You Cheap Mother

Because the goal is to move by August, we really need to reduce the contents of the freezers and pantries. That is a great deal of food.
My husband spent the better part of two years working for a friend who ran a meal assembly franchise. When the store went arse-up, hubby and his friend were faced with the task of emptying all the freezers. They were literally looking at throwing out 5lb bags of cheese, meats, fruits and veggies. It was crazy. We opted instead, to buy several (three) large chest freezers to store the contents in our basement. Which has been GREAT, but generally we forgot the food was there, and continued to shop and buy as normal. It’s very hard to USE a 5lb bag of cheese. You have to defrost it, then you use about a cup or two for whatever recipe, then the rest goes bad. It’s VERY disappointing if you aren’t very diligent and organized, repackaging into smaller baggies…which I wasn’t. One of the big problems was ricotta cheese. It came in this huge tub, but of course we only need 1-2 cups for a lasagna. We lost two tubs simply because we’d make the lasagna, then be eating lasagna leftovers for 2 weeks and not feel like ricotta.
But now that we are trying to empty the freezer…I’ve taken a different approach. I went through the top parts, identified several items that I could cook SEVERAL meals with during the week, and then drafted a whole week’s worth of meals off those items. I still needed to purchase some things from the store, but in general, this has been working very well.

This week, I took out a whole chicken (which we are roasting right now and it smells WONDERFUL), and the ingredients for lasagna.
I had two boxes of lasagna noodles in the pantry and one can of spaghetti sauce. The freezer had:
ricotta cheese, Parmesan cheese, and mozzarella cheese, as well as Italian sausage crumbles. I picked up three more cans of spaghetti sauce for 84 cents each…sure it would be cheaper to make from scratch, I just don’t have time.
I just assembled two 9×13 pans. This will make at least four dinners and several leftovers for lunches.
With the whole chicken, we’ll roast it tonight, then have leftovers for leftover night, plus I’ll be making crockpot chicken stock.

I had some apples from last shopping trip that we hadn’t eaten yet. The skin was getting wrinkly but they hadn’t gone south yet. I made some homemade apple sauce with them, and was so proud of myself! It came out amazing!

So that’s a good thing.
I spent 111.18 on groceries, mostly due to buying toiletries, etc. We have to spend about $1600 on fixing the sewer pump, which will drain my emergency fund. I’m pretty bummed about that. But happy I have the BEF. I could TRY to cash flow it, but that would honestly have meant paying the mortgage late. So, better to do it this way.
Recently the microwave also died. We’ve had to repair the Heat, the oven, the dishwasher and now the pump and the microwave. We are running out of things to fix/replace!

I splurged on my daughter’s graduation, 45.00 to get her nails done, then 70.00 buying dinner afterwards. About $30 in books for her gifts, and then 12 eating out the day after as well. I needed to shave 75$ from each week’s groceries, but of course didn’t manage to do that. Grr…

I’ll definitely use up the 202 buffer I had going.
Ok, well, gotta go make the mashed potatoes for dinner!

Well, officially not until mid-night…but…I made it to payday (midnight) without spending any money!

This might be minor for some of you hard-core frugals out there, but I’m still working on getting my black belt in thrift.

I actually struggled several times with some of the minor choices I had to make.

-Today the desire to go out to lunch was HUGE…mostly because the school called for me to pick up my son’s medicine since it’s the last day of school. I can get it next week, so I opted to do that instead, saving the last little bits of gas I have left. Also allowing me to sit at my desk for lunch and eat this healthy, low-calorie turkey sandwich!

-Last night, I opted NOT to go to martial arts class, (causing a 2lbs fluctuation in the scale, I might add!) in order to save that precious gas. Then my daughter, still wanting to go, asked to borrow my car (she has her own, WITH GAS). I said No (which made her not talk to me for the rest of the night, ugh).

-Purchasing of graduation present. That should have been done by now, of course, but I normally would have rushed, bought something massive impulsively, then regretted it when it hit the bank account. I didn’t. Instead she’s getting a trip later in the summer with me.

-buying small items online. DS7 needs little swimming ear plugs, none of the THREE VARIETIES we already have work well whilst swimming. Bathing is fine, but swimming is disastrous. The nurse recommended a certain type, online, which I found, but I opted to not buy them immediately, instead waiting till payday. Normally I would have just bought them immediately. Similarly, I’m in the market for an item for martial arts class, and I simply pushed it out of my head until NEXT pay period. It’s not urgent at all.

-Those darn boxes again! I still need to pick up boxes from my friend’s house, but alas, the gas issue again. If I do it tonight, I’ll be forced to buy gas tonight. If I wait until next week, it will work out much better…for me. She’s probably sick of those boxes!!!

I’ve also managed to MEET the pantry/freezer challenge, even planning a graduation dinner from items we already have!! I’m quite pleased with myself there.

Another cool thing is that I had a $10 bill in my planner that is still here. Normally I’d spend the cash, not “counting” it in the no spending challenge…but this time, I didn’t spend a dime! WHOO HOO!

Also of importance, I found my error in my planner and am finally able to balance my checkbook!!! It was apparently a math error ON payday, which threw off the entire pay period. I don’t know how I messed up, but I did I was off by 241.00, which was very very disheartening. Because I had 251 in my account before, and then got paid, I thought I had done everything (party included) in one paycheck. The concept of living within the paycheck, and not dipping into the existing balance is hard for me to master. While I know it should be zero based, I would like a little bit of a buffer in the checking account…just a couple hundred dollars. I would like to not spend my entire paycheck, have a couple of dollars to spare. But I spent my entire paycheck PLUS about 49.00…putting me at 202 in the account at this very moment.

Tomorrow the house payment comes out, which is about 99% of my paycheck. This paycheck also includes the car insurance ($293) and a bunch of $50-150.00 bills. Luckily child support and hubby’s contribution come in and offset the major expenses.
I have about $672.00 to live on for two weeks. If you take out that 202, that’s 472. I usually set aside 300 for food (150/wk) and 100 for gas (50/wk), leaving 72 for drs, car car, etc.
I need to get my oil changed (which I can do myself for ~15.00), but other than that, I don’t have a specific purpose. I’d like to set a goal of NOT TOUCHING that 202. A further goal would be to save 22 of that 72, so my balance would b 224 before next payday. Let’s see how I do. This will be rough with DD18’s graduation and relatives coming in to town.

