One of the most pressing questions I had before I went to work at the bank was just how much money is stored in the vault at the branch, and what does it look like?  I always pictured a huge vault, similar to the one Scrooge McDuck had.  I always wanted to roll around in the coins! My aunt and I were talking about banking the other day, and I casually asked her how much money she thought was held in the vault of a bank branch.  A few million was her guess.  Before I worked at a branch, that’s how much I thought, too! The truth is, normally there’s no more than $200,000 in a bank branch.  That’s not enough money for me to go to jail over!  Personally the most I’ve ever seen was around $250,000.  Of course if banks have more cash on hand that would be dangerous, so they ship out money during the week to stay within alloted guidelines.  Every branch is different, so some branches may have more money than that, but typically they [...]

It’s only taken two and a half years, but our neighbors officially think we’re hippies. I’m going to preface this by saying that I love my neighbors so much and wouldn’t trade them for anything. They are always going out of their way to be kind to us, and we love them like family.  That said, the other day I was talking to our neighbor boy about our new rain barrels, and asked him what he thought of them.  Part of me wanted to make sure they weren’t annoying the neigbors, and part of me wanted to know what he really thought about them. “Well” he started saying hesitantly, “my mom was wondering if you guys had turned into hippies.  First it was hanging all your laundry out to dry, and now it’s these rain barrels.  What is this all about?” I then started talking about living simply and sustainably and how those factors go hand in hand with saving money, and why not?  Who doesn’t love saving money? “Yeah, but it is so much easier just to use the [...]

It’s Cheap or Frugal Saturday! Last week’s question ended up with 58% voting frugal, and 42% cheap. Frugal it is! This week’s question is: You’ve heard the term “if it’s yellow, let it mellow; if it’s brown, flush it down.” If you don’t know what it’s about, I will give you one clue: toilet. What do you think, is this act cheap or frugal? Cheap or Frugal? Cheap! Frugal!