One of the topics that I particularly enjoy writing about is saving money and living frugally. Following you’ll find links to a selection of my top articles that each offer ten or more tips for some form of frugal living. In total it’s over 100 frugal living tips to help you save money!

1. Top Ten Tips for How to Grow a Frugal Garden
2. Twenty Simple Tips for Spending Less on Food without Resorting to Ramen
3. Ten Tips for Reducing Shipping and Handling Fees
4. Ten Ideas for Romantic Frugal Summer Dates
5. Ten Frugal Summer Fun Ideas for Families and Couples
6. Ten Ways to Turn your Travel into Cash
7. Ten Tips for Breaking an Internet Shopping Addiction
8. Twenty Five Frugal Ways to Say I Love You

Frugality is a popular topic during the recession but I hope that it’s one that remains popular with readers even after the economy improves. Do you think that it will?

Tags: Frugal Living, frugality, money saving tips, Personal Finance, save money, tips

I was recently reviewing all of the ways that using a food dehydrator can save you money. You’d be surprised at just how many ways there are! Some of these are more important than others though so I thought I’d share here what I consider to be the Top 5 Ways that a food dehydrator will save you money:

1. Facilitates buying in bulk. One of the best ways to save money on groceries is to buy bulk items at a discount. However, this doesn’t work if the food goes bad before you can eat it. If you use a food dehydrator to dry the food then it won’t go bad which means that you can more efficiently buy affordable food in bulk.
2. Reduces spending on costly items. You can use a food dehydrator to make your own herbs, spices, dried fruits and camping food. All of these are expensive items when you buy them in the store but you end up paying just a fraction of the cost when you dehydrate them yourself.
3. Increases the likelihood that you’ll make healthy food choices. A lot of people use their food dehydrator to make healthy foods, support raw food diets and go vegetarian. If you do this then you’ll be healthier which reduces the money you spend on medical care. That’s a big savings – and an important step for your life!
4. Gives you a gift you can always give. You can save a lot of money on gifts for others by using your food dehydrator to make homemade foods for people. I love homemade gifts so I especially love this point!
5. Can even be a money maker. A smart person will further increase the savings of a food dehydrator by actually using it to make money. This can be done by selling dried foods, offering classes in food dehydrator use or writing articles about your dehydrator.

So, what do you think – can you save money with a food dehydrator?

Tags: Food, food dehydrator, Frugal Living, save money

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

There are some people who spend a lot of money buying books. I used to be one of those people. What I ended up with was a whole lot of books and a whole lot of debt. Although I loved some of the books that I had, I realized that I didn’t need to keep hanging on to them. And I also realized that there are a lot of places where you can get books for free.

My favorite places to get free books include:

• The library. I’m a big fan of using the public library system to do all of my learning.
• Friends. I’m really good about returning the books that I borrow in a timely manner so I have a lot of friends who feel comfortable lending me their favorite reads.
• Book swaps. I trade books online through sites like Paperback Swaps.
• Authors. I do book reviews sometimes so I’m able to get free books from the authors of certain books.

There are lots of places to get free and cheap books. Do you use them or do you prefer to buy your books new?

Tags: books, free books, kathryn vercillo, paperback swaps, reading, save money, swap books, where to get free books

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

I really love guest posting on other blogs. It provides a great opportunity for writing about new topics and networking with others who write about the same things that capture my interest. I’ve been really lucky to do a lot of guest posting recently on the topic of frugal living which is a topic that I really enjoy writing about.

Some of my most recent guest posts on this topic were:

• Tips for Talking about Money with Your Spouse. A lot of people have a tough time discussing money and it can really lead to problems in a marriage if you aren’t careful!
• 5 Reasons Not to Save Stuff for Later. I fully believe that you should get rid of everything that you’re not using to declutter your home and your mind!
• Earn Money by Hosting Travelers this Summer. This is something I’m thinking seriously about doing myself!
• Low Cost Summer Activities Can Be Yours! I love the fact that there are so many different ways to keep entertained this summer without spending a lot of money.
• Positive Things Caused by the Bad Economy. I think it’s really important to stay upbeat despite problems with the recession.

If these articles interest you, you might also want to check out the list of frugal living guest posts that I did last month!

Tags: blog posts, Frugal Living, guest post, kathryn vercillo, save money, writing

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

I mentioned earlier this week that I’m interested in the idea of owning a bed-and-breakfast someday and that I’m toying with the idea of trying to rent out an extra room in my apartment to people who are vacationing in the area to see if this is something that I’d truly enjoy doing later in life. The one big concern that I have is the safety risk that you open yourself up to when you open your home to strangers.

For the most part I’m not worried about this. I’ve done a lot of traveling throughout the country and done a lot of things that could have been risky – such as using Craigslist Rideshare to get from one place to another or staying in the home of a pen pal who I’d never met in person. I believe that I’m good at screening people online and am willing to trust my gut instinct and end any endeavor that seems like it could go awry.

Nevertheless, the thought does have to cross your mind that you never truly know what you’re going to get when you bring someone into your home. And for that matter, travelers themselves face risks when going to stay in someone’s home. (See my recent article that offers safety tips for couchsurfers.) When you decide to engage in budget travel practices, you open yourself up to more threats than you face when staying in luxury places.

Is it worth it to save the money? I tend to think that it is but only if you’re smart about it. Learning about how to be safe when using budget transportation and staying in budget accommodations is simply the responsible thing to do if you’re going to be safe while traveling. You can have some great experiences when traveling on the cheap but don’t be dumb about it!

Tags: budget travel, frugal travel, save money, Travel, travel safety