For a while now I've been keeping a list of books that have been published by members of our community.  Originally I just posted this list to to the diary series What Are You Reading and Bookflurries but it has grown into its own diary series.  You might be surprised to find out which of your favorite authors is also posting here.  You also may be pleased to discover that some of your favorite diarists and commenters have even more for you to read.

This week, in addition to the sub-list of Kossacks-Once-Removed (authors who are relatives of Kossacks) I've added two more sub-lists: Former Kossacks (those who have not posted anything here in well over six months) and Celebrity Kossack Authors (authors who are well known outside this community and who rarely interact here outside their own diaries).  If you know of anyone who is missing from any of these lists, post a comment or send me email.  I'm happy to post an author's information anonymously (i.e., without the dKos ID) if that is what the author prefers.

OK, without further ado, check below for the complete (so far) lists.

Welcome to Frugal Fridays where we share money saving tips, discuss living frugally and generally talk about personal finance issues.  In the spring, a frugal person's fancy turns to ... art?  OK, that may have not been the ending to that sentence you were first expecting, but there's a logic to it, trust me.  With the warmer weather, comes a plethora of street fairs and other opportunities to appreciate the talents of local artists and craftsmen.  You can enjoy these events for free (the most favorite word of all in the cheapskate's lexicon) but you can also pick up beautiful items for your home at a bargain.  Best of all, you can be assured that all the proceeds go directly to the artist, not to any middle man.  

My thanks go out to all the guest hosts in the past month.  I'd really like to have more of this in the future.  I've been told that people like to get other perspectives than mine each week and to be honest, I like goofing off Fridays.  Please email me if you'd like to volunteer.

It turns out that we have quite a few authors hanging out here who have published books in the real world.  A while ago, I started keeping a list of books by Kossacks, former Kossacks and Kossacks-once-removed.  I was posting it each week to the diary series What Are You Reading and Bookflurries, but the list has grown long enough, that I've decided to turn it into a diary and post it as a weekly series on Tuesday evenings.

Not all Kossack authors may wish to lose their anonymity, so I am only including the author's UID if he has outed herself here (gender confusion intended).  If you'd like to be included on the list, or if you know of an author who is left off, please leave a comment or email me.

There are no new authors added to the list since the last time I posted it, but Jennifer Weiner and Jeffrey Feldman each has a new book out.  Check below for the full list.

Welcome to Frugal Fridays where we share money saving tips, discuss living frugally and generally talk about personal finance issues.  

Thanks again to plf515 for guest hosting last week and thanks in advance to AnnieJo and blue jersey mom for taking on next week and the week after.  I'm still looking for other guest hosts for the future.  If you are interested, email me: frugalfridays (at) gmail.com.

I keep coming across articles on 10 tips for this or 5 tips for that.  I am jealous of all the good ideas that these authors come up with, but rather than put the effort into researching and writing my own list of helpful hints, I thought it would be just as helpful (and a lot easier on me) to link to some of the ones I've found most interesting.  So, without further ado, I present the ultimate list of financial tips: my List of Lists.

Welcome to a special Mojo Friday/Frugal Friday joint edition.  In case you are wondering what either of those things are, Frugal Fridays is a regular diary series where we share money saving tips, discuss living frugally and generally talk about personal finance issues.  Mojo Friday is TexDem's series where we all gather on Friday mornings to trade jokes, stories, pictures/videos (please wait till after 300 comments) and whatever else tickles our funny bones.  This week he has graciously let me host this extravaganza, so come on in, sit yourself down and pour yourself a nice tall glass of mojo.

In case you are really jonesing for some financial discussion, don't worry, it's here too.  If you haven't yet filed your tax forms, check below for some last minute tax tips.

Welcome to Frugal Fridays where we share money saving tips, discuss living frugally and generally talk about personal finance issues.  Last week at lunch on Saturday, my friends and I were having a discussion about different types of investment and retirement accounts and how to decide where to put your savings to maximize your long term return.  (As an aside, yes, I know we are all nerds, no need to point that out in the comments.)  Anyhow, we are all pretty bright people, and yet we found we sometimes had trouble predicting what would be the expected rate of return under different circumstances.  Which got me thinking about how computing rate of return can be a really difficult calculation to make sometimes.  I want to take a stab at clearing up some of the confusion around this topic, today.  In the end, however, I may be as confused about this as anyone, so if you see something I say that you disagree with, please don't hesitate to point it out in the comments.

