Money Monday: July 2, 2012

Among the many things I keep thinking I should totally be better about are these sorts of posts – one of the many ways in which finances can be like dieting is that having something that keeps you motivated (and also honest) can really help you stay the course when you’re trying to accomplish something.

Which is actually a large part of my problem: I have a lot of vague ideas, a fistful of could and a pocketful of should and a side helping of would, but I don’t have a particularly clear-eyed vision around what exactly I want to do, or how precisely I think I should chart the course to get it.

This lack of vision tends to make it hard to actually get anywhere. Kind of like driving a car with the sunshield still up, you know? Where we goin? Dunno, but I think we’re getting there fast!

We’re actually at an excellent place in life to be having the sorts of conversations we need to have, too. Not only because we’re sort of between Grand And Sprawling plans at present (which is rather a problem that needs to be addressed), but because we are – whether we care to admit it or not – standing in the doorway to Middle Age.

(There. I said it. We are middle. frickin'. aged.)

(Well. Chronologically, anyway. Mentally…well, let’s put it this way: Fart. HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA! SHE SAID FART!!! HAHAHAHAHAHA! See? Maximum mental age: Fourteen, MAYBE.)

The way I tend to operate now is on an autopilot that was first set in place fifteen years ago – when we were newly-minted young adults learning just how hard this whole “being a grownup” gig actually was. We had six-figure dreams but only four-figure experience. We had lots of hope and energy, but not a lot of power in our jumps. We had tons of opinions, but not a whole lot of wisdom. And of course, we were desperately squeezing nickels hoping to transform them into dimes through sheer force of will.

But that isn’t where we are now. Now we are in our prime earning years. We are sailing into what we will undoubtedly look back upon as our best-ever earning years, the years when we were making the most money we ever made.

I could be wrong, but I suspect if I don’t get off my arse pretty quickly here and apply my experience in Such Matters to the question of how we want to leverage these literally golden years, I will be rather pissy with my younger self when we are sitting around in our Golden Years wondering why we even call them that, seeing as how it probably should be called the Once Upon A Time We Used To Have Some Gold, ‘N Now It’s Almost All Gone Years. (<= I very much doubt I will become less wordy in my old age. Just a hunch.)

The place I like to start for Such Things isn’t directly with dollars and cents and how many of them go to what categories – rather, I like to start by daydreaming a lot. This is actually a really fun exercise, because at this point in the game you don’t have to be realistic.

You don’t have to be sensible.

You don’t have to be all accountant-ish.

In Point Of Fact, the best way to approach this little task is playfully. Take yourself back to your childhood and play Let’s Pretend with yourself. Let’s pretend that we have all the time, money and talent in the whole wide world at our disposal…nothing is impossible, nothing is too big or too small, nothing requires too much pre-work that we haven’t even started yet, we can have, do or be anything we want…

Well. What do we want?

Grab a notebook and a pen, and start writing! It doesn’t matter whether the thing is an object, a destination or an accomplishment. It doesn’t matter whether it is “silly” or “serious.” They don’t have to be all the same category, or level of difficulty – you can have “swim the English channel” next to “grow at least one edible radish.”

It doesn’t matter whether anybody else approves. It doesn’t even matter whether you approve – yet.

The point here isn’t to carve into stone all the things you will absolutely, without fail strive to and possibly beyond your utmost to have, do and be…it’s simply to give yourself permission to dream, to imagine what such a reality would look like for yourself.

Sure, ultimately we’ll go over this list and prioritize things and look at what steps are between here and there and all that boring sensible stuff.

But for right now…don’t worry about it. Just rough out what “reality” would be, if you got to decide on it.

It’s so easy to get so caught up in what is that we forget that we aren’t necessarily defined by it. Reality seems so…well, real. Finite. Defining. Immovable, and irresistible.

Living as we do within the boundaries of What Is, we can start to believe that we, too, are part of it. That we too are what we are, nothing more, nothing less, unchanging and unchangeable.

It isn’t really so. To our species has been given a terrible and profound gift – we do not have to be defined by the world we are born into, or have fallen into, or even have worked long and hard to arrive in, only to find that, eh, now that I’m here? It ain’t quite what I expected, ya know…?

We have this gift of imagining. Of dreaming. And daring to mold ourselves, so that we fit the reality to which we would like to become accustomed.

Whether the journey is across the street or across the world, though, we can’t get started until we have some idea which way we want to go…so!

Start scribbling, and don’t overthink things at this point. Let those hopes and dreams of yours talk without being interrupted with words like “but” or “if only” or “can’t” for a bit. Build some castles in the air.

Next week, we can start looking into how we can get some foundations under them.

Money Monday: January 2, 2012

Happy New Year, one and all! And before I get all mercenary and self-absorbed with the money-thing – may 2012 bring peace, love, joy and plenty to you, one and all!

The last quarter of 2011 went by in a blur for me. It was definitely a one damn thing after another kind of quarter, both at work and at home. But in the back of my mind, the fact that my current contract expires on March 30 keeps repeating over and over. Not that I’m counting or anything, but there are precisely seven more paychecks coming before this chapter closes and the Next Big Thing begins.

I started looking at the numbers during the Thanksgiving holiday, but quickly abandoned the project when I realized that I was not coming at it from a particularly good head-space; I was moving fast into either being angry, or silly; playing the blame-game about every last penny spent or deciding that every last penny spent was vital, absolutely a non-starter for things to cut.

And I always call December a ‘no budget’ month – which is not < I>entirely true because of course I still have a budget…but I try not to set goals and get all nit-picky while Christmas shopping is in its final days.

It’s just not worth it, you know? I’m going to make myself crazy(er), which by extension means making the whole family crazy, and in the end it does no good – I’m too discombobulated to do good work on that front until after the tinsel and eggnog has been retired for another year.

Which leads me to today, the first Monday of the new year – when indeed the eggnog has been drunk, the Christmas tree de-ornamented, and I’m staring down a new ‘season’ of this full-body-contact sport called Life.

Thanks to the initial pass at number-crunching I’d already done, I’m already uncomfortably aware that we’ve got a lot of…um…fluff in the budget. Monthly charges for this-n-that, So Forth and So On and Miscellaneous Expenses.

When I find myself wondering why I never seem to have any money at the end of the month – this is the stuff that answers the question. Seldom anything Big! and/or Dramatic!...usually a bunch of little stuff that adds up over the course of the month.

But, a lot of it kind of settles in under the ‘sacred cow’ category for either myself or the husband; things that we may acknowledge are adding up to significant amounts of money, but which we will argue, vehemently, aren’t “that” big a deal and/or provide “that” much value in return for us.

It’s particularly hard for me to bring up things that are “his.” He isn’t a guy who is constantly charging out there buying thousands of dollars in power tools or gun safes; he has pretty sane and steady wants, and very seldom runs up saying he neeeeeeds this or that or the other thing.

Lately, he’s been talking a lot about one of our Someday Wouldn’t It Be Awesome If items – which is to move to a place with a little more land around it. Not 160 acres in the middle of nowhere or anything like that, but maybe five to ten acres within reasonable distance of the Amtrak line back to the city.

Prices are really good right now, and will probably stay that way for quite a while to come; but we’re in a really bad position to take advantage of them. We’re upside down on the current house (ugh), still paying things off, and every single month I’m ending up practically at a net-zero in terms of income v. expenses.

Last week, we got to have a dinner out; it’s rare for us to have more than a quick walk out for lunch on the days we’re both in the office, and was a great treat to be able to talk about anything for more than a few minutes without being interrupted by a child or a coworker.

Finally, on the drive home, I asked the tough question: How much do we really want that house on a little land? Because (I continued, awkwardly), when I looked at how we spend our money lately…it would appear that we value things like monthly massages, nail appointments, cable TV and tablet network plans way more than we value that Someday Awesome home on a few acres of range, where the deer eat the broccoli all day.

Plus, it simply won’t be possible to keep spending this way when I’m not working – even if it is only for a few weeks while I look for the next contract.

Just sayin’.

{awkward pause goes here}

After a moment of prayerful consideration (or possibly mourning for the Impending Budget Cut Victims), he opined that we should indeed look at where we are currently spending, and consider each line item’s importance in that way: Is this monthly expense more important than being able to make that move we keep saying would be Awesome?

Which leads me now to my task for this week: This week, I’m going to pull together a spending report for the last three months. Ignoring the things that are Christmas / Holiday spending, I’m going to get an idea of the average monthly spending for everything from cable to haircuts.

And then, I’m going to look for areas where we could cut back – without treating anything as a sacred cow, without whining about how we neeeeeeed this or that emotionally, or how it’s such a good deal, really, when you think about it.

We’re hurtling toward a period without my income; whether it will be brief or prolonged, we have no way of knowing. Sure, I have a skill set that is in demand and fairly highly paid; and usually, as long as I’m willing to make that long commute, I don’t have a lot of trouble finding a new contract.

But nothing is guaranteed. (Including my willingness to make the commute. Ahem.)

We need to make sure we’re ready to handle it, whether it is short or long in duration. We need to be able to get by on just the one income, and it would be ideal if we could not merely get by, but also put by – if we can reduce our spending enough to also be saving, we’ll be able to get to that bigger goal that much sooner.

And also…I need to do much better on the “dinner” front. Holy smokes, meals have gotten weird around here. Frequently, “dinner” equates to “forage in the fridge, find something to eat.” Between the family not eating together and the tendency for the “snack” foods to be substituted for “actual” foods by parents and kids alike (oops), we’re eating unhealthy and expensive junk instead of more cost-effective, actual food.

TO WHICH END…I propose the following menu for this week. (Wish me luck. I need to get this all assembled and ready to go today, or it will not end up on the table during the week!)

Monday: Pork chops, gratin potatoes (leftovers from the weekend) and corn (also leftovers)

Tuesday: Lemon chicken breasts, rice and spinach (from the garden – good old California!)

Wednesday: Meatloaf, mashed potatoes and peas and carrots

Thursday: Spaghetti night (woooo, easy!)

