Thriftmonkies Unite!

Many people consider me a serious, not fun person. This includes my mother who once told me wistfully that I was not the "fun child." I'm not sure why this is exactly. Perhaps it has something to do with my favorite hobby-saving money. (Other people have exiciting hobbies, right?)

I have always been a miserly child-when I was in elementary school one of my favorite activities was counting the money in my piggy bank. Even when I got my first job working in a movie theater, most of my paycheck went to my savings account.

Then I moved out of the house and found that I didn't know anything about saving money. I quickly depleted my savings, eating a lot of fast food, and trying to pay bills.

When my boyfriend (now husband) and I moved to the Washington DC area, the combination of our high rent and my sometimes boring job (which allowed for surfing the Internet) led me to articles about saving money. I learned that retirement for my generation is in jeporady due to lack of savings. I also yearned to buy a house in the expensive Northern Virginia housing market.

My search for articles about saving money led me to buy a book called The Tightwad Gazette. I found this book at Costco for $8. I pored over it-reading articles that discussed gardening, diapers, grocery savings, thrift philosophy, and more. I was hooked. And I quickly realized how much money I was wasting, buy expensive products at the grocery store, not looking for sales, etc...

I think the problem that I experienced is that once I was on my own, I thought I would be able to continue to live the way I did at my parent's house. The problem with this is that my parents had 30 years of hard work behind them to get to where they ended up. I was just starting out and, in doing so, I had to start from scratch.

The ideas I gleaned from TTG, as well as other websites I found and discussions with other people, led me and my husband to be able to save hundreds of dollars a month and stay away from credit card debt.

This is not to say that we are completely "in the money" now. Recently, we have had our first kid and bought our first house. We still have two cars to pay off and now retirement and college to save for. Plus, I have a dream of buying a house out in the country, with several acres, mainly so I can grow more vegetables. And maybe a few apple trees.

So once again, I find myself perusing money articles and exploring my own ways to save money. And I also find myself thinking-what if other people are in the same boat? I keep reading articles that the savings rate of Americans is in the negative territory. People my age have thousands of dollars of student loan debt to pay back. More tellingly, when TTG was last published ('96 I believe), the minimum wage was $5.15 per hour and the price of gas was .89 cents per gallon. Now, 10 years later, the minimum wage is still $5.15 an hour but the price of gas in my area is $2.99 per gallon.

So I have created this blog as a resource and compendium for money-saving ideas. Feel free to contribute suggestions for saving money, books to read, techniques, or whatnot.

However, please note: I am not a financial expert-I am a 26 year old history major with a not-so-good background in math. I cannot give suggestions about stocks, 401Ks, etc...It's kinda like a "Don't Ask Don't Tell" policy.