From the category archives:

Frugality

Dutch Oven Cooking: 2 Mega Easy Recipes for Frugal Camp Cooking

My family and I enjoy spending time in the great outdoors. We are fortunate enough to live in the Pacific Northwest so our camping options are many. Last year we scored ourselves some cast iron cookware including a dutch oven for outdoor cooking. A dutch oven or camp oven is really just a cast iron […]

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10 Reasons County Fairs are Better than Disneyland

It’s fair time, complete your staycation with a trip to the carnival to eat some deep fried pixie sticks, ride the Zipper and listen to some Def Leppard and enjoy 10 ways that the County Fair is better than Disneyland.

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How To Make your Own Homemade Air Conditioner

Okay technically it’s not an air conditioner it’s an evaporative cooler aka a swamp cooler but definitely provides a level of cooling to your room. I’m not going to lie to you. This is not a 2 minute fix, nor is it for the faint of heart, and finally it’s not the most attractive of contraptions (as […]

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Speed Kills…Your Gas Mileage that is. Hypermiling for Noobies.

On my recent good old fashioned family trip to the Oregon Coast we roadtripped down in our VW SportWagen TDI. I had hundreds of miles to cover and while on the freeway I figured I’d test out some different techniques to see if I could maximize our already excellent gas mileage. We normally get about […]

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Are You Fiscally Negligent? Did Netflix Cancel You Because You Never Swapped Movies?

I’ve done a variety of things to sabotage my own budget so much so that I wanted to share them here as not really savings tips but more like financial penalty avoidance (FPA). When you look at the potential expenses you could literally save hundreds a year by avoiding these traps so take this as an opportunity to learn from my mistakes or celebrate our financial failures together.

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When DIY has No ROI: Diary of a DIYaholic

I’ll be honest this is going to be a semi-painful tell-all of DIY projects gone awry of yours truly. When presented with the option to pay a professional $100 to complete something for me when I could only spend $20 if I did it myself, I’ll pick the latter option most every time. Well that’s […]

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Frugal Fix: Revive your Cell Phone or Electronic Devices from Water Damage

If you are like me you have dropped your fair share of cell phones, pagers, ipod’s, gameboy’s and camera’s in various bodies of water. Come on who hasn’t had a pager ride your belt right into the urinal? Okay maybe that was just me. Over the years I have polished some techniques for reviving these electronic items resulting in a fair survival rate.

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Refinance Your Home Even if it’s Underwater with the Making Home Affordable Program

If your home value has decreased and you don’t think you can refinance you still may be able to refinance at today’s mortgage rates. The Making Home Affordable program from the US Federal Government is designed to help homeowners who may have Adjustable Rate Mortgages that are adjusting or have loans with higher interest rates who may not qualify for conventional loans due to their home value versus their mortgage balance

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Is your printer robbing you blind? Calculate your Electricity Usage with a Kill A Watt

Is it worth your time to reduce electricty usage? Where’s the best bang for the buck? More importantly how would I really know how much I’m saving? Read on to learn how to use the Kill A Watt to calculate your electricity costs for most anything in your house.

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