Took my two little ones out for a treat yesterday -- something very rare for me. I took them to Chuck E. Cheese. They have online "rewards calendars" that you can print off and bring with you. When you turn them in, each child receives 10 free tokens. You have to buy food so I buy an individual...

I'm not sure about the cost per hour in labour, but it's really not that expensive if you do it right. I follow the Square Foot Gardening method and started really small (about 40 sq ft). It probably cost around $50 for the wood and stain we purchased to build the raised beds and maybe another...

Despite the advances we have made in today's society, when times get tough people often look back to the old tried-and-true methods of coping with problems. Case in point: bartering. With many people strapped for cash, bartering is making a big comback. Bartering has been around since before there...

Hi, I am looking for individuals or restaurants in the Chicago area that would like to share an order of 2000lbs of ground beef. I can take around 700lbs. If I could find 4 more people to share this ground beef order, we probably could get the beef for at least half of the price at the grocery store...

I couldn't figure out where else to put this comment, so... I disagree strongly with Damon Carr's article in this week's Dollar Stretcher newsletter, claiming that there is no way to achieve financial success without "sacrifice." The use of this word implies that living a frugal...

One thing that I really enjoy about my job is that I get to meet a lot of interesting people. And, not surprisingly, many of them are of the frugal living stripe. Two of them are Annette and Steve Economides. They're often referred to as "America's Cheapest Family". I've had the...

Heard an interesting phrase at a conference I was attending. It came from Tom Evans, President and CEO of Bankrate. He said that "money is no longer a spectator sport" and I think that he's right. When we bought our first home the choices in mortgages were pretty simple. Unless you were...

Wow! The news is full of stories about rising gas and food prices. For those of us who pay attention to our expenses it's not a big surprise. We've known for awhile that's been happening. In fact, what surprises us (at least me) is that so many people were unaware of what was happening. Take...

For the first time in years, inflation is back in the news. If you've studied economics, that's no surprise to you. In an attempt to make it easy for people to borrow money, the Federal Reserve has been lowering interest rates for years. When they do that, they reduce the value of the U.S. Dollar...

Saw something fairly interesting yesterday. I was sitting waiting for a stoplight to change when a cab pulled into the lane next to me. I knew it was a cab because it had a sign painted on the door. The car was a little smaller and older than what you normally think of as a cab. Then the cab pulled forward...