My previous post, about deciding to prioritize comfort over cash ? Turns out everyone else in Texas had the same idea. Apparently maintenance on the power grid happens in April, so 100+ degree days don’t jive too well with that. But we’ve got power back now. [Obviously. Heh.]
It’s just like being in California, but without the state income tax! [Good thing, too, since we just sent out an $8k dollar check to Federal IRS today...]
Our Money Matters had a post tonight about the magazines that come into their house.
Ah, magazines.
When I was growing up, we weren’t allowed to get magazine subscriptions. I don’t remember precisely my parents’ reasoning [though not wasting money would certainly be a good enough one], but I recall leaving childhood with the distinct feeling that subscriptions were sort of, well, naughty. Or something.
The first magazine I believe I ever scurriously got a subscription to was Interview when I was 12. The magazine was a lot different back then [late 80s], it still looked like it was Andy Warhol’s magazine. I may even still have the Nick Rhodes issue at my parents’ house. You can draw your own conclusions as to what kind of teenager I must have been using this single fact … and you’d probably be right.
These days, like I mentioned in my previous post, I get Taste of Home and I also get Backwoods Home. I finally let the subscription to my beloved Empire lapse because it’s just too crazy over-the-top expensive. And it’s not like I get out to see movies anymore. Heck, with Audrey no longer taking naps, I rarely see dvds anymore! [I haven't even seen -- or even purchased, thinking someday I might be able to see -- the "new" Star Wars yet. And I'm a nerd! You don't want to know what I did when the re-releases and other prequels came out... *sigh*]
My dad got me a subscription to the Wall Street Journal last year for Christmas, and it was awesome, but again, I just couldn’t justify it when it came time to renew. And let me tell you, they got desperate after a while. I think the best deal they sent me was 99 dollars for a full year of home delivery and a full year of online access. But I still let it lapse.
Andrew gets The Week and he loves it, and Audrey got some gift subscriptions to Your Big Backyard [which she loves], Wild Animal Baby [which she loves even more], and Ladybug [which she couldn't care less about]. She gets so excited to get the mail when there’s something for her.
One of the biggest sieves in our budget is things that we buy that we think we’ll use that we don’t. Or that we use just enough so that we can’t return it.
Like the new handle/lock set for the front door that required some package mangling to get out, but turns out didn’t quite fit on the door, by just a few millimeters. Or the shower door in the box next to the bed that was not quite the right size that we couldn’t return because it was a special order? [Grrrr. Worse because it's 100% my fault, though.] [Did I mention it's been leaning up against our bedroom wall for over 2 years?]
Or trying to anticipate food demand for the household for the week. My husband eats large amount of highly perishable fruits and veggies … except for the weeks when he doesn’t. It’s not east to balance the "there’s no fruit in the house!" vs. having to throw something away that went bad. Or having to eat all the produce myself.
The stereotypical "nesting" instinct has kicked in for me, big time, not always in completely rational ways.
Filling the freezer of heat-n-eat foods for after the wee one is born, that makes sense. Getting plenty of diapers and wipes and cream and milk freezer bags and whatnot, okay, those make sense, too. Cleaning out the "nursery" and crib and stuff, even though we never even used them for our first child … well, okay. Sure.
Some of the other things I’m feeling driven to do? Not quite so much sense.
Now, even when I’m not pregnant, I’m somewhat apocalyptically minded and make sure we have 2 weeks worth of water and at least a month or so’s worth of food and other household provisions stored up. [I'm not Mormon -- which is obvious, otherwise I'd have a year's worth! -- but I do think they have some good ideas on self-reliance in emergencies.] Lately, though, our pantries have been looking a wee bit little crazier than normal. I’m sure the National Soy Sauce Council salutes me, but perhaps we don’t need quite so many bottles in the closet…?
There’s good survival-reasoning in wanting to have everything stockpiled before the new one comes, so I’m not going to knock it. It would be totally just my luck to have an otherwise very unlikely avian flu outbreak occur right around the end of April/beginning of May.
But maybe we wouldn’t need quite so much mustard to get through it
I can be pretty tight-fisted with money. But there are some things that I am totally not price conscious about. Number one with a bullet on that list is scorpion control. Just a few days ago, I had the hubris to comment on How to Be Poor’s blog that I hadn’t seen a scorpion in quite some time. In fact, it had been several months since the last sighting.
So you know darn well what was waiting for my padding little feet this morning as I went down to the kitchen.
Our current pest control service is pretty good — hey, once every few months is better than one or more per day! — but whenever I think there’s a limit to how much I would pay for 100% never-see-another-scorpion-again, another little evil guy comes into my life and obliterates that ceiling.
It’s unfortunate that short of a solution that would probably wipe out all life in my neck of the neighborhood, there does not seem to be any 100% never-see-another-scorpion-again solutions. But if there were, I would pay dearly for it. I don’t think there’s anything else in my life that can work up the same heady mixture of rage and fear as those little bugs.
My dad always likes to talk about the concept of "secret economies," or the strange little frugal/cheap practices that we practice, even if they don’t make sense in our overall money handling schema. Even non-frugal [especially non-frugal?] people have secret economies.
My father’s personal example is paperclips. Whenever he sees a loose paperclip, he grabs it. Whenever he can salvage one, he goes for it. He started his own business 20-some years ago, he bought a 20-box pack of paperclips. Nineteen of those boxes remain unopened.
Now, my father is not a particularly frugal man in many ways. He’s a busy guy with his business, and will often eat at least two meals in a restaurant per day. A very small tweak in some other aspect of his life would more than cover the paperclip expense, and yet he still does it.
My mother saves napkins. If she goes to a fast food place or restaurant that gives out napkins, she folds up the extra and puts them in her purse. Her napkin holder at home is a cornucopia of different colors and sizes.
