Tight Fisted MiserTight Fisted MiserThis blog covers my experience practicing extreme frugality and shows personal finance from a modest earner's perspective.
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Another Look at Income-Based Repayment for Student Loans
2008-04-06 21:41:00 When discussing the College Cost Reduction and Access Act I discussed the income-based repayment plan in conjunction with the public service loan forgiveness program. The coupling of the two is a great deal but I wanted to see how the income-based repayment plan would work when used alone. The income-based repayment plan limits your payments to ... More About: Law School , Student , Loans , Student Loans , Income
Increase the Gas Tax
2008-04-05 00:48:00 This doesn’t have much chance of happening but it should. The federal gas tax has been at 18.4 cents since 1993 when the price of gas was about $1 a gallon. Now that gas is over $3 a gallon the gas tax is a much smaller percentage of the price. The gas tax needs to ...
Forced Frugality
2008-04-04 02:38:00 Back when I was getting over a problem with gambling I used a technique I call ‘forced frugality’ to help deal with it. Basically whenever I received money I would immediately spend it on a bill. This way I never had any extra money that I was tempted to gamble away. If I didn’t have ... More About: Forced , Frugality
March Expenses
2008-04-02 14:40:00 Here is a breakdown of my expenses for March : Household $378 Utilities $107.11 Transportation $151.90 Entertainment $335.85 Food $121.96 Student loans $100 Health Insurance/Medical $170.22 Total $1365.04 My expenses are too high mainly because of my entertainment expense. I really need to cut that one back. My health insurance is paid for three months so I shouldn’t have any medical expense this month. Other categories should be roughly the same. My goal ... More About: Expenses
Latest Festival of Frugality Picks
2008-04-01 23:54:00 The latest Festival of Frugality is up at Consumerism Commentary. It includes my post Aldi v. Supermarket v. Wal-Mart. There were a lot of posts I liked this week. Here are some of my favorites. The Lazy Cheapskate?s Guide to Saving the Planet, posted at FiveCentNickel. I’m lazy and a cheapskate and want to save the ...
March Income
2008-04-01 15:04:00 Here is a breakdown of my income for March . Online Income $115.69 Survey $5 Interest $69.43 Tax Refund $133.93 Total $324.05 My online income came down a lot but I’m still happy with it. I’m on track to make a lot more than last year. My interest income is high because I’m including ING Direct referral bonuses. April will be another low income month but in ...
The CCRAA and Law School Loan Forgiveness
2008-04-01 00:04:00 The College Cost Reduction and Access Act offers a loan forgiveness program for those who work in public service. As I am strongly considering a career in public service when I graduate from law school I decided to do more research on the loan forgiveness program. The details of how the program works are somewhat complicated ... More About: Law School , School , Loan , Debt , Forgiveness
No Spending Days
2008-03-28 21:35:00 One way to help reduce the amount of money you spend is to have no spending days. These are simply days on which you don’t spend any money. Some will complicate the concept and state that you are always spending money since you use electricity and eat every day then you are spending. Or they ... More About: Spending , Days , Frugality
Frugal Travel Tips
2008-03-27 18:54:00 Travel is one of my favorite things to do but it can be expensive. There are ways to keep the cost down though. On my recent trip to Cancun I spent less than $300 on airfare,lodging, and food for a 4-night,5-day vacation. Here are some more money saving travel tips from the latest Festival of ... More About: Travel , Travel Tips , Tips , Frugality , Frugal
McCormick & Schmick?s $20 Off Coupon
2008-03-26 16:52:00 McCormick & Schmick’s is offering a $20 off coupon when you make reservations online through 4/30/2008. Visit the promo page for full details. They had a similar deal last year which I took advantage of and had no problems. I probably won’t take advantage of it this year since I don’t have anyone to take. ... More About: Coupon
Daylight Savings Time Info
2008-03-10 23:01:00 This is off topic but some of the misinformation I hear about Daylight Savings Time (DST) irritates me so I’m going to try to correct some of the more common misinformation. I’ve seen it stated that DST was started to help farmers. If you know any farmers then you know that is illogical since they generally ... More About: Info
Used CC Balance Transfer to Pay Down Student Loan
2008-03-09 22:59:00 I went ahead and used the balance transfer from my credit card to pay down my Grad Plus student loan. The amount of the transfer was $4900 plus a $75 balance transfer fee. Since my interest rate will be over four points lower on the credit card I should easily make up the balance transfer ... More About: Student , Loan , Goals , Transfer , Debt
Using LexisNexis and Westlaw
2008-03-08 15:58:00 *Note-My new posting schedule is for Saturday’s posts to be about law school or law and Sunday to be about goals. Monday through Friday will be about frugality but there will probably often be some overlap in the weekday and weekend subject areas. If you’re in law school you probably know all about LexisNexis and Westlaw. ... More About: Law School
More Expensive Does Not Mean Higher Quality
2008-03-07 14:24:00 You do not necessarily get what you pay for. An earlier post “Cheap Wine is Fine” showed how wine enthusiasts rated wine higher when it had a higher price tag but in a blind taste test they ended up preferring the $5 wine over the $90 wine. Now there is a similar example in which ... More About: Frugality , Higher , Quality
Heating Experiment Successful
2008-03-06 16:07:00 My electric bill came this week and I can now evaluate the results of my heating experiment designed to reduce the cost of my natural gas bill. My previous gas bill was $103 and the current one was only $69 for a savings of $34. Quite surprisingly my use of an electric space heater only ... More About: Experiment , Frugality , Heating
February Expense
2008-03-05 15:25:00 Here is a breakdown of my expenses for February : Household $382.10 Utilities $118.68 Transportation $623.49 Entertainment $536.83 Food $110.06 Education/Student Loans $120.16 Total $1891.32 My expenses were way too high last month. I spent $440 on a new clutch for my car which made my transportation expense much higher than normal. My vacation in Cancun made my entertainment expense abnormally high. The bad thing about that is I ...
February Blogging Wage: $29.38 p/h
2008-03-05 00:13:00 I decided to keep track of my hours spent blogging last month so I could determine my hourly wage for blogging. The resulting figure is very misleading. I spent 21 hours on blogging in February . That figure includes actual time writing posts and working on the blog. It doesn’t include time spent reading other blogs ... More About: Blogging
Top Frugality Pick Plus COPF
2008-03-04 19:44:00 I was pleasantly surprised to see that my post “An Exercise and Frugality Hack” was a top pick at the Festival of Frugality being hosted by Broke Grad Student. I’ve had pretty good luck at getting my posts in the editor’s picks but this is the first time I’ve had the first post listed. Some ... More About: Pick
February Income
2008-03-03 21:14:00 Here is a summary of my income for February : Online Income $617.14 Surveys $5 Interest $36.87 Cash Back $8.60 Total $667.61 My online income was by far my best ever. This won’t be duplicated soon though because I was paid for two year long link placements which likely won’t be repeated. Also I received my Adsense payment which usually takes me a few months ...
Setback in Goal Progress
2008-03-03 00:18:00 Soon after I wrote about my exercise and frugality hack last month it was sabotaged. I had turned off my hot water at home and took my showers at the school fitness center to motivate me to exercise and save a little money. The school has now closed the locker room at the fitness center ... More About: Goals , Goal , Progress
Concentrate on the Big Three
More articles from this author:2008-02-29 19:45:00 In backpacking a common piece of advice to those who want to reduce their pack weight is to reduce the weight of their big three first. The big three consists of a backpack, sleeping bag, and shelter. These are usually the three heaviest items one carries. It makes sense to concentrate on reducing the weight ... More About: Frugality , Concentrate 1, 2 |
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