Educating the Wheelers

Our New Bloggy Home

2006-03-15T09:21:00.000-06:00

My awesome husband, Andrew, knew that I had some irritations with Blogger, so he set up a Wordpress blog with my own domain to replace it. Even though I was not-long-ago employed professionally as a computer geek, with a toddler underfoot and being pregnant out-to-here, I never would have taken the time to do it myself.

I really like the look of it and the way he set it up, so I'll be starting to post over there starting today. Please update any bookmarks or links you might have, though we'll see if we can put up an automatic redirect fairly soon.

Thanks, Andrew! And thanks for reading!

http://www.educatingthewheelers.com

HOA Blues

2006-03-14T11:29:00.000-06:00

Mapgirl has another interesting post lately about HOAs. [She's had a lot of interesting things lately. Check her out.]

When we were planning on buying here in Austin, we knew where Andrew was going to be working, so one of our big criteria was short commute times. In the areas fairly nearby his office, it's hard to find a house that doesn't have a neighborhood HOA. Heck, not too many years ago, our area was the total boondocks, so it's hard to find a house over 10 years old, even.

I am very much a "don't tell me what to do" hands-off kind of person, so as you can imagine, I hold most HOA stuff in contempt. It took quite a bit of looking, but we managed to find a house that we loved in a older neighborhood that was a conglomeration of multiple [like, 7 or 8] pre-existing HOAs. There are so many grandfathered provisions and other assorted goofiness because of this that the HOA here is voluntary dues, and has no teeth whatsoever.

So, when we painted our house and fence and added the multilevel deck in the back, etc, we didn't have to submit plans to an HOA for approval. We don't get any "helpful tips from the committee" postcards dropped in our mailbox. I know some people really like their HOAs and "keeps the house values up" and all that jazz, but I prefer our freedom. [And our housing value is doing just fine.]

Does it mean that one of my neighbors could start raising 100 fighting roosters in their backyard? Well, possibly. But you'd be amazed how people tend to not do those sorts of things, even without the Threat of HOA hanging over their heads.

Online Bill Pay Snafu Update

2006-03-13T13:05:00.000-06:00

This morning, I talked to both my garbage company again and my bank. My garbage company claims to have not changed any of their PO Boxes or anything that should affect receiving their payment checks, so who knows what happens to the last two checks that my bank cut for them. [My bank does report that they have not been presented for cashing.] I'm not 100% sure how I want to pay the next bill with them. I might send a regular paper check via there payment envelope and see if that gets there OK. I sure don't want to have to call in a credit card payment every time.

On a happier note, I called Chase [our brick and mortar, day to day finances bank] and not only were they friendly and super helpful, they stopped payments on the outstanding checks without a fee, and will credit our accounts within 3-5 business days. [When you online bill pay through them, they debit the amount immediately from your account.]

The last time I had to stop a check was when I was a customer of Bank of America. My landlord got my check in the mail, held onto it for a few weeks, and then misplaced it. Could I please send her another? Grrr. BoA charged 25 dollars for the privilege of stopping that check, and said it would only be in effect for one year. [Perhaps the difference is because they are online Billpay checks instead of paper checks? I do not know.]

I know every bank has screwed somebody over, but I gotta say -- the service we have received from Chase has outshone BoA on just about every front.

Do It Yourself Price Differentials, Part I

2006-03-12T17:30:00.000-06:00

As part of my ongoing budget slash-and-burns, I'm always trying to stop purchasing more and more convenience foods. Some items make sense to purchase [too much time to duplicate for the money saved], and some do not.

What's something that makes sense to make at home?

Well, tonight I made my first batch of granola. I usually just eat leftovers for breakfast, but my husband -- and now, my two year old -- like cereal. Cereal is expensive. Granola is often even worse. I needed a small amount for a recipe a few months ago, and a small box of grocery store housebrand was over 3 dollars! I was not happy, and I have been kicking around the idea of making my own. Finally did it tonight.

I made a variation on the Hillbilly Housewife's Brown Sugar Granola. I chose her recipe to start with because her stuff generally turns out pretty tasty, it's always very simple to do, and it's always got an eye on the cost.

Here's what I ended up using:

1 stick butter [After making it, I suspect I could get away with less.]
1 cup brown sugar, mixed with a little white and Sucanat [Audrey mixed the different sugars together for me. Heh.]
1/4 cup water
Small splosh of vanilla
1/4 teaspoon salt
4 cups rolled oats
1/2 teaspoon cinnamon
1 bag of free sample trail mix with nuts, seeds and raisins

Heat up the first four items in a big pot, let it simmer for a few minutes. Add next three ingredients, stir it up good. Spread it out on some lipped baking sheet and bake at 375 for about 10 minutes, or until golden brown. I stuck it in a hot, but turned off, oven that I had just baked some chicken in. Then you take it out, let it cool and break it into pieces in a container with whatever mix-ins you have around.

Even before it was cooled, Andrew and Audrey were digging in and eating it with some homemade yogurt.

As you can see, it was quick trivial to make, and costs very little. And, I must say, it's very tasty.

Verdict: Definitely worth the time.

UPDATE: I didn't bother trying to do an actual price calculation on this one because it would be pretty hard for me to pinpoint my actual costs. I recall getting the oatmeal when Albertson's had a 3 for the price of 1 sale on big containers of generic oatmeal. The butter has been in my freezer since just before Thanksgiving when all the stores had butter as one of the loss leader items, but I don't recall the actual price. The trail mix happened to be free this time. Everything else was pretty trivial cost. So I don't know exactly how much I saved, but it was definitely a good amount.

College Alumni Donation Solicitations

2006-03-11T09:34:00.000-06:00

Andrew and I both went to college, so we have two institutions that call us for alumni donations. Andrew received a nice sized grant from his college, so we give to them on occasion. [Though I can tell I've really become a parent now. The last time I got a call I said, "If you continue to call us more than once a year, you will get nothing."]

My college? Not so much. I have given to them only twice in the almost ten years since I graduated, and the person in whose name I always gave -- my mentor when I was there -- no longer works there. I am a little ambivalent these days about the value of my education I had while I was there. I can't say it's the institution's fault, but it does make me less eager to pony up money to them. [Note: I never received any grants or financial aid of any sort, but I did work as the assistant manager in the dedicated computer lab for math and science students. The manager of that lab was the aforementioned mentor. What I learned from her during that time is the knowledge I used once I graduated.]

There weren't a lot of women doing Computer Science while I was there, so for my first few years out, I would get the occasional invitation to come back and speak on a panel to the current crop of CS students to let them know "what it's like" on the outside, and how what I learned at our fine institution helped. It was an odd experience, because I graduated in 1996 -- the reality of the situation at the time was that I could have fallen off the back of a turnip truck and been employed in the high tech industry in Seattle during those years.

I realize this is completely incoherent. Sorry. Heh.

My Absolute Worst Financial Mistake Ever, Bar None

2006-03-10T11:31:00.000-06:00

My first townhouse purchase [and sale].

