For these I am grateful

Ever have one of those moments? You are in the shower and suddenly awash with gratitude? Well, maybe you are just awash with water and soap, but I find gratitude. We are poor as a family of church mice, but we are so fortunate. I was standing in the shower and thinking about


The hot water that comes right from the tap. Turn the dial, bam! Hot water. What a miracle. We can shower every day, three times a day if we want to.

Here are some other things that fill me with gratitude. Of course, I am grateful for health and love and my awesome family. But this post is specifically about modern miracles and conveniences that we in the States often take for granted. They are not universal rights, and many of them did not exist 150 years ago.

Trash service

Right out the front door, we put our garbage and recycling, and these guys just take it away. No living side by side with our garbage, no need to burn or bury toxic waste in our back yard. I realize there is a lot wrong with our current system of trash disposal, but still I am grateful for this service. And as more cities offer things like curbside recycling, the options get better.

Grocery stores

Exotic and mundane foods live side by side, ready for purchasing. We do not need to hunt and gather unless we choose to. Years ago, families would have to carefully plan their trips to the trading post to stock up on staples. Now we have an overwhelming decision to make each time we want to buy mustard.


Clean drinking water


It seems like such a simple, automatic thing. Turn the knob, fill a glass, and drink. If I am feeling fancy, I will add ice. Or a lemon wedge. But there are millions of people in the world who lack access to this most basic need. I am profoundly grateful for clean, regulated water.

What comes in must go out. Next on my list, indoor plumbing


Although the concept has been around for a long time, indoor plumbing as a household necessity is new and definitely not worldwide. The convenience of staying in the warm house in the middle of the night is wonderful. Sharing 1 bathroom with 4 other people is a drag sometimes, but it is nothing compared to the one toilet shared by 11 households that lived in a lane in Limerick, Ireland. But of course, the true joy is in the sanitation system that magically carts the waste away. This saves us all from all sorts of terrible diseases.

Electricity

Flip a switch, the light goes on. Magic. This magic allows for other magic.

Indoor cooking


Regulated  temperatures, lots of cooking space, no fire to make, right inside and next to the refrigerator.
We even have a microwave that can heat dinner in minutes.

Heat

Not our dogs, but they share the sentiment.No firewood to gather, no cold mornings, just set the thermostat and go on with our lives.

Computers
What once looked like this

And was a marvel
Now looks like this

And this

And is a marvel

And of course add this

And you have the most incredible tool ever-news, connections around the world, Netflix! Cats!

All of these wonders are housed in my house, and my house is next.

Even though we are surviving on two small incomes and a student loan, we are still able to afford to live in a house that is adorable and fits us all.

There is more of course: cars, lights, health care, travel. The list goes on and on. Even at the bottom of the income barrel, we live abundantly. For this I am grateful. I know that, even in this country, not everyone has these luxuries.

Grocery day

We are trying to bring the grocery bill down. Last week we did a really big shop, so this week it was more fill in. We stayed in town and only hit three stores-the IGA, Safeway, and Dollar Tree. The Dude and I both went through our Safeway Just 4 U cards and got our best deals. Luigi wanted cereal, and had quite the conversation with us about the importance of buying cereal and the types he was hoping for. The IGA had a sale on cereal. We got a few boxes, some at $2.50 a box, some at $2 a box. I decided that I would talk to him about cereal, but bought it today because I told him I would. I headed to the milk aisle. In our area, $3 or more per gallon has been the norm, although lately we have been able to find it on sale for $2.50 a gallon pretty consistently. I was planning to pick up some milk for $2.89 a gallon. However, when I got to the aisle, I saw a handwritten sign that said marked milk was 50 cents. I was feeling pretty happy, 50 cents off $2,89 is a good price. However, a closer look revealed that the milk was 50 cents. It was for gallons with a sell by date of today. I did a small happy dance, and grabbed a few


We are freezing those we can't use right away (currently on my back porch, which is below freezing) but I expect that this will last us about a week. We go through milk pretty quickly. My 7 gallons cost $3.50, or what a gallon typically costs when not on sale.

