No seriously. Stop laughing.

It IS cold to us thin skinned folks. The temperatures have been dipping down to the low 40’s at night. Last night it hovered at 60 degrees… inside our living room.

Yes, I could turn on the heater but since we’re trying to stretch our cash, we simply do without. We had two blankets on the bed but I was still chilled. I tried to snuggle with my husband to stay warm but his coughing kept shaking me awake. And no, I will not admit his cough is from the frosty internal temperature – well, not to his face anyway.

Our dogs have a heated floor in their dog house so they stay more toasty warm than we do. Please don’t tell my husband – he may ask to join them.

I added two more blankets last night and slept well. When my alarm goes off in the morning, I dress myself in three sweaters, a pair of sweatpants, and slippers. Sometimes, while putting on my make-up, I catch a glimpse of my Michelin Man appearance in the mirror and start to giggle.

Sometimes the circumstances of life are just funny.

I’m trying to beat my all time record internal house temperature of 56. Based on our new standard of living and the fact that the coldest month is still yet to come… I think I may just have a chance.

I hope you’re staying warm!

Perhaps it’s because my husband is blaring Amy Grant’s ‘Tender Tennessee Christmas’ in the other room.

No. I’m not joking.

His happy-go-lucky Pollyanna ‘I love the earth and all holidays’ attitude is for the most part a wonderful thing…

But thoughts of Christmas in October simply make me (and anyone within 50 yards of his subwoofer) suicidal.

I have to give him credit… it is an important reminder that we have to start thinking about Christmas gifts now. Since I’m broke and can’t spend 50 bucks on the last remaining blockbuster gift card in the Vons checkout on December 24th, I’ve got to make my plan of action. I’ve got to start taking left over change from payphones, digging through the neighbor’s garbage for recyclables, or compiling leftover foil for a life sized foil ball. Because if there’s one thing I’ve learned in my 29 years on this earth, it’s the fact that everyone needs a foil ball the size of a Honda.

No?

Hmm. Well, what was the best low (or preferably) no cost gift you ever received?

Last year my siblings and I compiled letters from us to our parents telling them how much we appreciated and loved them and had them printed and bound at Shutterfly.com (Walmart.com also provides the same photo type books we used). But I’m out of ideas! Help!

First, we cut our dental and vision insurance. This is something that can easily be re-instated but the $25 a month can help me now.

Second, I cancelled all my appointments health related or otherwise. None of my appointments were an emergency and I requested that my doctor renew my prescriptions without the annual check-up since the last 6 years have been clear of any problems. These appointments and tests run in the neighborhood of $500.

Third, I called my cable company to cancel our cable, reduce our internet speed, and reduce our phone service. I explained our situation and was surprised when they offered reduced internet costs, reduced phone costs, and added free services and free channels for a 12 month period. I would tell you how much I’m paying – but I’m afraid they’ll figure out they made a huge mistake and ‘correct’ the discount… or fire the guy who gave it to me. I would have cut out the internet and phone entirely but my husband needs internet for school purposes and job searching late at night when he gets home (free internet at the library is closed) and I’m uncomfortable without a home phone for emergencies.

Fourth, I contacted my student loan company for a deferment.

Fifth, my husband and I contacted friends and family and let them know we’d be available for odd jobs. Since unemployment doesn’t start for nearly a month after a job loss, my husband has done everything from pulling weeds to insulating walls. I have been helping a company with paperwork at night after work. We use this money for groceries and for the important bills like electric and water. At no time should you feel you are ‘too good’ for any type of job.

Sixth, we cut off all our subscriptions and memberships. If you’re like us, you may not even remember you have some of them since they are automatically billed to your credit card and you may not look at each item on your online statement. Some examples: gym memberships, club memberships, magazine and newspaper subscriptions (some automatically renew unless you cancel). Savings – $50 a month.

Seventh, we’ve been using more public transportation. It takes twice as long to get somewhere, it’s uncomfortable, and it’s far from fun, but it saves $50-$75 a month.

It’s not a lot, but each item buys us a little more time.

A 7 pm bachelorette dinner time that coincided with a 7 pm baseball game start and the 7 pm Saturday night party crowd shot parking rates and traffic to a premium. Unable to find an overnight parking place, I parked in an hourly rate spot (a spot that makes more per hour than I do). All throughout dinner, I checked my watch thinking, ‘Tick tock goes the meter – and my $50 allowance.’

I ordered the cheapest item on the menu, a $9 greek wrap, and had 2 – $2 beers. I dropped in $20 to cover my meal.

$30 left in my wallet.

We went to a club where I used $6 from my ash tray to have a Corona with the girls. As I sat nursing my beer with ‘Bridesmaid’ bedazzled across the chest of my pink tank top, guy came up to me and asked me to dance, he mentioned it was his 21st birthday… which had me thinking, ‘What is the official definition of a Cougar? And dear Lord… I’m not one right?!?’

A few more hours passed and I realized that I could not afford $35 for the hotel. Parking costs had chewed threw my money. When I pulled out of the garage, the kind and generous parking man gave me a discount from $54 to $30. Maybe he saw the shock register on my face – or maybe it was because I had my car loaded with bridesmaids in the same pink tank tops giving him Colgate smiles while winking flirtatiously.

I survived the weekend on $56.

And… it wasn’t so bad.

Well, I didn’t want to take an empty can of sunblock back to the store so I wrote an e-mail to Target. It was friendly and praising of their other products but asked for them to consider dropping or changing this particular product.

I didn’t expect to hear anything…

But I did.

Target wrote me an incredibly friendly e-mail and promised to look into my complaint. Two short days later, I received a full refund and yet another friendly letter in the mail.

I have always been a HUGE Target fan. They donate to local charities, have impressive customer service, and they save my budget every month. Add this surprisingly friendly response and…

Target, you have my lifetime stamp of approval.

A special thanks to Fern who let me know that, yes, it’s OK to complain sometimes.

The size four dress arrived for wedding number one and it fits perfectly… which of course means…

I’m in trouble. Sure, I can get the size two dress on, but it presents the very ‘minor’ problem of the inability to breathe.

So I have two options. Lose weight OR pay a small fortune to alter the dress for wedding number two. In light of my financial situation, I thought it best to lose some weight.

I have dieted exactly one time in my life and the diet lasted 4 hours before I broke down and ate a large order of carne asada fries. And it’s not that I haven’t needed to diet. I gained 20 pounds in college and kept the weight on for three years. But… self control isn’t my strong suit.

I’ve been using the Lose It! program I recommended in an earlier post and have been carefully monitoring my caloric intake. By dinner time, I’m left with a dismal 300 calories and my debate is usually a toss up between a green salad with goat cheese and a balsamic vinaigrette dressing or two glasses of wine. It’s not a tough guess as to which one regularly wins.

It’s been a week and all I can think about is food.

But I’m sticking with it…. at least for another four hours.

