You might have noticed (or maybe not), but I skipped posting last week. With everything going on with Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, my bandwidth was completely zapped and blogging just wasn’t happening. I do still want to keep this “pandemic” (and now war) public journal going, which is what TLRE mostly is at this point. But some weeks, I just don’t have it in me. Last week was one of those weeks.

Friday’s Frugal Five

1. Tuesday was International Women’s Day, so as Women’s Personal Finance, we clearly spent the day celebrating and acknowledging the day. We decided we wanted to have a specific cause to focus on for the day, and support for women and families in and fleeing Ukraine seemed right.

I reached out to a Ukrainian WPF member, and she and I talked about different options for how best to help. Since we have such a large FB group, we decided to go with an official charity to be able to use the donate button option on Facebook. I set a goal of $5,000, and while we aren’t there quite yet, I’m hopeful we can hit that number this week. If you’re in the Facebook group, search for this link, because Facebook apparently even throttles down giving posts using their link.

2. With good weather over the weekend, I took the time to clean the chicken coop. My mother in law and a friend came by to take some chicken manure for their gardens, but I still had more than I needed, so I posted on my local Buy Nothing group. Someone I don’t even know personally came and picked up chicken poop! Maybe it seems a little silly to share poop on Buy Nothing, but it’s really great stuff and I’m happy to share.

If you’re wishing you were local and could pick up some yourself, I’ve suggested to some other folks to post on their local community pages – I bet there are chicken keepers in your area who would be happy to share. Especially with fertilizer costs skyrocketing, getting it locally is even better.

3. We are hopefully finally at the end of our cold snaps, so the spring planting has begun! I spread some of the chicken manure that had been composting since the fall on the beds that didn’t have any last fall, and then began planting.

So far, I’ve planted peas and carrots, and then the garlic and onion starts are coming up nicely from the fall. I’ll be doing a lot more in the next couple of weeks, but I purposefully spread out the planting for succession harvests.

4. Speaking of Buy Nothing, a neighbor reached out and asked if I’d like to go through some clothes that she was going to get rid of. And so I now own my very first LuLaRoe pieces. Definitely nothing I would have ever searched out, but they are comfy.

Now that I’ve rocketed past the five year mark on my “one year clothes buying ban,” it’s time for me to write about my experience so far. I’m serious enough about actually writing this post that I asked Purple to add to her “accountability beast” list, so expect to see it soon(ish). If you have questions for me before I write the post, let me know and I’ll do my best to answer them!

5. Regina and I have done live Investing Basic classes in the past, and that hour long video exists within the Insiders video vault. We decided that we wanted to open that up for more folks now though, so we have a new Mission Supporter tier ($10/month) that includes access to that Intro to Investing Hour. If you’re interested, you can check it out here (and we’ve moved our Mission Supporter options to Ko-Fi with other options on how to support WPF as well).

We have so many things we want to do as a community, and many of those things take money, and we so appreciate our 350+ Insiders and Mission Supporters who make that possible. (PS – we did launch our March Insiders Cohort last week, but we sold out within 24 hours, so no more comment on that here).

Exercise Update

Friday was a lovely day, so I was able to get out for for a lot of walking. Saturday we went on another new to us hike (this time to Shelton View Forest in Bothell). It has some serious up and downs, and my calves were sore afterward. Sunday was a walk to stretch out my legs and then clean out the chicken coop (scooping straw and poop is pretty dang heavy).

Monday was two hours of walking and a twenty minute run. Tuesday I did more stair running and managed to hit a new personal record of number of flights in a half hour. Wednesday was another two walk day and then Thursday was another couple of walks in the sunshine before the clouds roled back in. I’ve also been doing some yoga/mild stretching most days, and it feels good to get back to that.

How are you hanging in? Sending extra love and prayers to those in Ukraine and those who love them and that country.