A lot of people are living frugally now who weren’t doing so a few years ago. The reason for this is obvious; the recession has caused them to need to cut back on spending. This type of frugal living is considered to be involuntary frugal living. That’s because it is the circumstances surrounding a person’s finances that make these people decide to live frugally.

Not everyone who lives frugally feels this way though. There are a lot of people who engage in voluntary frugality. And you might be surprised how many different reasons there are for the choice to live frugally. Some of the top frugal living philosophies include:

• Desire to simplify. Many people opt to enjoy voluntary simplicity. They avoid spending money on things that will complicate their lives including anything material that is unnecessary and creates debt.
• Eco-friendly mindset. People who choose to be green are people who choose not to waste. These people also aren’t wasting money and so are living frugally.
• Greater purpose in life. People may choose to live frugally so that they can pursue a greater purpose in life. This may be a spiritual purpose or it may simply be a life devoted to creativity.

I am working on being a bit more frugal myself. My main motivation is the desire to save some money to be able to have more freedom in my life. However, I’m also motivated by some of these other reasons including the belief that a simpler life allows us to explore a great purpose while we’re here.

Why do you live frugally?

Tags: Frugal Living, frugal living philosophies, frugality, kathryn vercillo, Personal Finance, save money, voluntary simplicity

I recently wrote an article about the methods you can use to get startup capital for a new business. There are a lot of different methods (including the ten that I wrote about in that article). One of the ones that interests me most is one that isn’t so common. It’s called a ROSCA group.

ROSCA stands for Rotating Savings and Credit Association. This is a small group of people that agrees to get together to lend one another the money that they each need to start a new business. From what I understand, the way that it works is this:

• A group is formed among people who have a small amount of money but not enough to start their own business.
• Everyone in the group meets monthly and brings a membership fee to the group each month.
• The fee is collected and put into a group account for one year. At the end of the year, the fee goes to the first member to start his or her business.
• The group continues to meet. The fees collected for the second year go to a different member.
• This continues until everyone in the group has taken their turn at getting enough money to start a business.

There are obviously risks that you take when you get involved in a group like this. It requires a commitment from people to stick with the lending process over a long period of time. As a result, it’s typically only done in developing nations where other options for getting loans are limited.

However, I think that this might be something that would be beneficial to people in today’s economy. It’s getting harder to get personal loans. At the same time, people in some communities are trying to come together to help one another out. Small community-driven ROSCA groups seem like a smart solution.

What do you think?

Tags: get a loan, get money, kathryn vercillo, loans, money, Personal Finance, rosca, rosca group, rosca loan

One of the topics that I write about on a regular basis is personal finance. I write about many different aspects of this topic but my focus is on saving money and living a frugal life. I believe that living within our means allows us to pursue dreams and focus on what really and truly matters to us.

Some of the things that I’ve written in relation to this during the past week or so include:

• How to find and attend free events. People waste a whole lot of money on entertaining themselves. That’s sad when there are actually tons of free events that you can enjoy with your family, your lover or by yourself.
• How to use coupons during summer travel. There are a lot of people who use coupons to save money. Do you know how many of them forget to do that when traveling? Too many! Hopefully these tips will inspire people to take their coupons on their trips with them.
• How a frugal life is a healthy life. Some people live a frugal life and are also unhealthy but it’s not that common. It’s especially rare among people who choose frugality (instead of having it forced on them by circumstance). Here’s a look at why frugal and healthy go hand-in-hand.
• Choosing foods that pair well together. If you buy two inexpensive foods that can be combined to make many different recipes (like broccoli and cheese!) then you can save money on groceries.
• Coupon news. I like to stay on top of news about coupons. News this week included a new printer that’s great for coupons, statistics about online coupons and problems with in-store coupons.

I love writing about saving money. I also love reading about it so if you know of good blogs or articles on this topic then feel free to drop a line!