Here are some things that really stuck out to me this week:

PICKS:
Lose It! by FitNow, Inc.
Unfortunately this iTunes application is limited for use on iPhones or iTouch iPods but the good news is… its’ FREE. This application/program is great at helping you monitor portions and nutritional content of nearly everything you eat. It has a huge reference library of restaurant nutritional information and of everyday items from the grocery store. Users simply enter their height/weight information, the types of nutritional content they want to monitor, and their weight loss goals. While I don’t need to lose weight, this program is valuable to me since I want to monitor my fat, protein, and fiber intake for my marathon training. Diabetics can also benefit since this program monitors carbohydrates and sugars. I am now more aware of what I’m eating and how I can make small changes to my eating habits to make a healthier me.

PANS:
Sun Block by Target
I’m a HUGE fan of Target brand products. I like them just as much, if not more, than the name brands. Plus, the cost savings helps stretch my miniscule budget. Unfortunately, I was less than impressed with their sun block. We took this sun block with us on our beach camping vacation and quickly discovered it was a waste of money. Our first clue should have been its label ‘water resistant’ and not ‘waterproof’ like the other sun block products. It washed off at the slightest sweat and did not hold up at all to a quick dip in the ocean. If you plan on not swimming or sweating, it’s great. I don’t know about you, but when I wear sun block… I’m in the sun. And, the sun is hot. In heat, I sweat… er… ‘glow’. I’m fairly certain that’s normal. Sorry Target, head back to the drawing board.

What are your picks and pans this week?

Camping allowed us the opportunity to cook our own food. We met up with friends before leaving and shopped for food together. We purchased only what we needed and divided the tab by 6. Each meal? Around $2-$3. We didn’t count this as an added expense since we used the money from our grocery budget – and actually spent less than we would have had we cooked for just the two of us at home. We brought a few bottle of wine and jugs of water from home. We did go out to dinner one night – to Carl’s Jr. – and we counted that in the $38 total spent.

Showers were 25 cents for 2 ½ minutes. I was more than willing to pay for warm water but my frugal husband showered in the cold shower by the beach for free. I’m not going to lie, it looked a little odd when he washed off his Irish Spring soap while surfers waited to rinse their boards.

When we booked the campsite 6 months ago, my husband cut some hefty branches off our trees. He stacked them along a shady side of our house for the last few months and we used them to fuel our campfire each night. People asked us why we were storing firewood when we don’t have a fireplace and we got more than one weird expression when we told them it was for our camping trip… in six months. But we saved a fortune by using a little elbow grease and cutting our own firewood. We didn’t have to buy any!

When it came to camping supplies, we didn’t have much. We own a tent and a portable grill but that’s about it. My brothers fiancé’s family is an experienced group of campers. Rather than purchase new items, we borrowed their shade tents, pots, pans, cups, games, and portable tables. One rule about borrowing – make sure you return the items cleaner than when you first received them and if you borrow something that requires any sort of fuel, fill it up before returning it. Also, return the item within a day or two after you come home.

The campsite was over an hour from our home. I wasn’t prepared for an added gas expense and was surprised when I realized… I didn’t have to be! We brought our bikes and traveled solely by ‘pedal power’ after we arrived. The truck stayed parked at the campsite and my car stayed home the entire week. With both of our cars parked, we saved money on gas!

So what did we spend the $38 on?

$18 on a game of golf at a beautiful municipal course.
$10 at Carl’s Jr. (I ordered a kids meal and he had a sandwich).
$10 on a t-shirt from an outlet store.

Sure, camping isn’t my vacation of choice, but I had a great time and spent far less money than I have ever spent on a weeklong vacation by the beach.

Our previous vacation trips were fun but the nasty ‘debt hangover’ when we came home always sucked (excuse my language, but I’m being dreadfully honest).

When we arrived home from beach camping, I flipped on my computer and closed my eyes after typing my password for online banking.

Tick. Tick. Tick.

Why is it when you are broke and running the risk of overdrafts, the bank websites turn to sludge? It’s as if they get a sick satisfaction in making your pain last longer.

The screen finally popped up and… I screamed.

We only spent $38 for the week (I’ll update you later on how we shamelessly saved money in ridiculous ways).

I’m fairly certain we spend more than that when we aren’t on vacation.

Cheers to my first ‘debt hangover’ free vacation!

OK, truth be told? I’m probably wrapped in sun protecting blankets under the pop up tent whining about how the sun is too bright, the showers are too cold, and the sand is too hot.

But I WILL have a margarita.

My husband I are in love with Sam the Cooking Guy (previously on Cox Cable channel 4, but now he has his own show on Discovery Health called ‘Just Cook This with Sam the Cooking Guy’)

Frankly, if I can make this meal (I’m what some call ‘culinary challenged’)… YOU can make it.

Oh, and watch Sam the Cooking Guy. He gives great tips on how to cook fast, easy, and inexpensive meals. So while I’m out, here’s a cheap dinner to enjoy.

Thai Curried Chicken

Ingredients
6 boneless, skinless chicken thighs
One 14 ounce can light coconut milk
2 teaspoons cumin
2 teaspoons curry powder
2 tablespoons Asian chili paste (I used Asian chili sauce and it worked just as well)
Zest of one lime plus the juice (no zester? no worry – just use the juice)
Cilantro, chopped fine for garnish
Cooked rice for serving

Trim chicken of any extra fat. In a large bowl, combine coconut milk, cumin, curry, chili paste, lime zest and juice, mix well.

Reserve about 1/3 of the sauce for after, but add the chicken to the rest. Mix well, cover and marinate—anywhere from 15 minutes to overnight.

Heat bbq or grill pan and cook chicken on both side until cooked though—those cool grill marks are perfect here. While the chicken cooks, simmer the extra sauce in a small pot to thicken.

Slice into strips, serve on top of rice with a little extra sauce and a sprinkle of cilantro.

Serves 6.

Visit his website for more info:
http://health.discovery.com/fansites/sam-zien/sam-zien.html

When my brothers (John & Mike) and I were 13 and 15, one of my dad’s oh so responsible employees showed us how to build a potato gun – because everyone knows the combination of pipe, potatoes, a bottle of WD-40, and a flame tool are landmark in safety and you should share them with teenagers.

We spent our afternoons launching the potatoes into targets… *cough* the pool deck… *cough* the new trees… *cough* the house siding… (sorry ‘bout those dents dad)

On a particularly hot day, John filled the chamber up with a combination of Rave hairspray and WD-40. The fumes filled the air as he quickly spun the cap on and pulled out the matches. He touched the flame to the side and a loud BOOM exploded into our ears. Mike and I looked down to see John on his back, his shoes smoldering, and the lawn burst into flames.

He hadn’t spun the cap on tightly and instead of launching the potato, the force rocketed the cap and the flame onto John’s shoed feet.

Responsibly… Mike and I laughed hysterically at John.

We laughed so hard, we overlooked the fact that the lawn was still on fire. About 60 seconds of laughing at John’s smoldering blackened shoes went by before we suddenly became aware that the fire was growing. If mom saw the fire, she’d never let us shoot another potato again (though I’m not sure she ever truly ‘approved’ it in the first place).

Mike ran for the hose while John stomped out what he could.

