Finding the cheapest places to live in 2009 could be something very important and impossible to fully identify but you can look at various elements to piece together a practical result and hopefully find the relative cheapest place for you to live.

Just working out what you need for your lifestyle is the first step. Including the type of work you do and if you need a house, condo, apartment. Do you have pets? Do you need to drive and if so how far do you need to drive? Etc etc etc.

It’s generally agreed that the cheapest places in the USA to live are in the midwest. You may get low wages compared to the rest of the country but taxes are low and housing is comparatively dirt cheap. Even things like beer and food can be found significantly cheaper. However you may have to take into account crime and poverty, building quality and other aspects before making your final decision.

Research conducted by the Missouri Economic Research and Information Center, show that the 10 most affordable cities in the USA are:
According to research conducted by the Missouri Economic Research and Information Center, the 10 most affordable states in the US are:

1. Oklahoma
2. Texas
3. Tennessee
4. Arkansas
5. Nebraska
6. South Dakota
7. Missouri
8. Kansas
9. Georgia
10. Mississippi

I have written another more indepth article on this subject and it’s also getting a lot of opinions and comments. So come learn more and join the discussion by reading the article: Cheapest places to live in America

I would love to hear from you.

I just recently purchased some amazing cheap one way flights and thought it would be a great time to share some of the info that I found and give some tips.

I’m flying one way from Boston to Ireland, Ireland to Liverpool, Then finally London to Cairo. All of this is happening within the next 7 weeks and I absolutely cannot wait! I am actually going to live in Cairo, hence not needing a return flight.

So here are 10 tips to get cheap one way flights:

1. Book early but not too early. Start judging prices as far in advance as possible but maybe hold off booking until a few months before travel. Tickets way in advance can actually cost more!
2. Check EVERY airline flying to your destination.
3. Consider booking your flight in 2 stages. It may possibly be cheaper to stop off half way and book through two or more airlines.
4. Phone around, don’t just rely on the internet. I have found amazing deals by actually phoning airlines and travel agents.
5. If using a compare site, compare using multiple compare sites. Each site makes different commission and has different deals so compare through lastminute.com, kayak.com and more.
6. Check out the return price and don’t use the return. Sometimes returns are just cheaper!
7. Book with no frills, no meal, small seat… For a shirt flight it may be worthwhile.
8. Fly to a nearby airport. Consider flying to another airport and taking a train or coach from further out to reach your destination.
9. Change your dates. Fly a day earlier and you may save more than an extra night costs in a hotel.
10. Search the net for coupons and discounts. You may find an amazing offer.

One of the most important aspects of being Frugal is keeping track of all your incomings and outgoings in order to determine the best way to cut-back funds and determine where you can save a little more money.

With a simple spreadsheet, or even a hand-filled printed list, you can meticulously track your progress each month and set important goals to work towards.

I was going to make some myself, but searching around I realized that there was a number of great free budget sheets available around the web. Therefore, I decided to compile a bunch of them in one place so that you may find the best ones to suit your needs:

Better Budgeting

Better Budgeting offer a variety of budget sheets including Basic Budgeting Worksheet, Dealing with Debt Worksheet , Monthly Spending Worksheet, Annual Budget Worksheet and Holiday Budgeting. All these worksheets are provided in an easy printable form.

Foxway
Foxway offer some great spreadsheet and worksheets (including Weekly Expense Record, Goal Chart, MyBudgetPlanner and Foxway Budget Tracker Spreadsheet) and a standalone budget program which may help you.

Microsoft Office
Microsoft Office Online offer a great Family monthly budget planner link for use with excel and may be able to be imported into other spreadsheet programs.

Woman’s Divorce
Although this site is about divorce, they do have online Budget Worksheets which can be used by everyone.

Love to Know
This site offer some budget worksheets, as well as advice for budgets based on your income(s).

I am sure after looking at your budget you will instantly realize how much money you are losing and you’ll see areas where you can apply your frugal ideas.

Let me know how you get along and what you do to cut back in certain areas.

If you are interested in stacking away a little extra money, then have you ever considered administrative assistant employment as a second job or a part time job? Maybe you should. There are ample opportunities available for those that are good with supporting others and helping them shine.