This one is a no brainer. I don't even know where to start listing all the things I did wrong.

I had just gotten my first really BIG raise, the kind of money that someone who is paying 325/month in rent to split an apartment and doesn't have a car or debt or school loans or pets or anything would even know what to do with.

Well, thank god one of my best friends was a realtor! She set me straight on that one.

"You know what you should do, you should buy a house!"

[Readers should now be wincing then shouting, "Don't go in there, that's where the monster is!" and throwing popcorn at the screen. You know what's coming.]

Where to begin? I had only recently realized that maybe I should try to do something with my money, so I did have some money in a mutual fund [the specifics of which were probably Worst Financial Mistake #3 or #4, but we'll get to that another day], but not enough for a real down payment. But I did have a father who would be proud that his young daughter was starting to get ahead in life, so he would help. And be paid back over the course of years later.

If you are imagining a printout of MLS listings with one really awesome place at the highest tippy top of my "affordability" and everything else on the list really crappy, you know where this is going.

If you are imagining that I had no idea that the number at the bottom of the good faith estimate was NOT what I'd actually cut a check for every month [Hello, taxes, insurance and association fees!], you know where this is going.

If you are imagining that I was now paying over SIX TIMES my former housing cost per month, you know where this is going.

If you are imagining that I let a now-former friend move into the downstairs bedroom for a couple hundred dollars a month to now make ends meet, and it was the one of the most horrible experience dealing with another human being in close quarters I've ever had [Helpful tip from the committee: don't rent to unemployed jazz musicians. You have been warned], you know where this is going.

If you are imagining that this is in Seattle, and the dotcom bubble is about to burst and I was going to have to sell after owning it for less than two years so I could keep my job while my company merged with one in San Francisco [one of only a small handful out of a company of about 100, I was a lucky one], you know where this is going.

If you are imagining that my good friend massively overpriced my house to sell it, perhaps as a good samaritan because she knew I was in a bad financial way by this point, and then incrementally dropped the price a little here, a little there over the weeks [or was it months?] until it sold, you know where this is going.

If you are imagining me making payments on my house while it's not selling while I'm paying an insane amount of rent in SF, you know where this is going.

If you are imagining that sitting down to sign the closing papers and seeing what was "leftover" after the sale was a surprise because of a numbers snafu, you know where this is going.

And yet, there's an upside to this whole big mess. When I got married and it came time for Andrew and I to buy a house, things went very, very differently. I hadn't yet discovered Searchlight Crusade [and if you're going to buy a house, you need to spend some time there], but this transaction was a 180 degree turnaround from the first one, that's for sure.

UPDATE: I want to add that I don't really blame my friend for much of this debacle, save for treating it like a trip to Macy's to buy jewelry rather than The Most Important Financial Transaction Of My Life. I didn't know what I was doing, and I got the expensive lesson that I deserved. But in case you haven't already learned: do not ever, EVER do business with a friend. The stakes are too high on both fronts. In this case, our friendship survived, but only sort of.

Watch That Online Bill Pay ...

2006-03-10T11:14:00.000-06:00

Got a call bright and early this morning from our garbage collection company saying that haven't received a payment ... since November. *boggle*

OK, they only bill once every three months, so that's only two missing payments. But, yow! What's going on? I've paid the bills online [via Chase], and they're debiting the money from my account. [And I've been paying them without a problem this way for 3 years.] The payment history makes it look as if everything is fine. The only difference I can see, and I'm not even sure what it means yet, is that on all other payments that have gone out, they have links next to them that say "See" and "Send Inquiry" -- and on the garbage bills, they just say "See."

Hmm. Well, I've got a call out. Let's see what happens.

Slashing Electricity Costs

2006-03-09T10:21:00.000-06:00

Mapgirl had a post recently about surging electricity costs, and why they are likely to get even worse in the near future.

I mentioned in a comment that I have been on a slash and burn mission to reduce our electricity bill here, so even while the rates are going up, our bill has been going down. Only slightly compared to all of the cuts I've made, though, as I mentioned, it's still better than a poke in the eye.

What have I done?

First: we don't use the dryer anymore. Maybe once a month, but I can't even remember the last time I've used it, so it's now even less than that. Andrew put up three retractable clotheslines for me on the deck, under the awning, so I don't have to worry about rain. If it's too humid outside, I use those folding accordion-style drying racks in the house. In fact, during the winter when the heat is on, I use those up in the bedroom at night to help raise the humidity while we're sleeping without having to power a humidifier.

Second: Minimizing heat and AC usage. I'm making judicious use of shades, windows, fans, turning the lights off, not using the oven as often [or using it first thing in the morning while it's still cool], and dressing appropriately. And shaving the dogs when it gets hot.

Third: I've become a light and appliance nazi. I used to keep lights on all over the house because I am skittish and paranoid and don't like walking into dark areas. And I like brightly lit rooms. But I've been slowly acclimating myself away from that. I've also been getting better at unplugging things that are not being used rather than keeping them in standby mode, but I could be better at this.

That's all the low hanging fruit, but so far it's really paid off for us. If the rates keep rising, I'll have to start doing the slightly more difficult stuff.

What Am I Going to Do With All These Bananas?

2006-03-08T11:05:00.000-06:00

I hate to waste food and have been working on more interesting ways to use things up. Take bananas. My husband is the big banana eater in the house, but won't touch them after they start to get a little spotty.

If I don't have much time, I just toss them as-is into the freezer, and later when I take them out, I peel them slightly defrosted with a paring knife and use them in whatever recipe. Pancakes, waffles, mashed into french toast bath, smoothies, the usual. But I get pretty sick of banana bread and muffins pretty quickly.

This is my new favorite way to use them:

Banana cookies.

2-3 ripe bananas, mashed in a bowl
1.5-2c uncooked oatmeal
1/3 cup oil
Splosh of vanilla
Handful of dried fruit, whatever you got. I like chopped dates.

Mix it all together, let it sit for awhile and soak into the oatmeal. Then drop spoonfuls onto a greased pan [mush it down, they're better a bit thinner] and bake at 350 until done. Usually about 10 minutes or so. Can be up to 20, depending on your stove, and how thick you made them.

Love them, love them, love them. And if you can get your dried fruit cheap, fairly frugal, too!

What Do I Need to Buy For the New Baby?

2006-03-08T10:41:00.000-06:00

I'm about 32 and a half weeks pregant now, so I need to get moving on getting things ready for the little guy.

I've been on the lookout for good deals on diapers [I decided not to switch to cloth for this guy, though I kicked it around for awhile], so I've got a bit of a stash already. All other diaper changing gear [wipes, cream, rags, etc], we already have plenty of since Audrey is still in pull-ups.

I haven't ordered a Medela parts kit for my old pump yet, and I need to do that. That's about 25 bucks. I know you can reuse the parts with yourself, but I gave my pump a thorough thrashing before Audrey could finally attach at three months, and looking at the old thing ... it just doesn't feel like even a thorough boiling and sterilization procedure is going to make it feel clean again. Oh, and I'm going to need new milk freezer bags, too. That'll be about 17 bucks. Again, I'm paying more than I have to here, there are cheaper varieties, but these will hold up for 6 months in our deep freezer. So if we don't need them in that time, I can donate them to the Mother's Milk Bank, like last time.

