Fighting Foreclosure - Getting Nine Hundred

Prepping an Apartment for Rent - Views of a Landlord

2010-02-23T11:12:00.004-05:00

In the comments of a post from last week Esperanza said that, as a renter herself, she would be interested in hearing more about the rental process from a landlord’s perspective. I am happy to do that! Since I have an apartment that needs renting right now, I will be sure to write about the process as I go through it.

When it comes to apartments, my feeling is “Better rental = better tenant.” It is just that simple. If a person rents an apartment that is beat up or dirty, what reason do they have to take care of it? If the owner of the unit doesn’t care enough about it to keep it looking nice, why should the tenant? I know there are lots of slumlords out there who have different goals for their properties, but that is not the kind of person I am. Plus, from a business perspective - I don’t want the hassles that come with renting to people who are likely to destroy their apartment or people I need to evict. This apartment is in my own home, I want it to be a lovely place for someone to live - a place they can take pride in. My own conscience will not allow me to rent out a place that I wouldn’t be willing to live in myself.

So to that, whenever a tenant moves out, I take that as an opportunity to do some home improvement. My ex husband owned another home that had three rental units in it, and over the years we rebuilt bathrooms, re-tiled floors, had carpet re-stretched, added heating units, new windows, light fixtures and kitchen cabinets and of course, painted. My rental is actually in beautiful condition for the most part. The last tenant did a great job cleaning, and in my opinion, it is pretty much “renter ready.” However, since I don’t have anyone in it, this is a great chance to get a few things done...

The apartment is built out of a portion of the second floor of my home. The tenant has their own separate entrance from the front, and once you go through the door, you immediately go up the stairs. At the top of the stairwell is a small foyer area. This section was painted “apartment beige” and had gotten a bit beat up over the years from people moving in and so on. Also, there were some small pieces of trim that were broken and not looking their best.

The other area that needed love was the kitchen. I had put new cabinets in it a few years ago, but now the walls needed some TLC. For one thing, they were painted screaming “Georgia peach.” I mean, it was so peach it was nearly fluorescent. (I obviously, had not picked out the color - it was there when I bought the house.) Over time some cracks had developed in the plaster, so the walls needed some repair work and a fresh coat of a more neutral paint color.

Most of this is work I could have done myself, though honestly I wasn’t too keen on tackling the entryway molding. Since I was so busy this month, I decided to take the “easy” way out and hire someone to do it. The same gentleman who did the exterior paint on my home is working on it now. I would actually love to repaint the bathroom and the bedroom too, just to freshen them up, but neither is so bad that I have to do it. It will entirely depend on my time and my energy level. If I do decide to do these rooms, I will probably do them myself with the help of some friends and family - since they don’t need anything but paint, they’re projects that could be done in a weekend.

I will be taking a ton photos of the apartment for my advertisements, when I do, I will make sure to post some of the photos! I'll also keep writing about each step of the landlord process as it happens.

Photo by: Clarous Maximus
Via flickr

Overworked and Under Stress

2010-02-22T13:24:00.004-05:00

I am so very tired. I went to bed last night pretty early, but I still feel like curling up in a big ball under my desk and taking a nap. I think some of the extra work I have been doing, plus the stress from other areas of my life, has finally caught up with me.

There is good news though, my current freelance project is wrapping up. I have 95% of it done - just a couple more loose ends to tie up and I should be all set! I admit, it feels really good to have that pretty much under control. I have another project I am also working on, but since I have a little downtime between this one finishing up and that one needing to be in full swing... I plan on taking advantage of that time for a little R&R.

One of the things I think is really important in busy times is to take care of yourself. I work hard to try to eat healthy and get plenty of sleep. Ever heard of the expression, “Take care of your tools and they will take care of you”? It’s a good one and very apt. In this case my “tool” is my brain and my body. If I don’t make an effort to take decent care of myself, I’ll burn out - it is as simple as that. If I work myself to that state, it doesn’t matter how much extra money I make, it isn’t going to do me any good if I’m coming unglued.

I’ve done quite well on the eating side of things. I’ve been able to make some simple dishes that I enjoy and that are easy to reheat and eat. No fast food for this gal - after all, fast food is rarely healthy, is too expensive and most times, it isn’t even ‘fast.” No thanks! Instead I’ve been living on hearty soups, simple dishes and a lot of healthy snacks. It’s been great! I’ve even lost a little weight.

The sleep side of things, however, isn’t going as well...

I’ve scheduled naps, I’ve planned my schedule so I can get to bed early... all in vain. When you have insomnia, there isn’t a thing you can do. My problem is that my brain is racing - I’m awake thinking of what is going on in my life, what needs to be done, where I have to go, how much work is ahead and so on. I toss and turn and my mind is full of all that stuff, so even though I am going to bed early, it is still several hours before I can truly fall asleep.

I know it is effecting me. In the last couple of days I can tell that I am on edge and not myself. I’ve said and done things that aren’t really like me, and I know that's the reason my office floor is looking so dang comfy right now.

I have found one thing that helps though, and that is keeping a pad of paper and pen beside the bed. Just being able to get up and write down what is on my mind helps tremendously. Last night I was laying there with my eyes wide open thinking ...and thinking... and thinking... It was awful! Finally I turned on the light, grabbed my notebook and started writing down all the stuff that was keeping me up. I made a list of tasks that I needed to do today, I jotted down some thoughts for a couple of important emails I knew I had to write, and I also wrote out an idea I had about delicate situation that came up at work. Basically I got the information out of my head and onto the page.

Once I admitted to myself that this was what I needed to do, I felt better. My brain was able to relax a little. Eventually I actually went to sleep.

The reason I bring all this up is that I know from my own experience the same thing can happen when tackling finances too. When I first started working on mine, I had many a sleepless night. I was up thinking of solutions and things to try, things I needed to look into, and people I needed to talk to. Once again, I found that writing it all down helped. Don’t get me wrong, keeping a pad of paper by the bed it isn’t a cure for true insomnia, but it is a simple and inexpensive way to help your brain calm down in busy times. It is certainly worth a try!

Photo by: Richard Pluck
via flickr

Spending a Little Too Much, Budgeting a Little Too Little

2010-02-19T17:05:00.005-05:00

Has anyone else been getting a million spam comments on their blog? Ugh - it has been terrible lately! I like to allow anonymous comments, but the amount of spam lately is getting ridiculous. It always makes me wonder - does this stuff actually work? Apparently, or they wouldn't do so much of it, I guess.

I mentioned that I haven't been budgeting as well as I should lately. I plan on changing that, but one thing I have noticed is that I have been spending a lot more as well. It is okay, I have the money and I am on target for many of my goals, but I still can't help but notice the increase. Some of it practical - like having the apartment painted and having some routine maintenance on my car, other of it has been social - spending time out and about with loved ones and friends. I can't say much of it is totally frivolous, but it is more than I would have been able to do just a few months ago.

The question that I have been pondering has been: Am I spending more because I am not budgeting and watching every penny, or, am I spending more because I am making more money and feel that I can? My guess is, it's a little of both...

Knowing I am making more money, that my basic needs are met and I don't need to worry about foreclosure like I once did, makes me feel more comfortable spending. Not keeping track of spending, makes it easy to underestimate how much I've spent. It's pretty much a vicious cycle.

I don't feel bad about it though, and I am not going to beat myself up about it. It is what it is. It has been nice the last couple of months to feel the way that I did prior to all this drama - back before marriage and divorce, when I lived in a little apartment, well below my means. I've enjoyed not thinking about things too much.

However, it won't continue. As I have said, my goal for the year is to build up my safety nets, and that won't happen through spending. I have also found another little odd fact... I like having a nice amount in my checking account. It makes me feel safe. Right now there is more in my checking account than I ever remember having - even back in "the good old days." It's a really good feeling - it is almost powerful. It's like knowing that I have this shield that will help get me through the hard times.

Although, having been through hard times, I know just how fragile that is, so, time to buckle down, get serious, and get focused. More on that as plans develop!

"money Shot" photo by: borman818
Via flickr

Busy Times, Drastic Measures

2010-02-17T16:52:00.004-05:00

So, I mentioned yesterday how busy I’ve been. I guess I don’t need to add that my budgeting has gone straight out the window - you can see that on my sidebar over there. Budgeting is one of those things that when I am keeping on top of it, it only takes a couple of minutes a day, but when I fall behind like I have, I tend to stall and stay behind.

I could sort through my bank statements and figure out January and February, but the truth of the matter is, whatever has been spent has been spent. Right now I feel like the best way for me to get off on the right foot is to just start fresh in March. So far in this month I have made over $400 and am on track for my nine hundred dollar goal, and I feel pretty good about that.

I will say though that having my budget from last year really helped with my taxes. It was simple for me to see how much I have spent on business items like gas, water and trash - all of which a portion is used by my tenant. So, once things slow down a bit, I do have some motivation to go back and, at the very least, record the numbers from last month.

As for my tenant, that’s another kettle of fish...

My tenant moved out in January, so I did receive rent for that month. This is the first month that I did not get rent, but so far income-wise I am doing fine. I did take this opportunity to get some work done on the unit. I hired my house painter to come in and fix up the entryway-stairwell area (which needed both paint and trim replacement) and the kitchen (which had some cracks in the walls and needed painting.) He should be done with that this week. It cost me about $250. While I am sure I could have done it all myself for less, there has been no time to do it. I’ve been swamped - that would have pushed me out even further. I decided that the cost per hour was completely worth it. This way when I slow down and can start showing the place, it will already be ready to go.

Fortunately, the tenant left the apartment spotless. Seriously, I was amazed at what a good job she did cleaning up. So, the next step will be to get some photos and start advertising it. My friend Tracey recently was apartment hunting and she wrote me a fantastic email with all the kinds of things she was looking for when she rented her place, and which web sites she looked on. It was really helpful. I actually feel pretty confident about getting it out there and getting it rented.

The one big thing I have left to do is type up a lease. I have some that have been used in the past, I just need to make one that someone can sign and turn in to me. I actually enjoy making forms, (it’s one of the things I do for my job,) but I am not looking forward to the time it is going to take to do it right. Ah well! It is too important not to take my time with it.

My goal is to have someone in by April 1. I can show it through March and if I find someone right away, they can move in a little early. I’ll let you know how it all goes!

Photo by: cindyproject
Via flickr

Working For a Living...

2010-02-17T12:39:00.004-05:00

So, what the devil have I been up to? Well, working - and doing a ton of it.

Back in October I was offered a neat little freelance project. It was doing some work that I knew something about, but an aspect of the job that I never actually done before. I was hired on by someone I knew at a local college. It’s the same place where I take classes whenever I can, and they like to use students; so, even though I am sure there are people who are more qualified to do the work, I got asked to do it. (Of course, it doesn’t hurt that I have worked many times with the gentleman who was head of this project, so he knows me and he knows my work.) I had a great time on it, appreciated the extra money, and was eternally grateful to my friend Shelly who had suggested me. And when all was said and done I thought, “Well, that was fun, I probably won’t be doing any more of that for awhile.”

Then, in December, I got another call. Another manager (same college) called me and said he’d heard I’d worked on the other project. He wondered if I could help him out. I said yes and that project got under way in January and should be wrapped up sometime next week.

But then, I got another call...

