The Penny-Wise Journal

I MOVED!!!

2005-10-22T12:45:00.000-07:00

Come on over to www.pennywisejournal.com and visit me!!!

Crab Legs vs. Big Macs

2005-10-21T10:32:00.000-07:00

I'm reading a book called The Simple Life edited by Larry Roth.

Each chapter was written by a different frugalista, as far as I can tell they all have or have had a newsletter or a book in publication on the topic of frugal living. At the end of each chapter is that particular author's 10 or so best money-saving tips.

What strikes me about this book is how widely the tips range. They often contradict each other. One guy splits his 2-ply toilet paper and uses the business end of an old rake to hang his coffee cups. Another advocates bypassing the little money-savers in deference to the big things like making sure you are getting the best deals on insurance and mortgage rates.

The truth is that there as many ways to be frugal as there are people on the planet. What works for one, would make the next miserable.

For instance. What made me buy the book in the first place was the fact that the first chapter was written by Amy Dacyczyn, author of The Tightwad Gazette series of books (and publisher of the former newsletter of the same name.) I'm a big fan and the book promised information that wasn't in her previously published work.

Dacyczyn speaks in her chapter about going on her last dinner date with her husband, a lobster dinner. And then not long after, her last movie date with him. After each date, they looked at each other and decided that it was too expensive and "let's not do this again."

When I think about not ever going to another movie or out to dinner with my husband again, I start to feel deprived. I can do it for a year, even with zeal because it's a challenge, but ever? Never ever?

I think it's a matter of figuring out what's important to you. And digging until you get to the essence of what draws you to any activity.

Take eating out.

I'm a foodie. I come from a family of foodies. I really enjoy good food. And yet, somehow, I managed to produce the two pickiest eaters every born, and marry a man that comes in a close third. So, we eat very simply at home. Otherwise, no one but me would actually eat! I like to go to restaurants where I can order new foods, or eat exotic foods that I just don't get at home.

Could I make those things for myself? Sure. Would it be cheaper? Perhaps. But ... I like the experience as well. I like getting dressed up and going out and being waited on. It makes me happy, and I'm not willing to give it up completely.

However, I can do without all the fast food meals. And the boring restaurant meals, where I usually just have a hamburger or something.

Three or four times a year Kevin and I go to a restaurant called Hushpuppies that serves all you can eat crab legs. It's expensive, about $60 for the two of us. But, it's an event. We're there at least two hours.

Those three or four crab leg meals a year are the essense of what pleases me about eating out.

I spend at least that $60 that it costs us to eat crab legs, every single month on pizza and fast food. Those meals are mainly just laziness, I don't feel like cooking. I don't enjoy them any more than I enjoy home cooked food. There is none of the event-ness that I crave.

So, perhaps when the Year of Frugality is over, we'll add back in the crab leg meals, but let McDonald's and Little Ceasars remain a thing of the past.

If you gave up all extravegance for year ... what would you add back in?

The Whole Enchilada

2005-10-20T11:32:00.000-07:00

I just came across this quote at this site:

"Silly little trinkets purchased on a daily basis add up by year's end to the cost of a bargain-hunter's trip to Istanbul or a month-long sabbatical to a writer's colony."

It stopped me in my tracks.

Because THAT is just what I've been trying to say.

We can spend the next year buying Starbucks everyday, and paying full price for groceries, and eating out several times a week.

Or we can pay off our debt.

We can spend hundreds and hundreds of dollars on birthdays and Christmas next year.

Or we can have a down payment on a house.

We can live our regular spendthrift lives in 2006. Sure. It would be easy.

But, if we make better choices, and spend one year in exteme frugality ... ah. Then who knows what might happen?

Someone emailed me today and said that having some money put aside against financial disaster is the whole enchilada.

And he is so right. Kevin works his first shift at his second job tomorrow morning. He goes in to his first job from 7 p.m. to 2 a.m., and then works 3 a.m. to 11 a.m. at his second job. That's 15 hours on his feet, and about 2 hours driving in the car to get from home to work, to work, to home.