I picked up a handful of "new" outfits for Little Guy at the thrift store in MN, practically brand new stuff for about a dollar a piece. Didn't feel bad about that, though I'm sure I could have made do with Audrey's unisex hand-me-downs.

The freezer is already full, but mostly with meal "parts" rather than completed meals. I'll want to change that ratio a bit before he arrives, because I won't want to be doing any cooking for awhile.

I think that's really all that's left to purchase. [I'm not counting the actual cost of the birth, etc.] Lots to do, but not lots to buy. That's a plus.

Getting Things Back in Order

2006-03-08T10:32:00.000-06:00

Paragraph breaks appear to be back [Yay!], and I've re-added a link bar on the side. But I know I've missed a bunch, so if you don't see your blog up there, please drop me a line or leave a comment. I'm going to be adding more as I get time today. [I just did a gmail search on "blog link" to see who I've exchanged emails with, and added whoever I happened to read this morning before Audrey wakes up. I hope that catches most of them, because my pregnancy brain is pretty mushy today!]

Uh Oh

2006-03-08T08:04:00.000-06:00

I thought Austin was going to breeze right past the big housing run-up/bubble/"correction" situation that a lot of areas seem to be dealing with right now ... but yesterday I called the guy who does all of our remodelling, etc, and asked him about doing a job for us before the new baby comes.

He said that things were dead during the winter -- almost 4 months of zero work at all -- but now he's backed up for weeks, almost all of it work for California investors who are snapping up properties here and fixing them up to flip.

This makes me nervous.

Blog Housekeeping

2006-03-07T16:34:00.000-06:00

Andrew has been fiddling with Other Blog Solutions lately, and it turns out that one of the tools for slurping up the previous posts out of blogspot to transfer to another system can kind of mess things up. Oops. I'm not sure if anyone even reads this blog on a regular basis, but if so, you may have noticed that it was completely borked without a template for a day or two, and we've also lost our links on the side and paragraph breaks in previous posts. I'll be working on getting those back.

Or maybe I'll just move to one of the other test sites he's been fiddling with.

Little Hazards of Frugality

2006-03-06T17:54:00.000-06:00

When I got out of the shower this morning, I got quite the whiff of surprise when I was toweling my hair dry. What was that weird smell?

Aha!

The laundry was hanging on the line yesterday when we started up the grill for dinner yesterday. The towel and everything I'm wearing today smells like bbq.

Treasury Direct

2006-03-03T15:11:00.000-06:00

I finally set up a Treasury Direct account for purchasing I Bonds and the like for a little more diversity in our savings. As an apocalyptically pessimistic person, this doesn't quite qualify as "SHTF" stash, but it's closer to that end of the spectrum than our stocks and mutual funds. Heh. [And I'm always a little nervous when I start wondering under what circumstances I wouldn't be able to access, or would have delay accessing our Emigrant Direct funds. Or our regular neighborhood brick and mortar bank, for that matter. Or these I Bonds.] I do feel strongly that I need to have some sort of plan in place for an economy-in-the-tank, extended-unemployment situation.

I'm not going to be investing much to start with, 50 dollars a month moved automagically over. But it's a start while I get used to it.

Home Again, Home Again

2006-03-03T10:06:00.000-06:00

Audrey and I are back home from our nearly month long vacation visiting my folks up in Minnesota. She got to play in snow and make her first snowman! [Also, her first igloo.] Very exciting for her since we almost never have snow in Texas.

I spent more money up there than I usually do at home -- but, these days, I spend very little money at home, so that's not too big of a surprise. I'm enjoying getting back in the swing of things here.

Why I Like Personal Finance Blogs, Reason #34

2006-02-26T16:39:00.000-06:00

There is an almost complete lack of partisan politics in personal finance blogs, which is a welcome breath of fresh air. And sort of interesting, too, since politics and money -- even at the personal level -- tend to intertwine so much. My eyes glaze over when the "Tastes Great!/Less Filling!" bickering starts up. *Click*, move on. I am one of the apparently rare folks online who really doesn't care what someone thinks about Iraq, Bush, abortion, whatever other new hot button issues happen to be out there, unless I happened to be married to the person. And that slot is already filled.

Thinking about Changing Credit Card

2006-02-23T20:01:00.000-06:00

Andrew and I pay off our credit card balance in full every month. We use it often just for convenience and instead of our debit card for various buyer's protections in case of fraud.

But we just have a plain old vanilla card with our bank, so we're not getting any perks off of it. And I think we're about ready to change that situation.

We've kicked around a couple of ideas -- first, staying with our bank's card, but switching to a cashback version. [It is nice to see our purchase history and statements on the same online banking page as our checking account.] Second, Citibank [I believe] has a card with "disposable" one-time numbers for online use, but I've been waiting to see if some other PF blogger would get one and report back first. Heh. And third, maybe an Amazon card because I love free stuff from Amazon. [Speaking of, in case anyone has any money burning a hole in their pocket, there's always my Amazon wish list!]

Does anyone have any experience with any of these cards? Or any other ideas?

Things That Have Slowly Changed

2006-02-21T19:00:00.000-06:00

I haven't always been frugal. It's been percolating for awhile, but the actual implementation has been gradual. Because of the slow pace, I haven't realized really how far I'd come, and somewhat unfortunately, how that might impact some other things in my life.

Case in point, a relative of mine wants to go out to eat or go shopping with me while I'm here visiting. Multiple times a week. She has suggested a few other activities, all involving going out and spending money. Instead, I've suggested she come over here, let's make some lunch, talk, whathaveyou. She has apparently had about enough of that. Heh.

For the first year after Audrey was born, one of my pre-mother friends [ironically, a woman from my birthing class, so she had a kid that was only a month older than mine] who only wanted to get together at a restaurant for lunch, as well. No great shock, we drifted and I haven't even talked to her in almost a year. She rarely wanted to take up any of my non-restaurant suggestions.

I mean, I don't believe in having an austere life, or never having fun or never getting out. But both of these folks were as insistent about going to a restaurant as I was resistant to it.

There are three issues for me. First, I've always been somewhat of a homebody, though those feelings have intensified since I became a mother, and they've really exploded since I've been pregnant again. I am wholly uninterested in being around large groups of other people, especially folks I don't know. Second, I realize this may be a passe notion these days, but I don't like bringing babies/toddlers/etc into adult spaces. Audrey is astonishingly well-behaved for a 2 year old, but that doesn't mean she isn't unpredictable and doesn't ever fuss. Folks pay good money at most restaurants, in movie theaters and the like and I don't understand why parents -- particularly of my generation -- think it's okay to bring their kids into adult spaces where there is a reasonable expectation of not being disturbed. Finally, of course, is the cost issue. What used to seem to me a totally reasonable sum of money to spend on lunch now seems like a big waste and opportunity cost.