It was the first gentleman again. This time he wasn’t working for the college, he was working for an independent group and had hired someone else... who had just quit on him. It turns out that the Pro that he had hired, who I know quite well (we’ll call her Kelsey) had just found out that someone very close to her has a fairly severe medical condition. Kelsey wanted to take time out to care for them and couldn’t do that and the freelance work. So, the question was, would I do it?

The “exciting” part about all this was that my college freelance project and Kelsey’s project coincided. They completely overlap. I talked about this with the manager, but we decided that since neither project was huge, I could treat both projects like one big one and just work on them both at the same time.

Now, don’t forget, all of this is going on while I still have a full time job and I volunteer on a regular basis, but the good thing about it is that the work can be done on in my free time. I can work on it on my lunch hours and after work. I can squeeze things in here and there and get a lot done that way. The hard thing though was that right in the middle of it, my part time job needed me for a week! A typical day looked like this:

6:50 a.m. - get up, get ready, be at “real” job by 9:00 a.m.

1:00 p.m. - leave job (I took 1/2 day of vacation time all week.)

Spend one hour either running errands for freelance work or working on building things for it.

2:30ish - Take a nap.

3:30 - Get up, eat dinner

4:30 - Be ready to go work at part time job

11:30 to Midnight - Get home, relax for a few minutes, then go to bed and be ready to get up and start it all over again.

Am I crazy? Maybe. But I can’t shake this feeling that my life arranged itself so that I could step in and help Kelsey just when she needed it. If I hadn’t done that first show in October or if I hadn’t accepted the second one in December, I wouldn’t have been ready to pick up her work and pitch in.

Plus, don’t get me wrong, there is a financial benefit to me as well. I will be paid for my work, and I don’t have kids or a spouse so having a few weeks of chaos really isn’t the end of the world. If I can make a good living and help someone out at the same time, you know I’ll do it.

...oh, and did I mention that another manager called me to fill in for Kelsey for her work in April?

Photo by: The Tim
Via flickr

Thoughts on Having Safety Nets

2010-02-16T16:22:00.005-05:00

We’re more than half the way through February and I am just starting to think about goals for the New Year. Honestly, I think I would like 2010 to be a year of rest. I’ve been feeling like Tarzan the last couple of years, swinging through the jungle of my life with crises for vines. I’ve swung from one traumatic problem to the next, barely touching the ground.

Last year I had quite a few goals and plans for the year. Some I completed, some I didn’t. This year, however, I want to take a step back. I realize that one of the big reasons that my problems were able to completely take over my life was simply because I didn’t have a big enough safety net. Divorce... fighting foreclosure... landlord problems.... every issue has been able to put me into a state of panic. Even little problems in life were able to derail me.

I have big dreams - going back to school, making some different career choices - but I realize that before I go jumping into something else, I need to take stock of where I am. Now, this isn’t to say I am going to sit around on the couch for a year and do nothing! If you’ve read my blog in the past, you know that I don’t let any moss gather on this stone! ...but, it does mean holding off on any major decisions, at least for a little while....

Being divorced put me in the strange situation of having a home I couldn’t afford, so when I first moved in, all I could think about was selling it and getting out. Now, I’m a lot more settled and I don’t feel quite the push to “escape” as I once did. I realize that the housing market has a long way to go to recovery and I am okay with that. As I’ve mentioned many times, I would also like to go back to school - but that takes a lot of work and energy, and completely changes your day to day routines and personal life. While I still want to do it, it occurs to me that if I want to do it right, I’ll spend a little time preparing first.

So, this is the year of mending and building nets - specifically, safety nets. I’m going to hunker down and build emergency savings accounts, I’m going to try to reconnect with family and friends in better ways, and I am going to try to try to get my ducks in a row, so when opportunity knocks - or crises bang down the door, I’m a little more prepared.

Here’s an example:

One of my goals for 2010 is to finish paying off my loan from my mother. My goal was to have it paid off by Christmas but, well, that didn’t quite happen. Why am I in this situation? Lack of safety nets! I ended up taking out the loan from my mother because I didn’t have quite enough money to finish paying for my to be house repainted last summer. I’m glad I got the house done, but I should have had a bigger pool of money set aside for the project before I even began it. Then, why didn’t I pay back my mom in full before Christmas? Again, lack of a safety net. I got the money to do it (I got a very nice year end bonus,) but I ended up taking most of it and putting it away into savings accounts because I was feeling nervous about not having them fleshed out enough. If those accounts had been better funded, I could have paid my mother back in no time at all.

I don’t regret the choices that I have made. I know that I made the best decision that I could given the information and circumstances at the time, however, I’m tired of feeling like I am flying by the seat of my pants all the time. Granted, its exhilarating, but it gets a bit old. One can only spend so much time on a roller coaster, after all.

So, to put it simply, I want to spend this year getting my house in order - both figuratively and literally. I would like it to be a year of fully funding my emergency fund, as well as setting aside money for the other things that come up in the course of a year - home repair, car repair, even tuition for seminars or classes I may want to take. I’m going to make a conscious decision to set aside some of the big things I’ve been wanting to do and instead, work on building a solid foundation. I’m going to continue to make my home a comfortable place to live, and organize it so it functions well with my busy lifestyle. Although I have some home repair projects I want to do, I’m going to put the big ones aside for now, and just work on the smaller ones when I have time and in my own fashion. I want to make more time for the people I love and try to strengthen those ties.

Oh, I’ll still be working 87 part time jobs, but I’m now doing it so that eventually, I don’t have to. I’ve felt what it is like to be in freefall, scrambling to make ends meet. I am very proud of what I was able to achieve and that I came out of it pretty much intact... but I’d certainly like to avoid it happening again!

There is this quote by Patrick Overton that goes like this:

“When we walk to the edge of all the light we have and take the step into the darkness of the unknown, we must believe that one of two things will happen. There will be something solid for us to stand on or we will be taught to fly.”

Great quote, but I can't help but think that in either case the leap is easier to make if you know there is a safety net down there waiting for you.

Photo by: ...storrao...
Via Flickr

Filing and Organizing Financial Paperwork

2010-01-11T10:04:00.001-05:00

Since it is January - a great month for organization - I thought I would write a little bit about the various systems I use, (and have used in the past,) for organizing all that financial... stuff. I'm not saying that what I do is the best, by any means. "Different strokes for different folks," and what works for me may not work for anyone else. However, someone might see an idea here that will spark an idea of their own. So, here you go:

I pay all of my bills through my online banking system. I usually do it during a few minutes of my lunch hour, so, when bills come in the house, they get opened, glanced at, then put in my work bag. This happens in pretty much one movement, no letting them pile up on a counter, they go straight into the bag! Then, the next day I will pop on my computer at lunch time and go to my bank's web site. Many of my bills I have auto-paid. I set them up in January and then they just pay out automatically each month. This works great for bills that are the same amount and due at the same time each month; when I had car loans and credit card debt they were all set up this way. Now it is mostly my mortgage and my utility bills that are on a "budget plan" (so they are the same each month,) that are on auto-pay. I still like to sign into my bank's site though and make sure everything is going out the way it should. It's just habit. However, the beauty of this is that even if I am on vacation or a statement is lost in the mail, the bills get paid on time. It is one of the reasons my credit score is good - because I haven't had a late bill in years.

Some of my other bills are more random, either in when they arrive or the amount due. Trash, water, insurance - they are all quarterly or semiannually. My cell phone comes at the same time, never seems to be quite the same amount each month. I don't have an automatic bill pay for these, instead I create a single payment each time a statement comes in.

After I verify a bill has been paid, then I file the statement in my work bag. I have a folder in it that contains all the statements from the prior month. This is when I glance and make sure that everything seems normal. When I saw my cell phone took too big of a jump up over the course of a month, I spotted it right away, because I have the prior month's statement at my fingertips. So, the new month goes in the Statements folder and the old one goes in a To Be Filed folder.

So that is the basic set up for simple bills and things, here's what I do with the old statements...

Talk about low-tech, I have two cardboard boxes for filing. One is marked with the present year, (I just made my 2010 one a few days ago,) and one is labeled Taxes. I use envelope boxes I get from work - they are sort of like shoe boxes, but wider and and flatter. Any receipt, statement or other piece of paper that has to do with my tax return goes in the Taxes box. Everything else gets thrown in the year box.

I have gone through a couple of different systems for filing statements and receipts. I actually originally started with the shoe box system when I read about it in a magazine years and years ago. Then I got more sophisticated and started keeping files in a locked file cabinet. This worked fairly well, except that while I had no problem adding something new to a file, I wasn't very good at taking things out. Soon my Auto, Credit Card, Insurance and other folders were filled to the brim. For some reason (laziness, perhaps) sorting out the cabinet and removing the previous year's statements just didn't really happen.

Then I became pretty eco-conscious and decided to try to go paper free. I kept one month of statements as I do now, but older statements and receipts were all shredded and recycled. I felt good about the planet, but lousy about my pocketbook when not having a receipt cost me a couple hundred bucks. That's when I went back to my shoe box filing system.

Checking my bank account online on a regular basis means I see instantly if there is any strange charges or odd activity in the account, keeping a paper trail of receipts and statements helps with taxes and returns. It takes up very little space and is super easy to use.

Not all my financial documents are in envelope and shoe boxes, however. Important documents are kept in a fireproof safe in my basement. Documents I update regularly like my budget, are kept in my computer in spreadsheet format. Now in my file cabinet I keep more "timeless" information - taxes, important paperwork on my home and other purchases, generic account information, things like that. It is no longer stuffed to the gills with 3 years of statements from every bill I have ever gotten!

What do you do with all your financial paperwork?

Photo by: SpecialKRB
via flickr

It's Not All Bad...

2010-01-07T17:12:00.007-05:00

Wednesday I posted about my big financial fear when it comes getting a new tenant. However, I have to admit that if ever there was a time for me to have this problem, it is now. The first quarter of the year is actually looking really good for me for extra income. Here's the scoop:

January

I got a raise!! Ha! I am so excited. I just found out about it today. It isn't some huge, massive raise, but in this economy (and don't forget, I am in Michigan - where we have one of the worst economies in the country) I am absolutely thrilled to get one at all. In truth, it was far more than I expected. I'll tell ya', this is the reason I continue to work where I do, they have always taken really good care of me, on so many levels.

Profit sharing!! At the beginning of December I wrote about getting a rather handsome profit sharing bonus. Our year end profit sharing is split up into two payments. They pay an estimated portion before Christmas and the final amount after the December books are closed. That means that sometime this month I should receive Part 2. The second half is usually a bit smaller than the first, as they try to give us a slightly larger portion before the holidays, (See? My company is just so thoughtful.) but I am still really excited about it.

Part Time Work - I have scheduled a couple of shifts at my part time job. I was only able to pick up two for January based on availability... I didn't have it, and my coworkers did. That is just fine though, I worked a ton of extra shifts last month when they couldn't so I'm happy to take the backseat this month.

Freelance Work - Okay, this is just plain nifty. You may remember that back in October I picked up some freelance work. This was a new thing for me. Someone I knew needed a project completed and a dear friend recommended me for it! Well, I just picked up another one. This work pays by the job. Admittedly, if you calculate the hourly pay, well, it isn't all that much. However, it's work I can do mostly from home, on my own schedule. I'll have to do some meetings and driving around, but it fits into what I already have planned and best of all, this is still a new thing for me so I am really excited about doing it. It is creative work with neat people and I am just tickled to be asked to do it. I'll be working on it this month and next. The final project is due at the end of February. My guess is that it will pay the first part of March.

