Oakland Zoo Family Membership – just $40!

Looking for an inexpensive zoo membership for your family? Check out this deal, and hop on it since it expires Thursday! First Sign up for a free membership at Savvy Source, and then click this link for a family membership – two adults and up to four children – for just $40! That’s more than [...]

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Free fun for families in the Bay Area

Yogurt is not our only live active culture! We strongly believe that kids need to experience a wide variety of activities and see things outside of their everyday scope to become well rounded members of society. Having a small budget doesn’t mean our kids don’t get to experience some of the highlights of living in [...]

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Habitat for Humanity hits Menlo Park

Known for its million dollar houses near Stanford University and The Silicon Valley’s high-paying high-tech jobs, Menlo Park is a community with a median household income of $100,000, and median house price of almost $900,000. On the east side of town, just across the freeway, the Belle Haven neighborhood has homes whose prices have dropped [...]

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Dialing for Dollars: Health insurance

As mentioned in my Brave Skills post last week,  we are canceling our health insurance policy, the thought of which scares the heck out of me! I’ve been with the same provider since I was a child; my mom is an employee, and I went from her coverage to a plan with my previous employer [...]

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Saving at The Grocery Outlet

I needed a few grocery basics to finish out the month of pantry eating – fresh fruits and veggies, milk, eggs, and bread – so I stopped by The Grocery Outlet, my favorite mark-down grocery store. They are located in California, Oregon, Washington, Idaho, Nevada, and Arizona and have incredibly cheap prices on name brand [...]

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Learned in IDA’s Financial Literacy Class

As part of the IDA program, I was required to take 12 hours of financial literacy classes, which I attended over the past two Saturdays, and while the course work was very, very basic (how to open a bank account, how to write a check, etc.) I’m glad I went. The frugal tips and local [...]

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A semi-frugal project in the works

Oh! Fransson is a fantastic quilter, and I’ve been eying her Paintbox quilt as a template for the  kids’ room for several months. Bright, cheerful, and gender neutral, it is perfect for our shared boy and girl bedroom. And now, she’s hosting a quilt-along for the Paintbox quilt! Making a quilt isn’t the most frugal [...]

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Menu Plan Monday: Making the most of our pantry staples

Another week of pantry eating is upon us! We have quite the variety of dry beans, so you’ll see those as the staple of the week, and likely for the next few weeks as well as we work down the stash! Monday: Black bean and sweet potato soup Tuesday: Chinese meatballs, brown rice, green beans [...]

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