The other day I was sitting at home and I started to reminisce about the things my family did growing up.  My parents immigrated from Portugal in the 70’s having grown up under the shadow of the dictator Salazar.  They had 4 boys when they came over and they eventually had me here in Canada making me the 5th boy. [...]

This is a post I’ve had sitting awhile waiting to be written and with Four Pillar’s recent post “What Does Frugal Mean To You?” I’ve decided to actually write it.  Now FP lists some common interpretations of frugality and does a good job looking at them from different perspectives. I just wanted to add how they apply to me:

I spend [...]

One of the first posts on this blog was “Frugal Tip – A Big Mac My Way“. The premise was you can pretty much get a Big Mac at half the price. This article had disappeared into obscurity until a reader posted the following comment:
daveking on April 12th, 2009 12:10 am
No offense, but this is getting on the borderline of [...]

Growing up my father always had a large garden in the yard. During the summer months it supplied most the herbs and vegetables that we ate. When winter came around my parents would freeze things like tomatoes for sauces. I always took this for granted but now that I’m older I’ve grown to appreciate the satisfaction in growing your [...]

Spending less than you make is a big part of being frugal. Now some people will say you should never dine out but I personally don’t believe in that. In our budget there is money set aside for dining out because some times we don’t have time to cook and other times we just don’t want to cook. Once in [...]