Which brings us to next month....

February

More Part Time Work! I have another part time job that hires me for just three weeks out of the year, and one of those weeks is near Valentine's Day. That's always a hard week, I'm working practically two full time jobs at that point, but it is only a few days. In fact, it isn't even a full week, it is just Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Friday and Saturday. For a few extra hundred dollars, I can work extra hours for five days!

Plus, the part time job I mentioned above will be having some more work starting at the end of February into March, which means I could pick up a few extra hours here and there.

March

Not only is there a lot of part time work that could be available this month, it is also:

Tax Time - Normally I try very hard for a even balance of taxes. I don't want a refund and I certainly don't want to pay them. In fact, I adjusted my payroll taxes to decrease the amount of taxes withheld and try to even out my tax burden. However, I am able to claim 25% of that very expensive house painting project I did this summer as a business expense, along with other expenses I invested into the property. I just got my packet from the accountant yesterday, if I get all my tax forms from banks and employers by the end of January and submit it right away, I usually see payment by March.

Other Factors

Had my tenant had to move out and to another state back when I first started this blog, I would have been completely terrified about it. The fact is though, over the last couple of years I have really gotten a lot of my financial ducks in a row. Not only do I get spare income as mentioned above, but more importantly I've found significant areas where I can save or reduce spending. I've created a living, breathing budget I can work with, and I have increased my monthly income in other ways that pay every month (like changing tax withholding on paychecks.) I no longer have any consumer debt, so I have greatly reduced my bills. I've also created an emergency fund and other funds to help pay for these kinds of issues. All these things add to a much more stable situation.

So, while I'm still nervous about not having a steady source of income for a month or two, its not nearly as bad as could have been.

Photo by: Rail Life
via flickr

Being a Landloard and Getting a New Tenant

2010-01-06T17:40:00.005-05:00

Well, last month was pretty crazy. Sorry about the lack of posts. A dear friend of mine just gave me a friendly poke in the ribs to get off my butt and start writing, so here we are! Rather than writing some big long apology post about what the heck has been going on with me, I think I will just pick up where I left off and fill you in as we go along. So that said... here we go:

My tenant is moving out at the end of the month and I am a wee bit panicked about it. She just gave her notice a couple of days ago and is apparently moving out of state at the end of the month. The rent for the apartment is $550 a month... and that is not at all included in the $900 I have as a goal for each month, so naturally, I feel a touch nervous about it.

However, it isn't all bad. There are some things I would like to do to that apartment and this may be my chance. Let's look at the Pros and Cons...

Pros:

Heat - One of the issues my tenant had was with the heat. The heat for the unit is controlled in my section of the house, which only makes sense - I pay for the gas. My ex-husband rented the apartment to my current tenant and at the time told her it would "be comfortable." However, my idea of comfort and other people's ideas can be two different things. Plus, the apartment has only a few heater vents and several old drafty windows. So, she was cold. My solution at the time was to buy her a supplemental electric heater and window film insulating kits. However, this would be a prime opportunity for me to install some nice baseboard electric heaters. Then my new tenant will have the majority of the heat they need supplied by me and can then add more as they need it.

Refrigerator - One of the other requests my current tenant had was for a new refrigerator. I was actually planning on purchasing one for her this year. The one that is in the apartment unit now works, but admittedly, it is a bit dated. I've repaired it once and it cost me over $90 to do it, since the parts are obsolete. It would make sense to buy a nice EnergyStar energy efficient refrigerator. Not only would I be able to claim it on my 2010 taxes but it would be a relief to have it done before the other one clunks out. The only problem had been arranging delivery and replacement with the tenant, since she is rarely home (and I wasn't too keen on taking her items out of the old fridge and putting them in the new one.) If she is out of the unit, I can do it anytime I want.

Possible Income Opportunity - My home has a three stall garage. I like having all the stalls to myself, but I realize that it is just convenience. It would be fairly easy for me to move everything out of the adjoining stall to my own and offer a garage stall with an electric opener for an extra $25. Or then again, I could offer them the single locked stall - it doesn't have an opener, but it would let them lock up some additional storage items. ...actually, the more I think about it, I like that option better. Hmmmm.... either way, it would be a possibility.

Paint - My ex-husband has several rental properties and one of the things we used to talk about was "Better rental = Better tenants." When we worked on properties we always tried to improve the look of the apartments between tenants. This unit is actually really sharp and in good condition, except for the stairwell. It desperately could use some fresh paint and some molding repaired. This would give me the chance to do it.

Cons:

Money - All of the above repairs cost money. Yes, they are items I can claim on my taxes, however, I won't be seeing that money back until next year. I have money set aside that I was going to use for some of these home repair projects, but now I am wondering if I shouldn't keep as much liquid as possible just in case it takes awhile to find a new tenant. The question then is, will the repairs draw new (better) tenants or does it make sense to woo them with promises of all the things I will do... once they sign the lease.

Lack of Income - While I do have a cushion of funds set aside for just this case and can go fairly easily for a few months without a tenant, but I don't want to go too long. The longer I go the more I deplete my reserves.

Finding a Tenant - One of the things that just stinks about being a landlord getting new tenants. Showing the apartment, getting applications, doing credit checks and all that is a fair amount of work, and extra time isn't something I have a lot of right now. It isn't something I can afford to put off though, either. It is going to have to be a big priority.

To Dos:

Here's some of the things I can get working on right away:

Put Together a Lease - As I mentioned, my ex-husband was really the landlord and he had a contract he used that he got through his membership in the local Rental Property Association. I have a copy of it, but not a clean one I could give to someone. I also have a copy of the lease I signed when I lived in my last apartment. It was owed by someone like me and they had had a lawyer draw it up. It had some great language in it, so I have saved it. One thing I need to get done ASAP is putting together a lease and having it looked over so it is ready to go.

Check Up on Credit Checks - My ex also used his connections with his Property Association to do this. I don't have a membership there, so I need to decide what company I am going to use and look into costs. He charged a $25 nonrefundable credit check fee, which paid for the checks, but gave the new tenant $25 off their first month's rent. I have to decide what I want to do about this.

Get Photos of the Apartment - Though I would almost rather photograph it empty, the current tenant has it decorated very cute, and I just don't want to wait until she moves out to get on this. I can always take some now and replace them later, if necessary. They will be used for...

Advertising the Apartment - Time to do a little research. I already have mentioned it to a few friends and put a little note on Facebook, just to get the ball rolling. There is a website for apartment rentals in town, I will want to see how much it costs to use them. I will also be looking at Craig's List. In the past my ex just put a sign in the yard, but I think I want to be more proactive than that. I will be out of town next week so I probably won't start it until the week of the 18th.

Review the Apartment - It's been a few months since I was last in the apartment. I'll need to get in soon and get a feel for what types of work, other than cleaning, I have to plan on doing. Having a plan is always a good thing.

So that's what I have on my plate for the next couple of weeks, how about you?

Photo by: Laurie.McGregor
via Flickr

Review of My Extra Income

2009-12-02T09:03:00.000-05:00

Yesterday I wrote about my good fortune in getting a holiday bonus from my day job. Believe me, I am well aware of how very lucky I am, especially when there are still so many people out there who are out of work. I am very grateful for my job, and the benefits it offers. Though, like everyone, there are days I occasionally dream of giving it all up and living in a shack in Fiji, I've been at my job almost 11 years now and have no intentions of leaving anytime soon!

Since I haven't done it in a little while I thought I would do a review on my extra income - what I earn over and above my day job wages. Though I finally have my finances rolling along like a well oiled machine, I am still actively perusing additional income. I've got a whole lot of goals on my horizon* and most of them require cash. Here's what I've been up to lately...

Rental income - I continue to have a tenant for the apartment (knock on wood!) Things have been pretty quiet in that area lately. She doesn't know it yet, but I am contemplating doing a house project for her, come spring. Next month I will get my tax worksheet from the accountant, and I am expecting a decent tax return - mainly because since my home has a rental unit, I can write off 25% of the house painting job. I am considering investing some of that back into the apartment. She has asked for a new refrigerator in the past. Hers works, but it is a tad ragged. I've already had to work on it twice and since it is a bit older, parts for it aren't cheap. It would be a good business decision, and again, something I could write off, and hey - happy tenants are good tenants!

Part Time Jobs - I still have a hodgepodge of part time jobs. My jobs, as you might recall, are all sporadic. I am not sure I would be able to do a regular day in/day out, 20 hour a week second job. (Well, I probably could if I had to, but I think it would take quite a toll.) My jobs all offer me a little work here and a little work there, never so much that I get too burned out. Part Time Job 1 offers scattered 4-5 hour shifts and Part Time Job 2 offers 1 week of work, 3 times a year. One of those weeks was in October. While the hourly pay isn't all that impressive, I get in almost 40 hours, so it's a nice bump when I add it to my regular income. In addition, I was offered some freelance work that month that was really exciting. It something I had never done before and was interesting, fun and really rewarding. Again, if you take the hours put in versus the return, the rate was pretty low, but it was work I loved doing and it helped my bottom line. I was paid for that work in November.

Currently I am picking up several shifts over at Part Time Job 1. With the holidays, they've had a lot of shifts available and it just so happens most of my coworkers are extremely busy right now. I offered to pick up a few extra shifts to fill in the holes. I pretty much worked every day through the last holiday weekend and have three more shifts coming up. Yay!

Surveys - I still do surprisingly well with surveys. I mean, I don't make a ton, but I usually manage to get anywhere from $10 - $15 a month. Okay, that's not enough to retire on, but it is around $120 a year I make on lunch hours or while waiting for reports to print. You can read a past post I wrote about the surveys I do (and see links to sign up for them if you want) here.

Bank Interest - Again, with interest rates the way they are, I am not rolling in dough from my interest! But you know what I love about interest? It is practically free. I do nothing to get it - the bank just adds it into my account each month. I love that!

Book Sales - Despite selling some nice high ticket items lately, book sales in general have been slow. I know this is my fault. I have proven to myself time and time again that if I am actively working on my book sales, I make more money. For awhile there I got busy and was coasting a bit, then I ran out of books to list. However, people I know have been clearing out their closets and generously giving their old books to me, so I have a box full of books waiting to go up for sale. That is something I need to make happen ASAP. Generally, when I am working at it, I can make an extra $60-70 a month on book sales.

Mystery Shopping - I used to do pretty well on mystery shopping, or at least get a free meal a month, but lately this has dried up! The only things I see offered are too far away or age compliance shops for places that serve liquor. They want shoppers who are under 30, to see if they get carded. Since I am over the age limit (and getting further all the time....) that rules me out. Ah well....

And that is pretty much it, other than the unexpected windfall! Looking ahead at my calendar, if all proceeds as normal, it looks like I will have a fairly good variety of part time work through June, which is when everything dries up for the summer. Here's looking forward to a good 2010!

* Some of my goals are going back to school, fixing up my home for possible resale when the market turns around, and some much needed work on the cottage. Plus I have some purely financial goals, like having 6 months of emergency funds stockpiled away!

Photo by: elycefeliz
via flickr

Money Decisions for December... Again

2009-12-01T09:01:00.001-05:00

Sooo.... guess who got a rather handsome Christmas bonus?