What if Kevin had saved just 10 percent of his income during the 15 years he was a working, unmarried adult? If he averaged just $30,000 a year take home, and had saved 10 percent for 15 years, he'd have a bank account fat with $45,000. More really, because surely he would have invested at least part of that into interest bearing accounts.

Add that to the $20,000 or so that I would have, had I followed my own advice and been saving since I started working.

What would $65,000 mean to us? Well, when we got married you could still buy a decent house in Las Vegas for $125,000, so that money would have been a more than decent down payment on a house that just three years later would have been worth about $300,000.

Having money gives you choices. Money means that you don't have to spend hours and hours a day doing work that doesn't feed your soul. It makes work voluntary, rather than necessary. It puts the ball in your court.

The whole enchilada, indeed.

Is a Year of Extreme Frugality really worth it?

2005-10-19T09:26:00.000-07:00

I think it is. It's worth it because I want to be certain that these three:

will always be taken care of. Living on the edge of financial disaster is scary. It is definitely not a good feeling to know that if Kevin lost his job tomorrow, by the end of the month we'd be homeless.
Also, I want her :

to have the opportunity to grow up on the little bitty farm that I dream of. I can see her chasing chickens around the yard, learning how to milk the goat and helping me put up the Grapple-berry jam (not!)

I expect this experiment to be difficult. I expect it to suck ass sometimes, in fact. But, if I keep my eye on the prize, it will be so worth it.

What could you accomplish with the money you would save during a Year of Extreme Frugality? What dreams would open up for you, if you had no debt?

Presenting ... the girls!

2005-10-18T12:40:00.000-07:00

Mmmm....bread....Mmmm

2005-10-18T10:29:00.000-07:00

It all started with strawberries. Sunflower market has them on sale for 87 cents a pound. I have a ton of strawberries, which I'm going to turn into jam today.

And what does fresh strawberry jam taste the best on? Homemade bread!

Ok. I'm guessing. Because I've never actually made bread before.

Until now. As I type I have two loaves of dough rising in a cold oven, and two in the freezer. I followed a recipe in my Stocking Up cook book, called "Crusty Bread." The recipe actually called for freezing the dough and then thawing it before letting it rise. I'm assuming that you can go ahead and just bake some of it right away. I guess we won't really know until I bake the loaves that I've frozen.

The question of the day, then? Is homemade bread a price savings over store bought.

There are a couple of preliminary questions. What kind of bread do you buy at the store? At my local grocery store I can buy a loaf of wheat (what we used to call brown bread) or white store-brand bread for $.79 any day of the week. It goes on sale fairly regularly for $.50 a loaf.

The problem is that the cheap-y bread sucks. There isn't anything to it, it's like eating air. It doesn't taste good. Even my kids don't like it. When I was a kid, the taste of cheap brown bread nearly turned me off of wheat bread for life. I can buy good bread at a discount grocery store for $.79 a loaf. For the purposes of this experiment, I'm using the $.79 loaf of good bread as a control.

To come up with the total cost of each ingredient, I first figured out the per ounce price by dividing the total ounces in the package by the cost. For instance, there are 80 ounces of sugar in a 5 pound bag, which cost me $1.79 on sale last week. $1.79 divided by 80 means that my sugar cost 2 cents an ounce. Then I weighed the amount of each ingredient that went into my bread, and multiplied that by the per ounce cost.

Here's my breakdown:

Flour: I paid 99 cents a bag, used half a bag. 50 cents.
Sugar: I paid $1.79 for 5 pounds, used 3 ounces. 6 cents.
Oil: I paid $1.99 for 32 ounces, used 1.5 ounces. 10 cents.
Salt: I paid 39 cents for 26 ounces, used 1 ounce. 2 cents.
Yeast: I paid $3.89 for a 4 ounce jar, used 1 ounce. 96 cents.
Powdered Milk: I paid $4.85 for 25.6 ounces, used 1 ounce. 19 cents.