But I know what you are thinking. If I am going to be an administrative assistant, then this would require that I would have to go out of the house and burn additional hours in a day that is already crammed to the max. Well, this doesn’t have to be the case at all. In fact, if you find the right opportunity, you may not have to leave the house at all.

Administrative Assistant Employment Options

That’s right, you can earn extra money to save and put into your penny bank from home if you want to. Administrative assistant employment opportunities cover everything from government work, warehouse careers, entrepreneurial assistance, even virtual assistant work on the Internet.

Obviously, the option that would allow you to stay at home and work would be the virtual assistant aspect of being an administrative assistant. This could be anything from writing articles for bloggers, editing paper work, scheduling appoints, responding to emails, or creating easy to do set up, stand alone websites that will help the business owner build their Internet presence.

Feel Like You Don’t Have the Skills to be a Virtual Administrative Assistant?

That is fine because you are not alone. Many of the virtual administrative assistants that we speak to say that they had no idea they would be able work from home and do many of the things that they are doing right now. If you can type, speak on the phone, and respond to emails, then you are more than qualified to take on many of these task and earn extra money for your piggy bank.

Most of the people that will higher you as a virtual administrative assistant would be willing to train and show you exactly what you will need to do to be successful working from them. And most of them with give you some time to work out the learning curve, which is all you need, some guidance and a little time to work it out.

Don’t expect to triple your salary working from home with a virtual administrative assistant employment opportunity, but you could easily add few hundred dollars to your bottom line in no time and have fun doing it. Then you never know where this could lead. Maybe one day you will be making enough money to quit your full time employment and work at home as a virtual administrative assistant. Wouldn’t that be something special?

I was hunting around the net and I came across the Frugal John website (I won’t link it and i’ll tell you why in a bit!).

First thoughts was, that’s awesome another personal site about all things frugal…. But I was quite wrong.

I guess with the economy going down the pan people are looking to save cash in any way they can and this site is no exception….

It was started by a guy laid off of his job in silicon valley as a joke. The site is aimed at listing all the cheap escorts and massage parlors in the area and has become quite and underground hit!

No I am not sure what to think of this. I don’t have an opinion against massage parlours and escorts if the ladies are wanting to do such things, however we all know this industry can be incredibly corrupt and young women can be dragged in and made to work for very little cash or anything!

So as funny as it is, I wish Frugal John would actually make his site a frugal living site and not what it is.

What do you think? Is Frugal John funny, no harm, a disgusting site or what?

I’d love to hear your opinion….

The Meaning of Frugal according to the Oxford English Dictionary is quite simply:

“sparing or economical as regards money or food”

However Frugal is one of those words that now means so much more and is with the way the world is going it’s something that has personal meaning to many individuals.

Being Frugal to me is important. I try and save in all aspects of my life and also attribute my impact on society and the environment to the word. If we consume less, we are being frugal and we give the world a chance to recover from some of the major damage we have caused.

If everyone takes some Frugal practice then things on this earth will get decidedly better. There is plenty of money to share around and if we make a better world, health and happiness will grow…. again saving more cash. I’m not talking about full on socialism or anything wacky. Just common sense…..

What is the frugal meaning to you?

Like all life style choices, decorating your home, be it a rented apartment or a mansion, is a very personal thing to you, and I am not going to tell you to do this, that and the other, because it just won’t work for you.

However, on the other hand, if the ‘Credit Crisis’ is forcing you to take a scalpel to your decorating budget, there are a couple of ideas I can give you for decorating on a shoe-string.

The top number one tip for decorating on a budget is to make every room a blank canvas. Paint the walls a neutral colour, like off white, (not pure white, that is too glaring!).

To that you can add your own choice of fabrics, pictures and ornaments that will make the room your own. This is the reason rented apartments are normally painted a bland colour, it gives the renter the opportunity to make the apartment their own with their belongings, and saves the landlord the cost, and the mind boggling conundrum of what each tenant would like.

