As you may have noticed, things look different around here! Turns out, there’ve been some advancements in web design in the nine years since I started Frugalwoods. No one will be surprised to hear that the old website was looking a bit, well, old. And so, I hired an incredible designer who created a brand…
Last weekend was ye olde county fair here in Vermont and, of course, we were on the scene to cuddle cows (if you’re Kidwoods) and look askance at cows (if you’re Littlewoods). The county fair also provides a panorama of consumerism. So much to buy, so little time! Annoying, but a fantastic opportunity to practice…
Sam and Riley are a married couple living in Winnipeg, Manitoba in Canada along with their dog Bisky and two cats, Theodore and Greta. Sam works as a plasterer and Riley is a social worker at a local college. The couple, both age 36, hope to have a child soon and are wondering how to…
Yes indeed, we’ve welcomed a hobbit into our home. Mr. FW is a well-known lover of The Lord of The Rings books and the main reason he wanted to have children was to one day read the series with them. He’s been working Kidwoods up to The Hobbit by having her first read the Fern…
Anna is a 35-year-old special eduction teacher of middle school students with severe and profound disabilities. She lives in rural Illinois and is currently working on completing her master’s degree in education. In the future, she’d like to move into a different teaching position that’s hopefully more lucrative since she doesn’t make enough at her…
A question I’ve been getting a lot lately: “What happened to your dog???” I get this question via email, through blog comments, on Instagram, Facebook and in person. It’s taken me awhile to put together my response because it’s a painful one. But today, I’m ready to share. The Tail of Genevieve (aka Gigi) the…
Laura and her husband Ethan are from Philadelphia, PA, but have been living in Hanoi, Vietnam for the past two years. Ethan teaches English literature at an international school and Laura is earning her Master’s degree in public health. They’ve loved their time in Vietnam and plan to be there for at least another year,…
One of the driving forces behind the birth of Frugalwoods was our desire to leave the city and buy a homestead in the woods. That happened in May 2016 and let me tell you, we had A LOT of preconceived notions about what it would be like to live rurally, some of which turned out…
This summer, my new AI investment advisor, Mezzi, discovered roughly $300,000 of hidden stock exposure in Google I didn’t know I had. It sounds a little absurd, given the amount. But I’ve been investing in Google for over 15 years, and with a complicated net worth it’s hard to track everything accurately when your mind anchors…
On Tuesday, September 8, 2026, an Anthropic researcher named Jacob Coxon resigned over safety concerns and wrote about why. He said the leading labs are “racing straight to self-improving superintelligence” and gambling with everybody’s lives. The people building AI, he wrote, earnestly believe it could kill us all by the end of the decade. Then…