This month’s Group Writing Project is about Personal Experiences with Loans, so we’ll tell the story of our first, somewhat disastrous experience with loans, of how we got in trouble and rectified the situation.

In May 2003, when we moved from Hawaii, we lived in a tiny garage apartment in Hayward, CA (more about this in Our Family Financial History). After a few harrowing experiences of walking as long as 3-4 hours through the dodgy neighborhoods to run errands, we decided we needed to buy a car ASAP.

Not knowing the first thing about buying a car or obtaining a loan, we set out on foot on Memorial Day 2003 and walked several miles to the car shopping district. The first used car salesman we spoke to asked us about our credit history, of which he had none. He told us we wouldn’t be able to buy a car without credit history and made some suggestions that we buy some jewelry on financing to build credit. Well, we needed a car then, not a year after owning jewelry we didn’t need, so on we went.

At the next used car lot we stopped at, a young salesman hurried out to speak to us. I can’t quite recall what was said in the conversation except perhaps that we were looking to buy a used car. Before we knew it, we had been whisked off in one of the used cars and driven over to the KIA dealership a block down the road and seated at a table with 2 car salesmen.

Again, they began by asking about our credit. We told them we had no previous credit history, but they went ahead and pulled our credit and came back shaking their heads and tsk-tsking about it, saying it would be really hard for us to buy a car. But good news was that I had an Old Navy credit card account (which I had never used), so I could actually get a loan – at an interest rate 24% APR. It was the only way, they said, that we could get a car.

We believed what they said and settled on a used 1999 Sephia LS, which was listed at $7,000, with a monthly payment of $230 (about $190 of which turned out to be interest) for 36 months. I didn’t like it, but by this time, we had been there for hours, were famished and really just wanted to get out of there. We also felt that we had to get a car that day, because we were too tired to walk all the way back home in that hot weather, and we couldn’t go on walking to buy groceries (Hayward is a scary place and our experience with public transportation there hadn’t been good).

So we finally gave in, put a down payment of $1,500 and took the “deal,” which upon later examination of our loan documents and after licensing and taxes (another $1,500) would have us paying a total of $11,300 for a not-so-great used car. We also made the mistake of not planning ahead and looking into auto insurance, so we had to take the dealership’s deal for insurance until we could get our own.

After we bought the car and spoke to our cousin, who had lots of advice for what we “shouldn’t have done” after the fact, we decided that we would do our best to pay off the loan as quickly as possible. The one good thing about this awful loan was that there was no pre-payment penalty. So we made our monthly payments and saved as much money as possible. By the beginning of June 2004, after 13 monthly payments, we had saved up enough to pay off the remaining balance of about $4,300.

By paying the loan off 2 years early, the final amount we ended up paying for the car was around $8,800. So we were able to save about $2,500. It was a mistake to go car shopping armed with no knowledge, but we did learn from our mistake and you can be sure we will never make the same mistake again. We’ve decided that next time we need to buy a car, we’ll order a new one from Cars Direct and pay in cash.

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About the PF Bloggers Group Writing Project

The Personal Finance Bloggers Network currently consists of 7 active personal finance and frugal living blogs. The Group Writing Project is a monthly project wherein each blog will write a post on a pre-determined topic and publish it on the same day of each month. Be sure to visit the PF Bloggers Group Writing Project page for the others!

Extended Group Writing Project Invitation

If you are a blogger, we would like to invite you to write your own post on this topic and submit it for listing with our entries on our Group Writing Project pages. Please visit the following page for details on how to participate in our Extended Group Writing Project.

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Related posts:

• Interesting Reads from Fellow Personal Finance Bloggers #9
• Interesting Reads from Fellow Personal Finance Bloggers #8
• Poorest Time of Our Lives
• Insurance Matters: The Cost of Complacency
• Falling Off Your Financial Horse: If You’ve Never Fallen Off a Horse, You Just Haven’t Ridden Enough

This month’s topic for the PF Bloggers Network Group Writing Project is “Rich People Gone Broke.” Our chosen subject for this project is Wolfgang Mozart, one of the greatest composers that ever lived. While a genius in everything musical, he was less lucky when it came to money management.

Prodigy and Breadwinner

Mozart first went to work at the age of five. As a child prodigy, he traveled extensively and made a living as performer, composer, conductor and curiosity. These travels were documented by his family’s letters to their friends in Salzburg.

At first Leopold proudly related the enormous sums of money earned by his children, especially Wolfgang, and described the generous (resalable) gifts they received from kings and princes. Then he got wise and began to conceal their earnings, claiming that they made virtually no profit after expenses. This later strategy made it hard for us to know the exact amount of Wolfgang’s earnings, but it was surely a fortune. In addition to cash, the gifts accumulated on these journeys were mostly made of gold and were described by a friend to resemble a church treasury.

Until age 23, Wolfgang Mozart increased his family’s wealth on journeys in Austria, England, Italy, Paris, and other places where he was often received by royalty and nobility. If they did not collect enough gifts at one location, Leopold sold tickets to the public to hear his children perform—anything to make a buck . . or a florin. But this venue lost him some patronage because the upper class didn’t want anything the commoners had.

Although Leopold successfully concealed the earning of his children, it is clear that Wolfgang Mozart was the primary breadwinner of his family, and as such was jealously guarded from theft. His trips were always chaperoned by one or both parents, his father constantly warned him about the deceitful and ensnaring nature of women, and his mother whisked him off to Paris (at the orders of his father) to save him from a girl he desperately wanted to marry.

Rebellion and High Living

“I could not go about Vienna looking like a tramp, particularly just at this time. My linen was pitiable; no servant here has shirts of such coarse stuff as mine, — and that certainly is a frightful thing for a man. Consequently there were again expenditures.” – Vienna, September 5, 1781, in a letter to his father

Mozart’s financial troubles began when he rebelled against his father (after his mother died) and quit his unfulfilling job (something we all understand) as the Archbishop’s musician. In his time, musicians were regarded as craftsmen and ranked as servants in a household, but Mozart’s early experience of being cherished by the highest people in society convinced him that he was special and caused him to be offended by this condition.

Mozart’s early career furthermore harmed his financial prospects by giving him a taste for high living and expensive clothes. The Empress Maria Theresia even once gave him clothes outgrown by her own children and to the end of his days, he was said to have a love of buttons.

Mozart lived a bohemian existence in Vienna, getting the occasional commission, putting on concerts, giving lessons, and selling published works. By comparing the currency of the time with the USD in 1989 William and Hilda Baumol estimate Mozart’s average income during his Vienna years to be about $175,000 annually. His opera The Marriage of Figaro alone earned a fee of $30,000, the same amount as his annual rent.

He would have had enough to live on had he not “needed” luxurious apartments and clothes. Mozart excused his extravagances by saying that he had to look and live a certain way to fit in with his noble patrons. We have to admit that to a degree he was justified in needing premises to teach and the best piano available at the time. His wife was said to be equally extravagant a spender and in later years spent much time at a spa, supposedly for an illness but possibly carrying on an affair.

Pecuniary Problems

In later years, Mozart’s financial state became increasingly desperate. His earnings decreased drastically due to inflation and the economical climate during the Turkish War. There are also rumors that the court composer Salieri sabotaged him somewhat (but didn’t kill him). His failure to secure a permanent post may be because he was not respectfully servile and lacked Beethoven’s ability win everyone’s love while being terribly rude.

To make matters worse, Mozart’s father died and left everything to his sister to punish Mozart for deserting the family business. Much of the money bequeathed to Anna Maria was likely to have been earned by Wolfgang in his youth and concealed from him by his father. He was not even allowed one of the many trinkets given to him at his performances. The disowned son was reduced to begging loans from his friends and the clandestine composition of a Requiem which he failed to complete before he died.

Sadly, things were starting to look up for Mozart at the time of his death. His last opera, The Magic Flute, had made him immensely popular and he had been appointed the next Kapellmeister at St. Stephen’s Cathedral. But had he lived to enjoy a larger income, who is to say he would not have incurred proportionately larger debts? Would he have increased his standard of living and the number of buttons on his coat to keep up with his new degree of fame?

Posthumous Prosperity

As for his wife, Constanze Mozart became a shrewd businesswoman when she found herself a widow with two young children. After her “friend” and Mozart’s student Süβmayr completed the mysterious requiem, Constanze cheated Mozart’s customer Count Walsegg who intended to perform the piece as his own composition. She pretended ignorance of the exclusiveness of the contract and sold the work to a publisher . . . after she sold Count Walsegg his copy. She procured a pension from the Emperor and took advantage of her status as a poverty-stricken widow to make sizable amounts of money with benefit concerts.

The Mozart family prospered. The widow made a good living selling the works of her late husband, putting on concerts with his music, and later writing his biography with her second husband. Though poor in life, Wolfgang Mozart was able to provide for his family in death and in that sense, was not a financial failure.

Sources:

• Mozart: A Life
• On Mozart (Woodrow Wilson Center Press)
• Mozart.
• Mozart: The Man and the Artist Revealed in His Own Words

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About the PF Bloggers Group Writing Project

The Personal Finance Bloggers Network currently consists of 8 active personal finance and frugal living blogs. The Group Writing Project is a monthly project wherein each blog will write a post on a pre-determined topic and publish it on the same day of each month. Be sure to visit the PF Bloggers Group Writing Project page for the others!

Extended Group Writing Project Invitation

If you are a blogger, we would like to invite you to write your own post on this topic and submit it for listing with our entries on our Group Writing Project pages. Please visit the following page for details on how to participate in our Extended Group Writing Project.

Related posts:

• August 2008 Finance and Frugality Blog Carnivals
• Ludwig & Wolfgang
• More About Us
• Shop
• Motivating Children to Practice Music (Part 2)

This first writing project deals with the circumstances, people and events in our past which have led to our present financial habits. I proposed this topic as the first of our group writing project as I had been planning to write something about our background and why we live the way we do.

We are one of those people who have a somewhat complicated history. In our first 25 years, we had lived in 3 different countries and called approximately 20 different places “home.” After several hours of attempting to put it all in prose, we have finally given up and decided to put our family financial history and relevant events in timeline format (and with authentic pictures), for your sake and ours.

A note before we begin: The time periods used to head each section are names of actual time periods from history; however, they are not all in correct historical order, but rather arranged to fit eras of our lives.

Pre-History

• 1978 July – Oakland, CA
  Mother, an art student from Taiwan, marries a young engineer and flight instructor from Japan whom she feels sorry for because he is poor and alone.

