Educating the Wheelers

Well, yesterday’s goals ended up being totally off-base. I didn’t end up making homemade ketchup because I remembered we still had a fair amount of store bought in the fridge, and I have nothing on the meal plan in the next week that calls for it. So, uh, yeah. Heh. Maybe another week.

And I didn’t end up making pizza dough because I saw we only have about a cup’s worth of whole wheat flour left after making the lemon thyme loaf cake thing the other night.

But I remembered that Albertson’s was having an 8 hour loss-leader sale from 3-11 yesterday, so Audrey and I headed up at 2.45 to pick up flour, bananas, and everything from their sale that we thought we could use. Audrey and I are going out of town for a few weeks soon and Andrew will be left to his own devices, so I picked up some of the frozen pizzas, 3 for 5 dollars. I’ve been gathering these up for him everytime I see them on big sale, so he’s got about 10 or 12 in the freezer now for when we’re gone.

[As Andrew said the last time we came in from out of town, “Can man live on pizza alone? Apparently, he can!”]

So I did end up spending money yesterday, but it was less than 40 dollars, and it was almost all deeply discounted pantry stock up. I also made some really, really good homemade blue cheese dressing to go with the Buffalo Turkey Wraps I made out of Monday’s leftover Turkey Breast. Cheaper than the “good stuff” you can get at the store, probably on par with the cheap stuff, but way, way better tasting.

Today I’ll make the pizza crusts. No, really!

Since we’ve become far more serious about cutting expenses over the last year, we’ve already nailed all the “low hanging fruit” in our budget. As I mentioned in a previous post, it’s like we’re at that stage in a diet where you’ve already stopped drinking soda and all the other easy changes. Now it’s time to start counting calories.

So, every day, I ask myself: What am I doing today, right now, to save or just not spend money?

Some days it’s easier than others. I’m making our yogurt instead of buying it. I’m putting the laundry up on the line instead of in the dryer. I’m staying home with Audrey and playing in the yard with the dogs instead of getting in the car and going, well, anywhere, really. I’m making muffins instead of buying snacks. I’m ensuring that the only lights on are the ones that are in the room we’re currently in. I’m turning off the computer when not in use, and using it less overall. I’m designing our meal plans off the freezer, the pantry, the sales circulars and rejecting recipes that call for expensive ingredients that will unlikely be used up before they go bad. I’m trying to plan a vegetable garden. [That’s a whole other post.] I’m shortening our showers. I’m giving Andrew extra reminders to bring his packed lunch to work. I’m using powdered milk.

I check our finances every day, as a motivator. But I still try to find something new every day, as well. Sometimes I’ll grab The Complete Tightwad Gazette and open it to a random page and keep reading until I find something we could use.

Today, I think I’m going to give The Hillbilly Housewife’s Excellent Homemade Ketchup a try, and probably make another batch of pizza crusts from the Sue Gregg cookbooks to put in the freezer.

We had a comment on Part I of this post asking what I think are the barebones necessities for the frugal mom with a new baby on the way.

A few obligatory disclaimers: this is what worked for us, your mileage may vary, and my list is way, way shorter than most you will read elsewhere. On the other hand, I’m not trying to sell you anything. [Though for full disclosure, I do have Amazon Associates links in this post, so decide for yourself whether I’m trying to sell you anything. Heh heh.]

With that out of the way, here’s what I learned from our experience, in rough order of importance:

• A car seat: Get a good car seat, be smart but not too cheap, if you know what I mean. It’s worth it to buy new. There are two routes you can go here at the beginning. You can get one of those detachable rear-facing guys for a hundred bucks or so that you use for about the first year, or you could get a more expensive [200-300, usually] convertible type that’ll last you until the wee one is about 5 years old. We ended up choosing the detachable one — a Graco SnugRide, I believe — and then got a Britax when she was reading to go forward facing. This is a more expensive route to go, HOWEVER — when you are dealing with the youngest of the youngins, they are always going to be falling asleep in the car on you. It is a very, very good thing to be able to just detach the seat and go rather than having to unhook them and take them out of the seat and probably wake them up. [Terri’s #2 Rule of Parenting: Never ever wake a sleeping baby unless you really, really have to. A baby’s sleep is your very best friend. Heh.]
• Diapers: Disposable or Cloth, I have no dog in that fight. Choose whatever works best for you, I’m not going to judge you, and please feel free to ignore anyone else who tries to. *** But whichever route you go, make sure you have about 2 weeks worth on hand at the beginning so you don’t have to worry about having to restock during those early whirlwind days. Don’t buy too many at the outset, because you don’t want to get stuck with a bunch of really small newborn diapers that your 10lb kid grew out of in a week! Etc. To stave off diaper rash, this is what worked for us: remove diaper, clean up with wipes, pat dry with a washcloth, apply some generic A&D style ointment, then replace with clean diaper.
• Baby Clothes: Hand me downs or garage sales are totally the way to go. Again, it’s real easy — especially in the hormone flush of pregnancy — to get all emotionally attached to that adorable 20 dollar outfit. But your kid will likely only wear it for a few months, and you don’t even want to know what all sorts of substances are going to stain and soak that thing almost immediately after you put it on him/her. Since this is your first kid, go the green/yellow/orange route so you can use them with all your succeeding kids and don’t have to do the whole “How old is your son?” “Er, she was born 2 weeks ago” dance with strangers because she’s in a blue jumpsuit, or vice versa.