Disclaimer: I am not a financial professional.  I'm just a consumer who tries to be educated.  Take anything I say with a grain of salt.  

Welcome to Frugal Fridays where we share money saving tips, discuss living frugally and generally talk about personal finance issues.  I heard a few unrelated news stories this week, and they made a connection when I started thinking about these economic stimulus checks that the government will soon be issuing.   Thoughts about how we approach debt and spending, how we should approach them started percolating around in my brain, and they are just going to come out here today, I can tell.  If you are interested in a meandering discussion of debt, savings, spending and charity in our society keep reading.  If you don't care about any of that, but just want some straight information about when these checks are coming and how much you can expect to receive, follow me below the jump, but skip to the end.

In the end, the most important thing to remember is that it's your money.  Don't let anyone else, including me, dictate what you do with it.  It's good to listen to different sources of advice and see different approaches, but it's your decision ultimately.

Welcome to Frugal Fridays where we share money saving tips, discuss living frugally and generally talk about personal finance issues.   In the past, I've talked a lot about internet shopping, which makes sense, since you are obviously internet savy people, or you wouldn't be reading this.  But what about the kind of shopping you do most of the time?  The kind where you walk into a store, pick something off a shelf and plunk down cold hard cash (or even harder plastic)?  This week I want to mention some of my favorite places to shop and since this is one of those weeks where I will have to post and run, I hope that you all can pick up where I leave off and offer your own suggestions for your favorite places to shop locally.

Welcome to Frugal Fridays where we share money saving tips, discuss living frugally and generally talk about personal finance issues.  Over the many months I've been doing this series, I've managed to accumulate hundreds of links in my bookmarks folder to different sites and I think it's time once again to share some of these.  In looking through them, I've noticed that quite a few are travel related.  These aren't all sites that will help you save money, some can help you save time and some just provide information that will help you make the most of your trip, but all of them I've found useful to some degree or another.  Since I have way too many links to post them all, I've culled out best of the best.  Follow me below the fold for my List of Links.

Welcome to Frugal Fridays where we share money saving tips, discuss living frugally and generally talk about personal finance issues.  I'm a terrible procrastinator, so I haven't started my taxes yet at all, but I know that some people are already started (or even finished) so I figured I better not delay any longer before writing a tax help diary.  If it turns out that I learn anything surprising and helpful when I actually do my own taxes, I may come back to this topic later.  

It's time to trot out my standard disclaimer:
I am not a financial professional.  I'm just a consumer who tries to be educated.  Take anything I say with a grain of salt.

Welcome to Frugal Fridays where we share money saving tips, discuss living frugally and generally talk about personal finance issues.  I'm sure many of you are going to be going to Netroots Nation in Austin this year, so I wanted to take today to talk about some frugal ideas on how to get there and where to stay while you're there.  If you are looking for a roommate or a ride, use the comment section to try to make contact with others in the same boat.  Of course there is no guarantee by me, Daily Kos or Netroots Nation that any arrangements you make here will be to your complete satisfaction.  Use your own judgment.

This diary is just devoted to getting to town and getting settled.  I'll call on one or more of the local residents to do one on fun things to see and do and good places to eat and drink in a few months.  Before you actually hit the road, be sure to check out the diary on frugal travel from a few months ago and don't miss out on the comments, there were lots of good ideas there too.

Welcome to Frugal Fridays where we share money saving tips, discuss living frugally and generally talk about personal finance issues.  In response to last week's poll, I'm trying to write more diaries on money-saving tips.  I don't know about the rest of you, but a non-negligible portion of my disposable income seems to go to books, so I thought I'd turn my attention this week to looking at some of the ways to save money on this addiction so many of us endure.