Friday: Beef roast, roasted potatoes and green beans

Saturday: Beef pot pies (leftover roast)

Taking off the training wheels

I tried to reply to this in the comments from this morning, but it got too lengthy. (Me? Lengthy? Never!) Anyway, you know the number one reason I feel I absolutely cannot continue the ‘modified plan’ for Danger Mouse the way I am for Boo Bug and Captain Adventure?

It’s this. The first week of school, I put $60 into her lunch fund. I KID YOU NOT, less than a week later – she skitters past me, stopping just long enough to blurt out, “Oh! And! I’m out of lunch money!”

“No, you’re not,” I said confidently.

“Well, the lunch lady said so, and I had to have cheese and crackers for lunch,” she tells me.

Uh, wha-now?!

MUCH. PRODDING. LATER., I learn that my beloved idiot of a child has blown through $60 buying French toast sticks and fruit snacks for “everybody,” plus getting cash-back (!?!?!) at the register of her middle school for the ice cream truck later.

(I’m sorry. I need a moment. I am still so @^*&@ing pissed about that last one. IN WHAT REALITY is that even possible?! I MEAN, I KNOW, it’s middle school, blah blah blah responsibility blah blah blah growing up etc. etc. etc., BUT LORD LOVE A DUCK, that is just…ARGH!)

Needless to say, I called the school the next day and said, “Yeah, hi, I’m Danger Mouse’s mom – can we put a block on her lunch account so she can’t purchase the a la carte stuff?”

This is what we did at her elementary school to keep her from doing the same exact thing, minus the cash back part which they were not STUPID ENOUGH to allow.

{collects self…deep breath, and hooooold for a moment…long slow release…OK! moving on!}

The fact that she couldn’t do it didn’t teach her a damned thing. The instant she discovered that she could do it, bam. Her lunch money burned a hole right through the floor of the cafeteria.

And now? Now? We are in Middle School. Which apparently is some kind of magic ‘all-grown-up’ place where the same kids who three months earlier couldn’t be held accountable for wiping their own noses are suddenly more than capable of handling all their own responsibilities without anything by way of adult intervention.

Which is why they responded to this with, “Oh, hell to the no. SHE has to take responsibility for HER OWN actions.”

And I looked at this kid of mine, starting to wear bras, about two seconds from having to arm-wrestle her big sister for the box of menstrual pads, and suddenly…it hit me, hard, that this kid, this same kid who had just done this incredibly brainless thing, this too-smart-to-be-so-stupid child…was never in a million years going to be “with it” enough to make a lunch in the mornings. Or remember the lunch. And I’ve been out of the house for three hours before she leaves for school – it’s out of my hands.

She’s going to be going without food from dinner the night before until 3:30 the following day, every day, because this is how she is, she’ll never get her act together on this, it’s just not how she is, it’s not her nature, and hang on a second…why do we take that ‘as read’ with her?!

I sat there in this tunnel of past and future rushing by me, counting up all the various ways we’ve tried to impress the concept of budgeting on her; all the times we’ve walked her through how this stuff works, slowly, carefully, with charts and graphs, with budgets and ‘tell me what $7 plus $5 is,’ with real money and pretend money.

And always, always, having to bail her out. Having to wrestle the money out of her hand, slap her upside the head and say, “What did I just say?! You cannot spend this whole thing at the first churro stand you run across!!!”

We intervene. Every single time. We go back to the charts. We explain how 2 + 2 ends up as 4. We talk it to death. We have different color cards. We use different kinds of money-markers. We talk until we’re blue, and the instant we hand her money again?

The instant you take your hand off the brake, she is full speed ahead, and damn the torpedoes.

It’s like giving an ADHD squirrel a plate of frosted sugar cookies for snack with a Red Bull to wash them down, and then trying to take it for a walk on a leash made out of embroidery floss.

After six years of trying to teach her self-control…I’ve got to start letting her crash, if she’s going to insist on speeding up as she approaches the wall instead of applying a little brake…and then instead of rushing in with the Neosporin and band-aids, I’ll have to just tell her where they are and remind her what to do with them.

Hopefully, by the time she’s having to buy gas (OHMYGAH, WHA?!?!), she’ll be better able to remember to take care of those most important things first, and then have her fun.

(I don’t promise not to nag, though. I can’t help it. I’m like a walking, talking calculator with her. “That’s $6.50…that would leave you with only $39.75, are you sure you want to…I mean, seriously, dude, you don’t even like that color, why do you need to buy…OK, it’s your funeral, I’m just sayin’…!”)

(MEANWHILE, Boo Bug [her younger sister] is all, “Oh, I’m out of lunch money…oh, wait, it costs how much for breakfast at school? Welllllllll, we have plenty of muffins and waffles in the freezer, how about just lunches…and I’ll make a lunch on Thursday because I don’t like the school lunch on Thursday…” Heh. How can four kids with the same two parents all be so different?!)

Sometimes I hate being the grownup

I’m constantly trying to figure out a “good” way to teach the Denizens how money…um…works.

As in, “No, there isn’t a magic money tree in the backyard that spits out twenty dollar bills whenever y’all want something.”

Or, “Just because you saw an ATM receipt that said $387.29 does not mean that I actually have $387.29 that I can spend on just anything right now.”

And the ever-popular, “I know you were innocently looking for mints when you accidentally (ahem) noticed that I have $200 in cash in my wallet, but this does not mean I can ‘totally afford’ to hand over $15 to the ice cream truck for six popsicles that would cost me about three bucks at the supermarket.”

About a month ago, I instituted a new thing: I gave each of the kids a blank checkbook. Every month, I give the girls a $100 deposit (it’s not into a ‘real’ account! don’t hyperventilate! breathe! breathe, people!), and they can also earn extra cash for doing extra chores.

Everything they want or need is then paid for out of this money. If they don’t feel like making a lunch because this is “too hard,” then almost half of their $100 will be going to the cafeteria. If they want a cell phone and minutes to use it with, they’d better think about that before they decide they need whatever shiny thing just popped up on their little radar.

It’s already been a fascinating – and painful – experience.

Captain Adventure is on a modified plan: He has a checkbook, but instead of a big deposit from mommy that covers everything, he gets a weekly deposit based on his ‘checks’ – he’ll get a check for decent behavior at school, two checks for really good behavior, and four for super-extra-awesome. He also gets them for doing well on school work, and for doing his chores. Each check is worth a quarter – and then he gets to use them for the things he wants, like treats from the ice cream truck and Wii games.

Eldest, on the other hand, has had her own real checking account since her birthday in March – Wells Fargo has a ‘teen checking’ that is kind of like a checking account with training wheels. There are no ‘regular’ fees (ATM transactions, low balances, that kind of stuff), and reduced fees for the ‘oopsie’ things (overdrawing the account). There are also no checks, but she has a Visa debit card she can use to get cash and make purchases.

She has been incredibly mature and responsible with it. She keeps careful track of her balance, has been very conservative with her spending, and I believe has bought something like three shirts and five book since we opened the account. She hasn’t come anywhere close to overdrawing it, and is already becoming the kind of customer the banks fall all over themselves trying to acquire. (*sniff!* I’m so proud…!)

Boo Bug still has a heavy amount of…ahem…let’s call it parental advisement. OH yeah. I am totally running interference with her. I’ll make her sleep on decisions, and I’ll even flat out tell her no. You need this first. You have outgrown all of your jeans – we are going to find you a couple pairs of pants before I let you sign up for a twenty year membership on the Pixie Hollow website, kid.

But Danger Mouse…she’s the kid that tends to be the reason I find myself muttering, “I have got to find a better way to teach them about These Things!!”

She lives entirely in Now. Not only is she really into instant-if-not-sooner gratification, she has limited-to-zero ability to remember that there even is a tomorrow…let alone that she’s got something she has to do in that far, far away world.

This weekend, I had to do something that I found horribly difficult: I had to allow her to run through the balance in her virtual account on festival froodideries.

Which I knew was going to happen. Before we piled into Homer the Odyssey for a day of fun at our annual Bean Festival, I said to myself, firmly, “Now listen here, Momma I’m Going To Protect You From Everything Forever: You KNOW she’s going to blow it. It is her nature. It is this nature that must be brought under control. She can either learn this lesson now, when it is safe and she doesn’t go hungry or without a roof over her head…or you can go ahead and wait until she’s out there in the Real World on her own and then has to figure out what happens if you spend your entire paycheck the minute you get it, without remembering that you’ve got to come up with $X for rent and $Y for food.”

With this internal pep-talk ringing in my mind, I proceeded to practically have a nervous breakdown as she zipped through her entire balance over the course of about three hours. By the end of the day, I was repeating things like what her balance would be, reminding her that the next ‘big’ deposit wasn’t coming for three long weeks, and listing off the things she had said she wanted or needed ‘more’ like I was an electronic parrot with brand new batteries.

It did no good. She ripped through her cash like it was nothing, and only at the very end of the day, when she was sitting there with a $9 tri-trip sandwich (which she wasn’t going to eat more than three bites of) in her hands staring at $13 left in her account did she realize…that’s another month without the coveted cell phone.

“That’s why I wanted to go there first,” she wailed. “I knew this would happen!”

“Then it’s good that we couldn’t go yesterday,” I shot back. “You have got to learn to think about tomorrow today, kid!”

Which was pretty brave talk for someone who was trying to figure out a loophole in her own system that would allow her to let the kid get the cell phone anyway, huh?

Sometimes, I hate being the grownup. I hate when teaching bleeds over into torturing. I hate watching my kids cry when their own choices come boomeranging back and smack them upside the head.

I hate it when it seems best to let them take a fall and find out it hurts.

The rest of September is going to be ugly for #2. She’s going to “need” things, and I’m sure there will be tears and lamentations that she cannot have them right now. And I am going to be sorely tempted to just…get them for her. BECAUSE AFTER ALL, she is still so young! AFTER ALL, this is hard for grownups! …because after all, it’s not like our parents ever taught us…this…stuff…

…oh…yeah…kinda…my job here, isn’t it…

…sigh…

Someday all too soon, she’s going to be leaving this little nest of ours. She’ll be out there on her own, with a real paycheck, and a real checking account…and real obligations, none of which are likely to give her a free pass on account of her youth, or their own tender feelings.

She’s got to learn how to do this, and so many other things.

It sucks being the grownup. And I suppose it isn’t much fun being the one who is growing up, either.