  Additionally, plain clothes with no frills, ruffles or other weird things are the way to go. A nice soft cotton footie pyjama style jumper, preferably with snaps all the way down both legs will make your life easier during diaper changes. You don’t need too many, depending on how often you do laundry, though it’s better to have too many than too few if you end up having a 5-diaper-blowout day. Heh. And a nice little hat for the first few weeks is also recommended, and should be cheap and easy to find.

• Swaddling Blankets: These are awesome. We had one of those kids that needed swaddling to soothe, and unfortunately you don’t know if you’ve got one of those until they’re here, so it’s worth having them on hand just in case. And if it turns out they’re not the swaddling type, you’ll end up finding a dozen other uses for them, so it’s not a total wash. Again, the hand-me-down or garage sale route is the best way to go. Get a handful of the smaller size — around 2′ by 2′ — and a few of the larger size — around 3′ by 3′ — because they’ll outgrow the smaller swaddling blankets fairly quickly.
• Teeny Tiny Nail Clippers: Those nails grow quick, and they are razor sharp! You’ll want to get 2-3 of these to start with because if you’re anything like me, you’ll constantly be misplacing them.
• Breast Pump, Freezer Bags, Etc: If we’re going the frugal route, formula is definitely not the way to go. But, you still need to prepare for the possibility of not always being able to breastfeed when your baby is hungry. If at all possible, I’d get one before your child is born, for a few reasons. First, you might end up in a position like us when Audrey couldn’t latch at all after birth and had to be syringe and finger fed pumped breast milk and then had bottled breast milk or fed on a breast shield until she was 3 months old. I had to pump every 2 hours around the clock in those days and counted my blessings that we had a good pump. But even if your child latches like a champ from the get go, you still want to keep some spare milk in the freezer “just in case.” Go with what you can afford, but it is sort of a “you get what you pay for” market. The Medelas are worth the price, if you can swing it.
• Sling: Mine was worth its 100 times its weight in gold. [Hey, they’re light!] Being able to “hold” your baby but have both hands free … I cannot overemphasize what a huge difference this makes. Cheaper and easier and more versatile than a stroller. Plus, once you get used to it you can learn how to discreetly nurse in public while they’re in the sling, and that makes your life even that much easier.
• Nursing Tops: Speaking of nursing in public … with practice, you will learn how to discreetly nurse in any old loose-fitting top, but at the very beginning until you’re confident, a nursing top or two is helpful. But if you practice at home, you’ll figure it out quickly.
• UPDATED TO ADD: I just remembered: a rectal thermometer and some vaseline will also be handy if you suspect a fever. But nothing else is coming to me off the top of my head.

Honestly, everything else is gravy. You don’t need a changing table, you don’t need a crib — though if anyone in your bed is a heavy sleeper, you’ll want to look into getting a Snuggle Nest for peace of mind in the first few months. You don’t need mobiles, you don’t need a Diaper Genie — how hard is it to put a diaper in a plastic grocery bag and bring it out to the garbage? Plus, if you’re breastfeeding, baby poop doesn’t smell bad until they start eating other stuff. It smells kind of like sour milk. You don’t need a pack-n-play, you don’t need a high chair, you don’t need a swing. You don’t need a baby bath tub, wash them in the sink with a folded towel on the bottom like our grandparents did. Heck, you don’t even need soap for several weeks! You don’t need toys, you don’t need a special “diaper bag” — a cheap backpack from a thrift store will do you fine to hold an extra outfit or two, a swaddle blanket and some diaper changing gear when you go out.