Fortunately they got the fire out (hence the reason they are such good firefighters… they started young) but there was still a huge problem…

There was a black spot of charred lawn directly in front of the screen door that mom surely wouldn’t miss. We couldn’t think of a believable story for the burn spot and we certainly weren’t going to tell the truth sooooo…

We dug out the lawn, tossed it across the fence, threw on some fresh dirt, then went inside and told mom the dogs had dug a patch of the lawn.

As for John’s shoes? ‘Pssshhh. Mom, that’s a fashion statement. Don’t you know style?!?!’

My best summer vacation memories were never about where we stayed or what kind of expensive things my parents bought, they were always about the fun times with my family.

Sure, we aren’t going somewhere nice this year, but we’re going together – and that’s the best part.

These are the times when I hate the fact that I’m finally living below my means – even though it’s good for me.

But, that didn’t stop us from booking a great place just steps from the Pacific Ocean. The gentle sea breeze and the sounds of the ocean will caress us as we drift off to sleep.

How did we fit this into our budget?

Hello beach camping.

Sure I’ll have sand in my ears and hair for a week straight but… I’ll be soaking up the sunshine, grilling 97 cent chicken while spending $90 for the weeklong campsite.

As San Diegans/Californians, we are fortunate to have beach camping sites within a few hours of home. With very careful planning (6 months in advance through ReserveAmerica.com), a great California vacation can be very inexpensive. Didn’t reserve 6 months in advance? A lot of these campsites have last minute cancelations. Sometimes you can get an unclaimed campsite for the same day.

I know California isn’t the only place with good, inexpensive campsites.

Name your state and share the best cheap vacation spot. America is a BEAUTIFUL place. Let me know what your neighborhood has to offer. I want to know where to go next year!

Looking for a good California beach site? You can’t go wrong with Carlsbad State Beach, San Clemente State Beach, and Doheny State Beach. All three will put you steps from the ocean and run about $35 a night. You can put multiple tents on each site and can split the cost like we did. You can (and need to) book the sites 6 months in advance. Sign on to the Reserve America website at 7:55 am on the 1st day of the month. Example: We booked a site for a week in July on February 1st a 7:55 am. Happy camping!

After a long wait, I finally received a letter in the mail approving my appeal. We will be receiving a check for our over payment in the amount of…

$1,100

AND, we will be paying less next year, saving nearly $100 a month.

Check into whether or not your city has the option of property tax assessed value appeals. Don’t pay a company to do it for you! You can do it yourself!

It’s worth it!!

As we started working through the details, I couldn’t help but wonder… maybe rednecks have it right. Here is how we have prepared so far and the current expenses:

I threw together an online invitation for our friends (free):

It’s time to round up yer cousin and yer sister from their mobile home… we’re havin’ our first annual REDNECK PARTY!!

So, hop in your 1987 Toyota Tercel and git over here!

We borrowed some used hubcaps from the local tire store to play games with and use for decorations (free).
We are wearing our own clothes (circa 1980 – also free).
We borrowed a wheel barrow from our neighbor for wheelbarrow races (free).
We pulled an old rope from the garage for the lasso competition (free).
We are borrowing new toilet seats from my husband’s plumbing company to play redneck horseshoes (free).
We rented country CD classics like Gretchen Wilson, Confederate Railroad, Kris Kristopherson, and Merle Haggard from the library (free).

So far, our expenses are zero! Perhaps we should rename the party ‘Working toward our debt free goal and having fun at the same time’. I’ll be sure to toss some pictures up here next Monday after the party.

Any ideas on cheap gatherings? How about additional games for our redneck party?

For the sake of the plants, I keep my distance.

He started early in the season and used a mix of seeds and small plants rather than buying large overpriced ones. He carefully chose the healthiest plants and worked hard to care for them. He used a thick mulch as a weed barrier and water saver (Sunset Magazine reccommends using gray water for gardening but I’m still on the fence about it).

Not wanting to be left out of the joy of growing greenery, I planted one single flower.

Here is my flower now…

I killed it with too much water.

Here is my husband’s garden….

Perfectly controlled and growing beautifully.

Is it worth it? Yes. He loves that garden and enjoys spending summer evenings puttering around the big green leaves. But are we going to harvest the value of the plants in their fruit? I’m not sure. I guess we’ll see in a few months. I’m going to keep a tab on our expenses (including the higher water costs) and see if we break even.

For the experts out there… is it worth it?

I hate our couches and I think they are ugly.

This week, my husband did what good husbands do – he attempted to solve my dilemma of ‘seating space’. He came home with a behemoth of a recliner and said, ‘Look honey! More seats!! Can you believe someone was going to throw this away?!’

I bit my tongue before a ‘Yes’ slipped out. Instead, I said ‘Wow hon, it’s… wow.’

‘And they have TWO! I’m picking the other one up tomorrow. How awesome is that?! Seats!!’

He happily jumped in the chair and reclined, a big grin spreading across his face.

How could I be mad or ungrateful? He solved my ‘seating dilemma’. Sure I have an ugly blue giant in my living room (err… soon to be two), but I’ve learned to take his efforts for what they are. That ugly chair is a monument to the fact that my husband listens to me and he’s doing his best to make my life easier… without spending a dime.

I’m going to stop whining about the sofas for a while. Who cares about sofas when I have a man like that?

My husband loves this system. He turns on the hose for a few minutes while he eats breakfast and turns it off before he leaves for work.

Or should I say… he lovED this system.

I came home from work on Thursday and heard water running. Confused, I headed to the backyard and was greeted with a mass of water and a geyser like spray erupting from our hose bibb.

Turns out, hubby darling forgot to turn the system off and the pressure built until the backflow device exploded. This water mistake will likely add $150 to our water bill.

To make matters worse, my ever so annoying dogs like to kill every living thing in their territory. The new lake in my backyard caused dead, tailless, lizard and mice carcasses to float to the surface. I guess I can be grateful my dogs aren’t bigger. I don’t think I could have held my gag reflex quite so well at the sight of bucktoothed bloated squirrels.

To the state of California – I am sorry for wasting our precious resource. I have decided to make amends and cut my already short 5 minute showers to 3 minutes. So, when you see me… and I stink… remember, I had a choice to assault your nose or assault my wallet. In these desperate economic times, I chose your nose. Please forgive me.

And yes, we learned from this. Thanks to a $30 timer, this won’t happen again.

What was your biggest home accident?

Realizing my planting skills barely rivaled a 4th grader, I sought planter packs designed for small children. I spent $10 on supplies, read the directions (twice), and gently planted the seeds.

According to the seed packets, sprouts would appear in 10 days.

2 weeks passed and there was no green in sight.

After another long week, I finally gave in after day 24 and threw the sproutless pots into the green recycle bin.

A few days ago, while trimming some hedges, I opened the bin, tossed the branches, and noticed something funny…

Every single pot I had angrily thrown away was sprouting with life in my recycle bin. Plants are safer in my trashcan than they are with me.

I can’t afford a landscaper… but my husband is hereby the official garden keeper in this house. I’m sticking to what I’m good at – cleaning!

Stupid Plants.

Um.

