Have any of you read the Tightwad Gazette books?  They are a compilation of six years of newsletters written by Amy Dacyczyn (rhymes with "Decision"), who called herself the Frugal Zealot.  A housewife living in Maine with her husband and their four (?) children, Amy's newsletter dispensed tips on ways to REALLY save money, to really stretch a dollar. In her newsletters, Amy wrote about everything from taking a mostly empty jelly jar and filling it with water, shaking, and pouring the liquid into popsicle molds for homemade popsicles, to tearing colored-in pages out of garage-sale or trash-picked coloring books before presenting them as birthday gifts. All six years of newsletters were compiled into one big book, The Complete Tightwad Gazette for around $16.00, which is a great deal for so much info. I didn't subscribe to the newsletter, but when the first compilation book came out, I bought it and preceeded to dog-ear just about every page. She did extensive tests on … [Read more...]