They settled in beautiful Cambridge, MA and bought a four-bedroom home that was walking distance to Harvard and MIT. Kristen’s tagline, “Living Cheerfully on Less,” speaks to my soul. Her series on spotlighting other tightwads, her grocery hauls, and her “Thankful Thursdays” also strike a chord with me.
Kinda Frugal is run by power couple Sara & Jerry Graham. They write about a variety of topics, including debt reduction, saving challenges, and how to lower your bills. Like the name suggests though, it’s definitely an all-in-one personal finance blog and not just a frugal living blog, since they talk about side hustles and earning money as opposed to just spending less. To save money for their move, the Thameses — aka Mrs. and Mr. Frugalwoods — examined expenses and reduced costs in seemingly every aspect of their lives.
- Frugalwoods (est. April 2014) is a living documentation of the accelerated final three years of our journey to financial independence and a homestead in the woods (more on that in #2).
- The “random box of junk” delivered to you each month.
- Sarah identifies herself primarily as a Christan and homeschool blogger, but I’m still including her because her frugal living section is really insightful!
- Kinda Frugal is run by power couple Sara & Jerry Graham.
- Are you creating an adverse scenario for someone else?
- I believe that managing your money opens up a world of options for how to live your life.
According to the Federal Reserve, Millennials in their twenties carried an average debt of $22,135 last summer. This is one of the most integral metrics of the Millennial experience because of its implications for how much money a young person can save. A recent study by ApartmentList claims that the rarefied minority of debt-free Millennials are putting away twice as much money as their counterparts who are still paying off balances. This makes it easier to put a down payment on a house, build a portfolio, and — if you’re lucky — retire early, Frugalwoods-style.
Opinions are our own, but compensation and in-depth research may determine where and how companies appear. For more on the ideology that grounds my approach, visit the Frugalwoods Philosophy section. All other content is listed in the categories at the right, which I add to as I address new topics. It takes an apple tree ~6 years before it bears a single apple.
Hi, I’m Liz!
She seeks to empower her readers to take control of their finances, while providing insights into how frugality helped her family achieve financial independence. We began discussing what we’d do if we didn’t have to work traditional office jobs for a living and we simultaneously agreed we’d live frugalwoods a simpler life in the woods. We love hiking and spending time together in nature and so, moving ourselves from the city to a more rural setting sounded ideal. My husband and I credit following his plan to our getting out of $40k in debt in two years (while paying for a wedding & two births).
- To accept this, I had to let go of the image of myself as a perfect homesteader out here homesteading away.
- Then they’ll snap up 20 or more acres of land in southern rural Vermont — paying in full with cash — and decamp to the homestead.
- ’ And sometimes I will say, ‘You know, I don’t need XYZ, a pair of shoes, a doughnut, or whatever it is,’” Elizabeth said.
- Aren’t we all looking for ways to save money?
I’ll be there for you every step of the way, creating a customized financial plan that fits your unique goals. We’ll stay in touch regularly, making sure you not only understand what you need to do next, but also have a clear picture of your lifelong financial path. Today is the 42nd edition of our periodic guest post series called 10 Questions and a Pizza Place.
The Venn Diagram of Frugal and Healthy
This transition to the new site is also why I didn’t post much in the last month. Fear not, I haven’t abandoned you, I’ve just been quite wrapped up in wrapping up this extensive redesign project. This is (obviously) my first post on the new site and I’m still getting used to my new backend structure. I am not, and will never claim to be, a tech maven, so I may have a bit of a learning curve ahead. If you don’t understand the terminology or rationale mapped out in your plan, then I haven’t done my job.
Or maybe they want to transition to working part time. So they see frugality as a piece of this puzzle, one of the tools they can use to work toward that goal. If you’re interested in developing better spending habits, you might consider taking Elizabeth’s free 31-day Uber Frugal Month Challenge. I personally completed this program two years ago, and it prompted a lot of self-reflection. While I consider myself frugal, I uncovered some areas in my life that I decided could use improvement. Elizabeth describes herself and Nate as “average people,” but the focus that the couple brings to their daily routines is far from average.
For me, the book was my introduction to Mrs. Frugalwoods, whose thrifty lifestyle, I learned, began more than a decade ago on the streets of Brooklyn. I picked up some savings tips from her book and found myself reminiscing about my good old days in Cambridge, where the Frugalwoods and I happened to live a few blocks — and a few decades — apart. Elizabeth joins her readers in taking this challenge twice a year, and the next one starts in January 2023.
Reader Case Study: Yearning For a Debt-Free Future
They made adequate money, but they felt unfulfilled. In April 2014, Elizabeth started Frugalwoods, and her family moved to rural Vermont, where they now live on a 66-acre homestead. Although only in their 30s, they’ve paid off their mortgage.
Life
Elizabeth works part-time, while Nate retired last year from a software engineering job. Aren’t we all looking for ways to save money? Elizabeth Thames’ website, Frugalwoods, is about how to do just that—and much more.
The blueberry bushes took two years to make an edible blueberry. Similar timelines are attached to all of these perennial fruits. And in terms of sheer number of plants, it is a lot, but in terms of how much fruit we actually get? The “big” vegetable garden is where we grow the majority of our annual veggies. Annual means you have to plant new ones every year as opposed to plants that are perennial, which means they come back every year. This garden is fenced in and has cattle panels–which I installed by myself one year, might I add–for things like tomatoes and snap peas to vine up.
April was the NINTH anniversary of Frugalwoods and to celebrate, I’m typing down memory lane with reflections on some of my most influential old posts. Nine years is a long time to do anything and I’m curious to see if I agree with my old self or if my thoughts have changed in the intervening years. Since May is the SEVENTH anniversary of our transition to rural life, this seems the perfect time to reflect on rural.
–and have a dairy cow for milk from which I’d church my own butter and make my own cheese. Surely we could provide for all of our needs and live out a modern-day sustainable, free range, organic paradise of our own making. To be clear, all of this IS technically possible. No need to engage, contradict, force or offer alternatives. If I force her to eat them, that’ll build resentment and potentially an unhealthy/bizarre relationship with food.
Maybe the answer is yes, and maybe it’s no,” she said. Mr. FW and I had a shared quarter-life crisis in March 2014 at age 30. We realized that all of our creative energy and our best ideas were funneled into doing work for our employers—not into endeavors that we find personally rewarding. And we had a sneaking suspicion that, if we didn’t change something, we’d wake up in 40 years still in those same cubicles We felt trapped. Mr. Frugalwoods and I both went to college at the University of Kansas (where we met our freshman year), did relatively well, graduated in 2006 without any debt, and got good jobs.
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