I've gradually shifted my social life to spend time with folks who are on the same page as me in this arena. On the upside, most stay at home moms with toddlers that I meet tend to not want to blow money, and tend to not want to deal with the "will they or won't they?" stress of bringing a toddler into a restaurant. So we'll meet at one or another's house, and if someone gets fussy or melts down ... who cares? We're all going through the same thing.

I Want a Garden

2006-02-16T20:21:00.001-06:00

I want a garden.

Most of our grocery bill goes to produce -- fresh, frozen, or dried. Our kids will be homeschooled, so it's an obvious project for them to help with. Our backyard is about a half acre, fenced, and there's not a whole lot going on back there once you get past the decks and the playscape.

So why don't I have a garden?

Odocoileus virginianus, the dreaded white-tailed deer.

Our house is on the deer superhighway right between two wooded, wild areas. There are some mornings when I'll look out and see two dozen of them in our front or back yard. Unfortunately, our 8-10 [?] foot tall privacy fence only extends about halfway back into our backyard, it's a 3 footer for the remaining, and they jump over that with ease.

So I can't just slap together a nice little Square Foot Gardening square and call it a day with a little quickie experiment. Unless, of course, I want fatter and happier deer.

I don't relish the idea of building a tall fence to enclose a garden, like all my neighbors have had to do. And I'm not sure how big I'd want to make it -- I certainly don't want to ever have to expand it once it's up. I have too many memories of spending summers at my grandparent's house, expanding the deer fence every year. Heh.

And then there's the whole new-child-being-born-in-two-months thingy. I think I'll be waiting until next year. Heh.

Clothing

2006-02-16T13:16:00.000-06:00

The only thing I hate more than clothes shopping is having to spend money on clothes.

These days, when I have to buy clothes -- like, say, now, when I'm third trimester superchunk pregnant and it's winter, while last time I was superchunk pregnant, it was nasty Texas summer -- I hold off until I can head up to Minnesota to visit my parents. Not too far from their house is the very best thrift store I have ever been in, bar none. I am absolutely spoiled rotten by it now. Even Walmart feels extravagant, and other thrift stores feel really ratty and dirty in comparison.

[If you happen to live around the Twin City area, I'm referring to the "Valu Thrift Store" in Sun Ray Mall. Mondays, everything is 25% off, and holidays are 50% off.]

I picked up maternity pants and 6 long sleeve maternity shirts and sweaters for about 20 bucks. And they're pretty nice looking.

I don't know how they do it, why that particular thrift store is so clean and well managed and such a screaming deal on nice stuff, but I love it, and I won't shop anywhere else.

Dog That Bit Man Actually a Wolverine, Film at 11

2006-02-06T15:46:00.000-06:00

I'm not sure why I'm the least bit surprised anymore when I find that some statistic that gets bandied around turns out to be, at best, misleading, and at worst, total junk.

Today's example of this is the new much-fretted-about statistic that the U.S. savings rate has gone negative. And, yes, that's bad. But less widely mentioned is the caveat that this statistic includes the ever burgeoning group of retirees, who report a savings draw down of about 12-14% a year. So, for working Americans, the rate is actually more like 6%.

Six percent is no great shakes, but it's not the raining cats and dogs, fire and brimstone negative percentage that everyone is freaking out about.

I look forward to the total panic that comes when the savings rate drops even "lower" because more and more people are retiring.

On the Road Again

2006-02-06T09:38:00.000-06:00

Audrey and I will be heading up North to my parents' house this week for three weeks of extended family fun and vacation. We do this about 3 or 4 times a year for a variety of reasons -- it's a big vacation for Andrew, who can work work uninterrupted on whatever projects he might have in the hopper; and it's a big vacation for me, because my folks are super-helpful with EVERYTHING and Audrey loves them and I get to relax. It's a win-win for everyone. And since we're gone so long, Andrew will often fly up for a weekend himself to visit us visiting. Heh.

We can usually get the flights pretty cheap, so the big frugal challenge for us is how to keep Andrew well fed without breaking the bank. [In other words, no Central Market deli 5 times a week at 15 bucks a pop for lunch or dinner, as tasty as that would be.] The food budget when Audrey and I are gone is usually much higher than when all three of us are there since I can't do the planning and cooking.

The first thing I do is start about a month beforehand scanning the circulars for loss-leader frozen pizzas and the like, and fill the freezer with tasty, easy to heat up meals for dinner. Then yesterday, I had Andrew select a handful of recipes for me to make for him that I'll individually package for him so he can grab them on the way out the door to work. But that sort of thing will only last a week.

He came grocery shopping with me yesterday, which he doesn't normally do, and we got a bunch of basics for building sandwiches and tacos and whatnot, so hopefully he'll just have to pick up mostly produce and dairy for himself while I'm gone.

So, with this preparation, he should have more breathing room for "treats" while he's on vacation without the expense of every meal being a treat, so to speak.

Today's Frugal Moves

2006-02-02T09:07:00.000-06:00

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!

I love the first day of the month!

2006-02-01T13:52:00.000-06:00

I love to log into our Emigrant Direct account and see our interest for the last month posted. This month, we scored $97.67, which means next month with the new 4.25% interest rate and a slightly higher balance on our part, we should hit over $100 dollars interest a month in that account.

I'm only putting $200 every 2 weeks into that account, so with the interest so high, it almost feels like we're getting a 25% match from Emigrant, as if it were a 401k.

Day By Day

2006-02-01T09:16:00.000-06:00

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.

Our Frugal Baby, Part II

2006-01-27T18:20:00.000-06:00

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].

Other New Baby Costs

2006-01-26T09:32:00.000-06:00

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.

Midwife: $~2k, but less than that, because of the Health Savings account

Birth/Post-Partum Doula: $900, a luxury, to be sure, but she worked with us with Audrey, we like her, and we don't have any family in town to help with Audrey and our household needs before, during and after the birth. This is also HSA material.

Diapers: ongoing, but I'll probably buy about 40 bucks worth to start us out. Other diaper changing gear - wipes, rags, cream -- we already have on hand for Audrey

New "parts" and freezer bags for my Medela pump: 70 dollars? I could conceivably just sterilize the old stuff, but I used it so much that I think it would be worth starting fresh

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.

The Cost of Giving Birth

2006-01-24T09:06:00.000-06:00

We have pretty good insurance through Andrew's work that would pay for the vast majority of a hospital birth for our babies. For Audrey, we went to a regular OB for about 6 months ... but we clashed so bad that we "fired" him and started looking at other options.

[I'm a stocky midwestern girl, and he insisted that because I was so overweight to start with, I could only gain 15 lbs the whole pregnancy, and was a paternalistic %$&###$ when I *gasp* had gained 10 lbs over the course of 6 months. Here's a photo of me at 9 months pregnant, where he would have been apoplectic, because I had gained around 30 or 40 lbs. I don't even know for certain, because that last appointment with him was the last time I stepped on a scale. For what it's worth, I was back in my old jeans and clothes before Audrey was 3 months old, so ... well, don't even get me started on that guy. Suffice to say, we kicked him to the curb.]