Actually, it isn't a Christmas bonus per se'. My company offers profit sharing. They split the year end profit sharing into two checks - one that you get before Christmas to help with the holiday shopping, and one they give out in January - after the books are closed and the actual figures are known. It is an extraordinarily nice benefit, and you can see it made a big impact on last's years numbers as well. (Please note that not all the money you see in the sidebar is from the bonus though, some was from my freelance work and I have had some nice book & DVD sales. I even sold Night Slave!)

Now... what to do with it? The obvious thing is to pay down my debt. I still owe my Mom for the loan she gave me for finishing painting the house. In fact, $350 of the money in my sidebar there has already been sent to her. It's a bit tricky though. When she gave me the money, she was so incredibly sweet about it. She told me she wasn't going to charge interest and I could just pay her back $20 or $30 whenever I had it. She also said she wanted me to keep track of it, and she wasn't going to worry about it one bit. Isn't that nice?? But, if you've been reading my blog for awhile, you know that isn't how I work. With each check I've been getting from my part time jobs, I've been saving a little of it for my emergency fund and giving mom the rest. So far, I have sent her $800 - two $350 checks and one $100 check. Each time she gets one, she tells me how hard it is for her to take my money since she knows how hard I work for it. She's such a dear.

So, I owe her $1900 yet. I could turn around and just pay her off. It is probably what I should do, but for some reason, I am hesitating...

Part of it is what Mom has been saying about how she feels about cashing those checks. It makes her feel bad. She is well aware that it is a loan and I am simply paying her back, but she wasn't expecting big lump sums. If she has a problem with $350, imagine how she'd feel with a $1900 check!?! I'm not sure she'd believe me that it really was okay.

But, that's not the only thing... there is something else, and I don't know how to describe it. When I get money like this, my impulse is always to split it up a bit - make the most out of it. If you look at the post I wrote about last year's bonus, you'll see I split it up. My current urge is to take a portion of my bonus and send it to Mom as a repayment, take another portion and put it in my emergency fund and a final portion and invest in one of my larger home improvement projects. I keep thinking that I could send her another $400 - $500 now, and then kind of pace it out over the month. That will still be a lot for her to take, but I think she'll do it. Then again, maybe this is selfish, I don't know. I originally really wanted to pay her back before Christmas, and this would let me do it. Yet at the same time, my range hood microwave hasn't worked in 6 months, and there are a lot of good deals right now. For a couple hundred bucks I could have that fixed finally. Or perhaps get a bed that doesn't hurt my back, since I have been sleeping without a box spring for 18 months.

On the other hand, it isn't like this is the only money I'll be getting. I'm working a ton of shifts at the part time job through December, and I should be getting another profit sharing check in January. (That one will most likely be a bit less. It usually is.) It is a strange thing. How come when I get a $400, I can fairly easily turn around and send Mom $350 of it, but once the money coming in gets over that $1,000 mark, I can't do the same? It must have to do with large numbers - it has to. I have to have some kind of block or something. Whatever the reason, it is how I feel. And I guess the reasons don't have to be logical. I am an extremely logical person - who is known for looking logic in the face and doing the exact opposite. I mean, deciding to get $900 a month over your income to keep not one, but two homes, is not at all logical - yet I did it.

So what to do? Follow my head, which says just pay mom back in full or follow my gut which says do it a little at a time? The good news is, I don't have to decide now. I send out my checks through online bill pay, so it doesn't cost me a thing - not even a stamp - to cut multiple checks. I can send out what I am comfortable with now, then see how I feel throughout the rest of the month.

Photo by: _ES
via flickr

Follow Up On Excercising to Combat SAD

2009-11-30T09:39:00.005-05:00

Well it has been a little over a month since I started exercising in the morning to combat my Seasonal Affective Disorder. I thought I would write a post to follow up on how it has been going:

Actually, it has been great! Now, don't get me wrong, I don't pop out of bed singing in the morning... exercise is not some magic bullet. However, it has made a huge difference. In my post about SAD and its effects on me, I tried to explain what it was like for me to wake up each morning when it's been dark. For some reason, the lack of light in the morning has really hit me hard. Setting back the clocks at the time change helped a bit and it was a bit lighter in the morning, but only for a week or two. Today when I woke up it was as dark out as if it were midnight. Before I started exercising regularly, this made it incredibly difficult for me to get out of bed. Have you ever taken cold medication and had it knock you out, and then try to get up? You know that feeling like your limbs are made of lead and your head is underwater? It was something like that, except that when it happens under the influence of cold medication, you can pretty easily laugh it off. Maybe not at the time, but later anyway. When it isn't the result of something you can control though - and it happens morning after morning - it become depressing very, very quickly. There were times that I found myself wondering if having a job was worth it. Not that I would actually act on that, but these ridiculous (though regularly occurring) thoughts show how bad it was getting.

It didn't matter how much sleep I got, either. I tried going to bed earlier and that just made it worse! Even if I felt like I was going to be able to fall asleep when I went to bed, once the lights were off I became restless and ended up being awake far past my normal bedtime, which meant I was overly sleepy on top of everything else!

So, a little over a month ago, I began exercising...

I am getting up 40 minutes earlier than I was. That gives me time to get up, get into my workout clothes, go downstairs and turn the lights on, then exercise for 25-30 minutes. I'm not doing anything terribly strenuous - some yoga stretches and light aerobics, mostly. (In the evenings, I try to do another hour, but that depends a bit on how busy I am. I've been able to do it most nights, though.)

The exercise has made a big difference. I still wake up wishing I could sleep in a little longer, but it's that normal "weekday wishing it was the weekend" feeling. It isn't depressing at all. As a coworker of mine who gets up really early said - "it isn't getting up an hour or two earlier that is hard, it's the first five minutes." In my case it isn't even that. The first minute I open my eyes I might be wishing the alarm hadn't gone off, but a moment later I am dressed and downstairs, and by then, everything it fine.

I'm feeling really good and glad to have shaken that depression. In addition, I've gotten the side benefit of losing a little weight. It seems the past few busy months have taken a bit of a toll on my waistline. I managed to eat pretty healthy, but I was eating rather late at night. I'm talking dinner at 10:00 p.m. - or much, much later. In my younger years this was no problem, but I have finally come to accept that, now that I am in my late 30s, my metabolism has changed. The late meals were not good for me, and that will be something I will have to work on when I get busy again. Anyway, the exercise has been great and I am now pretty close the same weight I was when I was married (which was the last time I had a scale.) I have to believe that those few extra pounds weren't helping my sluggishness any either!

I received a lot of supportive and interested comments on the original post. If you are dealing with SAD, I encourage you to check them out - along with this advice from my friend Tracey:

I too, have difficulties with SAD and everything you said is awesome!I am sure you have done your homework on this, but medically SAD is thought to be caused by lower levels of the hormones/chemicals Melatonin and Serotonin in the body. It is also considered an Environmental Psychiatric condition, so all that you're doing to change your environment is wonderful!

I strongly dislike taking any medications/supplements, etc..But when it gets really bad for me I take Melatonin in a small dose. There is a very respected health-food store in our area (you know the one), and they are VERY educated on SAD and can recommend anything from vitamins to different teas to help.

www.ei-resource.org is a great reference for SAD. And www.melatonin.com has a lot of info as well.

Here's hoping to a happier winter!

Photo of figure in Cobra pose (one of the poses I do in the morning) by: The Other Martin Taylor
via flickr

Happiness is... Free Recipes

2009-11-20T09:56:00.005-05:00

Today, I fell in love with Google, all over again.

I am pretty good at hunting things down on the internet when I need something, but every now and then I forget to even look. Today I was able to use Google to quickly and easily find two recipes I thought I had lost.

Back when I was married, my ex and I did a lot of cooking. Naturally, we owned a ton of cookbooks. We also were fond of cooking magazines like "Food and Wine" and "Cuisine." Since I'm the type of cook who enjoys being in the kitchen in part because I like making and trying new dishes, that gave us all the more reason to buy a lot of cookbooks.

When we split, the cookbooks were roughly divided up. I got all of mine that I had before the marriage and some that were gifts to me while we were married. He kept the ones we had bought together or that were given to him. For the most part I was absolutely fine with this division, but later I realized that in his books were two recipes I loved... and missed.

It is very rare that I miss a recipe. As I said, part of the reason I like to cook is to make something new. My father was the same way. He liked to make a recipe once, maybe twice, and then he was pretty much done with it. You really had to cajole him to make something if he was bored with the recipe. His apple pie was a prime example. My father made the best apple pie ever. Seriously, I have yet to have a pie that rivals his. Heck, I wish I had a tenth of his pie crust making skills! As I recall, he enjoyed making the first few - it was a challenge. For years after that though, it took begging. Mom would buy bushels of apples, which she kept on the three season porch. We knew then that it was time to start asking for homemade applesauce and apple pies. Mom made the applesauce, so we could get that pretty easily, but the apple pie took some work.

Now that I cook myself, I understand his reluctance. Once I've made something more than a few times, it stops being fun for me and starts becoming work. So, the fact that I actually miss recipes is really saying something! I didn't really want to buy the cookbooks that these recipes were in again - it seems a bit silly to buy a new cookbook for just one recipe. I did consider, briefly, going into a bookstore and attempting to find the cookbooks and then copy down the recipe there, but this wasn't quite as easy as it sounds either. While one of them would probably be fairly simple to find, (it was in one of the Mayo Clinic's cookbooks,) the other was from a "Food and Wine" supplemental - somewhere between a magazine and a thick cookbook, it wasn't the kind of thing likely to be on the bookstore shelves. I had no idea where I could get that from again, especially since I didn't remember exactly when it came out. So, I was pretty sure one of the recipes was lost forever. ...that is until today, when I typed both of them into Google and they popped right up!

They are:

Chili Dusted Pork Chops

Shrimp and Mango Curry

(Really both of these are summer dishes, but I was thinking of them because I have both pork chops and edamame in my freezer right now. )

I bring this up for two reasons - 1) I was incredibly happy to find both of these without having to spend a penny and 2) it was a instant object lesson in keeping it simple. Seriously, for the last year and a half, whenever I thought about these recipes (which happened every now and again this summer) I would think about going to bookstore with a pad of paper and a pen or trying to order these cookbooks used online so I could get a good deal on them - it never occurred to me until today to simply type "shrimp mango Mayo clinic" into Google and see what showed up on the search results! It was just reminder that it's frequently a smart idea to start with the easiest and less expensive options first - you can always get more complicated later!

Photo of the pile of cookbooks by: pirate johnny
via flickr

Grocery Shopping Review - Meal Planning from the Market

2009-11-17T11:31:00.004-05:00

A few months ago I started buying my groceries on the envelope system. For the most part, it is working really well. My food budget for the month is $125, so I take that out around the first of the month and tuck it in a special spot in my wallet, then just spend that when I shop. I have gone over a few times, usually at the end of the month when something unexpected comes up, but I am not going over by very much (or very often) and I am going over my budget a lot less than when I was using my debit card instead of cold hard cash.

