Thursday, July 3, 2008
Hiatus.
This blog is on hiatus. Your broke ass may find more information about cheap and healthy lifestyle choices or wack moneymaking schemes at mavenhaven. Thanks for reading!
Wednesday, May 28, 2008
Potluck.
While I appreciate the many fine qualities of my friends, one of the basic requirements is that he or she be able to cook or otherwise prepare food in a delicious manner. When I started grad school back in 1999, one of the first people I met was my friend Dom, who kicked off our social life by hosting a dinner at which he served handmade ravioli with mushrooms, roasted beets and greens, and goat cheese, or something very close to that combination. In any case, it was true love 4eva.
That dinner turned out to be sort of an anomaly, though, and I don't mean that Dom wooed us all with one amazing meal and then stopped cooking. What I mean is that hosted dinners, at which the host singlehandedly prepares every bit of food that is to be served, have been few and far between since then. It turns out that everyone I know can cook. And when everyone can cook, that humble party, the potluck (aka Feast, aka Throwdown), becomes your best bet not just for filling your grumbling gut with a variety of delicacies, but for entertaining on the cheap-and-satisfying tip.
Of course, if you roll in more formal circles, it's possible that your peeps would raise their eyebrows at the idea of potluck. To that I say FIE. Hosting a dinner party is expensive and can be quite stressful, between getting your house presentable and doing things like making tablescapes and timing the food so that every dish is ready at the right moment. You can dine out en masse, but dining out is expensive, especially if you're picking up the whole check for a group (but why would you be? your ass is broke). And dining out with a large group can be a nightmare even when you're splitting the check. It's all fun and games until the check comes and you have to start divvying it up and making the poor waitron run 6 different debit cards.
The point I'm trying to make is that getting together to enjoy each other's company does not need to be expensive OR stressful, and asking your guests to bring a dish to pass is not gauche. In fact, assigning your guest a particular dish based on his or her culinary skills is not gauche, either. (I have one friend who is an amazing baker, for example, but I'm less excited about his entrees and side dishes.) If your guests have dietary restrictions, potluck eliminates the issue of planning your meal around the vegan in the bunch, because she will make something amazing that will convince everyone else to go vegan too.
A good example of a potluck theme is breakfast for dinner, always a crowd-pleaser. Assign pancakes, toppings (yogurt and peaches were big favorites), sausage (real and fake), fruit salad, and eggs if you like. Best of all, just about everything can and should be prepared on the spot, which only means that you need to have two burners available on your stove. Assign the best pancake flipper to the pancake spot. Serve decaf, mimosas, and bloody marys. Since breakfast is a cheap meal anyway, this ends up being a great deal for everyone.
So I guess my recommendation here is twofold: 1) only make friends with people who have mad cooking skillz, and 2) make sure that said cooking skillz are deployed cooperatively in the service of your collective fun. Potluck!!
That dinner turned out to be sort of an anomaly, though, and I don't mean that Dom wooed us all with one amazing meal and then stopped cooking. What I mean is that hosted dinners, at which the host singlehandedly prepares every bit of food that is to be served, have been few and far between since then. It turns out that everyone I know can cook. And when everyone can cook, that humble party, the potluck (aka Feast, aka Throwdown), becomes your best bet not just for filling your grumbling gut with a variety of delicacies, but for entertaining on the cheap-and-satisfying tip.
Of course, if you roll in more formal circles, it's possible that your peeps would raise their eyebrows at the idea of potluck. To that I say FIE. Hosting a dinner party is expensive and can be quite stressful, between getting your house presentable and doing things like making tablescapes and timing the food so that every dish is ready at the right moment. You can dine out en masse, but dining out is expensive, especially if you're picking up the whole check for a group (but why would you be? your ass is broke). And dining out with a large group can be a nightmare even when you're splitting the check. It's all fun and games until the check comes and you have to start divvying it up and making the poor waitron run 6 different debit cards.
The point I'm trying to make is that getting together to enjoy each other's company does not need to be expensive OR stressful, and asking your guests to bring a dish to pass is not gauche. In fact, assigning your guest a particular dish based on his or her culinary skills is not gauche, either. (I have one friend who is an amazing baker, for example, but I'm less excited about his entrees and side dishes.) If your guests have dietary restrictions, potluck eliminates the issue of planning your meal around the vegan in the bunch, because she will make something amazing that will convince everyone else to go vegan too.
