Donna Freedman Today is my birthday and I am officially old. Not because of my new age, but because of how I spent my day. Some highlights:
Relax: My day sounds a lot worse than it actually was. In fact, it’s been pretty great. For starters, there’s the obvious reason: I’m still on the right side of the grass.
FinCon24 is in the books, and I’ve decided to go back to a tradition that fell by the wayside: giving away conference tchotchkes. Because who doesn’t need more reusable shopping bags or a new T-shirt for when it’s time to paint the kitchen?
This giveaway is a little different, though, because it will also contain a gift card.
For the uninitiated, FinCon is a professional conference for those who write, podcast, advise or are otherwise affiliated with personal finance. There’s always an expo hall for sponsors and vendors to show attendees what they do.
Two things get our attention – and it isn’t signage or name recognition. No, it’s candy and swag.
The swag is what I’m giving away, because I’m still nibbling on the fun-size candy bars and soft peppermints. But it’s useful swag. Most of it has some kind of corporate branding, but heck, as a nation we’ve been conditioned to pay for the privilege of advertising someone else’s business. (Lookin’ at you, Nike swoosh.)
Here’s what the winner will get:
I leave next week for FinCon (the artist formerly known as the Financial Bloggers Conference) in downtown Atlanta. From there I will swing through Phoenix to see my daughter.
Anyone interested in a meetup in either place?
The conference takes place Wednesday, Oct. 23 through Saturday, Oct. 26. I’ll be in Phoenix from Monday, Oct. 28 until Thursday, Nov. 11.
My usual MO is to find an easy-to-access fast food restaurant or mall food court and set up shop with my computer. I’ll stick around for a few hours, working if no one shows up and chatting if someone does.
We can chat about whatever you like, but my guess is that most of you want to talk about how frugality can make your life more affordable. More meaningful, too.
For the past few weeks DF has been practicing the music for an ecumenical service that will take place near Thanksgiving. The song that sticks in my head most is “Harvest Home,” an 1844 hymn*. This quatrain in particular applies:
Come, ye thankful people, come
Raise the song of harvest home;
All is safely gathered in,
Ere the winter storms begin.
No storms yet, but it was 29 degrees when I got up the other day. We are thankful that all is safely gathered in.
It was a somewhat dismal summer for the second year in a row, and gardens were more than a month late in ripening. Some things didn’t produce well, or at all; for example, a local tree expert posted on Facebook that he didn’t get a single cherry from his five trees.
We didn’t get that many cherries ourselves: 28, to be exact. Then again, this is only the second year the tree’s been in the ground. Popular fruit-tree wisdom holds that “the first year it sleeps, the second year it creeps and the third year it leaps.” However, I can’t hope for too much in 2025 because a moose got into the yard last week. It harried all three of our fruit trees before DF could scare it off the property by banging a hammer on a shovel.
This isn’t the moose that got into the yard, but I bet he knows the one who did.
Fortunately, we’d already harvested the apples the previous week. Moose can be real jerks.
For millions of people, Amazon is a way to get whatever they need, whenever they need it – and wherever they are. (More on that in a minute.) That’s why the rebranding of the “Prime Student” program is worth noticing. Amazon is offering six months’ worth of Amazon Prime for free to people aged 18 to 24, plus half-price Prime after that.
That means not just free parcel delivery, but also:
(In honor of Labor Day, I decided re-run this post from Sept. 5, 2010.)
When I was a kid, I couldn’t wait to earn money. Penny candy was only part of the reason. Working was a sign of being grown-up. I’d already figured out that being a kid was for losers. Adulthood was where it was at.
That’s why in elementary school I would pick and sell flowers and strawberries. It’s why I rejoiced when it snowed — the local doctor would pay a dollar to have his steps and sidewalk shoveled. It’s why I started baby-sitting at age 11, when I was hardly older than some of my charges.
It’s the only possible reason I could have enjoyed my first “real” job, at age 13: Picking tomatoes in a greenhouse that felt like an incinerator. It was a half-hour bike ride away, through temperature and humidity that raced each other into the high 90s. The plants were taller than I was and their leaves brushed me on all sides. I came home slimed with sap; the shampoo bubbled green when I washed my hair.
But oh, the joy of making $1.35 an hour.
A $25 Amazon card means different things to different people. Summer is winding down, so for some it’s time to buy crayons or school clothes. The child-free might be pricing new winter accessories, or restocking hobby supplies.
Gardeners could be on the lookout for canning supplies. Thrifty folks may be doing a little early holiday shopping (if they aren’t already done). And since summer’s not completely over, possibly you’re in the market for sunscreen or new flip-flops or a good beach read.
Whatever you want, my latest giveaway will fund the first $25 worth.
Let me be clear: In no universe would I mix tomato paste with strawberries. I’m simply using the can to illustrate the size of some of this year’s fruit. Aren’t they lovely?
How I wish blogs could share aromas, because our house smells marvelous right now. We are eating all the strawberries we want – and we want a lot of them – yet still have leftovers. The question was, “How can we preserve them without freezing it or turning it into jam?” The answer was, “Dehydrate them.”
Thus far we’ve dried a quart of these little beauties (see below), which means we sliced and dried about four quarts. That sounds onerous, but it really wasn’t. DF and I sit across from each other at the table, slicing and chatting, until the dehydrator is full or until we run out of berries, whichever comes first. Some people sit around watching TV or playing board games. We slice berries.
Why do this? Because we want every berry to have had a reason to ripen. I have never tasted berries like these before, either in New Jersey (where we picked them ourselves) or from Seattle farm markets. They’re as sweet and tender as the memory of first love and, as DF’s younger son marveled, “They’re red all the way through!”
I discovered a great frugal hack the other day while trying to use a “weekly digital deal” coupon at Fred Meyer. The store, which is part of the Kroger chain, offered six-packs of 16-ounce soft drinks* for $3.49.
Some days I don’t drink soda at all, and some days I’ll have two. Lately I’ve bought bottles rather than cans, so I don’t have to drink an entire serving at once. Tightly capped, a Diet Pepsi will hold over until the next day.
When I see a price like this one, I limit out until the next big sale. Unfortunately, the store didn’t have any Diet Pepsi. It had every other Pepsi flavor imaginable (and some I don’t like to think about**), but not the one I wanted.
No Diet? No problem! I headed off to another Fred Meyer and found the same empty spot on the shelves. A grocery manager looked everywhere and sadly reported they, too, were out. Damn those weekend barbecues and salmon-fishing trips!
The German language has the best words. Kummerspeck (“grief bacon,” or the weight you put on from eating your feelings). Sehnsucht, or the deep and emotional craving for something far away or unattainable. And frühjahrsmüdigkeit, which I’ve been experiencing lately.
Frühjahrsmüdigkeit is translated as “spring lethargy,” the fatigue that some people feel in the springtime, particularly after a hard winter.
We’ve had two particularly crummy winters in a row, and a lousy spring/summer in 2023. For the most part, spring 2024 has been cold and cloudy.
Sure, we’ve had a few spectacularly sunny days – the kind that make me think, “I can live here despite the winters.” Mostly it’s been…frühjahrsmüdigkeit.