Living rooms and bedrooms often have a change of curtains with the seasons, heavier curtains during the winter, and lighter airy curtains during the warmer months. As the window is often the focal point of a room, you can take advantage of this by changing the pictures and ornaments with the curtains, move around the furniture, and without having to use a single lick of paint, (if the old paint is still in good condition), and you still get the feeling as if you have changed the whole décor! It will feel like a brand new room, which it will be, to all intents and purposes.

If you are thinking about decorating your kids room, don’t forget they grow, and so do their tastes, so a ‘blank canvas room’ leaves you with the option of removing all those Spiderman pictures when the child decides they prefer Zina! Try to remember that those lovely themed wall papers for children were designed by adults, to get other adults to buy them for their children! Having a Fairy Princess themed bedroom, with matching wall paper, bedspread, curtains and rug, will not make the child grow up any happier, spending quality time with their parents will do that, and it is free!

Paint can often be found on sale, if you find a colour that suits you, snap it up and pray you have enough to do the room you have in mind.

Forget about wall paper, unless the walls are in such bad condition they need the paper to hold them up, in which case you really need to sort the walls out before you think about decorating anyway! Sorry.

Fabrics for curtains are also often on sale, but don’t stop at just curtains, why not buy enough to whip up some covers or throws for the furniture, and shades for the lamps? There is a lot you can do with a swatch of material and a sewing machine….

Everyone is looking for ways to trim down their spending these days, and one way to go is to look at your grocery bill. Just because you are budgeting doesn’t mean you have to loose out on good nutrition. Forget the new super foods, you will pay an arm and a leg for them instead look to how our ancestors ate, and not that long ago either!

During World War 2 people had restricted diets, especially here in the UK, things like butter, sugar and eggs were rationed. People grew their own vegetables. Now in times like that you would think that the children who grew up on such a restricted diet would be sickly and badly nourished. But the reverse is true. War time children grew strong and healthy, they lived longer, got fewer health complaints in later life, and instead it is THEIR children who are developing diabetes and heart conditions. That really is something to think about when planning your family meals.

Family meal ideas

Family meals should contain less meat than vegetables, and if the vegetables come from your own garden, so much the better, and the vitamins have had less time to degrade than in shop bought produce. Bulk up with good carbohydrates like potatoes, (not doughnuts!) they are filling and give you energy, despite the bad press they have had! Try some cheap recipes like Shepherd’s Pie, Casserole, and pasta. You can even make your own pasta, and you don’t need a machine to do it! Just don’t forget to have salad with it.

Cheap lunch ideas

Lunch is normally a rushed affair, so a quick and easy fix is the ideal here. Jacket potatoes with various fillings, omelettes, salads and toasted sandwiches are the way to go here.

Cheap cooking methods

For me the cheapest cooking method has to be the Slow Cooker, or Crockpot. You can put your ingredients in it in the morning, turn it on, and leaving it cooking all day. You come home to a nutritious meal, ready to be served, all for the price of burning a light bulb. It costs more than that to boil a pan of potatoes for heavens sake!

If you can’t for some reason use a Crockpot, the next cheapest method of cooking is the one pot steamer, the same cost as boiling a pot of potatoes!

Hob cooking is next in line on the costs table. Always remember to use lids wherever possible, it reduces the time the pot takes to boil, and turn the pot off five minutes before the end of cooking, the ingredients will carry on cooking themselves until done!

The grill is next, or griddle (I think the Americans call it). The shame with this is; it is rare to find a meal you can cook all on the grill, often you have to have the hob cooking too.

The oven is the gas guzzler of the cooking world, and if you can avoid using it, do so. If you can’t avoid using it, try batch cooking. Start with the item that needs the highest temperature, and work your way down until the oven goes off. Try to fill each shelf while cooking. Make the most of the energy you are using.

This is a concept that has largely been forgotten since the 1930’s, and especially since the Credit Card came in to being. The banks have marketed that little piece of plastic so well that even they eventually fell for their own hype, and look where that has got them now!

Credit is just that, credit, don’t let the sugar coating banks have given the name fool you. And to get that money, money that you don’t have in your pocket right now, will cost you, big time! After all, a bank is a business, and they are there to make money, out of you, their customer, never forget that.

