Almost exactly a month ago, I wrote about how I was seriously freezing my buns off. With temperatures all across the nation well below freezing, it’s no surprise many people are going to be accustomed to higher electricity bills. I know since I decided I was going to turn up the thermostat and not worry as much about it that I would be hit with a higher bill this month.  I actually just received it, and it is $215.10.  I was budgeting $200, so that was a little bit of a surprise.  Luckily it’s not going to break the bank.  I just won’t eat for a week.  Just Kidding. Although it was quite a bit of a jump from last month (it was $165 and I was expecting $120) it still could be worse. I’m very glad we didn’t buy a larger house!  We try our hardest to keep the temperature low so we can reduce our carbon dioxide emissions as well as saving money. I think it would be interesting to compare electric bills.   I’ll start, and I’d [...]

A year ago I started this blog because I wanted to share my personal finance story. I wanted to help myself save more money and get out of debt faster. I figured that by putting it all out there on the Internet, I would hold myself more accountable than if I didn’t have something in my face every day. I expected to help many people and inspire others through my own personal journey. What I didn’t expect was to find such a wonderful, caring community of other personal finance bloggers out in the blogosphere that would inspire me to meet my goals faster and live more simply. I wanted to say thank you to each and every one of you that takes the time to read my posts and take the time to comment. Without you, I wouldn’t still be blogging! Here are the top 10 my most popular posts from this year: My Whole Wheat Bread Recipe All Natural Laundry Detergent Recipe Making Money Online $5 Footlong Subway Sandwich Dilemma Why We’re Not Refinancing our Mortgage My Envelope Budgeting [...]

I have to let you all in on a little secret: I haven’t used shampoo since umm before Labor Day. And no, my hair is not disgusting.  Well, not from lack of shampooing anyway.   Why the crunchy granola craziness?  I want to eliminate all unnecessary chemicals in our life, and save money at the same time.  I decided I would look for an all natural alternative to conventional shampoo; something that I could make myself and save a little money as well.  I found just that, and haven’t looked back since. When you use conventional shampoo, all of the chemicals that are in the shampoo make their way into your body via the pores in your skin.  If you’re using shampoo with sodium lauryl sulfates (which is used also in commercial floor cleaners), you are entering those toxins into your body in a fast and easy way. When we were in Colorado on vacation, I threw out the shampoo after we bought a “Squeaky Green” shampoo bar from Lush. I knew that I wanted to start out slowly as [...]