So, I spent a total of $1.83 to make 4 loaves of bread, plus the cost of electricity. According to this website, an electric oven uses 2 kwh in an hour at 350 degrees, which in Southern Nevada costs 9 cents on average each, or a total of 18 cents. Bringing the cost of my bread up to a grand total of $2.01.

So, at a cost of just slightly more than 50 cents a loaf, my homemade bread costs the same as the cheapy grocery store bread that even my PB&J-on-white-fiend kids won't eat.

We normally eat four loaves of bread a week, for a family of four (plus a baby who doesn't eat bread yet.) At 79 cents a loaf, that comes out to $164.32 spent each year on bread. If I make two loaves of bread a week, replacing 79 cent loaves with 50 cent loaves, that will bring our annual bread budget down to $134.16, for an annual savings of $30.16. If I spend a one hour twice a month making bread (freezing the loaves until they are needed) that's an hourly "wage" of about $1.25.

Does that seem like too much work to save $30.16 over the course of a year? Perhaps if we extend that savings to the next 20 years, which is the amont of time I expect to have children living at home. That's a savings of $603.20.

That's a lot of bread! HA!

And there are less tangible bonuses to baking bread, of course. I got a decent cardic workout during the kneading process (I actually worked up a sweat. And those are muscles in your arms and shoulders that the treadmill at the gym just dosen't address!) There is also the emotional well-being that comes from knowing exactly what is going into your kids. And oh! The smell. Nothing compares.

There are many variables as to whether baking bread vs. buying it is a worthwhile money-saving venture. Perhaps having homemade bread to make a sandwich on at home will stop you from going through the drive-through for lunch. A turkey sandwich and chips at home costs less than $1.00, vs. $5.00 at Arbys. Do that once a week, and you're talking about an annual savings of $208.00. And a turkey sandwich on homemade bread? It tastes like Thanksgiving (I know, because I just ate one!)

Also, if you use the homemade bread to replace more expensive store bought French bread, buiscuts or rolls, the savings are greater. If you buy your ingredients in bulk, you can bring your savings up even more.

UPDATE:

The bread turned out beautifully! I'll post a picture this evening.

The jam? I did something very wrong. I'm not sure what happened, but I ended up with a sort of grayish strawberry soup. I don't know why it didn't thicken up, and I really don't know how ripe red strawberries ended up looking gray and nasty. I think the problem is that I tried to make it without pecitin. (I couldn't find any on sale, and buying it at full price would have brought the cost of homemade jam well over the cost of store bought.) I finally decide to add the only gelatin I had on hand, grape Jell-O. I figured I might end up with a sort of purple Grapple-berry jam that the kids might like.

Not. What I ended up with was a pukey, nasty purpley-gray mess.

Oh well. You win some, you lose some!

If someone offered you $603.00 in cash right now, in exchange for your promise to bake two loaves of homemade bread a week for the next twenty years, would you take it? What would you spend the money on?

A home of my own

2005-10-17T08:25:00.000-07:00

If you could build your very own, personalized, super-duper special frugal-living website, what would you put on it?

Would you have a bunch of tips and hints? Articles? Links to other places on the net? Would you have a newsletter? Forums? Recipes?

My brother is building me a website as we speak! I'm so excited. It should be up and running by the end of the week.

I have this vision of my site. I hope that I can bring that vision into focus.

My site will be a place for us to share our Year of Extreme Frugality with everyone. You'll be able to see our progress, and I'll also share the things that we're learning along the way. Of course, I'll have a blog!

And more. So much more. You'll have to wait and see!

But you can help, too! Tell me what you would want to see on a website like mine. What would keep you coming back? And don't forget to use the form to the right to get on my mailing list if you'd like to be updated when the site goes live.

Fun with Hamilton

2005-10-16T08:08:00.000-07:00

I guess it's not that surprising that when we talk about The Year of Extreme Frugality, the one concern that keeps coming up is ENTERTAINMENT.