I hate to disagree with a professional financial advisor but…

He’s dead wrong (and is obviously invested in Starbucks).

At least when it comes to me anyway.

I don’t buy big items. I bought my dining room set for $75 off Craigslist five years ago. My couches are ten years old. My bed is a hand me down from my sister. How do I spend my money?

According to my online banking… I spend it in tidy $20 increments over… and over… and over again. My money doesn’t flood out, it trickles. The article recommended taking 24 hours to consider every purchase over $100. Good advice, but the last purchase I made over $100 was months ago. It’s not the $100 purchases that are killing me!

I feel like the article should have simply said, ‘Watch where the bulk of your money is going and try to find ways to save from there.’

My goal this month is to watch my ‘trickle’ problem. I’ve gotten to the point that I have to seriously consider every item I purchase AND if I wait long enough, will it go on sale? will the newspaper run a coupon?… or will I forget I even wanted it in the first place?

Is your problem a trickle? Or a flood?

I excitedly went to our local nursery and realized the 15 bucks I budgeted for landscaping each month would allow me to complete my dream backyard sometime in 2037.

Um. Someone forgot to tell me how expensive plants are.

Disappointed, I went to work and lamented to a co-worker about my landscaping situation. She sweetly offered me some cuttings of her plants – several of which were on the list from the landscape architect. While we were talking, another one of my co-workers walked by and joined the conversation. He suggested I contact local garden clubs including water saving cactus clubs. He happened to be moving and offered to bring in several of his plants that matched my list. Let’s just not tell these generous co-workers about my history of plant killing OK?

Inspired, I can home and did some research and thought I’d share it with you.

I found several garden clubs – some of which offer spring plant sales.

Our local college offers a degree program in Ornamental Horticulture. Students grow plants and sell them for less than half of what they retail for at nurseries.

Our local dump (should I be politically correct and call it a ‘Solid Waste Disposal Site’?) offers high quality mulch in several different colors and sizes. If you are willing to load it yourself, you can save a fortune.

And perhaps the most odd place to find plants… our local 99 cent store!

Any ideas I missed? Where do you get your plants?

During my childhood, my parent’s water source was a well (actually, it still is. They’ve lived in the same house for 30 years). They never worried about water rates rising. They never had a water meter on their house. They simply had to worry about…

Their water source drying up.

Try selling a house with the very minor problem of no water.

Conservation was always a big deal in our house.

City living has spoiled me. I learned that showers longer than 2 minutes are a gift from God.

But our latest water crunch and water hikes have reminded me that conservation, in resources and in money, is my responsibility. I have conformed to the water company’s request that I take shorter showers (sometimes I skip all together… this has NOTHING to do with the fact that I usually skip a shower when I wake up late for work) and stop watering at least 20% of my lawn (since we don’t have a lawn, it’s fairly easy to stop watering it) but we’ve gone a step further – we rerouted our washer.

For $15, we bought some pipe and fittings to connect to our washer. All water now drains to our trees and roses.

We water our landscaping for free.

Those living in the southwest should consider this. Not only are you doing good for the environment, you’re saving money on your water bill.

(Just don’t forget to make sure your detergent is biodegradable)

It features a man dressed as a pirate in a restaurant singing a silly tune about getting his identity stolen. The commercial implies that having your identity stolen will ruin your life and somehow force you to lose your job. The only way to prevent the tragedy, according to the commercial of course, is to pay a small fortune for monthly credit monitoring services.

I’m not saying that losing your identity is easy.

I had my purse stolen a few years ago and I was terrified every time I ran my report. I was simply waiting for that ticking time bomb to explode.

Can I tell you what DIDN’T happen? I didn’t lose my job. Crazy enough, I still had the ability to work and my brain still functioned – unlike what the commercial portrays.

Losing your good name will not force you to sing as a pirate in a restaurant and preying on people who fear this is over the line. In fact, I believe these credit monitoring agencies are a complete rip-off.

You have the right to obtain your credit report FOR FREE on a yearly basis from each of the three major credit reporting agencies (go to annualcreditreport.com). If you’d like a copy of your credit score, it’s an additional $5 – $7.

You can also put a fraud alert on your credit if you feel your information may be at risk. I put a fraud alert on my credit immediately after I financed our home. I knew my social security number was floating around several financial institutions and I didn’t want to take the risk. The fraud alerts last 3 months and can easily be renewed if you feel you need a little extra time.

But here’s the kicker….

You are still at risk – even if you use a credit monitoring company. I was silly enough to hire one of these agencies AND I had a fraud alert on my credit and I was still able to finance $1,500 worth of dental work without a hitch. They didn’t even call to alert me that someone was taking out a loan.

What am I trying to say?

The only person who can RELIABLY monitor your credit is Y-O-U.

You can obtain your report online. You have no excuse.

I check my credit twice a year. You should too.

Stay informed. Know your score. Know what’s on your report.

I bought one of those ‘earth friendly’ metal water bottles – though I question the ‘friendliness’ of metal. Sure I’ll be using less plastic but how biodegradable is metal anyway?!?

Regardless, I was concerned about the financial impact of purchasing and carting plastic water bottles to work on a daily basis so I thought I’d give the world of reusable’s a try.

I carefully filled the bottle, took a sip……

And I have one thing to say.

I have standards and this… is way below them.

And… my standards aren’t that high to begin with. My city uses reclaimed sewer water that tastes like a cross between Dial soap and dirty socks and I can somehow drink that – but this? My bottle makes water taste like a welders refuse pile.

And trust me… I KNOW what metal tastes like. Twenty-four months of my life were spent with railroad tracks of braces glued to my teeth.

Needless to say, I won’t be re-using the metal bottle again. Maybe I’ll throw it in with the aluminum cans for recycling?

But, I wasn’t going to be deterred! My new job stocks bright red mugs with ‘Company X’ blazed across the front and stores them in the kitchen for community use. Sure there was a risk that I’d come down with communicable diseases from improperly washed dishware but at least my water would be drinkable.

…Unfortunately, as I was washing the mug, I noticed the tiny print on the bottom that read, ‘The colors used to tint this mug contain lead. Do not use if pregnant or nursing.’

Great. Like I need that to worry about. I’m not pregnant but now I’ll always worry about having a child with a mild deformation because ‘mommy wanted to save a buck’.

Thankfully, a co-worker noticed me struggling to bleach a mug and gave me a brand new Nalgene bottle.

Good thing he wasn’t there to witness my interesting way of drinking to avoid touching any colored areas on the mug.

Always looking to save. ; )

Here’s a link to the show page on Oprah.com.

I probably won’t get a chance to watch it, so I am hoping they offer the 50 easy recipes they mention for download. I could use some easy recipes!

Thanks Beverly for the tip!