A good example of a potluck theme is breakfast for dinner, always a crowd-pleaser. Assign pancakes, toppings (yogurt and peaches were big favorites), sausage (real and fake), fruit salad, and eggs if you like. Best of all, just about everything can and should be prepared on the spot, which only means that you need to have two burners available on your stove. Assign the best pancake flipper to the pancake spot. Serve decaf, mimosas, and bloody marys. Since breakfast is a cheap meal anyway, this ends up being a great deal for everyone.
So I guess my recommendation here is twofold: 1) only make friends with people who have mad cooking skillz, and 2) make sure that said cooking skillz are deployed cooperatively in the service of your collective fun. Potluck!!
Monday, May 12, 2008
Another credit card update, and sundry financial news.
It turns out I can't hack it--the original terms of the credit card experiment don't work for me. I just can't leave a balance sitting on my credit card. So here's what I'm going to do: continue to charge everything, and just pay it off every week, or every other week. That way I get the rewards without the psychological wallop of dropping $1500 on a credit card payment.
In other news, have you noticed that gas prices are still going up? Just kidding. Obviously you've noticed it; it's practically all anyone is talking about. The thing about gas prices is that they are never going to go down, not substantially or permanently, anyway, and like our friends (frenemies?) in Europe, we are going to have to suck it up and learn some new habits. And our transportation infrastructure and R & D for alternative fuels is going to have to step up to keep pace with gas prices.
For my part, I'm getting on my bike. I've pledged to bike commute to work at least once a week (that's about 15 miles round trip), and that will save me a bit of money and, you know, be a sort of carbon offset. I'm also carrying about 10 extra pounds of non-muscle weight and since I have no interest in dieting, getting on the bike will load me up with muscle weight instead of that other kind.
Also, and I haven't blogged about this yet because it is kind of pathetic, I'm about to reach zero net worth. This is cause for celebration. I don't have the numbers in front of me, but I think that means I've pole vaulted up from -$10K or so in less than a year. I started tracking my net worth last summer purely because I was interested to see how true it is that I'm worth more dead than alive (due to my life insurance), and it was and is indeed true, thanks to my student loan and poor track record with savings and investments.
My story goes like this: I took out about $20K in federal loans to get two degrees at a private undergraduate institution (worth every penny, as far as I'm concerned). I worked crappy jobs for two years, during which I made a few loan payments, and then I went to grad school for, like, ever. I got paid to go to grad school for most of those years and was fully funded by the institution for all of them, so I didn't take out any more loans or pay for school, but neither did I make loan payments, thanks to the magic of in-school deferment.
Then I was a half-assed freelancer. I made very decent money considering I gave myself tons of leisure time. I had no consumer debt of any kind, very low expenses, and inexpensive taste. I went on trips, went out with friends, went out on dates, bought clothes, paid for health insurance, owned a car, and basically did everything I wanted to do on my wee income...but I didn't really save money during that time, except for chucking $50 into my IRA here and there. At least I had an IRA.
So last year I finally decided that I needed to make some more money so that I could pay off my student loan more aggressively and catch up on retirement savings. I'm six months into my day job, which is a 30 hour position I negotiated with an institution I'd been working for on a temporary/casual basis for a few years. I still have freelance and contract work, and a little side business selling vintage clothing. My expenses are still low, but my income has increased. So instead of shifting my lifestyle to eat up more of my income, I'm putting the money into my loan and my IRA, while keeping liquid funds for emergencies.
I now have about $5600 in my IRA and about $750 in other investments, and as long as nothing crazy happens, I'll have my student loan paid off in under 5 years and will max out my IRAs every year. When I calculate my net worth next month, I expect to be in the black for the first time. Which is rad.
If you'd like to track your net worth, I recommend a simple spreadsheet on Google docs. There are templates everywhere, but I feel like I should give a hat tip to Boston Gal, whose financial life is an open book. She posts her net worth details every month. It's very interesting, but will probably make you feel bad about yourself because she's in her 30s and has already hit the half million mark. I heard about her on NPR last summer, and have been lurking around personal finance blogs ever since.
In other news, have you noticed that gas prices are still going up? Just kidding. Obviously you've noticed it; it's practically all anyone is talking about. The thing about gas prices is that they are never going to go down, not substantially or permanently, anyway, and like our friends (frenemies?) in Europe, we are going to have to suck it up and learn some new habits. And our transportation infrastructure and R & D for alternative fuels is going to have to step up to keep pace with gas prices.