This month I started my grocery shopping by going to the farmer's market. You might not think there would be a lot at a farmer's market in Michigan in November, but you'd be wrong! There was a ton of produce to choose from. As part of my effort to soak up sunshine before the winter darkness sets in, (and me trying to get a bit more exercise,) I walked down to the market on a crisp fall morning. I bought celery, carrots, beets, leeks, onions, Brussel sprouts (still on the stalk - I love that!), ham, turkey, eggs, kale and potatoes. There were also tons of things I didn't buy - squashes of all colors, pumpkins, apples, radishes, parsnips... the list goes on and on.

Anyway, you might already be seeing the problem with my trip... I bought a lot of root vegetables and you know what? Root vegetables are heavy!! I was so tired bringing home my haul that I had to stop over at a park on the way home and just sit on a park bench for awhile and rest my arms! It was good though, more exercise than I planned on certainly (next time I buy that much I'll bring my car!) but overall a worthy trip.

The next thing I did was start putting together my menu...

Normally I put together my menu and shopping list before I hit the market, but it was fun to change it around a bit and instead let the market inspire my shopping. I piled up all my produce on the dining room table, got out a couple of favorite cookbooks, grabbed a cup of coffee, and then picked out my menu according to what I had. As I figured out how I was going to cook each thing, it got put away. And while doing that, I also made my shopping list for the additional ingredients I was going to need (and, of course, added the nonfood items like aspirin and window cleaner to my shopping list.)

I then went through my coupons and hopped online and found a few more. As I did, I broke my list into parts depending on where I wanted to shop. More and more I am hitting certain stores for certain things, rather than getting everything at one big megamart. For example, I got those locally grown products at the farmer's market, then I went to a small butcher shop/market for some other meat and produce I couldn't get at the farmer's market. Next I hit Save-A-Lot for some canned items, aluminum foil and dried lentils, Rite Aid for pharmacy items (I had a $25 gift certificate) and finally the megamart for the last items on my list - and the ones I had coupons for.

So basically, when it comes to fresh vegetables and meat, I buy it locally and look for the best quality. I may pay a little more than at the megamart, but I am okay with that.

I do try to use Save A Lot for canned and dried items that I don't have coupons for. It isn't one of my favorite places to shop, but their prices are so low, it is worth the trip.

I waiver between CVS and Rite Aid for pharmacy type items. It just depends on who is running the better deals.

The megamart becomes the last step. Before I used to go there first and get everything, but now I pretty much only get there what I can't get elsewhere - or when I have coupons.

It's been working well - my savings tend to even out. I may spend a little more on free range eggs, but I save on the non-produce items. All in all, its a system that is working for me. Here's just a few of the things on the menu for this month:

Tex-Mex Turkey Chili
Risotto with ham, portabella mushrooms, carrots and peas
Quiche with turkey sausage, leeks and mushrooms
Homemade onion soup
Grilled chicken salad with artichoke hearts
Steak, oven roasted beats and Brussel sprouts with pecans

YUM!

Photo by: freeformkatia
via flickr

My Experience with Giving Through Freecycle

2009-11-16T09:23:00.004-05:00

Last week I was insanely busy at my office. We are going to be moving at the end of the year, and last week we started cleaning out our storage area. We need to get some units cleared out so that they can start moving them over ahead of time. Well, since going paperless quite a few years ago and having gone through several downsizings, we have accumulated a ton of miscellaneous office supplies. Most were gathering dust in the back. Since we don't use them anymore we don't want to move them over to the new office, where we have considerably less storage space.

The first thing we did was go through and take all the stuff we wanted to get rid of and put it all in one spot. Then we encouraged employees to help themselves. Then we donated a ton to to a couple of charities (churches and preschools.) We still, however, had some things left - and those I decided to Freecycle.

I am going to give you my personal views on working with Freecycle-ers. Let me state these are merely my opinions after 5 solid days of giving away office supplies, getting emails from over 100 people and giving things to over half of them. Your experience in your town might be completely different. First off, I love the concept of Freecycle. Basically you post what you have, and people who are interested email you and then (theoretically) come pick it up. Here we were looking at this huge pile of "office stuff" and my boss and coworkers wanted to pitch it all. But the hippy in me, combined with my inner frugal Dutch woman, could not bear to see all this perfectly usable stuff go into a landfill! On the other hand, I didn't have time or energy to deal with eBaying it. I didn't want to make trips to the post office, package it all up, then still have to deal with what didn't sell. Besides, I didn't have that much time - everything had to be gone in a week. Essentially I just wanted to wave a magic wand and make it all disappear. My magic wand was Freecycle....

I would post an item on Freecycle, say 500 used manila folders. (They are perfectly good if you turn them inside out or great for craft projects.) I would very clearly ask people to tell me how many they needed. When they responded, I would give them driving directions to the office and ask when they were picking them up, and for a name to hold the items under. Once they responded, I would grab a scrap paper and jot their name and the day they were coming, and put it on the item. I had a holding area for items waiting to be picked up and I had sections for different days. That way when someone showed up I could easily grab their stuff for them. This part all went pretty well... the quirky part was dealing with the people themselves.

Here are my little rules for Freecycle-ers:

1.) I immediately delete any emails that use text speak. First of all, this is a completely personal thing - I hate text speak. It feels incredibly disrespectful to me. If you can't take the time to type the word "you" I don't want to attempt to have a conversation with you. However, there is a practical reason to delete these emails as well - people who are too lazy to type, are too lazy to return emails. Every time I broke my own rule and responded to a "Will U Save these 4 me?" email they never responded with a name or time for pick up. In fact, not one person who used text speak actually picked up an item. Nothing irritates me more than me taking the time to set something aside for you and you not even bothering to come pick it up.

2.) If someone can't follow the directions in my post, they are going to end up being a pain. This little lesson took me a long time to learn. I would write, in all caps, at the bottom of each post, "PLEASE, TELL ME HOW MANY YOU WANT. This helps me distribute these among everyone who is interested." For example, I had 6 working 19" monitors. Big fellas, these were monstrously heavy and took up a ton of desk real estate - but hey, they worked - and I was giving them away free. People would say they were interested, but not how many they wanted! Well, this just makes more work for me, because now I have to check - and in the meantime I was getting deluged by emails. I finally learned to give away items to the people who responded properly first, then if I had anything left, I would offer it to the non-direction followers.

Amounts weren't the only directions people had a hard time following, though. For example, on the monitors I included in my post the size and weight, and encouraged people to bring someone with a strong back to carry them. Well, you guessed it, I ended up offering one to one of the people who didn't tell me how many they wanted. Who did she send to pick it up? Her 60+ year old mother, who was about 5'3" and maybe 100 lb soaking wet and her father... who had a broken back! Seriously, I couldn't make this stuff up. Guess who (while wearing heels) ended up loading it into their van.... yeah....

3. People who can't follow driving directions are wackjobs. Okay, I know this sounds horribly judgmental and I am not known for my keen sense of direction myself, however, as bad as this sounds, it's still true. I don't mean wackjobs in a scary sense, I mean it in that kind of affectionate, slightly frustrated, roll your eyes kind of way. I gave everyone very clear, very simple directions for how to find our office. Of the 4 people who called from the road to get directions - every single one of them was a wackjob. I'm not sure the correlation between not being able to follow driving directions and being wacko, but there you are. Maybe they not only dance to their own drummer but they drive to their own navigator?

Two of these folks wanted to talk to me forever afterward. These were not comfortable conversations - these were "conversations" where I pretty much didn't get a word in edgewise and where I kept hoping a coworker would rescue me. One of them went by her "stage name" which was vaguely uncomfortable to for me to say. Lady Fallopian Tubes, (not her real stage name, but close enough) completely creeped me out. The final directionally challenged wackjob called three times, apparently not believing 1) my driving directions, 2) the hours I said we would be open, 3) that we were really an office and 4) that we would actually give away all these great used manila folders and monitor stands. Sigh.... I think he wanted to chat too, but I pretty much gave him his items then hustled him out the door.

4. When you find a good one - give 'em all they can carry. Some of the freecycle-ers were great! They followed directions, picked their things up on time and thanked me, and then left. They were awesome! These folks I loaded down - not only with what they originally wanted, but they were the ones I emailed later with a "Hey, I also found this... could you use it?" One of my favorites was a gal who was opening her own law office with four of her fellow recent grads. I hooked her up - she said it was like Christmas! That's me... helping the Michigan economy 1 box of legal sized green hanging folders at a time.

5. Freecycle helps everyone - even though the week was rather hectic, I feel really good about it. Not only did I keep a lot of stuff out of the landfill, I also managed to unload things we would have had to pay to get rid off. We had hundreds of pounds of broken and/or unusable (by us) computer, printing and fax equipment. To have that picked up and recycled would cost us about $.12 a pound. Thanks to Freecyclers - especially the local Steelworker's Union who took 3 broker Phaser printers (at 100 lb+ each), 3 broken fax machines (65 lbs each) and all the supplies we had for each (thanks guys!) I saved the office quite a bit of money. I like that a lot.

Photo by: fatmandy
via flickr

Style on A Dime... or Less

2009-11-09T11:25:00.005-05:00

So, I've been writing about redoing my home to fit my style. A couple of weekends ago I tackled another room - my living room. Once again, I was able to completely change the feel of the room - without spending a penny.

First let me tell you a little about the room. It is fairly large room, roughly rectangular in shape, and painted an odd sort of gray green. The paint is matte, which was undoubtedly chosen to hide the waves and ripples in my 100+ year old plaster walls. The color reminds me of a Victorian doctor's waiting room - think dull, slighty depressing, grayish olive green. Obviously I did not choose this color, and someday I might change it, but I have to say that despite the fact I am not crazy about the color, they did a good job painting it.

This is the front room of my house. If you imagine a horizontal rectangle, the top line across has windows to my front porch. The front door is in the top right corner and the entryway to the rest of the house is in the bottom right, making an informal hallway. Originally my couch was on the short wall facing that hallway (the left side of the rectangle) and all the furniture was based off that.

The couch, and its matching chair, are incredibly striking, and part of the reason I don't mind the paint color - they make it work. Once again (as with most of my furniture) this was passed on to me by a friend. The couch belonged to my friend Tracey and it is in her rich, decadent, exotic and unforgettable style. First off, both the chair and the couch are huge. That was actually the reason I ended up with it - when she moved, it didn't fit into her new place... literally, they couldn't get it through the front door. So, she ended up storing it in her father's garage. Well, at the time I had an empty living room and offered to at least get it away from the car fumes and garage mice and store it at my place. It barely fit in my house - we had to take off both doors from the house, all the legs and finials off the couch, and then it took three men (one sober, one tipsy, one three sheets to the wind) and a time space continuum to get it through the door. I've always told Tracey that if she wants it back, it is hers... unfortunately I am not sure it is coming out without a saw!

Not only is the furniture big, it is in rich, gorgeous colors. It is deep brilliant red, black and gold in an intricate combination of tapestry fabrics. The back and arms of the couch are very tall, which is why it was so hard to get it through the door. In addition to the couch there is a big overstuffed chair, which is almost a love seat, (except that the lovers would have to be pretty skinny to sit side by side,) and a huge square ottoman. Honestly, this is not furniture I would have chosen, I think I would have been too scared to be that bold! My friend Tracey, however, is fearless when it comes to furniture selection and she has stunning taste. The best part (for me,) is that this furniture works with the room and the paint color. The warm elegant colors of the fabric keep it from being dark and cold. Since this room is kind of a formal parlor room (no tv here), it all works together well.