Ancient History

• 1979 March – San Francisco, CA
  Penelope arrives.
• 1980 November – San Francisco, CA
  Madoline arrives.
• 1978-1980
  Father cannot find decent work and receives gifts of money and private airplane (in hopes of stimulating flight instruction business) from our maternal grandmother.
• 1981-1987 – Tokyo, Japan
  Father moves family to Japan for better work opportunities. Father becomes a workaholic and makes a lot of money, buys himself computers and other gadgets but won’t give Mother money for food or clothes. Mother relies on grandparents for help and begins giving English lessons to neighborhood children after learning Japanese.
• 1987-1988 – Taiwan
  Father tells mother to leave and take us with her. Mother files for divorce and we are sent to live with various relatives in Taiwan while Mother works to build up a successful multi-level marketing business in Japan and Taiwan.

The Middle Ages

• 1988 July – Kauai, Hawaii
  Mother marries a spendthrift, workaphobe, and tax evader among other things disguised as a romantic gentleman in a ninja suit.
• 1988-1994 – Several locations on Oahu, Hawaii
  Mother continues to work at multi-level marketing business, Forever Living Products, bringing in as much as $10,000 per month for several years. Stepfather also helps by dressing up in business suits; however, the level and efficacy of his participation is questionable. 

  For the first we few years, we enjoy an idyllic childhood living in nice houses, one with a swimming pool, with a menagerie of pet cats, dogs, guinea pigs, rabbits, mice, fish and birds. As we get older, our mother begins to share her worries about our stepfather’s shopaholicism. He goes through one expensive phase after another – chess (during which he buys several costly chess sets and strategy books), golf, motorcycles, guitar, etc. She is also constantly worrying about his tax debt and his refusal to do anything to remedy the situation.

• 1991 – 2000 – Family Business
  Staring around age 12 and 10, Madoline and I become partially responsible for helping to manage the family business, as Mother and Stepfather become the area General Managers and run the warehouse for product inventory. Our duties include helping customers (called distributors) with product purchases, explaining the various purposes of the products, taking orders, retrieving and carrying products to customers’ cars, monthly inventories, compiling and mailing monthly sales summaries to the main office. We continue to help out in this business till around part-way through college, at times running the business solely in Stepfather’s place in later years.
• 1994 December – Hawaii Kai, Hawaii
  Mother is diagnosed with stage 4 cancer with 6 months to live. She begins preparing a will, appoints Stepfather legal guardian, names a trustee to set up our trust funds for the life insurance policy left for our future and education – $100,000 each for our education, $500,000 for the purchase of a permanent residence. Knowing Stepfather’s spendthrift nature, she allots $100,000 for his personal use. One month prior to Mother’s passing, the trustee of Mother’s estate is changed to Stepfather.

Imperialism

The following take place in several more locations on Oahu, Hawaii each successively less expensive than the previous.

• 1995 October
  Mother passes away, Stepfather collects the life insurance and begins spending money immediately. He purchases a new car – on credit so as to retain the cash for investing – and ignores calls from lawyer to set up trust funds.
• 1995 November
  Stepfather meets a man called “Grandpa” who has the investment opportunity of a lifetime; give him $250,000 and he will receive $6 Million in 2 months. Stepfather gives “Grandpa” $250,000 – without our consent, of course.
• 1995 November – Early 1996
  In anticipation of millionairehood, Stepfather spends money as if already a millionaire – takes a party of 10 to the Superbowl (including airfare, hotel and $1,000 tickets), takes entire family of which he is the oldest of nine to Phantom of the Opera, hosts a presidential campaign in Hawaii, etc.

The Great Depression

• 1996 Spring
  “Grandpa” proves by all appearances to be a fraud, though Stepfather continues to hope and chant “Our ship will come in.” All $800,000 is gone, new car is repossessed despite Stepfather’s efforts to hide it a ten-minute walk from house. IRS comes calling for back taxes dating to the 1970’s. All that is left is a modest residual income which would be sufficient for us all to live on if he didn’t spend next month’s check before it arrived.
• 1996 Summer
  Stepfather pushes for me to go to college one year early. When I do not want to do so, he resorts to asking for charity from a classmate’s affluent father. (We are unaware of this until after graduation.)
• 1996 -1997
  Stepfather begins to use the word “frugal” in family discussions, a concept he manages to abide to in theory; in practice, he continues to purchase computers, surfboards, and miscellaneous useless things which are somehow supposed to make him rich.

The Age of Enlightenment

• 1997 May
  I graduate high school and win the Sterling Scholarship for Foreign Language and receive a check for $4,000. Because Stepfather needs money, I endorse the check to him.
• 1997-2002 – Higher Education
  Madoline drops out of high school 2 years early, and does one year of independent study by correspondence in order to save Stepfather $16,000 in tuition, and enrolls in college one year early. We graduate college (with honors ) with the aid of scholarships and the residual income left by our mother. Even though the income is enough to support our very modestly priced education, getting the money from Stepfather to pay our class fees and insurance is like pulling teeth.
• 2001-2002 – My First Job
  I enter the work force after graduating, my first job being a contract 9-month receptionist/secretary for our college’s admissions office. I earn $9.00 an hour and work 30 hours a week. It’s a great first job where I discover I have an affinity for administrative work and enjoy counting how much I make every minute as I work (15 cents per minutes ).

The Great Schism

• 2002 June
  At the time of Madoline’s graduation, we sever ties with Stepfather due to a number of irreconcilable differences. When Madoline graduates and my contract ends, we get full-time jobs together. By sharing a house and all our expenses, we are able to put away about $1,000 a month. After a year at this job, we decide to leave Hawaii and try our luck in California.
• 2002 July – 2003 January
  We hire an attorney to help us deal with Stepfather and manage to transfer Mother’s residual income to us. By this time, the business has dwindled and the income is reduced to about 10% of what it was when our mother was alive and developing the business.
• 2003 February – Tokyo, Japan
  Biological Father now decides he wants daughters again after almost 20 years because he finds himself $80,000 in credit card debt from eating out and buying expensive presents for his girlfriends, and suddenly realizes family is important. Unfortunately for him (and for us), we have long ago stopped considering him as our family. Also, he asks us to help pay his debts which does not sit well with us.

The Age of Discovery

• 2003 May – Our First Apartment
  We decide to try living in the Bay Area, where we had been born. Because we will use up almost all our savings on the move, we look for the most inexpensive place we could find. We find a tiny place on Craigslist – and by tiny I mean 240 sq. ft. – an apartment behind a couple’s garage that will let us arrange the rental over email and let us bring all our pets for $650 a month. (Right: Approx. 1/3 of our First Apartment)
  We pack up our things (3,000 lbs. worth of furniture including our piano which we have had since childhood and couldn’t part with, books and mementos of childhood and our mother) and pets – our 4-year old dog, 16-year old cat, and 22 mice. The apartment is so small that we barely had room left after moving all of our things in.
• 2003 May – Our First Car
  After a couple of scary and extremely uncomfortable experiences walking in our new neighborhood to run errands, we decide we need to buy a car asap. Knowing almost nothing about car shopping and credit, we get tricked into a 24% APR.
• 2003 June – Our First Real Frugal Experience
  Having used up all our savings on the move and down payment on the car, and our monthly check having been delayed, we have $100 in the bank. One night we dig through all of our things, pockets and purses for spare change to buy groceries. Even after our check arrives, we go about setting up our apartment as inexpensively as possible because the amount of the income is unpredictable and unreliable. We begin to find creative alternatives for thing we need.
• 2003 Summer & Fall – Our Second Apartment
  As we are still trying to figure out what we want to do, we temporarily apply for and get jobs as sandwich makers at Togo’s Eatery. After a month, the owners of Togo’s offer us managerial positions at a new upscale pizza shop they are opening in Fremont. The apartment turns out to be in violation of several California building codes, and gets extremely hot, with temperatures above 100 degrees on the hottest days. As we are about to start our new jobs in Fremont, we upgrade to a 400 sq. ft. studio apartment. 

  As limited space continues to be an issue, we go to Lowe’s and bring home a carload of lumber and build ourselves a freestanding 8′ x 6′ loft over our beds with for our computer, cushions and other diminutive furniture. This loft is disassembled for a future move, and later recycled into cabinets, this computer desk (with hand-carved feet shaped like horse hooves), a shipping supply cabinet and beds for our dog.

• 2003 September – Our First U-Haul
  To save money, we rent a 10′ U-Haul for our short distance move from Hayward to Fremont. It’s my first time driving a truck, which is quite scary, but when it’s all done, we can’t help but feel just a little bit proud that we’ve done it all ourselves (except for the piano).
• 2004 March – Our First Credit Cards
  Ever since the car loan fiasco, we have been trying to learn about credit. A regular customer of our pizza shop who works for Bank of America advises us to apply for a credit card. We apply for and get our first credit cards and begin building credit histories. Biological Father wants us to add him as an additional user. We say “no.”
• 2004 Tax Time – Our First Time Filing Self-Employment Tax
  Our first tax season is a disaster. I have no idea about where to start and what forms I need to fill out for the income from our mother’s business. I spend days reading the IRS website and countless forms and instructions. I finally figure it all out and mail out our return on April 15th.
• 2004 June – Our First Loan Paid Off
  We have been saving up to pay off our car loan early (23 months ahead of schedule).

The Dark Ages

• April 2004 – Los Angeles
  Our 16-year old cat is diagnosed with kidney disease in November 2003. He becomes seriously ill in February 2004 and needs constant and costly care. As our pizza shop job does not pay very well due to business problems, we decide to move to Los Angeles for more employment opportunities.
• April 2004 – Our Second U-Haul (Actually Budget Rent-a-Truck)
  Again, to save money, we rent a 15′ Budget Rent-a-Truck for the move from Fremont to Van Nuys. This time the experience has gotten old, and the time constraints to return the truck in 3 days is more than a little stressful. We load the truck and hire a Bay Area piano mover to put the piano in the truck on Day 1, make the 8-hour drive and check into the apartment on Day 2, unload the truck and hire a Los Angeles piano mover to unload the piano on Day 3, and return the truck before 9:00AM on Day 4. We swear then and there as we rub our sore backs that this is the last time we ever U-Haul it.
• 2004 Summer – 2005 Summer – The Lost Year
  Having lost our dog to an accident and our cat to kidney disease in early 2004, we suddenly find ourselves a little aimless. Where we used to be content to stay at home and read or watch DVDs, we now find ourselves restless. For a few months, we wander one shopping mall after another as soon as we get off work (a depressing sales job working for a bald man who shouts a lot), buy more clothes than we need, and are reluctant to go home to an empty apartment. 

