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While in Belize with a group of MBA students, I met Vienda, self-proclaimed ‘Modern Day Gypsy’. Her life is the true essence of frugal fun. In the spirit of spring break, we invited her to share a posting on the topic of travel, fun and frugality. Modern Day Gypsy Guide: 7 Tips on How to Make Your Money Last I've been travelling around our pretty globe for 10 years now covering over 30 countries, with a couple of pit stops along the way; 18 months in London and 2 1/2 years in Sydney. People whom I meet along the way often ask me how I do it. I work, naturally, and have several different income streams but that's a post for another day.  How much money you have is generally less important than what you do with that money. Travels can last much longer if you use your money in thoughtful and clever ways, and think outside of the box. Here are seven of the most poignant tips on how to make your money last. 1. Be Flexible. Being flexible is probably the No. 1 tip I can give anyone w

As Valentine’s Day quickly approaches, I think back to the Beatle’s song “ Can’t Buy Me Love .” The Wall Street Journal was also thinking of the little things that show love in their article “ Small Acts, Big Love .” By putting the other person’s needs above yours, spending a little time, and being creative in your approach, really shows that you appreciate and care for them and you don’t take them for granted. Some key things to remember when you demonstrate your love through actions: • Don’t expect a pay back • Think about what your partner would like, not what is easy for you • Put your partner’s needs first • Show respect and appreciation Here are a few little things that say ‘ I Love You’ every day of the year: • On cold days, start their car and scrape the ice off the windshield • Make the bed • Pack their lunch • Open doors • Leave the toilet seat down • Leave the bathroom sink clean • Pick up after yourself • Empty the dishwasher • Make a meal • Say “thank you” • Anything that

Hosting a baby shower? Hate shower games? Pinched for funds? Try this one. We took scrap wood and cut them up into 2x3x3 inch blocks, sanded and painted a baby-powder white. As the guest arrived, they selected a number or a letter to feature on their block. We had acrylic paint pens for everyone to work with. It was a fun opportunity to release our inner artist. We coated each block with a protective spray, and wa la! Our guest have collectively created a one-of-a-kind set of blocks. The project cost $5 in paint material and provided not only a group project, but a very special gift for that little one. Very frugal and fun!

Have you ever thought about making your own laundry detergent?  The other day, we were shopping at our local farm/home supply store and found coupons that had all the items necessary to make your own laundry soap on sale.  The total cost to make the detergent for 288 loads was just under $15.00 or about 5 cents per load, about 3 times the savings over commercial laundry detergent. We tried the laundry soap and it works great!   Kristy is excited because she feels it works better and it is how her grandmother made laundry detergent. The directions: 2/3 bar Fels Naptha soap* ½ cup Borax ½ cup washing soda Grate the Fels Naptha soap. Mix in the Borax and washing soda.   Store in an air tight container.   Use 1 – 2 tablespoons per load.   Can be used in HE washers. * Freeze the Fels Naptha soap prior to preparing the mixture to keep it from clogging the grater.  Happy Washing! PS. We have had questions following this blog posting asking for the liquid form of the detergent: • 1/3 bar Fels

It’s that time of year again, when the political ads cease and attention is now to get you to purchase and spend for the holidays. The height of consumer spending frenzies is commonly referred to as “Black Friday,” which this year took on Thanksgiving Thursday. I don’t want to bash the consumerism of the holidays, but want to provide you with a few frugal fun ideas to increase your holiday cheer without breaking the bank. Who knows, you just might start some new favorite holiday traditions. Go Caroling Bundle up and grab some hot chocolate with your friend and go door-to-door singing favorite holiday tunes. Have a pot-luck dinner or snack before or after the caroling. Give the Gift of Time Life is busy and it may seem as if you don’t have any time to give. It may seem easier to just buy presents, gift cards or give. Think about giving your time to a friend or family member. You can help them around the house, with special projects or just an evening of turning off the television and pl

It has been six weeks since we sold our house and moved into our motor coach. If you read our previous blog "Homeless" you know it was quite a shock moving from 3,000 to 300 square feet. The idea of living in our motor coach for 6 to 9 months while we build our next home was a great plan as we sat around the dining room table of our old house. The good news is that it gets better. To bring you up to speed, we now have electricity as of two weeks ago but still do not have running water. When we were showering in the motor home, our 85 gallon water holding tank would last us about one week. Tuesday was our day to take the motor home out to empty our tanks and fill up with fresh water. We changed our ways two weeks ago. We now get up at 5:00 am to head out to the Campus Wellness and Recreation Center (CRWC) for a work out and morning shower. We can now stretch our 85 gallons out for one month. Lessons learned over the past 6 weeks: 1. Running water and electricity are great luxu

As classes have started and I’m back to teaching personal finance, I have a challenge for all the students taking this class and using “Personal Finance; Building Your Future” by Walker & Walker. I want to know who can come up with the best frugal fun night. Add your suggestions and ideas by adding it as a comment to this blog. Keep it clean (PG rating), include an estimated cost and how this Frugal Fun Night reflects your values – the values that you worked on in Chapter 1. Remember, being frugal is not being cheap, but it is the wise spending of money in accordance with your values. I look forward to reading your responses and getting ideas of how I can spend a Frugal Fun Night!