Also in the room are a few other big pieces, the grandfather clock my father built, a glass coffee table and few other things. This was what I had to work with...

The first step was to clean out the room - everything, except the couch, chair and grandfather clock, had to come out! I pulled, pushed and carried everything from the photos on the walls to the rug on the floor into my dining room. Then I pushed the couch and the chair over against the wall with the windows and got out my trusty Murphy's Oil Soap. After a good sweep I got down on hands and knees and once again washed the hardwood floors. When one side was dry, I pushed the couch and chair over and did the other side. (I did not move the grandfather clock. It is a pain to move and I hate doing it alone. It was fine right where it was.)

Since the couch is the largest piece of furniture in the room, that was the piece I needed to place first. I wanted to do something different with it, but my choices were limited. I was thinking about focal points - what do I want people to look at? I had had it against the wall opposite the doors, which frankly, isn't that much of a view. I don't have a fireplace, tv or piece of great art (common focal points) in there, so what to do? I put it against the windows when I was washing the floor, and could immediately tell that wasn't going to work. As tall as it is, it blocked out half the light. Besides, these are pretty much floor to ceiling windows, I was afraid of sun fading the material. I couldn't put it opposite from where it had been - that would put it directly in the path of anyone entering via the front door... they'd have to somersault over it to get in!

Really, that just left one choice, so I put the couch on the wall opposite the windows. This not only changed the flow of the room, it made the the windows and the grandfather clock into focal points - perfect! Now it looked like I was trying to make the room make some kind of sense. Next I positioned the rug and the chair. As I did, I noticed another effect that I liked. Because the couch was now on the "long side" of the rectangle, it shrank the room up a bit. In the past, because furniture was on both "short sides," the room felt pretty big and distant. It was fine if I was in there by myself or sitting on the couch with a friend, but when I had people over, I noticed that the furniture made the people sitting on opposites sides of the room really distant from one another. If you were sitting on the couch and someone else was in the chair, with the big distance between you and the ottoman and coffee table in the middle, you almost felt that you had to holler to the other person! Changing the placement made the room a lot more intimate and better for conversation.

As before, I brought in only the furniture that I wanted. Here is something that is crazy to me - changing the way things were arranged made more space... again. Just like in the last room I did. In fact, I actually added one of my chairs that had been in the library (it is gold, so it matches), a large side table that hadn't worked with the new library lay out, and a lamp.

Here's another quirky thing - when I had the furniture how I wanted it, I went to work on the pictures. I have two large framed prints that had been hanging over the couch. All the time, I knew I had hung them too high. It is a fault of mine, I always hang art to high. Recently though, I read something in a design book about figuring how how high you want to hang your art... then lowering it 3". This has been great advice! I've used it a couple of times now, and sure enough, things look better. I was dreading rehanging these pieces - they are so, so heavy and my ex had put them up with big molly bolts. It was going to tear up my walls.

But then something happened... even though the prints were too high behind the couch, that changed now that my gold chair was in front of them. My gold chair also has a tall back - even taller than the couch (it comes up to my shoulders when I am standing next to it.) I put it in front of the prints and a low bookcase nearby and poof! It worked. The prints no longer look like they are hanging in space. Believe me, I wish I could tell you that it was planned, but it wasn't. It just all came together... like magic.

There was only one problem when I got done with the room... now my dining room was full of things I wasn't going to use, from both my living room and my library room!! My next project was to clear that out. I now have a holding area of furniture in my basement that I need to make decisions on. I will either pass it on via the "undeeda" network (you needa chair? I gotta chair.) or sell it in next year's garage sale... or find a new home for it in my own home as I finish up the rest of the rooms in my house.

I am really pleased with this project so far. I am slowly, room by room, making the spaces in my house my own, without spending any money. Now admittedly, I have cleared out some areas that I look at and think, "I need a new _____ for there." but, I am not in any particular rush to go out and buy. I also am rather happy with the deep cleaning each room is getting. It had been awhile since these floors were scrubbed, the furniture vacuumed, the windows washed. I'm also going through each room as I finish with it and making a dream list - writing down everything I would do if I had an unlimited budget. Some things are big and out of my price range, like installing a gas fireplace in the living room, but others are very doable on my budget, like giving the metal register covers a fresh coat of black paint.

My next room will either be the dining room or the bedroom. The dining room will be the easier of the two, so it will depend on how much time I have. The dining room, though, has some potential for big projects, so we'll see if I feel up to tackling it. In the meantime, I have two great rooms that I love and feel very, very comfortable in.

Photo by: Browserd
via flickr

Frugally and Naturally Fighting Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD)

2009-11-03T09:47:00.004-05:00

If you live in a part of the world where you have dramatic shifts in climate during the seasons, you are probably familiar with Seasonal Affective Disorder, or SAD. Here in Michigan I know a number of people who are affected by it, some severely. In those cases it goes beyond a temporary case of the "winter blues" or "fall doldrums," it is a level of depression that can affect their jobs, relationships and overall health. I've been lucky. In the past I have not been very affected by season change, in fact, I love fall and winter, so I look forward to it. This year, however, has been a little different.

SAD is caused by a number of things, but one of the biggest causers is the change in daylight. Here in the Midwest our days are getting shorter at a fairly rapid pace. The lack of natural light is hard on the system. Personally, I am having a problem with the lack of light in the morning. Now when I talk about struggling with these fall mornings, most of my coworkers roll their eyes and make comments about me not being a morning person, but that isn't what is going on at all. To explain the difference, let me give you a little history:

I've worked at my present job for 10 years now. For the last 8 or so, I have worked a slightly odd schedule. For three or four years I worked 11:00 a.m. to 8:00 p.m. and for the last few I have worked 10:00 to 7:00 p.m.. Now, I like these schedules. In fact, if I worked at home and could set my own hours I would probably work on the 11 to 8 shift, because that is when I am the most productive. However, I wasn't doing that shift because I hated mornings, nor was I sleeping in until just before I went to work. I liked these schedules precisely because they allowed me to exercise in the morning or do things around the house. In May, my boss eliminated the 10 to 7 shift I was on and the last hold outs, a coworker and I, shifted to 9:00 a.m. to 6:00 p.m.. And you know what? It has been fine. I've had absolutely no problems all summer with the new schedule. My only minor complaint is that I miss extra hour at the end of the day when things were quiet to get things done in the office - but the mornings were fine.

Then, mid October that all changed...

At first I thought my difficulties with mornings had to do with my busy schedule, but it didn't feel that way. It felt bigger, darker somehow. I don't really have good words to describe this, but when the alarm went off in the morning, it felt wrong to get up - unnatural. I felt like I was struggling underwater, fighting to get up and get out of bed. It was starting to affect my mood.

After my schedule eased up, but the trouble with the mornings didn't, I realized what was going on. Just a couple of months ago, getting up hadn't been a problem at all. Now it was like climbing a cliff. It had to be because of the seasonal change.

Now there are fairly expensive ways you can combat this - you can purchase sunlamps and light boards to sit by. I also found a fabulous clock that has a lamp in it and it slowly lights up the room and wakes you with soft melodic chimes. It is fabulous and very cool... and over $200. That is just silly, when a simple digital clock costs less than $10 and I can use my cell phone as an alarm for free. Another option is to do what many older Michigan residents do - just move to a warmer state for a few months! None of these are really in my budget though, so I had to find alternatives. I really didn't like the way I was feeling and felt I had to do something about it.

Daylight savings was last weekend and that helps some. This morning when I got up, the sky was a pale silvery gray, but there was light, and that was great to see. But let's face it, that is only a temporary fix, the days are going to continue to get shorter and January and February are long cold, dark months here in Michigan. Here are my solutions:

Get Enough Rest at Night - Okay, this might seem obvious, but remember, my problems with mornings do not stem from lack of sleep. However, I don't want to compound my problems by not getting enough rest. So, I am making sure I am in bed by a reasonable time each night.

Getting Up Earlier - This sounds like the opposite of what I just said, doesn't it? Here's the thing, I'm trying to get to bed in time to get 7-8 hours of good sleep, while at the same time planning on getting up a half hour earlier than I was. I am doing it for two reasons: The first is that I am finding it is much better for my body and mental health if I get up a little earlier and allow myself time to slowly wake up, than it is hitting the snooze button and getting an extra 8 (or 16, or 24, or 32) minutes of bad sleep and then having to rush to make it out the door in time. The other reason I am getting up earlier is -

Exercise - Honestly, I hate exercise, but the effects are tremendous. I am getting up and doing 15 minutes of yoga stretches and 10 minutes of light aerobics. Nothing too strenuous, just enough to get the blood flowing and the brain synapses firing. Then I am doing another (more active) hour at night. I've been at this a week now and I already feel so, so much better. I used to take yoga classes regularly, but when life got busy and I was stressed, I stopped going. Isn't that always the way? When we get stressed and life is rotten, we stop doing the exact things that are best for us, like exercise and eating well - just when we need them the most! Which brings me to -

Eating Well - I have been trying to balance out my meals a little better lately. I always try to eat well, but I tend to go on kicks where I ate the same kinds of foods a lot. Currently that "kick" is having a small portion of some low fat meat and two veggies. One of the big problems with this time of year is the heavy amounts of food and calorie laden dishes. I'm trying to improve my overall health by eating well and getting a variety of nutrients. While there are some different studies showing the value of vitamins in fighting SAD, I figure whatever I can do to improve my health will help!

Drinking Water - Lots of it. In part this is because I have been exercising more, but also this time of year is very hard on skin. I have very dry skin and with being inside in artificial heat, my lips and skin can crack. Lots of water helps. It also is a good beverage for the evening, because unlike many other beverages (pop, juice, alcohol) water doesn't effect sleep behavior. That doesn't mean I am cutting out my hot chocolate or hot cider with cinnamon, it just means I am trying to have them early enough that the sugar and caffeine have time to get through my body before bedtime, and I am washing everything down with big glasses of water.

Getting Sunlight - This has not been easy the past couple of weeks, as we've had a lot of rain and cloudy weather, but when I can, I am opening my blinds and letting in the sun. The best place for me to do this is work, where my office gets quite a bit of light in the morning. Since Seasonal Affective Disorder has to do with the lower amount of natural light, I'm trying to soak up the sunlight when I can.

Turning on the Lights in the Morning - Yes, frugal me is actually turning on lights! I am such a Scrooge when it comes to my electricity bill, but not when it comes to my mental health. I am turning on the lights in the morning as I move about the house a lot more than I have in the past. It is a psychological thing, but it helps.

Appreciating the Season - The final thing I am doing is trying to take time to notice and appreciate these beautiful fall season. The leaves are mostly down now, but fall is a beautiful time of year. Winter is too. I'm trying to remind myself to be grateful for the changing days.

How about you? Do you have Seasonal Affective Disorder or know someone who does? What tips can you give? As I said, I've been making these small changes over the last week or so and really noticed a difference, what works for you?

Photo by: gato-gato-gato
via flickr

The Automatic Budget

2009-11-02T12:52:00.003-05:00

I haven't been writing about my budget a lot lately and I realized it's because I don't think about it as much as I once did. It took me over a year, but finally my budget is almost completely automatic! It is absolutely fabulous.

Let's take a look at some of my monthly expenses and how I am taking care of them each month:

Mortgages - I have two properties, each with two loans. All of these payments are taken care of every month with online billing.