  Then we decide to quit our jobs and enroll in some arts classes at the local community college, and re-settle into our frugal habits. We become so frugal that we literally don’t do anything or go anywhere except to the library and to the grocery store. We stop going out except to walk the malls for exercise and window shopping.

The Industrial Revolution

• 2005 July – Franga Designs
  One day, while shopping for a Star Trek Enterprise model for my cousin, I discover eBay. Thus begins Franga Designs, our dog and horse clothing and costuming business named after Mother, which later becomes an online store.
• 2005 October – House Hunting
  Madoline’s designs are an instant hit and we begin to receive many requests for custom designs. Our one-bedroom apartment (638 sq. ft.) is completely covered in fabric, patterns, sewing and photographic supplies that we barely have room to walk. We decide it is time to expand our work and living space, and after all the moving around, that it’s time to buy a house and settle somewhere permanently.
• 2005 November – Homeowners
  We find a charming 3-bedroom house with a nice yard in California City. We make an offer and escrow closes November 22, 2005. To celebrate being homeowners, we go to see Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire (matinee), which to this day remains one of my favorites.

The Modern Era

We are still in the process of settling in our home; with our frugal and DIY mentality, it takes longer to get things done. So far we have replaced all the carpet in our house with our own homemade flooring made from plywood that we sawed into floorboards, built a wall-length and -height shelf for our books and fabrics, and fixed up second hand furniture.

We try to save money wherever we can and build up our savings. Having been privy to our stepfather and our biological father’s mistakes and our mother’s constant stress over finances, we are paranoid about spending and debt.

If you are interested in finding out more about us, please visit the More About Us page.

* * *

About the PF Bloggers Group Writing Project

The Personal Finance Bloggers Network currently consists of 8 active personal finance and frugal living blogs. The Group Writing Project is a monthly project wherein each blog will write a post on a pre-determined topic and publish it on the same day of each month. Be sure to visit the PF Bloggers Group Writing Project page for the others!

Related posts:

• Is “Simple Living” Just Another Term for “Giving Up?”
• Finance Blog Carnivals of Late
• Learning From Our Mistakes: Our First (Auto) Loan
• Closing Your Credit Cards Can Hurt Your FICO Score
• Warm Weather Food Safety Tips

The topic for this month’s PF Bloggers Group Writing Project is our Favorite Christmas Memories. My favorite memory is our first Christmas in our own house, which was 2006. We bought our house in November 2005, but we had to travel out of the country to attend a cousin’s wedding – actually we were bridesmaids for the wedding – so our first Christmas in our house was 2006.

On Black Friday 2006, we went to Walmart for some shopping, and because we take our dogs everywhere with us and they were in the car, Madoline and I took turns going in to shop. Madoline went second, and when she came out, she had an 8′ Douglas Fir in a shopping cart. Thus began our Christmas festivities. We moved the dogs to the front seat, put the backseat down and shoved the tree into the car and it fit just perfectly with the tip of the tree at the dashboard. We drove the 50-minute trip home with Madoline and the 2 dogs in the front passenger seat (one sitting on the floor and one in her lap), the tree at my elbow and the whole car smelling like Christmas.

Wrestling the tree out of the car, sawing off a bit of the bottom and putting it in the tree stand was a bit of an ordeal, but we finally got it standing almost completely straight in our music room (a dining room for most people). This was our dogs’ first Christmas (they would turn 1 on January 5) and while they had no idea what Christmas was, they could tell it was exciting and were all over the place as we got out the ornaments and decorated the tree.

Because this was their first Christmas, we made them Christmas clothes and dressed them up for pictures. After the hours we put into making the clothes, we had to make sure we got lots of good pictures because they would grow out of them in a matter of weeks. Here are some of our favorites.

 

Since this was our first official Christmas with the 2 of us and our new family, we decided to allow ourselves a budget of $100 to shop for each other. In previous years, since living on our own, we either skipped presents or had small budgets of $20 each. This year we went all out. We took a couple of shopping trips to the mall where we again took turns going into stores to buy each other presents, then had to make the other personal look the other way while we put them in and took the out of the trunk.

After we got home, we snuck our gifts to our rooms  and then rooted around the house for boxes to put them in, wrapped our presents and put them under the tree. (This is my favorite part.) We also did some shopping online and whenever the mail carrier rang the doorbell, we ran to the door to make sure the other person wouldn’t see anything. Madoline couldn’t decide what else to buy for me when she still had $40 left, so I ordered the Ticket to Ride German Map Ediition as a present for both of us.

On Christmas Eve, we each opened one present. I wanted to play the Ticket to Ride game so I chose that one as the one I wanted to open but made Madoline open it. We stayed up till 4 a.m. playing that game and whenever we play it now, I think about that Christmas. When we got up on Christmas Day, the first thing both of us wanted to do was to continue playing Ticket to Ride, which we call by it’s German name which is a lot more fun – Zug um Zug [tsoog-oom-tsoog]. So we played Zug um Zug and then each opened a present, then we’d play another game, open another present, one of which was Carcassonne (another of my favorite German strategy games), and so on.

Because our business is mostly seasonal and centered around major holidays, we decided to take a vacation after we shipped out our last Christmas orders (our Christmas rush started the beginning of November and ended around mid-December). We spent the couple of weeks after Christmas hanging out, watching movies, playing games, drinking Earl Grey tea and eating chocolate.

We had also gotten presents for our dogs – little stuffed animals toys that they could play with while we relaxed – and we got enough to give them each one for each of the 12 days of Christmas starting on Christmas Day and ending on Epiphany, their birthday. On their birthday, we baked them a carrot-oatmeal-peanut butter cake which they enjoyed and smeared all over my bed.

That was our first Christmas in our own house, and thus far, my favorite Christmas memory.

* * *

About the PF Bloggers Group Writing Project

The Personal Finance Bloggers Network is a group of personal finance and frugal living blogs. The Group Writing Project is a monthly project wherein each blog will write a post on a pre-determined topic and publish it on the same day of each month. Be sure to visit thePF Bloggers Group Writing Projectpage for the others!

Extended Group Writing Project Invitation

If you are a blogger, we would like to invite you to write your own post on this topic and submit it for listing with our entries on our Group Writing Project pages. Please visit the following page for details on how to participate in our Extended Group Writing Project

Related posts:

• Frugal Christmas: Skipping the Tree and Presents This Year
• Holiday Blog Carnivals
• Free Printable Templates: Christmas Candy Stripe and Plaid Carrier Gift Bags
• Interesting Reads From Fellow Personal Finance Bloggers #12
• Free Printable Templates: Holiday Snowflake Gift Tags, Treat and Mini Carrier Bags

It has been a busy week for us here at Our Fourpence Worth. We partipated in another PF Bloggers Network Group Writing Project, the topic of which was our Personal Experiences with Loans. We wrote about the first time we purchased a car on our own and got in a little trouble by being clueless as to how the credit, loan and auto sales industries work. It was a once in a lifetime mistake that you can be sure we won’t ever be making again – Learning From Our Mistakes: Our First (Auto) Loan.

Check out the PF Bloggers Group Writing Projects page for more, and if you are a personal finance or frugal living blogger, you are invited to join in our Extended Group Writing Project. We also hosted the 16th Edition of the Finance Fiesta, the theme of which was “Devote Your Life to Money!” a cynical poem by David Kessel about the virtues of money.

A quick note before we begin with today’s roundup, we have been doing roundups once a month for the past few months, but plan to begin doing them twice a month. The reason we don’t do weekly roundups as many other bloggers do is simply because of our personal, work and blogging schedule. As you’ve probably noticed, we only manage to publish about 3 original posts a week so weekly roundups would not be a good balance of original and linking posts. OK, now on with the roundup.

PF Bloggers Network Members

• Wide Open Wallet shares her reasons for eating out. $400 a month is quite a lot, but if you enjoy it and can afford it, bon appetit!
• No Debt Plan talks about his “Thing”: Keeping a Bunch of Old Magazines. We have a similar “thing”. My Wall Street Journal pile, for instance, will soon be a WSJ mountain.
• Living Almost Large asks: is spending wrong? As with eating out, it really is all about what you can afford.
  
• Master Your Card gives a guide on How to Balance your Checkbook. In this electronic age, it probably is the norm to not know how to do this. Might I also suggest our Monopoly Game Expansion #2: Personal Checking Account for a fun way to practice this important skill.
• Girls Just Wanna Have Funds offers some car buying advice (something I was planning to do as well to follow up our experience with our car loan): Put On Your Lace Gloves: Get The Car You Want At A Price You Can Afford.

Elsewhere in the Personal Finance Blogosphere

• The Simple Dollar gives us Why Many “Alternative Income” Ideas Aren’t Worth Your Time – And What You Might Do With It Instead.
• I enjoyed Money Ning’s What Motivates You to Make Money? It is important to know and not lose sight of your true motives.
• Living Well on Less explains the beneifts of Life without a microwave. We did this for a while when our 12+ year old microwave died. It was a little inconvenient sometimes, but not at all impossible.
• Saving Advice gives us Ten Money-Saving Reasons to Get Out of Bed Early.
• Taxguy instructs on Items to Bring to Your Individual Tax Preparation Appointment.

Carnival Participation

Lately I’ve been really disorganized and have consistently forgotten to submit to blog carnivals, but I did manage to remember one. We’d like to thank The Personal Financier for including my post on Switching to Paperless Statements in the Carnival of Personal Finance #170 – Famous Last Sentences Edition. This edition features many [entertaining] statements, hopefully fictitious, that have not always resulted in a good end for the money manager or investor who said it. One of my favorites is #20: “It just can’t get any lower than this…”

Head on over for more personal finance reading recommendations.

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Related posts:

• Interesting Reads from Fellow Personal Finance Bloggers
• Interesting Reads From Fellow Personal Finance Bloggers #12
• Interesting Reads from Fellow Personal Finance Bloggers #2
• Interesting Reads from Fellow Personal Finance Bloggers #3
• Early to Bed and Early to Rise Makes a Man [or Woman] Healthy, Wealthy and Wise

Reading is one of the most frugal hobbies in existence, and is something, in my opinion, that everyone should do. Not only is it entertaining, but it can be beneficial and educational in many ways. In fact, reading is (along with watching period films based on classic literature) Madoline’s and my favorite hobby, and when we’re not working we can often be found with a book in front of us, even while eating.

