Day 14: Spend Less Than You Make

Jessica — Wed, 22 Apr 2009 19:18:00 +0000

Are you spending less than you make? Are you sure? Better double-check, just in case.

I’m getting ready for the Town Hall for Hope on Thursday and thinking about what are the true, simple and basic facts about personal finance. The bottom line really is that you must spend less than you make.

The origins of PennyWise Family are pretty sad. I started this blog the day after I was laid off from my “secure” job in hopes of helping other families adjust for layoffs. We had to slash our household budget immediately and needed to figure out how.

I’ve posted tips here ever since then, but thought maybe it was time for some more frugal living tips. Hands-down, the biggest hit so far has been the home-made laundry detergent. I’ve converted many friends to making their own, and we love it. To find other savings tips use my “Ligit” search bar and enter the subject of how you want to save money and it should direct you to the right posts.

I posted earlier about how we found we had cut $1500 a month from our household budget with ordinary and small cost-cutting.

Today I’m featuring a reader’s tips. These come from Abby S., in Washington State, who used to teach school in Alaska. A lot of necessities are expensive there, so she learned some spiffy ways to cut corners. Here are a few of her list:

Cut dryer sheets in half to make them last longer.

Use dehydrated eggs for cooking sweets (I use dehydrated milk for baking Abby, but I’ve never seen dehydrated eggs).

Make bread from scratch

Make milk from powdered milk and mask the flavor with chocolate powder or syrup.

Buy milk in bulk and freeze it.

Make home-made deodorant (if it works, please send us the recipe Abby… if it doesn’t, please warn us ).

Learn to can/preserve and freeze.

I’m also learning about making my own dishwasher detergent, but I want to experiment with my dishes before I post a recipe here. I’d hate to etch or damage someone’s dishes with a bad one, so when I’ve got it perfected I shall let everyone know.

Thanks Abby for sharing your tips!

This is day 14 of 30 in a series for April, which is “Financial Literacy Month”

Thank you!

Jessica — Fri, 10 Apr 2009 16:09:00 +0000

Thank you, readers! This blog began in December 2008, and was recently added to the WiseBread list of the top 100 personal finance blogs. Actually, it ended up and number 201 and has hovered between 201 and 205. I recently checked hoping to land at least back up to number 200 and was surprised to see that your support has moved us up to ranking at number 175!

I’m setting sights on the top 100! I hope to continue to recieve your support and feedback. Please always let me know what changes you like or don’t like and what kind of tips you’d like.

A preview of what’s coming next:

21 days of financial literacy PLUS a week of ways to educate kids about money and simple economics.
I’m currently working on collecting a bunch of tips from readers for cutting budgets at home.

Please send tips, ideas and feedback my way (jessc098 @ gmail . com) and I’ll incorporate them here. I’m also looking at adding cash prizes in the future. I’m working on a constest for the PennywiseFamily 1st Birthday Celebration in December.

If visiting the site isn’t convenient for you, here’s a few ways to get updates more regularly:
1. Subscribe via RSS or Google Reader and get any site updates sent to you right away.
2. Follow via Twitter, I’m @Jessc098

The Pennywise Family » Thank You

Day 14: Spend Less Than You Make

Thank you!