Wise Bread (Thursday Bram)

Twitter Can Save You Money with Deals and Coupons

Thursday Bram — Fri, 04 Sep 2009 14:30:13 +0000

Want a coupon to try out Yoplait Whips for free? Bargainbriana shared one on Twitter. How about a buy-one-get-one-free deal at Denny's? Coupondivas offered one on Twitter, as well. In fact, there are tons of promotions, coupons and deals floating around on Twitter — and some of them don't show up anywhere else. If you're already putting in a little time on the microblogging site, you can start getting something out of it.

Who To Follow?

I follow a couple of different Twitter users who focus on rounding up good coupons. Coupons.com has a Twitter account that I find particularly useful. I also asked other people on Twitter to suggest other people to follow that can be particularly helpful. Here are a few of their suggestions:

@Groupon — The account of Groupon, a website dedicated to finding the best deals in Chicago, as well as other cities (recommended by @DietitianJanel)
@UnitedAirlines — The account of United Airlines, which routinely offers deals on airfare (recommended by @dmozealous)
@DellOutlet — The account for Dell's refurbished electronics outlet, which often has coupon codes for computer equipment (recommended by @dmozealous)
@retailmenot — The account of RetailMeNot, a website that aggregates coupons for more than 66,000 retailers (recommended by @inksnatcher)
@couponSeven — The account of Coupon7, a website that lists coupons and deals from major retailers (recommended by @DonnaMcCarthy)
@CouponCabin — The account of CouponCabin, another website that lists coupons and deals (recommended by @DonnaMcCarthy)
@BuyWithMeDC — One of the accounts for BuyWithMe, serving the DC area. BuyWithMe also operates @BuyWithMeBoston and @BuyWithMeSD (recommended by @mattflight)
@CheapStingy — The account of CheapStingy, a website specializing in technology deals (recommended by @mgharavi)
@slickdeals — The account of SlickDeals, another website that lists technology deals (recommended by @mgharavi)

This is just a handful of the thousands of Twitter accounts that can help you find deals. If you have any suggestions for other Twitter users to follow, please share them in the comments.

Like any other coupon strategy, collecting coupons on Twitter doesn't do you much good if you aren't getting coupons for things you use. Many brands and specific stores have started to get involved on Twitter, sending out information about special sales as well as coupons. That's why it's important to follow Twitter users who will share coupons you're actually interested in. Check out your preferred stores and brands to see if they're in that category. I even found out that one of my favorite restaurants is sending out specials on Twitter: it's not a chain and I certainly can't find those deals anywhere else.

Searching Short-Cuts

You don't have to follow everyone under the sun in order to get the best deals, though. You can actually search Twitter for keywords and get a lead on deals that way. At search.twitter.com, you can just type in the word 'coupon' along with whatever purchases you need a coupon for. You may get a few strange results, but in general, you'll get a list of people commenting about specific coupons, along with links to the coupons themselves.

There are also a few different sites that bring together lists of coupons on Twitter. One site, CheapTweet, brings together a list of all the deals on Twitter it can find and then lets you look through them either by the newest deals or by the cheapest — you can vote on which offers are particularly good. CouponTweet offers a similar service. In both cases, you can look at one page and get a good idea of what coupons are available on Twitter today if you're rushed for time. However, it's worth noting that both sites don't catch all the good deals.

Permalink | 4 comments | Thursday Bram's blog | Channel: Coupons

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Cooking from Scratch: Where's the Work?

Thursday Bram — Tue, 25 Aug 2009 13:00:01 +0000

By Thursday Bram

My grandmother loved the fact that she could go to the store and buy bread, noodles and all sorts of other food that she could have on the table in a matter of minutes. She remembered when she had to make all of her own bread, along with just about everything else. She did have access to canned vegetables and fruit, of course — because she had put them up herself, preserving whatever was fresh for later.

Over the past couple of years, I've moved more toward cooking as much from scratch as I can. Just last week, I made a big pot of pasta from scratch. As I've gotten into the habit of preparing meals that require a lot more time than opening a box, I've tried to isolate the places where the biggest concentration of work is in cooking from scratch, and see what I can do about it.

1. Doughs

I started out making bread without much more than my hands and a tiny hand mixer. For just about every kind of dough, my hand mixer just wasn't enough — even on no-knead recipes, I found that I almost always had to get my hands dirty in order to get all the ingredients combined. It's time-consuming, and I could quickly see the appeal of just running down to the store for my bread. But one kitchen appliance has just about eliminated the problem: a stand mixer.