I have been with Qwest for my home line for over six years and my internet for the last eleven months. My contract price for my internet is about to expire, so I started doing my homework. Well, I checked into Charter and they were able to quote me $29.99 a month with no contract. I called Qwest and told them the deal that Charter offered me. They put me on hold for about 8 minutes. (I hung on, b/c it has to be good, right?). Finally, Rhonda from the Loyalty Department comes on and asks me what I need. She said to hold on a little longer…… Five minutes later, she comes on the line and says, “Erin, we really appreciate your business and want to keep you as a customer. We are going to offer you 6 MONTHS of FREE internet as long as you keep you basic landline for the next 6 months.” I said, “What’s the catch, really it’s free as in NO CHARGE free?” She said, “Yep, it is a special gift we’re offering b/c of your loyalty.” Of course, I said, “SIGN ME UP!” The 6 months of free internet will save me $270 in internet charges. I am so excited I just had to share it with you. You can feel free to share this story with your readers, too.

I have to thank Tabitha for sharing her story. I have tried a few times to call our phone/internet carrier to see if they have any deals we qualify for. I’d be on hold for about 10 minutes and then something would pull me away so I never got an operator. This success story is motivating me to lock myself in my room to finally get through to someone and wheel and deal. I’ll also have handy a flyer for phone/internet deals from another company

Anyone else have success stories like this to share?

I’m tempted to get a subscription to Popular Mechanics for our son. His gift subscription to Highlights magazine recently expired and he enjoyed getting mail like that. He didn’t enjoy the content that much, except for Goofus and Gallant and anything science related. He may be too young for Popular Mechanics, though. I’ll have to think about it some more.

If you are interested in checking out the deal, here is a link. I’m not sure how long this sale lasts – they are promoting it as a Valentine’s Day Sale so it probably won’t last long.

Thanks Beverly for the tip!

On Friday, the government reported Americans’ savings rate, as a percentage of after-tax incomes, rose to 2.9 percent in the last three months of 2008. That’s up sharply from 1.2 percent in the third quarter and less than 1 percent a year ago.

[Via Yahoo.com]

The article notes that paying off debt is considered savings and incurring debt is negative savings. We may even begin to rival the penny-pinching of those in the Depression-era. I think that is a possibility since it appears that being frugal isn’t looked down upon as it once was.

I can’t help but wonder if the change would stick if the economy rebounded. Would Americans go back to spending again?

It’s nicely organized by the amount of money you can save ($50 to $500) so you can start there or read the entire article.

One that we currently do is #3 – we close closet doors. Both get really cold since they are along exterior walls. Sure, our clothes are a little chilly, but they warm up quickly once you put them on and it helps wake you up in the morning

You can read the full article here. Thanks Dawn for the tip!

I may be getting back into using coupons for groceries. So I found this article interesting. Danielle tallied her deals at Kroger. She saved quite a bit.

Beverly sends me some of the greatest links. She didn’t disappoint with the following one. I haven’t tried the recipes yet (I’m still working on switching gears with our meal changes so I’m slow at trying new things right now). But I have this one bookmarked: 5 Dollar Dinners.

I LOVE salads, but lettuce and I do not get along. Our lettuce goes bad by mid-week. Now that we only go to the grocery store weekly I only buy enough for a few days so none goes to waste. Jeremy at Generation X Finance is my new best friend. He wrote a post about preparing lettuce to last all week and I am so pumped to give it a try this weekend!

Since I want to get the best deal possible on quality products, I developed a plan that has been successful so far (although I am always looking for ways to improve it!).

My first stop for shopping is always Amazon.com. It’s a great starting point to look at different brands and read the reviews. They have so many products. Once I find a product that is within our price point and of good quality, I note the make and model.

I enter that information into Google and look at other stores that are selling the same item. I compare the prices and note the shipping costs. Note: If you find the product on Amazon and it is being shipped by a third party company – also look at that company’s website. Sometimes the price is cheaper!

I don’t stop there, though. I take some of the best prices that I find and one at a time plug the company names into Google and add the word “coupons” after it. If you haven’t done that before, you will be amazed at how many coupon sites there are. I look through quite a few of the sites for the best coupon code deals. All coupon sites are not created equal.

The end result is hopefully some substantial savings. Of course, my way of internet shopping may not be the best way, so if you have a system that works and you want to share – feel free to do so!

SmartSource.com – browse the listed coupons and select ones to print from your printer (although you need to download their coupon printer).

Shortcuts.com – browse the listed coupons and select ones to have connected to your grocery card (at stores like Kroger, Ralphs and QFC).

I’ve looked at SmartSource.com before, but dismissed it since we purchase so many generic brands and I wasn’t organized enough to shop name brand sales with coupons (although, we are getting more organized to be able to do this with our grocery price book!). With Shortcuts.com, I don’t have any of the participating stores near me so I can’t try that one.

Do any of you have comments about the above sites? Do you have suggestions for other online grocery coupon sites? If you are a blogger who has written a review about the above sites, please feel free to link to your post in the comments.

The reader thanks you in advance!

When it comes to groceries, I have been fortunate thanks to my past experience working at a grocery store. Hours of pricing and scanning things left me with a thorough mental price book. So I never created a physical copy. While we were at the grocery store today I realized that the years have taken their toll on grocery prices and my mental book was now greatly outdated. My buying price points were way out of whack. It was time to start a new grocery price book. This time, it won’t be in my head.

I fired up a spreadsheet and listed everything in our cupboards and fridge. There are columns for item and price, as well as quantity, total, ounces and price per ounce. To help aid our grocery shopping, our price book is going to double as a shopping list. Before we go shopping, I can print out the list and look around the house to see what we need. I can also choose to add quantities on the list right on the computer and get an idea of the cost of our trip since I included a total column as well. Here’s a pic:

I thought it would take days to complete, but it didn’t take that much time at all. We really don’t have too many different things that we buy now, since we have been making more and more from scratch. Because this price book is also serving as a grocery list, I included non food items as well on it.

The end result for a few hours of my time is something that will save us money. It will also save us time since I won’t have to write a new grocery list every time (or skip the grocery list all together and end up buying things we didn’t need yet). It will keep us focused on getting the best value on our groceries.

It will probably be a month or more before we’ll need to do some major grocery shopping again. I’ll report back on how well it worked and if it indeed helped us save money.

First Example – hanging laundry to dry versus using our electric dryer. We had a system going and even installed a place to hang wet laundry in our bathroom. After a while, we didn’t hang our clothes as often. Gradually we stopped doing it altogether. Well, it’s back and we’ve already saved the electricity from two loads of laundry.

Second Example – using paper towels versus a kitchen towel. For a while there, we had weaned ourselves from heavy paper towel use. We were using kitchen towels for drying our hands, etc. Somewhere along the line, the kitchen towels went into hiding and we used paper towel after paper towel. “We’re out of paper towels again!” was a common comment. Well, they are now in a very non-convenient place in the cupboard to discourage use. Thanks to some after Christmas deals we have some more kitchen towels to use and our kitchen looks festive.

There are other things we stopped doing, but these are the ones we have agreed to bring back so far. At this point, since we need time for other things we are weighing the cost/benefit of each thing to see if it is worth it right now. Since we have an electric dryer, the laundry was a big one. And since we were buying paper towels often, they were another one. A side benefit of all this is that we are reducing our waste and conserving energy.

