The following is a staff writer post from Amanda L. Grossman at Frugal Confessions. She covers how to live a frugal decadent life where saving and living in the present are both held in high regard.

Organizations that accept donations of money, belongings, and time always see an uptick in willing givers during the holiday season at the end of the year. The end of the year gives a marked deadline for tax-deductible donations, many are feeling warm and fuzzy from the holiday season, and online and offline donation campaigns add exposure and convenience to the whole process. According to this Online Giving Study, one third of all online donations are procured in December of each year. An astounding 22% of annual giving happens in the last two days of the year alone!

The end of the year is a wonderful time to donate. But what about the rest of the year, during times when there are no natural disasters to rally our hearts and our wallets? Even if you do not have much money to spare, there are many ways that you can still donate and make a meaningful difference in the lives of others.

Commit Random Acts of Kindness

Have you ever had a Random Act of Kindness committed to you by a complete stranger? What an easy and fun way to spread joy in this world! After seeing an episode about this on Oprah, my parents began committing Random Acts of Kindness to complete strangers during my childhood. The one I remember most was when we were at a toll booth and my parents randomly paid the fare for the car behind them.

Without knowing the person, their situation, or really anything about him/her, by committing a Random Act of Kindness you can make someone smile while they think about all of the good in this world. Some ideas are to pay for a person’s order in the car behind you at the drive-thru, pick up an extra Sunday paper and leave it at someone’s stoop with a nice message, or perhaps leave a roll of quarters with a note at the Laundromat. Can you imagine the look of surprise on your recipient’s face?

Donate by Playing Games

Do you have time and the desire to increase (or test) your vocabulary? At FreeRice.com you can play multiple-choice vocabulary quizzes. For each word that you define correctly, 10 grains of rice will be donated to the World Food Programme to help end world hunger. You start at Level 1 and can go to Level 60. There is also a wooden bowl for the rice on your right-hand side, and you can watch it fill up (I worked up to 3,080 grains of rice in the writing of this article; fortunately for me, they do not take grains of rice away for incorrect answers)!

You can also play crossword puzzles at Charitii and choose which charity you would like your wins to be donated to (charities include charity: water, Invisible Youth Network, The Nature Conservancy, The Oaktree Foundation, and Philippine Aid Society).

Donate by Pushing Buttons

CharityUSA.com is a good place to find several, legitimate, click-to-give charities on the web. For any of the charities that you find on this site, 100% of sponsor advertising is paid as a royalty to GreaterGood.org, an independent 501(c)(3) charity that makes grants to charity partners delivering services in its mission areas. As an example, in the month of April over 357,000 pounds of food were donated from people clicking on buttons. And all you have to do is click a button (there is no cost to you)! Charities include Feeding America, the National Breast Cancer Foundation, Inc., the World Land Trust-US, and Feed Our Vets.

Volunteer

Sometimes a donation of time can make a world of difference. You could mentor a young child through programs such as Big Brother Big Sister, you could tutor children in a nearby elementary school, or why not volunteer at the zoo? Any project, mission, or organization that you are interested probably has a volunteer position that you can fill. This is especially true if you have skills to offer, such as my aunt who used her managerial and resume-writing skills to work with an organization that helps women transition from welfare to work.

I hope that this inspires you to donate throughout the year and not just around the holidays or surrounding natural disasters. Imagine how much more of an impact there could be if everyone did this?

Before you yell at me, obviously it is possible to make enough money to live and save on.  You have hopefully read one or two of my posts and know that we are good.  We pay our bills, save for our future, and spend on fun along the way.  But the more I talk to my friends and really listen to my husband, the more it becomes obvious that it is impossible to make enough to cover absolutely every need, want, and savings goal that we will ever have.  We want too much.

Needs and Wants

Our need list is really short.  We need:

• A place to live
• Food
• Utilities
• High speed internet (our job is 100% online)

But we want out of our needs is:

• A really nice place to live
• Food based on what we crave
• Utilities above what we really “need” since I like air conditioning and a green lawn
• Super high speed internet

Then we want a bunch of things that are really important to us too:

• Emergency fund savings since we like a ton of padding
• Retirement savings
• To pay cash for our next car
• To pay off our house in 10 years or less (6 years or less like our first house would be great)
• Biweekly housekeeping and lawn services
• Entertainment like cable and Netflix

Then we want even more stuff that is just low priority:

• I want a new laptop since mine is 6 years old and breaking down piece by piece.
• We want a new dishwasher since the builder’s one sucks.
• I want nice landscaping and an automatic sprinkler system.
• Hubby wants an awesome library chair/chaise lounge.
• We want new furniture for the living room and media room.