I finally broke down and summed up some of my monthly expenditures. It’s as bad as I thought.

Groceries: 602.96
Gas: 167.17
Dr: 250.00
Eating out: 406.03

Gas is under budget, groceries is JUST at budget (600 or 150/week). Dr’s I didn’t even have a category for, but should have, obviously. And June will be worse. I’ve already spent $567 on paying old dr bills this month

The elephant in the room is, of course, eating out. I should probably go back to October of last year and add that up, just to compare…since I’m feeling pretty bad right now. As bad as it is, I know I’ve improved a LOT in eating out. The problem is, it’s not enough. First of all, May didn’t have ANY budget for eating out. I took away the BLOW category entirely. Why? Mostly I couldn’t afford it in the budget. But also, I ignored it. Everything became BLOW. Suddenly that category was ballooning to several hundred dollars a WEEK, just to make the budget fit the lifestyle. So, I really wanted to go on a financial diet, and I eliminated that category. Everything (entertainment, etc) should come from it’s own category. And with some pretty lean payperiods, I had to just squeak by with essentials. Somehow, despite bringing my lunch more than ever, eating at home more than ever, I’m still spending $400 a month on dining out! That’s insane!
That’s a car payment! That’s half my daughter’s college costs (annually). Plus, when you figure that my grocery bill was still 600, I’m spending over $1k/month on food. For what amounts to a family of four. Can you believe that?

I’m so frustrated! LOL
It seems like one step forward, two steps back.
I think I’m getting ahead, but the reality is different. I wonder how I managed to do survive a year ago…because I’ve not used CC’s in years.
I could not even tell you. It seems like the more I focus on the budget, the hard it is to stick to it. Like those little toys at the dollar store, the rubber tubes filled with water. The harder you squeeze, the faster it shoots out of your hand!

So there are a couple of short term (one week) goals I’ve set up.
1) No eating out challenge. Friday is my daughter’s graduation and she’s already said she wants to have dinner in, so that makes my budget happier!
2) Pantry/freezer challenge. Instead of hitting the grocery store, I’m going to try to make a week’s worth of meals from the freezer and pantry alone. This will save money, but also it will help eliminate stuff that I’d have to deal with when we finally move. So double win there.
3) No gas. I’m going to try to make it until Friday without getting gas. This will mean carpooling with hubby, I’m sure. I’ll bike if need be, and skip extra trips if need be. I’m at a quarter of a tank right now, so it should be cutting it close. I only have one more day of work this week (Friday we are off for graduation). I’m not going out for lunch, obviously! So, the work commute should only use up about 1/2 of what’s left (1/8 a tank…if that).

I looked at my cc statements and found out that one is below 6K now, the other is just above 3200. Looking forward to that being below 3K! Suddenly I started thinking about refinancing my mortgage, and if that would offer substantial savings. It’s 6.6% I believe…I’d have to check. But refinancing would only lower the payment $200, if that. Plus the closing costs…
Unfortunately it’s not worth it. I was reading about the Homeowner’s Loan Modification programs, and my mortgage is only 24% of my gross salary. So I don’t qualify (plus they require you to be 3 months behind, I believe).

Oh well…now I need to figure out what to get my daughter for graduation. I just don’t even know.

Ok, this is a good and bad post. First of all, I went ahead with a planned surprise party for my parents’ 40th wedding anniversary DESPITE not having the money for any of it. When I say “Not having the money,” I mean, “Should have put it on the debt, I should have saved it to repair the sewer pump, or I should have used it to fix DD18’s car.” It literally was in my account, I “cash flowed” the trip…but it was bad timing.
I THOUGHT I had written down all my spending well, but I have to say, maybe I didn’t.
The trip went like this:
I booked the cheapest hotel on the island, normally $59/night, but it was 109/night due to being Memorial Day weekend. Also, they don’t let you stay one night, you have to book all three nights. My parents didn’t have room for all of us, so it was pretty much the hotel or nothing. Again, this is the cheapest. Yes we could have camped, but because of the anniversary party being held at their church, we didn’t want to risk having EVERYTHING rained on (like last camping trip) and showing up looking like we just got thrown in the pool.
So, hotel: 355.56
gas: 82 and change
Food: 145 and change.
Misc: 22.00
The rest of the entertainment spending, I didn’t track. I had $100 in cash before the trip. I used $20 before we left for something (I know can’t recall), and I still have $20 left, so we’ll say $60 on entertainment, but that’s really a loose guess.
But none of that counts the cost of the party. $190 for the catering, 101 for supplies, $55 for cheesecake (really).
When I added everything up and balanced my checkbook (planner) I figured I had $508 left over. This is an amount that makes me happy, but cause it means I stayed within my current paycheck. Since I had $251 before I got paid, and then Pete gave me $250…that means that I did the trip and all the other bills out of just the paycheck. BUT…when I look now, the balance in my account is 900ish. I show it still hasn’t posted the hotel, two checks I wrote (dr and for the party supplies), as well as a couple of debits. Based on that, it’s probably closer to $300 left after all is said and done. I’m really bummed about that. Did I miss writing down debit transactions?
Several of our dinners were way more than i meant to spent. For example, we bought pizza the last night. My mom picked the place, and ordered, and we just picked it up. They were HUGE pies, and three of them. The total was $57.99. I was floored. Yes I had the money, but that’s nearly half my weekly food budget. One lunch out was $33.00, where I was hoping to keep lunches around $15. Not crazy amounts, to be sure, but still…it adds up.
We made a couple of stops into gas stations where I grabbed chips, sodas, etc for the road. Did I forget to write those down?

Why is it so hard for me to keep a balanced check book?
From 5/21 to 5/28, I wrote down every single transaction that online banking has listed. I was 100% accurate. So why is the balance online so much lower now? Unfortunately I can’t reconcile the transactions from 5/29 to now quite yet. They are all “pending” for the time being.

This is really infuriating. Because I FEEL so good when I’m writing things down, KNOWING how much is in my account. But then I realize I still am as out of control as before the budgets, before all these behavioral changes.