Some things we couldn’t bring ourselves to buy. $1.30 for a can of soup versus $0.79 is a pretty big difference. We’ll do without the soup for now. Other things, like eggs and cereal, we had to buy.

This story of our trip down the cereal aisle is fairly typical. All three of us walk down it and I ask our son to see if there are any cereals on sale that he would like. We spot one of his favorite cereals (Lucky Charms) and see that it is 2/$5.00 on sale. My husband heads over to the generic Lucky Charms and I stay by the brand name so we can compare the prices and ounces. We may not use walkie talkie’s like the Economide family, but we have a pretty good system for comparing prices and we make sure our son is involved.

What wasn’t so typical is what happened before my husband reached the generic cereal section. He was stopped by someone working in the aisle and asked if he would like to buy one get one free for Kellogg’s cereals. All you have to do is say “Buy one get one free” and my right ear moves for better reception (yes, I still do the ear wiggling!).

It turns out that he is affiliated with Kellogg’s and was working in that store. Thanks to his coupons, we were able to get large boxes of cereal for $1.50/box (the coupons were combined with cereals on sale). Not too bad. He made my day right there. That wasn’t all, he spent a few minutes giving us a head’s up on some promotions coming soon.

We didn’t notice him talking to anyone else. While we were with him his attention was 100% on us even though other customers were passing us by. Maybe it was because we were obviously trying to stretch our dollars. Then I remembered something. Back when I used to work in a grocery store (which seems like ages ago now), we were encouraged to help people find the deals. Some of us workers would tell stories of how we helped people save money. Believe it or not, there were customers who were offended when we mentioned an available coupon. So we kept an eye out for the people who were looking at prices or maybe had a coupon folder – some clue that they were price shopping. It makes me smile thinking back on how we had scoped out all of the coupons around the store (even by the wines – sometimes there were coupons for produce or meat with no wine purchase required!) and how we handed those out to customers.

Maybe that is why the man decided to help us out. I made sure to thank him plenty (I probably said it three times before we walked away) and I smiled at him and saw a smile back. Yeah, I think that’s probably why he did it.

In other grocery trip related news, I found myself walking up to the coffee and sniffing it longingly even though I’ve never really been a coffee drinker. I don’t recall ever having caffeine withdrawals more than two days (I’ve quit caffeine multiple times in the past). I’m on day three and it has been the worst day yet. I was so close to getting some soda. But I held out and raided our hard candy when we got home to take the edge off of it. I sure hope today was the worst of it and man, I hope this post makes sense! My head’s still a little fuzzy

I’ve been keeping withdrawal headaches at bay thanks to some Tylenol. But I am soooo tired and am finding it hard to focus on anything. I was zapped of practically all energy today. If I could have, I would have slept all day. I’m not necessarily craving soft drinks, but I can tell that something isn’t right with my body. Tomorrow will probably be more of the same and then Monday I should start to get my energy back. At least that is what has happened in the past.

We both feel good about the change. We’ve been making a few lately, and some affect our finances. If I wasn’t so “out of it” I’d share those right now but they will have to wait. We’re bringing back a few good habits we had, but somehow slipped out of.

Growing up, my mom would make Hard Candy. I always thought it was hard to do. After all, it’s candy. I decided to give it a try this year and made one batch. Besides what appeared to be an icky clean-up (but it’s not – once you know the trick!), it was very easy to make. The hardest part is time because you do need to monitor the cooking of the candy because the temperature is important.

Here’s a link to the recipe I used – it was on the back of the flavoring oils I bought (here). All you need is sugar, light corn syrup, water, flavoring oil, food coloring (if needed) and a small amount of powdered sugar.

The flavoring oil is what gives the candy the flavor. I searched the local stores for it, but couldn’t find it. While looking one day in Walmart, I was telling a friend what I was looking for and a woman standing nearby mentioned that there was a display of them in the craft section of the store! I never would have looked there for them. I was thankful that the woman helped out!

The flavoring oils I bought came two in a package, like the one you see here. One small bottle makes one batch of hard candy. I paid $1.99 a package.

Back to the process. Basically, you mix the sugar, light corn syrup and water together to dissolve the sugar. Then you get the mixture boiling and let it keep boiling. After a while you can add food coloring (if desired – I found that I didn’t need it for Grape, Watermelon and Butterscotch since it already was colored with the flavoring I purchased). Once the temp is at 300 degrees F (which you’ll need a candy thermometer for – we found ours for $1.50), you remove from heat and add the flavoring. Mix well, then pour onto a cookie sheet (I sprayed mine lightly with no stick cooking spray). Let cool completely. Then have fun breaking it into pieces. I placed a paper towel on top of the candy and used a meat tenderizer on it’s side to break it up. It breaks like glass and the edges are sharp at first. NOTE: If you have hard candy molds, you can make candy into shapes or even make suckers. But it has to be a hard candy mold to withstand the heat.

You dust the pieces a little bit with powdered sugar and then you put in an air tight container. At that point, I shake the container of hard candy a little and that seems to smooth out the sharp edges some. You can also try to break in uniform pieces by scoring the candy while it is still pliable. I kept the candy shape random since that’s how mom used to make it

After I made my first batch, I was really concerned about clean up. The candy gets hard once it cools and it was stuck like you wouldn’t believe to the pan and spoon. The recipe didn’t say anything about clean up! By accident, we found out the trick to clean up. Soak everything in water for a while. The hard candy will dissolve right off, making clean up a breeze.

I ended up making three batches to give away as small gifts to others – Grape, Butterscotch and Watermelon. The purple, yellow and pink colors actually went together really well. Depending on how much you’d like to spend, you can get a fancy christmas tin or use another container maybe with a bow on top. I don’t think it matters much because the tasty treat inside is delicious. The butterscotch so far is my favorite…yum!

I was a little scared to try making hard candy, but it ended up being easy to make so I thought I would share my experience with it. Next year, I’m making a few more flavors and giving it out to a lot more people as gifts. I’ll shop the after christmas sale this year for some festive containers

When you use Swaptree, you list the items that you have available for trade. You then list the items that you want. Hopefully you see a little “GET NOW” button next to an item under your want list. When that happens, you can initiate a trade of one of your items for that item. If the other party accepts, you can print a shipping label directly from Swaptree and pop your item in the mail. Your credit card on file is charged for shipping and you also pay a monthly fee for using the Swaptree service for postage.

It’s a very easy system. I sometimes have a hard time getting to the post office during business hours but I can easily print the postage from my computer and walk out to my mailbox. The algorithms on the site determine your available trades from your have/want lists so you don’t have to go searching for trades. There is some work to do research on your trade parter (or partners, if it happens to be a three-way trade), but that is fairly easy to do as well.

I’ve done a few trades and received some great items. I was hoping to do a few more before doing a review but it didn’t take long before I was scammed. I participated in a trade and sent out my item. I didn’t receive one in return and the user is not answering my messages to them. It looks like they may have scammed a few others as well. From the sounds of things on their discussion boards, not receiving items is becoming a problem and Swaptree doesn’t appear to be doing much more than just trying to contact the user themselves.