"What about movies (books, toys, going out with my friends, bowling, eating out...)?" Is a reoccurring theme.

So, I've spent some time really analyzing what my family considers fun. We like to be entertained, by a movie or a show, we like an event. The kids like to anything that requires Kevin and I to focus a lot of attention on them. Kevin and I both have our favorite escapist activities (Kevin goes to the movies, I read.)

What I realized is that we end up spending the most money on things that don't really add that much to our enjoyment of the fun. like spending $25 on movie food. Or spending $9 on a full-price movie ticket.

You'll notice that I didn't mention toys. I spent so many years as a single mother, with very little income, that Adrienne and Nick never got into the habit of expecting a lot of toys. They heard "wait until Christmas" or "I'll remember you want that for your birthday" very often. Poor Nick, his birthday is two weeks before Christmas, so he heard it all year! This one area, which may be a problem for other families attempting a Year of Extreme Frugality, I don't think will be a huge problem for us. I plan to solve whatever small problem that does erupt around toys by tying an allowance system into our Year of Extreme Frugality. (More on that later!)

I'm making a list of ways we can have fun on $10 or less. That's $10 for the five of us, not $10 each! Some of them are pretty basic, like going to the Drive-in movies or having a family game night. Others are things that are available to us in Las Vegas, like watching the light show on Fremont Street or going out to the Mount Charleston Hotel for hot chocolate.

I guess that taking out the option of spending a ton of money necessitates simplicity. I tried to think of some spectacular cheap things we could do, in an effort to impress you, and I couldn't . BUT, I did get pretty excited about the simple things and I can't wait to do them, so that's ok.

How much fun can your family have with 10 bucks? What are the core essentials of what entertains you? Share!

We Rock! (and a cry for help)

2005-10-15T18:42:00.000-07:00

There are aspects of preparing for The Year of Extreme Frugality that are singularly painful.

Do we let Adrienne go on the seventh-grade trip to Catalina in January?

Do we buy season passes to the community pool next summer?

What do we do about the shiny new Target Visa that came in the mail today, complete with a $500 limit increase?

The first two are actually pretty easy. Adrienne goes on her trip. Memories are worth something. I still remember sixth grade camp, it was a rite of passage. I can't deny my daughter her equivilent, if there is any way we can swing it. The $350 for the trip becomes a necessary expense.

And we skip the passes. They cost $100. We can use that money elsewhere and let the kids run through the sprinklers, augmented by occassional pay-as-you-go trips to the pool.

And the Target card? Ah. That one. Well, we did something today that we have never, ever done before. It was hard. It actually hurt (a little.)

We called the number on the new card and told them we didn't want the increase. We transfered our balance over to the Target Visa, because it has a 5 percent lower interest rate. But, we changed the limit to exactly what we owe now.

I'm so proud of us. I still can't believe we gave up $500 in credit (plus the avaliable balance that was already there) this close to Christmas. We've made a commitment to ourselves to get through the rest of this year without anymore debt.

Gearing up for the big Year of Extreme Frugality you know!

Ok, ya'll. I'm trying to collect some really unique money saving tips for the print edition of The Penny-Wise Journal. Email me yours, ok? I've included a link to the right that will let you join my mailing list. You can send your tip at the same time!

My Trickle Down Theory of Economy

2005-10-14T21:41:00.000-07:00

Kevin is slightly glass-half-empty about The Year of Extreme Frugality. (Yes, in our house it's in caps.) I tried today to talk him into canceling cable. We live in a big city, and will have no problems picking up local stations sans cable. Plus, for $14.99 a month we can rent up to 3 movies a month, even new releases. That's about 1/5 of what we pay for digital cable.

It's only a year, says I.

The kids won't go for it, says he.

We're the parents. They watch too much TV, anyway!

But I like watching cable. (So, we get right down to it, Mister Negativity. And if I pushed the matter, I could probably get him to admit that we're paying $65.00 a month so that he can watch billards and The World Series of Poker on ESPN 2.)

And so on, and so on.

