Yesterday in Minneapolis, MN, it hit 90 degrees. I can sense the summer fever from everyone I know. With an early memorial weekend right around the corner, we will be sitting in the summer sun in no time at all! I know many people get excited for the summer, but if you don't actually make use of it, what good is it to you? In this article I have 5 suggestions for cheap or free things to get you out of the house and in to summer fun mode.

How many times have you gone to the grocery store and found yourself in the frozen pizza isle looking at signs that say, "5 for $10" or "3 for $9" for 12" pizzas? Do you usually eat these by yourself? I work from home and often times will throw a frozen pizza in the oven for lunch. Normally I eat about three-quarters of the pizza, complain to myself about how I just overate a little and then I throw the rest out. Today I found myself about to do the exact same thing but then something dawned on me. I checked the nutritional info on the pizza and saw that the whole pizza was 900 calories. That's too much for me just for lunch. Many pizzas are even higher. For one second I wished I had bought smaller pizzas so I wouldn't be throwing any away, but then I had an idea on how to solve this problem easily - and it's not something I've ever seen anyone do before!

Just the other day a friend of mine told me a story about paying off her car loan. She was in her office and was telling a coworker how excited she was to have just paid it off. Her coworker's response was enthusiastic but came with the immediate question, "So what car are you going to get now?" My friend was confused. She wasn't going to get a new car. She just paid off her current one and was happy to not have any more payments! Once I heard this story, it occured to me just how comfortable we americans have become with our debt and payments. It's typical to buy a new car immediately after paying off or often times before even paying off the current loan. It's unfortunate that we've become accustom to that because that kind of mentality can literally cost you millions of the course of your lifetime - and for what? Is it worth it to always have a new car that you won't care about in a few years anyway? Imagine if I could offer you an amount between $600k and 2.6 million dollars cash at the age of 62 if you could only buy cars under $12k until then. Would you do it? Here's how to make it a reality.

Before last week, I had only been to border towns in Mexico. This is the off-season but I was dying to take an impulsive trip somewhere and after seeing those $500 Air and Hotel included commercials on TV, I decided to look into it. Later that night, for $600 each, my friend and I were both booked for a 5 day trip to fly from Minneapolis to Cancun and stay at a small, pretty resort on the strip. Being my first big low-budget impulse trip, I was happy to find that everything ended up being far more affordable than I had ever thought it could be. We did, however, learn a few ways to do things better and really maximize on the experience.

I'm currently in a situation that's about as opposite as you can get from traditional american culture. I left my big corporate job at IBM, left the condo life, left Chicago and am now travelling around, staying with friends and family most of the time. Technically I think I might be homeless and really I'm not even sure what state I'm supposed to be a resident of. This is something I never could have done years ago and only recently got comfortable with the idea of. Most of what I have left (which is not much) is in storage in a friend's basement. I loaded up my 1996 Civic with the rest of what I thought was really important, that is, the things I can not do without in life. Besides your basic clothes and toiletries, it turns out that the things most important to me right now are a bowling ball, ping pong paddles, a snowboard, an RC helicopter and my laptop.

I am forced to commute 40 miles for every day for work and so I end up eating a lot of meals on the road. This is certainly not my favorite habit but it's just a fact of the matter and so I'm dealing with it in the best way I can, which is to try to find the least evil food that's available to me. I've compiled a list of cheap, partially healthy foods that can be found on nearly any road trip in the US. I say partially or semi healthy because this is really just going for less of the bad things like sodium and fat and doesn't really address adding nutrition.

We moved into our place about a year ago and it's been a long process getting everything organized. We've had the basic furniture since we moved in and have had a little painting done but up until recently the walls have been stark. We were wanting some art up to make it feel a little more like home but we're not really in a position to be spending a lot on it at the moment. Fortunately she found some nice prints that didn't end up costing too much. Combine that with some cheap frames from Target and Joann Fabric and we had everything up within a few weeks!

Photos are below: