Malachi and mud.

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malachi in mudThis grimy little guy is my great-nephew, who’s almost 9 and the luckiest kid I know: His mom lets him play in the dirt. Or, in this case, the mud.

They’d gone to Kincaid Park, where Malachi and some other kids thoroughly immersed themselves in play on the muddy beach. Alison brought along dry clothes so he wouldn’t wreck the inside of the family car.

“I did have to hose off his hair at the house, before his shower,” she said.

Playing in the dirt is truly frugal fun: Give a kid a spoon and some old plastic containers and watch her go to town. What’s more, science seems to indicate dirt is literally good for our kids.

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Filthy lucre.

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The most-read piece I ever wrote for the Smart Spending blog was an essay called “See a penny? Pick it up!” Before MSN Money switched blog platforms, the article had received more than 1.6 million hits.

The comments were also numerous, and about evenly split: People who also happily gleaned change and people who thought the idea was unbelievably disgusting. Pick up dirty, germy, dog-peed-upon coins? Eeeeewwww.

I’m fully aware that found money isn’t clean. But it’s not as though I carry it home in my mouth.

Besides: I hate to break it to those folks, but the bills and specie they get from banks and stores are probably just as revolting.

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Don’t hate the payer, hate the game.

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Want to save 50% at the supermarket? Here's help.I’m the grocery store customer who challenges the scanner. Yes, it slows things up a little. But I’m not going to pay $2.89 a pound just because someone forgot to tell the computer that hams are on sale this week.

That’s me. And you? You might be the person behind me, grinding her teeth in frustration because I won’t accept anything other than the advertised price.

My apologies if your checkout is delayed by 60 seconds. But that $1.90-per-pound savings times eight pounds represents almost $16. My budget won’t let me back down.

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A rhubarb recipe.

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I recently attended a barbecue that was wryly dubbed “Grill, baby, grill!” by its hosts. As I was leaving they gave me a small sack of newly cut rhubarb. Alaskans are nuts about the stuff. In the old days, rhubarb was the first fresh food of the year. To the pioneers it must have tasted positively ambrosial after a winter of sourdough bread and boiled beans.

Modern-day sourdoughs can get all the fresh produce they want at Costco, yet they  maintain an ancestral fondness for this vegetable that masquerades as a fruit. Even people who don’t eat it grow it, probably because it takes no horticultural talent at all. Stick a rhubarb root into dry cat litter and by morning you’ll have enough stalks to bake a pie. (Stick it in used cat litter and you’ll have enough for two pies.)

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4 ways to think about money.

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Want to drop a bad habit or develop a good one? You need a plan. Or, rather, you need a list.

We Americans love our lists. We especially love short lists. Just check the headlines on magazines, features sites or blogs. You’ll almost certainly see ones like “Three easy steps to lose weight/stop smoking/become a millionaire.”

Having a list makes us feel we’re already halfway to achieving our goals. Lists make us feel confident and in charge: I’ve got it all figured out! Now I just have to implement it!

It’s never really that simple, of course. If three steps were all it took, we’d be surrounded by thin, rich people whose fingers were unstained.

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14 insanely cheap ways to have fun this summer.

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So the economy’s not so great. That’s no reason to give up recreation.

The best things in life are free. Some of the other things are cheap — say, a dollar or less.

Just off the top of my head:

Wash your car. Use an environmentally friendly soap. It’s a good excuse to squirt each other with the hose on a sticky day.

Hit the dollar store. Buy sidewalk chalk, a kite, some bubble-blowing stuff or a generic Frisbee. Then take it to the park. OK, so you may have to add a few cents in sales tax. You’re still spending a dollar, but being charged tax. (Not to split hairs.)

Create your own “drive-in.” Weather permitting, set up a TV in your driveway and screen movies outdoors. Kids are especially delighted by anything out of the ordinary. But don’t be surprised if grown-up neighbors also walk over to see what’s on.

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Blogs you can dance to.

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It’s been fun trotting around the blogosphere this week. Why keep it all to myself?

“Delayed gratification,” at Girl With the Red Balloon

“What’s your frugal Kryptonite?” at I Pick Up Pennies

“The words I hate to say the most” at Modern Tightwad

“Overcoming the wall” at Financial Samurai

“A critique of marriage, from a bride-to-be” at Tiger Beatdown

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You can’t even tell perfect bodies apart.

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My Ani DiFranco T-shirts are fraying. Not before time, you understand: They’re from a 1997 concert in Anchorage, Alaska, which I reviewed. Originally they belonged to my daughter, who went to the concert with me.

The gray tee features a DiFranco verse:

“So I’ll walk the plank and I’ll jump with a smile/If I’m gonna go down I’m gonna do it with style/And you won’t see me surrender, you won’t hear me confess/’Cuz you’ve left me with nothing – but I’ve worked with less.”

The other shirt, a kind of an old rose/mauve color, bears a single lyric:

“Every tool is a weapon if you hold it right.”

Neither of us could have known that would be the last summer of Abby’s first life. Seven months after that concert she was on life support in the UW Medical Center’s intensive care unit. Guillain-Barre syndrome paralyzed her right up to her eyeballs and nearly killed her. She’d recover function but would never be the same.

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Can’t control your finances? Get yourself a coach.

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Not a counselor — a coach. That’s the subject of my latest “Living With Less” personal finance column, now up over at MSN Money. “Find a personal money coach, free” explains how you can work to make your finances match your dreams. Generally speaking, counseling is about an issue and coaching is about an individual. … Read more