Just for fun, I added up all the transactions for that 5/21 – 5/28 week.
Here are the results:

eating out:136.76
gas: 64.68
grocery shopping: 175.88
clothes, etc: 36.91
Dr, copays, pharmacy, etc: 40.00

this is kind of misleading, since technically things bought on 5/28 belong to the next week for my budgeting purposes. Also, this does NOT include any eating out for the trip, though it does count one gas station visit for the trip.
But the point is still there. I spent almost as much eating out as on groceries. Since we were eating out so much, we obviously weren’t eating the groceries!
The clothes entry is an rarity, this was for a friend’s new granddaughter, and my dd18 to buy a dress for her graduation.
And the dr’s is low since it doesn’t include a check I wrote but has yet to clear. So that’s really more like $130.

Here’s the kicker: I THOUGHT I SPENT LITTLE THIS WEEK.
I really did! I thought I was being ultra frugal this week…not eating out, etc, etc.
The numbers tell otherwise. But STILL. I’m tracking all transactions, my balances should still come close. Why is it that I’m nearly 300 off?
I had budgeted 150 for groceries, 50 for gas, 120 for drs. So I was off on everything. Didn’t have a clothes entry this payperiod. But I still wrote down the correct amounts, deducted it properly from my balance, carried the balance forward. How is it so off?

JUST NOW, I went back fro all of May and April, and I compared every single transaction with everything I had written down. Nothing was missing. Yet, I’m still staggeringly off. How???
GRRRRR

Ok, so far I’ve listened to the first three cds of Stop Acting Rich. I’ve enjoyed it a great deal, but I have to say, all the numbers are really lost on me without reading them. That sounds stupid, but when they are talking about this many thousand, that many hundreds of thousands, this many millions, I just have to see it for it to register.
I’m looking forward to listening to the book with hubby on the way to the beach.

I’m completely panicking about money for this payperiod and next. I’m not sure why, but the first time I ran through the budget, I only had about $637 to spend on the weekend trip, which included hotel, gas, and the catering for my parents anniversary. My goal is NOT to hit any of the savings. The next time I did the budget, I ended up with like 1800.00 left over. I’m not sure how I was so off.

Two of the things I think that are helping, one I didn’t spend that last $251 in my account. I held on to it until payday! Yay me!
Then, Hubby gave me a check for $250. I saved it until payday as well, then deposited it in my account. So that’s $500…where’s the rest coming from?
Well, it probably won’t matter because we had three “emergencies” come up.

1) the microwave melted. There is literally a hole in the top of the microwave. It’s the “Inlet cover” which can, apparently be replaced. There is a place nearby that sells it, so I’ll go pick one up later today. Or I can have the part shipped. Obviously it’ll be cheaper to go buy in town and not pay shipping, so I’m going to exhaust that first.

2) something has gone wrong with our sewer pump. We have a basement (unfinished) and I was told this pump was only to be used IF we end up finishing the basement. However, it has started belching smelly water out into the yard (thank goodness for that, I suppose). So, the plumber is coming today, and that will be $100 just to have him come out. Since we don’t have any idea what this piece of equipment actually does (we thought it was unused until the basement gets finished), then I don’t feel comfortable trying to fix it myself.

3) DD18’s car is dying. It overheats or something. She leaves for college in the fall, so she hasn’t really cared about fixing it. I would prefer she fixes is before it is a blown head gasket or something.

I have to admit, I still panicked when all this started happening. Despite having the money to cover most if not all of these expenses, it still feels like there is no safety net. Plus, do I want to send my emergency fund? No, I don’t. So I’m going to try to cash flow as much as I can.
We’ll see how it goes.

There is a line somewhere, between frugal and “beyond hope.” Between “tree hugger” and “hippie zealot.” I think I just blew past both of them in one swoop.

Let me explain…

First of all, by now you know that I’m about 50/50 on the reasons for my lifestyle changes. Half the time it’s to reduce the expense to eliminate debt, and the other half the time it’s the big flaming environmentalist inside of me. Luckily MOST things that are eco-friendly are also the cheaper way to go. For example, making my own rain barrels both saves a ton of money and is a very “green” thing to do. Making food from scratch is both cheaper AND reduces waste (from all that packaging). Composting reduces trash costs (bags, pickup expenses) AND is more environmentally sound. Biking to work is healthy, saves on gas, AND reduces pollution (triple win there!). I could go on and on.

So, my point is, that I’m always on the look out to A) save money and B) stop using disposable stuff. Several years ago I got us off our dependence on paper towels by making several dozen hand towels (bought cheap fabric and used the serger to bind the edges). More recently I got us off paper napkins by making several dozen cloth napkins in the same manner (well, used fabric from my stash).

Where is this headed? I am about to tell you!
I keep looking at the disposable things we still use: razors, qtips, toilet paper, etc. I’m never ready to deal with all of them at once, you know? Just like the several years between the hand towels and the cloth napkins, it seems to take a period of adoption of one change before I’m ready to embrace the next. And the next is HUGE.

Guys, you might want to leave this blog at this point!

On some website, I was looking at things like the diva cup, keeper, etc. And I’m sorry, but that’s not going to work for me. I’ve tried Instead. DOES.NOT.WORK. It might work for some people, I’m just telling you my experience.
So I found a couple of sites that had instructions for making your own pads.
That’s right, sanitary napkins. Menstrual pads. Whatever you want to call them.
Literally a YEAR after first surfing the web looking at all the different instructions out there…something changed.
I went from OH NO WAY…to….HMMMM.
Today, I crossed over the edge.
I was packing up some baby stuff in preparation for the move, and came across those water proof mattress pads for baby cribs. Something clicked in my head. With THIS as the backing, a homemade pad would be virtually leak-proof. It was truly a mad-scientist moment!
Suddenly it was all coming together. Not only did I have all these mattress pads, I had tons of flannel baby blankets. Nice thick flannel, not the cheap threadbare stuff. The gears were turning. A sandwich of this and that, and oh I found an old (never used) cloth baby diaper…and a ratty towel….I hurried through dinner and rushed off to my evil laboratory to begin my FrankenPad.