Question : What enables you to both eat healthy and be a good steward of your community?  Answer: Buy a share membership to your local Community Supported Agriculture (CSA). Through a CSA membership, you are buying seasonal food directly from a local farmer. In a CSA, the farmer offers a set number of "shares" to the public. A share consists of a box of farm produce. You purchase a share up front at the beginning of the year and in return, you receive a box of seasonal produce each week throughout the season. Information about CSAs and how to find one in your community can be found at http://www.localharvest.org/ Advantages for the Farmer • Market your produce prior to the growing season • Receive payment early in the season, which provides cash flow • Connect with those who will be consuming your produce Advantages for You • Fresh food, packed with flavor and vitamins as they will be consumed or frozen very soon after they are harvested • Exposure to new fruits and vegetabl

Gaining weight? No fun. Not fitting into your clothes? No fun. Buying new clothes for a temporary larger size? No fun. Remaking old skinny-butt skirts into funky fun tops for the afternoon graduation parties? So fugal. So fun ! 

It is Valentine’s frugal fun time. In keeping healthy hearts, label one of these healthy snack items and sneak it into your sweetheart’s lunch box. The following are a few sweet (as in thoughtful) sample valentines lunch box label treats for you to consider: 1. Apple: “You are the apple of my eye” 2. Cheese Slices : “Our love is so cheesy!” 3. Cupcake: “You are my little cupcake” 4. Cherries : “I cherish the memories” 5. Almonds: “I am nuts about you” 6. Pepper Packets : “You spice up my life” 7. Turkey Roll Up : “Don’t’ be a turkey, go out with me” 8. Ham Roll Up: “I am a real ham when it comes to dating you” 9. Peanut Butter and Jelly: “We go together like peanut butter and jelly” 10. Sushi: “You are the wasabi of my sushi” 11. Lettuce Salad: “Lettuce enjoy our time together” 12. Relish Salad: “I relish our time together” 13. Tickets to Lunch: “Let’s ketchup” 14. Jar of Mustard: “I mustard enough courage to ask you out” 15. Olives: “Olive you” 16. Pickle: “If I am ever

Hello World- Tonight, the man in brown delivered to our door steps two copies of ‘ Personal Finance: Building Your Future’ Walker & Walker 1e. After three years, hard work and much support and encouragement from the McGraw Hill editors, the 480 page book dropped on our door step and for the techie side of me, complete with QR codes that really work with the blog, which is too cool on so many dimensions. The book arrival is not an end point. It is a kick-off to a whole new adventure. We look forward to classroom adoptions and interactions with the blog and how social media can influence student learning and help keep current events interwoven with discussion items in the class room. We want to reach out just one more time to our friends at McGraw Hill. Hugs and cartwheels to Michele Janicek, Jennifer Lohn, Melissa Caughlin, Diane Nowaczyk, Jennifer Jelinkski, Ann Torbert, Bradley Woodrum, Johnna Barto, Elizabeth Hughes and all of the other editors, production staff, and marke

Money is a resource and so is your health. If you lose all your money, you can find a way to earn it back. You cannot always get your health back. The state of Iowa champions an annual 100 days, live healthy campaign , with the goal to bring together friends, families, businesses and communities in team-based wellness challenges.  This promotion for positive lifestyle change is part of Live Healthy America and kicks off January 23, 2012. The goal of Live Healthy America is to provide the tools, resources, and technology to assist individuals, organizations, and corporations in creating a culture of wellness. It has grown to a wellness solution that motivates, educates and empowers organizations to make positive and lasting lifestyle changes to achieve optimal health. All this helps to drive down lifestyle-related health care costs, which benefits you, your family and your employer. Shaving calories and increasing your activity will help you lose weight, save money, reduce medical expe

Have you planned your New Year’s celebration yet? A little short on cash? Consider giving a last minute shout out to friends and acquaintances --The more random the better. Those that accept, have them pair up to provide a course of the meal. Each take turns serving, with one pair volunteering to do dishes. What you have is a gourmet evening with good company for the cost of making one dish at home. The entree to our last impromptu gathering this week was a hit ( Chef Daniel Boulud's  Pork Shoulder with Guinness, Dried Cherries, and Sweet Potatoes ).  All in all, it makes for a very frugal – very fun evening out.  Hope you are gearing up to enjoy wrapping up 2011.

