Give the gift of financial freedom this holiday season! Do you have a person in your life you keep recommending Frugalwoods to? Do you continually send them links to personal finance articles that they seem to ignore? Does this same person bemoan that their money is a mess? Do you wish you could stage a financial intervention? Now you can!! I am here for all of your financial intervention needs with… Gift Certificates for Private...
I am not usually a Valentine’s Day type of person. It’s a commercialized, chintzy, kinda made-up holiday. I even once wrote a screed on why it’s dumb: A Frugal Weirdo’s Anti-Valentine’s Day Manifesto. But let me tell you, this year, I am ON BOARD. Sign me up for ALL the tacky holidays. Frugalwoods reader Barbara summed it up perfectly: Mostly, we don’t celebrate Valentine’s Day. But with the pandemic, I feel the need to celebrate...
Merry Pandemic Holidays!!!! We’re ready to celebrate how much we love our families by…. not seeing them!!! This holiday season will be different, but no less merry and jolly. Primarily I will achieve this by making as many desserts as I’d make if we were hosting 15 people. Since there are four of us x 1 pandemic x no childcare for 9 months, I feel the math is going to work out well. Also, going to...
Listen, I know this Friday is Black Friday. And I know a lot of people will go shopping and believe they’re saving money. And I don’t deny there are legit deals to be had the day after Thanksgiving. But here’s the thing: is it worth it to jump into the consumer melee in order to save a few bucks? I posit nope. My Opinions on Black Friday (spoiler: they are not good) Brought to you...
There you are, frugaling through the year, with your money on your mind and your mind on your money when, BAM, it’s the holidays and all the cash you saved and scraped is siphoned off into an endless swirl of gift buying, wrapping paper, holiday party hosting, and Christmas tree be-decking. Ahh well, better luck next year, you think as you start January broke, deflated, and feeling ever-more Grinch-like. BUT NOT THIS YEAR! The Frugalwoods...
September to December = my favorite time of year. I’m a holiday hound. A festivity fox. A Halloween hugger. What can I say? This trifecta: Halloween Thanksgiving Christmas IS MY JAM. People are sometimes surprised at how robustly I celebrate holidays because celebrating is not inherently frugal or minimalist or simple. It’d be cheaper, easier, and require less stuff if I let October 31st, some Thursday in November (I always forget which), and December 25th...
My husband and I have had a lot of things over the years: 10.5 years of wedded bliss, two darling children, endless conversations about grocery lists, vacations abroad, tears, exhaustion, and joy. One thing we didn’t have? A frugal wedding. Yep. You heard it here first: the Frugalwoods did not get married frugally. Mr. FW and I met when we were 18 and 19 during the second semester of our freshman year of college. We...
I decorate for Christmas the day after Thanksgiving and don’t un-decorate until well into January. In fact, I wrote this on January 9th basking in the warm glow of my Christmas tree. Although less warm than it was earlier in the month because a bunch of bulbs burned out. Probably because I turn it on ALL the time. I had high hopes for Christmas this year because: I’m not pregnant (hello gin-and-tonics on Christmas Eve);...
It’s the most wonderful time of the year!!! True, true, but it’s also the most stressful time of the year for some. Stressed? Moi? You may be thinking. But indeed, amid all the ho-ho-ho-ing and fa-la-la-ing, there’s an undercurrent of dread related to one of the most contentious aspects of the holidays: GIFT GIVING. It’s lovely to give and receive and everyone feels festive and jolly nestled in their woolen sweaters, clutching their ‘nog, smiling...
You didn’t think I’d let a holiday sneak by without weighing in, did you?! Impossible! I am a known lover of holidays and above all, the trifecta of Halloween, Thanksgiving, and Christmas. I live all year for these three. I moved to Vermont so that we could have picturesque fall leaves and snowy white Christmases. I have a giant fir tree in my yard and, the other day, my older daughter looked out at it–covered...
