Author: Laurie

October 14, 2016

Easy and Delicious Apple Crisp

So, it’s no secret here at The Frugal Farmer household that we love our desserts. Being that we have three plush apple trees in our yard (I highly recommend planting apple and other fruit trees: it’s a great way to help improve self-sufficiency, and apples are SO yummy!) we work to make good use of the fall apple bounty. Yesterday I made two apple pies. Today I made a pan of warm, delicious apple crisp. I’m telling you, there’s nothing like apple crisp to warm the tummy and the heart on a cold fall winter day. Read more

October 12, 2016

How to Prepare for a Natural Disaster

Last week Hurricane Matthew hit the shores of Florida. By 11 a.m. EST on Saturday more than one million residents were left without power. Four people were dead: two people killed by falling trees while in their home and camper, and an elderly couple died from carbon monoxide fumes from the gas generator they were running in their garage.

In Haiti the damage from Hurricane Matthew was far more intense: over 800 dead as of this writing.

My friends, natural disasters do and will happen, and there’s nothing we can do to stop them. You can call prepping for war, economic downturns and zombie apocalypses “paranoid” but the threat of natural disasters such as hurricanes, tornadoes, droughts, heavy rains and massive snowstorms are real and they happen regularly. Read more

October 10, 2016

Top Ten Ways to Prepare for Retirement

A recent poll by Go Banking Rates revealed that 56% of Americans have less than $10,000 saved for retirement. And 28% of Americans aged 55 and older have ZERO saved for retirement. These are numbers that should scare us all. Even if you’re doing great on saving for retirement, those who aren’t saving will eventually be a tax burden on the savers if they continue to avoid a retirement savings plan.

With health problems on the rise and medical costs on the rise, people are in dire need of a plan to start saving at least something for retirement. And lest you be discouraged, know that “something” really does add up. Read more

October 5, 2016

A Motivational Story for Getting Your Financial Sh*t Together

It happened again yesterday, as it’s happened a couple of different times over our journey to get out of debt. I was talking with someone when they shared a story with me that firmly established in my heart why it’s so important we keep on our journey toward debt freedom.

In this most recent case, the story was about a friend of ours. Read more

September 28, 2016

27 Ways to Save Money Right Now

So, you’re getting tired of the rat race and the paycheck-to-paycheck living cycle, aren’t you. I can tell by that look on your face. You’re tired, worn down, and you don’t want to live life that way anymore.

I’ve been there. Some days I’m still there. But one thing that’s changed is that we’ve now got a plan in place that will help us end up in a financial place where we have enough FU money that we can blow off hubby’s 9-to-5 job and do what we want to do instead of what we have to do. Read more

September 21, 2016

5 Effective Ways to Improve Garden Cultivation

Today’s post is a guest post from fellow blogger Ann, who owns the Sumo Gardener blog. Enjoy!

How to Improve Garden Cultivation

We always want to maximize the crops we harvest after a season of hard work. Our goal as gardeners is to produce sustainable food for our own consumption while maximizing our use of land and minimizing waste and losses. However, gardening should not only be focused on taking care of the crops that we will harvest at the end of the planting season.

One of the most important steps in determining your planting season’s success is usually the first step that you have to do: land cultivation. Today we’ll talk about five different ways that you can improve land cultivation in your garden, no matter how big or small it is. Read more

September 15, 2016

What You Should Consider Before You Buy a Farm

It will be four years ago next month that we sold our home in the ‘burbs and moved to a hobby farm about forty-five minutes out of town. The farm life is in many ways a much harder life than suburbia life, but the blessings are well worth the effort and we wouldn’t trade it for anything. Since a fair number of people seem to be considering moving out to the country these days, I thought I’d share a to-do list of things one should consider before making the move to a farm, whether it be a smaller hobby farm like ours or a larger working farm. Here are some thoughts. Read more

September 9, 2016

How to Prepare for a SHTF Situation

There’s been lots of talk in the prepping world that America’s fluffy existence is soon coming to an end – or at least taking a long break. Massive government debt (currently over 19 trillion) and personal debt (3.4 trillion and rising) numbers in America alone are causing concern for many economists and governments. If a major financial, political, natural or terroristic disaster occurred, how would stressed out Americans handle it? Would there be widespread riots? Cleared out grocery store shelves?

According to a popular prepping article, Germany has warned its citizens to be prepared for potential impending disasters by having a ten-day supply of food and five-day supply of water on hand. Other warnings are being given throughout the world, even in the United States. Read more

September 6, 2016

Stories from the Great Depression

Greetings, friends! I’ll try not to make this into a rant :-), but with all of the modern technologies of today and media ads running amuck telling us we need this, that and the other thing, I think we often forget just how good we’ve got it. So, in order to lovingly remind you (and myself) of all of our blessings, I thought I’d share some tidbits of stories from the Great Depression. If you like these, you can find more at the Ohio Department of Aging Website. Read more

August 31, 2016

5 Ways to Work Toward Millionaire Status

Becoming a millionaire is largely about finding more money to save and invest. Before we started the process of educating ourselves in the ways of money management, we really thought that becoming a millionaire was impossible for working class people like us. We’d been raised believing that there are the “haves” and the “have nots” and that it wasn’t our choice which group we were in; it was simply luck of the draw.

Today, over three years since we’ve really been committed to continuing personal finance education, we now know differently. Honestly, although I love hearing the many stories of people in their thirties, forties and fifties who have become millionaires through diligent saving and serious expense-cutting, many of those people and families have six-figure incomes.

But what about the rest of us? Those making well below six figures and raising kids? Read more