I never said this would be easy. I'm quite sure it won't be. Which is why were starting in January, for keeps. I'm the type who always wants to jump right in, but I tend to fizzle out by half-time. Kevin takes an age to warm up to an idea, but once he does ten years later he's still toasty. If I started off all gung-ho like I always do, right now, by the first of the year I would be burned out. If I wait for Kevin to catch up with me, he'll keep me on a more even keel.

So, we'll spend the rest of the year, the holidays, letting the idea brew. See, it's the trickle down theory of the Alburger household. It starts with me, because I'm the idea person around here. I spend time convincing Kevin. He isn't the type to change easily, so it takes a lot of talking to get him to come around. Talking which the kids hear, so when we finally get around to cluing them in, they aren't real surprised.

Ain't life all wrapped up in a pretty package sometimes?

I got a message from the Universe in my email today. It said that if I am pursuing money for money's sake, I've taken my eye off the prize. Interesting.

Could you live without cable TV? What would you do with all that extra time, if you couldn't spend it watching reruns of Sex and the City or Television for Women?

Grocery Shopping

2005-10-14T11:13:00.000-07:00

You might read this entry and shake your head, thinking to yourself: "Damn! This woman is insane, thinking I want to read her grocery list!"

I hope, though, that you'll see this entry for what it is. A study in food shopping. We all have to do it. But, we can shop smart and put less of our money into the pockets of the corporations that feed us. I hope you'll keep reading, and even share your own grocery-store victories with me.

I'm still learning, still working on reducing our food bill. One thing that really got my attention was realizing that, for a family of 5, (including formula for the baby) we were spending about $200 a WEEK on groceries. That's $800 a month. Plus, eating out. I can hardly get my head around the number, it's so huge.

My goal is to get our grocery bill down to about $50 a month by the first of the year. So far, I'm not there. Mostly because I'm still spending money stockpiling things.

After we dropped Adrienne off at school this morning, Ruby and I went grocery shopping. We went to Smith's (a major chain store) and Sunflower Market (a smaller chain store, sort of a cross between a regular market and a Whole Foods store.)

Here's what we bought:

Sunflower Market:

6 6-packs of Hansen's Soda
Fresh greenbeans
5 pounds of strawberries (I think I'm going to make jam or something ... that's a lot of berries!)
2 half-gallons of Neiman's Own Lemonade
4 artichokes
Canola Oil
1.5 pounds of deli turkey
6 pounds of extra lean ground beef (This will last us at least 6 weeks)
Fresh Broccoli
6 loaves of good bakery bread
Roma Tomatoes
Pretzles
1 pound of fresh, raw large shrimp

My total bill, before any discounts was $90.21. After discounts and coupons, the total that I paid was $48.70. That's a 46% savings!

At Smith's I bought:

2 five-pound bags of sugar
2 five-pound bags of flour
2 pounds of brown sugar
1 pound of confectioners sugar
3 jars of marshmallow cream (to make fudge for Christmas gifts.)
2 cans of evaporated milk
Crisco shortening
16 rolls of Brawny Paper Towels
4 cans of spaghetti
Cinnamon
Nutella Spread
Cookies
Turkey-sized basting bags
Peanut butter
Jam
3 bottles of Juicy Juice
4 boxes of fruit snacks
1 package of bratwurst
2 Dawn detergent
1 box of taco shells
6 frozen pot pies
3 jars Gerber turkey sticks
6 jars baby food (the little green beans and carrots that Ruby can pick up and eat.)
1 lipstick

My total before discounts was $112.68. The total that I paid after discounts and coupons was $70.91, for a total savings of 37%. For anyone who thinks that coupons are too much trouble, I saved $12.55 using them at Smith's alone. Since I would never toss a ten-spot in the trash, my coupons don't go there either.

All together I paid $119.61 for $202.80 in groceries, a total savings of 41%. I'll talk more, maybe tomorrow, about my strategies for saving money at the grocery store. In the meantime, check the link to the right for Refund Cents. It's very interesting.