We went to the Dollar Tree for toilet cleaner and I found some cereal there, 14 ounce boxes for $1. I got 2. We picked up a light for our lava lamp, a bottle of spray cleaner as well as the toilet cleaner, and a few bags of sugar free hard candy, which is our South Beach indulgence (40 pounds lost and holding!). At Safeway, we got some produce and scored some turkey sausage on clearance for 75% off. This brought it down to a dollar a pound. We stocked up.

This afternoon I had the cereal talk with the boys. It went like this: You asked me to buy cereal, so I bought lots of different kinds. However, we have to rethink our use of cereal. That is $15 in cereal. We are trying to spend around $90 per week on all groceries, and so $15 represents a significant portion, and it is basically snack food. For instance, this box of Honeycomb was $2.50. You all can eat that in about day (realistically, the three of them can blow through a box in one sitting). And it isn't just cereal, there is also milk. So, let's say you had that for breakfast. $2.50 for a box of cereal and $1.50 for half a gallon a milk if it is $3. That is $4.00 for breakfast for the three of you and you will need to eat something else soon because cereal is not going to fill you up for long. Compare that with bagels. We pay $1.85 for 6 bagels. Add half a package of cream cheese for an additional 50 cents and the whole family has a filling breakfast for $2.35, with a bagel left over. We need to start considering cereal as occasional treat food, not a staple. Granola is okay because we tend to sprinkle it on yogurt, not gulp it by the bowlful.(We have made a few attempts at making our own granola and they have failed, but if we can find a substitute for granola, we will). From now on, I will no longer spend more than $1 (or maybe $1.50) on a 13-15 ounce box of cereal. When we do buy it, you will need to make it last.

Luigi asked if we can occasionally buy more expensive cereals and I said yes occasionally. The Dude chimed in and told them they need to make this cereal purchase last 2 weeks. They were all pretty amiable about it. We will see how it goes in the long run, but I think this is a good start. In other good news, Rin has figured out that it would be easier to set aside half of his allowance as soon as he gets it, in order to save. We told him we can take it right off the top, so he wouldn't even have the temptation of the money. He said he would need some kind of documentation from us as to where the money is (smart kid :) ) but thought that could work. He is 13 and already embracing the principle of "pay yourself first."
And I will leave you with this photo of the littlest dog in our lives, the little red monster who is the most fiercely loyal dog I have ever met. Ms. Lucy Lu. I am including this picture for no reason at all except that she is adorable and looks so noble in this photo.

Lucy is commanding us to hand over that extra bagel!

Musings on poverty

I have been thinking about American perceptions of poverty.

We value it and we despise it
We watch movies about the poor at Christmas, and the Christmas story is based on a poor family whose child was born in a barn. We watch, we listen, we sigh, and we go out and spend spend spend to give our families a little bit of materialism for Christmas. I think many of us have overdone and overspent, feeling regret after the event, although maybe not of this magnitude.

We look at the families who make do with less-either Americans from long ago or those who struggle to feed their families in many parts of today's world. We think them noble and wonderful. However, when we have o have a poor day, yuck we feel terrible! Like we are not fully citizens if we cannot go out and shop. We judge those who struggle to make ends meet in this country-they must be lazy, or stupid, or addicted, or lacking morals, or all of the above. We are bombarded with advertisements about all the cool and wonderful stuff that will make us better people if only we buy it. Then we get mad at the poor for wanting it and buying it. They are being irresponsible with their money. Unlike the middle class Americans who live comfortable lifestyles but have credit card and mortgage debt and are just a few paychecks away from devastation.

Americans like to spend thousands of dollars to visit countries where poor people live. This is often a life changing experience that causes them to reconsider their relationship with money and stuff. However, the irony of spending the money to have the trip often seems lost. Also, I rarely hear about people having the same life changing experiences when they drive through poor neighborhoods near their homes.

