Daily links edition
Thursday, June 11th, 2009Welcome! You can get the complete text of all the latest articles at Lake Country Saver in your email by subscribing to my RSS feed. Your address will only be used for mailing you the articles, and each one will include a link so you can unsubscribe at any time. Thanks for visiting!
As you might have noticed, I’ve been slacking off lately. My kids are all home full-time (yikes), the weather is nice, and I’m enjoying some “rest” as I follow the baby everywhere, making sure she’s not eating knives or drinking out of the dog bowl.
Still, I’ve stumbled on a few great links, books and people lately, mostly due to The Simple Dollar and nosing around the Web. Here’s what I’ve been reading, working on, and thinking about lately:
1. Why did nobody tell me about Simple Mom?! Is it because you are keeping all the fun to yourselves? No fair. This is the blog I would have started had I known about blogging before 2008.
2. I used to subscribe to Salon way back when you had to pay to read anything of substance on the site. Thank god those days are over, because this post on eating ethically is fantastic.
3. I think a lot of people expect me to pinch pennies, or to automatically buy the cheapest item on the shelf, just because I’m really into “conscious spending” (my own version of frugality). So not true!
For example: I offered to bring drinks for last week’s end-of-year party at my daughter’s school. The organizer suggested I could bring a pitcher of water and stir in some powdered drink mix to keep costs low. She’s right that it would have been super cheap to do that. But pouring sticky “fruit” juice into little cups held by tiny, clumsy hands that would spill that “fruit” juice all over themselves and me didn’t sound like a party.
So I coughed up $7 to bring individual juice boxes of 100% juice. I hope that makes me fun to be around — or at least helps me avoid being called a failed frugalist. (Which I think is the same as being called a tightwad. Shudder.)
4. I just read Rich Like Them by Ryan D’Agostino, and I found it really inspiring. Although I was disappointed that not a single Wisconsin ZIP code made it on the list of richest 100 neighborhoods (why doesn’t Chenequa have it’s own ZIP code?), I loved reading about how rich people got where they are.
5. Like many people in Rich Like Them, my husband and I are both “entrepreneurs.” (But we’re not rich like the people in the book, so I’m pretty sure “entrepreneur” in our case is just a euphemism for “out-of-work writer.”) But when I read about Getting Rich in Your Underwear on this list of 40 places to learn more about business, I knew I was on the right career path. Unfortunately, my husband works in other people’s home, so I’m guessing he’ll have to skip that book and keep his shorts on.