Valentine’s Day giveaway.

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It’s a little early* for Valentine’s Day, but the point of this giveaway is for the winners to have gifts for the holiday. I’ll need some time to mail them, so early is the way to play it.

Those gifts can be for your sweetheart, your mom, your daughter, your niece or a nice coworker.

You could also gift them to yourself. And if you’ve got a bestest buddy who wears earrings? Make them a Galentine’s Day present.

My photography is subpar, but all these earrings do feature heart shapes. They seemed appropriate for Valentine’s Day.

 

They were made by my jewelry-making buddy Linda B., whose work has been featured in giveaways before. Since I believe in supporting the local economy, why not use heart-shaped art from someone I know? 

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Low- or no-spend February 2023: Who’s in?

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This is not a new idea, and in fact many bloggers make it a strictly no-spend February. But I like to keep things a bit looser because not everyone can just stop buying things.

Not that you have to stop buying entirely. If you get a head cold in late February, you don’t have to wait until March 1 to hit the drugstore.

And obviously you’ll still have to gas up your car/renew your transit pass as needed, or pick up fresh produce or milk when you run out (and if you decide you can’t live without these things).

The point of this 28-day exercise is to try not to spend, and to be intentional about what you do end up buying. Pretty sure you guys are already good at that.

So: Who’s in?

Instead of buying on autopilot, a low- or no-spend February asks you to think critically about everything you want to put into the shopping cart:

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Get 50% off Earn More Writing.

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In the past I’ve written about Earn More Writing, a freelancing course created by my FinCon colleague Holly Porter Johnson. After nearly seven years, she’s decided to close the course to new students – so this is your last chance to take advantage of her considerable knowledge of the freelance market.

And she’s having a big ol’ sale to commemorate this closing. So if you ever wanted to become a freelance writer, or if you’re already one and want to step up your game, now’s the time to take Holly’s course. From now until Jan. 31 she’s offering a 50% discount.

As an affiliate partner, I do stand to earn a little money if anyone decides to take the course. But I’d recommend it even if I weren’t an affiliate: Holly knows her stuff. She brings in six figures per year – often in the $400k-plus range.

To be clear: You won’t leap to six figures overnight. But you have to start somewhere. Holly did: She was freelancing steadily while working full-time, determined to build her business. Those first clients led to other clients. Taken together, she was able to quit her day job and become her own boss.

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Found money in 2022.

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Longtime readers know that I save my found money all year long, keeping it in a vase that my daughter found for me in the free box of a long-ago yard sale. In January, I round up the total and donate it to the food bank. This year’s total greatly eclipsed the 2021 take: $18.04 vs. $5.88.

The found money looked like this:

  • One $5 bill
  • Three $1 bills
  • 27 quarters
  • 19 dimes
  • 13 nickels
  • 74 pennies

The greenbacks were courtesy of DF, who did a couple of quick opinion surveys for a company that, believe it or not, sent him actual cash vs. a check or a gift card. His reasoning was that he is retired and wasn’t looking for employment; therefore, it was found money.

Usually I donate to Feeding America or to the Food Bank of Alaska. This year, as in 2021, I’m going to donate to the church of my childhood. The Fairton United Methodist Church now operates a small food bank to help people in that small town.

Some people are appalled by the notion of picking money up from the ground, the floor or one of those Coinstar machines. If that’s you, then you do you. But as I noted in “Filthy lucre,” it’s not as though I carry these coins home in my mouth. Food banks are being bombarded (thanks, inflation!), so for me it’s worth the stoop and then the hand sanitizer.

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The $1 Christmas tree.

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I’ve felt oddly detached from the holiday this year, to the point where I didn’t have the motivation even to put up my Christmas tree. Normally that’s pretty important to me, but this year I just wasn’t feeling it. Knowing that, DF politely offered to help me set the tree up – which is silly, really, since this is a two-foot tabletop model that takes all of five minutes to decorate. (Not counting the lights, of course, which take 15 minutes just to un-knot.)

Still I demurred, until I noticed that on Friday he’d cleared away his Advent candle wreath and draped a white tablecloth over a box to provide a great place for the tree. He suggested that it would be easier to reach this way; normally the tree is set atop a cedar chest.

Sometimes a partner just knows what you need. That clean, conveniently vacant pedestal was the gentle push I needed to get going. And he was right: It was easier to reach, and to decorate even though the lights were still a pain to un-knot. It’s just their way.

Decorating the tree got me humming carols, and before I knew it I was finished. As always, we turned out the indoor lights and plugged in the Christmas tree lights in order to get the full effect.

