The page views on Monroe on a Budget have been bumping up in the past couple of weeks, with many of those referrals and links coming directly from local sites such as The Monroe Evening News home page.

If you are one of my new readers, hello!

The MEN has done a lot of marketing both on line and in print for this blog during the past couple of years. I’ve made several public appearances this spring. I’ve even been featured on a Toledo TV station and by a well-known national financial blog.

But based on conversations I had recently with a local person whom I thought would have certainly been aware of the budget blog, there are still a lot of area residents who don’t know this site exists or what information is is here. So if you live in or near Monroe County, Mich., and find the information I have posted here useful – please pass on the bookmark and links to your local friends, colleagues, co-workers and relatives.

The concept for this blog is “living in Monroe, Mich., on a budget.”

When MEN set up a blog site in late 2006, both employees and community members were invited to contribute. I did some thinking about what topics I could write about on a regular basis, and made a pitch for what I called “Monroe on a Budget.” About two hours after I met with the managing editor to explain the concept in January 2007, the I.T. staff had my site  installed and I have been feeding the blog ever since.

This is not your typical frugal living blog. Most of the well-known personal finance and frugal living bloggers work their sites as a hobby or as a freelance business. Monroe on a Budget is written by a newspaper reporter and sponsored by a newspaper. That means you will see a lot more economic / financial headlines and public service announcements on my blog than the typical blogger picks up on. And in keeping with standard journalism practices, I don’t do pay-per-links or paid product reviews.

I also aim this blog specifically for the residents of Monroe County, Mich. If there’s a money-saving idea that is getting a lot of buzz on the Internet – but it won’t work in Monroe – I’m not going to recommend it. If that idea will work in Monroe, I’ll tell you when, where and how and give you the links.

Now, what are my credentials for writing about such things?

I’ve got a lot of experience with living on a budget – growing up in a family of seven children, seeking out scholarships and student loans for my college education, almost four years of single / divorced parenting, coping with my current husband’s downsizing / layoff from his former radio job in 2002, …

The current scenario is this:

• I am still working at a newspaper with more than 20 years in the business, but that’s not something to take for granted. If you live in Michigan, you know that it is a bragging point that the MEN is still printing and delivering seven days a week. I left another newspaper company and came to Monroe a couple of years ahead of a huge downsizing that is still rippling into layoff notices across the country.
• My husband now works at an auto supplier, but that has not been steady pay. He has been off and on unemployment quite a bit this year. He does not get “supplemental pay” when he is off work, just the unemployment benefits.
• My daughter will be a junior this fall in college. She and I spend a lot of time researching and filling out paperwork for any financial aid, grants and scholarships that she is eligible for. She also works part-time during the school year. This summer, she is working at an unpaid professional internship in Washington, D.C. That situation was possible because she can live with my aunt and uncle this summer, while various relatives have been helping her out with expenses such as tuition credits.

Bottom line: I’m looking for every way possible to stretch my family’s finances, and I know many of you are doing that too. I also have friends who have been laid off or their spouses have been laid off, who can’t sell or refinance a home, who can’t find temporary work during their profession’s off-season, who are trying to land “that next job.”

This blog is for all of us in southeast Michigan – and our neighbors in northwest Ohio – who need ideas on how to get by on tight finances during a horrible economic situation.

If you have any headlines, deals, tips or links to share that would be of interest or relevant to my readers, feel free to e-mail me at paula@monroenews.com or add the information as a comment at an appropriate post.