Tags: Frugal Living, kathryn vercillo, links, money, Personal Finance, saving money

I love going on cheap dates. Don’t get me wrong – I can get all glammed up and go out for an expensive night on the town as well. But I tend to think that inexpensive dates are a lot more fun. You’re more relaxed on them. And you usually end up doing things that are more creative than you do when you spend a lot of money on traditional dates.

I happen to think that summer is the ideal time for romantic cheap dates. Part of that has to do with the great weather that most places have during the summer (something that’s not necessarily true where I live in San Francisco but can be found nearby). And it also has to do with the fact that there are so many great cheap events in summer that don’t necessarily happen the rest of the year.

Last weekend I got to enjoy a series of activities that made for great cheap dates. I actually went with the guy I’m dating as well as with some friends so it wasn’t uber-romantic but the activities we enjoyed were perfect examples of great cheap dates. Those activities were:

• A short inexpensive road trip. We piled into a car and listened to the radio and laughed about crazy sights in small towns along the road.
• Lunch in Old Town. We stopped in Old Town Sacramento and got a cheap lunch then just did some windowshopping and photo-taking.
• Antique browsing. I admit it – I love looking at old junk in cheap antique stores. I ended up buying a great colorful pitcher and glasses set for $15 but I would’ve been happy just looking too.
• Art gallery reception. We ended up in the small town of Marysville. There was an art and literary opening reception there. It was themed around the 1970′s and seeing the dressed-up people was great. Plus there was free wine and food.
• Farmers’ Market. There was a Farmer’s Market going on so we got some great inexpensive fruit and walked around people-watching.
• Carnival. It doesn’t cost much to play a game of throwing the darts at the balloons but it sure was fun.
• Spent the day at a river. The main purpose of the trip was to spend a day at the river up there. We floated down natural rock water slides, ate a picnic lunch, swam in too-cold water and had a really great time.

All of these things are cheap and there were fun and I’m looking forward to the rest of the summer’s adventures!

Tags: cheap dates, dating, frugal dates, kathryn vercillo, Personal Finance, Relationships, romance

I have been trying to earn money for as long as I can remember. Even as a child, I was always trying to start my own business or to find a job that I could do even though I was young. I remember one time when I got together with some friends and made homemade friendships bracelets and then took them around the neighborhood to try to sell them.

I wasn’t the only one in my family who earned money with my own business. My kid brother learned early on that he could purchase candy in bulk and then sell it individually to kids at school to make a profit. He and my sister also used to scout the ground at every parking lot we ever entered because they knew that they could find loads of dropped change there which would add up.

We weren’t particularly unique kids as far as this goes. In fact, I think that most kids are pretty creative and I would say that most of them want to do something that allows them to earn spending money of their own. The problem is that it’s really frustrating for kids to figure out how to earn money when they aren’t old enough to work yet.

There are definitely options for kids with all different types of skills, though. Take a look at my article on 30 ways kids can earn money to get some ideas!

Tags: businesses for kids, earn money, home business, how kids earn money, kathryn vercillo, kids, kids business, Personal Finance, work

I spend a lot of time reading and thinking about coupons. I think that coupons are a great way for people to save money on the items that they buy regularly. I also think that that there is some interesting social history around coupons. (Does anyone get nostalgic thinking about clipping coupons with Mom when you were a kid?!) But what I’m thinking more and more about coupons is that the in-store, printable, clipped-out coupons that most people think of when they think of couponing are really totally inefficient and unproductive in today’s society.

There have been a lot of problems reported with printable coupons recently. There are huge problems with coupon fraud which exist primarily because criminals are able to easily manipulate printable coupons to get more money back than the manufacturer wants to allot. There are also problems with too many people trying to print out coupons and then creating in-store problems when they all flood into the store at the same time.

So what’s the solution? Technology seems to be changing in a way that will allow us to avoid use of in-store coupons in the future but to still save money with coupon deals. We already see this happening in the form of online promo codes which let you enter the code into your online shopping sites to get savings. There is a lot less trouble with coupon fraud using these types of coupons and of course you avoid the issue of shopping in overcrowded stores that run out of the products they’ve issued coupons for.

