Frugal Woods

If you’re a person who doesn’t do well with credit cards, if cards encourage you to spend more than you can afford and go into debt, I want you to stop reading this article and instead go look at this panda who traded her baby for an apple… Here are a few cards with rotating categories: • 5% cash back on up to $1,500 in combined purchases in bonus categories each quarter you activate with new 5% categories each quarter • 3% on dining at restaurants and drugstores • 1% on all other purchases • Earn $150 after spending $500 on purchases in the first 3 months • 1.8% cash rewards on digital wallet purchases including Google Pay™ or Apple Pay® during the first 12 months from account opening • However, if you do the math and calculate that an annual fee is worth it based on your spending patterns, there are indeed higher rewards to be had on cards with annual fees, such as the: • 6% Cash Back at U.S. supermarkets on up to $6,000 per year in purchases (then 1%) •

If Matt & Laura paid off their mortgage tomorrow, they’d get a 3.375% return on their money. If Matt & Laura keep their $396,315 in cash, they’ll get a sub 1% return as that’s the interest rate of their savings account. If Matt & Laura funnel this money into a taxable investment account, made up of diversified total-market low-fee index funds, they can project receiving a 7% annual rate of return from the market– Combining all of their retirement accounts–401ks, Roth IRAs, IRAs–Matt and Laura currently have: To project Matt and Laura’s retirement portfolio in ten years, we need to use an investment calculator.

If you’ve ever purchased a bottle of “Real Vermont Maple Syrup” and wondered why it cost $500, I will tell you: it takes 79 discrete steps and 24 hours of work to produce a single quart of maple syrup. To start the process, Mr. FW and Kidwoods pulled out the tap line and inserted it into the sap collection tank, then drilled small holes and hammered teensy taps into 24 of our sugar maples. On The Homestead: Maple Trees, Maple Sap, Maple… Welcome to my series documenting life on our 66-acre Vermont homestead, which we moved to in May 2016 from urban Cambridge, MA. The best 15 minutes of my day: helping Kidwoods build this ridiculously complicated marble run, then dropping a million marbles down it all at once, which (predictably) caused it to break apart and us to fall apart giggling.

Each dot = one hour and as of this publication (Monday, March 8, 2021), the kids and I are at 77 hours total, which averages out to 1.15 hours outside per day, seeing as we’re 67 days into 2021. because there’s a misconception that you can’t play outside in the cold, that teensy kids shouldn’t be outside in the cold, that people in general shouldn’t be out in the cold. The Gear, The Mindset, and The Baby Sled For kids, I’m an evangelist of the full-body, zip-up snow suit because my children act like frenetic otters in the snow. I don’t wear the coat when I’m hiking as I build up too much heat, but I do love it for my time with the kids.