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Posted
Oct 05 2007, 09:18 AM
by
Donna Freedman
Rating:
Money Blog: Smart Spending Blog - MSN Money
I remember when slow cookers first hit the market, back in 1970. To my cash-strapped family such things were luxuries, culinary toys for the rich. We felt the same way about popcorn poppers and the Fry Daddy.
But I don’t know how I would have made it as a struggling single mother eight years later without the slow cooker. It made most of the meals on which the baby and I subsisted: primarily bean soup, with occasional forays into minestrone and spaghetti.
One or two mornings a week, I’d put a pound of great northern beans in the pot with some grated carrot, chopped onion, pepper, and smoked neck bones or ham hock. When I got home, the smell of soup made me feel like someone had been cooking for me all day. It also took my mind off the sack of dirty diapers that I’d be washing on a scrub board later on.
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Posted
Dec 05 2007, 01:21 PM
by
Karen Datko
Rating:
Money Blog: Smart Spending Blog - MSN Money
Paul Michael at partner blog Wise Bread is mad as hell, and he's going to do something about it. He's sick of seeing supermarkets raise the price before putting something on sale, and then charge about what they normally would for the sale item. It's sneaky and underhanded, he writes. "'Wow, I just saved a bunch of cash,' you're thinking. But in actuality you've saved almost nothing and bought more product than you would have done if the sale wasn't there," he writes.
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Posted
Jul 09 2008, 12:01 AM
by
Donna Freedman
Rating:
Money Blog: Smart Spending Blog - MSN Money
Yesterday I was thinking about "hypermilers," those folks who go to great lengths to squeeze maximum mileage from their cars. While of course I strive for the best mileage possible, I don't hypermile -- with my car, that is. As a frugalist, I hypermile my whole life.
Meal plans, shopping, entertainment, transportation, utility usage, gift-giving -- all are done with an eye toward achieving maximum bang for the buck.
Plenty of you are right there with me, if posts on the Smart Spending message board and the comments about my articles are any indication.
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Posted
Dec 13 2007, 08:20 AM
by
Karen Datko
Rating:
Money Blog: Smart Spending Blog - MSN Money
This post comes from Myscha Theriault at partner blog Wise Bread. While I've been developing this article for a while now, Philip Brewer's recent article on bulk-purchase investment returns really kicked things into high gear. Most of us have known for some time that purchasing in bulk provides decent financial returns. Now, with Philip's excellent analysis of the potential percentage rates, you may be more motivated than ever to get started with large-quantity purchasing. The problem? Bulk buying sounds way simpler than it actually is. Where do you store it? When does it make sense to buy in bulk versus small quantities? It's enough to make your eyes cross and your brain start to feel pickled, particularly if you've never shopped this way before. What's more, it's far from the sexiest financial subject matter out there, which can make it very difficult to analyze and apply to your personal situation. Here's a nuts-and-bolts article covering what I see as the five major areas of consideration.
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Posted
Jan 18 2008, 07:16 PM
by
Karen Datko
Rating:
Money Blog: Smart Spending Blog - MSN Money
Millionaire Mommy Next Door offers a suggestion for making $1 million for retirement, and it all begins with lunch. You don't spend $9.50 for lunch every workday, and instead eat a $3 lunch from home. You invest the difference in a Roth IRA, and "let the account simmer for 41 years," she says. (We can only imagine how much more money you would have if lunch were a simple tuna fish sandwich and an apple, instead of, say, Lean Cuisine.) This wonderful post illustrates the beauty and power of compound interest in a way everyone can understand. Her point is that you can make even small amounts of money work for you in a meaningful way.
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Posted
Apr 29 2008, 12:47 PM
by
Karen Datko
Rating:
Money Blog: Smart Spending Blog - MSN Money
To some, 60 minutes may be a TV show, but to Kris at Cheap Healthy Good, it's the time she takes each week to implement her personal system for saving major money on groceries. With the rising price of food, this is something we all need to read about. Before you try her system, she advocates three steps. First: Junk any food on hand "that A) you can't identify, B) is in an advanced state of decay or mummification, and/or C) is old enough to be carbon-dated."
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Posted
Mar 20 2008, 02:30 PM
by
Karen Datko
Rating:
Money Blog: Smart Spending Blog - MSN Money
Melissa at A Penny Closer used to be skeptical about all of the gloom-and-doom talk about the economy. No longer. Now she's having a very difficult time staying within her $75-a-week food budget, even though she's buying less meat. "In the past I could shrug off the pessimism," she writes, "but now it's hit home in a new way and I'm a little nervous." Even pet food costs more. The sale price for the same can of cat food at her local store went from 33 cents to 44 cents in two weeks. What is her plan to cope? No more monthly $50 donations to the "fun money" savings account, even fewer meat-based meals, and more soup-and-sandwich dinners are among her strategies.
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Posted
Dec 28 2007, 01:16 PM
by
Karen Datko
Rating:
Money Blog: Smart Spending Blog - MSN Money
Philip Brewer of partner blog Wise Bread has a lasting memory of a poor family he encountered many years ago. Their clothes were worn, their car was old, and they were skinny. "It's unusual to see that now," he writes. "The new face of poverty is fat." The fact is that poor people buy the least expensive source of calories they can find, Brewer says. As we've noted here before, it's often junk food. If you eat packaged, high-calorie food until you're satisfied, you are going to be fat, Brewer adds -- and, we might add, prone to diabetes and other health problems associated with obesity. He offers some possible solutions.
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Posted
May 05 2009, 02:46 PM
by
Karen Datko
Rating:
Money Blog: Smart Spending Blog - MSN Money
Now that gardening is all the rage, some bloggers are wondering how many people will follow through once they get the seeds in the ground.
After all, those little plants need help. This takes work.
Suppose you do take this up. How can you tell whether your garden will end up saving you money or whether it's bound to disappoint? Blogger "pfadvice" shed some light on that question in a post at Saving Advice by comparing the methods of her neighbor, who's new to gardening, and her own. She's an old hand.
The neighbor's first mistake: buying a rototiller for a small garden patch.
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Posted
Nov 16 2007, 09:52 AM
by
Donna Freedman
Rating:
Money Blog: Smart Spending Blog - MSN Money
Want to save a ton of money and enjoy comfort food to boot? Bake some potatoes in your slow cooker. I did this one recent weekend morning and they were done to a tender turn after two hours on the high setting. The aroma was irresistible, even though I'd had a late breakfast, so I split open one of the smaller spuds, glossed it with butter and sprinkled on some coarse kosher salt. Afterward, I realized this was probably the cheapest snack I've had in ages. At 99 cents for a 10-pound bag, the per-spud price was about 4 cents. The butter cost less than 2 cents (loss-leader price plus coupon). The price of the salt was infinitesimal, since it came from a one-pound box I bought at the dollar store . They can make a cheap supper, too, and involve practically no labor. We know that on some nights, we're more vulnerable to the allure of Thai takeout or the fast-food drive-through – maybe Mondays send us reeling, or Thursdays are crunch days at work. So on those nights, plan a spud supper instead
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