One last thing. It took me about an hour last night to make up my grocery list and pull out my coupons. Say another two hours this week to clip and sort all my (many, many) coupons. I saved $119.61 with 3 hours of extra work (I'm not counting the time shopping, since I would have to shop regardless), that's $39.87 per hour. A decent hourly wage, no?

Oooohhh...my brain hurts!

2005-10-13T19:06:00.000-07:00

I just spent a good half hour trying to figure out if my homemade laundry detergent will actually save money.

I was able to find the ingredients at my local market. They can be hard to find. They are available online, but the shipping cost will eat up any savings. What I can buy locally for $11.35 would cost more than $30.00 if I bought it online.

Here is a little info about my laundry. We use Sun detergent that we get in 40 load containers from Big Lots for $2.89. That's slightly more than 7 cents a load. Since Sun is cheap-o detergent, we always add Borax to the wash, about a cup per large load, for an additional 26 cents. Bringing the total to 33 cents a load.

Ruby, our baby, has very sensitive skin and cannot wear clothes that have been washed in Sun. She breaks out in a nasty rash, poor thing. The cheapest baby detergent I've found is All for babies, which comes in a 25 load bottle for about $4.00. Or, 16 cents a load, plus the 26 cents for Borax is 42 cents a load.

Whew. Way too much math! But, wait ... there's more!

To make enough laundry detergent for 100 loads of wash I would need three bars of Fels Naptha soap, one box of Borax and two boxes of Arm & Hammer Washing Soda. If purchased at my grocery store, those items come to about $11.35. So, 11 cents a load. A savings of half over Sun with a Borax booster.

All the ingredients in the homemade detergent are safe to use on my baby's clothes, even with her extra sensitive skin. So the homemade stuff is an even deeper savings for her clothes.

Of course, if I just used plain Sun, no booster, that would be the cheapest. However, when you add in the extra cost of baby detergent, that confuses the issue some. I pay $6.89 for one bottle each of Sun and All for babies. I get a total of 65 washes out of both bottles, which brings the average cost up to just more than a dime a load. Which is still slightly cheaper than my homemade stuff.

So, we have to see if there are any other issues to consider. The homemade stuff has no added scents or chemicals, which is good since they bother Ruby's skin (even when they are on my clothes, they irritate her skin.) The clothes get undeniably cleaner with the Borax in there. There is less packaging, and no non-biodegradable packaging at all. And, making the detergent had a certain satisfaction to it that you can't get from buying Sun at the Big Lots. And, last but not least, I get some exercise by grating the bars of Fels Naptha.

The is also the extra bonus of the stain removing properties of both Borax and Fels Naptha. If I have an item that is stained or yellowed, I can stop my washer and let the whole load soak right in the detergent. (If you've never tried soaking dull clothes in Borax, you should. It's fascinating. That stuff just pulls the dirt out of the fabric.) Or just rub some of that loads detergent right into the stain before washing. No more Spray N' Wash.

And, lastly, if I buy Fels Naptha in bulk from www.soapsgonebuy.com I can get each bar for about half of what I would spend at the grocery store. Bringing my total cost down to 9 cents a load, with an initial outlay of $45.00 for 40 bars of soap (that's a LOT of laundry detergent!)

The verdict? The homemade detergent is a savings over what I was doing. And, if I buy the soap in bulk the cost will come down to about the same as the very cheapest way I can think of.

And, as an added bonus, I will have loads of Fels Naptha soap available for other uses, such as making other sorts of cleaners. That may or may not save me money, but that is a topic for another entry.

Ok. In conclusion (HA!) If I save an average of 22 cents per load using the homemade detergent vs. Sun plus Borax, and I do 10 loads of laundry a week for 4 people, that's a savings of $2.20 a week, or $114.40 a year. Add in say $10.00 for stain removers that I won't need any more, the savings goes up to $124.40. The baby has two loads of laundry a week, at 42 cents a load (Baby All, plus Borax.) A savings of 51 cents a week, adds up to $26.52 for the year.

