Joni Smith

Joni Smith

Joni is a 40-year-old wife and mother in Kansas City, MO. She started budgeting in 2013 and was able to quit her job as a computer programmer in 2017. Her family now has financial freedom, living comfortably on only her husband's teaching salary. (This includes 3 humans and 3 cats living under one roof.) These days, Joni enjoys finding simple ways to live the good life while saving money and the planet at the same time. Her hobbies include DIY projects, gardening, quilting, making self-improvement goals, and brainstorming ways to reduce, reuse, and recycle.
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You need a sun map of your yard

Green Thumb 101: make a sun map of your yard

March 27, 2019
Joni Smith
Gardening & Growing

Have you ever struggled to keep some plants alive in your garden? Do you painstakingly place them in the ground, only to watch them slowly wither and die? And have you wondered why some kinds grow well for you while others are constantly sickly? Do you wish you could figure out the secret sauce to growing plants successfully in your garden every time? What you probably already know is that all plants need some combination of three things to grow…

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Start seeds indoors using items around the house

March 19, 2019
Joni Smith
Gardening & Growing

If this is your first time starting your veggies from seeds, you don’t need to spend a fortune to be successful. In fact, it can be a rather frugal undertaking.
For starters, save your money on seed starter kits.
Instead of spending money on seed starter kits at the store, you can easily make your own!
And you can make them with items you probably already have in your home right now!

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How to Save on Birthday Gifts for Kids

March 5, 2019
Joni Smith
Budgeting, Family, Holidays

Do your kids get invited to a lot of birthday parties?
If your family is like ours, between friends and family, it’s probably not uncommon to have some months with multiple parties for kiddos!
Of course, each one of those parties has an aging guest of honor who needs a gift from your child and/or family.
Oh, the happy and fun times!
Oh, the budgeting horrors!
But what if I told you all those parties didn’t have to be a strain on your family’s budget?

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Is “10 Meals in an hour” the real deal? A LWSL meal plan review

January 29, 2019
Joni Smith
Food

My “10 Meals in an hour” freezer to crockpot meal plan results There are fourteen different “10 meals in an hour” meal plans on the Living Well Spending Less blog. You can even buy a digital download of them all bundled together.) I would see these Living Well Spending Less meal plans pop up frequently in my Pinterest feed. Every time I saw one of these meal plans advertised, I’d wonder if it could be as amazing as it sounded.…

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Tangle-Free Way to Store Your Christmas Icicle Lights

January 23, 2019
Joni Smith
Cleaning & Organizing, Holidays

If you haven’t packed away your outdoor Christmas lights yet because you’re dreading the tangled messy pile that they will ultimately become, this post is for you. I think we’d all prefer to have tangle-free Christmas lights, but it isn’t always clear how to accomplish that. Luckily, there are storage techniques that can make packing -and unpacking- your lights a breeze. Check out this post and give these packing techniques a try. You’ll be glad you did next winter when…

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Create a poster-sized picture frame for $7

January 17, 2019
Joni Smith
Home Projects

You can easily elevate the look of a poster by putting it in a poster-sized picture frame. But picture frames that size are so expensive. What’s a person to do? DIY, of course. 😉 My husband got some free posters from a few Sporting KC soccer games a few years ago. They had been rolled up and stacked in the guest bedroom closet for a long time when I discovered them. No joke, my husband is a crazy huge Sporting…

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