Archive for March, 2012

Reading Salon and March Blog Update

March was an amazing month. A lot of great things happened to my blog. A lot of great articles surfaced in the blogosphere. Let’s read first!
Reading Salon: Favoritism Edition
I am going to be really selfish this time and recommend some of my favorites. Why? Because they rock, they inspire, they provoke, and they simply are amazing. Don’t take it personally if you don’t see yourself listed. You are still my favorite. I simply run out of time.

American Debt Project talks about Blogging History X: What Every Blogger Needs to Know. If you are into blogging, it is a must read.

101 Centavos is his usual(…)

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Some Jobs Pay More Than You Think But It Might Cost Your Sanity

Lucille Morgan is a writer, activist and free spirit. Believing that life is too short her mission is to live creatively and joyfully. Wealth  and healthy relationship building are some of the themes she waxes lyrical about on her blog. She is also a contributor at : www.pinkvox.com

You’ll find her “uncommon sense” at: www.wisdomona.blogspot.com

The recent post on “some jobs pay more than you think” reminded me of a time when I had such a position working for a wealthy lady. I was a personal assistant-secretary for a wealthy woman who had clearly climbed the ladder of success, and to all intents and(…)

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How to Survive on a Small Paycheck

This is a guest post by my husband, Beaker.

In my forty some years of life there has been one constant. Besides gravity and that the sun always rises in the east, I have never had a good job or have had a lot of money.

Until recently, I have made such a small amount of money that I was considered to be living in poverty. I am not writing this for sympathy or trying to ask for money. I just wanted to give readers my credentials to be able to state that I know poor. I believe that I know how(…)

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My Mother Was a Mail-Order Bride: The American

This is Part III of My Mother Was A Mail-Order Bride. You can find Part I here and Part II here. 

He arrived to Lithuania in a fashionable but very thin coat. It was February, one of the coldest and miserable months in Lithuania. He chose to travel in the off-season to save some money on air tickets. He paid for it dearly, freezing in his fashionable American coat; taking baths in a cold bathroom with almost no heating because Lithuania was going through such troubled economic times; walking in an ice storm to an organ music concert, and falling on(…)

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The Cost Of Being A Mail-Order Bride

This is Part II of My Mother Was a Mail-Order Bride. 

Financially it did not cost us anything. Emotionally we were a nervous wreck.

The agency printed my mom’s picture and her short bio in a paper catalog. There was no Internet back then in Lithuania. All correspondence was done the old-fashioned way, through the mail.

The cost of services was passed to the American men. There was no sign-up fee, but men did have to pay $5 for each woman’s address they were interested in communicating to.

Women, most of the time, stayed on their own turf, and never traveled to meet their(…)

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My Mother Was a Mail-Order Bride

People often ask me how I came to the United States. Sometimes they give me an unpleasant smirk, wink at Beaker, my American husband, and say nothing but imply a lot. Sometimes they go as far as measure me up and down, and blatantly ask me if I was a mail-order bride. In response, I always force myself to smile and politely say that no, I was not a mail-order bride. Most of the time I suppress a really strong urge to say something mean and nasty.

But I am a polite person, generally, and I keep my mouth shut. When(…)

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Saturday Afternoon Reading Salon

This Friday I got really lucky. I mean really, really lucky. At work, in-between my two morning meetings, I took a sneak peek at my Twitter. Imagine to my surprise when I saw this tweet from Lifehacker:
“Don’t write down what you need to buy, write down what you *don’t* need to buy to save some money and reduce clutter: lifehac.kr/wYaqaJ”
It sounded like my post How Do Not Need List Can Save You a Buck I wrote way back in January. What the hell, I thought, re-reading Lifehacker’s tweet for the third time, someone is writing about the same stuff I wrote.

I realize that(…)

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If Only We Could Stop Eating

Our first paycheck of the month melted away like ice cream on a Mexican beach. It was not because I failed my no-buy self-induced painful challenge (I will elaborate on this shameful event later this month). There was something else eating away at our paycheck. Quite literary, by the way.

We all know that the most important money management tool is knowing where your money goes. As soon as I noticed that our paycheck was performing a continual disappearing act, I tuned into Mint and took a very close look at our spending.

One particular item in our budget was flashing at(…)

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