Living Richly on a Budget

I dug through Amazon to find these great kitchen gifts for under $25. They are all eligible for Amazon's free super saver shipping on orders $25 or more.
http://www.yummysf.com/foodie-gifts-under-25/

Found some great tips on how to save money on health insurance, Walgreens, cruises, etc. Also, there's an article on how married couples can survive this financial crisis. http://www.livingrichlyonabudget.com/money-saving-tips-from-...

http://www.livingrichlyonabudget.com/top-money-wasters

This incredible deal on a one year subscription to Cooking Light ends Saturday night at 11:59pm. http://www.yummysf.com/cooking-light-subscription/

I love Peet's. Buy a drink for a friend and get one free for yourself. http://www.yummysf.com/peets-buy-one-get-one-free-coupon/

I've been reading about Internet entrepreneurs. I learned about a 25 year old guy who was laid off, then managed to make $8,000 through passive income. Unbelievable! Read more about passive income.
http://www.livingrichlyonabudget.com/internet-entrepreneurs-...

I saw this costume contest on a local newspaper website. The kids and costumes are adorable!
http://www.livingrichlyonabudget.com/creative-costumes

The prices on laptops have dropped. Now is the time to buy. You can buy one now starting at $299 for a netbook. http://www.livingrichlyonabudget.com/cheap-laptops-from-dell

I saved $143 a month, which is $1716 a year, just by switching service providers and dropping services. http://www.livingrichlyonabudget.com/save-100-month

MTV's award winning documentary series followed three twentysomethings who once had high paying corporate jobs and lived lavishly. They lost their jobs and now are struggling to make ends meet. http://www.livingrichlyonabudget.com/true-life-i-can-no-long...

Here are my favorite and least favorite job search websites. http://www.livingrichlyonabudget.com/job-search-websites

http://www.livingrichlyonabudget.com/money-saving-tips

$1 off any individual entree
$2 off any $10 purchase
$4 off any $20 purchase
http://www.yummysf.com/boston-market-coupon/

If an airline can manage to save $3 million a year, starting with $25 per flight, how much can we save in a year by saving a few dollars at a time?
http://www.livingrichlyonabudget.com/american-airlines-saved...

If you're looking for an easy way to budget, then try Mint.com. It's an award winning free budgeting tool.

http://www.livingrichlyonabudget.com/easy-budgeting-with-mint

Cooking at home saves so much money. If you don't know where to start check out a menu for a month's worth of easy dinners:
http://www.livingrichlyonabudget.com/a-month-of-easy-dinners

Just saw the movie "Confessions of a Shopaholic". It was a cute movie with financial lessons, surprisingly.

See my post:

http://www.livingrichlyonabudget.com/financial-lessons-from-...

I am starting a new blog, called "Living Richly on a Budget."

My first post is about paying off credit debt, loans, debt in collections. And I found a cool debt calculator that will calculate how to pay off all your debt.

Hope this helps you! http://www.livingrichlyonabudget.com/7-steps-to-paying-off-c...

I'm so excited that I sold some video/audio equipment and made $1500! I'm a former videographer so I have a lot of video equipment to get rid of. $1000 will go towards our goal of $1000 for emergency savings. The rest will go towards other goals.

I also sold some stuff on eBay and got $40. I'm motivated to sell more stuff. Having a lot of stuff that I don't use is overwhelming. My goal is to live more simply with less "stuff".

I need gift ideas for my cousins who are ages 20 - 28. Anyone have any ideas?

My husband found a job! What a relief. So now we have one income to live on instead of unemployment. Now I need to find a job too to get back on track, hopefully before the holidays.

I am cooking a lot more and we hardly eat out anymore... saves us a lot! A restaurant bill is as much as a grocery bill.

My husband and I are both unemployed and living very, very frugally. I hate to admit it but this experience has taught me a lot, that I don't need much to be happy. With this time off, I've learned to cook a lot more things too.

Today I went grocery shopping at the local Chinese grocery store.

Here's what I got for $31.66:

$9.65 2 lbs of chicken tocino (marinate chicken)
$ .49 bunch of green onions
$3.19 boneless skinless chicken breasts
$3.33 whole tilapia fish
$5.46 skinless salmon fillet
$ .99 dried buckwheat noodles
$ .45 2 yellow onions
$ .99 tofu
$2.64 package of shiitake mushrooms
$1.88 3 chayotes
$2.59 dozen eggs

(Without the chicken tocino, this would have been around $20.)