With a good stand mixer, it's easy to handle the entire kneading process for most doughs — without even touching the dough. A good mixer can even handle notoriously tough tasks, like kneading pasta dough. The downside is that a good stand mixer can be an expensive purchase: I've run the numbers on mine and even with the major difference in my food budget when I cook from scratch, it took a long time for the purchase to pay off. There are alternatives, of course. The best mixers, such as the well-known KitchenAid line, are very long-lived. There are mixers in my family that are older than I am. If you can find a second-hand stand mixer in good shape, you'll have less of an investment, and still be able to get the benefits.

2. Meat

The fact that we can buy just a single steak, ready to toss on the grill, is a major time-saving factor in the kitchen. But if you're trying to bring down your grocery bill, you're probably not buying just one steak. Many people buy their meat and poultry in bulk, or choose options like a whole chicken — it's a lot cheaper, even if you have to take it apart to get it ready to cook. If you buy in any kind of bulk, there are a couple of things (beyond a freezer) that can make the process much easier.

Buy freezer bags in bulk, as well, and pull out the masking tape and marker. An alternative is a combination of cling wrap and tin foil. The moment you bring meat and poultry home from the market, it's easiest to immediately divide it into meal-sized portions, preferably marked with the date and the contents. It's a lot faster to handle it all in one go, especially if you have to divide poultry or any other item that you don't want to defrost until you're ready to use all of it. A pair of poultry shears can also make the process a lot faster.

3. Soups and Sauces

On the surface, a soup from scratch doesn't seem like a ton of work: after all, you put everything in a pot and then ignore it for a while. But soups, sauces and other dishes that can require cooking over longer periods of time can be a bit of a problem if you aren't planning to stay home with it all day. Crockpots and other kitchen appliances that allow you to cook on a timer are key to being able to cook from scratch.

Admittedly, I still worry a bit about leaving a running crockpot when I'm out of the house. It's certainly not on the order of leaving the oven on while I'm out, but I'm not the biggest fan of leaving anything running while I'm not there to supervise.

4. Planning

One of the biggest sources of work that is necessary in cooking from scratch is planning out your meals ahead of time. If you're making bread for dinner, for instance, you need to know that with enough advance warning to not only mix up the dough but allow it to rise and then bake it. The same goes for getting food out of the freezer in time to defrost — it's not particularly a labor-intensive part of your day, but you won't be able to cook if it doesn't happen.

That means sitting down and planning out meals ahead of time. It's just a matter of getting in the habit, week after week — and it does get easier once you're used to doing it.

Where's Your Work?

Is there another part of cooking from scratch that seems to make up the biggest part of the workload for you? How do you handle those tasks? Is there a way to cut down on the time necessary, or at least handle it all in one go?

Permalink | 25 comments | Thursday Bram's blog | Channel: Food and Drink

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Europe on the Cheap: Take the Train

Thursday Bram — Tue, 23 Jun 2009 20:17:47 +0000

By Thursday Bram

When it comes to traveling through Europe, there's a lot to be said for taking the train. With just a little planning, you can see five or six countries in just a week — and for a price that doesn't break the bank. And if you are interested in extended travel — or live the digital nomad lifestyle — you can travel around the whole of Europe for a fraction of the cost of plane tickets or car rentals. These tips can get you started in the right direction to do just that.

Buy a rail pass: There are more than a few different rail passes that offer you inexpensive access to European railways. Even if you look only at the Eurail passes, you'll find options for unlimited travel, regional travel and more. Some of these passes, such as the Eurail Global Pass, which starts at $475, can seem fairly expensive. But you can get a phenomenal amount of traveling done with such a pass — and there are routinely discounts available for the passes.
Travel at night: If you're willing to ride a train at night, you can save quite a bit of money. First of all, you can skip the expense of a hostel or a hotel. Second, the way the Eurail pass and other European rail passes tend to work is that if you stay on the train overnight and into the next day, your time on the train all counts as one day's travel — which can help you travel even more on your pass. If you were to get off the train for the night and then reboard in the morning, you'd use up two days worth of travel on your rail pass.
Find a local supermarket: Many modes of transportation have specific rules against bringing food on board. But you can pack along a few sandwiches or other food while you're traveling, making your food far less expensive than whatever expensive snack you can grab in an airport or bus station.
Use your pass to get other discounts: In addition to savng you money on train rides, the Eurail pass in particular can get you into some museums, discounted ferry rides and far more.
Exercise your flexibility: One of the greatest parts about traveling by train is that you can be very flexible. I've found in the past that there were local fairs and other events that I'd really like to attend, but couldn't because I was with a tour group or had an airplane to catch. In some cases, I've been interested to the point of changing my plans — and paying fees to do so.