I took pictures of the process, I just haven’t gotten them off the camera yet.
First, I needed a pattern.
I used this one From HillBilly housewife. It wasn’t the original post that got me thinking about this so long ago, but I liked her template the best. I didn’t actually print it out, but just mocked up a similar template on newspaper.

There are several parts as she explains. There is the top, the bottom and the middle. The bottom, in my case was actually cut from the mattress pad. It is one piece. The top is made from two pieces that overlap creating an opening to insert the actual pad. This was made out of the old baby blanket. The middle I used the towel and the baby diaper. Basically two layers of terry cloth (towel), with a layer of baby diaper sandwiched between). I serged around the edges of everything, used the regular sewing machine to finish up and make it look pretty. And I added velcro to the “wings” instead of safety pins. In my case, the mattress cover was flannel covered, so it didn’t need to have a flannel bottom added. But I could have added a bottom if I wanted to. I might at some point. Not sure.

It took about 2 hours and I made three enclosures, plus 6 “insert” pads. I only used about half the mattress pad, about 1/4 of the baby blanket and all of the towel and baby diaper. I definitely need more, as three really won’t last more than a day, I’m sure.

As for cleaning, I have a Laundry detergent tub that is perfect size, with a sealing lid. It even has a handle. They will soak in there until I wash them, which will be daily I’m sure. I’m doing a load daily anyway!

The idea of using these while around the house, I can totally get that. I don’t know how I feel about trying to manage them during the work day. Perhaps that will be something the diva cup might handle better. I don’t know.

So what, really, is the savings? Considering all the materials were scrounged or re-purposed…They cost nothing. If I eventually make enough to handle the entire 5 days of my cycle, then it’ll probably save about $7.00 in otherwise purchased supplies. Since I already do a load of laundry daily, this doesn’t actually increase the laundry bill. Once the little guy stops wetting the bed, that will certainly change. If they fail miserably and leak through everything, I’ve lost nothing, except some time, and some fabric items that were going to goodwill anyway.

The funniest part was that when my 18 year old daughter came in, she picked one up, said “What is it? …A pad? That’s DISGUSTING!” and quivered. I tried to explain, but she didn’t want to hear it. Then, she saw me taking pix of my progress and begged me not to put the pix on facebook. HA!

Well, I feel industrious if nothing else. We’ll see how it works. I’ll keep you posted.

UPDATE: Oddly enough, my opportunity to use these hit immediately. I used them over night Friday, all day Saturday, over night Saturday, and now into Sunday. I’ll have to switch back to store bought here soon, as I’m at the end of the ones I made…but so far, other than being quite bulky, they’ve worked perfectly. No leaking at all…which is actually better than the disposable ones. I’m still not sure how I feel about risking this at work…but for over nights and weekends this might work fine.

Festival of Frugality is a daily collection of frugal blogs from around the interwebs. Sometimes they seem to revolve around a theme, other times, not so much.
But in any case, plenty to waste a couple of hours on when You should be working!

Here on the homefront, I’ve been on a roller coaster. First, I thought I was AWESOME because I’ve been tracking my spending daily for two whole months! YAY ME! and I was down to 110.00 according to my check register, yet still hadn’t panicked and hit the BEF or anything of my other resources. I was TRUSTING that I had been accurately recording my spending in my register, had budgeted everything properly, and that all would be good with the world…but I was wrong.

I sat down to reconcile my checkbook, and found that I had MISSED a $415.00 deposit!!! I should have had $525 then!! But my balance was $251…soooo…something was seriously wrong. I started trying to match up purchases to when they cleared the bank…and I had been so perfect, or so I thought. OMG, I was wrong…but I still don’t know where, and why. I have to sit down, go through line by line, day by day. The problem is, things might take two weeks to clear my bank, so I am darting back and forth all through the planner trying to find out if I wrote it down or not.

So, I still suck. Big Time.

That was very depressing. I actually went to bed early last night I was so upset. No, nothing bounced, but still. My behavioral changes are still coming up short.

Meanwhile, I’ve been operating as if I only had $110 in the checking account, I really had $251. I thought “there is something else that hasn’t yet posted” but couldn’t find anything that had not cleared the bank. I will go back and find the missing $300 or so, and hopefully will be able to figure out why I didn’t record those transactions.

The other massive challenge occupying all my time right now, is the battle over eating out. Going back through my bank statements, it’s MacDonald’s, Burger King, Dunkin Donuts, Bojangles, Mexican restaurant, Fuel Pizza, etc, etc, etc. Over and over and over. I should honestly add up how much I spent in one month on eating out. I bet it’s horrifying.

I wonder, if I had known there was $251 in the account, would I have continued to eat out this week? I’ve had several massive temptations (and I even gave in once! – But hubby was buying). Coworker’s wanting to eat out, not feeling in the mood for what I brought, just stress and wanting to get out of the office during the day…but in the end, I feel like it’s more about really meeting the challenge, not about bending the rules. It’s not “get to payday without bouncing anything.” At least not anymore. Sure at one point it was. Now, it’s “Get to payday without using that last bit of $ so I can put it toward the CC!”

This isn’t just about eating out, though…it’s about everything. I told you about not using the car as much, to save on gas. Well, then my daughter borrowed it, and used up a bit. Tuesday night I biked home from work. I was tired. I didn’t want to. But I did it anyway, because I was on 1/4 a tank on TUESDAY, and needed it to last until Saturday. In the morning it was raining, so I carpooled in with Hubby. While I missed out on the exercise, I still saved on the gas. Last night I was supposed to go pick up boxes from a friend’s house. I would have been 40 miles round trip, REQUIRING me to get gas. Because of the timing, it also would have required me to eat out. The idea was appealing. I won’t lie. Breaking my vow to get free boxes…it seemed harmless. If I had 110 in the checking, I could get gas ($35) and eat out ($15) without going into the negative…and payday was JUST around the corner…

In the end, I canceled the box pick up with the friend, and made arrangements to get them from work later in the week. I went home and made the chicken and beef enchiladas I had started the day before in the crockpot. They were fabulous, btw. I used ground beef from the freezer and chicken breasts that were left over from Mother’s Day BBQ. The enchilada sauce was found in the back of the pantry, as was the box of Spanish Rice. The tortillas were several weeks old, purchased for enchiladas that only required one bag, not two. We ate like kings for FREE. Sure yes, I paid for it previously…but nothing was purchased in this (or last, really) week’s food budget. It’s killing two birds with one stone. I’m de-cluttering our freezer and pantry AND saving money. Can’t beat that.