We Can’t Have It All

Just because we make more now than we have before doesn’t mean we get to buy or save everything we want money for…it just means we have more money to use towards our priorities.  There is never going to be enough cash just sitting around to satisfy our every whim.  I’m okay with that.  I just have to remind myself of it when I have those days that I’m feeling like an entitled brat.

The Only Way to Be Happy

The only way any person is ever content with life is when they are honestly happy with what they have and stop basing their happiness on what they don’t have.  In my experience, everyone has bad moments once in a while, but the difference between a general optimist and a general pessimist is that the optimist concentrates on the good way more often.

I have no idea what the “true” meaning if life is.  Sorry, I don’t have all of the answers.  But I know that I feel better when I help others.  I feel better when I stay busy.  And I feel better when I am making those around me happy.  So my meaning of life is to be a generally good person that helps others and hopefully has some of my best feelings rub off on others.

So I try to take my own advice.  I try to be grateful and happy as much as possible with the blessings I have.  There are days that I mope around and get all whiny, but those are outnumbered by all of the great days.  Life is too short to feel unfulfilled and crabby all of the time.  And I know that I control my outlook.  That’s on me.  So I will continue to try to make every day a content one.

How about you?  Do you ever find yourself concentrating more on what you don’t have?  Or are you already pretty good on staying positive and being content with your life?  Any tricks to stay positive or better a bad mood?  How about any tricks to wanting less?

Weekly Updates

• I met Shondell at Call Me What You Want, Even Cheap yesterday and her friend – they were awesome!  Seriously, funny ladies!  Also, the fruit flies are nearly gone, yay!  I think we just have the stragglers left to kill.  Which was great since I’m glad they didn’t swarm anybody yesterday, lol.
• Remember to sign up for my newsletter (in the right sidebar) —-> to be able to enter the separate giveaway that I host for subscribers only every month! Plus, I share things in the newsletter that I no longer share here (hint…what do you think happened to my monthly income reports).

Weekly Favorites

• Money Life and More with We Cancelled Our $50 Wedding Reception Venue For a Better Deal  Congrats!
• First Gen American with Babci’s Revenge  That is one awful spouse but a nice point-proving exercise.
• Live Real, Now with IRA or Powerball?  IRA, but I do also buy about 20 lottery tickets a year all spread out.  Sometimes it’s just $1 of hope on a bad day.
• Wealth Informatics with Your friends are the reason why you are not saving money or losing weight  Yay for my potluck-loving friends!
• Evolving PF with Long-Distance Marriage: Communication and Personalities  I don’t have the right personality type for living apart from Mr. BFS for longer than a week or so.
• Beating Broke with Personal Crowd Funding?   I would donate to a project like a game on Kickstarter that also gives something in return, but I don’t think I would ever help anyone with a down payment on a car or house.  Honestly, that’s an ongoing debt and if they need help with the money down, how will they keep up with the loan payments themselves?
• Funny about Money with Wounded Dog Dodges Bankruptcy  Some people are just money-grabbing butt heads – always get second opinions for the expensive stuff for sure!
• Budgets Are Sexy with We Found a Place! We Found a Place!  Yay!  I hope you love it for the next year!
• We Only Do This Once with Resolve to Declutter  I seem to spend about an hour or two every 3 months decluttering from the previous months of build-up.
• Mr. Money Mustache with The Principle of Constant Optimization  It’s amazing how fast things can become habits that we seriously have to reconsider regularly for our priority list.

Posts on my Co-Owned Sites

Okay, so my co-owned sites do not get as much love as BFS, but we have amazing staff writers like Libby Balke and Natalie Spring. Plus our very own BFS commenter and guest poster, MikeS, has started writing too!