When we found our midwife, we were thrilled to discover that our insurance would cover 60% -- because she's "out of network" -- there doesn't appear to be such a thing as an "in network" midwife, of course. Heh. She charged a 3k flat fee for her services, so we paid less than 2k. And it was worth every penny. On the upside, this time around, we knew we'd be going the same route, so we were able to max out our Health Savings Account for this year to cover it.

Financial Education

2006-01-23T08:13:00.000-06:00

My parents never talked to us about money when we were growing up. In fact, the only thing I can recall is that when we got our checking accounts in out teens, they would be on the lookout for the telltale "overdraw" notices from the bank in the mail, and laugh at us when they inevitably came. Responsibility by humiliation, I guess. Heh.

I started college at 16 and remember vividly my prof in my College Algebra course walking in one day and announcing that we would spend the day talking about compound interest, because he wished that someone had explained it to him at our age. It left a powerful impact on me -- one of the few lectures I remember vividly from that year. [I also recall my philosphy professor exclaiming "God is dead!" re: Nietzsche and getting mad that no one was riled up. Hey, lady, we're 3.5 hours into a Monday 6-10 evening class. You're going to have to do better than that...]

Of course, I didn't immediately apply those lessons to my life, because I was an idiot. But he was the first one to get the seed planted.

Andrew and I will be homeschooling our children, and I spend a lot of time thinking about how to start talking to them about money earlier on. Some things are obvious -- raise them in a frugal environment! But then there is the issue of allowance and deciding how much to let them know about the family finances. As I mentioned above, my own family kept all of that opaque and I didn't know anything about anything until, well, my 20s after I'd been on my own for awhile and made huge financial mistakes. I honor my parents' decision on that matter, but I don't think I want to go down that route with my own kids.

Retirement Target

2006-01-19T08:04:00.000-06:00

Amazingly, Andrew and I have never actually put hard numbers to our retirement goal before last night -- it's always just been "save as much as we can." He asked me what our goal should be and I thought 2 million. So we crunched the numbers.

We took our current savings [we're leaving out home equity/mortgage for our calculations, but I'd estimate we've got about 100k equity in our house], our current rate of savings, estimated Social Security income [we estimate 0 dollars], and expected annual rate of return [we looked at 4, 5 and 6%]. This puts us at the 2 million mark around 19-24 years, depending on return.

We intentionally chose very conservative numbers because we'd rather be pleasantly surprised by market returns or Social Security than the alternative. This also assumes that we never up our yearly contribution, which I certainly hope/plan to do. On the other hand, it also doesn't account for possible financial catastrophe such as long term job loss and, uh, our children's college expenses. Heh. [That's not entirely true. The plan is to invest/save any future bonuses, stock windfalls and raises, so that does help mitigate the college factor.]

Since Andrew is currently 35 and I am 32, I feel like we're doing pretty good.

Pregnancy as an Obstacle to Frugality

2006-01-16T17:04:00.000-06:00

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.

Another Whack At Expenses

2006-01-09T09:52:00.000-06:00

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.

Minor Money Panic

2006-01-06T13:25:00.000-06:00

We got our first direct deposit of the year, and I was in a for a minor panic. It was about 30% less than I was expecting. I knew that the new benefits enrollment kicked in on this paycheck, so I went to log in to the site and see what was up. I mean, I didn't recall things being that different...

The benefits site was not exactly intuitive to figure things out. In fact, it gave the impression that we had unenrolled from 401k! Well, if that was the case ... wouldn't we have more money coming in than less?

One crazy-pregnant-lady-panicked phone call to my husband later and with some work, he was able to dig out the details. [I miss getting paper statements. They were straightforward.]

As it turns out, last year our new ESPP deduction kicked in at exactly the same time as our 401k maxxed out, and they are for very similar amounts. And starting this paycheck, they were both in effect for the new year.

Mystery solved.

Though I'm beginning to wonder if we're now being way too aggressive on our savings. I just did the calculation, and our actual take-home into-the-checking account amount is less than 28% of our pre-tax salary. So, taxes, 401k, ESPP, benefits, % that goes directly to Vanguard and % that goes directly to Emigrant now account for a little over 72% of our income. That doesn't include extra for paying down mortgage. Hmm. Now, I can squeeze blood out of a rock, but can I squeeze that much blood out of our rock? I'm not sure yet. That's my task for this weekend, to see if we can live on this, or if we're going to have to scale back.

Big Houses

2006-01-06T09:03:00.000-06:00

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.

Our First Homemade Pizza

2006-01-01T19:28:00.000-06:00

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.

Goals for 2006

2006-01-01T18:38:00.000-06:00

Looking ahead, these are my goals for 2006:

* Give birth at home to a healthy boy end of April/early May.
* Settle on a name for said boy with Andrew
* Read and exercise every day with Audrey
* Relax and enjoy parenting/my kids

* Drop our mortgage principle by at least an extra 10k
* Up our automatic monthly emergency fund contributions an additional 25%
* Continue maxxing out our 401k and Roths.
* Straighten out our life insurance/will situation.

I think I'm sandbagging a bit, so I might have to update these later. Heh.

2005 in Review

2005-12-31T19:32:00.000-06:00

This year has been great!

We transitioned from Andrew handling the bulk of the finances and me being totally clueless to me handling the bulk of the finances and Andrew keeping occasional tabs on things.

Audrey turned 2 years old, and we finally got pregant again.

We put together a solid financial plan, and pretty much the whole thing [save for how much we prepay extra on our mortgage each month] is on complete autopilot. We cut back our discretionary spending, we cut back our day to day living expenses significantly. We have +/- 45% of our pre-tax income going into savings these days. And that is AWESOME.

And a bunch of other stuff. But all told, it was a good year for money. We have been very lucky, and tried not to squander our good fortune.

Our Frugal Christmas, Part II

2005-12-30T20:31:00.000-06:00

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.

Our Frugal Christmas, Part I

2005-12-30T14:19:00.000-06:00

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.

We love free!

2005-12-20T10:55:00.000-06:00

Andrew just won us a free year's subscription to Kiplingers in a contest over at All Things Financial. We love things that are free!

And speaking of winning contests, Andrew also just won a tablet pc in the Microsoft One Note PowerToy programming contest [one of the top 5 winners of over a 1000 entries] -- more about that when they finally make an official announcement and post the winners for download.

Maybe I should have him buy a Powerball.

Our Frugal Wedding, Part II

2005-12-17T18:55:00.000-06:00

Once Andrew and I decided that we didn't want to deal with the hassle, stress and expense of a traditional American wedding, we started kicking around other ideas. Vegas, Justice of the Peace, etc.

There were a lot of other strange factors involved, but suffice to say that we needed to do it quickly before my quit date at work, which was rapidly approaching for our move to Austin. So we went down and got our state of CA paperwork, that was about 75 to 100 dollars. Then we got some wedding bands. Here we splurged a little, that was about 600-700 dollars total for the two of them.

