Your clothes dryer sucks your money away. After your basic HVAC, fridge and freezer it is the biggest and most expensive energy hogging appliance in your house. You are a NW Edible reader, so of course you know a clothes dryer is totally optional. People have, can and do line-dry their clothes 100% of the…
Productive Home
No Spend Month: Week 3 Wrap Up and At-Home Coffee Analysis
The giant canister of coffee beans we keep on the counter clinked empty early this week. Out. Of. Coffee. This is how most conversations before 10 am start in Seattle: “I’m not really up and moving yet. Haven’t had my coffee!” “Hey, do ya wanna go get a coffee?” “Um, could we talk about this…after…
Mini-Money Challenge: Occupy Your Brain (Why You Don't Really Want What You Want)
I had a dream the other night. I was working some corporate job and my boss lent me his car to run errands over the weekend. In the dream, I didn’t know what kind of car it was, and somehow Homebrew Husband ended up driving it to pick me up from this job. This was…
Mini-Money Challenge: Sell Some Books
I’m of the Erasmus school of spending: When I get a little money I buy books; and if any is left I buy food and clothes. As an example, these are some of – but not all of, you understand – my cookbooks: I have an equivalent number of gardening and house-maintenance books, quite a few big, heavy collections of…
No Spend Month: Week 2 Wrap-Up
Ready for the big No Spend Month disappointment? I totally succumbed to temptation at the thrift store this week. See, there was this mint condition, vintage, all-wood game of Labyrinth. Remember trying for hours to get that little metal ball past the fourth hole in the board? Or was I the only one dorky enough…
Mini-Money Challenge: Plugging Your Little Money Leaks and The Latte Factor
Everyone who talks about budgeting beats up on Starbucks and people who just want a damn cuppa coffee to help them get through their long, long day. Poor Starbucks. Poor Latte Drinkers. I get it. I live in Seattle, where we love coffee, we love Starbucks, and mostly we love to pretend to hate Starbucks…
Mini-Money Challenge: Earn $1440 An Hour With A Phone Call
When the hell did my internet bill become $80 a month? That’s not for some fancy bundled internet-TV-phone combo thing, you understand, although they would like me to do that (oh, yes they would!). No, that’s just for the internet service. We’ve been without cable TV and a home phone line for years. We have just have this one…
No Spend Community (Bloggers, Share Your Posts Here!) And Week 1 Wrap-Up
First things first: have you done the Own Your Financial Numbers Challenge yet? That might be the most important thing you do for your financial health this whole month, so if you’ve put it off, go do it. No really, we’ll wait. It’s that important. Phew. Okay, now that that is done, how ya feeling? Pretty solid? Glad…
Mini-Money Challenge: Own Your Financial Numbers
As I recall, Oprah, in one of her less-svelte periods, talked about “owning her number.” As in, admitting publicly that she weighed 200 pounds. Owning Your Number is not being scared to really look at your starting point. It’s about getting past denial. I consistently find the philosophical fundamentals of financial fitness and physical fitness are the same. One deals in…
Mini-Money Challenge: Wrestle More Money Out Of Your Largest Appliances
Once I was visiting my in-laws in Central California. We were driving through what used to be Ag Land but is now, inexplicably, where people who work in San Francisco live. I say inexplicably because this area is about a 90 minute to two hour drive from San Francisco depending on traffic. People explain why…
Stop Leaking Money and Start Valuing It with No Spend Month October
It’s time to whip your finances into shape. Money is the band-aid we place over up the gaping flesh wound that is thoughtless, unsustainable consumerism. The wound isn’t healed just because you smack a $20 on it every few days and absorb more blood. If your money is busy covering up some financial wounds, No…
Half-Ass Earthquake Proofing The Pantry
“Nice shelves loaded with glass jars full of home-canned food, Erica! Now, don’t you live right on a fault line or something? Aren’t you guys in Seattle just waiting for an 8.0 earthquake to turn your whole city into rubble? What’s your plan for those jars of tomatoes, then, huh?” Yes…I know, I know. There…