Monday Q&A | Low-Carbing, Heat and Houseguests, & College

Every Monday, I answer a few of the questions that my readers send me. If you have a question you’d like me to answer in a future Q&A post, just leave me a comment here or email me (thefrugalgirl [at] gmail [dot] com) and put Q&A in the subject line. I look forward to hearing from you!

I have been on a low carb diet for several years, all your recipes are high in carbs, can you help me with that?

-Debbie

Oh dear…I’m really, really not the girl for that! I probably eat more carbs than is good for me and I am not at all well-versed in low-carbing (I don’t think there is a way to make my bread recipes low-carb!).

However, I’m sure that some of my readers have done low-carbing frugally, so hopefully some of them will have some advice for you.

I’m a new reader and just had a question about keeping your house cool in winter. We keep ours around 65 all winter, which we’re very comfortable with (it’s actually less about being frugal and more about preference, really!). However, when our family comes to visit they make a big production about leaving their jackets on and shivering the whole time they’re here. I wonder if you have the same problem at all with guests and how you address it?

-Heather

Our house isn’t particularly large and when we have guests, just the extra body heat seems to warm the kitchen, living room, and dining room right up. In fact, when we’ve got a lot of company in the winter, I often get a little bit too warm.

Of course, if our guests stayed overnight in the bedrooms, maybe the coolness would be a problem.

If you’ve got the money to pay for it and your family isn’t staying for weeks at a time, I’d consider bumping up the thermostat for the duration of their visit. It probably won’t cost that much more and it might make your guests a little happier. 😉

Though I don’t have to adjust the heat for guests, I do take their comfort into consideration when it’s warm weather. Normally our AC is at 78-80, and when we’re going to have company, I almost always turn it down several degrees because I want our guests to feel comfortable in our home.

Supposing your child is going to college. When it comes to choosing the college, paying for it, picking a major, and finally looking for work, what, in your opinion, is the proper parents’ role and child’s role in all this?

-Jenny

I don’t think there’s one proper way to do this, but Mr. FG and I are working at saving up some money for our children’s college expenses. I highly doubt that we will save up enough to pay entirely for four 4-year degrees, but something is better than nothing.

We’ll also encourage our kids to attend our excellent local community college for the first year or two (tuition is reasonable and they can live at home) and also encourage them to apply for scholarships. And I hope that they will be able to work part-time while they’re in college like I did.

As far as picking the major goes, that will mostly be up to our kids. As they grow, we’re trying to help them discover what it is they’re good at so that they’ll be able to figure out what college major they need or if they even need college (Lisey wants to be a pastry chef, so school for her might look different than a school for Joshua, who wants to be a herpatologist).

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Readers, you can weigh in on all 3 of these questions (which is not the case when someone asks something like, “What are your favorite things about Mr. FG?”!), so add your thoughts to mine!

Today’s 365 post: And this is Lisey’s (also, in case you missed it yesterday, take a peek at 2 other pumpkins)