Getting scammed so early was not encouraging and I decided that I would not participate in any more trades right now. I’ll keep checking out the discussion boards every now and then to see if Swaptree changes some policies for items not received. It is a great idea, but a few bad apples can ruin it.

Do I regret trying it? Nope. I am very happy with the items I did receive and I traded things that I attempted to sell for dirt cheap at our garage sales. I did pay some money in postage, but the price for postage was lower than what you would pay for a used book at Amazon or a used book store. Like I said, it’s a great site if you don’t get scammed. Once that happens, it can put a bad taste in your mouth.

For those reading who use Swaptree, how are things going for you?

I think the last part above is the hardest part of Christmas shopping. I was so very tempted this weekend to purchase something that would have blown our Christmas budget out of the water. Would it have been nice to have? Yeah, probably. Do we need it? Nope. So I walked away and didn’t go back.

It’s tough to do that. My guess is that the item is now gone or will be gone shortly since it is a hard to find item. I’m okay with it, though. We didn’t need it no matter how exhilarated I felt because I found a hard to find item.

It’s funny because those “finds” sure get my blood pumping. My mom and I can talk for a long time on the phone and we end up chatting even longer when we discuss the deals we have come across. We are alike that way. But, we both can walk away when we need to (although it took me a while to get to that point). I think just the little bit of an adrenaline rush is now good enough for me

Jim at Blueprint for Financial Prosperity has 100 Money Saving Tips for the Holiday Bonanza

JD at Get Rich Slowly has A Do It Yourself Christmas – 34 Great Gifts You Can Make Yourself

I haven’t logged into my Bloglines account in some time now so I’m sure I am missing more articles recently written. So if you know of one, feel free to mention it in the comments and I’ll try to add up above when I get a chance. For now, Jim and JD can get us off to a good start!

The main thing that we do every year is put plastic on certain windows. That’s basically it because our home already has blown-in insulation and we have a few trees that are nice windbreakers.

Wait a minute. Our neighbor cut down some trees this summer. Could that be affecting us even though the trees were a distance from our house?

According to the USDA:

The reduction in wind speed behind a windbreak modifies the environmental conditions in this sheltered zone. The sheltered zone extends as far as ten to fifteen times the height of the windbreak downwind from the windbreak.

Wow. Those trees were close enough and they were in the right position to block the wind. I was sad to see them go to begin with (there was an owl that liked to hang out on the top of one of them), but now it could be related to our home not being able to fight the winter winds like it used to. I guess we were spoiled and we didn’t even realize it.

I have a few ideas of things we could try to help combat the extra wind this winter. One is to create a small windbreak using snow. That’ll be some good exercise for me and a fun project for me and my son. Doing that should help to at least keep the basement warmer. Then I am going to borrow a trick from a commenter at Lifehacker. To find drafts in your home, burn a stick of incense and take it around your doors and windows. The smoke will change directions when you go by a draft. I can definitely feel them – it’s time to find them and seal them up!

For our future dream home, we are definitely going to incorporate a windbreak.

Sometimes I am very thankful we have come so far technology-wise to have the internet. There is so much information at your fingertips. You think back to the time depicted on Little House on the Prairie (one of my favorite shows) and if something went wrong and you didn’t have a solution, you had to ask around town to see if anyone else knew. If you didn’t have luck there, you could try the next town which could take a while to do. With the internet, you do a search and chances are good that you can find something regarding what you are looking for within a few minutes.

For instance, we had a bad smell in our basement. I did a search on Google and came across a few home repair sites that said the smell was likely due to the water evaporating in our open drain (normally there is a layer of water in it to keep the gases below from escaping into the basement). Just pour some water down there to replenish the layer. Viola – problem fixed and no calls to a plumber.

I started thinking about it some more, and we have saved quite a bit of money by trying to find solutions from the internet. Word of caution, though. Sometimes it can cost you. We had to pay money because we followed some advice about a water heater that was knocking. It ended up being bad advice and we could have really broken our heater. But we lucked out and only had to replace one part that ran about $15. I’m really cautious now and do not stop searching with the solution I first come across. I check multiple sites.

For learning about things, books from the library are great. But the internet has some great resources that combine videos and written instruction. My son and I are learning American Sign Language and we came across this awesome site: Michigan State University ASL Browser. For more structured lessons, we found the ASL University.

To help our son with his learning, I am thankful there are sites out there with printable worksheets. Here’s a few of my favorite sites for free ones:
TLSBooks.com
SchoolExpress.com
Teachnology.com

Oh, and the recipe sites! Or Google Books! It has been suggested in the past that we cut our internet out of the budget to save money. We couldn’t do it because my employment depends on it. But even if we could cancel internet we wouldn’t. Now that I am really thinking about it, it has saved us more money than we have paid for it ($25/month).

My hours are a lot more flexible now so I was able to stop in the library one morning while out and about running errands. It had been a while since I stepped foot into a library. Boy, have they progressed with the times. I couldn’t believe the vast amount of videos and dvds available at my fingertips. I saw many of the movies we have rented in the past at the video store.

A little sad, I know. We weren’t practicing one of the biggest tips in frugality – use the public library! Oh, the money we could have saved! They even had Star Wars on DVD. You should have seen the smile on my son’s face when he saw that they were there and they were free to borrow. He knows that means no more paying to rent them from the video store and he was really excited.

In the past, I headed to Amazon.com or eBay when there was a book I wanted to read. Lately I’ve been doing some research on learning styles. Our library is a small one and didn’t have a book I was interested in. I requested an interlibrary loan and in a few days I received a call that the book was in. That was faster than an order from Amazon with free shipping. And the price was unbeatable.

I feel silly mentioning this, but maybe there are others out there who haven’t yet checked out their public library. Even if you happen to work during the library’s open hours (like I did), maybe you can stop by during a lunch break. I should have done that and I regret not making the time to at least stop by for a few minutes to check it out. Our public library really is a treasure. I feel like we hit the “saving money” jackpot.

CNN Story

Except for a stray coupon here and there, I really don’t use coupons. I find that it is often cheaper to go with a generic brand versus a name brand with a coupon. Of course, there are exceptions. The coupons I like to use are the ones for cereal. I only use them when a store has the cereal on sale – which brings the price below that of the generic variety. That’s when we stock up on cereal.

There was a finance blogger that did an article that examined the use of coupons and if it was worth it time-wise. I wish I could remember who that was (if someone knows – feel free to mention in the comments!). I thought his/her look at the time factor was very interesting. Right after our son was born, we were spending about $25 a week on groceries for my husband and I. That was a result of a lot of planning and scanning through grocery sale flyers. We could probably drastically reduce our grocery spending if I spent that time again planning.

What about you? Do coupons play a large role in your financial life?

[EDIT - I got it to work this morning ]

But I do have an in interesting financial tidbit to share from our fall color tour. We came across a few gift shops that were gearing down for the end of the season. That meant some very nice sales of 25-50% off. I was able to find a hat and t-shirt for $10 and my son was able to pick out a few Christmas gifts for grandma and grandpa for a nice price. We sometimes stop at gift shops to buy gifts for relatives, but it has been during the busy season. We need to start hitting them at the end of the season for the deals!

