Category: Featured

15 Dec, 2021

Join the January Uber Frugal Month Group Challenge!

The Uber Frugal Month is BACK! Sign-up now to join me—and thousands of other frugal folks—for my free, month-long money makeover/bootcamp/analysis/party. Starting January 1st, I’ll send you an email a day with specific steps to improve your finances. There’ll be motivational mantras thrown in, but the primary purpose of the UFM is to give you detailed, straightforward, easy-to-follow financial action items. Woohoo! A lot of people (me included!) take the UFM every single year as...

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Featured / Our Finances

15 Sep, 2021

Mr. FW Retired and We Paid off Our Mortgage: Frugalwoods FIRE is Complete

Two sizable pieces of Frugalwoods-relevant news occurred this past spring: We paid off the mortgage on our primary residence in Vermont! Mr. Frugalwoods retired! These both happened amidst the flurry of the pandemic, our stint as unintentional homeschoolers and, of course, maple sugaring season. I promised to share the details once the sap stopped flowing, we got vaccinated and the kids went to in-person school (PRAISE BE). These two events are correlated since we didn’t...

Featured / Smart Buys

2 Jun, 2021

How to Save Money on Your Cell Phone Bill with an MVNO: I Pay $12 a Month

One of the easiest and best ways to save money is to switch your cell phone provider to an MVNO. Cell phone service is one of those things most of us skip over when we’re trying to reduce our spending. We figure it’s a fixed amount, the same no matter what provider we use. Today we dispel that myth with the wonderful world of MVNOs (Mobile Virtual Network Operators). MVNOs are re-sellers of name brand...

Credit Cards / Featured / Smart Buys

25 Mar, 2021

The Easiest $486 I’ve Ever Made: How To Use Cash Back Credit Cards To Your Advantage

Content warning: I am talking about some EXPLICIT credit card rewards today. There will be actual numbers, real percentages and even specific cards discussed. If you’re a person who doesn’t do well with credit cards, if cards encourage you to spend more than you can afford and go into debt, I want you to stop reading this article and instead go look at this panda who traded her baby for an apple… I mean, maybe...

Entertainment / Epic Treks / Featured / Kids

8 Mar, 2021

We’re Spending 1,000 Hours Outside in 2021 (maybe, we’ll see how it goes)

I don’t think I’ve ever kept a New Year’s resolution. Ever. In my frittered youth, I made impossible, vague and numerous resolutions. I’d resolve to “lose weight, achieve inner peace and volunteer more,” all in the same year, with no specifics, no action plan and no accountability. I think we can all see why this approach failed. And it didn’t fail just once. It failed every single one of my resolution-making years, which was probably...

Featured / This Month On The Homestead

23 Feb, 2021

This Month On The Homestead: Bonfires In The Snow and Leisure Cilantro

January 2021 We are in the season of snow every day. Maybe a lot, maybe a trace. There’s no forecast to tell us what’ll happen: we look outside, we bring in more fire wood. It dips into single digits every night and still, we go outside every day. We hike, we sled, we cry (mostly the kids; sometimes me), and we love the cascade of monochrome. There is no beauty more distilled than fresh glitter...

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Featured / Reader Case Studies

18 Feb, 2021

Reader Case Study: Looking to Leave LA?

Kate is 30 and lives in LA with her kitten Cashew. She works in payroll at a university, which is a stable job with great benefits and low stress. As she approaches the five-year mark in her current position, she’d like to examine her options for moving to a lower cost of living area and a smaller town. Kate also hopes to have children one day and she’d like our help with determining a financial...

Featured / Monthly Expense Reports

5 Feb, 2021

Fruit Trees And Other January 2021 Expenses

We’re planting a pear, peach, apple and elderberry orchard this spring! Because why not. In a year (two years?) of unrest and insanity, why not plant an entire fruit orchard. We have a long-standing goal of expanding the perennial foods we grow and this’ll be our latest and largest undertaking. In years past, we planted perennial blueberries, strawberries, currants, cherries and did major remediation work on our existing apple and plum trees. This’ll be our...

Featured / This Month On The Homestead

26 Jan, 2021

This Month On The Homestead: Pancakes, Snow and Tractor Stuff

December 2020 Christmas at home and online, daily hikes, snowshoeing, baking cookies, fires burning in the wood stove and wrestling children into snowsuits. These are a few of our December things. And Bernie’s visit to the Glamour Shed. Pandemic “Homeschool” Continues My ‘give them real jobs’ approach to “homeschooling” continues with countertop wiping, laundry folding, egg scrambling, dishwasher loading, vacuuming, sweeping and… scribbling on any important paperwork they happen to find. All day long Littlewoods...

Featured / Holidays and Special Occasions / Reader Suggestions

22 Dec, 2020

Merry Pandemic Holidays! How We’re Celebrating, How Readers are Celebrating

Merry Pandemic Holidays!!!! We’re ready to celebrate how much we love our families by…. not seeing them!!! This holiday season will be different, but no less merry and jolly. Primarily I will achieve this by making as many desserts as I’d make if we were hosting 15 people. Since there are four of us x 1 pandemic x no childcare for 9 months, I feel the math is going to work out well. Also, going to...