During the gifting season, it is sometimes difficult to find the ‘perfect’ present. Some of the best are those from the heart. Like the garden stone with our grandchildren’s’ foot prints, framed photos of special moments from the past year, lovely scarves from faraway places we have traveled. Sometimes the best gift can be the offer to undertake a dreaded task, like cleaning out and reorganizing a storage room or offering your services as dishwasher for your parent’s dinner party. The very best gift is the present of presence, being there for one another, either in person or in heart. And to think – it doesn't cost a penny. How grand.

It is the holidays and in the spirit of gifting and the joy of creating, make useful and fun things for family and friends this time a year. Tis the art of Upcycle : To make new from items that have lost their usefulness or value. A few flavors of the day: Paper bag stockings , perfect for gifts of movie passes, lottery tickets or gift certificates:         Covering an old canvas so to gift a new painting : Piecing together old jeans into a cozy blanket : Everyone has a little elf inside them. Get out the glue and glitter and release your inner elf . Very fun. Very frugal.

“ Frugal Fun”', “Holidays” : The two topics go hand-in-hand.  So much of the joy of the holidays is the time spent with love ones and surprising them with something special. The something special does not have to cost a mint. Gifts from the heart can be the least expensive and the most treasured. Frugal-festive examples from our homestead this year include p ackets of homemade monogrammed stationary: Stockings made from a fabric stash and old costume jewelry: And grandparents teaming up with the grandchildren to make extra special surprises for the parents. These activities make the holiday glow -- from the joy of the planning, the making and the giving. From our household to yours, we hope your holiday prep this year is joyful, frugal and fun . :)

This week a wind storm blew down three rows of our neighbor’s sweet corn. Luckily, the corn was ready to be picked. Now to be perfectly honest, picking sweet corn is hot work, especially in Iowa when the temps are in the 90’s and the humidity is in the 70’s. But here is what we have found to make the harvest enjoyable:  Do it with friends : Many hands make light work – as well as good conversation while doing the work.  Share a meal: We picked the corn at the farm, and then had a nice meal with FRESH (picked off the stalk less than an hour before eating) corn, with a home raised chicken, warm bread, great cheese and wine. And oh yes, a good desert before we started the shucking, cleaning, blanching, cooling, cutting and bagging of the corn.  Divide and conquer: It is just the way it works, but while the guys are shucking, the girls are cleaning, blanching and cooling the corn. By the time the guys get done shucking, it is time to start cutting the corn off the cob. When is it all

There is nothing better than picking fresh berries for breakfast or clipping fresh spinach and lettuce in the evening for dinner. They are plump full of vitamins and you burn calories in harvesting your bounty. Growing fruits and vegetables in your yard, on your patio or on a window ledge is good for the environment, good for your health and good for your pocket book. Challenge yourself to eat local and in season. Try adding one fruit or vegetable to every flowerbed. A cucumber trellis is great fun for the patio. Love sweet potatoes vines climbing on the fence. Each hill can stay stored in the ground into the fall - harvesting it when you are ready to indulge. It’s not too late to plan the summer’s second season plantings or purchase the fruit trees on sale for next year’s harvest A great blog to check out is Eden Makers Blog . Likewise, a nice book on edible estates is Edible Estates: Attack on the Front Lawn . For your video viewing pleasure:  Bon Appetite!

Call it editable estates, urban agriculture, reducing your carbon footprint, or a throwback to the American ‘Victory Garden’ of World War II -- Last year, we decided to plant at least one surprise edible in every garden plot in our back and front yard. Among the many fruits and vegetables, we had peppers beside are day lilies, strawberry plants as ground cover lining are front walk under the yews, and sweet potatoes climbing the fence as a back drop to the zinnias. Not only have we been rewarded with the playful fun of edibles interwoven across the landscape, we have relished (no pun intended) in the harvest. We have feasted on fresh vegetables and fruits all summer and have been canning and freezing to carry us well past Thanksgiving with home goodies. Who knew that three cucumber plants would give us enough to can dozens of quarts of dill pickle spears and bread and butter pickles? This fall, our pepper jelly has been a huge hit at gatherings. We found a very simple, step-by-step re

Have you ever received a gift where the wrapping paper is so beautiful, you can’t bear to toss it? I love to upcycle beautiful gift wrapping as linen linings in my dresser drawers. A special treat is to sprinkle them with lavender oil. Even if the paper only stretches for one drawer, I love the mix and match of each drawer having it’s own characteristics. Seeing the lovely paper when I root to the bottom of the drawer reminds of the event's special celebration day.