I just hope that someday she thanks me for it half as hard as I think she hates me for it right about now, as it settles in on her just how many things she traded for an afternoon of new hats and tri-tip.

Money Monday: January 25, 2010

As January is coming to a close, we’re finally starting to see some of the payoff for all the crazy we’re inflicting on ourselves; with both of us doing the heavy-duty commute, the level of insane has reached epic proportions. Through November and December, I felt like I was constantly having to tell myself to be patient. So many days off, so many expenses, miniature paychecks…it felt as though the money were just pouring through my fingers like sand.

I was ready yesterday to start giving myself the patience lecture yet again. Expenses were ridiculous this month, we’ve got a lot of digging to do before we see any daylight anyway, and, well, you’ve just got to stay the course and all those other positive, upbeat sort of hang-on-a-second…

For the first time in more than a year, I’m starting a new month with the entire month’s budget already in the checking account – which means that the income we earn in February gets to stockpile in the savings account for a while instead of zipping through our hands so fast we get blisters on our check-writing fingers.

Now, the biggest factor contributing to this miracle of you mean I have ACTUAL MONEY LEFT OVER?!-ness is, of course, the fact that I now have a full-time paycheck again, but that wouldn’t add up to diddly if it weren’t for the other half of the equation, which is that we are continuing to live as if we didn’t have this second income coming in.

Usually, any increase in income will see a proportional increase in spending. It’s just human nature, I think – we hope for better things, always, and we see that pay raise as being that better thing, arrived at last.

We feel wealthy, so we spend. Even if we said we wouldn’t, even if we said we were going to use this raise to build up savings or get together a downpayment on a house or pay off debts or whatever…there’s just something about that extra money in the checking account.

I can’t pretend I don’t feel it. I’m out in the Real World again, marching up and down Market Street, seeing other people’s Cool Toys and wishing I had something cool like that, deciding that I “need” this or “deserve” that.

Maybe I could take a little vacation this year…maybe I should get myself an iPhone…you know what’s better than one pair of boots? TWO pairs of boots!...a makeover, a wardrobe change, a live-in nanny and housekeeper and a much bigger house to keep them in…

I have no idea how long this contract will actually last, or what will happen afterward. I don’t want to risk becoming dependent on the income, to increase our spending until it matches this new bounty and then be all upset when it suddenly gets yanked out from under me.

Soooooooooo… I’ve based all of our budgeting on just my husband’s income, which means that right now we’ve got less than $300 a month for everything that isn’t a recurring bill.

Yeah. Not going to work out too well, long term. I suppose it might be possible to feed, clothe, transport and entertain a family of six on three hundred bucks a month in California…but I’m really not too game to try. We’re cruising by right now on Christmas present clothing and leftover food, but the day is rapidly approaching when shoes will be worn out (what’s up with that, anyway? I swear to Dog, Captain Adventure can go through a pair of shoes in less than two weeks…wears the toes right on out of them…argh…) and the pantry will be truly bare – I need to have more cash available for Food and Such.

We’d have it now, if I put my paycheck into the main pot, stirred well and spent it if I had it.

But then, we’d become dependent on it for certain. We’d “need” that money just to get by, and I’m 110% sure that we’d find ourselves spending princely sums on everything from food to swim goggles, and then saying, “But we hardly spend anything!” and wondering where it all goes.

Instead, I’m holding my paychecks physically apart. They go into an entirely separate account at a different bank, and they pay for just two things: Work-related expenses (childcare and train tickets, for example), and whatever the #1 Goal currently is.

Right now, I’m building up savings; sooner than I thought, I’ll be cherry-picking debts out of the mix. The first one will give me an extra $275 a month in the “real” budget; it’s still not a whole lot and there isn’t a whole lot of goin’ to the movies in the budget, but it’s a lot more feasible…and because I’m not increasing our spending to match our new income, I should be able to pay it off in about three months and grab the next one – which is another $300.

Two months later, I’ll move on to the next and put another $200 back in the general mix.

And so on, and so on, for as long as the income lasts…the important thing being, when it does come to its inevitable end, we won’t be screaming in pain because we neeeeeeeeeeed! that paycheck to keep the ballet lessons going, the steak on the table, the weekly shoe odyssey, not to mention the cruise we’re planning to take this summer!

All along, we’re living on just the one income, with the comfort-level on it increasing only at sustainable levels.

It’s not always easy to do. There’s a lot of stuff I want to buy, and it seems like something new pops up every single day. It’s hard, right now, trying to keep the spending down that far…harder still when payday rolls around and I feel that surge of Wealthy hit.

Surely I can afford a little pecan tart and perhaps a tall latte from Starbucks today…certainly I deserve a LITTLE something for all this Crazy, say, maybe, a pair of BROWN boots… (I found a pair of great knee-high black ones at the Famous Brands shoe outlet right before Christmas? Fifteen dollars. Woot!) (…but now, I want brown ones…) (seriously? what is it about boots?! I’m not a big shoe person, but I am attracted to boots of all kinds, from cowboy to ridiculous stiletto-heeled monstrosities…)

ANYWAY. It’s yet another case of trying to make sure I get what I really want…which come right down to it, is freedom. I don’t want to be a slave to my paychecks. I want to want to work, and if I don’t want to, I want to have the ability to say, “It’s been swell! See you later!” and jump off the treadmill.

Right now, I really don’t have that. I pretend I do, setting our budget so tight and insisting that we’ll make do (undoubtedly with many bailouts from my purportedly set-aside paycheck – let’s face it, $300 a month? Not too likely to make it through February on $300, folks…shoot, I am now the proud parent of two Girl Scouts and HEY! LOOK AT THAT! IT’S COOKIE-SELLIN’ TIME!!!!) (I am dead meat, people. Seriously. Pray for me.)…but we can’t make do.

The windshield cracked on the car last week. Where would I have gotten the $100 copay – because I’ll tell you what, even with all the food leftover from the holidays, I still burned through that $300 in the first two and a half weeks and was fudging like crazy for the rest of the month.

One doctor’s visit, just one, and that other $200 and then some, is gone.

One two night hospital stay was over $1,600 out of pocket – after insurance had whittled it down from over $16,000.

Yeah. Right now, we neeeeeeeeeed my paycheck.

But I can change that…one resisted box of Thin Mints at a time…

(you have no idea…my daughters, all cute in their little vests…with the little forms and the pleeeeeeeeease, mommy? It’s for courage, confidence and character!”…oh…dear…)

(“In late-breaking news, a mother of two Girl Scouts spent $18,000 on cookies this afternoon, and then gorged herself into a coma trying to hide the evidence from her husband! Film at eleven!”)

Debt and Dieting

You know…reducing debt and dieting are an awful lot alike. First of all, they both stink. They’re both about as much fun as a root canal. They both are things that you’d really rather not do.

And, as much as we don’t like to think about this because after all, nothing is our fault anymore because we are all perfectly OK just the way we are and all…what we’re having to do is deal with the fallout from our own failings.

We don’t generally wake up one morning and find that we were mugged by the Fat Gang – we generally get there one too-big meal at a time. (At least, that was how I got myself there…sure, I used child-making and mommyhood as an excuse, but push come to shove I put on those 70 extra pounds one extra-large slice of pie at a time. The Denizens didn’t do it to me – I did it to me. Which stings and I hate it so let’s move on, shall we?)

Likewise, debt tends to arrive one bad decision at a time. Something happens. You’re in mid-remodel and a contractor says, “Uh…ma’am? Can you come here and look at this with me for a second?” (That’s not something you want to hear.)

$8,500 later, the problem is fixed. But it lives on in our hearts, minds and checking account balance!

Or you suddenly realize your two year old isn’t just a slow bloomer with the talking thing…there’s something wrong. He doesn’t just not-talk, he doesn’t communicate. He doesn’t point, he doesn’t grunt, he doesn’t make any attempt to inform you of his wants and needs…he’s just…well, he’s like a really big newborn, really. He yells when he wants something, and you get to figure it out with no verbal or physical cues to speak of.

That was a nearly $30,000, two year odyssey. Good times! (I’d feel better about it if any of that expensive stuff had actually done anything…the best results have come from simply following the advice of his pediatrician [which seven times out of ten was to NOT take him for the tests, therapies and treatments I insisted on doing anyway], and the school’s speech, behavioral and occupational therapists. Sigh. Oh well. The coffee was really good at the $595-per-session “emotional attunement” therapist’s office, anyway…) (Yeah. $595 cup of coffee, right there…SIGH…)

ANYWAY. There’s something else debt and diets have in common: There are thousands of books, groups, methods, and gurus out there to tell you how to go about it.

Each one will tell you that this, right here, is the One True Way. This way, and no other, is The Way. You will lose the weight if you follow my twelve easy steps. You will be out of debt if you follow my bouncing ball.

Do this. Don’t do that. Eat this. Don’t eat that.

Have you ever noticed that each way has both supporters and detractors? One side eagerly spreading the Gospel According to $GURU, the other side just as eager to explain how $GURU didn’t work for them one little bit, and they actually ended up worse off, and it’s all a big scam?

That’s another thing debt and dieting have in common: Every individual has to find what will work for them, a plan that motivates them and keeps them motivated…because yet another thing they have in common is that they are seldom “quick fix” situations. It took time to get into this mess, it takes time to get out of it; the way in was usually quite easy, but the path out is steep and hard.

So, what got me on this particular rampage? Well. In response to my Monday post, Anonymous mentioned that Dave Ramsey advises people to pay the lowest dollar-value line off first, regardless of interest rate, for the psychological boost and to free up more minimum payment money faster.

I read that comment about three times and then shrieked, “Whaaaaaaaat?! That’s crazy! That’s just stupid! That’s like saying, ‘You should eat the cake first, because then you’ll feel fuller and won’t eat as much dinner!’”

But then I settled down and reminded myself that personal finance is not a one-size-fits-all proposition. The reason there are so many advisors out there proposing that you do this, or that, or the other is that lots of things can, and do, work…and what works for me won’t automatically work for anybody else…no matter how sure I am that my way is THE One True Way. (Accept no substitutes!)

