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Archived Posts from this Category
Archived Posts from this Category
Posted by Lise on 29 Dec 2009 | Tagged as: meta, personal finance
I won’t lie – this year has been a tough year for me and my husband. In May, I lost my job in market research, and I still have not found full-time employment. Many of our financial goals have fallen behind as a result, and we have unfortunately been reduced to living more or less paycheck-to-paycheck, something I deplore.
On the other hand, this year has brought me many joys. In not having full-time employment, I’ve found ways to fill my time productively. I spent most of this year free of addictive gaming. I picked up new hobbies. My various freelance jobs taught me much about web design – those much-needed ‘best practices’ that I’m ignorant of, since my way of learning everything web-related is just to jump in and make things work.
In measuring the success or failure of my goals this year, I’m using two things as a yardstick – both my 101 Goals in 1,000 Days list, as well as my more specific 2009 collage.
Goals Attained This Year
Goals Attempted But Not Attained This Year
Goals of Questionable Status
I’m working on putting together a 2010 collage, and I’ll share that as soon as I finish it. In the meantime, how did your year-long goals or New Year’s resolutions turn out?
Posted by Lise on 27 Dec 2009 | Tagged as: meta
I just upgraded WordPress to version 2.9. It’s a bit trickier than can be handled by Dreamhost’s one-click install – as I started this blog in one directory and moved it to another – so I had to do a manual install.
And yet, I seem not to have broken anything! Please poke around the site and confirm that this is true?
Posted by Lise on 28 Aug 2009 | Tagged as: meta
So, all those blogs about blogging say that if you take a hiatus in posting, you shouldn’t do anything to draw attention to your absence.
Here I am, breaking that rule – and also confirming I’m still alive.
A lot has changed in my life since my last posting. The most significant is that I was laid off from my full-time job in market research. I didn’t sit idle long, though; within a couple of weeks I had a part-time freelance gig as a web programmer for a marketing firm in New Hampshire.
I’ve been supplementing this income with a couple of side projects. For one, a friend hired me to write and program the product tour and introductory email blast for a piece of software he’s trying to sell. Secondly, a former coworker, who had recently become VP of Research at a different company, hired me on as a contractor for a phone survey her firm is conducting.
To be perfectly honest, losing my job was probably the happiest thing that could have happened to me. It has taken me on the path toward self-employment, which is ultimately where I want to be. Right now finances are tighter than usual, but I am hoping to fill out my time with more freelance work. I also still look at (and have interviewed for) several full-time jobs; but it seems a lot easier right now to get part-time work.
Aside from work, I have been working intermittently on my garden, (which is doing very poorly this year, alas), planning an RPG campaign for friends, and, after six months of WoW-freedom, volunteering my time to help other gaming addicts find a way out.
Tomorrow I’ll be posting my first substantial post in a while: Reigning in the Dining Out Budget.
Posted by Lise on 05 Dec 2008 | Tagged as: meta
The first part of my review of The Two-Income Trap was featured in this week’s Carnival of Personal Finance, hosted at Mighty Bargain Hunter.
These were two of my favorite articles from the carnival. I totally did not pick them because of the blog names – but I probably should have:
Posted by Lise on 27 Nov 2008 | Tagged as: meta
I’m heading off to Thanksgiving dinner with some friends in a few hours, but right now it’s carnival time!
My post Visualizing $10,000 Extra in Your Life was entered in the 180th Carnival of Personal Finance, hosted by Living Almost Large. Here are some articles I particularly liked:
Eco Joe presented the Festival of Frugality this week, picking his choice of 18 articles out of hundreds and hundreds. A couple I liked were:
Posted by Lise on 19 Nov 2008 | Tagged as: meta
I’ve added a few new blogs to my blogroll recently. Just to highlight them:
But really, I’m writing this post because I want to hear about you. Yes, you. You’re not one of my close friends who reads this blog just to humor me (hi Nat!). Maybe you don’t even have a blog of your own, and RSS confuses you. You don’t leave comments, ’cause what do you have to add, right?
It’s you I want to hear about.
You matter, and I want to make you a FitF celebrity.
Posted by Lise on 13 Nov 2008 | Tagged as: meta
For current readers: I was recently featured on Fox 25′s “Family Coop” segment, talking about sharing resources in your social network as a key to frugality. Ahhh, my three minutes of fame.