We want to teach our children the value of thrift and frugality, but then we get iPhones for our 13 year old children. In the letter, the mom writes: "You are a good and responsible 13-year-old boy and you deserve this gift." While I think the sentiment is normal, I caution parents to think about tying deservedness to iPhones and other gadgets and gizmos. We should be careful not to wrap a person's worth in the stuff we can give. Do the poor lack material goods because they do not deserve them? When a kid is a struggling 20 something, are they more likely to put those goodies on the credit cards they can't afford because they "deserve it?" I think that the idea that we should buy stuff because we deserve it is a common one in our society, and one that advertisers feed into consistently. But we are also constantly hearing about the fiscal cliff, the crappy economy, and the environmental and human rights abuses that go hand in with modern consumption. Maybe this dichotomy contributes to the high percentages of mental health issues in our country? We have all these conflicting messages and no way to sort them out properly. I know that, for me, the conflicting messages are sometimes at the heart of my bad money decisions, and I plan to try to unearth them when I am about to slip away from my financial goals. Hopefully this will help me stay on the frugal path.

Saving at the grocery store

We are trying to bring down one of the biggest costs in our household: the grocery bill. I think the only thing higher is our rent.
 We have three teen and preteen boys in the house, and they can eat. We try to choose healthy, and we do eat dairy and meat, which raise the bill. We tend to shop at WINCO, Their prices are good and they are employee owned, which we appreciate. Before we moved here, we frequented the Discount Grocery Outlet, but now the closest one is 30 miles away. Since the inventory is forever changing, it is a hard to store go out of the way for. We also shop at our local food co-op and Safeway. Since we are trying to reduce our cost, I have decided to tweak our model. Yesterday I scoured the websites of 3 different grocery stores. We have 2 IGAs as well as the Safeway, co-op,  and WINCO. There are also 2 WalMarts, but we don't shop at WalMart for ethical and sensory issues. I price checked. I also made a meal plan, or at least a loose one. I came up with about 10-15 different main dishes that we would be interested in eating, so we can pull cheap, easy, quick meals out of our hat.

The list:
Creamed tuna or chicken casserole
Burritos
Potato and Mushroom Soup
Spaghetti with meat or clam sauce
Pizza (from scratch)
Veggie Omelets
Chili
Lentil or split pea soup with bread
Chicken and Dumplings
Corn Chowder
Shepherd's Pie
Egg Foo Young
Meatloaf in Acorn Squash bowls

We went to WINCO with our list and sale prices from other stores. We plan to make a price book so we will know the best price at a glance, but having this list was a big help. It took us a total of 3 hours to go to all these different stores. I hope to get into shopping every two weeks, making the shopping trip more efficient. Our trip to Safeway was especially satisfying. They have their new loyalty program that requires customers to log in and select the sales they want to participate in. These sales are personalized for each customer, somehow. I always forget to sign in and use the program, just like I always forget to keep track of my Rite Aid rewards money. But this time, I logged in and grabbed some bargains. One of them was Lucerne yogurt for $1.57 a quart. We eat a lot of yogurt and usually spend about $2 a quart, so I was happy about this. When we got to the store, we found the red "reduced" sticker on a quart of plain lowfat. The sticker said 50% off the club price. We found a total of 6 plain yogurts with these stickers. Each quart cost 79 cents!  Thanks to the discount club, I was able to get block cheese at$2.25 a pound. We will use our food processor to shred it. I also grabbed a gallon of milk for $2.25. Given the fact that milk prices may soon soar, I am happy to find any deals I can!

Goals to reduce food cost: eat in more, carry snacks in the car to avoid drive thru temptation, create a price book, comparison shop and shop at multiple places to keep costs low, participate in Bountiful Baskets, shop Safeway clearance, reduce waste!, and clean out freezer* so we can use it.

As I mentioned in a previous post, the Dude is planning to make snowshoes. We found a possible solution, and so went to Ace to buy PVC couplers. While we were standing in line, I noticed there were free calendars, and I grabbed one and discovered I was eligible for a free roll of packing tape with a $10 purchase. Our purchase came to $10.18, and now we have a spare roll of tape.