While these tips focus on traveling by train in Europe, there are options for taking a train on just about every other continent. However, you may find that you have to adapt to the local railway system a little more. In the U.S, for instance, travel by train can be a little less assured, especially in the Midwest. The distances involved can make for very long train rides and all of my experiences with train travel in the States have involved delays.

Permalink | 10 comments | Thursday Bram's blog | Channel: Frugal Living

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Restaurant Menus: Translating Cost and Taste

Thursday Bram — Mon, 13 Apr 2009 16:08:27 +0000

By Thursday Bram

A well-designed menu is considered an easy way to separate diners from their dollars at a restaurant. Even mom-and-pop restaurants put a lot of time and effort into how they put together their menus in the hopes of not only directing you towards dishes with high profit margins but into tempting you to come back soon and try something else that sounds tasty. A good menu is advertising: a way to get consumers to spend more money. If you know some of the most important menu design tricks going in, you may still wind up ordering your favorite dinner — if the food's worth the price, why not? — but it can also help you decide to try a meal that's easy on the wallet.

The Gaze Pattern

Most diners look at a menu in exactly the same way. Depending on just how big a menu your waiter puts in front of you, you'll find that you look at it differently. On a one page menu, you'll generally scan the page quickly until you reach just below halfway down where you'll actually read all through the items placed there. The hot spot that a diner actually winds up spending the most time on differs between menus of different lengths varies: extensive research has gone into finding that spot for different sizes.

Most restaurants make a point of putting exactly two types of meals in their menu's hot spot: high profit margin dishes and signature meals. Dishes that restaurants always make money on aren't the highest priced meals on the menu, by the way — they're often simple (and fairly inexpensive) dishes like pasta with marinara sauce. Your favorite restaurant may do a very cheap pasta dish, but they're probably still making plenty of money on it.

Signature dishes also wind up in the hot spot for a very simple reason. Restaurants are pretty confident that you'll enjoy their signature dishes — and that you'll want to eat them again in the future. By placing their best dishes — regardless of profit margin — somewhere diners are sure to see them, restaurants are betting that they can keep you coming back for those particular flavors.

The Hierarchy

Most menus are constructed in similar sections. You'll see the appetizers at the beginning, along with lighter fare, while sides and drinks are towards the end, accompanied by desserts. But within that very set hierarchy, menu designers have a lot of wiggle room. For instance, within the salad section, you'll see the same emphasis on high profit and signature dishes at the beginning and end of the sections. Diners, as you might guess, spend more time looking at the first and last items in a section, often forgetting entirely what's in between.

Descriptive Writing

Extensive descriptions aren't included on your menu to warn folks with allergies. It's to get your mouth watering. Many restaurants go out of their way to specify ingredients, preferring something like "applewood smoked bacon" over plain and simple "bacon." That added description has been shown to help sell dishes, especially when it's something that you're encountering for the first time. The feeling of adventurousness can be all that it takes to close a sale.

Choosing Your Meal

Hopefully, your budget allows you to choose a meal based on what sounds good, rather than the cost. Either way, though, you can use a menu's design to your advantage. Those high profit dishes that many restaurants like to push are often good options for your budget: the restaurant may make a ton of money on a bowl of pasta, but it's still one of the cheaper dishes on most menus. Choosing a signature dish is often an equally good decision, because it's a dish that the restaurant has worked hard to perfect.

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Gardening in a Group: 6 Tips

Thursday Bram — Sun, 22 Mar 2009 17:50:28 +0000

By Thursday Bram

The new White House garden is definitely a joint effort: it's 1,100 square feet that will be tended not only by members of the White House grounds staff but will involve students from nearby Bancroft Elementary School. Even the Obamas have announced intentions of getting their hands dirty while working in the new garden.

That sort of combined effort can be exactly what it takes to create a gardening success. Last year, I started a small balcony garden with some success. This year, I've teamed up with a friend in my neighborhood to plant a bigger and better garden: we're taking a joint approach to the effort just like the White House. If you've been thinking of starting your own little co-operative gardening effort, I've got a few tips from my own experiences that might yours go a little smoother.

