Posted on 19th March 2009 by Mish in finance | frugal | money | personal finance
frugal, frugal tips, frugality, money
My father always used to tell me that “work was work, if it was fun, they’d call it fun, but it’s not – it’s work. It’s not supposed to be fun.”
I used to argue with him. I would rant and tell him that you could most certainly do something with your life that you loved (or at least liked) and still be paid for it. He dismissed me out of hand. He told me that my thinking was irresponsible (as was having a bunch of kids!) and that I had to wait for the weekends to have fun.
I’m much older now. Twenty years older, in fact. And I’ve had a lot of jobs – not all of them fun. I’ve learned, through the years, to work very hard, but I have to say that I have been able to find elements of fun to each of my jobs. Although, I would probably amend my argument to say that work can be fun some of the time – or that you can find joy in hard work if you like doing it.
I did not, for example, always enjoy waiting tables. But I like people and I always enjoyed talking with customers and joking with the cooks in the kitchen. I found waiting tables to be enjoyable work – even if my feet ached and I sometimes got a lousy tip from a grouchy customer.
Being a newspaper reporter was hard work (no, not as hard as say, construction work, but still…), and it was often frustrating and intimidating. I frequently faced angry people who didn’t want to answer my phone calls, but I enjoyed the learning process and I thoroughly enjoyed investigating a story. It was, in the end, a very fun job.
Through the years, I have cultivated two careers – one as a writer and one as a mother. Both are equally frustrating in their own way and one pays only marginally better than the other (I’ll leave you to guess which one), but I am happy doing them both.
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Technorati Tags: frugal, frugal tips, frugality, money
Posted on 19th January 2009 by Mish in frugal
frugal, frugality, simple living
I read – a lot. And because I am constantly striving to live more simply, more frugally and more eco-consciously – I read a lot of books about those topics.
What follows are my top five picks for some of the best reading for living simply and frugally. I have been inspired by these books and awed by them. I hope you’ll enjoy them:
Posted on 14th January 2009 by Mish in frugal
frugal, frugality
#1) I forgot how inexpensive things are here. I am so used to having to make stop at my local general store (because I didn’t want to drive 45 miles to the closest grocery store) and spending $5 or $6 on the tiny can of coffee. I love that I can stop at any one of five or six stores and grab milk and coffee and spend less than $5 for both! In Vermont, that little jaunt would have easily cost me $10 or more!
#2) My floors are staying reasonable clean even in the middle of winter! No more trucking in sand/snow/slush from the 400 trips to the woodpile! Not to mention the trips up from the driveway (that used to be 100 yards away from the house).
#3) I love that I can walk places – like the park, and the store and the library, and to the kids’ schools (yes, they’re going to school now – more on that later). I still have my truck, but I can exercise my right to be really green and ride a bike or walk! I could have done this in Vermont, I suppose…but the mountain I had to climb to get home was amazingly steep and a heck of a climb with kids in strollers or wagons!
#4) It only took me 20 minutes to clear the snow from the driveway, walkways and sidewalk – and I didn’t have to hire anyone to help (I used to spend $35 per plow in Vermont)!
#5) OK – I have to put it on this list – the pizza. I’m sorry, but I’ve been aching for delivered pizza once in a while for years…I love my own pizza best of course – and it is the most frugal and yummy option – but how nice to be able to take a night off once in a while! Don’t worry y’all – I still have my crockpot and use it!
Technorati Tags: frugal, frugality
Posted on 16th October 2008 by Mish in frugal
frugal, frugality, homeless, homelessness, living in the car, michelle kennedy, one paycheck away, poverty, saving money, sleeping in car, without a net
With gas prices rising, food prices rising…OK – the price of everything rising…I am often asked about how to get by on very little.
As you may already know, I spent the bulk of the summer of 1997 living in my car with my three small children. Before that, I lived in the cabin from hell (a tar-paper shack in Northern Maine with no running water). Before that, I was your basic middle-class young mom. To read how all that happened, buy this book.
Needless to say, I’ve learned a bit about living on very little in the last 10 years. Because I am deathly afraid of it ever happening again, I’ve struggled to maintain my simple standards – even when times are good! I am so tired of watching people on TV morning shows tell me that the best way to get through a tough time is to save money. Well, if you are anything like me – you don’t make $100,000 or more a year as a television talk show host – so you probably don’t have a lot to save.
Instead, you need ways to save money – or make money – right now, so that you can put food on your table, gas in your car and pay the electric bill.
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Technorati Tags: frugal, frugality, homeless, homelessness, living in the car, michelle kennedy, one paycheck away, poverty, saving money, sleeping in car, without a net
Posted on 27th September 2007 by mishakennedy in frugal | gardening
, frugal, frugality, gardening, green living, heat, heating oil, money, pellet stoves, wood
But, but that little knobby thingy on the wall is so much nicer! I know, I know. It’s nice to be able to just turn the knob and get a little extra heat – especially when the temp is dipping below 0. But at $3 a gallon for heating oil – can you afford to ignore your environmental conscience any longer?
In addition to being inexpensive (free if you can cut it yourself), wood is a renewable energy source. From Hearth.com: “Burning fossil fuels sends carbon dioxide, the main greenhouse gas, on a one-way trip. It pumps million-year-old carbon from inside the earth into the atmosphere, where the concentration of carbon dioxide is increasing. Burning oil, gas and coal is like spending the earth’s savings, and scientists say it is changing the global climate. Wood fuel is different. As trees grow, they absorb carbon dioxide from the air in a process powered by the sun. Indeed, about half the weight of dry wood is this absorbed carbon. A tree destroyed in a forest fire or one that falls and decays in the for est gives up its carbon once again to the air as carbon dioxide. So continues the earth’s carbon/carbon dioxide cycle.”
While most people think of heating with wood as an “old-fashioned” technology, let me say that new woodstoves are more and more efficient. With many, you can go all night without having to get up to feed it.
Wood pellet stoves are great – and I highly recommend them as well, but a woodstove has one advantage a pellet stove doesn’t – it can be lit when the lights are out. When the electricity is out, a pellet stove (and most other forms of heat) are out too – not so a woodstove! A woodstove can keep you warm when the electricity is out – and it can cook food, and melt snow for water (if your power is out, the water won’t flow for long!).
Burning wood is also a very safe proposition these days. With a little practice and a little help from those who know (feel free to email your questions to me, if you need to), burning a wood fire is as safe as lighting a pilot light – or turning up the thermostat.
And remember, if you don’t cut the wood yourself, ask your firewood supplier where the wood came from – make sure it’s sustainable!
Great resources for learning about burning wood:
www.hearth.com
Technorati Tags: , frugal, frugality, gardening, green living, heat, heating oil, money, pellet stoves, wood
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