Two of my Wise Bread posts, The Ethics of Hoarding and Healthy, Frugal Eating, got very kind mentions in the Doctor Oz blog:
Wow. Just a stellar post… Philip Brewer strikes again with a straightforward, no-bull piece on why we gotta suck it up and stop eating expensive crap. Stern, but informative!
I find it surprisingly difficult to extract quotes like that—it seems too much like bragging. I guess that’s why it’s useful to have a publicist.
My Wise Bread post Have Style, Not a Lifestyle was featured on the Discovery Channel’s Planet Green.
Here’s the gist of what I had to say:
The key to resisting the Diderot effect is to have style. Not just any old style, but a particular style. Something nicer than everything else you own isn’t in keeping with your style and that makes it easier to resist: It’s just not you.
Check out the Planet Green’s Watch Out For the Diderot Effect which includes a link to a translation of Diderot’s famous essay.
My story “An Education of Scars” made the Best New Stories of 2009 at Free SF Reader, which gave it a rating of 4 out of 5. Since they didn’t give any “5 out of 5” ratings last year, that puts my story pretty close to the top of the list.
The reprint of my Wise Bread post Understanding Capital Costs is up at the US Airways Magazine site, in the section the Gist: Understanding Capital Costs.
US Airways Magazine is running my Wise Bread article Understand Capital Costs in their section “The Gist.” It appears on page 22 of the October 2009 issue. I got my contributors copies in the mail today.
I’m not sure what day they actually change out the magazine onboard the planes, but I assume for the next month or so airline passengers will be reading my article!
This isn’t new news, but I don’t think I’ve mentioned before that my Wise Bread post How to Spot Counterfeit Money was reprinted in the handsome educational magazine The Forensic Teacher. It appeared in the Winter 2008 issue.
Mishell Baker has an article up at the new Fantasy Magazine website on looking ahead to attending Clarion this year while pregnant, Cautiously Expecting: On Creating Life and Fiction at Clarion–which includes a couple of quotes from me, talking about my experiences at Clarion.
She had emailed, asking for my thoughts. I responded and also pointed her to a little essay I’d written about How I Learned at Clarion. Looking at that piece again prompted me to revise my page about Clarion to include a link to it and to the various other things I’d written about my Clarion experience and what it had taught me about writing.
Cool! Lifehacker picked up my post Stuff will never make you organized, as Save Money by Organizing Before Purchasing Organizational Tools.
Lifehacker links to posts by other Wise Bread writers pretty often, but I can’t remember the last time they linked to one of mine.
I did two interviews recently with Laura of Green Panda Treehouse:
She’s looking for other people to interview, so I thought I’d mention that it was fun to do. If you’re a personal finance blogger, consider getting in touch.
Christine Des Garennes of the New-Gazette did a profile on me and my writing for Wise Bread. It made the front page! Checks and Balances: Living large on a smaller budget.
Although some of his blog posts are practical, such as “how to make sourdough bread and save a buck on every loaf,” Brewer’s “central shtick,” as he put it, is all about doing what you love.
Ask yourself, are you working a job just to earn enough money to support your lifestyle?
“If you live frugally enough, you can change your work based on what you want to do,” Brewer said. After your family, he said, there is nothing “that has such an importance on whether or not you’re happy than your work.”
[Updated 29 May 2009: It used to be that the News-Gazette closed articles behind a pay wall after a week, but as of today the link seems to still be working.]