Plan out just what you each want to grow — and don't make assumptions. We've already got a great set of eggplant seedlings, but we didn't realize that neither one of us actually like eggplant until the seedlings started popping up.
Decide early on where the garden will actually be, along with the materials you need. Our decision was pretty easy: although we both live in apartments, my friend has a yard that she's allowed to use. We'll still need to bring in planters to keep her landlord happy, though.
Share costs and work as best you can. The fact of the matter is that the member of your joint gardening effort who actually lives with your garden will wind up doing more work. If that person winds up bearing the brunt of any expenses, as well, your garden probably won't make it past the first year.
Take advantage of having more people involved. You can often get at least a few seeds from friends and relatives — if you and your partner both ask around, you may be able to get all of your seeds for free. The same goes for looking for boards you can reuse to build your planters or soil you can use for planting.
Plan at least one shared meal from the results of your garden. While a shared meal isn't a necessity for a shared garden, it can be an enjoyable way to see how well your garden worked out and decide how you might want to adjust your plans for next year. It also lets you avoid at least some of the discussion on how you want to split up your produce.
Square Foot Gardening can offer a lot of shortcuts for gardening as a team. Not only can you set aside specific squares for individual growers, but it can also simplify dividing the workload.

Have you teamed up with someone to grow a garden? If you have any tips to add, I hope you share them in the comments!

Permalink | 5 comments | Thursday Bram's blog | Channel: Food and Drink

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Five Frugality Hacks Straight Out of the Great Depression

Thursday Bram — Thu, 08 Jan 2009 17:33:21 +0000

By Thursday Bram

During the Great Depression, simple frugality was the only way to get by. There was a saying that everyone lived by: "Use it up, wear it out, make it do or do without." There's a lot we can learn about frugality just by looking at how folks managed during the Great Depression — and those old-fashioned ways are starting to come in handy again as we all face this financial crisis.

Go In Together: If you can pool your money with someone else, you have more buying power. In many cases, that means you can get something cheaper. For instance if you can buy food in bulk, it's less expensive. If you need a tool or something else that you won't need every day, you can often go in together with someone else that needs the same thing, effectively halving the cost.
Do It Yourself: Pretty much anything is cheaper if you do it yourself, from home repair to cooking meals. Of course, the trade off is time, but if you have the time, it's worthwhile to learn to do as much as you can for yourself. I've been working on this one myself — I still probably shouldn't be trusted with any car repairs, but I no longer have to call someone in to do some of my minor home repairs.
Barter: Just because you don't have cash for a certain expense doesn't mean that you can't cover that cost. Instead, you can barter. Trade your skills for someone else's — maybe you need a babysitter and your favorite babysitter needs a professional haircut (or whatever your specialty happens to be). You can work out a deal where you both get you want without having to bring cash into the matter.
Go to the Source: Buying anything from its source is cheaper — food is especially so. If you can purchase from a farmer or through a farmer's market, you often pay less for your food because there is no middle man getting a cut of the cost. Prices are even better if you can become your own source — if you grow your own garden, the cost of your food can be minimal.
Reuse: We're used to throwing away all sorts of things that can be easily reused. From packaging materials to broken items, there's almost always some way that you can repair, reuse or repurpose anything that you're planning on sending to the dumpster. Clothing is a key example — it can often be repaired, handed down, altered, made into a quilt or even used as rags. There's rarely clothing that really ought to be thrown away.

There are far more approaches to frugality that were crucial not so long ago. There's plenty of room in the comments if you'd like to add your own.

Permalink | 16 comments | Thursday Bram's blog | Channel: Frugal Living

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The Piggy Bank: A Secret to Simple Saving

Thursday Bram — Mon, 29 Dec 2008 18:40:50 +0000

By Thursday Bram

When I was a sophomore in college, my dad gave me a piggy bank for Hanukkah. I couldn't figure it out at first — had my dad forgotten that I was all grown up and didn't need a piggy bank for my pennies anymore? It was an adorable little pig, though and I put it on my desk as a decoration. Pretty soon, the pig was full. I wasn't sure how it happened, really, but who was I to turn down the $20 I had in pennies, nickels, dimes and quarters? I took it with me to the bank and deposited my change — I wasn't about to roll all that change myself.