• MikeS at Money in the 20s with To Help or Not?
• Libby at Smart Money Focus with Looking for a Last-Minute Tax Shelter? I’ve Got The Answer
• Natalie at Richly Reasonable with 5 Skills to Save You Money: Handyman Skills

Blog Carnivals that Included BFS

• Carnival of MoneyPros at My Personal Finance Journey
• Finance Carn. for Young Adults at WILDaboutFinance
• Y and T’s Weekend Ramblings at Young and Thrifty.ca
• Yakezie Carnival at Money Life and More

Thank you!

Giveaways

• Surviving and Thriving is hosting a Macoron Giveaway until May 21st!

Please let me know if you are running a giveaway so I can add you to the list each week! If you already emailed me and don’t see your giveaway, it isn’t on purpose. Please email me again as your first email must have died a horrid death in my inbox…

Top 10 Referring Sites to BFS from the Last Week:

1. Get Rich Slowly
2. Funny About Money
3. Free Money Finance
4. First Gen American
5. Len Penzo
6. Evolving PF
7. Frugal Portland
8. So Over This
9. Making Sense of Cents
10. Money Life and More

Thank you! Feel free to contact meif you have any suggestions. I’d love to add a few more blogs to my regular reading list or at least give a shout-out for great posts or contests.

As always, thanks to all the bloggers that teach me something new every day. Thanks to all my commenters for making this blog the community I want it to be. Thanks to all my lurkers too.

I hope everybody is enjoying this as much as me!

These last couple of days have been annoying as heck at home because of freaking fruit flies.  We got the first few with some fruit I bought last week, but they didn’t really take over in full force until Tuesday night.  I’m writing this Thursday afternoon.

How to Handle Fruit Flies

Apparently, you bring the eggs into your home from fruits and vegetables from the store.  So first step to prevention is to immediately wash all of the fruits you bring into the house to get rid of the eggs.  But if you didn’t do that (like me), you now have a whole set of different problems.  Our infestation came from some old vases of water and a pot of boiled water we left out that we had used to boil corn.  Ewww.

First you have to get all food off the counters and into the fridge or freezer since they need food and water to live and breed in.  Plus, they die in the cold.  Then you need to really clean the house so there won’t be any crumbs or standing water for them.  Dump old vases, don’t leave drinks out overnight, and take out the trash every single day.  This also means even taking house plants outside since they can live off of the fermenting leaves.

Then set out fruit fly traps and keep all of your food locked up until they are all dead.  The traps that are working the best for us right now are bowls of syrup and a little dishwashing liquid combined with warm water that are covered with plastic wrap that I poked holes into with a fork.  The Raid fly strips are also working really well.  I do feel a little cruel with the fly strips since it seems meaner than drowning them in syrup, but at this point, I just need these things out of my house.

This one has killed quite a few in 12 hours.

This is a picture of the product itself before it was opened. It has only been hanging for a few hours and already has quite a few on it.

It’s only day three of the real battle, but I feel confident.  I’ll let you know next week if I am still fighting the little buggers.

Have you ever been taken over by fruit flies?  How did you get rid of them?

About two and a half months ago, I wrote about spending about $500 on our 15 year old dog, Miss Doxie.  She had a lump removed from her belly and I was really hoping it wasn’t a complete waste.  Well, I have good news!

Update

In the last 2 months, Miss Doxie is acting like a much younger version of herself.  She still has the beginnings of cataracts that they can’t do anything about, but she is bouncy and is taking the stairs on her own every time.  She also has her appetite back and is even feisty enough to try to take Mr. Pug’s food when he isn’t looking.  I mean, we don’t allow it, but at least she feels good enough to try. 

I am amazed.  We only had the lump removed because she was finally noticing it and licking at it.  I didn’t think it was slowing her down at all.  Apparently it was sucking up some major energy just by existing and I’m a douche for ignoring it forever.  But yay for having it removed!  Even if she dies tomorrow, at least she showed major improvement.  Hubby and I agreed yesterday that no matter what now, the $500 was money well spent.  Yay!

She’s a ball of happy without that lump!

Sometimes You Just Follow Your Gut

So we could have spent $500 and Miss Doxie could have stayed sick and passed away.  We still felt obligated to go ahead with the surgery even with that as a huge possibility.  But it would have stung.  It’s always nice when stuff works out.

I may not be super old yet at 30, but I know that poop happens sometimes no matter how diligent you are.  I know that you need to be as grateful for the good times as you are pissed off about the bad ones or your personal equation won’t balance, and you’ll just slowly fade inside wondering why the world sucks all of the time.  Even perky Crystal has been there several times.