For my part, I'm getting on my bike. I've pledged to bike commute to work at least once a week (that's about 15 miles round trip), and that will save me a bit of money and, you know, be a sort of carbon offset. I'm also carrying about 10 extra pounds of non-muscle weight and since I have no interest in dieting, getting on the bike will load me up with muscle weight instead of that other kind.
Also, and I haven't blogged about this yet because it is kind of pathetic, I'm about to reach zero net worth. This is cause for celebration. I don't have the numbers in front of me, but I think that means I've pole vaulted up from -$10K or so in less than a year. I started tracking my net worth last summer purely because I was interested to see how true it is that I'm worth more dead than alive (due to my life insurance), and it was and is indeed true, thanks to my student loan and poor track record with savings and investments.
My story goes like this: I took out about $20K in federal loans to get two degrees at a private undergraduate institution (worth every penny, as far as I'm concerned). I worked crappy jobs for two years, during which I made a few loan payments, and then I went to grad school for, like, ever. I got paid to go to grad school for most of those years and was fully funded by the institution for all of them, so I didn't take out any more loans or pay for school, but neither did I make loan payments, thanks to the magic of in-school deferment.
Then I was a half-assed freelancer. I made very decent money considering I gave myself tons of leisure time. I had no consumer debt of any kind, very low expenses, and inexpensive taste. I went on trips, went out with friends, went out on dates, bought clothes, paid for health insurance, owned a car, and basically did everything I wanted to do on my wee income...but I didn't really save money during that time, except for chucking $50 into my IRA here and there. At least I had an IRA.
So last year I finally decided that I needed to make some more money so that I could pay off my student loan more aggressively and catch up on retirement savings. I'm six months into my day job, which is a 30 hour position I negotiated with an institution I'd been working for on a temporary/casual basis for a few years. I still have freelance and contract work, and a little side business selling vintage clothing. My expenses are still low, but my income has increased. So instead of shifting my lifestyle to eat up more of my income, I'm putting the money into my loan and my IRA, while keeping liquid funds for emergencies.
I now have about $5600 in my IRA and about $750 in other investments, and as long as nothing crazy happens, I'll have my student loan paid off in under 5 years and will max out my IRAs every year. When I calculate my net worth next month, I expect to be in the black for the first time. Which is rad.
If you'd like to track your net worth, I recommend a simple spreadsheet on Google docs. There are templates everywhere, but I feel like I should give a hat tip to Boston Gal, whose financial life is an open book. She posts her net worth details every month. It's very interesting, but will probably make you feel bad about yourself because she's in her 30s and has already hit the half million mark. I heard about her on NPR last summer, and have been lurking around personal finance blogs ever since.
Thursday, April 24, 2008
Eat healthy; vote with your dollars.
Sorry for the silence over here, gentle readers. There's been a lot going on, much of it relevant to lifestyle choices, which I usually blog about over on mavenhaven. However, witchyobrokeass is about nothing if not lifestyle choices. Some people are frugal because they have to be, and some people are frugal because it makes good sense to be frugal--because it gives you options. I'm somewhere between those two categories right now. Taking a day job--which I did last fall--has given me more financial headroom than I used to have, and that is allowing me to think more about why I'm making the lifestyle choices I make.
I've been doing a lot of reading lately about how f-ed up the food supply is in the United States, and I'm going to recommend three books to you right now:
I said this on my other blog, but the most depressing thing to me about industrial food production is how money-driven it is. Farmers are forced into raising cattle a certain way because they feel they'll be pushed out of business if they don't. Corporations will do just about anything to meet the consumer demand for rock-bottom prices, including pumping animals full of food they were never meant to eat and medicines that help the animals to tolerate that food until they're killed. This is the craptastic story of corn-fed cattle.
If food production is market-driven, then the market needs to change. Here are some tips:
As I mentioned in my previous post about monthly expenses, I've recently bumped up my food spending by switching over to an organic diet. This summer, my diet is going to be more restricted to foods that are in season and produced locally, which should reduce my costs. We're splitting a CSA share with another couple this summer, so for about 4 months, we'll be getting a box of whatever the organic farm has harvested each week. I've also asked for surplus produce to can, freeze, or dehydrate so that I can eat these local goodies for the rest of the year.