Before I start with the money saving tips though, I want to make the case that sometimes the cheapest option is not always the best.  Authors need book sales in order to make a living and to continue churning out those tomes we love to read.  So, if you can afford it, consider buying new hardback books whenever possible.  These are the ones that provide them the most royalties.  If you really can't afford to buy all the books you want yourself, at least request that your local library buy copies.  Also, when shopping, consider buying from locally owned retailers to help your local economy and from retailers who treat their workers fairly, to help your neighbors.

Welcome to Frugal Fridays where we share money saving tips, discuss living frugally and generally talk about personal finance issues.  It was one year ago last week that I posted the first Frugal Fridays diary, so I figured this would be a good time to look back over the year and revisit some of my highs and lows.   I'd like to get some feedback from you on what you think worked and what didn't as well, so please comment freely.

Follow me below the fold for a trip though the wayback machine to see how it all started and where we've gone from there.

I'm worried that some folks may be losing sight of the fact that we all are going to have to work together to win in November.  Neither candidate will be able to win without the support of his/her opponents' followers.  Since it looks like the nominee may not be decided until August, we won't have much time for reconciliation, so I'd like to get started now.

In that spirit, I'd like to offer this anthem to party unity.

Welcome to Frugal Fridays where we share money saving tips, discuss living frugally and generally talk about personal finance issues.  

This turned into a busy morning for me, so I wasn't able to do the diary I wanted to.  Since it's running really late and I want to get something out before midnight, I've scrapped my original plans, and this week will just be a general discussion of frugality.  Please use this as an opportunity to share your favorite tips, hints, jokes, recipes, you name it.  

Welcome to Frugal Fridays where we share money saving tips, discuss living frugally and generally talk about personal finance issues.  One cool thing that has happened since I began this series is that friends and family have started sending me links to finance related articles or interesting tidbits they find on the web.  This week I decided to combine a few of them into a discussion of family net worth and retirement planning.

Most of us look forward to the day when we can stop working.  Maybe your fantasy doesn't extend as far as telling off your boss in no uncertain terms and striding out the door no longer a wage slave, but you probably still envision a time when you never again need to rise to that alarm and spend most of your day away from your friends, family, hobbies and leisure pursuits (such as blogging).  Follow me below the fold for a discussion of how to plan for that day.   Please add your own thoughts in the comments.

As usual, my standard disclaimer still applies.  Disclaimer: I am not a financial professional.  I'm just a consumer who tries to be educated.  Take anything I say with a grain of salt.

Welcome to Frugal Fridays where we share money saving tips, discuss living frugally and generally talk about personal finance issues.  Folks we have a disaster on the horizon and we need to batten down and prepare.  No, I'm not talking about your favorite candidate losing the nomination, I'm talking about something a little closer to home.  It may be something as minor as a short term power outage or as major as Hurricane Katrina, but each and every one of us will most likely face some natural or man-made disaster in the next 5 years.  A few weeks ago, in the midst of the Southern California fires, I did a diary on how to put together a home disaster kit.  As with many of the topics I write about, I picked that one in hopes of inspiring me to actually assemble a disaster kit for myself.  It turns out that putting such a thing together takes a lot more time and thought than I had realized.  (Or maybe I had realized, which is why I hadn't done it!)  I hope that by sharing some of the lessons I have learned below, I can boost you up a bit on your own learning curve.

Welcome to Frugal Fridays where we share money saving tips, discuss living frugally and generally talk about personal finance issues.

I am a terrible procrastinator.  (Or am I really good at procrastination?  Hmm, I'll get back to you on that.)  In any case, I have a list as long as my arm of things that I need to get done before we head out on our holiday trip tomorrow.  (No, it looks like we can't leave till Sunday.  OK, Monday at the absolute latest!)  Since all I can think about is shopping and traveling, and since I've already covered shopping here ad naseum, this week's topic is going to have to be "Hints and Tips for Frugal Travel."  And, since I have a few other commitments today (did I mention my list?) I am going to only be able to make this a bare bones diary and am depending  on audience participation to flesh it out.  So please help me out here and add your favorite ideas in the comments.