I know things have been quiet on The Personal Finance Program lately, and I apologize. That being said, I have a legit reason – I’m now a published author!

Over the past month, I’ve been working to get my ebook How to Make a Budget: Simple Budget Techniques and Ways to Save Money up on the Amazon Kindle platform. As of this morning, it is up and running, which I’m super pumped about! In fact, I’ve already made a few sales – that I know of – and have gotten three likes. No reviews yet, but hopefully soon enough.

Anyway, I would be absolutely thrilled if you headed over to Amazon and checked out the book – at the very least, clicking the like button up by the “write a review” link.

Thank you for your patience with The Personal Finance Program. I hope you enjoy How to Make a Budget: Simple Budget Techniques and Ways to Save Money so much that you forget all about the fact The Personal Finance Program has been dormant for the past month!

Here’s a pretty simple way for you to save both directly and indirectly on your clothing costs – avoid dry clean only clothes.

Dry clean only clothes are, more or less, a double edged sword: you almost always pay more up front when you purchase them, and then you have to pay a lot of money over the time you own them in order to keep them clean.

Let me give you a real world example:

This past Christmas I received a very nice pair of dry clean only black slacks, which I’m sure cost well over $100. Now, whenever I want to have them cleaned, I have to take the pants down to my local dry cleaner and pay them $8. Not cool.

Not to sound a terrible grandson, but I would have much rather received two or three pairs of “regular wash” pants that would probably look just as nice, last just as long, but don’t cost me $8 every time I want to have them cleaned.

So, when you’re shopping for clothes and it comes time to choose between “dry clean only” and “regular” clothes, go with the clothes you can clean yourself.