Since I’ve taken a decidedly frugal turn, I’m not sure what my secret economies are anymore. I suppose in the case of an actively frugal lifestyle, you can count things that you are driven to do, even if they are of dubious thrift value. For instance, I am very weird about air conditioner use in the car. Even in Texas, even in the summer, I turn it off while going up inclines or any time I have to accelerate. And then I turn it right back on again. [Yes, it drives my husband crazy. No, I don't know why I must do this.]
My husband and I both have birthdays in April so it’s time to start thinking birthday gifts.
I have always hated gift buying because only about half of the time do I find something I really think the person would like, and the other half the time I’m having to scratch my head and waste money on something, anything.
My family used to have the habit of pinning a gift label on someone. This may have happened to you. Someone buys you something one year and, not being a total jerk, you end up saying, "Thanks for the frog towels! I love frogs!" Well, then word gets around to the rest of the family that you "love frogs." You will be getting frog-themed gifts from everyone from then on. I was tagged with frogs, my grandma with owls [and then lighthouses], my mom with pigs, etc. I had almost ten years of frog-themed gifts.
And then came the Internet. Sweet, sweet internet. I made an Amazon wish list as soon as they made them available, and have actually received gifts from my family that I like and are useful — albeit not exactly a surprise — ever since then. Even my non-computer-using relatives just give my mom a check and she orders something in their name. [Now if only they would make their own wish lists, I would be set ... ]
In the handful of years that my husband and I have been married, we seem to have settled into our own routine. If we find something we really, really think the other person would like, we get it for them. If not, we ask them what they want. Or tell them to find something that they really want that they probably wouldn’t be able to normally justify spending the money on, and order it themselves.
For instance, today I just ordered my own birthday present, and I know I’m going to love it. I got two dvd sets from The Teaching Company — their new on the history of the Popes and the Papacy, and another series on Herodotus, the Father of History.
It’s not exactly the height of romance, but it’s a bit more satisfying. I suppose it would be much less so if you didn’t budget and already always bought yourself whatever you wanted. But since we have tightened up the budget more and more over time, it’s become more fun to try to decide how to spend my birthday/Christmas/etc "mad money" on myself. [Last Christmas, I got myself the complete Backwoods Home Anthology sets, and my last birthday, I got myself a year long British Literature course that I'm still working through.]
Yesterday, I was looking out the window while Audrey and I were sifting together some flour, salt and baking powder. We were assembling some homemade Bisquick-style mix. Out the window, I could see the team of about 10 guys and their 6 or 7 vehicles laying down our new driveway.
I’m going to be writing a 3741 dollar check for that driveway. I only saved about a buck by making the baking mix myself.
There’s a money cliche that people will drive 20 minutes out of their way to save 5 dollars on a 20 dollar item, but won’t do it to save 5 dollars on a 500 dollar item. And yet five dollars is five dollars. Yesterday felt like it could be the inverse of that cliche. Should I have just gone outside and asked the foreman if he’d take a check for 3740 dollars instead and just pick up some store brand bisquick?
My mom called later and I asked what her thoughts were. She pointed out that one of the reasons that we could write a 3741 dollar check instead of putting it on the credit card is because we make our own Bisquick. Oh, that single dollar doesn’t mean too much in the scheme of things, but the mindset that drives you to do it saves money everywhere and adds up. Additionally, it was kind of fun. I have about 11 hours a day alone with Audrey, and that time has to be filled, preferably with something that’s remotely educational or otherwise beneficial. If I had made the mix myself, it would have taken less than 5 minutes, instead we had about 40 minutes of pouring and sifting and fiddling with flour. And laughing. It’s a mess, but is a lot of fun with a two year old.
Free Money Finance has a post today about using a shopping list at the grocery store. I was going to comment there but realized I actually had a fair amount to say on the matter. You wouldn’t think there was that much to say but like Walt Whitman, I contain multitudes.
I keep a notepad by the computer in the kitchen all week long, and as I think of things or as we start to run out of items, I add them to the list. My brain just won’t keep that sort of thing in memory for very long anymore, I have to write it down right away or it’s gone. Then the night before I go shopping, I select a menu for the week either based on what’s on sale wherever I’m going to do my primary shopping, or what’s in the freezer, or what we have to use up. I have almost all of the recipes I use on a regular basis on the computer, so if I’ve got sour cream that’s going to go bad, I can just search on "sour cream" or whatnot and find a selection of recipes to choose from.
I used to jot everything down that I needed to buy and then rearrange the list by where it is in the store, but that was a pain and only marginally useful because my lists are usually so small. [Every week is pantry/freezer challenge week at our house!] Now what I do is bunch things together by recipe and mark a line between bunches. This way if I get to the store and they don’t have one of the items for that recipe, or if the quality of an item is particularly subpar, I can easily tell which other items to not buy.
The most important thing that I do to make shopping easier, though, is keep our toddler at home with my husband while I shop. I used to always bring her with and get it done during the week, but, man, it’s so much easier to do it alone. I tend to go early in the morning on a weekend before it gets crowded, but even if I go when it’s mobbed, it’s still my only child-free time for the week so it feels like a vacation nonetheless.
Our house sits about 100 feet back from the street, and has a sort of circular driveway. A driveway that has seen better days. We’ve known since we bought the place that it needed work, but we finally bit the bullet and started getting estimates.
The driveway is 3380 square feet. [Yes, it's that big.] And it has tree roots busting out from underneath it in spots so it can’t just be resealed. It needs a whole new overlay.
Our first estimate came in yesterday, and let’s just say it’s $1.10 per square foot and let the math hang out there in the ether so I don’t actually have to type the big, scary number. I’m grateful that we have an emergency fund to cover just such things instead of having to put something like that on a credit card.