I am very numbers-oriented. I don’t see little individual bits of the puzzle – I look at bottom lines, at total costs and benefits. So when he says “pay off the smallest line first, regardless of interest rate,” it immediately raises hives on my psyche. Whaaaaaaaaaaaat?! Are you NUTS, Dave? That buys you NOTHING, and costs you MUCH!

And then, because I am all numbers-oriented and some junk, I ran some scenarios through my debt reduction planner. I’ve got all our debts in here, regardless of their “good, bad or indifferent” status – we’re sick to death of all of them and don’t care that we get $0.27 of every dollar we spend on mortgage interest kicked back on our taxes. We’d rather keep the other $0.73 in our pockets, thank-you-very-much and hey! Here’s an idea! If we don’t have to pay the mortgage, we don’t have to earn as much money…if we don’t earn as much money, we don’t pay as much in taxes! Problem solved!

Anyway. Right. So. We’ve got a mix of credit cards, home loans, auto loan, medical obligations (oy) and a lovely chunk being paid to the IRS.

Left alone, paying just the minimum / fixed payments, we’re looking at being debt-free around January 2038, at a total cost (interest paid, in other words) of roughly $453,000. (Yes, three zeroes.) (See, this is the stuff people hate to look at, and this is also why Dave’s plan works well for a lot of people – interest is hard to look at, therefore paying less interest isn’t as appealing to most people as simply paying something off is.)

Simply putting them in interest-rate order, fixing the payments as they currently are and snowballing as each is paid off (adding the payment from the paid-off to the highest interest debt), we’re debt free in December 2018 at a total cost of about $156,000. (Dedicating all of my net income [after childcare and commute], we are debt free in August 2013, for only $59,350 in interest. WOOT!)

Using Dave’s method, we hit the same December 2018 debt-free date, and pay $164,000 in interest…so it will cost us an extra $8,000 in interest and not get us out of the morass even one month sooner.

UNLESS, of course, we gave up and went shopping because we got so frustrated by the apparent lack of progress.

In which case, Dave’s method would have kicked butt.

Whiiiiiiiiich brings me (at long last) to my point: There are lots of plans out there. Just about any of them can work – whether or not they will depends on how well they fit in with your personal style.

There has to be a ker-chunk! when the plan comes into your life. If it doesn’t click-n-stick, it doesn’t have a prayer of working.

There’s just one thing I will categorically say to steer clear of if you’re in the market for some help with your debts, or your personal finances in general: People who get paid if they sell you a specific method.

There is nothing wrong with getting a professional to help you. A certified financial planner is not just for the rich and famous, or to deal with extraordinary situations like “my uncle just died and left me a bazillion dollars…and a cat…”, and they can be of tremendous help with such mundane things as figuring out a budget, dealing with debts, planning for college or retirement, and so on and so forth.

But do watch out for the guy who works for MegaLoansAndAnnuitiesRUs.com, OK? Watch out for the online “friend” who directs you to a sure-fire plan which s/he will gladly send you for one low-low payment of $49.95.

Or even $12.95.

Be suspicious. Ask uncomfortable questions. When the “really great guy” who works for the loan company tells you that this home equity line will cure all your ills and make all your “bad” debt go bye-bye…don’t automatically believe him. Don’t look at the payment and say, “Hey! It’s less than we’re paying now! SOLD!”

Ask yourself what s/he’s getting out of this, and whether or not that matters. They’re not automatically bad people because they make a living by selling you a specific loan, and the loan is not automatically a bad loan because it’s being offered to you by someone who only pays their bills if you take it – I’m just saying a little extra caution is in order.

Think the whole thing through. Ask the uncomfortable questions of yourself, too. What does this really fix? Does it solve the problem, or merely delay the inevitable? Moving debts around to make them easier to bear isn’t necessarily the best idea, even for someone like me who likes to pay the absolute least amount of interest humanly possible.

It’s like taking pain pills. You might feel great, but the underlying problem is still there – and might be getting worse. You’re not feeling the pain so much, so you think everything is groovy…but in actuality, you’re getting into more and more trouble every minute.

If you’re staring down the barrels of a debt-cannon, I know this stuff is overwhelming. Right now, more people than ever are teetering on the edge; more people are hitting the wall faster and harder than at any other time in my memory. Between job losses, credit lines being slashed, and the overall mad rush on the part of the creditors to slam us with higher rates, lower lines, increased payments and so forth and so on before Congress makes it illegal – well.

A lot of people are being forced to deal with a credit-free-except-you-gotta-keep-paying-it-off reality literally overnight.

It sucks, but there’s a lot of help out there. If you’re reading this, you are aware of a little thing we have called The Internet, right? Google ‘how to get out of debt.’ Read-read-read. Don’t jump onto the first bandwagon that comes along – think about it. Ask yourself if the plan makes sense to you. Does it feel right to you, does it make you sit up straighter and say, “Yes! I could do that!”

If something promises that The Solution can be yours, just click here and for $129.95 they will send you the five easy steps to financial freedom…please…say, “Pass!”

And if you don’t find the answer on your own and really want somebody to just tell it to you already!, take that money to the office of a financial planner instead (check out Wiser Advisor to get started finding one) (by the way, you shouldn’t pay a dime to interview them and you have every right to do so – again, this is very personal and you want someone you feel is going to work well both with and for you).

It may cost $50 an hour for that person to go over your financial situation with you, and it make indeed take two or three or even four hours – but you should get what you really need, which is a plan tailored to you, that fits not merely your financial situation but your personal style.

A plan you’ll be able to stick to…which is going to be the only plan that will work.

(I lost the weight using old-fashioned calorie, fats and portion-size control, along with thirty minutes of exercise a day [brisk walking plus stretching] whether I technically had time to or not. Nothing fancy, no rules or exchanges or points or anything else. It sucked. I hated every second of it. Still do, sometimes. But, I’ve been within my ideal range for six years now, so I’m OK with “just” one scoop of ice cream or a half-slice of pie. The smaller portion still tastes good, but doesn’t leave extra gifts behind on my hips.) (The hardest part is actually the exercise. Gah. I hate exercise-as-such. But the gardening is really helping with that – it’s not exercise, see, because it has a point. That’s my story and I’m sticking to it.)

Money Monday: November 2, 2009

Why do we work?

Most of the time, I suspect this question is asked as a rhetorical protest against the evils of the early morning alarm. Gaaaaaah, why?! Why do I DO this to myself? Unnnnnngh…don’t WANNA work…

And then we drag ourselves out of bed, pull on our battle raiment and head for the battlefields for yet another day of slugging it out with the world.

I’m one of those people who feels that life is work – that work is, in fact, kind of the point of things. What we do with our time is kind of, you know, what this life’s experience is all about for us.

Things haven’t really changed as much as we think they have. Oh sure, they’re faster and sleeker and smarter and come in a much wider variety of colors and all, but what does it all boil down to in the end?

Most of us work to keep ourselves in food, shelter and clothing; it is only a happy few who get to work because they merely want to work, because it makes them feel fulfilled or gives them some other emotional high.

Most of us work because we’ve got to, in order to keep body and soul together.

I’m stating the obvious here because I’m having a big problem with myself right now.

I need to work right now because we are up to about our knees in debt; arguably, it’s actually up to the waist at this point.

Over the last two years, we’ve had more crises than we had cash to cover them, and then with the last year of “eh” income we really got way out into the weeds on that.

And of course, the further into debt you go, the harder it is to cover everything on one income – and if you’re getting into debt because the one income can’t cover everything that comes up in an average year, well, what’s going to happen when you start adding debt payments to the pile?

Uh-huh. Suddenly a “good” month is one where you cover everything without using a credit card, and a “bad” one isn’t just that you slipped slightly further into debt, but that you took a major header down the Cliff o’Debt.

An average one sees you sliding by “just a little bit.”

And it is only on the GREAT! months that you take things the other way. Yippee, I actually made headway!…and then two months later…@^*&@ it, what do you MEAN it’ll cost $500 to fix that! Wellllllll…I don’t know…honey, how long do YOU think we can go without running water?…

So for me specifically, the answer right now to the question why do you work is very simple: So that I can take a backhoe to the debt pile, clear as much of it away as humanly possible and get us back to a situation where either one of us can, with one (1) paycheck, keep this household in food, clothing, shelter, and entertainment without a whole lot of drama.

Back to where we have enough, plus a little bit extra.

I’ve been going over what stays and what goes on my homesteading experiment. My first instinct was to say “Everything goes!” because I’m tired even thinking about commuting my time is about to become a lot more precious – and let’s face it, that’s what made things like boxed crackers and prefab meals so appealing to the human race in the first place.

When your time becomes a scarce resource, it automatically becomes more valuable…but throw a dollar value on it and suddenly all sorts of things become “more cost effective” to just buy rather than do yourself.

BUT. I am not working so that I can pay someone else to do things for me. I’m not working to support an entire ecosystem of gardeners and maid services and giant factories that belch out an endless supply of crackers, snack cakes and frozen sandwiches with their crusts already cut off. (I still hate that those things even exist. I’m not saying it’s a rational or even a fair loathing, but those Uncrustable things just give me the heebie-jeebies.) (Worse even than the Lunchable thing. “Hey moms! We’ll give you $0.65 worth of crackers and meat-like-product, and charge you $2.00 because we’ve put them into a bright yellow box and neatly organized them in plastic trays! Or, for another buck, we’ll throw in a fifty-cent pouch of juice-like liquid! What a deal!”) (But I digress.) (Sort of.)

A lot of times, those of us with two incomes get into what’s called the ‘two income trap.’ We acquire obligations, either debts or lifestyle, that eat up the entirety of both paychecks…and then we say, “I sure wish I didn’t have to work {this hard, this long, at this soul-sucking place}, that I could take more time for something else, but of course I can’t – we need every penny I earn to pay all the bills.”

If I start using my paycheck to pay for things like convenience foods, new clothes, vacations and all the other So Forth and So On our wonderful, entertainment-oriented society puts out there for my idle amusement, we’re quickly going to find ourselves backed into a corner where we need that paycheck, desperately, to keep the bills paid and our lifestyle what we’ve expanded it to be.

I don’t want to do that. We’ve already proven (time and again), that we don’t need that stuff to be happy – what we need is stability, and the freedom to make choices.

