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Category: Home Ownership

When lightening strikes

When lightening strikes

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Just wanted to give you a heads up as to why I didn’t post the last two mornings. This has been a pretty exciting week for me and I’ve probably beaten the odds on a couple of things. First my article on How to cure a sore throat almost instantly was picked up by Digg and Reddit early this week and ended up as the #1 story on both sites for a good day or so on Monday and Tuesday. Then on Wednesday my house got struck by lightening, which in turn fried our television, my wireless router, and all the internal phone lines, which means I don’t have access to internet at home which makes it tough to blog.

Edit: 3/26/2007 – still no internet at home – will play electrician tonight and have something for tomorrow on my thoughts on helping our kids out on their college education.
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How to go about frugal landscaping – Part II

How to go about frugal landscaping – Part II

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In Part I of this series I talked about some high level things you can do to save you money and increase your chances of success when going about landscaping.  In this part I am going to talk about where to get some of the supplies you will need and how to save money on them.

Mulch
Mulch is an important part of most frugal landscaping plans.  Mulch is not only a cheaper alternative to things such as gravel or stones, it is a lot less likely to cause you issues if it creeps out of your landscaping and into your lawn which it most likely will do.  Think 2 inch rock in lawn mower versus piece of tree bark.  Mulch is also much better for your plants and flowers as it is a natural material which will help retain moisture (less watering) and slowly break down and release nutrients for your plants and shrubs.
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How to go about frugal landscaping – Part I

How to go about frugal landscaping – Part I

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Well I just talked about the true cost of owning a home and well if I want to stay happily married I’m going to have to spend some money on landscaping this summer. So obviously I want to figure out the most cost effective way to do my landscaping and still end up with a product that my wife would be happy with. I already start the process of frugal lawn care last summer after the Chemlawn guy stopped by an challenged my green thumb manhood and to be honest my lawn ended up looking great. So while I know next to nothing as I write this article about landscaping I do know that if you aren’t careful landscaping can cost a fortune (we just had some professionals stop by last night with some plans and a quote – thus somewhat like the Chemlawn incident I feel personally challenged to show them I can do a much better job for a fraction of the cost)

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The true cost of owning a home – or reasons why renting isn’t all that bad.

The true cost of owning a home – or reasons why renting isn’t all that bad.

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My wife and I were discussing whether her soon-to-be-married brother and his future wife should really be looking to purchase a home right away. Knowing what I know about the couple and my personal opinion about buy vs. rent I took the side of the argument that the couple definitely should not be looking to buy a house right now. The two of them are fresh out of college and from what I know don’t have a whole lot of money saved up. In fact I think they have some debt and are going even further in debt to pay for the wedding and honeymoon. Now at their age there is certainly nothing wrong with being in debt, especially if the reason for the debt is college education and well as much as I promote being frugal in all aspects of your life, you probably should enjoy your wedding/honeymoon as hopefully it’s an only once in a lifetime experience.

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