One of my favorite blogs is An Affordable Wardrobe because it shows that style doesn’t have to be purchased at some fancy boutique. It doesn’t hurt to have coin to drop like that, but it’s not necessary either. Anyway, here’s a very thoughtful guest post Giueseppe wrote describing why he shops at thrift stores. I’m not sure there could be a better, more well-thought out rationale.

Mark Boyle gave up cash. He doesn’t have money and lives off the land, so to speak. A quick read with a few examples of how he lives, I found the most interesting piece to be what he’s learned (emphasis is my own, so I remember it).

What have I learned? That friendship, not money, is real security. That most western poverty is of the spiritual kind. That independence is really interdependence.

Kottke.org points out the Sandwich Calculator, which is wonderful if, like me, you are curious how much you spend on your meals. My “blue collar sandwich”* only costs me $0.49.

* I know I’ve detailed what the blue collar sandwich on Twitter, but I can’t find it (annoying). But for future reference, a blue collar sandwich is cheapest bread available, a kraft single, bologna with the red string and yellow mustard.

When shopping for food, did I have to choose between my budget and my beliefs?

This piece by Salon answers this question and goes into some detail on how – a subject not many tackle, but rather just say eat organic, it’s better – and what to eat but at a reasonable cost.

Here’s an extreme account of how to live more frugaly. This guy lives off $12,000 per year. I don’t think I can do what he does to keep costs that low, but I can relate to a couple of his suggestions.

I Never buy garbage bags. Reuse the bags that you get at the grocery store for your lunch container and for putting out the garbage. Sure they are small, but who cares? They all go into a garbage can just fine!

Garbage bags really annoy me. I’m in absolute agreement with him here. Why buy them?

I ask myself, “Do I really need this? Is it of lasting value?”

Here is a very important question to ask your self when you’re about to purchase something. I’ve gotten better, but am still guilty of buying things without lasting value.

Is it possible to make good tasting food using items from the Dollar Store? The New York Times delves into this topic and comes up with some surprising results. This is inspiring for those of us who love good food but don’t want to break the bank.

Learn to live cheaply. Learn to live like an animal. One thing we had going for us is we all spent a lot of time in grad school, and long periods of grad school teach you how to live well on a low budget. That’s good training for becoming entrepreneurs.

Seeing as I’m building a business and am a man of leisure (with exquisite tastes), I need to keep this lesson fresh in my mind.

I used to play the credit card frequent flyer point game, where you sign up for a card to get the initial points then cancel the card for a free flight. But, I’ve never done it to the extreme of Chris Guillebeau at The Art of Nonconformity. Surprisingly, it doesn’t really hurt your credit score. My only question is if there’s away to combine all the points so you have a huge pool of  points versus 30k at one airline and 50k at another.