For new readers: If the Fox segment is how you’ve found me, welcome! Here are some articles that will give you a quick introduction to this blog and what it’s about:
Feel free to comment below and tell me a little bit about yourself and what you’re hoping to find here!
For new and old readers alike: I’ve just added an email newsletter to this blog. Enter your first name and email address below, and I’ll update you a couple of times a month with site updates and bonus frugality tips. As an additional incentive to sign up, I’m offering my 8-page e-book (e-pamphlet? e-brochure?) “3 Ways to Shave $300 Off Your Monthly Expenses Without Feeling Deprived,” free to anyone who subscribes to the newsletter. This e-book outlines some of the methods I talked about in the Fox segment in greater detail, such as:
And, as always, you can sign up for my feed, which will deliver each of my articles directly to the RSS reader of your choice. (An Introduction to RSS).
Happy reading!
Posted by Lise on 11 Nov 2008 | Tagged as: meta
A friend forwarded me this NY Times article about frugality in rural France vs. New York City: 6 Cents Is 6 Cents, but Time? That’s Something. I shamefully admit that, despite living in France, I’ve never heard the “porcupine in pockets” euphemism for being fiscally-conscious, but this whole story is true of the French shopping experience. I’ll also add that you bag your own groceries in a French supermarket- no one is there to bag them for you.
My favorite from last week’s Carnival of Personal Finance #177 (yes, I’m behind the times) was this article by Shadox of Money and Such: Now May Be A Good Time To Quit Your Job. I have several friends who have been laid off recently who may not agree! Nonetheless, I loved this quote:
If you realize that you will not be able to excel in your position and attain your life goals at the same time, you must accept the logical conclusion that the position is not for you.
Posted by Lise on 03 Nov 2008 | Tagged as: meta
I just wanted to point out a couple of articles from the last two weeks that caught my eye:
America’s Income and Wealth Inequality by Andy of Saving to Invest. Andy takes the Economist’s recent figures on income distribution in different countries one step further, extrapolating the net worth distribution in the U.S. The bad news: the poor in the U.S. are just as poor as those in Turkey or Mexico. Much as I suspected, countries like France lead the pack in terms of wealth equality.
Getting the Buy-In From a Partner by Childfreelife. This article talks about getting your partner involved in your financial adventures. While focused on childfree couples, it is widely applicable.
More on Tuesday or Wednesday, when the carnivals are out!
Posted by Lise on 02 Oct 2008 | Tagged as: economics, meta
September was a goal-less month, but I covered a lot of ground, nonetheless. The number of subscribers to Frugal in the Fruitlands grew to around 40, and I visited topics as diverse as productivity, price comparisons, identity, local eating, and fashion.
The most popular post this month was Identity: The Problem Money Can’t Solve, thanks in large part to Paid Twice’s kind referral. Some of the other popular posts from this month were:
I also talked a lot in the past couple of weeks about the $700 billion bailout of Wall Street, and why I was against it. With the Senate backing the bill, the outcome is looking more and more certain, but the bill still does not address what I feel are the biggest issues with the credit markets – the need for re-regulation. To quote this Mother Jones article:
Perhaps, the greatest lie resides at the very top of the proposed plan: that the bailout will somehow “[assist] American families in preserving home ownership, stabilizing financial markets, and protecting taxpayers.” The only way to protect citizens is to re-regulate the industry along the lines of Glass-Steagall: divide its players and their books into understandable, less risky, more transparent entities… The Democrats inserted a lukewarm provision into the bailout legislation to have the government aid in renegotiating borrowers’ mortgages to better terms, but they didn’t include any enforcement measure requiring lenders to comply.
That said, and my opposition to this bill in its current wishy-washy format registered, the American Housing Institute presents a cogent discussion of pro-bailout thinking. I understand where they’re going, but I reject the assertion that most of these bad debts the government is buying up are “real Vermeers.” I also don’t believe that this bill will encourage the credit industry to reinvest the proceeds in the economy – at least not in a non-toxic way – without credit re-regulation.
And with that thought, I leave you to pursue Day Two of Web Browing Reduction Month. (Day One: Success!)