More important than any equipment is human support. Your mom, your sister, your friend, your neighbor — a friendly looking new mom that you spy in public! — reach out! Do it! I am an extremely introverted, solo homebody in my normal life, but this transition period after your first child is born is very very rough while you adjust, and I don’t believe mothers were ever meant to go it alone. Unfortunately, with the rise of geographically-scattered extended families and the like, many new moms are isolated and life is much, much harder than it should be at first. Especially if you are a stay at home mom who’s alone with the baby 8-10 or more hours a day.

*** My #1 Rule of Parenting is to trust yourself. You are going to find that many people are both insecure and very emotionally attached to the choices that they make/made as a parent and thus see people who are making different choices as indirectly criticizing their own choices. But parenting is NOT black and white — keep an open mind, use whatever works for you and almost always, what your gut and instinct tells you will be right. Just nod and smile at the complete strangers who will come up to you and tell you that what you’re currently doing is all wrong. Why normally sane and polite people do this completely mystifies me [though I am sure it is at least partially related to what I wrote above].

As we are coming upon the third trimester for the next baby, I’ve been taking a look at what the costs associated are going to be.

Almost all of Audrey’s old clothes and swaddling blankets were yellow, green or orange, so he’s good to go for a long, long time clothes-wise. He’ll be in bed with us in the Snuggle Nest [like Audrey was] until he’s robust enough to sleep without worry of being rolled onto. Not that that has ever been an issue for us — I am an extremely light sleeper and perhaps too in tune with where the little ones are when I’m next to them. But there’s no reason not to be safe, anyways. He’ll be on the other side of me than Audrey so I shouldn’t need to worry her rolling on top of him, either. Good thing we have a big bed. The cat will just have to be content at Andrew’s feet.

Audrey’s car seat is still good [and no recalls], we never used the stroller or crib anyways [maybe we should sell them?], and my old sling didn’t get too stained, so I don’t think I need a new one of those, either.

As long as we *knock on wood* don’t have any complications with the birth, it shouldn’t be too expensive. Babies just don’t need that much. Heh.

I haven’t posted much recently because I’m pretty solidly in “pregnant and crazy” mode. If you’ve ever been pregnant — or more likely, if you’ve ever been married to someone pregnant — you know what I’m talking about. I’m overly emotional, my moods are flying and I’m totally irrational.

What does this have to do with money? Two main things, as of late. The first is that right now we’re in crunch mode on our finances — as I mentioned previously, we’re currently living on a little over 25% of our salary as we readjust to some new and possibly overeager savings plans. So how am I responding to this? By totally capsizing. It’s been awhile since I’ve felt so … driven to want to spend money. My Amazon shopping cart is full of all sorts of crazy stuff, and it’s only by sheer force of will that I haven’t actually purchased any of it. And so on.

The second prong of this fork is that something totally bizarre has happened to my taste buds. I am just not tasting things the way that I used to. I made some homemade mac and cheese the other night that I thought tasted great, and poor Andrew was totally repulsed. [Note to self: don’t make any recipes any time soon that call to add ingredients “to taste.”] I went totally overboard in the adding dry English mustard department … because I couldn’t taste it! I still can’t taste it in the leftovers, so it wasn’t a one night thing. Andrew could taste nothing but the overwhelming horseradishy mustardness.

And today I made a potato/carrot/lentil curry stew which looked awesome on the page — and I must brag, one of my Super Powers is a keen eye for what recipes will taste good when made — and I tried some, and it tastes horrible rotgut to me. All I taste is overwhelming clove/cinnamon — which aren’t even in the recipe, though are a small part of the curry powder — and nothing else. And the dinner I made previous to these two had a similar issue.

What am I getting at? It’s hard to save money when you’re throwing out food that you make instead of eating it.

It’s been a frustrating week.

As I mentioned in a previous post, I need to try to find a way to cut another 1/3 off our budget. I’m not entirely sure how I’m going to do this, since it doesn’t seem to be possible. I take some comfort in the fact that the extra money out of our budget is ESPP, and we’re basically doing a buy and then turnaround right away and sell for the 15%, but there’s a six month lag to get it back. And I don’t want to dip into savings during that time or significantly reduce new savings, either.

This weekend, I planned our menus for the next three weeks with an eye on both money and health. I could get our food budget down farther if we didn’t eat quite so much produce [especially in the middle of winter], but that’s a choice we don’t want to make. We’re in the planning stages for a vegetable garden in the back, but with a toddler and another little one due in late April, it’s going to be tough for me to get one started this year.