When money is tight, plant some tomatoes and get yourself a really amazing recipe for beans and rice instead of hitting up the fast food dollar menu. Healthy, fresh food is for EVERYBODY, not for the left-wing cultural elite. Industrial food may be cheap on the front end, but the hidden cost is that your taxes are paying for farm subsidies that benefit big business, and the food is slowly killing your broke ass.
I've been doing a lot of reading lately about how f-ed up the food supply is in the United States, and I'm going to recommend three books to you right now:
- Animal, Vegetable, Miracle: A Year of Food Life
by Barbara Kingsolver
- The Omnivore's Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals
by Michael Pollan
- The Way We Eat: Why Our Food Choices Matter
by Peter Singer and Jim Mason
I said this on my other blog, but the most depressing thing to me about industrial food production is how money-driven it is. Farmers are forced into raising cattle a certain way because they feel they'll be pushed out of business if they don't. Corporations will do just about anything to meet the consumer demand for rock-bottom prices, including pumping animals full of food they were never meant to eat and medicines that help the animals to tolerate that food until they're killed. This is the craptastic story of corn-fed cattle.
If food production is market-driven, then the market needs to change. Here are some tips:
- SLOW DOWN. If you have time to stalk all your high school classmates on Facebook or watch endless reruns on TV, you have time to make dinner from scratch.
- Make dinnertime a personal and family priority, from food prep to eating to cleanup.
- Stop buying processed foods.
- If you eat meat, buy meat from farmers who pasture their animals and raise them ethically. This is going to cost more, so: eat less meat. You'll be supporting the right kind of farming and eating a much healthier product.
- Buy food in season and it will cost less.
- Ask your grocer for locally-produced and organic foods.
As I mentioned in my previous post about monthly expenses, I've recently bumped up my food spending by switching over to an organic diet. This summer, my diet is going to be more restricted to foods that are in season and produced locally, which should reduce my costs. We're splitting a CSA share with another couple this summer, so for about 4 months, we'll be getting a box of whatever the organic farm has harvested each week. I've also asked for surplus produce to can, freeze, or dehydrate so that I can eat these local goodies for the rest of the year.
When money is tight, plant some tomatoes and get yourself a really amazing recipe for beans and rice instead of hitting up the fast food dollar menu. Healthy, fresh food is for EVERYBODY, not for the left-wing cultural elite. Industrial food may be cheap on the front end, but the hidden cost is that your taxes are paying for farm subsidies that benefit big business, and the food is slowly killing your broke ass.
Wednesday, April 2, 2008
Meaningful data: three months of expense tracking.
Back in January, I decided to record every little bit of spending I did, in niggling detail, with an eye toward creating a budget based on my real-life habits instead of just my minimum expenses and some nebulous idea about my miscellaneous spending. Because a chunk of my income comes from my work as an independent contractor, I had already been tracking monthly income and business-related expenses, so it wasn't a huge leap to start tracking daily spending.
Now that I've been at it for three months, I can start to make some generalizations based on my actual habits, rather than just on my gut feeling about my habits.
Now that I've been at it for three months, I can start to make some generalizations based on my actual habits, rather than just on my gut feeling about my habits.
- Leaving aside things like housing, loan payments, and IRA contributions, groceries are my biggest daily expense--no surprise there. After two months of trying to shop more systematically and doing a little inventory of my food-related values, I realized that I could actually move toward buying almost all organic foods without financial hardship. Voila: in March my grocery spending LEAPT up by over $100. I'll keep working on this one.
- I wouldn't necessarily have thought of this while creating a budget, but I need to allocate an average of $60 per month for gifts and $60 per month for charitable donations if I want to continue giving at the same level that I am currently. I'm not extravagant with either gifts or donations, but both are important to me. At a minimum, I have monthly electronic deductions to support public radio and my alma mater. And birthday season kicks off in my family at the end of this month.
- I have a category called ME that encompasses everything from the Print Gocco machine I bought myself back in January to the Dunn Bros beverages that helped fuel my work and teaching during the coldest days of the year. That category apparently requires about $95 per month, though that result was skewed by the aforementioned Gocco purchase. I may end up writing Gocco off as a business expense anyway, so I think this category needs a bit more time.
- I need to brown bag it even more often than I already do, I think. Quick lunches or dinners on my extra-long days, or on days when I don't have time to pack food, accounted for an average of $47 per month. That's not a lot, but those occasions could nearly always be addressed with a little extra planning from home.
