It’s sensible for all of us to look at our lifestyles and see what steps we can take to minimize the effects of the recession. Often, small changes can yield big results. Consider the following suggestions to ‘recession proof your lifestyle’ .

This month has presented itself as monetarily challenging; our car needed a major and unexpected repair, a tax bill showed up, and my sister’s wedding is just around the corner. Needless to say, I’m not going to make my savings goal this month.

Joe Mihalic, the blog owner, shared his journey of paying off $90,000 in college debt in under 10 months. Obviously, that’s incredibly impressive and makes for a great headline. But I don’t want to get into all the details of how he did it, you can read that on your own by checking out his story.

Imagine being able to walk a block or two and grocery shop, run to the cleaners, or pick up lunch. In some neighborhoods, this is doable. But in most, this is not. Instead, these errands require jumping in a car and driving a few miles.

I’ve finally gotten around to reading Your Money or Your Life by Vicki Robin and Joe Dominquez which I’ve had in my closet for almost 2 years. I had hesitated reading this book because I really thought that the original publish date was so outdated it would have antiquated personal finance information, but what I’ve found is that even though the data is old, the ideas and concepts behind the book still make sense today.