Me Being Thankful

So let me say that we are super happy that this $500 lumpectomy was totally worth it.  I also will admit that the $638 I just had to spend on new struts and strut mounts for my stupid car was worth it.  I am super happy that my 2005 Chevy Aveo is paid off and is running as well as it ever has.  Fixing the struts has made it drive better – no more shaking and even the road noise is deadened a bit.  It may not be my favorite vehicle in the world ever since I found out that Chevy would even make thermostat housings out of plastic, but it has driven me from Point A to Point B faithfully for 8 years and has only needed about $2000 in work (the thermostat housing, belts that should have lasted longer, brake pads that would have happened with any car, and new struts which is also normal).  So I will stop holding the thermostat housing grudge.  I officially don’t hate my poor little car and will continue my pledge to drive it until it just won’t drive anymore.

What are you thankful for today?  Anything crappy that needs to be counteracted with some good vibes?

I am sure nearly all of you have heard “Thrift Store” by Macklemore by now.  If not, you HAVE TO watch the YouTube video at least once.  There is some naughty words, so don’t listen at work unless you have a boss like me, lol.  But to summarize, it’s a fun rap song about finding a unique style via thrift stores.  I usually avoid rap since I just don’t get it, so the fact I love this song says something.  My sisters loves rap and also loves this song, so that says something too, hahaha.

My Recent Finds

Anyway, ”Thrift Store” has become one of my personal anthems and I sing it to myself while browsing the ones near me.  Since our new house is within a half mile from a Goodwill and a Upscale Resale Shop, I actually can browse for new arrivals at least every month or two without going out of my way at all.  That’s how I found my new-to-me black dress a few months ago, and yesterday I bought the new boots, jeans, and shirt below for about $23 with tax!

Aren’t these awesome?! They look brand new and only cost $8.00!

The jeans also look brand new, make my butt look amazing, and were only $8.50!

New Personal Challenge

Given that I am even more happy with these discounted shops than I ever am at regular stores, I have started a new personal challenge.  I will not buy any new item of clothing (other than undergarments) for at least the next year.  And I should be pretty set with my undergarments anyway, so this really should cover everything.

No new clothes until AT LEAST June 1, 2014. 

If I need anything (dresses, pants, shirts, etc,) between now and then, I have to find it at a thrift store, a garage sale, or anywhere with used clothes.  And I bet I’ll still get some new clothes as gifts around Christmas and my birthday, but this is an exercise for me.  If this works out as well as I think it will (especially since I only go shopping once a year normally anyway), I may very rarely buy anything new ever again.  We’ll see…

Do you thrift shop?  What’s been your best find?

Mr. BFS and I have instigated the Great Food Fight of 2013 to stay on track since we tend to go a little food crazy. We are aiming to spend $500 or less every month. That sounds really high for 2 people (because it is), but we enjoy eating out with friends and cooking for them at home. So it is what it is.  But we have gone crazy the last 2 months apparently…

Food Expenditures from April 13, 2013 – May 12, 2013

In order to track our spending without logging into our credit card account every day, we WERE keeping a running tally on a sheet of paper stuck to our refrigerator. Between the two of us (and by double checking ourselves by logging in to our credit cards), we would write down every food expense diligently throughout the month. It’s not the prettiest method ever, but it usually works great to keep our eyes on the prize.  But we stopped writing everything down for the last 2 months (well, we tried this past month for a few days and then blew it off) and our food bills show it.

Here’s how we did:

Eating Out – $437.97

Groceries – $294.70

That comes to $732.67 total.

Honestly, we ate out at nice restaurants about 3-4 times, so I did expect this.  Normally we spend $15-$22 max at a restaurant for dinner if we do go out.  But we ate at a nice steakhouse and spent $70.  We also ate some great Italian for $46 and splurged a couple of times at $30 a pop at our favorite Mexican place.  Overall, if we had skipped those 4 places, we would have been at around $550 instead, so at least we knew we were splurging when we did it.  There’s just so many birthday parties and celebrations this past month!  Oh well. 