So this morning, I realized I’m staying home tomorrow because my son has Field Day at school. My normal plan of driving in to work, leaving car there, biking home, then biking back to work tomorrow, and driving car home…would not work. I sat there, thinking, If I drive to work and back today, I’ll be close to E (closer than I like) and I’ll need to get gas tonight or tomorrow (payday) at the latest. But here comes the issue. If I get gas on Friday, I use the car all weekend, then come Monday, I’ll be down to about half a tank. If I get gas on Sun, then I have a full tank most of the week, landing on a half around next Friday. Sooooooo
are you thinking what I’m thinking? If you said “Bike in to work!” you are!

I DROVE the little guy to school (I should have put him on the bus, but didn’t wake up in time ), came home, grabbed my bike (I contemplated BIKING with him, but the question of where to put his bike, or the trailer, etc was insurmountable at 7am this morning), and headed out. I made it in less than 1 hour (arriving on time!). I washed up in the bathroom (no showers, so I wash my hair in the sink, wipe down with babywipes, and profusely apply deodorant and perfume – plus I had a shower before I left), changed clothes, and voila, ready to rumble! I hung up my bike clothes to dry out, so that when I head home, I’ll not be putting on wet gear. Bleck.

My co-worker and I were planning our “eat-in” today, where we would brown bag a lunch together instead of going out, but still enjoying the same social time. I didn’t have much at work, but I managed to talk hubby into bringing in a bag with soup and some soda for me! Carrying that on the bike would not have worked, and I was of course quick to think that maybe we’ll scrap the eat-in idea and just go out. I have no will power!!!

In the end she couldn’t make it, she has to work through lunch. Meanwhile, I’m facing the prospect of the third day this week of soup for lunch. Yes I should be happy, some people in some countries don’t get Lunch. They are happy to have ONE or TWO meals a day. So I should just be quiet. But I won’t. I’ll still whine. The LURE of pizza, the smell of burgers…the salty crunch of the free chips at the Mexican restaurant…OMG OMG OMG…It’s like I’m addicted. Eating out is absolutely my BIGGEST VICE. I wonder if I took up a crack habit if it would be cheaper..? That’s not entirely rhetorical… At the very least it’s less fat and calories!

In other news, I’m heading to my parent’s for the weekend for their 40th Anniversary. This is problematic in sooo many ways.
FIrst of all, we get paid on the 21st (tomorrow) then again on the 4th. Daycare is due on 6/1 and this is the first time they will be charging the SUMMER rate. So basically double the normal rate, if not more. But I don’t 100% know, since it’s only 3 weeks for June, so, I’m a little unsure what will actually be taken out. I have to set aside $800 (the max it could be) just in case, leaving little wiggle room for travel expenses.

Because of this Anniversary Party being a “big deal,” camping seemed out of place. I know, I could have rethought this. But, I am remembering last summer, the camp ground infested with mosquitoes, the torrential rain that soaked EVERYTHING – on three separate days, spending half a day each time at the laundry mat drying everything…
When you are bouncing back and forth from the beach to your tent, biking all day, being sticky, stinky and covered in sand, well, it doesn’t matter. Showing up at my parent’s anniversary party looking like we did that week last year…not really going to work. Maybe it wouldn’t be like that. Maybe it would have been fine. My parents don’t have the room to host us, which is fine. So that left the cheapest hotel on the island, which…doubled it’s rate because of the holiday weekend. Thanks a lot there.
So the hotel will be $350 for three nights. Plus I’m having it catered. So that’s an extra $200 (not bad for 20 people!).

I took my budget, figured out the max I can spend, and it’s $637 for the WHOLE TRIP. Well, we are pretty much there already!! That leaves $ for gas (outside the normal gas budget), and nothing for food . The hotel has free breakfast (YAY!), obviously the day of the party we are covered for lunch/dinner. That leaves 2 lunches and 2 dinners that I’ll have to figure out how to cheaply do on vacation (one of each will be on the road)!

Now that the sun is out again, and now that My Son has passed all of his allergy tests, the desire to hang out the laundry again is very very strong. I’ll admit I’ve stopped drying his sheets and blankets. The fact that it’s $0.40 per run of the dryer really helps me. I can look at the blankets and think, it’s going to take 2 runs to dry this OR, I can hang them out for a couple of hours…? It’s worth it, I think.

Our office is donating a ton of boxes to our moving effort. I picked up three REALLY nice filing cabinet boxes. Last night I packed up all the winter clothes in my son’s room. The bonus is, I kept right on going! I cleaned his room, and it looks great. I’m picking up some computer boxes tonight, and my friend is going to give me a bunch of boxes from her recent move. We are still picking up boxes from the liquor store whenever I can remember. It’s going slowly.

But we might have to speed up! The new place is going to foreclosure auction, so it should be on the MLS in a matter of weeks. We are starting the process of getting hubby’s finances together to make the purchase. It still might be several months off, but we want to be ready NOW. Our current house will go on the market by the end of June, no later. June 1st would be better…but I just can’t get anything done.

So that’s where things are today. Hubby just asked me out to lunch. OMG that was so hard to say no. Hopefully this will get easier with time.

So, reading all these blogs on frugality and non-consumerism, I’m excited at how much my own behavior overlaps. However, I’m really getting that EYES-OPENED moment of clarity. I could be doing so much more.