So, I’m going to be doing my best to make sure my paycheck doesn’t go into “stuff,” but stays firmly targeted against those debts – every debt I get rid of brings our monthly needs down, which returns that much more choice to us.

Whiiiiiich means that my homesteading experiment is still on…even if I do suspect that I’m more than a bit crazy for even thinking about attempting it. The only slack I’m cutting myself is that I’m not going to try to add anything new for a while, until I’ve adjusted to the new schedule and gotten some kind of groove on.

To reduce the temptation to decide things are “emergencies” based on the balance in the checking account rather than their actual urgency, I’ve set up my paycheck (when I’ve finally actually got one) (by the way, it is sooooooo hard not to spend the paycheck I don’t have yet right now) to go into a separate account rather than dumping it into the same pot with my husband’s paycheck. That secondary account will pay for three things, and three things only: Our childcare provider, my train tickets, and to make payments on whichever debt is currently at the top of the snowball list. (If you don’t know what a snowball is, scroll to the bottom of the post – I’ll explain it down there.)

For everything else, all the other bills and groceries and so forth and so on, we’re still operating on just my husband’s paycheck. I’ll still have the same tight budget, which will mean I’ll have to operate with the same (ahem) creative solutions for a while…but here’s the sweet bit: Each time my paycheck takes over paying a bill?

That bill’s payment stops coming from my husband’s paycheck, and can go back into the household instead.

It won’t be long before I’ve got the same budget I used to have for groceries and such…and not long after that, we should start seeing that we are once again consistently living below our means.

At that point, we should start automatically building up some savings – which both cushions us against the inevitable Stuff Happens that life likes to throw at us (oh, that funny swooshing noise was my brakes going out, you say?), and starts to give us back our choices.

I can’t wait for those choices.

I also can’t wait for my garden to start really producing. We’ve got a lot of slow-growing winter vegetables out there right now, and the peas got pissy because first we had a heat wave (they don’t like heat) and then a violent wind storm (they don’t like violence, either) – but now they’re suddenly getting their legs and growing vigorously and putting out pod after pod of sweet promise.

The green beans are starting to grow, too. They’re sooooooo cute! Wee little tiny green beans, awwwwwwww!

Also, green bean blossoms are just as sweet at pea blossoms.

Aren’t I the cutest thing ever? Yes, you know you want to kiss me and tell me how cute I am! I rival the tiniest babies in Cute Factor, it’s true! How about if I wave a bit in the breeze, give you a REAL treat…

The carrots are not impressed by the cuteness of the green beans. Actually, they’re kind of like teenagers that way.



Ya, whatever, cute little green bean blossoms…if you need me, I’ll be here in my room sulking and not growing by so much as a centimeter no matter how much you feed me because I’m a grouchy old carrot and I take something like 1,200 days to get big enough to harvest…whatEVER…

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What the heck is a ‘snowball’?

The ‘snowball’ method is one of the most popular methods of getting rid of debt. It gets you out of debt fastest, and at the least possible out of pocket cost to you.

First, you take all the debts you want to be rid of – for most of us this would be “all” your debts, but sometimes people set out home and auto loans, loans to family, student loans and the like. (This time around, I’m not doing that – the minivan and home equity and mortgage loans are going into the pot like any other obligation. So there.) (Easier for me to say, since my mortgage interest rate puts it very near the bottom of the list.)

Next, you put the debts in order – highest rate of interest on top, lowest at the bottom.

The debt at the top of the list is the one you focus on first. Everybody else gets minimum payments while you blast away at that most expensive debt, sending it every spare cent you can – remember, focus on the interest, not the payment. What you pay in interest is the true cost of the debt, not the payment. This method works best because it eliminates the most expensive debt first, saving you the most money overall.

When that first debt is paid off, you move on to the next debt – but you roll the payment from the first debt into the payment on the second, and that’s what you send now to Debt #2.

That’s where it gets the name “snowball” – because like a snowball, the further you roll with this, the more mass you pick up. It takes some mental discipline, but hey, look, you’re making those payments now, right? Right. So, instead of spending the payment on fritter-and-fratter, you add it to the next payment in line and keep blasting away.

Soon, that little snowball is an avalanche and your creditors will never know what hit them! Woo hoo, debt free!

Bright new days

Yesterday was one of those “hard days.” (As if you couldn’t tell.)

It was a lot like pulling a scab off an infected wound. (Ooooooh, nice visual! Thanks for that, Tama!) (No problem, any time you need gross bodily fluid related images, you can count on me!)

The whole situation hurt. It ached and throbbed and kept me up at night and was miserable. But I didn’t want to deal with it yet because I didn’t have to deal with it until next month and maybe a miracle would happen and somehow I’d just have the money.

But it just wasn’t going to happen. So I took a deep breath, filed, clicked, paid, a bunch of icky stuff oozed out and I ranted and screamed and cried and then I self-medicated and went to bed.

Guess what?

Feels a lot better this morning. Still sore. Still aching. It’s going to take some old-fashioned fiscal therapy to get things limbered up again.

But that impossible pressure is gone. The worry and fear and anticipation is over.

And in its place…well.

It’s a bright and beautiful day out there today. Sunny, cool, a little breezy.

Perfect day to start a war.

I now have $488,390.06 in combined mortgage, credit card, auto and medical loans to pay off. I have no savings to fall back on “in case.” We are relying on my husband being able to bill two clients who are themselves struggling – one of them in particular is having trouble keeping even their own people working, let alone us.

This is as personal as it gets, folks, and I am taking very personally indeed.

I’ll be honest, I much prefer this feeling. Fear, anxiety, uncertainty…they suck.

I like looking at what I have now and thinking, Right. Where’s my whittling knife and my coupon book? This sucker is goin’ DOWN!

It’s an enemy I know…one I know I can beat. Sure, it isn’t fun, I’ll probably have to do things I won’t like (rhymes with ‘commute’) and life will get extra-crazy for a while.

But I have action items. I have power. I have knowledge and skills and something I clearly understand before me.

The wound still hurts. But it’s starting to heal, and I know what to do to heal it faster.

It begins now, with a single word…Onward!

I’m goin’ to my happy place now…

Oh look, it’s the payback for poor planning mentioned in the last post: I just paid our remaining tax liability for 2008. It was ugly. I am not happy. I’m ashamed to admit I actually cried.

But having to produce EXCUSE ME THIRTY GRAND out of your ear can do that to you, especially when you’re already sort of in A State because {insert list of woes we’re all sick of hearing about here, economy, jobless situation, recession, wah-wah-wah}.

The good news is, there were no penalties. The bad news is, we were under-withheld.

The good news is, I was able to come up with the money. The bad news is, I had to do it in one of those ways that involves sitting around comparing the options.

Do I fall on my sword? Slit my wrists? Saaaaaay, there’s an idea! Sideways or long-ways? Or perhaps I could just drink hemlock! Or antifreeze! I hear it tastes just like Gatorade…or was that looks like Gatorade…?

So many choices! And all of them just SO DAMNED CHEERY!!!!

I finally went with the one that cost the least in interest and penalties (but screws my FICO firmly to wall for a while) and ran with it.

And right after I hit the last button and confirmed for the twentieth time that yes, I would like to sell my soul and half of each Denizen’s, please, well.

I just kind of sat back and wept like a baby. Feels very unfair, somehow. Even though it totally is fair, and totally is my fault. I misread one stupid check, thought the total income was one figure when it was actually nearly triple that (silly me, I thought the actual dollars we got would be somewhere near the total income charged by the transaction! Hahahahaha! Yeah, the total check was half the additional taxes I just paid!).

ANYWAY. It’s done now. Done, and done.

I’ll be paying them off for a long, long time…but the worst part is over.

The dreadful anticipation and uncertainty is gone. Nothing left but the hard work to shovel our way back out of the hole.

…but first, you know what? I’m gonna get me a beer, and find me a video game.

Work more tomorrow.

Right now…takin’ a break until the kids get home.

Money Monday: 03/02/2009

Every single month (it seems, at least), I find myself slammed with one or more large hits. This month, the big one was childcare.

On the one hand, the after school program for the girls is relatively inexpensive – it sets us back $170 per month, per child, which is a far sight better than the $125 per week per child the average daycare charges.

On the other hand, you have to jump in the instant months become available and snap up your spots. All of the months. So when April and May opened up, I had to jump on in and pay my $900 all in one go. Ouch.

This month, I have two big ticket items coming at me like a pair of freight trains that left Denver at 4:15 and Chicago at 12:45, traveling at…oh. Wait. Sorry. Math homework confusion. Ahem.

The first train is property taxes. Again with the two hand thing – compared to a lot of our neighbors, our taxes are very low. On the other hand, it’s still $1,600.

The second train is the car insurance. Ordinarily I pay the whole thing in one swell foop, because otherwise they charge me 12% interest on the balance and I am against that. However, this year…sigh. I think I’m going to have to take them up on the financing offer because meh, the income-outgo ratio sucks lately.

Speaking of which, one of the things I want to do this month is put some extra effort into cash conservation.

It may come as a complete surprise that stockpiling cash often comes as a result of not spending it.

I know! Revolutionary! Quick, somebody call the committee, ‘cause this kid deserves the Nobel prize in Economics!

Ahem. OK, so, possibly, there have been greater discoveries made this year.

Or possibly, the whole thing is rigged.

ANYWAY. It can really be surprising how much money you spend on this and that. Each individual thing is small. Five dollars here. Twenty dollars there. Just forty dollars for this sheet set, what a deal…twenty dollars for a pair of jeans, practically stealing.

They all add up, each ‘negligible’ little thing piling on top of the last one. Even my thrift store purchases add up. Less than I’d pay at the mall, but more than I’d pay if I just didn’t buy them.

This month, I’m invoking a partial spending fast. No thrift stores, no stockpiling, no loading up the freezer or picking up twelve boxes of Ritz crackers, even if they are at fire-sale prices. The idea on groceries will be to cook and serve what we already have, filling in only what we actually need – mostly milk and fresh produce until the CSA deliveries start.

Tonight, I used the last whole chicken from the freezer to make one of those comfort-food dinners. I quartered an onion for stuffing, melted some butter, added some garlic salt and brushed the outside of the bird with it, then put it into the oven and roasted it. Mashed potatoes and canned corn rounded it out.