The piggy bank went back on my desk and I started paying attention to what I was doing with my spare change. I had developed a habit of dumping all my change in the piggy bank as I was emptying my pockets on my desk at the end of the day. Before I had just been setting down piles of change — and I'm not really sure that I ever saw any of that loose change again.

The Piggy Bank as a Focus Point

My piggy bank, just by sitting somewhere that I saw it every day, helped me realize just what I was doing with my money. It's easy to lose track of pocket change — it's just a few cents, after all. But those pennies and dimes add up fast. Even with my college habit of pulling quarters of my bank to do laundry, I could fill my piggy bank in a month.

The Piggy Bank as a Saving Tool

If I had just treated my piggy bank's contents as found money, I could have had a fun evening once a month. But I was able to think about it as a saving tool — it was money that I would have lost if I wasn't putting it in the pig, and I worked hard to remember that fact. That money went straight into my savings account. It came in handy, too: the clunker I drove died on me one day and without my savings, I'm not really sure that I would have been able to get my car fixed.

The Piggy Bank for Grown Ups

I've come to the conclusion that my dad was right — a person's never too old for a piggy bank. It doesn't need a snout or a curly tail, but having a place that you can put spare change can be a very effective savings tool. I still keep my piggy handy and it gets all of my spare change. It may not fill up as fast — I rely on my debit card for most purchases — but that makes it even more important that I have a place to put my pennies before I lose them. Even a few cents can be important to a budget when you put them all together. My spare change has saved my bacon: has it saved yours?

Permalink | 28 comments | Thursday Bram's blog | Channel: Budgeting

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Last Minute Wrapping Paper: 5 Options

Thursday Bram — Wed, 24 Dec 2008 16:41:39 +0000

By Thursday Bram

I've been known to wrap presents literally five minutes before the family has planned to open them — and that means there's no time for a last minute run to the store for a roll of wrapping paper. If you're in the same boat (or you just want to wrap presents with something you already have), don't worry about buying wrapping paper — you've got a couple of wrapping paper alternatives at home.

1. Drawings

If you've been wondering what to do with the drawings your children produce after you've run out of room on the fridge, consider re-purposing them for packaging. They'll be appreciated far more than what some factory produced. If you've got a box a little bigger than a standard piece of paper will cover, you may need to commission something a little bigger from your young artist. While butcher paper might be ideal, paper bags from the grocery store can work out just as well. Cut the bags apart and turn them inside out — if you're worried about getting colors to show up, this is an opportunity to break out the glue, glitter, macaroni and other craft stuff your kids enjoy.

2. The Funny Pages

I've been known to hoard the Sunday comics in the weeks leading up to the holidays. They're just as brightly colored as any other wrapping paper, and they're already on hand. And I don't get the feeling that I'm buying pretty papers just for the privilege of tearing them off of a package.

3. Fabric Bags

My grandmother used to sew small draw string bags in the time it would take me to wrap a present. These bags were always festive, and I've been known to reuse them in my gift giving. It's as simple as cutting a rectangle of fabric about twice as long as the gift you want to wrap, preferably in holiday colors, doing a bit of sewing and running yarn through for the strings. There's a great pattern on Yarn Envy if you need a little more detail.

4. Tape, Tin Foil and More

While I'm pretty sure the box I got entirely wrapped in duct tape was a last minute emergency measure, it did have a cute little bow on top made from colored electric tape. That elevated the wrapping job from emergency measure to cute conversation piece. The same goes for the gifts I've seen wrapped in tin foil and construction paper: if you take a moment to personalize the gift, the recipient is more likely to think you're being cute than you were in a rush.

5. Skip the Wrapping Paper Entirely

The best gift I remember getting as a kid wasn't even wrapped — my dad got me this kitchen set that he just draped a quilt over. I didn't even care: I was playing with my little kitchen the moment the blanket came off. I think it's perfectly okay to do a minimal wrapping job for some presents, especially if you're working with little kids or oversized gifts.

Permalink | 9 comments | Thursday Bram's blog | Channel: Shopping

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Get In Gear For The New Year: 5 Tips For Making Resolutions

Thursday Bram — Tue, 16 Dec 2008 19:57:41 +0000

By Thursday Bram

The New Year is infamous when it comes to resolutions — not because most people manage to turn over a new leaf but because we declare big goals, work towards them for a few months and then forget about them. This situation didn't come about because we don't want to achieve those goals, but because the system is more than a bit arbitrary. If you want to complete your New Year's resolutions this year, going about it a little differently may make things easier. The tips below can help you reach a goal with a little less struggle.