I thought I’d just come up with a list of what we do now, and what I’d like to do (or stop doing) in the future to meet my financial goals:

I(We):
-Make a budget
-Plan meals
-Make shopping lists
-Cut our own hair
-Try to repair broken items
-Make items that can’t be found for cheaper
-Use dish towels instead of paper towels
-Use cloth napkins instead of paper
-Compost (create less trash)
-wash our own cars
-mow our own yard
-groom our pets
-do most auto repairs
-bike to work a couple of days a week to save gas (and prolong a dying transmission)
-look for big ticket items on craigslist first
-only buy clothes on clearance, usually when the item is under $10 (shirt I’m wearing today was bought for $1.00)
-have taken second job when money was very tight
-no cable or satellite tv
-no cell phone bill (I have one, paid by work, no one else in the house has a cell phone)
-Leftovers!!
-camp at state parks for vacation
-can, pickle, etc
-make a lot of food ourselves

(I’ll update that list as I remember things)

What we should do:
-move. The house is so much of my paycheck, it’s not even funny. This is in the works, but hasn’t happened yet.
-never eat out, or rarely. Currently I still eat out way too much. Right now I have a goal of not eating out for a week. I have yet to achieve this goal. Everything counts – even buying a drink at BK. Lunches add up, especially when I’m paying for hubby, too. The $15 lunch becomes $30…times 5, is 150.00 PER WEEK. A can of soup (Cambell’s Select Light) is $2.49…I’m sure I can find it cheaper.
-Sell more on craigslist. I go through fits and spurts of this. And unfortunately, when I do get the money, I spend it
-get rid of cars. I panicked during a traumatic family event and bought a new car. While I hope to own the car 10 years, and I got it for a crazy low price (really, I did), I still hate myself for not trusting in the process and going back to my car-centric life so quickly. My goal of being bike-only still exists. I’ll just be doing it with a big loan holding down the driveway, making sure it doesn’t blow away…
-snowflake. I don’t send money to the cc’s during the month. By the time the bill is due, I instinctively send the payment amount. I do this because I think “Maybe something will come up and I’ll need that extra money,” despite having a Baby Emergency Fund. Then I impulsively spend the extra money.
-get rid of expensive hobbies. For me, they revolve around exercise and healthy living, and that is my justification. But the extra expenses need to go.
-Control healthcare costs better. I got sucked in to visiting a chiropractor for a foot issue. Suddenly it was visits three times a week, at $40 a pop (co-pay). When I’ve only budgeted for 2 dr. visits a month, that kills the budget. I should have just shut it down early on, but I naively thought it would help my foot. It didn’t.
-Plan for big expenses better. My parents 40th anniversary party is in two weeks. I didn’t set aside money for the catering or hotel, or anything really, like I should have. It came up terribly fast and suddenly I’m having to make quick decisions, not able to take my time and thus make frugal decisions.
-coupon. I can’t get the paper because it creates too much of a mess (I’ll pile it up to recycle, then forget to, the cats will sleep on the pile, the pile will take over the floor, I’ll grumble and get stressed out, pile it all back up, repeat cycle a couple of times, then angrily through it out in a fit of OCD vs EcoGuilt. It’s not pretty.). But beyond that, I don’t think that coupons are really that great for food shopping. I generally go with what is cheapest, so store brands work fine for me. The only exception to that is really toilet paper and soda. I shouldn’t be drinking soda anyway… But for TP I can see the benefit.
-OAMC/Freezer meals. I used to do this, but our freezers are so stuffed from the failed meal assembly biz, that I have no room. Oh Irony, you are a humorous devil!

and the biggie: STOP BUYING STUFF. We are trying to downsize to a townhouse and yet I’m still buying stuff? WTF? That doesn’t even make sense to me. Yet I’m doing it!!! Bought a couple of exercise things (see hobbies, above) that take up a fair bit of room. I’ll get a wild hair that I NEED X, that X will make me happier, it will make my life easier, it’ll make my boobs bigger and it’ll make my children obedient!!! While I do still research the crap out of it, look for it free or used, and then finally succumb to purchasing it, in the end I’ve still purchased it. It really UNDOES all the hard work I’ve accomplished up to that point. Just as a dinner out does. What good is saving $0.40 on not running the dryer when you take the family out to dinner for $100.00? Does that make sense?

In a perfect world I’d be able to say “It was worth the experience, treating the family to a meal, the memories you created, the bonding, etc” But no, the reality is, I’m still $30K in debt (including the now car and student loans), and I have not even included hubby’s debt. I don’t think there is any sense in spending that, or $350 on a hotel for three days (which I’m about to do, despite my better judgment) or $500 on caterers (again, despite better judgment), or really anything until that debt is gone. Hubby sees it as “it will always be there, why sweat it” whereas, I want it gone so it never is hanging over me again. If I don’t have debt, if I don’t have a car payment, if I don’t have a mortgage payment…what does it matter if I lose my job? THAT is the security I’m looking for!!!

If ONLY I could make that long term need more important than these short term desire!

I don’t mean Golden Corral, I mean Almost Frugal that I talked about yesterday. I’ve been hitting site after site from her blog…each one better than the last. I’m in heaven!
Seeing all these like-minded people, it’s so refreshing! I like the variety…some are in this for causes, some for security, some for rebellion, for lack of a better word. But embracing frugality (for whatever reason) has so many different aspects. “Earn MORE; Spend LESS” can come about through so many different methods!

I like reading something new and adding that new idea to my quiver of frugal tricks! I like reading something I’ve done for a while and the resulting moment of “I’m not alone!” But what I love THE BEST, is when someone says something I’ve been trying to convey better than I ever could.

Adam Baker over at Man Vs. Debt and the good sense to take a guest post from Matt Gartland at Healthy Lifestyle Design. The resulting article: “Are you Eating Yourself Into Debt?” is 100% me. That is my issue. THAT is what I’ve been talking about is my main struggle with budgeting.

While Matt focuses on HOW it gets you into debt, and not why or how to stop (other than stop eating out, buying crap, etc, obviously), it’s so perfectly worded, I could only hope to put the TITLE together as eloquently. Every sentence I’m thinking YES! This is what I’m trying to say when I whine on my blog “My biggest issue is eating out…” He gets it…and articulates it.

In the last year, as I’ve said, I’ve lost 80 pounds (lost 90, regained 10, grr). So obviously I’ve gotten a handle on healthy lifestyle more than I had previously in my life. Still, though, I struggle with eating out, both as it relates to frugality AND as it relates to health.
For me, I linked the two a while ago, but could not express it properly. Both are behavior issues. Both are about impulse control. Both are about investing in the long term want while mitigating the short term desire. At least, for me.

