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Frugal Articles of the Week

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Reading Nook Photo

Every week I like to feature a few frugal articles that caught my eyes. Curl up in your favorite reading nook and enjoy. Hopefully these encourage you to live frugal lives!

The Benefits of Living Alone on a Mountain by Brian Bolster
Most of us are living lives like rats on a wheel, and it’s hard to find moments to stop and think. I, for one, could use that right about now. The following video comes from a mini-doc on a U.S. Forest Service fire patroller who scans the mountains for any signs of danger. He goes every fire season and finds it be one of the best times of the year. There’s downtime, reading, and an amazing connection to the world around him. Best part? He gets paid to do it!

Simple Living through Staying Single by a Redditor “Blue-Jasmine”
I’m not one for linking to Reddit posts in my weekly articles, but this one caught my eye. This woman talks about the process of breaking up with a boyfriend, joining dating sites, and then realizing an inner happiness and simpler life as a single person. Loved this little story!

The Most Underrated Sound in Our Society by Joshua Becker
This week, Joshua knocked it out of the park and focused on being mindful of sound; more importantly, appreciating silence. We live in a busy, fast-paced society that constantly demands for our attention. Silence is a rare commodity, and usually, doesn’t cost a thing. Beautiful reminder that we need to slow down enjoy all our senses.

Filed Under: Save Money Tagged With: articles, Best, dating, Frugal, Minimalism, reddit, Silence, Simple Living, Video, week

Frugal Articles of the Week

By Frugaling Leave a Comment

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Reading Nook Photo

Today I wanted to feature a few frugal articles that caught my eye this week. Curl up in your favorite reading nook and enjoy. Hopefully these encourage you to live frugal lives!

This powerful Reddit thread reveals how the poor get by in America by Max Ehrenfreund
What does poverty in America look like? It can be difficult to truly understand, but this Washington Post article aims to capture some of the harder parts. They found a Reddit thread of real-life examples of poverty, and what people sacrificed to get by. It’s a painful reminder that we have a lot of work to do to reduce poverty.

How to Spend $50 a Week on Groceries by Cat from Budget Blonde
One of the most difficult parts of my budget is food. I eat out too much, and have some weird reactions to certain foods. Cat explains three awesome methods for saving on your food budget and staying at $50 per week! Really impressive job.

Why Wages Won’t Rise by Robert Reich
From the Clinton White House to University of California, Berkeley, Robert Reich has been a leading economic thinker. In this article he explains how — despite greater employment rates — wages aren’t rising as we might expect. The culprit is complicated, but might be related to greater automation.

The Bling Dynasty by Devin Friedman
“Communist” China isn’t looking so equal. Over the last decade, hundreds of people have become billionaires. And in turn, corporate giants have flocked to China for a piece of their wealth. In this crazy ride of an article, Friedman catalogues the wacky world of China’s new rich — spending money wherever they can.

Filed Under: Save Money Tagged With: Articles of the week, China, Employment, Frugal, groceries, poverty, reddit, Wage

I Just Received 200,000 Visitors In 2 Days

By Frugaling 36 Comments

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Google Analytics Screenshot of Web Traffic

Late Sunday night I published an article about work in America. More specifically, how the 40-hour workweek harms productivity, the environment, and psychological health. The next day, I woke up to find over 50 people on my website. And then something crazy happened.

After my article was published, it was shared on the social networking site Reddit. Currently, it’s the 53rd most visited site on the net. The users of Reddit tend to be more tech savvy and interested in social issues (but isn’t limited to these areas). My article struck a chord with people that support the Occupy Wall Street (OWS) movement and workers’ rights.

I decided to go over to Starbucks yesterday to complete some academic research, as my site was beginning to launch into a mad frenzy of traffic. In my typical frugal fashion, I had a reward and even got another free refill before I left! I was buzzed by the caffeine, but even more because of the analytics. Hell, I couldn’t concentrate on the research writing because the numbers started to grow.

Suddenly, it hit the hundreds. OWS supporters shared it on Facebook and the niche social site, Hacker News. I texted a couple friends and let my mom know what was happening. Mom hopped on the site, and I could see her individual visit. That’s the last time I could see a person’s click.

I began to tweet out progressively higher traffic statistics, which came from free Google Analytics. When I hit 200, I looked back at Reddit. A big-time user and moderator of one of the largest “subreddits” had shared my article on no less than three other boards. The über popular “Futurology” subreddit generally has thousands of visitors at any one moment. That’s when I could tell it was all about to rollover into the most popular article I’ve ever written.

From there, the article rocketed to the top of five major boards and was shared on Facebook nearly 2000 times. I kept watching the traffic — still ticking higher. It was like gambling or playing a videogame, except I couldn’t lose. The real-time traffic statistics constantly updated every second, and the visitors didn’t stop.

Every time I thought I had hit the max number of visitors at one time, it went up even further. I thought it would all stop before 500, 600, 700, 800, 900, and 1,000. But it didn’t. The highest recorded real-time, active visitors clocked in at 1,212 (see the screenshot above), with my web server straining to handle one more person.

I struggled to get to sleep because the traffic was still in the 900s by Monday night. When I finally began to drift, I assumed that the number would be back to more reasonable levels in the morning. I thought, “Maybe it’ll be around 100 or so?”

Surprise surprise, that wasn’t the case. When I woke up around 9 AM, the site was still reaching about 900 people — 150-200 visitors per minute. The stress on my server hadn’t ceased and my site was still inaccessible for much of the morning.