The virtues of reading (even light-hearted, entertaining fiction) are as follows:

• Subconsciously improves your knowledge of language, grammar and writing
• Acquisition of vocabulary through example in context
• Expands your horizons and knowledge of people and the world
• Teaches a sense of perspective and the ability to see more than one side of a situation
• Improves overall reading comprehension skills and better prepare you for life
  • Good reading and writing skills are essential for success in career and business
  • The ability to better read and understand contracts, terms and conditions (such as credit card terms) helps you to be a more conscientious consumer
  • Proper writing and spelling is a necessity if you want to be taken seriously whether it be in letters, on message boards, your own website or blog, etc.

So now that I’ve convinced you of the virtues of reading, here are some tips for reading on a budget (or ) and sources for affordable reading. While we try to borrow from the library as much as possible, we do sometimes purchase books.

A few reasons we purchase books are:

• Collecting
  Book collecting is just as rewarding a hobby as stamp or coin collecting. Some people collect for fun, and others for profit. We personally love books so much that we would rather keep old and rare books than sell them.
• Reading more than once
  We have favorite books and series that we often read more than once (sometimes once a year) and feel it worthwhile to purchase and collect them.
• Study and reference
  Madoline is currently studying in preparation for graduate school, so we often purchase reference and related materials that will be useful both now and later.
• Home library
  We live in a remote area without much to do and our local library can be rather lacking in some areas, so if there is a book we are sure of liking and re-reading, we sometimes purchase it. Also, if you live a frugal lifestyle and often opt to stay home instead of going out and spending money, it’s sometimes nice to have a handy library to pick from when in need of some entertainment or activity.

You don’t have to purchase new books to fill your collection or library. In fact, we often prefer to purchase used books just because they’re more comfortable to read. When we read a new book, we always feel the need to keep it pristine and hate seeing them get dinged or creased. But with used books, we don’t have that problem, and can read in total comfort (after wiping it over with rubbing alcohol). There are many sources for very affordable books, as low as 10-25 cents per book, which I will share below. I will start with the most preferred (frugal) sources and work my way down.

Continue on for a list of affordable reading resources.

1. Libraries

Every city, county and/or state has a public library system. You’ve already paid for the resources offered by the library, so you might as well use it. Most library systems these days are very up-to-date and offer the latest bestsellers and new releases. For more on the benefits of libraries, refer to my post .

2. e-Books

I personally prefer physical books that I can carry around and read in bed or a comfy chair, but for those who don’t mind reading on the computer, e-Books are very easily available from a variety of sources these days. Most free e-Books are classics and other works that have entered into the public domain as a result of expired copyright, but libraries often offer free access to thousands of new release and bestsellers in e-book and audio-book formats through their websites. A couple of good sources for free e-Books are:

• Project Gutenberg
• Book Glutton

3. Library and Friends of the Library Book Sales

Most libraries have a Friends of the Library group that collects donated books and organizes regular sales to raise funds for the library. These book sales often sell old, used, like-new and sometimes even new books for incredible prices, often at 10 to 25 cents for a paperback, 50 cents for softcover trade paperbacks, and $1.00 for hardbacks. These types of sales in metropolitan areas such as Los Angeles are especially plentiful in current bestsellers in new condition. They usually occur once a month in most areas, but even when there isn’t a sale, many libraries have a cart or shelf near the entrance where you can pick up books and deposit the money into a collection box.

The Book Sale Finder website is a great place to search for and sign up for notifications of book sales in your area.

4. Thrift Stores

Thrift stores such as Goodwill and Salvation Army usually have a book section with decent prices. They’re not as good as the library sales, but cheaper than most other used book stores, with prices between 50 cents for smaller children’s books to $2.00 – $3.00 for other books.

You can search for thrift stores near you at The Thrift Shopper.com.

5. Used Books Online

My favorite online source for used books is abebooks.com. Prices start at $1.00, even for some new books, and there is a vast selection from booksellers all over the world. The sellers that sell on this site also sell on other used book sites such as Amazon Marketplace, but at AbeBooks, the combined shipping rates for additional books from the same seller are sometimes better, as it would seem that AbeBooks allows the sellers to set their own rates for additional books, while the other sites set a flat rate. Some sellers on AbeBooks offer combined shipping rates of only $1.50-$2.00 per additional book (within the United States), while most other sites charge between $3.00-$3.99 per additional book.

	Author Title Keyword ISBN

6. New Books Online

If you can’t find a book used or free from the library and must buy it new, then I’d say go with Amazon or Overstock.com. I recently learned that many people are not aware that Overstock.com carries books and movies. In fact, Overstock.com actually often has better prices than Amazon even when you add shipping charges, but Amazon has a wider selection, competitive pricing and free shipping on orders over $25.00.

• Books on Amazon.com
• Books on Overstock.com

Related posts:

• April 2008 Finance and Frugality Blog Carnivals
• Under the Weather – Recommended Reading
• Pecuniarities (Our Fourpence Worth) 1 Year Anniversary
• Interesting Reads from Fellow Personal Finance Bloggers #10
• My Favorite Money and Time Saving Websites

The topic for this month’s PF Bloggers Group Writing Project, “Poorest Time of Your Life” which was decided about 5 months ago, comes at a somewhat inopportune time. When our group picked out these topics, whoever it was that suggested this topic must have thought that we must all be in a position where the poorest time of our lives were in the past and could serve as an inspirational story of financial achievement.

But with the recent and current economic developments (or should I say, deterioration?) and the rate of inflation, I really can’t say if the poorest times of our lives really are past. At first thought, I just assumed that the poorest time of my life was past, but upon further contemplation, I am beginning to question if NOW might not be the poorest time of my life.

When I sat down to write this essay, I had planned on writing about two brief periods in Madoline’s and my past when were quite poor. They were transition periods in our lives, however, which really didn’t last very long and probably didn’t really count as being poor.

Poor Period 1

The first was right after Madoline graduated from college which coincided with the ending of my first job, which was a 9-month contract position. We had had a falling out with our stepfather who, as trustee of our mother’s estate, was in possession of the income she had left us. For more about this, please refer to our Family Financial History.

While our rent was still being paid by our mother’s money, we had little left from my earnings and were living in a town where employment opportunities were scarce. For about a month, we made a little money here and there teaching piano lessons and singing at weddings of acquaintances, after which we managed to secure 2 out of 5 full-time positions that opened up at a new company in town.

Poor Period 2

The second poor period was after we quit that job and moved to California. We had saved up $10,000 after working 11 months and had also managed (with the help of an attorney) to persuade our stepfather to turn our mother’s income over to us as she had intended. While the monthly income wasn’t a lot, it was enough to pay the rent and some bills on a small place, and we felt the need to leave Hawaii and start afresh.

We spent $800 on 2 one-way airfares; $225 on airfare for our dog, cat and 22 mice ($75 per ticket – the mice counted as “one”); found a place to live for $650/mo. in Hayward, CA; and figured we had enough to cover the movers and sustain us for at least a couple of months while we looked for jobs.

But we underestimated the costs of the move which was based on the weight of items moved. Because we didn’t have a parents’ house where we could leave things, we had to take everything that had meaning to us, such as a an antique desk of our mother’s, our piano and mementos of childhood. We had no idea how much everything weighed and assumed it wouldn’t be more than 1,000 lbs., so we had estimated about $1,200, but when the movers’ invoice arrived in California stating a total of almost $3,500, I knew we were in trouble.

After the initial costs of moving in, buying necessities for our new place, putting a down payment on our car (read about that catastrophe here) we had just about $3,500 left for the movers. Our monthly inheritance income check had been delayed due to mail forwarding, and for a few weeks, we literally had no money in the bank. I have a memory of one night when we rummaged through all our pockets and purses for change. We gathered about $10 with which we then went to the grocery store to buy food.

We began job hunting as soon as we got a car, and took the first jobs offered to us at Togo’s Eatery (a sandwich shop similar to Subway). When we got our first paycheck, around $100, we took it to the bank and deposited it. The clerk told us the balance would be available immediately, so we went grocery shopping and put it on the debit card. We found out later that the clerk had misinformed us and that we had gotten an overdraft because it turned out the balance wasn’t immediately available after all.

But this only lasted a few weeks. Our mother’s income check eventually arrived and continued to arrive each month. After our scare of being poor, we saved like crazy. We continued working at Togo’s for the time being and got hired on to manage a new pizza restaurant that our boss opened a couple of months later.

So things were hairy for a while, but that brief brush with near poverty was an invaluable lesson and catalyst for our desire to live frugally.

Is Now the Poorest Time of Our Lives?

I am beginning to wonder if the present might not be the poorest time of our lives. While we still have money in the bank, I can’t but wonder how long it will last if this recession and rate of inflation keeps up. Our monthly grocery bill is almost double what it used to be (we only have one supermarket within 40 miles, which may mean higher rate of inflation). The cost of propane has increased at least 150% since we moved in 3 years ago. The list goes on. But our total income continues to decrease – both from our business, which was very promising and the reason we bought the house, and our inherited income.

While we are OK for now as far as having money for groceries, the mortgage and bills, I can’t help but worry that we’ll run out in a few months. It is truly scary because this is much more permanent than our previous “poor periods” which were nothing in comparison. We didn’t have mortgages back then. We were living in areas where we could find employment. We are again living in an area where employment opportunities are scarce to none, even when the economy is good. But this time we can’t move because we have a mortgage which we can’t refinance now or sell the house in this current market as our property’s market value has decreased by 40%.

Maybe I’m just being paranoid and worrying for nothing – I usually am. But what if I’m not?

* * *

About the PF Bloggers Group Writing Project

The Personal Finance Bloggers Network currently consists of 7 active personal finance and frugal living blogs. The Group Writing Project is a monthly project wherein each blog will write a post on a pre-determined topic and publish it on the same day of each month. Be sure to visit thePF Bloggers Group Writing Projectpage for the others!

Extended Group Writing Project Invitation

If you are a blogger, we would like to invite you to write your own post on this topic and submit it for listing with our entries on our Group Writing Project pages. Please visit the following page for details on how to participate in our Extended Group Writing Project

Related posts:

• Holidays Should Be Happy: Have a Party-Preparation Party to Reduce Stress
• Sewing: A Frugal and Fulfilling Hobby – Save Money by Sewing Your Own Clothes
• Is “Simple Living” Just Another Term for “Giving Up?”
• Does Thinking About Money Make You a Bad Person?
• Motivating Children to Practice Music (Part 2)

Originally posted 2008-11-19 07:00:01.

I have some news today. Since the demise of the PF Bloggers group to which I use to belong, I had been thinking about starting a new group, which I did a couple of weeks ago. It’s called Pecuniary Associates, and consists of 6 blogs:

1. Pecuniarities
2. Living Well On Less
3. Financial Nut
4. Counting My Pennies
5. Greener Pastures
6. The Passive Dad

(I have decided to cap recruitment for now in order for us to start getting to know one another and see how we work together, and therefore am no longer looking for additional members at this time.)

