Given that my Suddenly Frugal book is due to the publisher in 30 days, you can pretty much guess what I’m going to be busy doing during the month of March–you know, besides not spending anything above and beyond regular expenses. Seriously, though, I spent Monday, a snow day in these parts, working on various sections of my book.

I had a lot of fun putting together one chapter about how you can learn new skills to save money. The premise behind the chapter is this: if you can learn to do something that you would normally outsource to someone else, in the long run you will save money. You know it’s the whole “if you give a man a fish, you feed him for a day. But if you teach a man to fish, you feed him for a lifetime” concept.

Here’s a perfect example of how I put this notion into practice. About 10 years ago, when I knew that I needed to get with the times and get a website up and running, I didn’t hire the Geek Squad to get me on the Internet. I signed up for a website-building class at my local community class. It cost less than $100, and after four nights spent in the computer lab, I had a pretty good grasp of html. That knowledge continues to come in handy these days, even though the widgets on Word Press save me a lot of trouble with “a href=” and “<i>/<i>” stuff.

Here are some other skills-building ideas I’ve considered including in the book:

• Sewing classes at Jo-Ann Stores
• Cake decorating classes at Michael’s
• Gardening and landscaping workshops at your local state university’s cooperative extension office
• Home improvement workshops at Home Depot and Lowe’s.

Have I missed anything? Did you ever sign up for an inexpensive class so you could learn a skill and, in the long run, save money because you no longer needed to pay someone to do that for you?

I wonder if I should take a course in dog grooming so I could take care of my dog myself? That would save me about $50 every three months. But where would I find such a class?