A friend of ours is a minister [well, minister enough for legal purposes. Heh.] so he and three of our friends met up with us at a local Japanese garden for a small ceremony. Parking/Entrance Fee: 9 dollars.

After a five minute exchange of vows and rings in a beautiful, tucked away corner of the garden, we headed to a small Italian restaurant and treated everyone to a big lunch and official marriage paperwork signing. Lunch and Drinks: about 150 dollars.

Our parents received email notification that the deed was done [they knew it was coming, at least], and about 3 months later we had a big, big party at a restaurant near my Grandma's house in Upper Michigan as the reception. That part was a gift from my parents and it was modest, though not cheap. Probably a few thousand dollars. Not bad for a hundred guests.

All told for us, less than 1000 dollars. And we're just as legally married as folks who spends tens of thousands of dollars. We used the difference on the down payment on our house.

Our Frugal Baby, Part I

2005-12-15T13:06:00.000-06:00

Over at 2million's site, we've been discussing in his comments about the fallacy of having kids blowing your budget. I believe that just the culturally entrenched ideas that if you get married you have to have the diamond and white dress and all that crap, there are similar ideas about babies.

So, if you have a baby, you have to have a crib, a stroller, a changing table, cute little brand new outfits, bottles, formula, a mobile, jarred baby food, all that junk. And that junk is expensive. And all of it falls under "want" vs. "need." You hardly even think of them as choices, because "everyone" does it. *** We have a few things on that list. We found we hardly used any of it, and what we did use, we could have easily done without.

Now with one toddler, and another child a few months away, we spend less than we did before our first child was born. How is that possible? Well, we don't go out as much anymore, for one thing. And it's harder to do things like watch movies, so we certainly don't go to the theater, and we rarely get dvds anymore, either. Becoming parents made us even more of homebodies than we were, and that is not an expensive lifestyle to maintain.

*** I'm not going to go into the whole "But I couldn't breastfeed!" angle. If you're sensitive about this -- and some people really, really are -- I'm not making moral judgements here. Some small percentage of women really can't, and I have friends in that category. But for everyone else it's a choice, an expensive one, and that's the point of this post. Our baby couldn't latch for the first three months of her life. I had to pump every two hours around the clock to bottle feed her expressed milk, so I know about overcoming nursing difficulties.

Where Audrey learns to Cook

2005-12-14T19:39:00.000-06:00

Audrey is really interested in cooking. I suppose since I do quite a bit of it, she wants to know what the heck Mom is up to.

Her first "recipe" that she learned and has been able to make [with help] in the last few weeks is guacamole, which she charmingly calls "avocado seed" after the first step of cutting the avocado in half and popping the seed out.

Today she was rummaging through my stash of Christmas cookie ingredients and fixated on the white almond bark. She brought it to me and said, "Audrey cook." So, we melted it down on low in a heavy bottomed pan and then stirred in a cup of peanut butter. Into a pan and then into the fridge. Boy, was she thrilled a few hours later when she got to eat her first piece of "fudge."

Later on, she helped me make a lentil/brown rice salad, and then jambalaya for dinner. She's really starting to get in there and help!

Our Frugal Wedding, Part I

2005-12-11T11:48:00.000-06:00

My Grandmother was appalled that I didn't let Andrew buy me a diamond engagement ring. I didn't really want one, but he thought it'd be a good idea to go and try them on, just to "make sure." So we did, and I was sure. The idea of spending several thousand dollars on a trinket just blows my mind. Oh, yes, but it's a "symbol" of our love. Yeah, right. It's a symbol of the effectiveness of DeBeers' decades of marketing effort. What a racket.

Additionally, I was really disheartened to see some of my normally less materially competitive friends scoping out other women's rings and ranking them. It all felt very high school.

So, we started off on a good foot with no diamond. Instead, we got a nice-looking pearl ring for about 70 dollars. I told him that if he really wanted to spend a little cash on me, he could upgrade my computer. And he did. Heck, if I'm going to get a gift with high depreciation, it might as well be something useful!

Bye, bye Schwab...

2005-12-07T12:24:00.000-06:00

Well, we've liquidated all of our taxable accounts as one of the final steps to moving everything from Schwab to other investment houses. We've already transferred all our IRAs from Schwab to Vanguard, so once we move the taxable stuff we're done w/ Schwab.

I was happy with Schwab for years. The service is excellent, and the web site is pretty darn good - especially compared to Fidelity circa 10 years ago when I migrated out of Fidelity and into Schwab. The problems started to creep in when Terri and I started to get more involved with our investements, and figure out what exactly we were looking for. What we primarily want are index funds with very low expenses, and pretty good returns without huge risk. But most importantly, we also don't want to have to do much "active management" of our funds. Neither of us are really into "playing the market", and I think we'd be happiest if we could put our retirement investments on "cruise control", and feel confident that our investmenting is sound, without much more than maybe a quick monthly checkup.

The problem is that Schwab seems to be more geared to the "active traders" than the "set and forgetters". Their selection of no-load index funds are pretty good, but aren't the "best of breed" that can be found at Vanguard. They also don't have any no-load "target retirement" funds: funds that balance themselves, and get progressively less risky as your retirement date approaches.

To that end, we're moving our long-term investments to Vanguard, and our short-term/emergency funds to Emigrant Direct (4% and FDIC-insured - yippee!).

A word of caution if you leave Schwab: Schwab hit us with a $95 transfer fee for each account we rolled out of Schwab.

And we had 4 IRA accounts - ouch! They didn't give us any warning - the fee just showed up on our statement. If we would've known then we could have done a few different things to reduce or completely negate these charges. This was, by far, the slimiest thing I've experienced with Schwab.

Whittling Down the Budget

2005-12-04T20:31:00.000-06:00

I'm getting to the point with our money situation that all the low hanging fruit has already been whacked off. We don't go to Starbucks, we're not paying any ATM fees, no credit card debt, no car payments, our grocery budget has already been cut in half, I've stopped using the dryer and hang dry all of our laundry. That kind of stuff.

It's like that feeling you get when you read a magazine article that tells you how you can painlessly lose X lbs a year by drinking water instead of soda and you're thinking, "But I already drink water!"

I've been putting it off, going through all the receipts and having to face up to all the other little things that I've been in total denial about because I don't *really* want to give them up. December feels like a particularly painful month to do that, so I think I'll take this month to psych myself up for it. January it is.

Then maybe in February I can craft a real budget.

Eek!

On the Home Front

2005-12-02T19:29:00.000-06:00

Today is Audrey's 2nd birthday! We had two of her play buddies over this morning, and that was a hoot -- 3 toddlers is enough to fill a house, that's for sure!

We also had our ultrasound yesterday, and everything seems to be in its right place and all that, which is always a relief. I'm not exactly getting too old for this stuff, as they say, yet -- but I'm creeping up there in age, and you begin to worry about this kind of thing.

