Frugal in the Fruitlands

I participated in two carnivals this week:

Four Strategies That Are Frugal Only If Your Time Is Worth Nothing appeared in Festival of Frugality #129, hosted at Money Ning. My article was slightly controversial and almost opposite the “try a little harder” theme for the week, but I got some valuable comments on it nonetheless. Some other articles I liked from this week’s festival were:

• Why You Should Focus On Spending Less Over Earning More at SavingAdvice.com. While you can’t underestimate the power of extra income, I like that Shannon mentions on one of the most compelling reason to focus on spending less: unless we learn to control our spending first, it will just keep pace with our income, leaving us no more available cash at the end of the month.
• Where To Buy Cheap Spices at FeedtheFam.com. Spices are an integral part of cooking delicious, healthy food, and shouldn’t be neglected due to cost. Indian groceries are my favorite places to buy spices in just the right quantities, but Gretchen suggests some other alternatives that are new to me.
• Repurposing Items for the Garden at Frugal Pursuit. As a gardener myself, I definitely will be putting some of these to use - especially the first, since my town won’t recycle milk jugs and I have a thirsty apple tree.

Four Expensive Garden Mistakes I’ve Already Made, So You Don’t Have To appeared in Carnival of Money Stories #63 at Bible Money Matters. Some other stories that caught my eye were:

• Build A Business Before You Go Solo at The Digerati Life. As someone who aspires to be self-employed, I know there’s a learning process to go through before I’m ready for that. For one, if I just up and quit my job today, I suspect I’d have a hard time adapting to having more time on my hands - and would end up spending it all watching Judge Judy instead of building a business.
• 10 Surprising Implications of the Global Rise in Food Prices at CurrencyTrading.net. This is a dense article, but a must-read for PF bloggers. We have a responsibility to understand economics as well as personal finance.

Also, we now are available at www.frugalfruitlands.net! You should be able to use links that begin with both “www.frugalfruitlands.net” and “www.electric-monk.net/lise” to access the site from now on. There should be no change in how RSS feeds or permalinks are handled - please let me know if you experience any problems.

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