I still can't believe this. $30 is how much I would spend on a meal out with my hubby.

Miso soup, the soup in Japanese restaurants, is one of my favorite foods and it's easy and inexpensive to make yourself. Basically it's just miso paste (available at the health food store or Asian grocery store), tofu, green onion/scallion, and dried wakame (a type of seaweed) flakes. The miso soup recipe is available at YummySF.com.

I went to the library to pick up "Tightwad Gazette" and I saw this book "America's Cheapest Family" on the shelf and got it too. America's Cheapest Family Gets You Right on the Money is about how this family saves $$$. You can start using the tips right away. For example, they shop for groceries at Costco only once a month and stock everything in a stand alone freezer. And the mom plans a month's worth of meals.

Check out my easy recipe for miso soup on my food blog at YummySF

If you live near a Mollie Stone's grocery store in the San Francisco Bay Area, they have a natural vitamin and natural beauty care 20% discount card. You can get 20% off those items once a month. Just ask for the free card at the register.

Check out my recommendations for cheap iced drinks at www.yummysf.com

My husband is really into photography and he is great at it. He takes pictures every single day! For many of us, our photos remain on the digital camera or on the computer but are never printed. One day, he decided to print some photos of our trip to the Philippines, ones with his relatives.

Costco is definitely the cheapest place for prints and enlargements that we've found. He ordered them online and then picked them up in the store within an hour. He printed some 8x12 ($1.49 each) and 12x18 ($2.99 each) which are odd sizes, although common dimensions are available. But we found frames to fit them at Aaron Brothers, buy one get another for 1 cent. 8x12 frames were 2 for $10. Basically, if you take the matte out of some of the frames, they will fit these rare sizes. Creative thinking, I love it!

Once the photos were framed with simple black frames, they were amazing! Photos look different when they are in frames. You pay more attention to them. We hung some of the photos on the wall, and it is a special feeling to see not only my husband's artwork surrounding us, but also to see his relatives, who live on the other side of the world.

Photos make special, one of a kind gifts. My husband even created a hardcover, photo book for his friend's wedding in Kona, Hawaii. That was the best wedding gift for her.

You can now do more than put photos on mugs. You can put them on mousepads, make wallet prints, handbags, calendars, throws, ornaments, and even canvas prints.

Groceries are one of our biggest expenses each month. Here are ways we have cut down some of the costs.

Bottled water - We no longer buy bottled water since we use a Brita filter at home. If we do need bottled water, we get them free at my husband's work gym.

Convenience foods - We buy less premade, frozen foods and cook our meals from scratch.

Coffee - I haven't gone to Starbucks in a long time. I make my coffee lattes and chai lattes at home. For coffee lattes, I use instant espresso powder, hot water, and hot milk. For chai, I buy chai concentrate and add hot milk. I got this machine (with a giftcard) to make coffee drinks at work. http://www.yummysf.com/?p=150

I have lots of recipe books but I find that the online recipe sites are great. Allrecipes.com is one of my favorites because it has recipe reviews.

If you have any other ideas, please share.

Some Target stores have a grocery section. They have frozen foods and packaged goods like cookies, crackers, coffee, bread, cereal, etc. I like to go to Target to get organic milk, Amy's frozen pizza, ice cream, and Archer Farms tiramisu (delicious!). Archer Farms is the Target house brand. The prices are cheaper than the chain grocery stores. But my Target doesn't sell fresh produce.

I recently quit my job. Living frugally has a new meaning for me now.

I love reading everyone's blogs here. And I love reading about new tips about saving money.

I cook a lot more and don't eat out as much. Here are some of my discoveries.

Cheap places to buy groceries:
1.Costco - My husband and I now buy our raw chicken here. Foster Farms has these prepackaged chicken packs - 3 chicken pieces in a pack and 6 packs per package. You can use just what you need and the rest are still sealed fresh to be fridged or frozen. We get chicken thighs because they are cheaper than chicken breasts and tastier. Plus the ones with the skin are half of the price of skinless! $9 for skin vs. $18 for skinless.
2.Chinese Supermarkets - It's just like the major chains minus the frozen dinners and processed foods, which will save you money in the long run because you will be forced to cook from scratch. You can get fresh vegetables, fruits, seafood, meats, etc. Prices are a lot cheaper, eg. green onions are only 33 cents vs. 99 cents at Safeway/Vons. And they speak English so there's no excuse not to go if you live near one. Chinese supermarkets are cheaper than Korean and Japanese supermarkets.