I am slowly learning to accept "awkward" silence (or a better way to say it - gaps in conversation) and that I don't have to fill it. Also, I got pretty good at knowing when a conversation has died (and that's ok, it has to happen at some point)
Conversations are much easier for me if I ask the other person mostly…

We do this for our freezer, since it's hard to tell what's what in there. I label things on the whiteboard like "Breakfast sandwiches 1 2 3 4 5" and each time one gets eaten, a number gets wiped off.
Plus, doing this for my freezer helped me see (and remember!) some things in there that I forgot about - like…

I think I became more comfortable with electrical wiring after changing out my first few light fixtures, then replacing a wall outlet, then building my own light fixtures, eventually all the way up to re-wiring our entire second floor (because we were doing construction anyway, and the outdoor outlets were on the same…

Well, at least the article didn't mention "starving artist" anywhere. :P
Maybe instead of "daily essentials" it should be "everyday" bag? I feel like the word "essentials" combined with a career makes the contents seem career-specific, which isn't always the case.

Not so much of a horror story, but about a year ago I spilled a glass of water on my laptop keyboard, and the keys immediately stopped working. Took the laptop apart, let it air out, and it actually worked two days later!
Well, except the "A" key.
Made some attempts, but I knew I couldn't fix it without replacing the…

Since we're NJ too I'll tack mine on here (and, actually "renting earlier this year" applies to us as well, but we don't own quite yet, it's complicated.)
Bergen County, NJ
$1,310/mo
For a 1-bedroom apartment, included heat/hot water/gas, 4 closets (including a full-wall closet in the bedroom), a balcony, an incredibly…

All my good ideas seem to pop up while I'm driving my daily commute, sigh sigh

I use it at home, at work, and I use a similar program on my Android called "Twilight". It's been great so far - been using it for months. It's free and I find the transition to be fairly unnoticeable.
It's cut down on the night-time headaches I used to get from staring at a bright screen without realizing it, too.

The hot water heater might also be inaccessible for you - in my last apartment, it wasn't in my unit, I think it was in the building's basement (it was a 3-story building so that worked fine). Plus, if it's a shared water heater they might not be so keen on changing the temp (I think ours was shared with at least 1…

There were some classes that required 3-ring binders, and I remember what I would do was buy my usual notebook anyway, but take a moment to speak with the teacher after the first class about the binder requirement. If (s)he wanted it for the same reason you cited - lots of punched class material - I'd get/reuse a…

YES!!! I'm so excited for this!
I've always been a DIY-er, and I married a DIY-er, and together we're... well, ridiculous haha. We have so much fun talking about, planning, and doing projects around the house, so I know we'll love the posts on this blog.
Bonus points: the blog's got a lead LADY! Always happy to see…

YNAB does this without linking your accounts. It's primarily a desktop program but also has an app to input expenses manually.
Full disclosure, I personally haven't used it (yet - planning on getting it ASAP) but I hear terrific things about it!

Thanks for this! I am in the same place you were - I REALLY want to make a budget, and have tried a bunch of ways which failed. We've looked into Dave Ramsey and agree with the fundamental ideas of his approach, PLUS I'm pretty sure that YNAB would be a perfect system for the way we'd like to budget.
So your story was…

Or, you know... "Reuse those pens and pencils from last year - both environmentally and wallet friendly!"

Be careful about feeding your cat only dry food - it can lead to dehydration and digestion issues. My mother just had to switch her 9-year-old cat to wet food only because of some scary dry-food related kidney stone problems. She used to give her dry food as a morning/late night snack and wet food for dinner(cat loves…

Thank you - this is brilliant!
I had gone to the SS website to try and decipher the data myself in Excel (ugh)

I'm adding this to my "to-do" list, planning on putting copies in a few places (like the safe - because we'd wind up there eventually in a financial pinch, even if there are only pennies and moths dwelling within)
It would be great to have this on hand instead of spending the time figuring it out in a grind (because…

I've used Coastal for my last few pairs of glasses. The nice thing is that they'll send you your prescription and if you don't like it, you can send it back without a problem.

LW1: He's already said he's seeing someone else and expressed his disinterest to you. You've only been chatting for a few weeks.
Move on to the next guy, don't bother deliberating over this one.
Also, pick up the phone to talk to someone - texting almost ALWAYS leads to mis-communication... it's not a good communication…

This is a really great article, especially as it's always good to be prepared. Thanks for the info!