Which brings me to another subject. Another mom last week was complaining about how expensive mashed potatoes were. And I was all, Errrrrgh? because hello, cheapest food on the planet.

Well, she was talkin’ potato buds, the instant-potato-substance. Cheaper than KFC, sure, but when you’re keeping a family with a teenager or two fed? It still gets pricy.

It was her impression that ‘real’ mashed potatoes were a lot of huff, bother, mess and that you needed some kind of mystic powers to make mashed potatoes.

Now, I’ll admit that there is some amount of practice involved that makes mashed potatoes something I consider fast and easy. But really…they’re not hard.

The basic system around here is this.

Set out a pot large enough for the potatoes to simmer submerged in water. Fill it with water, then set it on the stove to heat while you select and prepare your victims.

The basic recipes, which feeds six smallish appetites or four more average ones, takes six medium potatoes. Wash and peel them, then give them three decisive cuts: One down the middle lengthwise, and then into thirds. Plop! Into the heating water they go.

Bring the water to a boil, then reduce the heat to a brisk simmer. Give them about fifteen minutes then poke at them with a fork. If they give way fairly easily, you’re ready. You don’t want them to explode at the slightest pressure – that’s going to make grainy mashed potatoes. You don’t want them too firm, either – if they fight the fork and have a chance of winning, they’ll be lumpy.

They should break apart with slight pressure. When that happens, take them off the heat and drain them. Toss a quarter cup of butter or margarine into the pan, put in the potatoes, and start with a quarter cup of milk.

Set the hand mixer on stun and start whipping the spuds. This is where your human eyeball comes in: If they seem grainy and ‘too thick,’ add a tablespoon of milk. Just a tablespoon – the point of creamy goodness comes fast, and you can’t take the excess milk out very easily.

If you like them a little rustic (with lumps), leave the speed low and stop sooner. If you prefer them to be really smooth and creamy, set that mixer on kill and whip them.

And then you’re done. It generally takes me just over twenty minutes start to. Set the pan to soak while you’re eating and cleanup is no big deal, either.

Don’t be afraid of your kitchen, folks. I know, I know, a lot of you aren’t. But I also know more than a few you are, and you find those home-cooked goodies intimidating because when they don’t turn out right…well. It’s so obvious, and you feel like a failure because gee whiz…every other cook in America can do this in his or her sleep, what’s wrong with me?!

Ya know what? The first several runs I made at mashed potatoes sucked. Mightily. My most common mistake was over-boiling the potatoes, which made them gummy and blech. I also over-salted them, under-cooked them, over-whipped them, and once absent-mindedly dumped almost a cup of milk into them. (Potato soup, that’s what that was.) (Not bad, exactly…just, you know, not mashed potatoes.)

Don’t worry about it. If anybody gives you crap about your mashed potatoes, invite them to make their own damned dinner and see how they feel about it then. Laugh about it. Enjoy it. Love yourself for trying…love yourself for getting better…love yourself for succeeding.

And don’t worry too much about wasting some potatoes or even burning some steak along the way. Kitchen accidents happen to everybody, even famous celebrity chefs. These are valuable lessons, investments in future good things.

Give them a try. You will save money in the long run, eat healthier foods (OK, mashed potatoes are not exactly the Gold Standard for health food, just stay with me here…) and if the apocalypse actually happens and there is no more take-out?

You will be worth your weight in gold.

You have to plan ahead, people. Those who can cook from scratch, post-apocalypse? They’ll be nearly as valuable as people who can make socks using two sticks and some string…just sayin’….

(Seriously. Imagine if you couldn’t pop over to WalMart for a pair of socks? Who loves their resident knitter now, huh?!)

Money Monday: February 23

I know I’m not alone in the whole reevaluating my relationship to spending thing right now. In that one thing leads to another kind of way, I’ve been reevaluating this week is my relationship to money this last week.

Which led me to realize something rather surprising about myself that I honestly hadn’t realized before: I actually have an aversion to the idea of being wealthy. I’m fine with ‘comfortable,’ I’m good with the old middle class thing.

But when I start thinking about things like having enough cash to buy a rental property and start being a landlord, things that start smacking of actual wealth building…I turn all skittish and start making excuses. I diss my own strengths, call myself stupid, and tell myself that I should be grateful we can manage to have merely enough.

What’s even weirder is, I have no problem with somebody else being wealthy. Somebody else builds a business, makes and keeps bank, and is then obscenely rich…well, good on ‘em. More power to ‘em. May the cork of their wine bottles never rot.

It’s just not OK for me.

Weird, huh? The things you realize, when a massive global recession has you thinking more about your money and how you square off with it. I have a certain comfort zone when it comes to how much wealth we’ve accumulated, and once we hit it I start doing things to ensure we don’t go over it.

I’m going to need to talk myself out of that little quirk, PDQ. It’s already shot us in the foot at least twice, and I certainly don’t want to be here again the next time a recession rolls around – out of cash, scrambling to keep the bills paid, and wishing with all my heart and soul we’d hoarded up more of the jaded dross back when the trees were loaded with fruit and we could eat ourselves sick with ease.

Anywho...I’m going to have to go to Costco tomorrow.

Pray for me.

I don’t wanna, but I gotta. We’re out of everything from milk to eggs and flour and even sugar. Ugh. I’m just not feeling the love for the journey, you know? These are the moments I wish they provided free delivery. Or even reasonably cheap delivery. Or that it would be less than twenty bucks for delivery.

I really am not looking forward to it.

This week I’m using beans a fair bit in the menu. They’re cheap, healthy and filling – a perfect food. Plus they can provide hours of cheap entertainment later. Especially if you have some arrested adolescence going on, which guess what? We do!

I’ve already made one batch of navy bean soup. It’s partially pureed, which gives it both velvety body and nice, firm whole beans to nom. It was supposed to be for dinner last night, but it sort of never got eaten so it’s magically transformed itself into lunch meals. Flexibility, it’s what’s for dinner lunch.

The other one I’m making later in the week is a honey-baked pinto bean as a side dish. Mostly I wanted to make that one because it will use up some salt pork I acquired a while back, ostensibly to make Boston baked beans but then it turned out they weren’t needed and well. The salt pork has been in the fridge ever since.

We’ll be having spaghetti tomorrow night because it is fast and cheap. I will be grateful for both because I will have gone to Costco in the morning. I will not want to look at or think about food for two DAYS after shopping at Costco. It sucks the starch right out of me.

Wednesday is a baked maple-honey chicken and a wild rice and mushroom soup. The grownups love that soup…the kids loathe it. Which is fine, because more for me, neener-neener. Wild rice is expensive, fancy food...which should erase the taste of the cheap, prepackaged food samples shoved at me from all directions in Costco tomorrow.

Thursday I’m going for pineapple-baked pork chops, rice and green beans. Gotten from Costco. So I will just have to get over my Costco aversion, now, won't I.

Friday is looking like a homemade pizza kind of night. And I won't even think about Costco at that point because time heals all wounds and all.

And Saturday I’m shooting for a roast chicken, mashed potatoes and corn. Because it sounds like comfort food to me, and I have a feeling I’m going to need it by then. I’ve got a long week ahead of me (in addition to the Costco thing), and I’m starting it by staying up way too late writing a blog post.

Mixed up priorites – I haz them.

Good night, all. Sweet dreams, and may nobody else fart under your covers.

How to earn $1,440 an hour

…for ten minutes annually.

OK, yeah, the full disclosure part kind of takes the wind out of the old sails. Still! In ten minutes start to finish, I got $240 taken off my annual car insurance premium.

Back when one or both of us was commuting daily, we put a lot of miles on the vehicles – especially our little Civic. It was being driven a whopping 25,000 miles annually, sometimes even more.

Since my husband started working almost exclusively from home over a year ago, that’s dropped considerably. Last year, we put less than 9,000 miles on the car.

So I called up my faithful representatives and mentioned this fact, and about three seconds later my annual bill was $240 less. Sweet.

In somewhat related news, I do not see why it is necessary to emblazon Twenty-five years together all over my cards. Why don’t they add, We’ve been with you through ten vehicles and over a million miles! or Gee, you really are getting past the dewy-fresh-youth thing, aren’t you sweetie while they’re at it?

I’m gratified that they recognize our long-term relationship and all, but at the same time some of us are perhaps a tad sensitive about things that make plain the fact that if we look thirty-something, it is probably Maybelline.

...but perhaps I am just a little extra-super-sensitive at the moment because a sweet little girl-child on the beach Tuesday asked me if I had GRANDCHILDREN...ooooooh, SNAP!

Anyway. If you haven’t really looked your policy declarations over in a while, give it a squint or two. There might be some money waiting to be found on it.

Wha…wha day izzit…?

I’ve been adjusting my stock portfolios this week. When I doodled that task down on the list last weekend, I expected it would take, eh, four hours or so on Monday. It’s usually a quarterly thing, but I’ve started doing it a tad more frequently since the market has been…um…let’s call it unfriendly.

I’m not a day trader, or even a particularly active investor. When it comes to my personal investing philosophy, There is no way but Value Investing, and Warren Buffet is its prophet.

Buy for value, hold it forever. Amen.

So Monday I settle in and rebalance my husband’s IRA. Conservative portfolio, not a whole lot of action going on. Took some profits off the table, reinvested the dividend and interest cash in other things, and moved on. No more than an hour. {yawn}

My IRA. A little more aggressive, a little more time in. Hmm. Interesting, this is really down, almost to the point where the stop order (an order you place with your broker in advance saying, “If this hits this point, sell” – it’s a way to protect profits if you aren’t going to be directly babysitting your investments) will engage. Didn’t expect that, not really…what gives?…hmm…that’s interesting, looks like it’s just pin-action from this other thing…hey…

Whoa. Waitasecond, why is that down that far? Holy crap, this other one is…@*^&@in’ A, man, that’s way oversold! {Begins pouring over financial statements and making educated guesses and frantically moving money around…}

Five days later…it’s like The Lost Weekend.