I was shocked by the total amount of traffic that was driven to my site over two days. Despite being a nerd through much of my life, I had no real appreciation for the level of traffic available on the Internet. After two days, my site has received about 200,000 visitors (probably more than that, due to tracking and server issues). That’s roughly three times the population size of my adopted home, Iowa City.

I was lucky to be able to share this experience with Twitter followers, friends, and family. As a writer, it put a serious smile on my face that people cared that much to read and share my work. I’m deeply honored and humbled by the magnitude of support. Thanks for your support by sharing the article and reading all about it!

Filed Under: Make Money Tagged With: Blog, Blogging, Google, Hacker News, occupy, reddit, Visitors, Writing

Hunter Gatherers vs 21st Century Desk-sitters: What A Natural History Museum Taught Me About Work

By Frugaling 19 Comments

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The Field Museum of Natural History Time is an illusion Frugality
The Field Museum of Natural History

Drop down a little rabbit hole with me. There’s a philosophical question that keeps bubbling up in my mind. Essentially, many people work in jobs they don’t care for, with increasing demands and responsibilities, all for the goal of retiring and entertaining a life of leisure. This comes at a time with tragic income inequality and painfully low social mobility.

I’m puzzled by this pattern that we are corralled into: Birth, education, working years, retirement, and then death. Why do we work as hard as we do to become financially solvent when time is an illusion and our days here are undefined? Moreover, why are we pursuing these stressful work lives that cause serious medical complications and early death (e.g., stress, heart disease, cancer, etc.)? Is there a balanced alternative?

This New Year’s Eve, I visited Chicago to celebrate with someone I care deeply about. As we walked around the city, I suggested we traipse over to the Field Museum of Natural History. That’s when some of these questions came into perspective and I found some surprising answers.

The hunter gatherer versus 21st century desk-sitter workweeks

xkcd computer problems 21st century desksitter
Photo: xkcd

As we strolled through the museum, I began to see how work and life changed for people. Where once we foraged and hunted, travelled in groups and visited a variety of places, we now hunker down and settle. Questions of food scarcity, shelter, and life expectancy abound when you’re a hunter gatherer. But you’d be wrong to assume that hunter gatherers were working all the time to survive.

Anthropologists have long known that the life of a hunter gatherer included far more leisure time than our traditional, 21st century desk-sitter. In fact, the average working day was less than 5 hours. Here in the United States and much of the working world, there’s a 40 to 44 hour workweek, and far less leisure time.

Is it worth the time? xkcd productivity tips 21st century desksitter
Photo: xkcd

Popular productivity tips and organizational oracles flood major content websites. There are entire swaths of the Internet dedicated to tackling your work, life, and beyond. Admittedly, I frequent websites such as Lifehacker and the Reddit “lifehack” subreddit. I read The 4-Hour Workweek with great vigor, and promptly failed at utilizing most of the productivity skills it contained.

When I return to books and sites like these, I feel like I’ve admitted defeat and accepted that my lifestyle and workweek just go with the territory (a full-time grad student and employee with a monetary budget equal to a few packets of ramen). Each of these self-proclaimed productivity solutions seem to be getting at the same thing: less work and more play.

The 21st century desk-sitters’ kryptonite: Heart disease and early death

Despite evolving into bipeds – made for walking, running, and moving – we are more sedentary than ever before. At the museum, the curators boldly outlined a significant problem with our current lifestyle: heart and health-related early death.

21st century desksitter picture
Photo: victor1558/flickr

The shift to 21st century desk-sitters and the productivity movement caused a sudden increase in heart and health-related diseases. Increased duration and pressure in the work environment is associated with depression, obesity, cancer, sleep deficits, cardiovascular complications, stress, and eye strain. Here’s what we know about working beyond 7 hours (aka, overtime):

The research shows a 60% increase in heart-related illness such as non-fatal heart attacks and angina in those who work for three hours or more longer than a normal seven-hour day.

“Employers and patients need to be aware of all of the risk factors for coronary heart disease – and should consider overtime as one factor that may lead to a number of medical conditions.” (The Guardian)

Despite these risks and loss of enjoyment, we continue to pursue these workweeks that perpetuate and encourage the trouble. The solution and ontology are simple: move and find time to relax more.

The hunter gatherers were really good at one thing: Minimalism

While we fight mightily to carve out more time for leisure via productivity, we’re failing and the paradigm needs to shift. There are systemic, governmental factors that limit our ability to engage in more leisure time. But more interestingly, there seems to be a cultural appreciation for those that work two or three jobs, and fight to make a living. This may hold us back more than any federal legalese.

Hunter gatherer societies seemed to understand that life was held in a delicate balance. Time versus effort was carefully calculated. Needs were different, as many just needed to feed, cloth, and find shelter. These people weren’t squabbling over cloud-piercing skyscrapers, or debating between iPad and Google Nexus tablets. They carried and traveled with little more than their necessities, and the urge to consume was much less. They were minimalists to the fullest extent – out of pure necessity.

Fortunately, some countries are wisening up to these consequences and reducing the normal workweek schedule. Germany, the Netherlands, and France top the list of countries with the fewest average work hours. Germans work an average 25.6 hours per week, make $35.33 an hour, and only have a 6% unemployment rate.

My night at the museum opened my eyes to this simple change in our workweek, lifestyles, and health complications. There’s an alternative to the work, work, die lifestyle and it starts with your schedule.

Would you be able to reduce your work hours? What consequences would you see, positively or negatively?

Filed Under: Minimalism, Social Justice Tagged With: 21st century, balance, desksitter, employee, employer, heart disease, Hunter gatherer, jobs, lifehacker, Minimalism, museum, reddit, Work, work life, workweek

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