A few things we will be doing which you will see here at Pecuniarities:

• Recommending posts from each others’ blogs that we think will be interesting or useful to our readers
• Participating in group and community writing projects in which we will each share our viewpoints and experiences on certain topics
• Community writing projects in which we will invite all personal finance bloggers to participate

So keep an eye out for our first group writing project!

Now on to this week’s roundup.

From Pecuniary Associates

• Counting My Pennies tells a tale of frustration in Friends and money don’t mix.
• Financial Nut reports his experience with fraudulent activity on his credit card this week. This is a good reminder that we can never be too careful and must remain vigilant in regularly checking our statements.
• Living Well On Less offers a suggestion I’d be more than eager to follow if I was ever faced with renting and moving again (but never will because I am determined to never move again unless I want to.) Moving on a budget? Consider staying where you are
• The Passive Dad offers 10 ways to deal with financial stress, something we can all use.
• Greener Pastures advises to just use a little less.

Elsewhere in the PF Blogosphere

• The Paycheck Chronicles offers some tips for Laundry on the Cheap.
• Free From Broke asks: Is Saving 8 to 12 Months Expenses Even Possible Or Practical? I say, definitely.
• Wise Bread advocates Borrowing, renting, substituting, and doing without

Blog Carnivals

We’d like to thank the following hosts for including us in their recent blog carnivals:

• Money Ning hosted Money Hacks Carnival #55 – Thank You Edition which included my post:
  Who’s to Blame for Your Spending? You or You?

• Green Panda Treehouse hosted Carnival of Personal Finance #196: Music Edition which included my post:
  Financial Lent: A Frugal Fast to See What You Can Live Without

Another Reminder

Personal finance, frugal and green living bloggers:

If you haven’t already done so, don’t forget to submit your best post and apply to host an edition of the Carnival of Pecuniary Delights and enter the giveaways for some really cute Piggy Bank Magnets which we just received in the mail and look even better in real life than onscreen!

That wraps it up for today, which incidentally is my birthday, so off to party I go! (Before your imagination runs away with you, by “party” I mean watching Sense and Sensibility (and/or another Jane Austen film) on DVD and consuming copious amounts of fish n’ chips.)

Related posts:

• Pecuniary Links ~ August 2009 #1
• Interesting Reads From Fellow Personal Finance Bloggers #19
• Interesting Reads from Fellow Personal Finance Bloggers #3
• Interesting Reads from Fellow Personal Finance Bloggers
• Interesting Reads From Fellow Personal Finance Bloggers #18

It’s been a somewhat hectic and busy month what with 100+ degree weather just about everyday since the beginning of June, car trouble and my messed up sleep schedule. I know my posting has been rather irregular, and I apologize to my regular readers. Our cousins’ 3-month visit is winding to an end – she’ll be leaving on Tuesday July 7th – so we’ll be trying to spend as much time together as possible in the next few days. After that I hope to be able to get back to posting a little more regularly.

That said, the past month has gone quite well for Our Fourpence Worth. Our Money Management Monopoly Game Expansion series has met with pretty good reception in the financial blogosphere, 2 of them having been chosen as Editor’s Picks in recent blog carnivals and quite a few mentions at other blogs. This also means we’ve had to do a lot of test-playing of our expansions, which hasn’t exactly been torturous labor.

I’m also really excited to be slated to host the Festival of Frugality on August 19, 2008 and the Money Hacks Carnival on August 20, 2008. We’ve also received the honor of being included in the Personal Finance category at alltop.com.

OK, now on to our round-up for this month.

PF Bloggers

First of all, I would like to announce that the PF Bloggers network is starting a monthly group writing project wherein each member of our network will be writing about a pre-selected topic on the 15th of each month. Our first topic will be our personal/family financial history and basically what influenced or inspired us to live frugally and/or aspire to financial freedom.

• No Debt Plan gives us 2 reasons we should care about his toothpaste savings.
• Master Your Card posted some amusing things children said about credit cards.
• Future Millionaire shares her reasons for tipping generously.
• Wide Open Wallet tells us why she likes high gas prices.
• Pinching Copper contemplates whether a Costco or Sam’s Club membership is worth the money.

Elsewhere in the Personal Finance Blogosphere

• Frugal Dad asks Who is Responsible for Your Misery Index? Hint: The answer is under, over and behind your nose.
  
• The Simple Dollar posted A By-The-Numbers Look at Why Saving Is More Important Than Perfect Investment Choices. This is a relief, because I’ve been worrying that we were missing out on a lot by not having invested already.
• The Digirati Life gives us 7 Ways To Handle Unexpected Expenses and Financial Emergencies.
• While this isn’t strictly a personal finance blog, Zen Habits shares a great guide on succeeding at what you do: 9 Steps to Achieving Flow (and Happiness) in Your Work.

That’s it for today. Have a good one!

Related posts:

• Interesting Reads from Fellow Personal Finance Bloggers
• Interesting Reads From Fellow Personal Finance Bloggers #12
• Interesting Reads from Fellow Personal Finance Bloggers #2
• Interesting Reads from Fellow Personal Finance Bloggers #3
• Early to Bed and Early to Rise Makes a Man [or Woman] Healthy, Wealthy and Wise

Productivity

• Check out one of my earlier posts Save Hundreds with Open Source Software for a list of open source applications with short descriptions of their functions and links to the websites for free downloads. These are not free trials but completely free programs that stay free and upgrade for free.
• Google Calendar is a handy online calendar that can send alerts to you by email or pop-up reminders. The program allows you to share your calendar with friends and family who also use Google Calendar so you can coordinate schedules with each other.

Computer Protection

• ZoneAlarm Free Firewall can filter all traffic in and out of your computer. The most secure setting will warn you of even legitimate access to the internet and of every attempt by a program installed on your computer to access the internet to check for updates, etc.
• ZoneAlarm Spy Blocker Toolbar protects you from spyware while surfing the net.
• McAfee SiteAdvisor warns you of bad sites and has profiles for each tested site with details on downloads, spam email count, and user reviews. It also shows the safety rating for web search results with a small icon next to each link: green for safe, red for unsafe, yellow for caution, and gray for untested (you can submit a test request for gray sites).
  

Communication

• Skype allows you to make free computer to computer video and voice calls, and calls to phones for a small charge. We use the free computer to computer calls to talk to our overseas relatives
• If you use Hotmail, you can also use Windows Live Messenger for voice and video chat sessions with your contacts. You can also send mobile text messages to contacts in your address book.
• Gmail is my favorite free web based email program because, not only does it give you ever increasing storage (6.76 GBs as of this writing and counting), but it lets you forward your email to a desktop email client such as Outlook or Thunderbird. If you access your mail online, it has a nice filtering tool to help you sort your mail and also has a built in chat program, Google Talk, that allows you to chat with your online contacts without having to download anything.

Entertainment

• Hulu has an ever growing collection of new and old television programs and movies which you can watch for free online with a very reasonable amount of advertisements. The commercial breaks are shorter than you would have to sit through (15 or 30 secs) when watching a show on TV. For some newer shows, only the last 5 or 6 episodes are available, but there are also full seasons and full series of episodes for some shows.
• Network channels all have websites that let you watch the last 5 or 6 episodes of their current shows online. Here is a list of links to the home pages:
  • NBC
  • ABC
  • FOX
  • ABC Family
  • Sci Fi
• SHOUTcast is a free internet radio site that has a large selection of genres and stations and good sound quality.
• Joost is a player that allows you to watch thousands of TV shows and movies on your computer.

Reference

• Wikipedia. If you’ve performed a web search on the net, you’ve probably already stumbled across Wikipedia, which is a free, open encyclopedia that anyone can edit. It may or may not be 100% accurate, but it is convenient and has a great collection of articles and images on just about any topic, person or place including cities, actors and operas. Wikipedia is available in English, French, Spanish, German, Japanese, Polish, Russian, Portuguese, Dutch and Italian. (Time Saving Tip: To search for something straight from your Google toolbar or search, just type the keyword and the word “wiki”, i.e. “horse wiki” and the link to the entry will most likely show up first in your search result.)
• High Beam Encyclopedia is a collation of articles from Britannica, Oxford University Press, Columbia Encyclopedia as well as other published newspaper and magazine articles.
• Google Translate provides fair (though not the greatest) translations for 23 languages. It can translate typed/pasted in sections or entire webpages. This allows you to make use of websites you otherwise might not understand or save you time where you already know the language but take longer to read. It also has a dictionary for looking up words from those 23 languages.
• Reference.com has links to a host of reference tools including atlases, almanacs, a dictionary, thesaurus, literature and more. (Time Saving Tip: To look up a definition of a word, for example, “antithesis”, type “definition antithesis” in your search window. To look up synonyms (thesaurus) of the word “simile”, type “synonym simile”, and the search results will link you to the page of the entry.)
• The Gutenberg Project is a digital library of works that have fallen into public domain through expired copyright. The library includes fiction and non-fiction literature, audiobooks, sheet music and more.
• Google Calculator is a handy tool that lets you type in a formula or question in your search window and it will calculate and show you the answer. For example: type “1+5″ in your search bar and it will give you “1 + 5 = 6″. It can multiply, divide, add, subtract as well as calculate units of measurement such as miles, kilometers, megabytes, grams, degrees, pi, currency exchange rates and much more. Check out this great Google Calculator Demo at the Learn Google Search blog.

Free Downloads

• Download.com has a large collection of safe, free and trusted software downloads with editor and user reviews.
• Softpedia also has a large collection of downloads.
• Mozilla, home of the Firefox browser has a large number of great open source software including web browsers, html editors, email and calendar programs. Be sure to also check out the list of Mozilla-Based Applications which include other interesting and useful programs.
• Firefox Browser Add-ons: If there is a function you wish your Firefox browser could perform, chances are someone has already had the same thought and created an add-on for it.
• Google Pack includes the following (you can select which items you want):
  • Google Earth: a map program that lets you look at satellite, terrain and street level images. Includes driving directions and businesses
  • Norton Security Scan for viruses
  • Google Desktop to help organize your files, pictures and web history
  • Mozilla Firefox Browser with Google Toolbar
  • Adobe Reader
  • Skype
  • Star Office word processing, spread sheet, presentation and other office programs
  • Google Toolbar for Internet Explorer (helps block pop-ups)
  • Spyware Doctor (starter edition)
  • Picasa for editing and organizing your photos
  • Google Photos Screensaver to create slideshows with your photos
  • Google Talk for chatting online or by voice and sharing files
  • Real Player for playing media and transferring music to iPods or other players

Shopping

• Amazon.com is our favorite shopping site for almost everything we can’t get at our local grocery and drug stores. The Free Super Saver Shipping for orders over $25 allows you to spend your money on things rather than shipping charges. We also have the Chase Amazon Visa Card that gives us 3 points for every dollar spent at Amazon.com and 1 point everywhere else, and a $25 gift certificate when we reach 2,500 points.
• We occasionally shop at Overstock.com when the price is considerably less than can be had from Amazon. In our experience, their service is just as good, if not better, than Amazon’s due to the online customer service chat and faster shipping time, because Amazon’s free shipping takes an additional 4-5 business days before leaving their warehouse. They offer flat $2.95 shipping on all orders, and cheaper media shipping for 1 or 2 media item (books, music and DVDs).

