The Festival of Frugality is back! 

Hosted by Squawkfox, the Bare Necessities Edition is chock-full of frugal goodness and some rather ’interesting’ pictures of fruit. 

So why is PersistentIllusion all about the frugalness?  Because you can’t fully live your dreams if you are beholden to The Man.  (Yes, Bank of America, I am looking at you!) 

Bite-sized bits of frugaliciousness!

Frugal Dad compiled a mini-compendium of encyclopedic thoroughness, 75 Tips to Survive a Down Economy.  Among many other suggestions (74 to be exact!), he recommends unloading the trunk and removing any unused cargo racks.  ”Added weight in the trunk reduces gas mileage, as does the added wind drag from an unused cargo rack.”  (I got an extra 20 miles  out of my tank of gas by doing this.  Viva le garage!)

Frugal Fu shares her frugal (and surprisingly green) methods of keeping critters from your home.  I can’t wait to try this on the ants who-go-marching-one-by-one through my sliding glass door.

Broke Grad Student shares 7 Ways to Save Money on Music, and - no surprise – Pandora Internet Radio takes the cake!  What?  What’s that you say? What the heck is Pandora?  Pandora is the only reason I didn’t kill Mr. PersistentIllusion while we were painting.  (Not his fault.  I just hate painting.)

My absolute favorite entry was from a mother trying to figure out what to do with her kids for the holidays.  

Curious as to what they were doing, I had a peak out the window. The table was strewn with flowers and herbs from the garden. The pot and the bowls were filled with water. Each girl took a flower and pulled the petals off, putting them into the pot.

What on earth were those girls doing?  Solve the mystery here!