Decide what you can do by Feb. 1. Most resolutions don't lend themselves to being completed in a month. But if you can set a goal to reach by the end of January, you'll have some absolutely concrete and obtainable that you can work towards, you've got a better chances of completing 1/12 of your resolution in that first month. Maybe your resolution is to build up an emergency fund containing several months worth of expenses. If you try to save every penny you can during January, you're likely to burn out about the time the end of the month rolls around. But if you set a goal of getting just $400 into your savings account, you'll be able to see the end — and you'll get a buzz when you actually complete that first step.
Consider the underlying causes of your resolution. Many resolutions aren't as simple as deciding that you just aren't going to do a particular something anymore. If, for instance, you want to stop going out to eat in 2009 and work on eating at home more, think about why you go out to eat. Maybe the way your schedule is currently set up leaves no time for grocery shopping or cooking — and without a few changes to your schedule, you'll be back at the restaurant in a few weeks.
Talk to your loved ones, and make sure they understand your resolution. For most people, having someone who simply knows about your goal is enough to motivate you — after all, no one wants to fail to achieve a goal and then have to tell someone about it. Furthermore, you can often get a little help. Resolutions like working out more often are easier when you have someone else to do the work with.
Write down your resolution. If you've written down your resolution, it's just that much harder to forget about. Adding milestones or incentives and placing your resolution somewhere you'll see it regularly can help you keep your goals in mind. You might consider keeping a note about your resolution in your wallet or on your computer — somewhere you'll be inspired to take actions that will move you towards your ambition.
Think about your resolution now. Sure, you've still got time before the month ends, but I've heard a few New Year's resolutions decided at literally the last moment. Those are the ones that typically don't make it to the next morning — let alone the next month. But spending a little time thinking about your resolutions can help you commit yourself to carrying though, and give you a chance to think about why you want to work toward a particular goal. Incentives can be a great thing, whether you're working towards a little piece of mind or towards a big vacation.

Permalink | 4 comments | Thursday Bram's blog | Channel: Productivity

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Flexible Holidays Are Much Cheaper (And Less Stressful)

Thursday Bram — Thu, 04 Dec 2008 14:43:47 +0000

By Thursday Bram

My family doesn't exactly respect the calendar. We've held Thanksgiving on a Friday, moved Mother's Day to the last week of April and moved around just about every other holiday to suit ourselves. This adaptability has saved us an unbelievable amount of money. For Thanksgiving alone, the savings can be in the hundreds of dollars — just because we're not flying on days that the rest of the U.S. is trying to cram itself on a plane.

Suggesting a more flexible schedule is often as simple as telling those relatives that you want to spend time with that you just can't figure out how to manage it on a specific day — so why not the day before, or the day after? If you've got a few frugal relatives, it's easy to argue the savings: if you hold your celebration after everyone else, traditional foods and decorations are often on sale. Big meals out (like a Mother's Day brunch) are cheaper when you aren't paying a holiday premium, either.

There's also a lot to be said for being flexible to cut the stress of the holidays. I spent my childhood shuttling between divorced parents — and endured plenty of bickering about who got what holiday. I often had to rush out of my dad's Thanksgiving get-together to make it to my mom's. Let's just say that a good time was not had by all. Convincing at least one part of my family to hold Thanksgiving on a different day cut my stress, and it might cut yours too.

While everyone else is off celebrating, you may need to fill some hours. Luckily, there are plenty of options:

Volunteer. Especially for big holidays like Christmas, just about everyone takes off to be with their families. That means a lot of vital services are understaffed — even hospitals can have a skeleton staff for the holidays.
Accept an invitation. Many years, we get far more invitations than we can accept. But if we're spending a different day with our families, we can accept invitations from friends.
Work. I may be alone in enjoying working when everyone else is gone — but I can often get enough done to justify taking off at least the day I'm planning to celebrate (if not more).

Now, we don't move every holiday, every year. We're scattered over the country and may only get together for one or two big get-togethers each year. There is something to be said about observing many holidays along with the rest of the world. Getting out of sync for St. Patty's Day or New Year's Eve just gets you some odd looks. We tend to keep religious observances exactly where they're scheduled as well. But being flexible on just when you observe holidays can make them a bit easier to handle.

Permalink | 10 comments | Thursday Bram's blog | Channel: Frugal Living

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