Frugal Framnett

Yesterday’s installment of Spreadsheet Samurai discussed the basic elements of spreadsheets namely rows, columns, and cells.Today I want to discuss a basic formula.
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I created a personal finance web ring and I invite all with personal finance websites to join.

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So, how is our progress on establishing budgets going?

Good! We are getting a good idea on what we are spending on groceries and it is more than what I had thought, but it does not seem to be out of line with norms and a fair amount of food is going into storage.
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Most know what a spreadsheet is, but many of us do not know how to tap into the power of one.

I am going to make this post a high-level and quick introduction to spreadsheets.

Lesson one: rows, columns, and cells
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Let us ring up another $8.64 in savings. The items we saved on this week are chunky soup, canned tuna, pepperoni, Italian sausage (loose), can chicken broth.Lorie is often using chicken broth for one dish or another, tuna is frequently used in winter casseroles, and the pepperoni and Italian sausage can be put to use in pizza making & spaghetti. So the food we bought we are putting to use right now.

Coupon savings have to date totaled to $34.93 which is nearly 47% of the cost of the newspaper. I figure by the time March rolls around the paper should be paid for.

I was planning on making pizzas for sometime now with the sourdough starter we had, I knew we had some pizza sauce in the freezer, and hard cheeses. In addition, we had a coupon for loose Italian sausage. Then I spotted the coupon for the pepperoni in today’s paper so took advantage of that. How did the pizza turn out?
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Our washing machine during its last use made inordinate amounts of noise in the spin cycle and Lorie noted the drum did not turn like it should, sure enough there was a problem.Well, some googling and my limited knowledge of mechanical things led me to believe a bearing went bad. Well, today that was pretty much confirmed. (more…)

Researchers at the Stanford Graduate School of Business and the California Institute of Technology found that because people expect wines that cost more to be of higher quality, they trick themselves into believing the wines provide a more pleasurable experience than less expensive ones.

Higher wine prices boost drinking pleasure – Reuters via Yahoo News

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There is the old saying, watch the pennies and the pounds will take care of themselves. However, we have another saying contradicting the previous one: penny-wise, but pound-foolish, that is one who is very conscious on the small expenditures but foolishes handles large sums of money. I tend to think the former (think Former First, Later Last). saying carries more weight and the later is used to justify not watching one’s daily expenditures. (more…)

Free Money Finance beats me to the punch and discusses grocery shopping on a budget. I have been kicking this around but have not yet written it. Free Money Finance notes an interesting statistic about shopping, that is on average, people purchase about $100.00 of goods per hour when in a grocery store. Well this makes sense, most often we do not just hang out in stores.In addition to keeping you in the stores, marketers work to stimulate your buying through the use of colors, product placement, product pricing, display design, etc.Since I have worked in retail I know retail stores do spend a fair amount of resources in designing their stores to get you to buy.Here are the things I have heard or am coming to see as good ways to minimize grocery expenses.

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Cash Money Life asks: What Temperature Do You Set Your Thermostat? Here is my answer.You are looking at three money saving tactical weapons! From left: a wool quilt (yes, in camouflage), a wool rag sweater, and flannel bed sheets. I particularly like the green & gold color theme, GO PACK GO!

Anyway some years ago in our local newspaper there was a letter to the editor complaint about the cost of heating their house!

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