But what about when you do want to shop in stores? I think that coupons may be popular but society is leaning in favor of just offering good overall deals instead of coupon deals. For example, many people have found that they can save just as much money by buying generic store brands of items as they can from buying name brands with coupons. They skip the coupons and still get the savings.

What do you think? Do in-store coupons still make sense or are they going to become a thing of the past?

Tags: coupon codes, coupons, kathryn vercillo, Personal Finance, save money, society, Technology

People who read my writing regularly know that one of my favorite topics to write about is personal finance. I have specifically taken an interest recently in frugal living. I’m trying to implement more frugal living tips into my own life. I’m also trying to find the links between frugal living, simple living and green living. These are all ways I want to live and I believe that they go hand-in-hand.

There are tons of great posts and articles out there around the web about personal finance and frugal living issues. I would like to think that my voice contributes to this base of knowledge at least a little bit. Here are links to some of my frugal living and money-saving blog posts that have been around the web so far this month:

• The Difference Between Promotional Codes and Coupons
• How Frugal Living Simplifies Your Life
• Tips for Coupon Use During Summer Travel
• 5 Ways to Save When Shopping Online
• Frugal Tips for Family Day Trips
• Massive Coupon Fraud Case

Would love to know any thoughts that you have on these different frugal living topics!

Tags: Frugal Living, guest posts, kathryn vercillo, money, money saving, Personal Finance, save money

Have you ever thought of the possibility of actually making money off of your summer vacation? Most people don’t even think about this but it’s actually not that difficult to do if you have something of an entrepreneurial spirit and a creative side.

I usually do it by writing about my travels. Travel writing for blogs and magazines can help to offset the cost of vacations that you’re already taking. If you get really lucky, you might eventually be able to go to new destinations on someone else’s dime if you’ll write about it for them.

Writing isn’t the only way to make money from summer vacations though. Check out the other ideas that I have for this in my recent article titled 10 Ways to turn your Summer Vacation into Cash. I’d love to know if there are any other ideas that you have so drop a comment here if you think of something else to add!

Tags: kathryn vercillo, make money, Personal Finance, summer vacation, Travel

I am one of those people who pretty much ignores every “deal” that I’m offered. What I’ve learned is that I rarely need what’s being offered and the “deal” almost always turns out to involve too many terms and clauses to make it actually wortwhile.

Despite this, I do know that there are some amazing promotional deals out there. For example, cars made with new technology (such as hybrids when they first started to come onto the market) are often promoted with assistance from the government so that you can get terrific rebates and tax breaks when buying them. If you’re in the market for this type of thing at the time that it’s being offered then you can save a lot of money using those promotions.

Sometimes I do wonder if I miss out on good deals like this because I so often have turned a deaf ear to any sort of sales promotion. For the most part, I think that I probably benefit even if I miss out sometimes because I’m not getting sucked into the many bad promotions that are out there. Nevertheless, I think there are probably some people getting perks that I miss out on because I won’t listen to what’s being offered.

Do you pay attention to promotions?

Tags: money, Personal Finance, promotional deals, save money

I frequently read blogs about coupons, frugal living and how to save money. Reading about these topics helps inspire me to reduce my own spending so that I can live a simpler life. Some of the most popular blogs related to this topic are the blogs of coupon queens, women who have turned the use of coupons into an art form that also seems to earn them an income.

There are a lot of tricks used by these coupon queens to get the most for their money with coupons. Ultimately, though, these tricks seems to boil down to three basic things. Coupon queens concentrate their efforts on searching for and saving as many coupons as possible (using coupons for everything), stacking coupons which means using multiple coupons for the same purchase, and always looking for new information about the best ways to save money.

People who want to learn to save money with coupons but who don’t want to invest the time and energy to go ahead and become coupon queens should find that working on these three tricks will help them to save the kind of money that they want to save through the use of coupons.

Tags: coupon queens, couponing, coupons, Frugal Living, Personal Finance, save money