Not bad, for a Charlie Brown tree (apologies for the dual image created by our double-paned window):

And here’s a daytime view, which doesn’t have the double image and which better showcases our ultra-white Christmas:

 

Just got back from my niece’s house, where I watched as she and her kids opened their holiday gifts. My own contributions to that celebration were, of course, almost completely paid for through gift cards from rewards programs, a bit of judicious re-gifting and the Expo Hall** at the Financial Bloggers Conference. I love giving presents, but I do need to keep an eye on the bottom line as I approach retirement.

My niece’s Christmas tree is much taller and more impressive. It’s also pre-lit, which is something to keep in mind if I ever replace my own tree. Somehow I doubt I will, because that  tabletop model means something to me. I bought it for $1 at the annual rummage sale held by the Lakeside School in Seattle, shortly after I had fled my marriage. Dropped another buck on a sandwich bag full of small Christmas tree ornaments, too.

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The birthday pear fiasco. (Free recipe inside!)

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Every year my daughter sends me a box of Harry & David pears for my birthday. The sweetness and juiciness of this fruit defies description. I look forward to them every year because you just can’t get pears like this in Anchorage. This year’s delivery was a little different, because the pears were delivered…frozen.

Not because they sat all day on the temps-in-the-teens porch, either. The delivery guy put the box directly into my hands. But when I opened up the gift, I found a batch of pearsicles.

Somewhere along the way, the fruit had encountered too-low temperatures – and there’s plenty of those on the Last Frontier. That’s never happened before with a Harry & David’s delivery.

As any savvy consumer would do, I phoned the company. Listened to the apologies, accepted a new delivery date for a new box of fruit.

And as any good frugalist would do, I wondered if I could salvage the old box. So I sliced one open and took a tentative nibble: hard and not sweet at all. Not surprising, since pears are picked under-ripe and allowed to develop to their full potential when customers want them.

While putting the pear’s core into the boiling bag, I decided that the rest of the fruit would not follow. I invented a new dessert* instead.

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Black Friday serendipity.

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The washing machine finally died. DF can’t remember how old it is, but it’s at least 25 years old and possibly older. It didn’t owe us a thing. But the appliance still had one act of service left: It waited until the day before Black Friday to give up the ghost.

We were lucky it lasted as long as it did, yet we dreaded the cost of replacing a major appliance. Even a quick glance at the ads left us a bit breathless.

Fortunately, we are money nerds who specialize in stretching every dollar. A quartet of frugal hacks helped reduce the financial pain: 

First, DF compared prices and incentives at half a dozen retailers before choosing Lowe’s. (Hurrah for free delivery, setup and haul-away!)

Second, as always, he paid with a rewards credit card. As do I: All of my plastic is rewards plastic. It just makes sense to us.

[Surviving and Thriving has partnered with CardRatings for our coverage of credit card products. Surviving and Thriving and CardRatings may receive a commission from card issuers. Opinions, reviews, analyses and recommendations are the author’s alone, and have not been reviewed, endorsed or approved by any of these entities.]

He further sweetened the pot by raiding the “washing machine fund” jar for another $150. This is one of our easiest stealth saving* tactics: For every load of laundry we run, $2 goes into a jar. Your fund can be for anything you want; in fact, we took money from this jar a few years back to help pay for a new stove.

Finally, I cashed in enough Shopkick points to get $225 worth of Lowe’s gift cards. Since I’m always telling him that the points are for our household, not just for me, this was another chance to put my (free) money where my mouth is. As recently noted in “How I saved $233.07,” these rewards programs provided a pretty nice boost to our home and garden budget this year.

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Staycation at Abby’s house.

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Having escaped the warmth and humidity of Orlando, I am now experiencing the warmth and extreme dryness of Phoenix. While in Orlando I learned that I am no longer a theme-park person. (More on that below.) Also learned that four adults in a rather small hotel room is a recipe for anxiety; so was the need to schedule daily activities. By contrast, visiting my daughter is like a staycation, albeit at someone else’s house.

Eating whatever and whenever I choose. Reading until late at night and getting up when I feel like it, rather than rising when park activities (or other people’s getting-ups) decide.

Coming and going as I please, when I please. Sitting around and catching up for hours, with Netflix or Hulu on in the background. Doing small chores to give her a break, including helping tidy up the place and prepare snacks for a game night. (Why is it always easier and even fun to clean other people’s houses?)

A staycation, in other words.

It’s not that I won’t ever leave the house. We plan to browse the Savers thrift shop on Monday (half-price day) for a big glass bowl or Pyrex dish, as she wants to start making yogurt. We  plan to hit Bobby Q’s for ribs and sides. I hope to hang out with Sonya Ann, a regular reader from the MSN Money days. And on Friday, we’ll go to see “Die Hard: A Christmas Story,” presented by the All Puppet Players. (Yep: A plush John McClain shouting, “Yippee-cai-yay, mofos!”)

Mostly, though, it’s like any other visit to my daughter: hanging out. 

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