Blogs are to frugal culture what Shakespeare is to English literature.
No one has embraced the frugal revolution quite like bloggers, and that makes sense: Blogs are free to write and free to read. Who would want to spend money on a book about saving money? There is actually a market for that, which Suze Orman has successfully tapped, but I prefer my personal finance advice to come for free and feed directly into my Google Reader.
You can pinch pennies until your fingers are raw, but until you start learning from and sharing with like-minded people, you will be missing out on an important part of the frugal world. Blogs are a great place to find ideas, recipes, horror stories about credit card debt and more.
Wisebread.com offers a number of blogs on a variety of topics and updates almost daily, though the articles are hit-and-miss. Many, like “Rethinking the Early Mortgage Payoff,” seem irrelevant to students, and the worst blogs offer amateur analyses of the current economic condition. I would not look to any frugal blog for this type of information.
Instead I look for practical tips on cutting water heater costs and “Making the Most of Imitation Crab Meat,” and for that, Wisebread lives up to its name. I recommend using the search bar to find past articles that interest you rather than reading them as they come. The Sept. 5, 2008, entry, “Frugalize any Recipe,” for example, changed how I think about cooking.
Frugaldad.com is similar to Wisebread in that it offers a range of advice, but it is maintained by one individual, so the style is more consistent. Like Wisebread, some of Frugaldad’s content is focused on investments, tax refunds and other things that may not appeal to the under-25 crowd. But two articles worth checking out are “75 Money Saving Tips to Survive a Recession” (4. Scale back the cable, 50. Avoid stores) and “The Difference in Being Frugal, Being Cheap,” which does a great job of explaining that distinction.
Unfortunately, there are surprisingly few blogs aimed specifically at the college demographic. College is the perfect time to start practicing healthy personal finance habits, but most of the thrifty suggestions available online are targeted towards families of four, not dorm-dwelling freshmen.
The most legitimate student-centered blog I have found is The Frugal Law Student (frugallawstudent.com). This site “attempt[s] to explain personal finance from the perspective of a twenty-something law student.” Though even this is not always relevant to undergrads, some might find use in student-tailored advice like “What to do with those Loan Refunds.”
Prudent Blogs
• Wisebread.com
• Frugaldad.com
• Frugallawstudent.com