*I don't remember if I posted about this, but over the summer, we bought a frozen turkey and put it down in the basement freezer. The freezer was on a power strip which was accidentally switched off. The result was obnoxious and smelly, and it all happened at the hottest part of the summer. We tossed the turkey, but there is a bloody stinky mess in the freezer. We plugged it back in and shut it up, in order to deal with it another day. That day has not yet come! The freezer sits in the basement, plugged and empty, waiting for someone to clean and deodorize it. Sad state of affairs.

Changes afoot

I decided to invest in an espresso maker with steam jet. We have one of these:

But I like frothy creamy drinks. So, we went trawling the thrifts and I found one like this: 

I paid $8 for it, which was a little more than I wanted to spend, but this was the  only one I found and I didn't want to embark upon a never ending trek that keeps us going back to thrift shops. I think this one will pay for itself within 4 trips to the coffee shop, if my home brew allows me to be satisfied with a cup of drip at the coffee shop. I also spent 60 cents on a lovely mug with hearts on it. I will bring this with me to the shop and it will help the drip coffee feel a little more special. 

We have been trying to figure out how the Dude can get exercise this winter. In the summer, he bikes and hikes. He works in a restaurant and so moves a lot. But in the winter, it is harder to bike here. His restaurant slows down, so the exercise there tapers off. He suffers from depression, and the long winters are not helpful. We were thinking of buying a membership at my school's fitness center. I automatically pay for a membership, and have been using it often this year. A membership for him would cost about $160 for a semester. We were ready to do it, and then I started brainstorming. We bought a couple of guest passes this week and I noticed that he gravitates towards the bike. He loves loves loves biking. I searched around online a bit and found out that it is relatively easy to build a stand that will turn a bike into a stationary one. We have been interested in trying snowshoeing and a search of the web also unearthed many plans to diy. So, the Dude will get a chance to build (which he loves), and can keep his exercise outdoors, which he also loves. We may have to revisit this if it doesn't work out, but I think this is the current plan.

Let's review

So, the school year got busy, we got lazy, and we fell off the wagon.
One goal was to pay down the credit cards. Thanks to some Christmas splurges and some medical bills, we now have about $4000 in credit card debt, up from $3000 in September. We have a cross state move looming this summer. We need to once again tighten our belts. The nice thing about life is that do-overs and learning from our mistakes are available.
So, what happened? A few things: we never did define needs and luxuries. A few members of the family even forgot about our no-spend pledge. As the semester ground on, it became harder to be excited. The Dude had a hard drive crash and try to go an inexpensive route, which just added additional cost to the later more expensive route. Boys are missing the bus more and more and so needing rides to school. I like meeting friends for coffee, and going out to lunch. Going out is tricky. Socializing often means money.


Computers were a big expense this semester. I had mine die at the beginning of the semester, and had to buy a new one. No way around it. I could use the computer at school, but needing to be home nights with the kids, not terribly convenient. As much as I love my iPad, I cannot do real writing work on it. So, I bought a new computer. Magnus' computer began to run ridiculously slow, due to a lot of programs running at once. He needed more processor speed. Rin needed a new hard drive when his got corrupted. He used an OS running on a flash drive, but not all programs would work and it was an exercise in frustration. I know, I know. We could live without computers, or just have one. However, we are a computer family. We don't have a television or really elaborate gaming systems. We do things mostly on the computer. Magnus reads and absorbs information so quickly that a computer is the only way to keep up with him. He can read a book in about an hour. He reads lots of books, but he likes the internet also. Rin loves computers and programming and wants to spend his life working with them. Luigi loves Minecraft. And now My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic. Giving them each a computer is okay by me. Magnus is at the point (10th grade) where computer is needed or at least very very helpful for schoolwork. The Dude went to the university surplus shop and picked up a "new" tower running Linux for $100. It came with keyboard, mouse, and monitor. He stripped Magnus' old computer, updated it, and gave it to Luigi. For playing Minecraft, checking email, and watching netflix, it is fine. We bought a new hard drive for cheap ($60) and Rin is good to go. The Dude bought a laptop at the surplus store for $50, but it did not work well (5 minute page loading sort of thing). He ended up buying the $280 Samsung Chromebook. I think mine was $450 with rebates. So, that is somewhere almost $1000 in computer stuff this semester! In addition to the $900 for an iPad and $400 for a tablet in the spring, and I think we need to stop spending money on technology for a while! Hopefully the Dude can sell the laptop he bought and get a little cash back. In some ways I am okay with this, because it is easy to spend $1000-$2000 on a single computer, but when on a tight budget, this is a serious outlay.