The downfall is that the selection is limited. You can only buy so many “My Town” shirts LOL. It’s a nice change from the plain shirts we often buy for the low price.

There’s more about today’s show on Oprah’s homepage.

Thanks Dawn for the tip!

UPDATE: I didn’t get to catch the show, but head on over to Mom’s Budget Files for a nice recap of some tips from the show!

Once the furnace is on, that means we need to get the plastic up on our windows. Our house is old, and so are the windows. Plastic on them makes a huge difference. We did our son’s room today and we’ll work through the rest of the rooms the next few days. We usually do not do all of our windows since some are in better shape than others. We happened to find a good deal at Walmart on plastic so I think we will be doing all windows this year.

I say this every year, but don’t end up doing it. I really want to take advantage of the sun this winter. I want to open the shades when it is sunny and close them when the sun goes away. I think if we could do that it would really help with our heating bills. Plus, our pets will be happy since they can get a little bit of sunshine.

I always dread winter bills, but in a way I don’t. I think my competitive side kicks in and I like to see how well we can do with getting them lower.

The following tiny home is a steal, with a price tag set at $8,000. The only drawback is that they are 320 sq. feet. That’s a little too small for our family of three. What are they made of? Shipping containers.

I know…I know…my first thought was “No way.” Even checking out the outside picture of the shipping container home I still wasn’t convinced. But click on the second picture. Wow. I am impressed!

Here are a few more details, as well as a link to the full article with pictures:

They designed a galley-style kitchen with a stove, sink, refrigerator and dinette, and a 48-square-foot bathroom with a pedestal sink, shower and commode. Adjacent to the kitchen is a bunk area for children; separate sleeping quarters for the owners lie behind the bathroom wall.

[Via CNN.com]

The creators showed the prototype to some residents of a poor neighborhood in Juarez, Mexico, and one said living in a home like that would be a dream. If you read the story, there are even ideas to make communities out of these shipping container homes, since they are stackable and easily portable.

I still can’t get over that inside view. Amazing.

Thanks Allison for the tip on these amazing tiny homes!

- If it takes one hour to make something, is it worth spending the time doing that versus using that time to bring in more income?

- What about the cost to run your appliances?

For the first question, I think that one is highly subjective. I ran the numbers, and once I added my time into my bread making – the price of the homemade bread did rise above the store bought bread. But then I thought about the non-monetary benefits. I felt like a million bucks when my son told me thank you for making the bread – he loved it so much. Now that I’ve done it once, he’ll join me in the kitchen for the next loaves I bake. I think it will be nice time spent together.

For the second question, I had no clue on how to factor in appliance usage costs. Rich came to the rescue and found an article written June of this year that gives some approximate usage costs by appliance:

Newsminer.com Article

According to the article, an oven costs about $0.43/hour to operate. So four our bread it cost about $0.22/loaf to bake them. That’s not too bad, especially since if we bake bread in the winter it will help heat the house a little bit so our furnace doesn’t have to work as hard. If it was around $1.00/loaf, I may start to rethink making our own bread, but the cost doesn’t seem too bad to me right now.

When everything is factored in, the homemade bread did cost more than the store bought bread. The cost of my time put it way over the top. But when I thought about it a little bit, I do my share of wasting time during the day. One great example is watching TV. If I replace that TV watching with creating food from scratch for our family, then that is an improvement. So I think that’s another way of looking at it. I’m still not making income, but I am making better use of my time during non-working hours.

I made my first batch of homemade bread today (2 loaves) and it was absolutely wonderful! I took basic ingredients (yeast, flour, salt, sugar, & shortening) and made bread out of it. I felt a little bit like Tom Hanks in Cast Away when he was able to make fire. I made BREAD! I feel so empowered LOL.

The entire process was very easy. I admit, I had a little bit of help since we own a Kitchenaid stand mixer with a dough hook. The entire process of mixing everything together and preparing the dough for the oven probably took about 15 minutes total. The majority of the time spent was from letting the dough rise (over an hour total) but you can do other things while the yeast does its thing.

About 30 minutes into cooking, I could smell the bread baking from our living room. I stood up and walked towards the kitchen and the aroma increased. Only 15 or so minutes to go!

The timer went off and I took out the first loaf out of the oven. I was so anxious to put it on a cutting board I came close to burning myself. I sliced a nice, thick slice and the butter I spread on it melted on impact. I took a bite, and I was whisked away to the homemade bread my mom used to make. Sigh.

Our son came running into the kitchen, “I want to see the bread!” I showed it to him and he said he wanted to try it. I gave him a piece and anxiously waited for his reaction.

“Yummmmm!”

Not only did I make some homemade bread, our son likes it! He wanted a piece with jelly on it. After he ate that, he wanted a piece with butter on it. It took only a few hours for that first loaf to almost disappear. All of us dug into it. You would have thought it was as great as….well, warm, sliced homemade bread

I think I always thought that making bread was really hard to do, but the recipe I used proved me otherwise. By running some very crude numbers, the two loaves of bread that we made cost around $2.20 for the ingredients that we used. I checked while in the grocery store today and one of their bakery loaves of white bread cost $1.99. The brand of bread we usually get runs on sale 2/$4.00. We are saving some money and we have control over the bread and what goes in it.

Next up I would like to try to make bread better suited for sandwiches (the bread I made here is a heavier bread), some hamburger/sandwich buns, sub buns and our own pasta. If we keep up with making more things from scratch, we just may make a huge dent in our grocery spending. That is always a good thing!

I started researching how to make pasta, and did you know you only need three ingredients? Flour, eggs and salt. There are variations out there, but that is all you need to make the basic noodle pasta. You don’t need a fancy machine to roll it out, either. You can use a rolling pan and some arm muscle to flatten it out. Then fold it up, cut with a knife and unravel and hang to try. It stores up to a few weeks. You have complete control over what goes into the pasta and it cost less than store bought (from my very crude calculations the recipe I saw would run about 65 cents/pound).

Here’s a link to the recipe and instructions I found: About.com

I really want to give this a shot and see what happens. If it works well, I think I might have to make some pierogi too. Double mmmm… When I was younger, my neighbor’s grandmother would make them from scratch. She filled them with fruit, meat or potatoes. They were so good. I used to eat Mr. T’s Pierogies, but we’ve been cutting frozen foods out of our diet so I haven’t had them in a while.

I have also looked into making our own bread, but that takes longer to do and I have been waiting for the cooler temps of fall to do that. Our weather is now in the 60s, so maybe this weekend I’ll try my first batch. There are so many recipes for bread, though. A few promising ones that I have found are for white batter bread and peanut butter bread.

Just a note – the recipe site I linked to is pretty neat. You can filter by ingredients you have on hand, other requirements (like equipment) or even nutrition. For us trying to save some money, there is even a filter for “inexpensive”

And for snack items? No more Betty Crocker mixes for us! Just take a look this simple and well rated recipe for brownies. I have a feeling our house is going to smell like homemade goodies all weekend LOL.