free

Giveaway: “Budget Bytes,” a wonderful cookbook.

by

351095I’ve often said that food is the budget category with the most wiggle room. After all, you usually can’t bargain down your car payment or your rent. Groceries, on the other hand, can be finagled.

That’s how Beth Moncel came to start a blog and later write a book. Her student loans were “eating her alive,” she said, so she had to cut spending. When a car repair knocked her budget sprawling, Moncel decided to spend no more than $6 per day for food in order to pay the freight.

Having earned a bachelor’s degree in nutritional science, she already knew how to make food healthy. Now she just had to make it affordable.

To keep herself on track she created a blog, BudgetBytes.com. Soon she developed quite the fan base, because plenty of us would love to eat well but also cheaply.

Now she’s also got a book, “Budget Bytes: Over 100 Easy, Delicious Recipes to Slash Your Grocery Bill in Half.” Reading it makes me hungry, filled as it is with ideas like Huevos Rancheros Bowls (served over grits instead of wrapped in corn tortillas), Spinach & Artichoke Pasta, Curried Potato & Pea Soup, Chicken Tamale Pie, Teriyaki Salmon With Sriracha Mayo, Cumin-Lime Sweet Potato Sticks, Firecracker Cauliflower, White Beans With Spinach & Bacon, Savory Coconut Rice, and Southwest Veggie & Rice Casserole.

Read more

My minor celebrity moment. What’s yours?

by
Photo courtesy of Free Images (pachd.com)
Photo courtesy of Free Images (pachd.com)

During its musical revues the old Fly By Night Club sometimes included a “Minor Celebrities” bit, inviting audience members to write down their furthest-removed brushes with fame. During intermission the cast would pick what they thought were the best – and again, the more tenuous, the better.

Thus we’d hear things like:

“I take dance class with Michael Jackson’s plastic surgeon’s wife.

“My great-uncle invented Cheez Whiz.”

“I once heard Brian Keith belch when I walked past his house in Hawaii to go surfing.”

“I used to carpool a kid whose mother’s father embalmed Babe Ruth.”

All these snippets led, naturally, to a book. The title: “Elvis Presley’s Pharmacist Was My Sunday-School Teacher.” 

Read more

Another “Coffeehouse Cliche” giveaway.

by

thPicture yourself sitting in a coffeehouse and writing the Great American Novel. Or next year’s Pulitzer for Best New Play. Or just sucking down some java and pretending to be all sensitive and deep.

I can help.

This week I’m having a second Coffeehouse Cliche giveaway, with three essentials to literary pretentiousness:

A notebook. Not the electronic kind, obviously. This is a 5-by-7-inch navy blue book with lined pages and an attached pen. Go ahead. Fill it up.

Starbucks e-gift card. This is good for $10 worth of whatever caffeine you need to jump-start the muse.

Coffee mug. This stainless steel Cutter & Buck mug has a lid with a handle and a leather sleeve if you’re not a handle-holding kind of sipper. The sleeve bears a discreet logo for Bankrate Insurance — yep, I got it at last year’s Financial Blogger Conference.

Read more

Celebrate the Iditarod start: Win a hat!

by

thThe Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race has its ceremonial start in downtown Anchorage on the first Saturday in March. People line the streets, which have been prepared by having snow put on them and which are aflame with barking, leaping, howling dogs.

If you happen to speak Canine, you’ll be able to hear what they’re saying: Let’s GO! Let’s GO! Let’s GO!

Come to think of it, you don’t need to know what a dog’s saying — just check his body language (See “barking, leaping, howling,” above.)

I hope to be there myself, although it will be a late night on Friday — I’m reviewing the touring company of “The Addams Family” for The Anchorage Daily News (my former long-time employer), and I’m expected to put the review up on the Arts Snob blog that same evening. The show probably won’t let out until about 10:30 p.m., which means I won’t even start to write until 11 p.m. Who knows what time I’ll get to bed?

I’ll be there in spirit if nothing else, having attended Iditarod starts in the past and enjoyed them hugely. I’ll also check out photos on the Daily News website of both the ceremonial start and then the next day’s re-start in Willow, Alaska. You should, too: The ADN shooters are masters of the art.

But that’s not what I came here to talk about. I came to talk about a hat.*

Read more

Traveling for spring break? You need this bag.

by

thThis winter has been a real bear for much of the Lower 48. If you’re lucky enough to have the time and the money to plan a little break, it will feel soooo nice.

Except maybe when it comes time to pack. More of us are choosing to go carry-on vs. paying to check a bag — but that means you can’t take your giant economy-size bottles of shampoo and conditioner, or the big tube of toothpaste you got on sale.

This is one time when frugality is frustrating. Why pay big bucks for teeny toiletries?

Win this bag instead and you’ll have that much more to spend on wherever your spring break takes you.

Read more

Get free retirement advice from the pros.

by

thHave you thought about how you’ll manage after you stop working? Get some free advice at “Jump-Start Your Retirement Plan,” a day-long online chat on Feb. 20.

Sponsored by Kiplinger’s Personal Finance and the National Association of Personal Finance Advisors, the event is designed to help consumers make the smartest possible money moves.

Given some of the comments from my recent Mary Hunt book giveaway, I’m hoping that readers will make time to attend. You can submit specific questions, such as “I’m in my 40s – how do I get started?” or “We’re on a really tight budget – what are your suggestions?”

Read more

A book that could change your life.

by

guidetoretirementLadies: How’s your retirement planning going? Have you even started? Do you fear you’ll never be able to stop working?

Have I got a book for you.

Mary Hunt’s “The Smart Woman’s Guide to Planning For Retirement” is designed for women of all ages. Yes, I’m looking at the 40- and 50-somethings who don’t really have a clear plan except, “I hope Social Security isn’t gutted by the time I retire.”

According to the U.S. Department of Labor, 55 percent of women have no savings at all and thus depend entirely on Social Security. Since the average monthly check is $1,130, that would be like working for $6.40 an hour, the author notes: “Could you live on that?”

Those who retire with some savings don’t fare much better. The average account has less than $30,000 in it; assuming you live to 85, it works out to just an additional $125 a month.

Want to take charge of your own finances? Enter for a chance to win a copy of this book.

Read more

Giveaway: The cold and flu package.

by

th-1I’ve heard a bunch of hacking and coughing lately, and I bet Alaska isn’t the only state thus afflicted. With so much time spent indoors, you’re likely to run into some kind of rhinovirus or other virulent cootie just lookin’ for a home.

Once it hits, having to pay $7 for a bottle of cough syrup adds fiscal insult to physical injury. I think that’s why these cold-and-flu giveaways are so popular: Nobody wants to shell out $20 or more for analgesics and expectorants.

This time around the package features:

Advil Congestion Relief. It’s a non-drowsy version, in case you really can’t take time off from work, and it’s a one-pill dose so you don’t have to remember to take it throughout the day.

Tissues. With all the suffering in the world it’s a little embarrassing to complain  about a chapped honker. But after a couple of days of nonstop blowing our noses really do get sore. That’s why I’m including a box of Kleenex Lotion Aloe & E Tissues.

Read more