By Shannon Christman
It’s that time of year again. Some of us know it as spring; others call it the start of yard sale season. Yard sales (also known as garage sales, tag sales, rummage sales, and stoop sales) attract an interesting and diverse subculture of bargain hunters, environmentalists, and treasure hunters; they are […]

By Jennifer Derrick
A friend and I were talking the other day about jobs and money (actually, we were whining about our jobs and money) and he brought up the concept of Voluntary Poverty. I’ve never heard of voluntary poverty outside of certain orders like monks and nuns, so I asked him to explain.
Turns out […]

By Jennifer Derrick
When many people today think of frugality they think of a life filled with deprivation and sacrifice. They think of people who are living on the fringe of society; people who make all their own clothes, eschew modern technology, aren’t knowledgeable about popular culture, and mail-order worms for their compost heaps.
While some […]

By Ann Hartter
I love my blue jeans. They’re a pain to find and when I do, I pay top dollar for something that fits and isn’t too fashionable. I then wear them till they’re holding on by mere threads. I do get good use out of my jeans, but the price I end up paying […]

By Shannon Christman
My church is part of a denomination whose doctrinal statement reads in part, “Nonconformity calls us to reject the world’s unrestrained materialism, its sensualism, and its self-centeredness. Rather we seek to express the values of God’s kingdom by a lifestyle of modesty and simplicity.” Nevertheless, in the eight and a half years […]

By Jennifer Derrick
A lot of people ask me: “If you don’t watch TV and you choose to limit movies, clubs, restaurants, etc. in order to save money, what do you do for entertainment? Aren’t you bored?” I usually look at them, dumbfounded, because to me there is too much to do and boredom is never […]

By Jennifer Derrick
I’m frequently asked why I choose to be frugal. Is it all about saving money? My answer is always, “No, it’s not all about saving money, although that’s a nice side effect.” Saving money tends to be the driving reason behind why many people turn to a frugal lifestyle (and it was […]

By Jennifer Derrick
Since when did choosing to live a frugal life become a political issue? I don’t make a huge deal about my frugal lifestyle, but when it “shows” in public, more and more people are feeling perfectly free to slap some sort of political label on me. Maybe it’s because it’s an election year, […]

By Shannon Christman
“If Bill Gates saw $100 lying on the ground, it wouldn’t be worth his time to pick it up,” a friend told me once. She reasoned that he would make more during that time by doing something else. At an estimated salary of $4,000 per minute, every minute of the week, Gates […]

By Jennifer Derrick
This weekend I was reading “You’re Broke Because You Want to Be: How to Stop Getting By and Start Getting Ahead” by Larry Winget. (A pretty good read, by the way. The advice is nothing groundbreaking, but his straight talk and no excuses approach is entertaining.) Anyway, in the book he states that […]