My very wise friend, Sarah, wrote about Etsy on her blog, The Quest to Become Debt Free, which is about… well, I’m guessing you can tell what Sarah’s blog is about!

At first, I had a difficult time trying to figure out how Etsy and saving money go together. In my personal experience, it’s very hard to save money when you have Etsy’s vast array of goodies tempting you on a regular basis. As someone who spends most of her hard-earned Etsy money on Etsy, I know this!

But then I realized that, if I’m going to spend money on gifts or other potentially frivolous purchases, it makes more sense to give that money to regular folks–people who are probably also in debt or struggling to make ends meet, or maybe they’re just trying to make a little extra spending money, like me–instead of patronizing the big box stores, where your money will only serve to make the executives at the top of the food chain wealthier. When I support an economy that’s a bit closer to home, so to speak, I don’t feel so bad for splurging!