What We’ve Been Eating

Mr. BFS and I have been eating all kinds of stuff this month…

• Salmon off our propane grill
• Restaurants like Panera’s and Jason’s Deli
• Spaghetti
• Steamed veggies
• TONS of fruit
• Mexican
• Chili’s
• Steak n Shake
• Soft tacos
• Beef and vegetable soup
• Frozen pizza (I love Freschetta)
• Pork loin
• French bread and garlic spreads

Overall, we are getting back on track.  I am making our new tracking sheet as soon as I schedule this post and will be taping it to the fridge.  The next big birthday month isn’t until late June to mid-July, so we should be able to be pretty good for the next 31 days…

Did you hit any specific goals lately? How is your food budget coming along?

Okay, so long-story-short, I lost about 30 pounds using just Weight Watchers Online when I stayed on the program seriously from January 2011 through early July 2011 (6 months).  I went from weighing 176 pounds on January 3 to about 145 pounds by July 4.  Then as you may have noticed through the past couple of years of posts, I sort of stopped caring on and off and slowly gained back most of the loss.

Back on the Program

I know I care about most things in spurts, so I was not too surprised that weight loss became one of those things too.  I was surprised to get on the scale for the first time in months on Sunday, April 28 and see 170.6 staring back at me.  Crap.

Surprisingly, I received a coupon for Weight Watchers Online the very next day, so I think they have my scale bugged.  Anyway, I got the signup fee waived and joined back up for 3 months for about $57.

When I spend more than $20 on something, I will dang well use it.  So I started tracking my points consistently again and weighed in these past two Sundays.  I only lost 3 pounds the first week (usually the first week is a little better), but I also lost a couple of pounds the second week (which usually is pretty stagnant for me).  Overall, I am at 166.4 pounds (4.2 pounds overall).  Onto week three…

My Reasoning

I am not super motivated to lose weight, I am overall healthier now than I was in 2011, and I like how I look.  But since I will be on camera at least a few times at the Financial Blogger Conference in October, I need to be less padded.  Specifically, I want to fit into all of my clothes nicely including my new-to-me black dress.  Yep, anyone who wants to see a vertically-challenged, yet curvy, redhead in a black dress at the night events this October should sign up right now for FinCon, lol.

And if possible, I rather my arms didn’t look like white, flabby balloons in every picture I am ever in…yep, the absolute epitome of sexy right there, hahaha.

Can a Lack of Motivation Be Inspiring?

So this isn’t like the Come-to-Jesus meeting with myself in 2011.  I am less motivated.  But I am making a pledge to myself and all of you to follow the program as well as I did in 2011 and see if I can get similar results.  I am aiming to weigh 150 pounds or less by the end of these 3 months (by the end of July 2013).  That means losing a little less than 2 pounds a week on average overall.  I figure if I can stay on a portion-control program even when I am not OMG-motivated, then it’s even more inspiring to myself and others, right?  I mean, it’s easy to lose weight when that is your main priority, but let’s see if it’s also doable when you don’t really give a poop. 

Sorry that doesn’t sound super inspiring, but you get my drift. 

And before anyone drops me from their feed like a hot potato, don’t worry, I’ll only be doing updates either once or twice a month, not weekly.  So if weight loss posts aren’t your thing, no worries!  And no whining. 

Anybody else on a health-related quest?  Feel free to share in the comments as you go!  I’ll probably be doing the updates every other Monday or so. 

Weekly Updates

• It’s been a movie week!  I loved Iron Man 3!!!  LOVED IT!  The Great Gatsby was pretty although I still hate the story itself.  Vapid women are not worth the effort, people!  If you are going to get all hot and bothered, at least make sure the object of your affection is worth it!  Maybe someone that’ll be as much fun to be old together with as young together with.  I guess I just wish everyone had better taste when finding a mate…so frustrating!
• Remember to sign up for my newsletter (in the right sidebar) —-> to be able to enter the separate giveaway that I host for subscribers only every month! Plus, I share things in the newsletter that I no longer share here (hint…what do you think happened to my monthly income reports).