Related Posts

• Save Hundreds with Open Source Software
• The Frugal Literate’s Guide to Affordable Reading
• Public Domain Music: Music You Already Own
  

Related posts:

• June 2008 Finance and Frugality Blog Carnivals
• Welcome MSN Money Central Smart Spending Readers!
• Under the Weather – Recommended Reading
• Festival of Frugality #140: The Frugal Quotes Edition
• Ludwig & Wolfgang

Originally posted 2008-05-26 12:33:47.

My suggestions are divided into the following subsections:

• Summer Hobbies – activities with lasting benefits and meaning
  
• Summer Studies – develop skills that will be useful in life
  
• Summer To-Do’s – a few ways to get your life or home in order
  
• Summer Fitness – ways to keep cool and stay fit
  
• Summer Pet Bonding – make your pet happy and you healthy

Summer Hobbies

Here are some ideas for catching up on tasks that may have been neglected during the year.

• Write in your journal
  Write about your past year, what’s on your mind, who and what you like and dislike, your daydreams, anything. In future years you will be glad you did it and also amused by your younger self. You think you will always remember what happened when, but as time goes by, memories do fade and become forgotten. (Trust me, I’m speaking from experience and I’m not yet 30 and have a memory better than most.)
• Make a family video
  Go around the house and take a video of your family going about its regular business. You will be glad for the memories one day.
• Scrapbook
  Organize family photos, report cards, birthday cards, artwork, concert programs and other keepsakes from the past year into a scrapbook.
• Reading
  Reading (even fun fiction) can help improve your mind, vocabulary, grammar and writing skills. If you go to the library, you can read in an air-conditioned environment without having to pay for the air-conditioning or the books.

Summer Studies

Yes, summer should be fun, but there’s no reason it can’t be both fun and productive.

• Learn a new language
  The benefits of learning languages are endless. Learning a new language can help you to:
  • Get ahead in your career
  • Make new friends from different parts of the world. When you show an interest in someone’s language or culture, they are often appreciative and take an interest in you in return.
  • Improve your English (or first language)
• Learn to play a musical instrument
  Music enhances the mind in many ways. Studies have shown that children who study music at an early age do better in school than those who don’t. Aside from that, it is also just plain fun.
• Learn to sew
  Sewing is a very useful skill to have regardless of your gender. You can learn to mend clothes, make your own clothes and other things for your house, which can save you a lot of money. Older and more skilled children can even make their own clothes for the coming school year. Check out one of our earlier articles for more info: Save Money by Sewing Your Own Clothes.
• Take a computer class
  Learn to type properly, use a spreadsheet or database, design websites, make presentations, etc. Most jobs these days involve computer use, so knowing as much as you can about computers might help you get a higher salary.

Summer To-Do’s

A few suggestions for improving life at home and getting ahead on the coming year.

• Get a head start on your Christmas shopping
  This could save you time and money because you can shop at your leisure and take advantage of summer sales. Leaving your shopping to the last minute usually costs more because you are up against a deadline and usually have fewer options.
• Sort through your stuff
  Go through your clothes and things and prune out those you no longer want or need. You could donate the things you no longer need or hold a garage or yard sale and make some money to put into your college or retirement savings.
• Re-arrange your room or home
  Re-arranging your room or home can have a positive impact on your life. A change can be uplifting and produce an overall feeling of well-being and accomplishment, renew your energy and increase productivity.
• Clean out your computer
  Ideally you would do this several times a year, but if you use the internet and download a lot of things, it’s a good idea to clean out your computer on a regular basis. If there are programs you don’t use, uninstall them. If there are files that you no longer need, delete them. Clean your registry if you’ve had the computer for a while. Keeping your hard drive from getting too full will extend its life.

Summer Fitness

A few suggestions for staying cool and healthy this summer.

• Mall Walking
  Walking in an indoor, air-conditioned mall is a great way to get exercise away from the heat and smog, and you can also save on sunscreen. You can even window-shop during your walks, but if you think you might get too tempted, leave your money and credit card at home.
• Swimming in an indoor pool
  Swimming is another low-impact exercise (safer than running) which increases endurance, muscle and cardiovascular strength. Try to swim in an indoor pool whenever possible or wait until early evening to avoid sunburn.
• Ice Skating
  Not only does it let you get away from the heat, but it’s a good low-impact and aerobic exercise which will help strengthen your bones and cardiovascular system. Taking some lessons and learning to skate properly can be worth the money.

Summer Pet Bonding

If you have a pet, spend some quality time together. Not only will you make your pet very happy, he/she will help make you healthier. (How Pets Help People)

• Take your dog to obedience school
  Obedience school is good for socializing and teaching discipline. There is nothing wrong with repeating obedience school for fun and refreshing both your memories.
• Teach your dog new tricks
  There are lots of fun tricks you can teach your dog: beg, spin (in both directions), roll, speak, catch a ball or frisbee, etc. You can also teach your dog to be helpful around the house: closing the door or brining you something you dropped. Dogs enjoy feeling helpful and learning new things can keep mature dogs’ minds sharp.
• Take your dog for long evening strolls or hikes
  If going hiking, be sure to take another person along, bring lots of water and plastic bags, and make sure your dog’s feet are protected from rough terrain. For your dog’s and other hikers’ safety, never let him off-leash on a hiking trail.
• Enter your dog in a 4th of July costume contest
  Make a fun costume for your dog and enter a costume contest or parade. (Sorry, for the self-promotion, but if you don’t want to make your own costume, check out some of our patriotic dog clothing and costumes at Franga Designs.)

Well, I hope some of these suggestions prove helpful in making your summer both fun and productive. Vas-y t’amuser!

Related posts:

• June 2008 Finance and Frugality Blog Carnivals
• Under the Weather – Recommended Reading
• No-Air Conditioning Summer Part 1 – How It Started: No-Heat Winters
• Language Lesson ~ Frugality is a Virtue
• Frugal Thermodymics Part I: Limiting Sources of Heat in the Home

Originally posted 2008-06-09 05:28:43.

My spring cleaning therefore begins with using up these scraps as fast as possible and disposing of the remaining shreds. One easy way to use fabric scraps is to make patchwork berets which are highly individual and as colorful or demure as you choose. My recent hats are very colorful as I have a large variety of small pieces to deal with, but I intend soon to make some with fabric choices limited to one or two tones.

 

I have two styles of patchwork berets pictured here. Each beret is a 16 inch circle gathered onto a 22 inch band and took less than half of a day to make. The brims are optional and stitched on afterwards. The first beret is composed of truly small scraps of pretty fabrics (velvet, satin, cotton prints, suede, & corduroy) appliquéd to a circle of an ugly blue-green cloth that we once purchased for some inexplicable reason. The stitched edges were concealed by sewing white lace on top, which gives the whole piece a sugary, frosty look. You can use other trims such as ric rac, ribbon, or dimensional fabric paint to cover these edges. I opted for a white satin bow at the top instead of a pom pom (fitting for children) or a silk daisy and finished it off with a pieced together brim and three buttons in different colors.

The second hat is made of five pie-shaped pieces sewn into a circle. I made the pattern on my computer using the simple drawing tools common to word processing programs and added ½ inch to each edge for sewing. I then joined two or tree pieces of scraps to get a piece from which a section could be cut. These five piece were joined, lined with flannel (two leftover pieces joined together) and gathered on a patchwork band. The brim is made from leftover suede, stiffened with iron-on stabilizer. A button tops off the hat.

These hats are possibly too colorful for some people, but they are nice when worn with conservative clothing such as white shirts and coats. They can also be pieced together entirely from scraps of one fabric or the remnants from sewing a garment which becomes a matching accessory. Lining is optional and can add warmth or durability. The flannel pieces I used were from sewing a nightgown and old-fashioned ruffled caps. Other good fabrics for lining hats are: fleece, cottons, satin & faux fur. When you have enough hats for yourself and your family, produce them as Christmas, birthday, and baby gifts, saving the money you would spend buying presents.

Related posts:

• Pecuniarities (Our Fourpence Worth) 1 Year Anniversary
• Affordable Storage Solution: Covering a Cardboard Box to Make a Treasure Chest
• Our Favorite Sources for Affordable Fabrics
• Elegant French Memo Board from Thrift Shop Picture Frame
• The Frugal Art

Originally posted 2008-03-27 16:48:57.

I remember when I was very little, flipping through a very old book and seeing a craft project  for making toy soldiers with toilet paper tubes. The image has come to mind now and then and I got the idea to make printable toy soldiers. They come four on a page. Print on card stock or regular paper. All you have to do is cut them apart, roll them into a tube and secure with a glue stick.

My toy soldiers are adorable standing at attention with arms stiffly at their sides. You can display them on parade or leave one or two standing guard over your Christmas presents.  Other uses include hanging as ornaments on your Christmas tree or wrapping around a jar or bottle to use as a vase.

These soldiers can be displayed year round to show your patriotism or love of military history. Here are four classic nutcracker or British soldiers, one naval officer, and one modern soldier in camouflage with green cheeks.

Modern American Toy Soldier in Camouflage

Classic Toy Soldier in Red Coat & Blue Pants

Classic Toy Soldier in Red Coat & White Pants

Classic Toy Soldier in Red & Blue with White Straps

Classic Toy Soldier in Red Coat with Double Buttons and Gold Trim

Classic Naval Officer in Blue Coat & White Pants

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Original artwork by Madoline Hatter available on a variety of merchandise at Mozartini

As we learn in grade school science, everything on this Earth is composed of many smaller things, which in turn are composed of even smaller things, etc., etc., etc. The same principle applies to finance and fortune. I have often read or heard of people who, though they wish to become wealthy, opine that doing certain things or forgoing certain pleasures simply isn’t worth the time, effort or sacrifice to save a few cents or dollars.