Only, you know. It was five days, instead of a weekend. And instead of descending into the dark underworld of addiction, I was playing the market like it was Warcraft. Made really good money. Whoo boy. I’ve got some good fish stories now, people. And it was fun.

But yeah…I seem to have lost a few days. Vines have grown up the walls in here. And I think I saw an Eloi foraging in the fridge. Or it might have been Eldest. Hard to tell, really.

This highly-active investing thing is not exactly low on the stress-o-meter, either. I had to see my doctor yesterday to go over medications and how well they are(n’t) working, and for the first time in my life, ever, my blood pressure was over 120.

I’m usually one of those people they read twice. “OK, and your blood pressure is 100 over 58…wait…let me do that again…104 over 60…um…let’s use a different cuff…”

So when I came back at 127 over 74 yesterday, my doctor drawled, “Hummm…what’s got you all worked up?”, and swung the computer monitor around so I could see that the line showing my blood pressure over time was all “boring… boring… boring… boring… SKYROCKETS IN FLIGHT!”

What can I say, man. {starts twitching and nervously fingering the Treo, which may be about to buzz with an alert from the broker} Made bank in a quick pop in and out of MegaBank.com this week, and yet I still have a large lot held long because I have a long investment horizon and think in, oh, five years or so, that sucker may be back up from the $3.05 I bought at to the $25 or even better range…unless, of course, their heavy reliance on the FICO instead of common frickin’ sense for lending rears up and bites them on the arse, which is IMHO the next big !SURPRISE! coming for the financial sector.

…crap, there goes my blood pressure again…

Interesting week. Fun, too. But I wouldn’t want to do this, you know, every week. Too stressful, and too fraught with peril. It’s a lot like going to Vegas. Most of the time, you don’t win big. You do well if you break even, or only lose what you intended to lose.

But then you have that one time, when on the way to the blackjack table you drop three quarters into a slot machine and win $600.

Somehow, that one win cancels out dozens or even hundreds of other Vegas trips where you left poorer.

I still think value investing is the one true way to build wealth in the markets.

But managing to grab a few thousand shares at $3 and selling most of them off at $5.50 a few days later sure makes for a great fish story, huh?

And now, I think I’d better settle in for some nice, relaxing knitting. Let’s see, I’m on row 73 of lace pattern #2…K17, K2tog, yo, k1b, yo, kn1b, yo, sl1-psso, yo…wait…is that a yo, or a k1b…?

Crap! There it goes again!!…

529 update

Hmm, my blog comments have been going into my spam folder. How irksome.

I did use the UPromise 529 plans for the kids – I’ve been using their program for a while and had some reward cash just sitting there. Looking into the assorted plans, I decided I liked the Vanguard portfolios they had available and jumped on in. Hopefully, I won’t get a bunch of water up my nose on the deal…(I’m not a huge lover of mutual funds. I prefer to hand-pick my money-leeches companies.)

I’ve also gotten the cash-back card offered through Citibank (giving up my other one, which makes me sad…I just bought a 27 cubic foot refrigerator for $300 of cash-as-such and $1800 in gift cards I got from my old card…) (you should have seen the expression on the cashier’s face, though, when I produced a stack of Sears gift cards the size of three or four decks of cards to pay for the fridge…PRICELESS!).

But the more I got to thinking about it, the actual cash-value of my points on the other card was about 1%, sometimes less. The UPromise card gives 1% back on all purchases, with bonus amounts for certain products and services. It may not be as emotionally satisfying (or laughter inducing) as having a wallet thick with gift cards for wants-not-needs buying fun, but I’m getting more and more concerned that we just aren’t doing enough for those college futures. I keep hearing about folks coming out of basic college with tens of thousands of dollars in student loans to pay off, and it just gives me the heebie-jeebies.

“OK! So! You’re starting your new career now, and even as a newbie you’ll be making $5,000 more a year than this other guy without a degree! However, your student loans will be costing you $10,000 a year in payments…” Ouch.

I’m checking into the Freshman Fund college savings registry Jeff mentioned in his comment. I’m a little concerned about the part where “any logged in user” can access the kids’ pages…they’re not seeing account information or physical address, but still. Call me neurotic. (“You’re neurotic!!” “WHO SAID THAT?!?!” {tears office apart looking for hidden cameras…})

But it does seem like a cool idea, especially for those of us with far-flung friends and relatives who tend to mail checks for birthdays and such. Instead of mailing a check (which I then have to deposit into my account and remember to write an equal check into their accounts) (remembering, is the key word here…), they could log into the site and make their donation on the web. I’ll give it a trial run for a Denizen or two and see how it works out, and let y’all know what happens.

Specifically, I’ll be checking out how easy it is to use, whether or not my email gets spammed like crazy after I sign up, what fees (if any) are involved and how long it takes for a contribution to go from Point A to Point B. And of course, I’ll be making sure the money goes where it’s supposed to go – and no extra money vanishes. Call me neurotic, but…oh wait, we already went over that…

Interestingly, one of their other founders was also the founder of CDNow – does anybody else remember CDNow, before it was swallowed whole by Amazon?!

Ah, yes. The good old days, when the Internet was a Wild, Wild West and if you said, “Internet Startup!” venture capitalists said, “Here’s my pocketbook!” I’m not dissing CDNow, by the way…I really am just having a warm-fuzzy flashback to the Internet boom days…and trying to forget that part where it went “BOOM!!!” and people who came late to the party got their fingers blown off and stuff.

That part kinda sucked. Like the folks next door, who bought their house at $485K at the end of the housing boom in order to flip it, couldn’t sell it at $435K and have now walked away leaving it sad and alone and vacant…LET’S TALK ABOUT SOMETHING ELSE…

I also looked at Jeff’s blog, and I have to say I heartily agree with one of his recurring themes: The plastic crap we ladle over our children at every birthday and holiday is so pointless. We spend thousands on toys they don’t really play with, on goods that pack up our landfills and clutter our homes. I’m not saying that kids should have no toys, ever, or that we should limit their playthings to only three hand-carved wooden toys of native birch or anything like that.

But I do think that if we cut the volume of them way, way down and put the money aside for their futures instead…they would thank us for it, in the sweet by-and-by.

Right now, they may be pissed. This is why we are called “parents” instead of “best buddies” – parenting sometimes means that you will do things of which the children do not approve. Like putting spears of broccoli on their plates or limiting their TV time, saying “no, you may not watch Shaun of the Dead with us”. It’s part of the gig. I don’t like it either, but oh well. Someday, they will thank me for all the fiber and character-building and call me to complain that their six year old wants to watch Shaun of the Dead and oh my gawd, it’s horrible the way he cries and pouted and stomps when we say ‘no’!

And I shall laugh. Oh yes. I shall laugh…

Anyway, back to birthdays today: Getting them just one small thing for instant gratification and putting $25 into their college fund would definitely be a better deal, for them and the planet. Less trash from wrapping and packaging, and the inevitable throwing away of the toys they didn’t really like so they decided to drown them in the toilet or throw them off the balcony or leave them in the backyard to bake.

Along with sixteen pairs of shoes and my good colander.

Right-O. Putting the soapbox away now.

Also, a 529 for myself! I hadn’t thought of that…I already have a BS [shut up!], but honestly I’d love to get a master’s someday…tax-advantaged growth on my savings toward that Lofty Goal would not suck, not even a little bit…! And think: if my kids decline to go to college or by some miracle have cash left over when they’re through (stop laughing!), I could roll it into a 529 for myself and go back to college for a degree in something incredibly valuable, like Celtic Studies.

Cead Mille Failte, y’all…

We have a cunning plan

I finally set up official 529 plans for the kids and transferred their college savings into them. Well. Most of their college savings, anyway. They have a couple accounts that are returning kick-butt interest right now (credit union is giving them 8% for a year, for example), but still.

It was time, and past time, to get this stuff into an official tax-advantaged savings account with their names literally on them.

And as I was going through the process I thought, “Hey. This is something you ought to take a minute to talk about on your blog!”

I know there is a lot of debate out there about whether or not it is “necessary” to provide college money for your kids. I considered it part of the deal when I had the Denizens, because personally I feel that a college education has tremendous value – not merely in the form of that infamous (and not always transpiring) leg-up into the World of the Salaried, but also in terms of personal growth. Your basic college education includes a lot of “useless” classes in things like philosophy, logic, creative writing, literature and so on.

I know that I would be a much less interesting person if I hadn’t been exposed to all those groovy, annoying, pointless, tell-me-again-what-this-has-to-do-with-getting-a-degree courses.

And yeah. I do kind of hope that it will give my Denizens the same thing it has given me: That slight edge in the workforce. I know for a fact that there have been times when my resume was in a pile of twenty or more, and it only drifted to the top because I was one of the very few with an actual, verifiable degree behind it.

The 529 plan allows your college money to grow free of federal and, in most states, state income taxes. You do not, in most states, get any kind of tax advantage for the money you put into the account (unlike, say, an IRA or 401k). You can put in up to $310,000 per student (oh, I wish!!). You can start with as little as $25 down.

It does not matter how much or little you earn. This is not just for the rich, or just for the middle class, or just for the poor. It is for anybody who wants to use it. Every little bit helps, so don’t let the fact that you aren’t sure you can manage more then $25 a month stop you. Even if it doesn’t pay for the Whole Experience, you’ve done more than you otherwise would and it just might make the difference between Not Going, and Going.

And never forget the magic of compounding. The money you put in today will grow, and the interest it earns will in turn earn more interest, and so on, and so on, and so on.

If the money is withdrawn for ‘qualified expenses’ (books, tuition, fees, supplies and equipment – even housing expenses if the student is going to school more than half time), the income earned on the money is never taxed.

If one of the Denizens doesn’t end up going to college, I can either give their money to another Denizen, or roll it over for one of my nieces or nephews, or even just let it ride for my grandkids. I retain complete control over the funds – I can even decide that eh! What have these rotten kids done for me lately?!, withdraw the funds, pay the tax penalties on the income I’ve earned and go to Maui on the cash.

I haven’t actually set up these accounts before for a variety of reasons, ranging from ‘lazy’ to ‘I can do better on my own’…which I can, up to a point. Frankly, my returns in the stock market kick butt over the average returns of these mutual funds, and with fewer fees and loads.

