Oh my! Going through my RSS reader this morning, I just read a post over at Being Frugal called “Tightwad Tuesday: Christmas in July“. Seems I should start my shopping now in order to save money on Christmas presents. Go check out Lynnae’s post to see how you can save money by starting now!
Christmas. Already. Never mind Christmas, it’s practically August already. Unbelievable!
You know that expression “Friends Don’t Let Friends Drive Drunk”? Of course you do, but if you think about it, the same general principle applies for many other things in life – we all want to stop our friends from doing stupid things. Luckily, I have many good friends throughout the personal finance blog world that do their best every day to give good advice on a ton of different things; from using credit wisely, to saving for retirement, to getting out of debt. But one of the subjects that comes up most often both here on My Two Dollars and on other sites I read is the idea of “frugality” and “being frugal” – so I thought it would be cool to gather up some my friends’ best “frugal” advice for you guys all in one place. Hope you enjoy the articles and can use them in your quest to be more frugal!
I am a big fan of Google Documents – I use it for rough drafts of blog posts, working on budgets, excel spreadsheets to track blog income; basically anything that I used to use Word for, I now use Google Documents. I can access my documents from any computer, I don’t have to worry about crashes here at home, and I can share my documents with anyone so we can both work on them at the same time. It really is a terrific way of working with Word and Excel docs. And while I was comfortable setting up my own templates in Google Docs, now they went ahead and came out with what looks like hundreds of free templates, from Business Plans to Budget Tracking to Resumes to Thesis Outlines – talk about good stuff! And on top of just offering them, they are way better than the ones the Microsoft offers with their software – much more user friendly and intuitive. Here are some of my favorites upon first glance:
It’s that time again! Want some free magazines of your choice delivered to your door? Did you run out of airline miles and cannot get any more free ones out of them? You can now choose from hundreds of different magazines and white papers free of charge on my new magazine page here within My Two Dollars, in partnership with magazine provider RevResponse.com. I have gotten a ton of magazines from services like this in the past many times, and it is a pretty cool and easy way to get them without spending a dime. While most all of them are free of charge, they will normally ask you a few qualifying questions before approving you for your selections, so be ready to answer a short couple of questions about yourself. Browse through the list of free magazines, white papers, downloads and podcasts to find the titles and editions that best match your skills and interests; topics include accounting, education, automotive, electronics, construction, internet, medicine, banking, financial planning, multi-media and trading. Simply complete the application form and submit it. Remember to fill out the forms completely so you will be sure to be approved. Some of the magazines you can choose from include:
Why is that we are all so concerned with “owning” things? I believe it has something to do with past generations needing to hoard food and other products in order to survive…but somehow we have turned hoarding into an art form and we now buy and keep everything! I truly believe that renting or borrowing everything you possibly can not only saves money but also reduces the amount of waste (both in plastic packaging, etc. and shipping costs) that we generate in our every day lives. Sure, you are probably not going to rent furniture or cookware, but why not rent the things that you don’t need to own or will only use occasionally?