What many seem to forget is that a fortune doesn’t consist of just one thing. A million dollars isn’t acquired all at once or not at all. It is most often accrued over time and not without sacrifice or effort. Before we go any further, I would like to state that I am not perfect and that the following is mostly a lesson and reminder for myself, but hopefully also prove helpful to you. In the past few months, I have made many regrettable purchase decisions (recent examples: Pepsi and Cheetos), by giving in to impulse and forgetting the big picture.

Breakdown of a Million Dollars

It is important to remember that one million dollars is composed of many smaller dollars, which consist of yet smaller components – quarters, dimes, nickels and pennies, without which one couldn’t have even a single dollar.

A Few Examples of Big Things Made of Little Things

• A mountain is built of individual grains of dirt.
• An ocean is composed of individual molecules of water.
• You are composed of organs, which are composed of tiny cells, which in turn are composed of tiny organelles and so on, without the existence of which you would not be here reading this scintillating piece of writing (which is composed of 818 individual words, which are composed of 5,093 little characters.)

A Penny a Day

The chart below calculates the amount of dollars 1, 5, 10, 25, 50 and 99 cents can become if one unit of it is saved (or picked up) each day of the year.

Note that this chart does not count:

• Interest or Dividends if invested
• Leap Years

How A Few Cents Soon Become A Few Dollars

Now we will look at a couple of examples of how saving a few cents once or twice a week can add up. Replace the examples with things that apply to your own life.

These are just saving once a week. Multiply these numbers by the number to times or items a week you could save this much on and think of the potential.

How a Few Dollars Saved Could Become a Million Dollars

The following chart shows how a few dollars saved during the course of a month and what they can amount to.

Remember that interest and dividend rates grow with your balance, so the higher your balance, the more you earn. Now, make a list of the things you could be saving on every month and see how much principle you could be putting into investments to generate extra or passive income.

Picking up Pennies

I once read an article, Is It Worth My Time to Pick Up a Penny?, which stated that it would be a waste of time and money for someone like Bill Gates to stop and pick a $100 dollar bill up off the floor. A commenter on this article said that he never picked up or saved coins, but instead threw them away because it he didn’t think it worth the time or space to save them. It is true that there are times and circumstances where doing something is a waste of time/effort/happiness/etc., but if you aren’t in the middle of a more lucrative task in the 2 seconds it may take you to pick up the coin and maybe the 5 seconds to toss it in a coin jar, what’s the harm in saving the extra money?

So unless you are one of the fortunate few who could make more money in the 2 seconds it would take you to pick up a coin, next time you see a penny, even better a nickel, dime or quarter, laying on the floor, pick it up and put it in a jar to be combined with other pennies and quarters. In time they will become dollars combined with more dollars to eventually become a sum to be reckoned with.

Don’t Forget to Water Your Money Tree Journal

Golden Coin Sprout Baby’s Bib

Incontinent Spending Mousepad

Related posts:

• Put Your Brain Where Your Money Is: Think to Save
• March 2008 Finance and Frugality Blog Carnivals
• Blog Action Day: Poverty. Awareness is the First Step: The Next Time You …
• 101 Ways to Save Money in Your Everyday Life
• Simple Solutions to Staying Out of Debt

Not surprisingly, we, with the help of our rambunctious dogs (especially during their puppy teething stages), inflict a noticeable amount of wear and tear on our home and furniture and it is lucky for us that the distressed look is so popular nowadays. Nevertheless, we have a cabinet stocked with paints to keep our lifestyle on the romantic side of shabby and away from woefully distressed. We are constantly painting, decorating, patching, repairing, refinishing, and making things for our house. Over the years, we have developed some economical and efficient habits which we would like to share.

Thrift store chairs purchased for $5-15 each that we painted in our favorite colors

• For both home or crafts Buy gallon size un-tinted latex/acrylic paint which costs less per ounce than small bottles of craft paint.
• Mix your own colors by adding colored craft paint to white paint.
• You can also purchase pigment to mix as much as you need for a project instead of buying a whole gallon of a certain color.
• Save food containers with lids (such as yogurt and cream cheese tubs) for mixing and storing paint.

Madoline’s closet bookshelf with rosy-pink wall.

• Slightly water down paint for more even application (except with oil-based paint). You may end up doing an extra coat, but will use less paint overall. I find thin coats of paint more attractive.
• Add water to keep leftover paint from drying up and store covered for several weeks. This paint can be used to paint matching decorations or mixed into new colors.
• Instead of throwing away or donating leftover paint as instructed on the can (they want you to buy more) hammer the lid back down and store in a cool place. If very little paint is left, transfer to smaller container to minimize evaporation.
• If you don’t want to use masking tape, carefully paint trims, edges, and corners of your walls with a small artist brush.
• Keep pets and children away from wet paint and be sure to have sufficient ventilation.

Homemade cabinets

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• Save Money, Make Money 30-Day Challenge @ iVillage
• Frugal Home Dec Tip: Electrical Outlet or Light Switch Frame
• 101 Ways to Save Money in Your Everyday Life
• Frugality 101

I came across an interesting article on MSN Money last night titled Does money make you mean? which described a study conducted on a group of subjects who had been preconditioned to have money on their minds when various experiments were conducted. The study found that those with money on their minds tended to be more indifferent and less helpful toward others, preferring to do things on their own and waiting longer to ask for help when help was needed.

The Study

The “money primed” group was preconditioned by doing puzzles with money-related words, reading essays containing references to money, being shown posters of money and given play money and tokens to handle. This group was then combined with the control group (not preconditioned to think about money) in several staged situations. In one test, the group was assigned to complete a puzzle and told that help was available if asked for. Money-minded subjects waited longer to ask for help than the control subjects did. In another situation, a passer-by “accidentally” spilled a box of pencils on the floor and the test subjects were asked to help; those who had been “money primed” picked up fewer pencils. When asked to donate to a university student fund, “money primed” subjects gave less.

The researchers concluded that the money-minded subjects weren’t consciously being rude or selfish, but were simply indifferent, as if they didn’t know how to help out or couldn’t see themselves as having a role in someone else’s life.

This Sounds A Lot Like Me

When I read this, my first thought was that this sounded a lot like Madoline and me. Ever since moving to California and needing to live frugally, we have become very independent and tried to be as self-sufficient as possible. When something in our house breaks, we always try to fix it ourselves. When we find that we can’t do it on our own, we usually procrastinate a while before finally calling someone in to fix it. This is, of course, due to the fact that we are money-conscious and try to save whenever we possibly can. While we do not dislike being around other people, we also don’t actively seek to get involved socially.

At this time in our lives, most or all of our behavior is influenced by money. We do not have close family or friends whom we could go to for help if we needed it (because we have moved so much, we have lost touch with childhood friends and most of our classmates now live all over the world and have their own families). Because we don’t feel as if we can rely on people, money is the only thing that can guarantee our health and security.

Money Can Buy Happiness

My second thought after reading about this study was that this is natural survivalist behavior. In this day and age, one simply cannot survive without money. True, money can’t buy “Happiness” bottled and ready to go. But, money buys food, pays the mortgage and doctor’s bills. Money makes sure that our pets, who are our family, are well fed and taken care of. Money is what will keep us healthy and comfortable throughout our lives. And health and comfort play a big part in one’s happiness.

So, at this time, I’m afraid we are just as the research finds – indifferent and unhelpful (with the exception of this blog, hopefully) – not out of hate for others, but out of necessity to ensure our own future survival. As many others do, we dream of one day being financially free. We hope to one day be able to give to causes we believe in and even start charitable organizations of our own. But in order to be able to help others, we have to be able to help ourselves first.

Recommended reading: Does money make you mean?

Related posts:

• August 2008 Finance and Frugality Blog Carnivals
• It Saves to Be Nice Part 2: How to Be a Nice Customer
• Put Your Brain Where Your Money Is: Think to Save
• Blog Action Day: Poverty. Awareness is the First Step: The Next Time You …
• Dear Taxpayer: Good News! Your Property Tax Has Decreased … P.S. So Has Your Property Value

These images are provided for personal non-commercial use and may not be published elsewhere. If you want to share this with your friends, please link to this page.

If you enjoy our free printable templates, please consider making a donation to help us produce more.

Gingham Carrier Bags

For carrier bags, regular printer paper is recommended. Directions are provided on image:

1. Fold down top of bag.
2. Crease on lines to make rectangular shape and glue into a tube.
3. Fold bottom of bag end as if gift wrapping a box.
4. Use yarn, ribbon or string for handles and make a crease down each side as you have seen on paper bags.

Click on the small images to enlarge and print.

Yellow Gingham Bag	Violet Gingham Bag	Spring Green Gingham Bag
Red Gingham Bag	Blue Gingham Bag	Pink Gingham Bag
Orange Gingham Bag	Green Gingham Bag	Brown Gingham Bag

For more original free printable templates by Madoline Hatter, visit our Freebies section.

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• Free Printable Templates: Mini Wall Street Journal Carrier Gift Bags
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Yes, I know I’m a little late in the game. Having seen references to Twitter all over the web in recent months, I finally decided to check it out and signed up this past Sunday. Twitter is a great, easy and fun way to interact with people – specifically for me, personal finance bloggers and blog readers.

What is Twitter

Basically, Twitter is a social networking website, but much simpler than Facebook or MySpace. You simply log-in to your account and type in your 140 character (or less) update to tell your friends and family what you are up to, what’s going on in your life, what you are thinking/doing/reading/watching/etc.

You begin by “following” other people – friends, family, classmates, etc. – subscribing to their updates. You interact by typing updates of yourself, and reading and replying to your friends’ updates. Eventually people will start following you. (Read to the end for a list of useful Twitter Tools and Tips.)

How Twitter Relates to Our Fourpence Worth

There is a great network of personal finance bloggers on Twitter. By following them, I can:

• Get to know my fellow personal finance and frugal living bloggers
• Know when new blog posts are published
• Discover new blogs
• Keep up with what other personal finance bloggers are writing about
• Keep abreast of personal finance blogosphere happenings – blog carnivals, group writing projects, blog networks, etc.
• Find interesting things to share with my readers [you]

Follow Me on Twitter!

I’d like to invite you to follow me on Twitter. It’s an easy way for me to get to know you, my readers, find out what’s on your mind, and hopefully be able to make this blog more useful to you by writing about topics that interest you.

