Living Cheap

You may have seen all of the coverage in the past few years on talk shows and morning news programs about the trend these days to cut your expenses and live cheap. There is a family that has even renamed themselves the Economides to embrace their new way of living on a limited income to be able to put more into their savings. They bill themselves as America's Cheapest Family. Out of this frugal trend that became necessary because of the shape of our economy, have come TV reality shows like Extreme Couponing.

The De-Clutter Club has always talked about ways to sell some of your excess to make some extra money - be it a garage sale or selling on eBay, so it seems natural that the group would be interested in discussing things like couponing. There is a wealth of information available in the library on this topic.

Books on personal finance can be found in 332.024. Here you can find Suze Orman's books on getting a hold of your finances and the many books that have been written lately about preparing for retirement since the Baby Boomers started to turn 65 in 2011. There are also a number of books like: The Complete Idiot's Guide to Stretching Your Dollar by Shannon Medisky; Suddenly Frugal by Leah Ingram; Be CentsAble by Chrissy Pate and Kristin McKee and the lighthearted illustrated book The Cheap Book by Robin Herbst and Julie Miller.

Another section of the library that has books on similar topics is 640.73 where you can find book on Home Econimics, which is an archaic term that seems to have taken on a new life. Here is where you can find the Economides book Cut Your Grocery Bill in Half and other similar titles.

I hope that the new and improved De-Clutter/Extreme Couponing Club will take advantage of all of the ideas available in these resources to discuss with the other club members. If this kind of information is interesting to you, stop into our first meeting in the new format on March 1 in Program Room 1B.