But I pay taxes on the income I earn by doing the investing myself. So, take the total earnings for the year, lop 33% off the top of that for state and federal taxes and there you go – that’s what the kids earned on their college money.

So now that they’re set up and a hefty portion of my monthly budget is being siphoned into them, I have one last tip to share: There is a website called UPromise. It’s like a MyPoints or other loyalty-reward program, but these funds go to college savings for your kid(s). Use your reward card at Safeway, earn money back for college. Buy your gas at Exxon, get money back for college. Buy your Oriental Trading goodies via the UPromise site…7% back for college.

You get the idea.

You don’t have to be the parent to use UPromise, by the way. Grandparents, friends, neighbors, uncles and aunties – you can link your grocery cards and such and be earning cash back for your favorite Little Ones as well.

And with that…my tax deductions are demanding dinner. And snacks. And ice cream. And…

Holding onto the rush

The Simple Dollar had an article today entitled The Total Experience of a Purchase.

He talks about rushing out a few years ago to buy an iPod Nano, charged on a card he couldn't pay off, and how after an initial "buyer's rush" it then didn't get used as much and overall it not only cost him an extra $50 in interest charges but ended up having a lot of negative baggage associated with it. Paid $200, didn't use it, couldn't pay it off, paying interest paying interest paying interest still not using it, FEH!

He then talks about avoiding that "overall negative experience" feeling by thinking purchases through and making sure he both really wants the thing AND can afford it before he buys.

I've got something to add.

The "buyer's rush" is a well-documented experience. You go out, you buy something, you feel gooooooood. You feel important, and pampered, and all that. Like most rushes, it fades over time - sometimes it's gone before you even get out to the car.

And if you're buying crap you don't need with money you don't have, the feeling turns ugly in a hurry. And then a lot of people turn right around and buy more, and so on and so on and so on.

What Trent doesn't mention in his article is the way a buyer's rush can last, under the right conditions. Instant gratification often has instant fade on the rush - but having to wait, and work, and anticipate the getting of the Cool Whatnot adds to the enjoyment of it.

You've already given yourself an emotional boost by not going into money-worries for it, a fiscal boost by not adding to your debt load to own it, and then you give yourself a lasting glow by knowing, every single time you look at it, every time you use it, that you really wanted it, and then earned it, and you need make no apologies for having it.

I still get a rush from Homer the Odyssey. And my iPod Classic. Every bottle of wine in my rack, every pair of shoes in my closet, the yarn on my shelves, the chairs in our front room. Each one still gives me a stab of pleasure when I think of them.

I live a very rich life, without the rich life credit card balances.

It's a good thing.

Bulk Buying

All right, that’s it. I just read the umpteenth item about people rushing out to bulk buy everything from rice to peanuts, and I’m afraid we’re going to have results similar to the tremendous waste of beef during the beef shortage back in the 70s – it was caused by people buying unfamiliar cuts in attempts to still have their beef in spite of skyrocketing costs. “Hey, this has all these weird bones in it…and is it supposed to taste like liver?!”

I’m going to do my wee little part to help here. You want to buy bulk? Keep the following in mind:

Price book: A Bulk Buyers Best Friend

A price book is a simple tool that can really help you figure out whether a deal is awesome!, or smoke & mirrors!. You do not have to keep track of every single item in the entire store. Only things you buy frequently, with special attention paid to items you buy in varying sizes in an attempt to save money.

Let’s take cocoa powder for an example. Who has the best deal on cocoa powder? Is that sale price actually your ‘best possible’ price? Is the bulk purchase best?

Store	Item	Date	Units	Price	Cost / Unit
Safeway	Scharffen Bergerpowder Cocoa	4/25/2008	6	$8.54	$1.42
Safeway	Hershey's Cocoa Powder	3/24/2008	8	$4.35	$0.54
Penzey's Spices	Dutch Process Cocoa Powder	4/25/2008	16	$7.90	$0.49
Safeway (Sale)	Hershey's Cocoa Powder	4/25/2008	8	$3.50	$0.44
Penzey's Spices	Natural Cocoa Powder	4/25/2008	16	$6.80	$0.43
www.BulkFoods.com	Natural Cocoa Powder	4/25/2008	80	$11.25	$0.14
www.BulkFoods.com	Natural Cocoa Powder	4/25/2008	400	$53.15	$0.13
www.BulkFoods.com	Natural Cocoa Powder	4/25/2008	800	$87.78	$0.11

Note that by calculating it by units, you level the playing field. It can be hard to compare a six ounce container to a one pound container – but by calling that one pound bag a sixteen ounce bag instead and figuring the price out in ounces rather than by the bag, you have a better chance of figuring out whether or not you’re getting a great price.

Looking at a price tag of almost ninety bucks is enough to make you just say, “Uh, no, that’s too expensive!” on face value. But look at that price-per-ounce! A third the price of the supermarket sale price!

Where’s it gonna go?

If you’re going to buy bulk, think about storage before you get home with a 50 pound sack of flour. You can’t open that bag, then stick it out in the garage and hope for the best. Moisture will make it rot, weevils will infest it, you will be very, very sorry. You need a dry, cool storage space and air-tight containers. If you have concerns about weevils or other varmints, put the food into your freezer for 24 to 48 hours.

Personally, I use food-grade containers like these. Mine are square, though, which I find stack with more stability and also make best use of my (ahem) square garage cupboards.

Check them regularly. I keep a smaller Tupperware in the kitchen, and each time I refill it I make sure I stir up the contents of the larger containers. Sometimes, varmints and wetness (and the mold it can cause, ew!) will gather only on the bottom, with seemingly innocent and clean stuff on top. Giving the stock a good deep stirring will expose any nastiness that might be happening.

If you use the stuff briskly you won’t have this problem. I go through that 50 pound sack of flour each and every month – sometimes, in less than a month. I haven’t seen a weevil in my flour buckets in years. But if you’re buying a two-year supply of rice this weekend? Make sure you keep an eye on it.

Expiration

Before you buy, check the ‘use by’ dates. Yes, many things will actually survive long past their technical expiration date – but some things don’t, and sometimes the bulk items have been languishing longer than you might expect. There could be several months difference between the use by on the cases at the front of the shelf, and the back.

The freezer does not equal suspended animation

The freezer will significantly extend the life of things. But it is not, NOT, NOT!, equivalent to a complete halt of the decaying process. Things will lose moisture and texture over time, and honestly if you’ve got a self-defrosting freezer – they may desiccate faster than you expect.

As a general rule of thumb, your vegetables will last about 3 to 6 months, depending on what they are and how they are prepared. Nuts will keep about 6 months. Meats…meats are tricky. The larger the cut, the longer it lasts – up to a year for large roasts. Ground meats 3 to 6 months. I’ve had really rotten luck with really thin things like deli ham, no more than a month before I’ve found it just doesn’t taste right.

Does this mean they will have to be thrown away? No. Not at all. I actually do use vegetables that are way past their prime in stocks, and sometimes will take meat that not even the dog would eat (well, if we had a dog, anyway…) due to texture and/or appearance and use it in soups. But if you were planning to grill those luscious steaks you bought last year when they were on sale?

They…uh…may not be the same filets you knew and loved.

Know What You’re Buying!!!!

Read the label very, very carefully. Take my cocoa powder up there: I’m buying natural processed powder. It is not like Hershey’s! It is like the difference between semi-sweet (Hershey’s) and unsweetened (natural process). If I use it in recipes without acknowledging this, whatever I make will come out on the ‘bittersweet’ side. (This is perfectly OK by me, actually – but not everybody likes chocolate that kind of bites you back!)

If you pay $80 for a box of cocoa powder you then despise, well, you haven’t actually saved money unless you force yourself to choke it down anyway.

Invest a little money in a smaller package if you can. As fresh milk prices continue to rise, it may well come to pass that dry milk will become economical again. Right now, a gallon of fresh 1% milk is $2.99 (actually, it’s $3.59 a gallon, but two for $5.99). The cost to make a gallon of nonfat is $3.50 if bought in extreme bulk.

If the price of a gallon of milk crept over about $3.75 around here, I’d consider buying the milk powder. But before I ran out and got three cases of #10 (enough for roughly 86 gallons of milk) cans of the stuff for the best price-break, I’d “waste” money (paying about $4 a gallon) on a single can to try it. If I loathe the brand, if it adds a nasty taste to my breads or I can’t get a white sauce to set using it – I’m not going to spend $300 only to find out it is not going to work for me!

Got Friends?

I know. We all live on little islands, we talk to nobody, we know nobody, and the last thing we want to do is go to the neighbors (who are, like, not from around here? And also they dress funny? Plus I think they might be {Catholic, Hindu, Baptist, Unitarians, Satanists} or some junk?) and say, “Heyyyyyy…wanna buy some beef with me?!”

But I think we’re going to have to get over that. Normal people simply aren’t going to be able to use an entire cow in six months.

But four families just might – and each family will enjoy the tremendous cost savings associated with going direct to the ranch and buying an entire steer. (The rancher will be happy too, because in spite of giving you a price as much as 50% less than the Costco price he still makes more selling directly to you!)

If you can force yourself to take that tremendous risk and get to know your neighbors, all sorts of things become possible. Their backyard garden has zucchini, tomatoes and lettuce…you’re growing corn, sunflowers and broccoli. Let’s make a deal!

You couldn’t possibly use 50 pounds of flour in your lifetime…but if five neighbors each take ten pounds, well. Ten pounds at my supermarket would cost $6. Fifty pounds is (was last time, anyway) $14.50 - $3 per ten pounds, or half price.

You’re brilliant at sewing, I can bake. Say, could you put a new zipper in Eldest’s dress? I’ll give you four loaves of bread for it…dude, mow my front lawn for me and I’ll give you a fresh apple pie (you would not believe how strong a motivator apple pie can be for red-blooded young men)!

You can even divvy up the cost of the club warehouse this way. Everybody puts in their requests, one person has the membership and does the shopping in bulk, and the members of the neighborhood club pay the shopper when they pick up their stuff.

The benefits of bulk pricing, without the pain of throwing away the food you just didn’t manage to eat in time – and possibly the even greater benefits of putting together a group with a wide variety of talents to offer.