My Twitter Page:
http://twitter.com/PenelopePince

Twitter Tools and Tips

Since I”m new at Twittering and these following resources have been useful to me, if you’re new – or even if you’re not new – maybe they’ll be useful to you too.

For Personal Finance Bloggers and Blog Readers

• A list of 118 Twitter Users Who Blog About Money (plus more under Comments)

Graphics

• Cute “Follow me on Twitter” graphics for your site, email signature, online profiles, etc.
• More cute Twitter Graphics and Icons (like the one above)

• Follow me on Twitter badges / logos / buttons (very artsy graphics)

For Bloggers

• Twitterfeed tells your followers about new blog posts using your RSS feed (requires OpenID)
• How to Use Twitter – Tips for Bloggers
• 9 Benefits of Twitter for Bloggers
• 7 Ways to Use Twitter to Promote Your Blog and Build Traffic
  
• The networking benefits of using Twitter
• 17 Ways You Can Use Twitter: A Guide for Beginners, Marketers and Business Owners
• 7 Ways to Use Microblogging Services for Traffic and Brand Exposure

URL Shorteners

Because each Twitter update is limited to 140 characters, you’ll want to use an URL shortener to save space.

• Tweeter Burner ties into your account and allows you to track how the links you share are doing (how many clicks)
• TinyURL seems to be the most commonly used URL shortener

More Twitter Tools & Apps

• Official Twitter Application Downloads Site
  
• Twitter Apps (Official Twitter Blog)
• Twitter Forge – Twittown
• Twitter Tool Box: 60+ Twitter Tools
• Twittermania: 140+ More Twitter Tools!

• Top 21 Twitter Tools and Help Websites

• Twitter Tools 2nd Edition

• Twitter Fan Wiki Apps
• Firefox add-ons for Twitter

Cool Stuff

• Twittervision – Shows you tweets being sent all over the world in real-time (ok, with a slight delay – less than a minute). I like the 3-D globe one that spins. It’s really fun to read all these tweets being sent all over the world in various languages.

Interesting Stuff

• Twitter as News-Wire

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• Carnival of Pecuniary Delights Giveaways: Cute Piggy Bank Magnet Prizes for Hosting and Submissions
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• Favorite Christmas Memory
• Home is Where the Money Is

Software

• Open Office
  The Open Office Suite is similar to the Microsoft Office Suite. There is a word processor (Writer), spreadsheet (Calc), drawing (Draw), database (Base), presentation (Impress). There’s even a math program for doing math calculations, but I don’t really understand or have much need for it. You have a choice of installing all the programs or just the ones that you need – i.e. we just use Writer, Calc and Draw. While Open Office is not quite as fancy and aesthetically pleasing as the Microsoft programs, they are more than capable of most everyday and business tasks. We use the Calc program for accounting and taxes, Draw for drafting patterns for our dog clothing designs, and Writer for letters, invoices, coupons, etc.
• Thunderbird
  For email, I recommend Thunderbird, which is a great alternative to the Microsoft Outlook email program. Like Outlook, it has filtering, junk mail control, etc. You can install the calendar add-on Lightning if you need/want it. The Sunbird calendar program is also available as a separate program if you don’t use Thunderbird or prefer not to use add-ons.
• Foxit
  Foxit is a pdf reader similar to Adobe Acrobat Reader with annotation features such as highlighting, drawing graphics and typing text, and conversion to plain text.
• Filezilla
  Filezilla is a nice and easy to use FTP program. I use it for working on my Zen Cart and Wordpress sites, which is much easier than uploading through my webhosting browser ftp.
• The GIMP
  The GIMP is a graphics program and a Photoshop alternative of sorts. This program isn’t as advanced as Photoshop, but is probably competent enough for the average casual user for basic photo touch-ups or graphics. (We use Adobe Photshop Elements for our business graphics and photos.)

Browsers

• Firefox
  I think this browser has surpassed Internet Explorer in popularity by now and you’ve probably either heard of it or already use it. We have been using Firefox for almost 4 years now and it is our primary browser. It is much faster than IE, and while I have found that it’s not as fast as SeaMonkey or Opera, the number of available add-ons enable you to customize it is so many ways that the convenience surpasses the downside of slightly slower (but still very decent) browsing speed.
  
• SeaMonkey (Mozilla)
  SeaMonkey is an all-in-one internet suite that comes with browser, HTML editor, mail and news client and chat applications, and other web development tools. As mentioned above, I have found the SeaMonkey browser to be faster than Firefox. The main reason I downloaded SeaMonkey was because I had need of a good WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get) HTML editor, and the SeaMonkey one has worked very well for the occasional webpage design. I’ve also used the mail client in the past and found it quite decent.
• Opera
  I downloaded Opera mainly for webmastering purposes to make sure all my websites are displaying properly. A lot of people have said that Opera is the fastest browser, but I’ve found it to be about the same as, if not a little slower, than SeaMonkey. It’s a very nice-looking browser however, with a very convenient “speed-dial” page for quick access of your frequent online haunts.

Web Development

• WordPress
  This is the php program I use to manage this site. You can pretty much see for yourself what it does, but I will add that it is a wonderfully clever and very easy to use program. There are scores of plug-ins you can install to add additional functions and features. Download it for free at WordPress.org.
• Zen Cart
  I use the Zen Cart php shopping cart for our Franga Designs website where we sell pet clothing and costumes. As with WordPress, there are hundreds of modules you can install to add additional features to your store.
• OsCommerce
  OsCommerce is another php shopping cart script similar to Zen Cart. I personally like Zen Cart better and found it to be less buggy than osCommerce. However, there are many people who use osCommerce.

Operating Systems

• Ubuntu
  Ubuntu is a linux-based operating system that comes with pretty much anything you need: web browsers, office applications, instant messaging, games, media players and graphics applications. There are a myriad other applications that you can easily install through the control panel. To a non-linux user, it may look a little foreign at first and take some getting used to, but it works just as well as Windows and best of all it’s free. Just go to the Ubuntu website to download it or you can request a free CD to be sent to you completely free of charge.

For the most part, we still use Windows XP as it came free and pre-installed with our current computer, but we have an Ubuntu CD on hand for when Windows acts up, which inevitably happens once in a while, so we can still handle our business affairs.

A good place to start looking for free software is Softpedia where you can search for, download and try various types of programs (some are free, but some are not). I highly recommend that you always do a little research on the web to find out more about a program before downloading and installing it.

For more information on open source and free software:
GNU Operating System
Open Source Iniative

Related posts:

• My Favorite Money and Time Saving Websites
• Best Free Anti-Virus & Anti-Malware Solutions and How to Disinfect a Virus Infected Computer
• 101 Ways to Save Money in Your Everyday Life
• March 2008 Finance and Frugality Blog Carnivals
• Covering Cardboard Cartons: The Simple Suitcase (Storage Box)

A credit card, when used wisely and responsibly, brings you a number of benefits and can save you money. And so does a library card. The public library is one of your most useful resources for saving money. With a library card, which you can obtain for free, you have almost limitless access to a variety of services and materials such as:

• Books – Fiction
  Especially good for people who read a lot but usually only read books once.
• Books – Non-Fiction
  Books on careers and jobs, writing resumes and cover letters, learning computer software and programming, accounting and taxes, starting your own business, etc.
• Foreign Language Books
  Fiction and non-fiction in foreign languages prevalent in your community. Many California libraries carry books in Spanish, French, German, Chinese, Arabic and Vietnamese.
• Audio Books
  Classic, children’s and contemporary literature on CD or Audio, including new releases and popular titles.
• Music
  Classical, contemporary, film soundtracks, international music, etc. CDs that you can check out just like a book.
• Movies
  Most libraries have movies (DVD and VHS) that you can rent for $1 or $2 and let you keep for a week.
• Magazines
  There’s usually a good selection of general and special interest publications to choose from including titles like: People, Time, Newsweek, National Geographic, Better Homes & Gardens, The Family Handyman, and even young adult magazines such as Seventeen. Instead of paying for a subscription, you can read current magazines at the library and some libraries will let you check out back issues to take home to read.
• Newspapers
  Current editions including local and national newspapers such as the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, etc. can be read in the library.
• Computers
  Free computer access for word processing or internet use. Instead of paying for computer use at Internet Cafes, you are usually allowed 1 hour of free use per day and more if there are not other users waiting.
• Online services
  You can access online databases of periodicals and articles and educational websites from within the library or your home computer. Many libraries offer online access to e-books, audio books, and music that you can download and read or listen to on your computer.

Continue reading for information on other useful services provided by your library and tips for responsible library use.

Other services provided or sponsored by your public library:

• Reserving Materials
  If your library location doesn’t have something you need, you can request the same item from another location. When it arrives at your local library, they will contact you by phone or email to let you know it is ready for you to pick up. This service is almost always free and you are only charged a small fee ($.50 or $1.00) if you fail to pick it up within a reasonable amount of time.
• Renewing Materials
  Most loan periods are 3 or 4 weeks, depending on the library. Unless there are other users waiting on the same items, you can often renew your materials for up to 2 more times. Libraries make it very easy for you to renew items these days with online or automated phone renewals.
• Special Events
  Some public libraries host guest lectures and performances by professionals in various fields such as writing, music, history, etc.
• Used Book Sales
  If you like to collect books, library used book sales are one of the best sources for expanding your personal library or collection. You can often find new, like new, or vintage and antique books for very good prices. Most hardcovers sell for $1.00, trade paperbacks for $0.50, and paperbacks for $0.25.

A few tips for borrowing materials from the library:

• If you tend to forget due dates, set up a reminder on your computer email program, Google Calendar or cell phone to to either renew or return your borrowed materials a few days before the due date. Some libraries have email notification systems that can send you email reminders too.
• The online account access is a very convenient feature. If you can’t make it to the library by the due date, just log on, check all the items due and hit the renew button. It’s a good idea to do this a few days before the due date in case some of the items are not renewable.
• Don’t let anyone else use your card.
• If you’re concerned about the cleanliness of the materials, use a paper towel and some rubbing alcohol to wipe the surfaces before using them.
• If you’re applying for a library card, bring ID and proof of address such as a utility bill addressed to you if your current address doesn’t match the one on your ID.

Some people don’t like to use the library because you sometimes have to wait a while to read new releases. But in the big scheme of things, is it really so bad to wait a few weeks or months to read that new novel? A little patience can save you a lot of money.

To see how much money your library can save you, go to your local library’s website and look for a page called the “Library Value Calculator”. Enter in the number of books you read per month and any other services you could be using there and see how much you can save.

After all, if you think about it, you have actually already paid for these services by paying your taxes, so you might as well use them.

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