We were expecting a house full of guests. The occasion? My eldest daughter’s confirmation. With 18 people coming to town to celebrate, we knew we were going to have to do some entertaining. Our original plan was to say the heck with frugality and take everyone out to eat at our new favorite restaurant in town. But then fate stepped in–the restaurant refused our reservation. Their reason? They don’t take reservations so that they can keep tables available for walk-in diners. (Hmm, turn away 18 confirmed paying customers in hopes that you’ll get on-the-fly folks who happen to be...

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I’m so pleased to be able to share with all of you the cover of my forthcoming book Suddenly Frugal: How to Live Happier & Healthier for Less. That’s the good news–that I have a cover to share. Now the slightly less good news: the pub date has been pushed back to January 2010, which means the book will be in bookstores in December 2009. While I wish the book was coming out sooner, the new pub date suggests that the book will be ripe for giving as a holiday gift and perfectly timed for all of those “I...

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One of the lessons my frugal mother taught me was never to throw anything away or put a dish in the dishwasher until you were sure that a container was absolutely, positively empty. That meant scraping bowls with rubber spatulas to make sure I’d gotten every last drop of something I’d cooked–and was now serving–or adding a little bit of water to a soap dispenser so I could go just a few more days without having to buy a replacement. Turns out I’m not the only frugal person who uses creative tricks to make sure everything I own is...

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I’m afraid that some of the people who’ve found their way to this blog did so because they are out of work and need to learn how to live more on less. I know that getting a job in the current economy is probably one of the most challenging tasks a professional person has to deal with, and I can only imagine the obstacles college seniors are going to face. That’s why I’ve dedicated today’s Suddenly Frugal blog posting to job interviewing and networking tips. While these were designed for graduating college seniors, courtesy of Stevenson University in Maryland,...

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I admit it–sometimes I procrastinate. Usually this involves grocery shopping or putting away the laundry, but never anything work related. How else could I get a book offer in January and hand it in eight weeks later? This week I’ve been trying to tackle my many magazine assignments and hand them in early, too. Why? Because it frees up time to market myself more. And to be successfully self-employed, you have to spend 20% of your time marketing. Here’s another area where I do not procrastinate: my taxes. It’s not because I expect to get a refund each year...

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Hope you like this podcast recap of our month of no new spending. No New Spending Recap

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As you know my husband and I declared March to be our month of no new spending. With the month over tomorrow, I’ve been spending the past few days working on a wrap-up and recap of exactly how the month worked out for us. Doing so has taken a bit longer than expected, so stay tuned for tomorrow’s post for how everything went. I realize that I’ll be posting on the last day of the month–and I suppose something earth-shattering could occur on that last day–and perhaps I should be posting on the first of April instead. But, oh,...

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Believe it or not, my Suddenly Frugal book will be at the publisher next week, and on the road towards bookstores for the fall. As I spend this last week before my deadline finishing my proofing and editing of the manuscript, I’m also putting together the “back matter” of the book. In this instance that would be the two Appendices for the book. One is a frugal glossary; the other is frugal resources for readers to use. As far as the glossary goes, this is where I’m going to list various words that are a part of the frugal...

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I love the first day of spring. Winter is officially over (though we’ve had many a snowstorm in April here in the Northeast), and signs of warm weather are popping up all over. In the garden there are the blooming crocuses and daffodils, on the streets are people finally shedding their winter layer of coats, and at the local Rita’s Water Ice location, they’re finally opening for business again. As is the tradition for the past 17 years, Rita’s is giving away free water ice (we called it Italian ice where I grew up) to celebrate spring. According to...

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Here’s a stat I find hard to believe: according to a recent survey of ShopSmart readers (that’s a Consumer Reports magazine), only 7% of women dislike cleaning their house. What? I don’t know about you, but I always feel like I’ve got the guilt of not having time to clean my house hanging over my head. I’m usually pretty good about tidying up here and there. But a top-to-bottom clean house? Hasn’t happened in years. Well, at least not since we fired our cleaning lady when we went frugal. Having a cleaning lady was one luxury I couldn’t continue...

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So I’m completely in the home stretch of writing Suddenly Frugal, the book. My contract asks for a 60,000 word book, and as of about 30 minutes ago, I’d written just over 53,000 words. I have three chapters left to write on the following topics: Gardening, yard, and landscaping Renovations and interior decorating Vacations and getaways I’m putting out feelers left and right across the Internet for more information on these areas so I can include it in my book. If you have suggestions to share–or know of websites I should check out to research these topics–will you let...

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Early on down the road to frugal living, I figured out that a great way to save money when I shopped was to check out store brands of nearly any product I wanted to buy. While I have professed my brand loyalty to certain products–and continue to feel that way about particular items–I would be crazy (and poor) if I didn’t make store brands or generics a part of my frugal equation. Just today I refilled the soap dispenser in my bathroom with store-brand liquid soap, served store-brand cranberry-apple juice with dinner, and cleaned some pots after dinner using...

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I just discovered that Amazon.com has Suddenly Frugal the book available for pre-order. I hope that folks here will take advantage of this pre-order option. I wasn’t expecting to see the book up on Amazon yet, especially since I haven’t actually finished writing the book yet (about 10,000 words to go). But I loved getting a chance to preview the book’s subtitle: “A Quick Start Plan to Living Happier and Healthier with Less.” Sounds like the kind of book I’d want to read, even if I hadn’t written it.

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Even though it’s been three months since I moved the Suddenly Frugal blog from Blogger over here to Word Press, I’ve just now figured out how to add the Blog Roll to my sidebar. Slowly, I’m trying to beef up the names and links to the blogs I enjoy reading–and which I think the readers of Suddenly Frugal will enjoy. So if you have any blog recommendations, please post a comment with a link, and I’ll check it out. Thanks.

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