Every time you buy something on credit, you are not just paying the cost of the item, you are also paying for the wages of the person that made it, the wages of the person that sold it, and the wages of the people at the bank who arranged the credit. Do you really want to pay the wages of the fat cat who has ruined so many lives with their short sighted policies? I thought not.

So what is the first step to living below your means?

Sit down with a piece of blank paper, draw a line down the middle, and on the left put a heading; ‘Money in’. Underneath that write all the money you come in last month, leave nothing out. On the right put a heading; ‘Money out’, and underneath that list every single thing you paid money out for, right down to that cappuccino you had on the way in to work that day.

Now tot those two columns up. You should be able to take the total of the right hand column away from the total of the left hand column without going in to minus figures, if you can’t then you are not ‘living below your means’, and something has to change.

Everyone is different, some are happy to turn the telly off and sell it to make those two column tally, (you save on electric, eye glasses, and if you live in the UK, licence fees!), some are happy to fore go their lunches in the local deli and brown bag it instead. The decision is yours, and yours alone where you cut expenses, but if you really want to get out of debt, this is the place to start. With the money you save, you can start getting that credit card debt down and eventually gone, and I hope by this point that little piece of plastic has been cut up in to tiny pieces, and posted right back where it came from!

The principle of ‘living below your means’ is simple, never spend more than you have coming in, in any one pay period. If you can save some of your pay that is brilliant, but don’t forget, all the time that credit card bill is sitting there, it is costing you more in interest than your savings will be earning you in interest, so you will be better off getting shot of that bill before thinking of saving.

So you love the socks off each other, and want the World to know by celebrating your love in a Wedding! Congratulations!

But there is just one little fly in the ointment, (No I’m not talking about the Mum-in-Law to be), I’m talking about finance. In today’s financial climate, even the better heeled among us are watching those pennies a little closer than before, so you really can be forgive for wanting to find ways to cut corners of your wedding budget, while still having the best ‘do’ possible.

The first thing you have to do is sit down with your partner to be, and decide what sort of Wedding you both really want. Then you have to sit down with interested parties, and these include, parents, siblings, and best friends, tell them what you want, listen to their suggestions, and then choose. What ever you do, DON’T turn down any offers of help at this point, as even if you have done this before, you have no idea how much work is going to be involved between now and the chosen date!

You need to work out how much you are able to spend on this wedding, then set up a Wedding Budget Spreadsheet, with everything you can think of listed and apportioned a set amount, and stick to it. A good way to get an idea of what sort of things are going to be needed is to get a couple of wedding magazines. Put out a call on your local Freecycle, and you will find someone with some magazines they are willing to part with, and that will be your first step towards a budget wedding!

Using the Wedding Budget Spreadsheet you have carefully compiled, create a Wedding Budget Checklist. From that you can research friends and family who have skills you can use. Do you know a dressmaker who would be willing to make THE dress? (Or that of the bridesmaids if you are having any?) The dress can cost more than any other single item on the list, so getting someone to make it can greatly reduce the over all budget. Or you could buy second hand, or even ask on Freecycle again and get it for free!

Do you know someone who can do hair/nails/make-up? Getting the hair, nails and make-up done professionally for the Bride and Maid of Honour can be very costly, so having a friend or family member who is willing (and able) to do the job, is highly recommended.

Is there someone you know someone who is clever with flowers? Can they grow them (a packet of seeds is a lot cheaper than the ready grown item!) or can they arrange them?

Or decorating, do you know someone whose house always looks spectacular when they throw a party? They will know where to get cheap decorations!

And the Cake! Ask your parents on this one, they might know someone who can do the job and literally save you hundreds!

Do you know any people who bring spectacular dishes to parties and gatherings? Could you get them together to make the Wedding Banquet, and turn them into caterers for the day?

What about the invites? Do you know someone who is artistically inclined, who could design a simple invite that could easily be reproduced? (PS… we wrote a post on this here: Inexpensive Wedding Invitations)

Between you, you have a whole group of friends and relatives who have skills that have never really been exploited. Now is your chance to help them shine, make use of that resource for cheap wedding planning and low budget wedding ideas!