I hope you enjoy this week’s Five Friday Favorites. Click here to see previous editions!
- Favorite personal finance article/post. I bought my first home (my condo in Cambridge, MA) over three years ago now, and it turned out to be one of the best financial decisions I’ve ever made. I really enjoyed Michelle from Making Sense of Cents’ informative post about the other side of the equation: home selling. She does a great job of covering all phases of the selling process. As a former home buyer, I can personally attest to the importance of things like cleanliness and staging during the selling process. It is amazing how many people can’t look past an ugly couch!
- Favorite non-personal finance article/post. I loved reading about the project that A Beautiful Mess is working on with Habitat for Humanity. ABM purchased, designed and renovated a house that will be given away to a family through their local Habitat for Humanity chapter. What an amazing way to give back to your community! I especially loved seeing the video tour of the completed project. That is one lucky family that gets to live there!
- Favorite thing I did this week. Now that I’m back at work, my “favorite thing I did this week” is going to be a lot more boring. No more trips to the Eiffel Tower or Normandy. Sorry! My favorite thing this week is actually insanely nerdy: I decided that I want to compile a comprehensive price comparison chart for all of the items I regularly buy (food, household items, toiletries, etc.) to make sure that I am getting the best prices. While I did my weekly shopping this week, I took note of the prices and sizes of all the items I usually buy and put them into a spreadsheet when I got home. And I thought it was super fun. Nerd alert!
Apples go for 99 cents a pound a my grocery store. How much do they cost at yours?
- Favorite recipe. I am a big fan of Kung Pao Chicken, but for some reason there just aren’t any good Chinese food restaurants around my place in Cambridge. We have about 400 Indian food restaurants but no Chinese, go figure. Anyhow, this recipe from Gimme Some Oven looks amazing. Can’t wait to give it a try!
- Favorite quote. Looking through my billion page list of quotes today, I stumbled across this gem from the one and only (big) Edie Beale. Don’t know who Edie Beale is? You’re missing out! The two Edith Beales, relatives of Jackie O., were the subjects of an amazing documentary called Grey Gardens. They are truly unique women, completely unconcerned with the world outside of their own concoction. Put this on your library request list if you haven’t seen it!
What are some of your favorite things from this week?
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Anything You Want - A Personal Finance Blog 
I like this! A little hodge podge of everything!
My favorite thing of this week is today is friday 🙂 Long work days and my last summer class was yesterday!
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Thanks! Congrats on being done with class for the summer! I hope that means you get to take a little break!
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Oh god, you hit my sweet spot with a Grey Gardens quote. So quotable. My favorite is when she’s explaining her crazy outfit and she says, “You can always take the skirt off and use it as a cape.” Or how about this exchange:
Big Edie: The cat’s going to the bathroom right in back of my portrait.
Little Edie: God, isn’t that awful?
Big Edie: No, I’m glad he is. I’m glad somebody’s doing something he wanted to do.
The Drew Barrymore remake is good, too. Worth seeing.
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YES the cape quote is amazing! Another one of my favorites. I’ve seen the re-make it thought it was fine, but not nearly as good as the original.
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That’s awesome that you made your grocery price comparison sheet, sounds super productive to me! 🙂 One of my favorite things from this week was a picnic in the park that Little Miss and I had with one of my friends and her daughter who is 2 days older than LM. It was so sweet seeing them play and interact! Have a great weekend Ali!
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Aw that sounds so fun! The only thing more adorable than one baby is two! (Or a baby and a puppy. That is hard to beat!)
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I don’t know about favorite quote but I’m a big fan of:
“If opportunity doesn’t knock, build a door.” Milton Berle
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That is a great quote! You have to make your own opportunities in life.
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I thought about one month writing every single thing I bought grocery wise and posting it, but I’ve yet to commit to the process because I buy A LOT! 🙂 One day!
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Haha it is turning out to be a bit more tedious than I thought. I’m trying to just focus on items I buy frequently, and hopefully that will give me a good sense of generally where it is best to buy food items, household items, toiletries, etc.
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I think that type of thing is fun, too! Will be interesting to see how it impacts your shopping habits!
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I’ll be sure to provide an update on the blog!
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I’ve also thought about doing the same “nerdy” thing. I am currently trying to make income fully online and I need to save every single penny possible!
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I’ll let you know how it turns out! I’m hoping that it will save me some money.
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We were just talking about doing a price breakdown spreadsheet, now that we have three main stores we’re visiting, instead of just one or two! But it seems a little daunting. 🙂 Have you found it to be worth the time and effort, and actually save you money? Of course it seems like it would, if you weren’t already paying attention to prices. But I’m guessing that you were already pretty price conscious, and had a good sense of what certain items should cost. Curious if a price conscious person will get big savings from it, but hope the answer is yes, because we could use the nudge!
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It is turning out to be a lot of work, but I’m hoping it will be a useful exercise. I’ll provide an update on the blog once the spreadsheet is complete! I am generally pretty aware of prices, but sometimes the changes can seem pretty small (a few cents per roll of toilet paper) but really add up over a year. That is the kind of thing I’m trying to identify.
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I’m really interested in your price breakdown spreadsheet, as well. This new slow carb diet I’m doing is starting to get seriously expensive! But trying to funnel this month’s energy into being successful with that rather than saving money. Hopefully, I can save in some other areas! That’s awesome you bought a condo in Cambridge three years ago. I know how expensive it can be. We might have talked about this already, but I’m from Newburyport and went to school at UMass Lowell. My parents are always trying to pressure me to move home, but it’s just so damn expensive! Plus, no state income tax in Tennessee is pretty hard to beat 🙂
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I’ll definitely do a blog post about it! Sometimes it is worth it to spend a little more on groceries in the name of health, especially if it is for a short period of time.
I agree that the Boston area is way too expensive! I would like to move to a lower cost of living area (warmer wouldn’t hurt either!).
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“Now that I’m back at work, my “favorite thing I did this week” is going to be a lot more boring.” Haha I hear you on this one. My weeks are pretty boring for the most part and even my weekends are typically not that eventful. I spend a lot of my free time working on my blog, prepping for grad school, and working on our retaining wall project. Not much to talk about there!
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Yes, my day to day life really isn’t very exciting! I try to sneak in a few fun things though. But I think that what is fun to me isn’t always fun to others – like my spreadsheet. Only us personal finance nerds find that exciting!
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Hello Ali,
You really had lots of favourite stuffs this Friday and they’re all awesome. I love the idea of preparing a comparison chat for all the stuffs you usually buy, its a no brainier and i think i should try that one :).
Also, your favourite quote is really cool and i had to agree with that.
Thanks for sharing.
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Thanks! I’ll share my chart on the blog so that everyone can learn from it!
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I have tried doing the spreadsheet for pricing, but I wanted an easier way to do it… Might revisit it because I think it might help me get the best deals and more aware of what a good price is for things.
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It is definitely tedious, and I haven’t found a better way to go about it than just going to each store and recording prices. I’ll share my spreadsheet on the blog, so maybe that will help!
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