Weekend Roundup – New Layout Edition

As I alluded to on Friday, FiveCentNickel is now sporting a new look. Like I said previously, it’s fairly similar to the old look, but it’s very (very!) different under the hood. The heavy lifting (including a complete CSS re-write) was all done by Leia Scofield, who did an excellent job. While this site used to be an utter mess on the back-end (just ask Leia!), it’s now squeaky clean and very orderly.

In terms of visible changes, we’ve freshened up the fonts, widened the right sidebar, cleaned up and tweaked a variety of interface elements, and added Google site search (much more powerful than the old search). I’m also pleased to report that you can once again subscribe to comments via e-mail. I’ve had some problems with this in the past, but have decided to bring it back for a trial run.

Links of interest

Jim has some unconventional financial advice: Save money by getting a divorce. Don’t worry, it’s a Devil’s Advocate post, but it does make some interesting points.

In a very timely piece, Donna talked about celebrating freedom from wants. Distinguishing wants from needs is a key step along the path to financial freedom.

Lazy Man talked about Parkinson’s Law, which is just a fancy name for what I’ve always referred to as “time expansion theory.” In short, tasks will take as much time as you have available.

It seems like everywhere I look, people are writing about long term disability (LTD) insurance these days. This time, it was Jaimie’s turn… Methinks I should get off my butt and get a private policy to back up my employer’s LTD policy. I’ve been planning on doing this for a long time now, and just haven’t made it happen.

JD put together an excellent list of grocery shopping tips.

In case you’re not content to shop for groceries and cook at home, Wise Bread has a nice list of tips for eating out on the cheap.

MBH (who recently started a weight loss site) highlighted ten ways that being fat costs money.

On a related note, SVB talked about losing weight and saving money.

Jeremy compared and contrasted ETFs and mutual funds.

Lynnae talked about saving money by buying in bulk.

Finally, Madison talked about fun and frugal summertime activities. If you run out of things on her list, you should also check your local theater for free summer movies.