Lifestyle

Our Favorite Festive Holiday Season Frugal Joys

Our Favorite Festive Holiday Season Frugal Joys

We tend to spend more money than usual around the holidays, and this year with inflation it’s going to be even more expensive. If you are feeling stressed about your holiday budget, we have you covered.

The good news? You can add some extra holiday cheer to your life without spending more with frugal joys.

Frugal joys are free or inexpensive things that make us really happy. If you are looking for some festive free or inexpensive treats, here are our favorite holiday frugal joys.

Should I Buy This? A shopping quiz.

Should I Buy This? A shopping quiz.

Many of us were hopeful that our spending was going to decrease due to stay-at-home orders, but we’ve been surprised to see that’s not always the case. Many of us are now spending more.

How can this be? Yes, we’re spending much more on groceries - stockpiling shelf-stabilized goods or paying extreme markups for toilet paper, but the main culprit for most is online shopping.

Go through this checklist before you buy something on sale 

Go through this checklist before you buy something on sale 

Have you ever walked into a store just to “look around” and ended up needing something you didn’t know existed five minutes earlier? Or opened up your email to get some work done and got completely side-tracked by a sales email from one of your favorite brands? Yeah, me too. Companies are getting better and better at separating us from our money, and sales are one of their favorite tactics because they combine two great marketing strategies - scarcity (time is running out!) and a great deal.

So how do we decide what to do? How do we evaluate a purchase to make sure it’s worth it? With the holidays and the biggest shopping weekend upon us, it’s the perfect time to arm ourselves with a checklist to consult before buying something on sale.

Support Women & BIPOC-Owned Businesses with This Holiday Gift Guide

Support Women & BIPOC-Owned Businesses with This Holiday Gift Guide

Each year we showcase incredible BIPOC and women-owned businesses to support while doing your holiday shopping (and all year round). Why? Because what we buy matters! How we spend money is a way to vote for more of what we want to see in the world.

Plus, the pandemic, inflation and supply-chain issues have made the last few years really challenging for small businesses. Our support can make a big difference. We’ve compiled a list of your (and our) favorite brands. Thank you for sending in all of your new favorites this year. This list just gets better and better. And we plan to continue to add to it!

How to Have a Money Party

How to Have a Money Party

We don’t typically associate money with parties but I’m telling you, it’s a worthwhile association to make. 

One of the reasons we don’t make the progress we want in our financial lives is because our financial to-do list continues to get put on the back burner. We have busy lives so when we don’t create the time for something (like dealing with our finances), the calendar fills up and we continue to not have time. It’s a vicious cycle. 

Love and Money Etiquette

Love and Money Etiquette

Dating and money etiquette, financial red and green flags, and more.

Dating and early relationships can be stressful. Then add in money and it gets even more complicated.

Not only is dating expensive (hello inflation!), it can also be confusing. I always had questions like… Who should pay? Do we split? When should we talk about money? How do we split expenses? Is that a financial red flag? What are my financial green flags?

Why You Need a Dream Team 

Why You Need a Dream Team 

For many of us, money is a taboo topic that we don’t even talk about with our closest friends and family. This might not seem like a big deal, but it has some major repercussions. One is that it makes it a lot more difficult to reach our goals.

When the people who love us the most don’t know about our goals, they can’t support us. They might even unknowingly sabotage us!

Our Favorite Free $ Resources 

Our Favorite Free $ Resources 

Over the past nine years (the Fiscal Femme had it’s 9th birthday on March 2nd!), I’ve been creating resources to help you succeed in your financial life and reach your goals. And we provide many of them for free.

Here’s a roundup of my favorite free resources. Whether you are new to the Fiscal Femme or you just missed a few of these golden nuggets, I’ve compiled them for you here in one place.