways to save–and not just a little! This book has hundreds of ways to cut expenses. Start saving on everything from cars to food, children to utilities, holidays to housing. Develop money-saving savvy, escape Killer Debt, and end money stress forever. “Inglehart can nickel and dime with the best of them,” says Woman’s Day, “but she mainly urges people to start looking for big savings.” – Amazon Review.
Frugal Living for Dummies
Deborah Taylor-Hough
Is there a better way to live? Can you get what you need and what you want without killing yourself to get it? Absolutely. In this warmhearted guide to living the good life on less, Deborah shows you how to live within your means and enjoy doing it. Packed with tried-and-true techniques for cutting costs and stopping the insanity, Frugal Living For Dummies is the ultimate financial survival guide for the rest of us.[/column]
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