A homemade Christmas ornament {betterbudgeting.com}

Some offer quick and economically sound menus. Others give budgeting advice and help you save your hard-earned money. Add a slew of articles, e-books, tips, guides, blogs, newsletters and you have a variety of useful tools for your everyday life. (Coupon sites are useful too, but are in a category of their own).

Apart from Twitter, these frugality-promoting sites are the hottest thing of 2009. They are fun to read and serve the common good much more than entertainment sites. There is no better feeling than spending quality time with the family after getting your life under control. Be sure to check out at least a few of the following sites. They are quite helpful (and hundreds of thousands of visitors per month can’t be wrong!):

• TipHero: Inexpensive ways to live via user-submitted tips. Focus on food and home.
• Living on a Dime: Articles meant to help you save money and stay organized. Plenty of e-books, for a small fee.
• Miserly Moms: What the title says – helping moms save money so they can spend more time with their families.
• Budget Stretcher: Printable forms to structure your bills and expenses.
• The Simple Dollar: A blog specializing in the simplification of personal finance.
• Menus4Moms: Healthy dinner menus and grocery tips for moms (and dads too, I suppose).
• Get Rich Slowly: A slightly more involved personal finance blog. Very insightful.
• The Dollar Stretcher: Saving you time and money since 1996. Articles from solar power to slow cooker recipes.
• Hillbilly Housewife: Low-cost home cooking from scratch so you can have some financial breathing room.
• Living a Better Life: Monthly e-zine that helps your family stick to a budget.

Enjoy and best of luck harnessing the power of the tips!