Oh, and it's a boy!

That Pesky Mortgage

2005-12-02T19:08:00.000-06:00

Our house cost about 225k, our mortgage was for about 185k. [We actually refinanced our mortgage within a couple of months of buying the house, but the story of why on Earth we did that may make its own post some day. Heh.]

We've now had this mortgage for about two and a half years, and we've whittled the principal down to about 146k, as of this month. That's pretty aggressive, and my goal is to have it paid off in less than 10 years. Even if we run into any financial trouble between now and then, I still hope to have it paid off before Audrey enters college -- we have a good 15+ years for that.

I have friends who think it is foolish to pay down your mortgage early. Some because they think the mortgage deduction is so wonderful [though I don't see why paying a dollar so you can get about 30 cents back is so great], and some because your mortgage loan is the cheapest money you can get. Then there's the "put it somewhere else where you'll get more return!" crowd. Well, we don't have any other debt whatsoever, so that sort of wipes out #2. And #1 is kind of silly on its face. As far as #3 goes, we already max out our 401k and our IRAs, plus put an extra chunk every two weeks into Emigrant to bolster our emergency fund, so we've got all of our basics covered already. Plus we have another chunk just "in the market" that's non-retirement. I guess what I'm saying is that we're not exactly skimping on our other investments. And paying down the mortgage has a few add bonuses: First, the return is guaranteed. Second, the psychological advantage of having zero debt whatsoever is worth quite a bit to me. Third, the cash flow issue -- that's a pretty large check that I'm looking forward to no longer having to write every month.

Putting It Into Perspective

2005-11-30T21:19:00.000-06:00

I've been feeling kind of discouraged lately on the finance front. And then I realized that the program that I use to track net worth is missing a few accounts that I've been moving stuff around into. And then I realized that many of the personal finance blogs that I read count the value of their house into their net worth, and we don't do that -- so that makes a huge difference in the number, too.

I'm feeling a little better about it all now. Heh.

Before the "Real" Homeschooling Begins...

2005-11-26T20:51:00.000-06:00

Audrey has been learning up a storm lately.

She knows her alphabet [and can sing the song!] and letter sounds, knows the numbers 1-10 solid and loves to count things, and knows a huge number of general vocabulary words -- great since she lagged way behind in communication for awhile there. In the last few days, her favorite activity bar none has been playing with Tux Paint on her Dad's tablet computer. She has it totally nailed. She can start the program, use almost any of the tools or brushes and start new pages. She likes to draw faces, rainbows and umbrellas. She's not even 2! It blows my mind.

Me, Being Cheap

2005-11-26T19:19:00.000-06:00

Everytime I finish a jar of pickles, my inner cheapie cringes when I pour the pickle juice down the drain. I decided last week to try to think of some ways I can put it to use.

I cut up a cucumber and stuffed it into one jar and made some "refrigerator pickles" -- after a few days, they were okay, but not great. Then I pulled a really, really cheap roast out of the freezer and when it was nearly but not quite fully defrosted, I cut it up into stew-sized pieces and marinated them in some pickle juice overnight. The next day, I made a beef stew out of it, and I thought that turned out really, really good.

I haven't thought of anything else yet.

Learning How to Cook All Over Again

2005-11-17T19:46:00.000-06:00

I used to cook a lot before I had kids. And then after Audrey was born, I had to learn a whole new ballgame. Different recipes, different techniques. Nothing too elaborate -- and most importantly! -- something that could be broken down into a lot of atomic operations that were not too time dependent. For instance, there was a short period of time when I never cooked pasta because invariably I would be tied up in something when it was time to drain the pasta. This sort of thing reached its peak during 14-20 months, the clingiest, highest need period of her toddlerhood.

And then something magical happened a few weeks ago [Don't ask, because I'm not even sure what], and now not only can we get tasks done around the house, but she's a big helper. [Her first recipe mastered was guacamole. Oh, how she loves guacamole.]

But this now opens up a lot of new options for us, and allows us a lot more latitude in eating healthier and much more frugally. Right now, I'd say our food budget is down at least 50% from when I started really working on getting it down.

Always speaking too soon ...

2005-11-16T19:06:00.000-06:00

So, after a good month or so of being really tight with money, I've spent more money in the last couple of days than the last 2 months. [Save for bills, of course.] Admittedly, it was stuff we had been planning to buy for some time, but actually pulling the trigger on most of it at one time felt weird. But this is good! This means that I've definitely turned that corner from buying things giving me a rush to buying things giving me the heebeejeebees.

A major part of this little mini-spree was getting hard plastic pantry containers for, well, just about everything. I've been battling a moth problem in the pantry for some time, and they were winning. These are some pretty tenacious Texas moths that have chewed through just about everything that I have wrapped or sealed my pantry items in. They chew through boxes, through freezer bags, thin plastic, you name it. I don't think they'll be able to chew through the containers that I bought today, though.

So Audrey and I spent the afternoon going through our pantry, chunking what's already been infested and repackaging the rest. I now have a lot of empty space in the pantry. Heh.

I should also mention ...

2005-11-15T18:03:00.000-06:00

Besides being a crappy blogger, I am also pretty crappy at the whole personal finance game, though I am getting much, much better. My biggest handicap is that I am chronically disorganized and thus can't hack a budget. Before I had my financial act together, I used to balance my checkbook by the "rhythm method" -- I knew that at certain times of the month I had more money than others, and spent by "feel." My only saving grace was that I made pretty good money.

But now that I'm married and quit my job to stay home with kids, that all had to stop. So we've instituted the "pay yourself first" model. Before our paycheck even makes it to our checking account, our maxxed out 401k has been taken out, a large chunk gets sent to Vanguard to hit our yearly maxes for our Roths, a chunk is taken out and sent to Emigrant for our emergency fund, and a chunk is taken out for our medical savings account. [We've got a midwife to pay in April!] Additionally, I earmark an extra chunk to go towards our mortgage's principal every month. [More about that another time.]

Our mortgage is only about 30% of what's leftover after all of that [and taxes!], so we are able to still play pretty loosey-goosey without a budget. But that only works because we're not big spenders in the first place. We're fairly introverted homebodies with a small handful of friends, so we don't have to keep up with the Joneses. We both have little hobbies -- for me, books; for Andrew, little gadgets -- but we keep that in check so it's not too expensive.

Something a Little Different

2005-11-15T18:00:00.000-06:00

Oh, I am the very worst blogger. A few main reasons: I have a toddler and am pregnant with another; and most of the current homeschooling thoughts and ideas I have, I've come to realize that I feel they are still private. So I guess I'm not ready to blog about it all yet. Heh. Not that anyone reads this, but if they did...

The other main issue is that we know we're going to homeschool, we're very happy and comfortable with our decision. Not a lot of grist for the blogging mill. Instead, our big project right now is two fold: save as much money as we can, and make our diet significantly healthier.

