One of the challenges of writing a blog is keeping it focused. Committing to a subject and gaining mastery over it are challenging enough. Maintaining a consistent pace while keeping the content fresh and providing value to your audience require yet more discipline. So I am always impressed by blogs that have been able to achieve focus, relevance, and novelty.
A few months ago, Amy Suardi, a former colleague whom I hadn’t heard from in over ten years launched her blog Frugal Mama. She skillfully seeded interest on Facebook, creating a Facebook page, and reconnecting with everyone she knew, including old friends like me. (Hey, wait a minute, why haven’t I done those things yet? Doh! Social Media 101!)
Frugal Mama is about how to save
money and still live better. What I love about Frugal Mama is that it’s extremely
practical, with excellent tips that are both effective and relatively easy to
act on with
a few changes in lifestyle. One of my favorite posts (and one of
the most popular) is Never
Ask Again: Where Does All The Money Go?, where you can download a printable
chart for keeping track of daily expenses. Now I know this is nothing new and
my grandparents probably did it, but until reading Amy’s blog I never had. Amy’s
take on this is that financial record-keeping seems overly complex, but a
simple low-tech chart you can keep in the kitchen really makes it simple and
easy. So I printed one out and redid it in Excel, making some tweaks that made
more sense for my family, such as adding a line-item for beer. And guess what:
it worked!
Keeping track of things like how much you’re spending on gas, lunch, and that money- and adrenalin-sucker coffee – or how consistently those $600 home-repair issues keep popping up – really does give you great insight into your cash-flow, and with that insight comes control, and a certain calm. For example, I’ve been telling myself for years that I should pack my lunch every day instead of blowing money on burritos and deli sandwiches. But having to actually write down how much I was spending on lunch suddenly made it easy to change my habits.
Frugal Mama exemplifies several things that make up good communications: simplicity, relevance, consistency, and freshness. What’s more, it’s animated by a strong Reason Why: saving money on little things can add up to qualitatively bigger improvements.
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