Life and Auto Insurance - Since my home insurance is paid out of escrow, these are the only insurance costs I have. Both have odd billing dates - the auto is semiannually and the life is quarterly. Basically what I did was add up the cost of both over the course of the year and then divide by 12. Each month that amount is set aside in a special online savings account I have just for Insurance. When a bill comes in, I just transfer over the money from the account and pay it online.

Utilities are a bit different...

Gas at the house, and both electric and gas at the cabin, are on budget plan billing so each month I owe the same amount. I have online billing just pay those three bills automatically. Electric at the house is one of the few checks I actually cut each month (though, of course, I do it through online billing.) I did it this way because this was one area where I was really working hard to decrease costs. I think I have pretty much gotten it as low as it is going to go, so I am considering doing the budget plan for this one too. It is so nice to have a set number each month - then I can just schedule to pay it and it goes.

Cell phone - My cell phone bill is one of those ever changing bills. I have no idea why. Fortunately, it is almost always within $5 or so of what I plan on, but it is off enough that I cut this bill separately. Trash and water I treat just like insurance - I estimate the amount I will spend for a full year, divide by 12, then have a little bit put aside each month.

In fact, that is how I handle all the rest of my bills. I have a car registration fund, car maintenance, Christmas, and emergency funds - all which take out a little each month. I hate getting surprised by bills, so this way I am ready when the time comes.

For the two things I spend the money on the most - Groceries and Home Improvement, I have gone to the envelope system. I take $125 for groceries and $100 for home improvement out in cash and keep them in separate places in my wallet. Since doing it this way, I almost never go over, and usually I actually have money left over. The only other two things in my budget that are slightly unpredictable are Entertainment/ Dining out and Buying gas for my car. Since I started focusing on trying to only dine out with other people and making it a social occasion, I have really cut down my bill. I still miss dining alone, but having the extra money in my pocket is worth it. As for auto fuel, I always come in under budget - maybe because my budget is set too high. I still expect gas prices to rise.

Essentially, the way my life is structured now, I know that unless I am dining out - any time I use my debit card I am outside of my budget. This knowledge has scaled down my spending a lot. When I do use the card, I know why I am doing it and how much I have to spend. Same thing with cash that doesn't come out of the grocery or home improvement funds. Doing all this may sound like a lot of work, but it means that I don't think about it during the month. I just stay on track and everything else takes care of itself.

Photo by: massdistraction
via flickr

Easy Ham and Bean Soup - Great for Fall

2009-10-30T09:12:00.004-04:00

Before I started the busy week last week, I decided to cook up a big batch of bean soup. High in protein and low in fat, this turned out to be a healthy way to have a quick meal. Plus, once it was made, I could just heat it up and go. Here's how I made it:

1 bag of dried beans
1 Ham shank
1 large onion
2 cloves of garlic
celery (I used some from a leftover mixed veggie tray, approximately 3 stalks.)
carrots (Same as above, about 3 or 4 full sized carrots)
2 bay leaves
olive oil
Salt and pepper to taste
2 smoked pork chops ( about a 1.5 pounds.)

You can chose just about any dried beans for this, or a mix of different kinds. I used navy beans because I am particularly fond of them. There is a market here in town that has a fantastic meat department and they also carry some local produce, including Michigan grown dried beans. They cost a little more than beans at the local megamart, but I like knowing they were locally raised and my purchase supports Michigan farmers. This market is also where I got the meat for my soup...

This soup is really flexible, in fact, you could leave the meat out all together and go with a vegetarian option. Another choice would be to add a small style pasta at the end for a bean and pasta soup. In my case, I had gone to this market specifically for their ham, unfortunately, they were out - but they had some at the smokehouse and it would be in the next day. Frankly, that was the best answer they could have given - now that's a real butcher! Since I didn't want to wait until the next day, I got the smoked pork chops instead, and let me tell you - they were awesome!

The first step is to rinse off the dried beans and sort through them. (Small rocks can occasionally get in batches of dried beans.) Then soak the beans overnight.

The next day, chop up the carrots, celery, garlic and onion. Put a small amount of olive oil in a big soup pot and cook the veggies cook lightly over low heat in a little olive oil. Toss in a small amount of salt (you can always add more later, but wait until you know how salty your ham is,) some fresh ground pepper, and the bay leaves. Cook until the onion is translucent. Add the ham shank.

Some information on ham shanks and ham hocks: Real hams have bones. This may be shocking to some of you who are used to the boneless pre-shaped kinds, but those are to ham what bologna is to steak. Artificial hams have been processed and then squeezed into a ham mold and died pink. A true ham is a cut of the hind leg of a pig. The shank is the section of the bone that ran through the ham. A hock is the sort of "handle" at the end. Ham shanks and ham hocks tend to be less expensive cuts of meat. My ham shank cost $2.59 a pound, and it was a pound of smokey, salty, hammy goodness that made an amazing broth! Now, a shank has a big bone running right through the center so there isn't a ton of meat, (which is why I bought the pork chops,) but for flavor - hocks and shanks are fantastic!

Now drain and rinse the beans. Put the drained beans in the soup pot with the veggies and shank and add 6 cups of water. Bring the water to a boil, then turn down to medium low heat. (You want regular bubbles, but not a full rolling boil.) Cook until the beans are tender. It was 2 hours for me.

One note here on cooking times - I told you what I used, but I always recommend paying attention to the manufacturer's suggested cooking times when it comes to beans, rice or pasta. They know their product best. As you get to the end of the cooking time, check regularly to see if they are done. Personally, I love these long cooking recipes because they are just so easy. I can put everything in one pot and let it cook while I go off and do other things, making sure to swing by and stir occasionally, of course.

When the beans are tender, remove the ham shank and set it on a cutting board to let it cool. Meanwhile, cut up the pork chops into soup bite sized pieces. (Since they are smoked, they're already cooked, which is why I waited until the end to add them. No sense over cooking them.) Once the pork chop is added, cut all the meat off the ham shank, discarding fat and bone. (Hint: ham bones can be kept and cooked again to make great stock. I like to keep them in the freezer in a freezer bag until I have enough to make a new batch of stock.) Once all the meat is added, cook for another 20 minutes, just to let all the flavors meld.

And that's it! It is fabulous with fresh pepper added at the table! YUM!

This recipe made a ton of servings. I don't know how many, but I am guessing 10 or 12. Some I froze, but most I ate. It is a great fall soup - very warming and very filling. All told with buying the beans, chops and shank, I spent about $10. For ten servings of soup - that comes out to only a $1 per serving! The soup takes awhile to make, but once made, it was less than 3 minutes to heat it up, perfect for on-the-go meals, and so, so much healthier than fast food!

So, what is your favorite busy week food?

Photo by: Roger Smith
via flickr

First Room Completed!

2009-10-29T09:53:00.003-04:00

When I was a teenager, I went through a phase of being a slob. What is it about that age? Is it part of establishing our own identity or perhaps a little passive rebellion? Or is it biology? Do teenagers need more sleep and therefore don't have time to pick their clothes up off the floor? Whatever the reason, the older I got, the more I grew out of it. Having my own apartment was finally what killed my slovenly ways. I pretty quickly realized that if I didn't clean up, no one else was going to do it for me! I also found out that it is a lot easier to clean a tidy house. I am not a fan of cleaning, though I like my house that way, and it seems a lot easier to take 2 minutes to put something away when I am done with it, then to spend precious hours on Saturday cleaning the whole room. This system works great... right up until I get extremely busy, and that is when my teenager tendencies return.

So, as you might have guessed, the house took a nose dive for the worst during the week of the 19th, when I was busier than a one armed paperhanger! On top of normal home wear and tear, my freelance work was very crafty and thus I have craft items strewn hither, tither and yon. My dining room looks like an art class tornado hit it. On Thursday I decided I had had enough. The phrase "tidy room, tidy mind" kept floating through my head, and I knew I didn't have a tidy room in the house. I decided to take the time to put one room in order so I at least had one place I could sit in my house and not feel stressed out.

I chose to work on my library. As I mentioned yesterday, library sounds fancy, but really the room is just a den. It's a small room off the dining room where I have my TV and a few bookshelves, but I love the sound of having a library, so that is what I am going to call it! In any case, when my sister moved out of her old house, I told her she's welcome to store things at my place until her new home is ready. After all, the one thing I have plenty of is space! So when the movers came by and put her yard care equipment in my empty garage stall and her furniture in my spare bedroom, they also dropped off the furniture she was giving me. However, I hadn't exactly prepared the room for new furniture, so it was sort of just crammed in there any which way. I spend a lot of time in this room, so it was the one I tackled...

I tried at first to kind of cheat and just move the two old chairs I didn't want out of the room and put the new furniture in, but that didn't work. The room just didn't "flow" and the bookcases kept getting the way. Finally, I accepted the inevitable - in order to make this work, I was going to have to take almost every single item out of the room and start fresh.

So, out came the old chairs, the new-to-me furniture, the lamps and the decor. I tried to cheat on my big 6' bookshelves and only take half of the books off and then slide them to the middle of the room... but eventually I realized that if I was going to do this, I had to do it right. Every book had to come off and the shelves had to be moved out of the room along with everything else. I even rolled up the rug and took the pictures off the wall. The only thing I left in place was my TV. It is in one of those big armoir cabinets and because of where the cables and electrical plugs are, it can really only go in one place in the room. There wasn't any point in moving it.

Once everything was out, I realized this was one of the few times I could easily deep clean the walls and floor. I swept the room (I have hardwood) and then reluctantly threw on a jacket and headed to the store. I hate leaving when I am deep in cleaning mode, but I needed some Murphy's Oil Soap to do it right. Back at the house I mixed up a bucket and scrubbed the floor "Cinderella style" on my knees. I also cleaned the windows and got out my duster with the extension pole to clean the crown molding. When I was done, I rolled the rug back out and vacuumed that. I was finally ready to set up my room.

I've mentioned that I have been reading some design books lately; they talk a lot about the focal point of the room. In my case, the obvious focal point is the TV, so it made the most sense to put the couch facing it. This seems horribly obvious, I know, but at one point I was considering putting the couch against a different wall that would face the door. The point though, is to have rooms that are functional. If I had had two focal points - say a TV and a fireplace, I might have to really think about what I wanted to be the main area of focus, or how to make the two work together. Fortunately in this case, it was easy.

Once the couch was in, the next thing was the bookcases. After all, what is a library without bookcases? I was trying to place furniture by size - start with the big stuff and work my way down. As I was putting the cases into place, I noticed a number of nicks and dings, so out came the Old English polish (fortunately, that I had on hand.) Eventually, after polishing the bookcases and then going ahead and cleaning each item, I got each piece of furniture in the room just the way I wanted it. One piece didn't fit though, I had a smaller antique bookcase that had been in the room, but it just didn't quite work with the new arrangement. Then I had a brainstorm! My antique bookcase is fairly formal, so I took it into my living room (which is a rather formal room) and removed from there a fairly modern bookcase, which just happens to be fairly close in color to my new-to-me furniture. (Yes, I have lots and lots of bookcases.) The swap worked great, both cases look better in their new rooms.