Thankfully, these two projects help one another rather than hinder. We almost never eat out, and Andrew takes a lunch with him every day to work. We're also in the process of cutting out most processed foods and making more and more items from scratch. As Audrey gets older, she's able to start observing and helping in the kitchen -- even a few months ago, doing much involved kitchen work was almost impossible because she was still a little too clingy and too flighty to help.

Today was our first foray into using some of the powdered milk we bought. First we made some hot cocoa [yum], and then we reconstituted some regular milk and mixed it about 2/3 - 1/3 with some 1% we had in the fridge. I'm going to let that sit overnight and see how that tastes in the morning. Most of the milk usage in the house is in recipes or steamed up in the morning for Andrew's coffee, so I think we'll be able to make the switch pretty painlessly.

Sonlight

2005-05-06T13:34:00.000-05:00

I've been looking into Sonlight Curriculum a bit while trying to learn more about homeschooling. I'm not an evangelical Christian [they are], but it seems pretty adaptable. In fact, I am currently part of two Yahoo groups - SL Catholic and SL Secular - that are all about adapting it to fit other points of view.

Sonlight appeals to me because there are no textbooks. I tend to agree with the more Charlotte-Masony idea that textbooks tend to squeeze the life out of a subject and can turn just about anything interesting into drudgery. I've gone through some elementary level science, math and English texts and they're pretty bleak.

When I was a kid, I was excited about learning and not excited about school. And it eventually occurred to me that perhaps there was something wrong with that. [I ended up leaving high school after the 10th grade and moving to the local community college where things were much different.]

For my birthday this year, my husband purchased Sonlight's Survey of British Literature high school curriculum and I've been working through that while raising Audrey. It's wonderful so far, though slow going.

I'm working my way through Beowulf, and it appears that I have had the wrong idea about that poem. The translator mentions in the introduction how alien the poem seems to modern audiences, particularly in comparison to, say, the Iliad. Even if you don't really know much about Classical Mythology or have never read the Iliad before, basic cultural literacy is going to make many of the names and much of the plot familiar to you. Not so with Beowulf, none of it seems to have wormed its way into our culture. Unless, of course, you watched Firefly and then realized, "Hey! That's where he got the reavers from!" Once you make it over that hump, though, it's a rip roaring good time. It's brash and it's brusque and it feels like it would go well with a beer.

Welcome back to my lame blog!

2005-05-06T13:20:00.000-05:00

Okay, so it's been almost a year since I've posted. At least I didn't
only make one post and never post again! Heh. [I wonder what percentage
of blogger posts fit that description ... ]

Anywhoo, Audrey is 17 months old now and soaking up vocabularly like a
sponge. She will very rarely attempt to say any of her new words, but she
can point to the objects named. And not just animals! She's also figured
out colors, numerals, and she's beginning to pick out individual letters.
And to think that just a couple of months ago, our doctor wanted us to
take her in for a hearing check because she wasn't responding to much of
any verbal communication. I think she was sandbagging so she could blow
us all away when she was ready to unleash it.

In other news, we are feeling more and more comfortable with our decision
to homeschool. I feel confident that I can provide an excellent
education, and I hope that someday in the near future Audrey will have
another sibling or two to learn with. [But will I stop ending sentences
with "with" before then?]

One decision down, X to go ...

2004-07-27T10:26:00.000-05:00

Well, I guess we know now that we won't be attending the Waldorf school down the road. It's a bit of a shame, though, since it's within walking distance, and the campus itself is quite beautiful.

We had been a bit worried that the curriculum wasn't math/sci enough, but we've always assumed that it's our job to supplement gaps in curriculum if need be. Andrew was particularly concerned by how weak they were on computers/programming. Now, looking further and harder into their philosophy and curriculum on the net, we can see that it really doesn't match at all what we want.

One of Andrew's big concerns [and I agree] is that whatever course we take with her, if we ever have to put her back into public school, we want to ensure that she is ahead of public school standards, not behind. I didn't get the feel that would be the case with Waldorf.

Not to mention some of the stranger touchy-feely/spiritual stuff in their philosophy. I won't get into that here, but suffice to say, that's not really our ball of wax, either.

Homeschooling in Texas

2004-07-01T17:59:00.000-05:00

It appears that Texas is one of the best states for homeschooling. Their stance is that if your school doesn't take state money, the state can't tell you what to do -- and here, a home school is considered a private school for those purposes. In the late 80s, the court ruled on a Texas standard for homeschools -- they need to meet 3 criteria:

There needs to be 1. Bona Fide learning going on with a 2. Curriculum in 3. the Required Subjects.

What are the required subjects? Reading, spelling, grammar, math and good citizenship.

Good citizenship! I'm sort of charmed by that. When I was in the 4th grade, we took a tour of the Capitol building, and I got to sit in Gov. Sununu's chair. [It was a nice chair.]

Math Curriculum / Calculators

2004-07-01T15:04:00.000-05:00

I stumbled across this post today [via Joanne Jacobs] on how widespread early calculator use affects later academic performance. [Hint: it's not good.] My post-partum memory is fuzzy, but I seem to recall not using calculators regularly until my college statistics class. In fact, I still have my trusty TI-36X from that class and still use it. [I've since sold the TI-81 that I used in calculus.] I always enjoyed calculating in my head -- I remember working at San Francisco Street Bakery in college, and I'd keep running tabs for folks as they picked out their items and would announce their total to them before I even got to the cash register. Cheap fun. Heh.

I've been reviewing different math curricula lately -- there's a fairly wide variety of approaches out there, but my gut tells me that tried-and-true like Saxon or Singapore Math is what most effectively teaches math competence. [The girls who babysit for us -- and who are homeschooled -- use Saxon.] One thing I like about them is that they discourage calculator use.

Waldorf

2004-07-01T12:28:00.000-05:00

We are within walking/biking distance of a Waldorf school. We have mixed feelings about sending Audrey there. On the plus side, they seem to have a fairly interesting curriculum, and you can be assured that most of the parents are very involved. On the negative side, it might be a little touchy-feely for our tastes. It's too early to tell yet what Audrey's academic interests are going to be, but both Andrew and I are fairly technical math/science/computer types -- Waldorf doesn't seem to emphasize those enough for our taste, but I'm not sure that's a showstopper.

Choices, Choices ...

2004-07-01T12:03:00.000-05:00

Our first daughter, Audrey, is nearly 7 months old, and already my husband Andrew and I are struggling over where/how to educate her.

The current options we're kicking around include public school, Catholic school, the very nearby Waldorf school and homeschooling.

Admittedly, I'm not thrilled about public school. I went to a handful of public schools and a handful of Catholic schools. I had a good experience at a small, neighborhood Catholic school, a great experience at a small, rural public school, a poor experience at a wealthy Catholic school and and particularly crappy experience at a suburban "good" public school. I left there after the 10th grade and started at my local community college. But Andrew had a good experience in the Austin, TX public school system [years ago], and isn't nearly as jaded as I am. At the risk of stereotypical old cooter "everything is going to hell"-speak, I do feel like the public schools have only gotten worse since we were there.

Thankfully, we have a few years to decide.