So, my grocery bill was 60 dollars this week, and that was including some unnecessary snacks, like ice cream and cones and yogurt raisins. So I think I did pretty darn good.

My next mini-task is to ensure that my husband remembers to take his packed lunch with him every day. Every time he forgets, that’s 7-10 dollars at the taco stand, or Audrey and I driving it out to him. Little notes seem to help, but not always.

Consumerism Commentary has a post today about large houses. After living in Seattle and the Bay Area for many years, when I first moved to TX with Andrew, I had to wrap my head around the idea of Big Houses.

Our neck of the woods used to be the boonies for many years — where we are specifically is still about 15% boonies, though that is rapidly changing — so almost all of the houses we looked at were built in the last 10 years. Which meant brick McMansions, the official house of Texas. I could have gotten used to it, but I really prefer something a little more homey, so we kept looking. Our agent even quickly surmised, “You won’t even look at a place that doesn’t have a large amount of mature trees, will you?” And it was true.

So we finally stumbled upon one of the rare older, more established neighborhoods and found a house that was still big by my standards — 2100 sq ft, give or take — but was about 1000 sq ft smaller than everything else we were looking at. It also had the advantage of being on an acre instead of piled up on top of its neighbors and being 50-75k cheaper than what we had been looking at. We snapped it up. [We had to outbid some lawyers for it, but that’s another post some day.]

I love our house. The “smallness” occasionally causes problems — there is very little pantry or storage area, so we have to be very creative, and we still are in discussion over which bedrooms will be used for what — but, really, I love our house.

There are still some convenience foods in our diet that I’m trying to squeeze out, both for budget and health reasons. One of these is pizza. [Another is the Cheezit Tabasco Cracker, but my utter failure to make homemade crackers is another post sometime. Heh.] We almost never get take-out pizza anymore, and I am working on reducing/replacing the frozen pizzas, save for when I can find a smoking deal, like Albertson’s rare “Buy 1, Get 2 Free” specials.

Anywhoo, tonight I made my first totally from scratch pizza. I made the dough about a month ago when a buddy was in town, from the generic whole wheat bread dough recipe in my Sue Gregg cookbook. I portioned that up and tossed it in the freezer. Last night, I pulled out a ball and let it sit in the fridge until tonight. Then I pulled out a pizza sauce recipe from the Backwoods Home Magazine Recipe Anthology — a recipe they call the “59 Dollar an Hour Pizza” after doing the calculations on the difference in price between it and delivered, and how long it took to make. A very small amount of shredded mozzarella and parmesan to keep it vaguely healthy and we were good to go.

It turned out awesome, by the way. Much easier and quicker than I thought it would be — especially with the dough premade — and now we have another high cost convenience food item I can cross of the list.

After nearly a lifetime of money-sucking hobbies, I am relieved to note that almost all of our Christmas presents were things that were more designed to save us money than to make us spend more.

Case in point, I noticed this afternoon that we were running out of yogurt and I went to put it on tomorrow morning’s grocery list when I remembered, “Hey! Didn’t we get a yogurt maker this year from my Godmother?”

I just pulled our first batch out — made with a scoop of leftover yogurt, 3 cups of reconstituted nonfat powdered milk [with extra powder for protein] and 1 cup of leftover heavy cream from Christmas … and, yum, it is good. The bit of heavy cream in there gives it that “Brown Cow” brand yumminess, but for way, way cheaper.

We had a great Christmas, and a relatively inexpensive one. Admittedly, that’s pretty easy to do when you only have one kid so far and she’s only 2 years old. She had a lot of small presents, and a fair chunk of them were from the local used toy store. I wrapped them in shiny foil-like packaging, and I think she liked playing with the boxes and bows and stacking them in different places more than she liked opening them. In fact, I’m thrilled because she wasn’t too interested in opening them. We’d cajole her into opening one, and then she would just want to play with that one, not open another. So it took us two full days of that to open her presents. I’m not complaining!

I waited until, hmm, it was either Wednesday or Thursday to get a Christmas tree since that’s when they go on big sale. I was able to get a really nice looking pre-lit artificial one for about 60 bucks. We used two cannisters of Big Lots plastic glass-looking bulbs [important with a toddler, and only 15 dollars total] and a Big Lots star for the top, 4.99. My mom donated an old hand-crocheted skirt for the bottom, so we came in under 100 dollars for a nice looking tree we can use again.