Weekly Favorites

• My Open Wallet with Spring Update  That meal service sounds interesting but expensive comparably in our area.  At $20 a day per person for 2 meals, hubby and I would be looking at a minimum of $800 a month and all of you already think we spend too much at $500-$600 a month, lol.  But we live in Houston, not New York, so obviously there is some major differences.    I am sorry about her mom though…never fun to watch someone crash when it could have been avoided.
• Live Real, Now with I Accidentally Bought a Bus  Hope you can flip it quick!
• Funny about Money with Training Prosecutors: It WAS Entertaining  I bet!
• 2 Million Blog with April 2013 Net Worth Update (+$13,409)   Love peeking as usual at other people!
• Budgets Are Sexy with Is Being Too Honest Bad For Business?  Probably but makes good stories. 
• Shopping Detox with Do you need to be rich to be a minimalist?  Hmmm, interesting take on it!
• 20′s Finances with How I Survived College Financially  Scholarships and part-time jobs or paid internships would be my suggestions.
• Sophisticated Spender with Are You Building Wealth or Just Collecting A Paycheck?  Yay, more peeking!
• 50 Plus Finance with Common Credit Score Myths Debunked  Good to know!
• My House, My Rules with Clutter Busting Challenge – Days 7-10 (food edition)  I so need to do this!

Posts on my Co-Owned Sites

Okay, so my co-owned sites do not get as much love as BFS, but we have amazing staff writers like Libby Balke and Natalie Spring. Plus our very own BFS commenter and guest poster, MikeS, has started writing too since Libby has to scale back for her new job (congrats!!!) and his posts will be going up this coming month!

• Libby at Money in the 20s with Homogamy, or, Why Your Marriage Will Be Boring  LOL

Guest Posts on BFS

• Liran with Life Insurance Q&A with Liran Hirschkorn
• Staff writer, Amanda, with Become a Product Tester for Free Swag

Thank you!

Blog Carnivals that Included BFS

• Carnival of Financial Planning at PF Carny
• Carnival of Retirement at Brick By Brick Investing
• Yakezie Carnival at Growing Money Smart
• Finance Carn. for Young Adults at Fat Guy,Skinny Wallet
• Carnival of MoneyPros at Thirty Six Months

Thank you!

Giveaways

• Surviving and Thriving is hosting a Deal With Your Debt Book Giveaway until May 14th!
• Bike Lane Living with United by Blue Bike Bag Give-Away! – Two Bags! Enter by May 13th!
• Money Life and More is hosting a Keep Your Eye on the Marshmallow! Book Giveaway until May 16th!

Please let me know if you are running a giveaway so I can add you to the list each week! If you already emailed me and don’t see your giveaway, it isn’t on purpose. Please email me again as your first email must have died a horrid death in my inbox…

Top 10 Referring Sites to BFS from the Last Week:

1. Free Money Finance
2. Get Rich Slowly
3. Funny About Money
4. Wisebread
5. Surviving and Thriving
6. Making Sense of Cents
7. Frugal Portland
8. Money Life and More
9. Len Penzo
10. Broke Professionals

Thank you! Feel free to contact meif you have any suggestions. I’d love to add a few more blogs to my regular reading list or at least give a shout-out for great posts or contests.

As always, thanks to all the bloggers that teach me something new every day. Thanks to all my commenters for making this blog the community I want it to be. Thanks to all my lurkers too.

I hope everybody is enjoying this as much as me!

Okay, so my mom reads my blog (hi Mom!).    To counteract this and get your opinion anyway, I’ll be vague. 

Plans Rained Out

My younger sister and I had been planning an outdoorsy meetup with my parents and youngest sister this Sunday.  But today is nothing but thunderstorms and high winds, so we’re betting our plan will be too soggy to go through with.  That said, my younger sister is trying to make backup plans with my dad.  She is also trying to figure out a gift idea for the woman who literally already has everything she wants.

The ongoing joke in our family is that gift giving for the “adults” is freaking hard (I am on that cusp officially, lol).  My parents are retired and can/do buy the little things that make themselves happy.  Right now, that is fruit trees and stuff for chickens and ducks.  I think they are set there.  So either we can go with the cliché flowers or take a shot in the dark with a gift that she may not want or already has, lol.  Boogers.

I Like Made-Up Holidays

And before you even have to ask, I am probably one of the few personal finance bloggers that actually like the “Hallmark Holidays”.  I agree that you should let your loved ones know that they are loved all of the time, but set days to really point it out works for people like me.  It forces us to schedule time for special days as opposed to “visiting on a light day”.  I have no idea how it is already May!  Worse, it’s already May 10!  What the heck?!

So, what are you doing for Mother’s Day?  What would you suggest for backup plans?