Updates: May 27 – June 2

Well, I’m off for a week-long stint in Seattle. Each spring I end up spending a week out of country to run a mid-sized scientific conference. It’s nice to be staying close to home (last year was Europe, next year is New Zealand…) although one of the biggest perks of my job is the ability to travel. I’m especially happy to have such a close to home meeting as it allows me to bring CF along for the first weekend! I’m sending her back on the train, and I’m pretty jealous – something I’d like to do. I think she’d trade places in an instant though as our trip to Germany taught us the train = nausea for her! She certainly won’t be reading any of the excellent articles below on her trip back!

• We love cooking and it is an essential part (for us) of a balanced budget. Canadian Budget Binder has some great tips on How To Get the Most Our of Frugal Easy Cooking.

• Vanessa from Random Thoughts & Acronyms guest posted at Mo’ Money Mo’ Houses on The Pro’s and Con’s of Roommates. I had a good twitter conversation with Making Sense of Cents earlier this week and we agreed that the money is too hard to turn down. It doesn’t look like Vanessa has had good experiences, so learn from her lessons!

• I spend a lot of time trying to be more productive. I’ve spent a lot of time with The Simple Dollar’s ‘Getting things Done’ series of reviews and even bought the book myself. CF turned me on to Confessions of a Recovering Lifehacker which helped put somethings in perspective. It’s not always about optimizing your system, sometimes it’s just about getting dirty and getting it done!

• Props to Jordann on eliminating $7500 of debt since December 2011!! Setting goals is fun, but it’s even more satisfying to knock them off.

• Get Rich Slowly posted some great tips on How to Host a Yard sale. I love yard sales and encourage you to check one out this summer rather than going to the store for something new that someone else might already have and are not using.

Have a great week everyone!