When the coworkers all huddle around outside my office door and say “Where are we going to lunch?” I see the laughter, the bitching about work issues, the inside jokes which won’t make sense to me in the afternoon if I miss this social opportunity. I also taste the cheese and the salt, the grease and the sugar (we are in the south, land of lard and honey), and suddenly it doesn’t matter what the budget says, if the money is in the checking account, “I’ll figure it out later.” If I’m consuming 1300 worth of calories, “I’ll work it off later.” Of course later comes and I am to be found curled up on the couch surfing the web, in no mood to work out…and even if I was, how the hell am I going to work off 1300 calories when I consumed such junk?! I’m a three-toed sloth at that point!
I then tell myself, “OK, you have to take that out of the food budget, since you didn’t have any money left in your eating out budget. Instead of 150, now you are looking at 135.” Guess what happens when I actually hit the grocery store? I come in around 156 or so…the hole just gets bigger!

For me, the biggest issue is behavior. Too much food and not enough money are just symptoms of the same problem.

OMG OMG OMG
I’m in heaven!
Not sure how, but I googumbled (that’s stumbling using google) across this site, Almost Frugal,
which lead me to MANY other super cool blogs on frugality. Nicole’s series of profiles of frugal blogs is a smorgasbord of thoughts and ideas of people living below their means FOR A MULTITUDE OF REASONS. Everything from getting out of debt, to saving the planet. There’s so much to love at Nicole’s site, and she spreads the love with 3 other regular bloggers, as well as the chance guest post (and interview, as I’ve mentioned). There’s just too many things that I said OH MAN, I’m going to link to that! So, just go read the whole site. You’ll thank me later.

One of her profiles I really am jived about is Early Retirement Extreme, run by Jacob, a man who has embraced thrift as a means to early retirement.this blog post, I just love. I think he nailed the issue that I’m having with: consumerism as a lifestyle. I remember the days of waking up Saturday and getting ready to GO TO THE MALL. What for? I have no idea. That’s just what you did. Getting together with a girlfriend to push the kids around in strollers? Let’s GO TO THE MALL. The weekly trip to Sam’s Club to “See what they have” usually ended up in several hundred dollars and 5 pounds of Chocolate Morsels, which my thighs really didn’t need. Buying is a national sport here in the US. It’s not Baseball, it’s not even Football. It’s shopping. And shopping in December is a full contact sport! But that’s a different story.

Which brings me to: Our neighbors drive me nuts. They are consumerists to the extreme! They just spent over $50k (not including furniture) to finish their basement…so their KIDS could have a place to watch TV. Our houses are identical, so I know they have about 2700 sq ft before they finished the extra rooms. They have two kids, and the grandmother lives with them as well. So, five people living in 2700 sq ft, five bedroom house…
They have the wii, the xbox 360, the gameboys, the flat screen tv. And their house is PERFECT. Flower boxes on the porch, golf course type grass, beautiful flowers blooming year-round…They just had their deck expanded, added a huge grill and many lounge chairs, got a trampoline, and built the kids a tree house. Installed a sprinkler system, in the middle of a drought, of course. Her hubby just bought a convertible sports coupe, and they had a trip to the Caribbean for their wedding anniversary. All of this and SHE stays at home. The hubby and grandmother work in very high paying fields, and I know when the grandmother moved in, she brought a great deal of financial security, as before the neighbor had complained about finances to me.

The reason these people drive me nuts is the effect it has on the rest of my family. DD18 says “Oh I love their treehouse,” hubs says “I’d like to do that with our yard!” ds7 says “Why can’t we have a Wii???” Meanwhile I look at them and want to go cry. I feel like I am somehow falling short because they SEEM to have it all together, and I am living paycheck to paycheck, our grass looks like something out of a spaghetti western, we can’t even afford to DREAM about finishing the basement (something that was planned to begin just after moving in, but here we are 5 years and two lawsuits later…), and I am constantly more amazed at their ability to find time to do yard work than really anything else. I can barely find time to take a shower, much less stand out side and give the flowers a daily simulated gentle rain fall.

So despite wishing otherwise, their over consumption effects my self-esteem. I feel like I’m not as together as they are. They LOOK like they have it together because they have PRETTY THINGS and they spend a great deal of their time maintaining their pretty things. Of course it could be that I keep getting nasty grams from the HOA yelling about my ugly cars, or unpainted mail box that is causing the self-esteem hit, you never know…

I wonder, how much at they living on credit, and how much of all these THINGS do they actually own? It’s the status driven behavior, I know, that everyone talks about. But even with not watching TV (and thus being outside of the reach of commercial marketing), the emotional pain it inflicts on my family is pretty amazing.

As I’ve said before, sometime this year we will be moving. I’m sure they will be happy to see us go. Maybe I’ll leave them a copy of “Stop Acting Rich” on their doorsteps as a parting gift!

Reading these other blogs I realized that my blog is really very different. This is more like a journal, with each post capturing many different topics. Other blogs seem to stick to one topic – one post, MUCH better than I do. SHRUG
OH WELL.

So, on that note, Switching topics!
This week, the budget was tight. By that I mean, I had money allocated for all expenses, and there was money in the BEF, but I didn’t have ANY wiggle room between the budget and what was in the primary checking. This scares me. Usually things come up, not quite emergencies, but still, I like to be able to swipe my card at the checkout and not have that anxiety of whether or not I’ll see “APPROVED” smiling back at me.
Little things, like finding out that DS7 needs $8 for a Tshirt for Field day, or that DD need XYZ for her graduation ceremony. The annual “Italian Festival” at our church came up this week, and it’s usually an amazing treat for DS7. The food is ok, but the “air” rides are the big hit. There is entertainment, and we see good friends, so it’s usually a great time. However, it usually costs about $40 between food and the rides. I decided to not even go this year. The same thing happened with the strawberry festival.