We had agreed to go to Leavenworth for Christmas and go we did. We packed snacks but did eat dinner out 3 nights. We also had a blast and since we do not travel to see family over the holidays, this trip is very important to us. We had also given the okay to spend money on Christmas and birthday gifts. Rin's hard drive was his birthday present and we used Amazon points for much of it. Magnus' computer was his birthday present and we have gift cards to use for his Christmas present, so that helped some. But we were also hit with an unexpected vet bill when the little Doodle threw out his back. We were fortunate that he didn't need surgery, just pills and rest. Still, a couple hundred dollars. Also, the 20 year old van need hundreds of dollars in investment.

But then there is the bleed. "Oh, let's stop at Jack in the Box" "Let's go for coffee" The Dude and I, thanks to South Beach Diet, now split entrees, which helps bring the cost down. But still-$10-$20 for lunch adds up. We got weak and visited some thrift shops. Overall, I think we did better than we have in the past, often leaving stores empty handed, but we still violated the no spend contract.

So, where do we go from here? We started as we always do: with the family meeting. We talked about a commitment to retool. We defined luxury and necessity more clearly. We have given ourselves $20 a month to spend on restaurants. We have decided to revisit the grocery bill-which is way out of control. We got some lovely coffee shop gift cards to help the studying fees. I am going to give up the beloved latte for a simple coffee or tea. I am planning to buy an espresso maker so that I can make lattes at home, which will help me stay on track in the shops. We have recommitted to coming up with alternatives to spending. And, most importantly, we have scheduled monthly meetings to track progress and discuss struggles. We have decided to only commit to a month at a time. Hopefully that will help.

The Dude is tackling our budget now, going through and figuring out what the heck we are spending on and how to change our ways. No time like the present to figure out the future!

weeks 10-13

Hello,

Starting school got me off blogging for a bit.

It has been a pretty rough month. Usually by the time school starts, we are okay but not great money wise.
This year, we were skidding. The Dude didn't work for a few months at the beginning of the year, I splurged out on an iPad, we had dental costs, and all this added up to a tight summer. We were just about at living on credit cards stage of the game. So, this is the year that my financial aid doesn't go through smoothly! I didn't put my student ID # on the tax form, and didn't find out until Wednesday of the first week. Financial Aid is having a whole host of other issues this year, and I am looking at 5-6 weeks before I will get my check. Even though work started on the 13th, we don't get our first paycheck until the 10th of Sept. Luckily the Dude is making good money and gets cash tips, but it has still been scary.

I was given the option of a $2000 emergency loan, to tide us over.This is good. It costs $10 and will come out of my loan money before my money reaches me. So, we should have been okay. Then my computer died! It was 6 or 7 years old and the screen went nasty. It is back to school time, so we were able to score a pretty good deal, but of course a big chunk of the money is tied up in rebates, which will also reach us in 5-6 weeks. And I still have to send those rebate forms in. Luigi is playing flute this year, and the entire rental for the school year went through, instead of just the first month. $250. And Rin is playing bass clarinet, to the tune of $150 for the first payment. And then there was rent for a month, and the $2000 is gone.Very disappointing how things pile up at once. But we should be okay. However, good that we are learning to spend less.

We have had some expenses. I have started tracking them on my iPad. Rin has gone goth and needed hair dye. There have been some trips to the coffee shop, a Subway sandwich or two, a movie and a drag show. We also paid for parking a couple of days. For weeks 10-13, there has been $60 on unneeded stuff. Not great.

In positive news, we are stocking up on produce at great prices, and getting better at using it up.We are freezing peaches today: 25 pounds for $16!
 The Dude and I have each lost 30 pounds on South Beach. New clothing purchases  may go into the need category soon