- Entertainment only accounted for about $63 per month. I attribute this to the fact that I find almost everything entertaining.
Tuesday, April 1, 2008
Update: the credit card experiment.
I've now finished an entire month of putting absolutely everything on my Chase Amazon card, in the service of earning rewards and letting my cash earn a few more pennies of interest before I pay for all of my purchases with actual money. And I'll tell you what, it's weird. I've been tracking my spending since January anyway, so the expenditures are not surprising, but I have to admit that I'm uncomfortable with having the balance sitting on my card. It is just slightly psychologically weird. But I am going to keep it up for three months before I decide whether this is a good money management strategy for me or not.
On the plus side, I should have a $25 Amazon gift certificate showing up soon. It's already earmarked for a sweet sweet chef's knife, which is going to make my chopping-heavy vegetarian life a lot nicer.
On the plus side, I should have a $25 Amazon gift certificate showing up soon. It's already earmarked for a sweet sweet chef's knife, which is going to make my chopping-heavy vegetarian life a lot nicer.
Tuesday, March 18, 2008
The Diva Cup.
I've been meaning to post about the Diva Cup, and this week it is especially appropriate for reasons you'll likely be able glean your ownself after reading the following.
If you are a dude or other non-menstruator, you can probably skip this post, because it's about menstrual cups. It fits squarely in the category of Stuff I've Tried, as well as Environmentally Friendly, and Frugality. In fact, I should make a Venn diagram about it, because at the intersection of those categories, you would find Menstrual Cups (along with things like Vinegar as Household Cleaner) but I can't find a slick Venn diagram generator on the internets. If you find one, holler at me.
So menstrual cups. They've been around since the 1930s, but these days I'd wager they're better engineered and more comfortable compared to the specimens of the past. Here's how they work: they're worn internally, just below the cervical opening, to catch the flow. You can leave them in for up to 12 hours, and empty as needed. Simply dump, rinse, reinsert. They cost about $35 and last for years. Considering I had been spending at least that much yearly on tampons prior to switching over to the (unfortunately-named) Diva Cup about a year and a half ago and will probably be getting my period for another 20-25 years, it's well worth the investment. Not to mention the environmental factor: no more flushing of tampons or disposing of packaging (minimal with the applicator-free versions I was using, but there was packaging nonetheless).
I've also tried the Keeper, which at that point was only available in latex (they now make a silicone version). The latex was a little irritating, so I switched to the Diva Cup, which is medical grade silicone. The two products also have slightly different shapes, and I prefer the Diva Cup. But both operate the same way.
The websites for both products provide lots of information about the cups, including testimonials and FAQ. There's a bit of a learning curve with using a cup, it's true, but if you think back, you'll remember there was a learning curve with tampons too. Having tried just about every type of menstrual protection available in my 21 year career, I totally endorse the cup.
If you are a dude or other non-menstruator, you can probably skip this post, because it's about menstrual cups. It fits squarely in the category of Stuff I've Tried, as well as Environmentally Friendly, and Frugality. In fact, I should make a Venn diagram about it, because at the intersection of those categories, you would find Menstrual Cups (along with things like Vinegar as Household Cleaner) but I can't find a slick Venn diagram generator on the internets. If you find one, holler at me.
So menstrual cups. They've been around since the 1930s, but these days I'd wager they're better engineered and more comfortable compared to the specimens of the past. Here's how they work: they're worn internally, just below the cervical opening, to catch the flow. You can leave them in for up to 12 hours, and empty as needed. Simply dump, rinse, reinsert. They cost about $35 and last for years. Considering I had been spending at least that much yearly on tampons prior to switching over to the (unfortunately-named) Diva Cup about a year and a half ago and will probably be getting my period for another 20-25 years, it's well worth the investment. Not to mention the environmental factor: no more flushing of tampons or disposing of packaging (minimal with the applicator-free versions I was using, but there was packaging nonetheless).
I've also tried the Keeper, which at that point was only available in latex (they now make a silicone version). The latex was a little irritating, so I switched to the Diva Cup, which is medical grade silicone. The two products also have slightly different shapes, and I prefer the Diva Cup. But both operate the same way.
The websites for both products provide lots of information about the cups, including testimonials and FAQ. There's a bit of a learning curve with using a cup, it's true, but if you think back, you'll remember there was a learning curve with tampons too. Having tried just about every type of menstrual protection available in my 21 year career, I totally endorse the cup.
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