So ... drumroll please ... by using the homemade laundry detergent over Sun and All for babies with Borax ... I will save $140.92 in a year.

Hey. It all adds up, dolly!

P.S. The prices that I have listed are assuming that I will use 2 Tablespoons of homemade detergent per load. The instructions at www.soapsgonebuy.com indicate using 1 Tablespoon for light loads and 2 for heavy loads. I haven't had the chance to experiment enough to decide whether or not I'll actually need 2 Tablespoons for every load. If I can get my clothes clean enough with 1 Tablespoon, the homemade stuff gets SUPER cheap.

What could you make home-made, instead of paying for store-bought? How addicted are you to brands? Do you think that advertisers telling us over and over that you must buy THIER brand has made us forget that we can actually do without ANY brand?

Me and my spending machines

2005-10-13T12:50:00.000-07:00

My daughter is addicted to Starbucks. My son? He "needs" new Yu-Gi-Oh cards on an incredibly regular schedule. My husband loves to go to the movies, and knock back $12.00 in popcorn and Coke with his $9.00 show. I hate to cook, drive-throughs are my best friend. And the baby? Well, she sucks up formula like a Hoover, only to redeposit it directly into a diaper that cost the Earth.

We're in trouble, aren't we? Ha! I'm going to have to sit my crew down for a family meeting soon. Kevin and I have decided to have one year of extreme frugality. A crash budget. We're going to sit down this weekend, and really knock out a spending plan. And then, it will be time to let tell the kids. I can hear them now.

"What about Christmas?"

"My school trip is coming up!"

"What about Christmas?"

"But, I NEED Carmel Frapaccinos! All my friends get them!"

"What about Christmas?"

My game plan is to try to convince them that this will be fun. Fun? Budgets? Saving? Not buying? No Starbucks? No movie popcorn? Cloth diapers? WHAT ABOUT CHRISTMAS! Fun??? Well. It could be. It could be the five of us banding together, figuring out ways to reuse, reduce, recycle.

I have to make it fun. Especially for Adrienne and Nicholas, who will complain the loudest I'm sure. They are spending machines, who really have not concept of where the dollars come from.

Adrienne and I made our own laundry detergent the other day. It was a blast. We grated about 1/3 of a bar of Fels Naptha laundry soap, added a half cup each of Arm & Hammer Washing Soda and Broax. Voila! And you only need to use 1 to 2 tablespoons in a load. Fun, economical, AND quality time together. I rock!

See! I told you it could be done.

Now. I'm off to see if I can find a recipe for homemade Carmel Light Frappicinos!

EDITED TO ADD: I've put up a link to the website where I found the recipe for laundry detergent. This lady sells the ingredients, but try first to find them locally, to avoid high shipping costs. I found everything at the grocery store.

Why Penny-Wise?

2005-10-12T09:31:00.000-07:00

In the past two years, the cost of living in our town has about doubled. The house we live in, when we started renting it in 2003 was worth about $175,000 or so. A month ago, when our lease was up for renewal, our landlady told us that the house has recently been appraised at $285,000.

We were approved for a homeloan of a QUARTER OF A MILLION DOLLARS. And we can't find a house that we are willing to spend that much money on. We aren't snobs either. Who in their right mind would spend $250,000 to buy a house that three years ago was only worth about $110,00? Were we to buy a house similar to the one we live in now, our mortgage payment would be close to $1000 higher than our current rent.

So, we have a plan. Our plan is to get out of debt, save some money, and get out of Dodge. It's time for a different lifestyle, one that doesn't leave me crying in the realtor's office.

The Penny-Wise Journal is a chronical of our rise out from under a mountain of consumer debt. This blog is a part of that. At the first of the year, I will be offering a subscription print newsletter. It will be cheap, and I think useful to you.

I'd love to hear from you. Are you struggling like we are, to get out of debt? Are you depressed because the old routes to simple things like owning a home just aren't available any more?