Author: Laurie

August 25, 2016

Should I Buy My Child a Horse?

Whenever I mention that we have horses on our farm, I would estimate that at least half of the people I’m talking to say “Yeah, my kid wants a horse.”

Having a horse or pony is a dream for many children – and adults alike. But it’s important to know what you’re getting into before taking the plunge into horse ownership. We’ve been “horse people” for 5 years now, and we’ve learned a lot over the last five years. For the first year or so of owning our first horse, we boarded him at a boarding stable, and we’ve had our horses at home now for nearly four years.

I’m by no means a horse expert (that’s oldest daughter’s area of expertise) but I think we’ve learned enough to share some valuable information that people should consider before they make a decision to buy their first horse.

Here are some things you should consider if you’re thinking about buying a horse for your child. Read more

August 12, 2016

Frugal Home Hacks that Save us Hundreds Per Month

They say that necessity is the mother of invention. There’s lots of truth in that quote. For us, the necessity to keep trimming our spending as we work our way out of debt has helped us to “invent” more and more ways to spend less and less of our money on things we need to buy. As we work on our financial goals we work on increasing our income, but we also continue to work to cut expenses. For instance, in order to reach our 2014 grocery expenditure goal we spent only $215 on groceries in December 2014. For a family of six, that took a lot of work, but it showed us that we can spend less if we need to.

We haven’t been that extreme in a long time, but we do continue to look for ways to cut down on home expenses and save money. I would say that our savings as we work on cutting expenses are now easily in the four digits compared to our expenses when we started our journey in 2013. So I thought I’d share some of our frugal home hacks today and how much money we’ve saved per month by continuing to look for ways to cut expenses. Read more

August 4, 2016

Six Health Hacks that Help us Keep Medical Costs Low

*Disclaimer: I am not a health professional. I am simply sharing my experiences and as such, this article should not be substituted for professional medical advice.

*Disclaimer: This post contains affiliate links.

Since the induction of Obamacare and the crazy rise in health care costs over the last few years, we’ve been working extra hard at finding ways to keep medical and health care costs low. Anyone who has had any medical costs the last few years knows that one big (or even semi-big) medical issue can add up to big out-of-pocket costs real quick. Read more

July 7, 2016

How We Broke the New and Shiny Cycle

See that pic? That’s the odometer on our 2005 Chevy Suburban. It just hit 200,000 miles this last month. I love our 2005 truck. It runs great. Looks good. And fits all of our needs. The fact that it’s eleven years old doesn’t phase me a bit, but it wasn’t always that way.

For years we were addicted to “new and shiny”. In our defense, we stayed mostly away from “big” new and shiny things after we moved to our McMansion in 2001. We moved to the McMansion right along with our 1999 Ford Windstar and our 2000 Chevy Silverado, both of which were bought new and shiny off the showroom floor. Read more

July 3, 2016

TwoFer: A Great Holiday Recipe and a Serious Word of Caution

Greetings, friends! This is a post that I re-post every year around the 4th of July. Note that this is NOT an anti-fireworks post, just an important word of caution for all about the dangers of sparklers. Please share with everyone you know in order to keep people safe as they enjoy independence day. And bonus: it comes with a great recipe! 🙂

I was thinking I had another week to get this post up, but then I realized that the 4th of July is just around the corner! I’ve got two tidbits of info I thought you might appreciate in lieu of the upcoming holiday weekend. Read more

June 29, 2016

How to Live a More Rounded Life While on a Budget

Greetings, Frugal Farmer friends! Today I’m sharing a guest post from my blogging pal Richard, who blogs over at Frugality Magazine. Richard worked hard via frugality to pay off a boatload of debt so that he could get his life back. Today he’s sharing how to live a full life even on a strict budget.

Budgeting: its a necessary evil if you want to take control of your money.

But it’s also not without its problems, not least that budgeting your money carefully can mean denial. We give up spending wantonly on whatever we want, we economize, we give up on those frivolous expenses.

The risk, of course, is that budgeting reduces the fun of life. Instead of going out with your friends you stay home. Rather than eating out at restaurants you cook for yourself. You give up on those new jeans you wanted and try to make your current ones last another few months.

June 22, 2016

Republic Wireless Review: What We Think After One Year

So, it’s been just over a year now since we switched our cell phones from our pay-as-you-go service to Republic Wireless. Republic Wireless had asked us to try their service, and we agreed.

I thought I’d share our experience today and tell you our likes/dislikes about the services they offer. Read more

June 12, 2016

Why Financial Wellness Matters

The following blog post is part of The Road to Financial Wellness blog tour. The Road to Financial Wellness is a three-month, grassroots campaign promoting financial empowerment on a national level and encourages people to pursue their dream lifestyle. Find out more about local events near you.

Recently I read a personal finance article titled “76 Million Americans are Struggling Financially and it Doesn’t Matter” or something like that. Curious, I read over the article and found that the author had, like so many people in today’s world, ridiculously unreasonable reasons for why the two main facts in the report that he cited aren’t cause for concern.

The first fact was that roughly 30 percent of Americans Read more

June 9, 2016

The Difference Between “The Good” and “The Best”

This post was originally published in 2012 – one of the very first posts I published on The Frugal Farmer – but I find it very enlightening so I thought I’d give you a blast from the past and share it again today. Enjoy!

So, we’ve made it through our first day of DE living. We went grocery shopping. That was an experience, but we did well on our grocery budget so far. But I have to say the biggest hurdle we faced yesterday was in changing our habits. That realization led me to remember a favorite saying I read years ago:

It’s the smallest amount of extra effort that will separate “the good” from “the best”

May 31, 2016

How Going To A Distance Learning College Kept Me Out Of Student Loan Debt

Good morning, frugal friends! Today we have another guest post! Carrie Lowrance from carrielowrance.com is sharing how she saved money on college costs by choosing a distance learning school option.

As we all know, student loan debt is astronomical. The cost of going to college is growing by leaps and bounds and the financial ruin it is causing is devastating. Students who cannot pay their loans and go into default. Parents that lose everything over loaning money to pay on these loans. It is an all too common nightmare. Don’t get me wrong, an education is definitely worth it. But the possibility of financial ruin for the student and their family is not. Read more