Can’t Get Ahead? It May Be Time to Take Out the Machete

A lot of articles I write here are about fine-tuning your frugal habits, budget, and spending. It’s as if I ask you to take a scalpel and slit open the tiniest of holes in your finances in order to reap that extra little efficiency. But what if that is not enough? What if after obliterating [...]

An Experiment: Using Walmart’s New Price Match Policy

In a world tipped in the favor of retailers and manufacturers due to the  recent uptick in media attention on consumer dishonesty and fraud, Walmart has chosen to not only simplify its price matching policy, but to choose to trust consumers on their word with their new price match policy.  Granted, this was not a [...]

Frugal Decadence at Its Best: Our $19 Out-of-Pocket for Custom-Fit Plantation Shutters

My life philosophy and blog manifesto are displayed in the upper right hand corner of my website. I call it Frugal Decadence, and describe it like this “The art of enjoying the many pleasures and luxuries of life at a fraction of the cost others will pay. Life is too short to deny yourself, and [...]

What Will $5 Buy You on a Flight?

Ever since I boarded a plane for the first time as a sixteen year old foreign exchange student headed to Burgos, Spain I have been in love with flying. Perhaps it is because there is nothing else to do once you board the cabin but to sleep, read, write, or relax. I get to turn [...]

Save Money on Stocking Up this Hurricane Season

Hurricane season starts on June 1st—are you ready?                 I first moved to Houston three days before Hurricane Ike hit. I had lost my job in June of 2008, which was the only thing keeping me in South Florida. Paul had lost his job just two weeks before me, and he was the first to [...]

Is Frugality an Anti-Aphrodisiac?

Have you ever picked up a date in a Reliant K? Politely asked the person across the table from you to only order from the “turf” options in a seafood restaurant? Slipped a coupon in with your credit card in the oh-so-stylish black notepads come bill time? Or perhaps you were fortunate enough to be [...]

Get Rewarded for Your Efforts to Lessen Your Carbon Footprint

Have you ever heard of the Cap and Trade program? It is a program that sets a maximum amount of emissions of a certain pollutant (sulfur dioxide, nitrogen dioxide, etc.) that each regulated facility can emit, and then allows facilities to sell any amount of that pollutant that they manage to reduce below their maximum [...]

Save Money on Gas

Sticker shock: I pulled into the gas station one week ago. It was like any other Thursday with the sun shining a buttery color and tinting the whole upcoming weekend with beautiful prospects. And just as I was beginning to let my workweek unwind, replacing my shallow breathing with deeper, life-affirming breaths, the pump stopped [...]

Not-So-Green Confessions

This is a Guest Post by Sustainable PF who writes with his wife, Mrs. SPF, at Sustainable Personal Finance where they discuss balancing their financial goals with their lifestyle and beliefs regarding sustainable living in Ontario, Canada. Psst.  I have a not-so-green confession to make.  Actually, make that five.  Mrs. SPF and I don’t do [...]

15 Frugal Date Ideas

Most marriage and relationship experts suggest making date night a weekly ritual to keep the spark alive in your relationship, to encourage communication, as well as to continually add to your bond by remaining apart of each other’s current lives. But going to dinner and the movies each week could easily add $150 to your [...]

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