Click HERE to win your own FREE Keeper! In April, I wrote a post about alternative menstrual products and mentioned The Keeper menstrual cup. From that post, the director of marketing left a comment.  I emailed her back, and we wound up chatting and she graciously offered me a Keeper to try.  I had told her I had used the Diva Cup before and was not 100% satisfied and would love to see how the Keeper works.  I’m glad I did. Before I went on vacation, I received a very small package in my mailbox from Julia at The Keeper. As I opened it up, I was impressed that there was no extra packaging, just the Keeper itself, a cute little pouch, some literature, and a note from Julia.  Everything was recycled except for the Keeper.  I was impressed.  One of my biggest pet peeves is when I order some green product and it arrives in a huge package with tons of bubble wrap and plastic.  I was pleasantly surprised to see that the Keeper company lives out the true [...]

We are student loan debt free!!  On Friday, I made the final payment online, checked this morning, and it had posted.  I can’t tell you how excited I am to be rid of this debt!  We have paid off this last loan of $12,333.80  in 1 year, 3 months, and 25 days.  Yes! I don’t think I’ve ever mentioned it on the blog before, but this $12,333.80 is not the only student loan debt we had.  In 2004, Mr. Money enrolled in culinary arts school and we moved across country for him to attend.  Fast forward to October 2006, and now he’s got his degree and has left school with over $36,000 in debt.  Yes, that is not a typo.  $36,000 was more debt than I ever cared to accumulate, and we went full force attacking it. We paid off  almost $24,000 in two years, on mainly my salary of $12 an hour full time, plus Mr. Money’s salary of $8(?) an hour part time.  Needless to say, we lived pretty poor to be able to pay off that kind [...]

This week was pretty busy for me.  I changed the layout of my blog this week, as well as some other fun things.  I went yard sailing, had some guilt about spending money, sweated my buns off, had lunch with a crazy friend that stopped saving for retirement because she thinks the world will end in 20 years, had a nice windfall to figure out what to do with, and found an unexpected passenger on my way to work yesterday. Whew.  Today I’m going to do some laundry, tend the garden, and go shopping to try and make a new clothesline. Here are some of my favorite posts from this week: Kacie at Sense to Save is settling into her new place. They ended up moving themselves, but it worked out well in the end! Frugal Babe got an awesome rate on her new mortgage for their new house. J Money at Budgets are Sexy talks about living like you’re broke. I’ve considered doing this. We used to live on hardly anything a year when we lived in Colorado. Squawkfox [...]