On Friday I had $191 in the checking account. From that, I would need $150 for weekly groceries, as well as having budgeted $50 for gas for the week. Because I biked and carpooled a couple of days last week, I only used half a tank of gas. A full tank is about $35, so even if I had to fill up completely, I would have made it until payday (Friday). Hubby talked me into eating lunch out on Friday (GRRR at myself for letting him!!) and that was $15.00. So I had 176 for the week for food and gas. I’ve been pretty good about coming under budget for food with the initial trip, but subsequent trips during the week push me over budget on food. I decided to take a different approach. We have three chest freezers FULL of food. This is a leftover from Hubby’s foray into meal assembly franchises many moons ago. The problem is, they are frozen in commercial sized portions, so I tend to forget about them when planning my menu. As part of the decluttering in prep for moving, I have been trying to “eat from the freezer and pantry” as much as possible. This seemed like a GOOD WEEK to put it into practice!

From the freezer, I took out stew meat, steaks, “turkey pucks” (these are turkey breasts that are cut and wrapped in bacon like filet mignon), chicken breasts, and some Alfredo sauce. Then I made a rough inventory of the pantry and the fridge.

From this I planned:

Beef Tips and Rice (with broccoli)
Beef and Barely Soup
Chicken Enchiladas
Chicken & Spinach Alfredo (I also have Shrimp in the freezer if hubs and DS18 are interested once this menu item comes up)
Turkey Pucks, Baked Potatoes, Veggies
Steaks on the Grill

I’m anticipating no leftover night this week, as I’ve designated leftovers for lunch, to keep me from eating out for lunch.
I solved a small problem with the “social” aspect of eating lunch out. I invited a coworker who I know is also trying to save money to “eat-in” lunch with me. We’ll brown bag it and have lunch in the conference room together! It’s funny how simple the solutions to problems are when you think about it.
We’ll see how that goes.

Anyway – so then, with my shortened shopping list, we BIKED over to the grocery store (this is a GREAT METHOD to keep from impulse buying, let me tell you!!!), and I was able to get by on $56.00. Mostly this was fresh fruits and veggies, soda, and lunch meat for my daughter’s school lunch. I was pretty proud of myself, I have to say.

The other thing I did was to vow NOT TO DRIVE this weekend to save gas!!!

Then I immediately broke that vow.

My intent was to bike ds7 over to his dad’s using the “Hitchhiker” tag-a-long that we used without fail last summer for just such trips. My son had outgrown the baby trailer completely and has to hunch over the entire trip – so that was out. However, a vital piece of this trailer was missing…making it impossible to bike him over. I briefly toyed with the idea of letting him bike himself, with me leading, and getting off the bike and walking on the sidewalk for the main road we briefly must travel, but in the end I opted to just take the car. Other than picking up and dropping off the little guy (and FYI the distance between the houses is about 3 miles by road), I didn’t drive at all. DD18 managed to borrow the car once for a trip to church, though.
By NOT using the car to drive all over the place, not only did I preserve the half tank that was left, but I also kept myself from driving to the shopping areas! Right now to fill the gas for the week, would take about $17.00. I plan on biking at least two lengths of my commute this week, so I’m hoping I can make it to Friday on the gas that I have.

Another bonus came when I was discussing the shopping list with hubs. He said we needed shampoo, conditioner, and soap. From experience, I know that he likes to stockpile shampoo, conditioner and soap. I immediately snapped that I didn’t have money to replenish the stockpile, so if we aren’t OUT, then it needs to wait until payday. He didn’t get defensive or anything, just walked into his office, wrote me a check and handed it to me. I was FLOORED. (Yes we have separate finances. No, nothing you say will make me change my mind. Divorced twice previously, so pigs will fly before I have a joint account ever again with anyone I didn’t give birth to). Part of me is thrilled, but then part of me was also kind of looking forward to the challenge of not exceeding the budget this week. I can still do that, sure…I’m going to put the $ in a different account than my main checking, but some place more accessible than the BEF. Just a little extra safety net! YAY!

On the way in to work this AM, I stopped and picked up canned soda and milk for my little dorm fridge. This allows me to not feed the vending machine, and also gives me no excuse to stop for breakfast any morning. With a box of raisin bran, bowls and spoons already here, milk was the only thing I was missing. I also needed some parts for DS18’s car, which came to about $8.00. Those two purchases I made from a different account, though, so they technically don’t come out of the $176. Cheating, I know. That checking account is going away, but I haven’t officially closed it due to three debits that still come out of it.

Earlier last week, I splashed out $11 for the Audio CD version of Stop Acting Rich. I decided after much research that purchasing the cds were the best option. First I hit our library, and there is only ONE COPY of the audiobook in the state. Huge waiting list as well. The book exists locally (not my branch, but at least same county!), but I weighed it against the time I have to read vs the time I could listen to it while driving. Also, I want hubby to read it, and he HATES reading. So, the audio books were a “requirement” from that perspective. We have a trip coming up, and I’m hoping to pop the cds in for the 5 hour drive (each way). I looked at used, and digital, and the price was MORE for digital (wtf?!?!) and not that much savings for used PLUS I’d have to pay shipping for used! So, in the end it was cheaper to buy new. If it helps get hubs on board, then it’s worth the $11. I don’t buying stuff new that I know I’ll get a ton of use out of, and I feel like this falls into this category. I can see lending these to my daughters (and subsequently never getting them back…!!!). The decision to buy them took about a week. First I tried free options, then I tried used options, and ultimately settled on new.

This was the same process when I was looking at a punching bag. We have one in the basement, but it is a hanging heavy bag, not good for kicks. I considered MANY different ways to stabilize the bag to allow me to use it for kicking practice. Most involved buying parts and all could be potentially damaging to my body if I accidentally kicked the kludge. I looked at the price of the “stand up” type bags, checked online, looked for “yard sale,” options, craigslist, ebay, etc…for about 6 months. Nothing came up. I found ONE used one in that time at Play it Again Sports, for $60, with duct tape on the seams. Since the bottom gets filled with water, I found this disturbing!!! A second one for $85 came up on craigslist, in even worse condition. I finally decided that buying it new was ok, and it came as an early Mother’s Day present. Since breaking my toe, it’s proved several workouts that I wouldn’t have been able to do otherwise. And despite the injury, I’ve lost 4 pounds. So, worth it in the end, especially since DD18 also can practice on it, and the closer she comes to going off to college, the more I want her to be able to kick butt. It is an entertainment investment, if nothing else.