Now with the furniture in, I moved to the art on the walls. I ended up swapping two pieces and moving another one over about 6 inches from where it had been hanging. Once that was done, all the books were replaced and then I started on the decorations. I decided to listen to the design experts and go with the "less is more" style. I wanted cozy and comfortable, but not cluttered. I ransacked other rooms, grabbing freely from other parts of the house and picked only things that worked with the colors and style I was putting together. When I was finally done, I sat down on my couch and looked around with pleasure. Not only was I really happy with the way things came together, to my surprise I actually have more room rather than less. Why, I even have two walls now that I want to find art for. However, I am going to wait to find just the right thing - no running out to get something just because I can.

Over the last week, the library has become my haven. It is where I read, relax, even work on projects. It is my favorite place to be. Just the other night I lit some candles, grabbed a favorite book and then closed the door to rest of the house. I never close that door usually, but that night it just felt right. As I was telling a friend of mine the other day, I am so happy with how the library came out, I actually tidy it up before I leave it. If I throw an afghan over my legs while reading a book, when I am done, I fold it and put it back. I mean, I don't worry about it if I just get up to get a glass of water or something, but every night when I leave the library I look around and make sure that everything is in its place - throw pillows are on the couch, afghan folded, coasters put away, etc.. My mother has told me that she loves her condo so much that sometimes she just sits and looks around it; I always thought she was a bit wacky. Now I am starting to get it.

There are a few more things I would like to do with it. If I had the money, I'd love to replace the windows with some historically styled energy efficient ones. When I was cleaning them I could feel the drafts coming in - brrrrrr. (This is why I spent almost my entire home improvement budget this month on weatherproofing products.) There are also some smaller things that I can do: get the art for the walls, replace the ugly cheap brassy door knob, fix some of the floor molding, that kind of thing. But for now, I am completely happy with it. And the cost?

$3.99 for Murphy's Oil Soap.

That's a price I can live with! Who says home decorating has to be expensive? Of course, the downside of all this is that all the stuff I didn't put back in the library is now cluttering up the dining room, and the living room is still torn up from where I took out the bookcase. In other words. every room surrounding my little haven is a disaster!! Ah well, that's what this weekend is for. I am hoping to tackle another room. I need to work in the yard, but Saturday it is supposed to rain. If so, you'll find me in my living room, hair in a ponytail and dust rag tucked in my back pocket, looking around and figuring out what to move next!

Photo by: 정호씨
via flickr

Three Questions for Finding My Style

2009-10-28T09:51:00.003-04:00

Just before I started thinking about style and how I want my home to look, I got two offers for "Uneeda" furniture. (Uneeda as in "Uneeda chair? I gotta chair you can have.") The first was for a small dining table. I've mentioned in the past that I have an incredibly ugly dining room table. Sadly, this new-to-me lovely little table could not replace the unattractive one in my dining room. My dining room is rather large, and this is a small breakfast nook style table - sharp but not right for that room. Still, I thought I could use it for something else, so I accepted it.

My other Uneeda furniture was a living room set from my sister. It's a couch, love seat, chair, coffee table and side tables. She'll be moving into her new house soon and wanted to get rid of her old stuff and start with something fresh for the new place. So, she offered the set to me. I snapped it up in a heartbeat.

In both of these cases, I didn't think about it all that much before I accepted these gifts. I've always been able to make various pieces work together, and since I didn't have any real plan, I just figured I would accept them and then figure out where it'd go later. Now that I have been working hard on my home, that is going to change. When it comes to new home furnishings, whether I am buying them or whether I am getting them for free, I am going to start asking myself three important questions first...

1.) Does this item fit in with my home plan? As I have mentioned, I am trying to figure out my style when it comes to my home. To help me do this, I'm putting together a three ring binder about what I love. It has photos from magazines, quotes and ideas from designers, and a section on the colors I want in my home. I'll write more in depth on it later, but essentially this notebook is going to be my guide to turning my house into a home. So, the first question I need to ask from now on is, does this work with what I want? Is it the right colors, the right style, the right look for what I want? Do I love it? Even if it is free, I am not going to take something just because I can. If it doesn't work, I am going to learn to say, "no thank you" and let whatever it is go to someone else - hopefully, someone whose style it is, and who will truly love it.

2.) Is it something I can use? This includes all the questions like: Do I have room for it?, Is it functional?, Does it work for my lifestyle?, Will I really use it? For example, a fabulous chair that is completely uncomfortable isn't something I can use. A perfect piece of artwork - that is too big for the wall I want to hang it on, a crystal vase that gathers dust in a box somewhere, candlesticks that let wax drip all over - all these kinds of things are not only unpractical, but they use up space that could be put to better use. My goal is to make sure that whatever comes into my house is something I something I will use.

3.) Can I afford it? This one should be fairly obvious, and it is... when I am sitting at my computer thinking about finance. When I am in the store, however, that is another matter! At the same time though, I put these three questions in this order for a very specific reason. If the answer to the first two questions is yes and the last one is no, that doesn't mean I need to rule it out. It just means that I need to save up and budget for it. The last year has taught me a lot about how to budget!

Now, how would my latest furniture acquisitions have held up? The living room furniture from my sister would have been a firm "Yes" on every question. I had the perfect place in my library. "Library" makes it sound pretty fancy, but the truth is it just a room where I have my tv and books - some people might call it a den. I, however, have wanted a library room since I was a little girl, so that is what I am going to call it, by gum! The only problem with this room is that I didn't have much in the way of seating. I had two chairs which were called "church pews" by those being generous, and "we're not watching movies at your house" by the less subtle. Needless to say, most of my friends found my two chairs less than comfortable! So, my sister's set was perfect. Just as importantly, it is in the colors I like, the style I like and it matches the walls in the room perfectly.

The dining table is another story. The price was certainly right (free), but when I said yes to it, I wasn't exactly sure what I was going to do with it, and what's more, the color of the wood is far lighter than I would have picked. Fortunately for me, it worked out perfectly. I ended up putting it in the spare bedroom, where I am going to have my home office. I got rid of my falling apart, cheap-o computer desk and replaced it with this lovely table. I've always liked tables as desks - they seem so clean and tidy. (I have all my office "stuff" in a set of rolling wood drawers to the side of it.) I think the reason it works so well is that that room is painted a fairly dark taupe... with white and black splatter paint. No, I did not do it. It was done by one of the former home owners, and I see why they did it. I have a 100+ year old house with plaster walls in that room. Naturally, not a one of them is straight. The texture effect hides a lot of cracks and bubbles and wavy walls. Someday I may repaint it, but in the meantime, the room is pretty dark. The light wood of the table works perfectly in that room. I put it on a black and off white rug I had, and it came together beautifully, the whole room is now a mix of dark taupe, black and tan.

So, in this case, my lack of a plan and the gift of a table worked out perfectly. But now I have a look for the room and so in the future, I will know what else can go in that room... and what can't. Basically, it is a level of simplicity - using just what I love and just what I can use.

I'm very excited about redoing my home this way and truthfully, there is a level of peace that comes with it as well. There is something very relaxing about having a plan and knowing what you want to do - it certainly takes a lot of the stress out of it!

Photo by: pillowhead designs
via flickr

Sweet Dreams of You

2009-10-26T11:47:00.007-04:00

Last night I had a rather odd dream. I know reading about other people's dreams is usually about as boring as watching grass grown in winter, but bear with me for a moment, I'll keep it as short as I can:

I was at a party, a kind of early afternoon, late morning brunch thing. (Those of you who have been to bridal or baby showers know the atmosphere.) A friend of mine who is quite religious got up and spoke to us about how he'd been struggling and unable to talk to God lately. He decided that the solution to his problem was to talk to friends and family about the things that were really bothering him. So he bravely stood up before us and started talking; he told us all deep dark fears in his soul and the struggles he had been going through. By the time he was done we were all in tears.

Then he asked all of us, no matter what our region, to get into groups of four and talk about what was going on in our own lives. He asked us to be brave and pour out all the things that we had bottled up inside. Moved by his example, we all started to gather to do as he asked.

But there was a problem. Since this was his party, it was with his friends. They were all people I knew, but few were close to me. They weren't people I wanted to talk to, but finally I joined a group... but then I still couldn't talk. In my group the first people to talk went on and on about their lives and I listened closely, at the same time trying to gather my own thoughts. Then when it came around to my turn, suddenly everyone got up and switched seats and formed new groups. This happened time and time again, I would sit with people, try to be a good listener, but then when my time came, the group split up. I was starting to feel pretty rotten about the whole deal.

Then the groups started forming in 5s and 6s and so on as people who were good friends started joining up and making larger groups. They were all talking, and it went from being something deeply meaningful to just chit chatting. Over in a corner, I spotted one of my best friends sitting all alone and with relief went over to talk to him. He is a great listener and was perfectly happy to sit and let me talk, so I marshaled up all my thoughts and just then.... we were both distracted by some craziness that was happening right outside the window! Agh. I never get did get to talk. That's when I woke up.

So what does all this mean? Well, I think it is a pretty good reflection of my week last week...

Last week was insanely busy. (This week will also be fairly hoppin', but not nearly as bad as last.) I was working mornings at my day job, at the part time job until 1:00 a.m. each night and, at the same time, working hard on my freelance project any free moments I had in between. All the while I was also trying to get enough rest, eat well and keep my house in some sort of order. (Did moderately okay on the first two, failed utterly on the last one.)

At the both part time and freelance jobs I work with a lot of friends, however, I've been so busy that it seems I never get a chance to talk to them. Anytime we got past, "So, how are you?" something popped up and one of us had to rush off. That's normal, we were working after all, but I think the whole combination of running from job to job, trying to get tons done and not having a lot of time to relax, combined with the fact I haven't been able to write in my blog, it all boiled up in my subconscious and came out in that odd little dream!

The truth is, life is actually going quite well. I don't have any big things bothering me, besides the usual money concerns. But I have missed being able to take a quite moment and write on my blog and read other people's blogs. I also have been thinking a lot about my friends and family and I think as soon as this last crazy week is done, I need to spend time with them.

In other words, I've missed you all - lots.

Photo by: curiousyellow
via flickr

Temporarily Out...

2009-10-19T12:34:00.003-04:00

Just a quick note, I will be insanely busy this week - this is where all my part time jobs all have to be done at once (I'm even taking time off my 40 hour day job.) I am actually a bit overwhelmed by it all, but it will be exciting to see how everything turns out... and to get those checks, of course!

I still have lots to write about, but might be scarce until next week. Have a great week all!

Three Questions to Finding Your Own Style

2009-10-16T07:12:00.001-04:00

At the bookstore, I put all the magazines that I didn't want back in the rack and slipped my trusty "This Old House" and "This Old House Interiors" under my arm. My graphic designer friend headed off to the art book section and I meandered over to the books on home design. One of them immediately caught my eye. It was called, The House Always Wins: Create the Home You Love-Without Busting Your Budget by Marni Jameson. Well, all right! That sounded perfect. I grabbed a comfy chair and settled in.

The first few pages had me hooked! The first chapter was all about figuring out your own sense of style and creating a plan. It was fabulous - and funny. Mrs. Jameson is very self depreciating writer and her own decorating horror stories populate the book. I enjoyed reading it so much that I ended up buying it along with my magazines.

Since finishing "The House Always Wins," I have to admit I was slightly disappointed with it. The first and last chapters were fabulous, but the middle sections of the book were really written with a different kind of consumer in mind. In the beginning and end of the book, the author talks about finding your own look, waiting until you have the money to buy - and not settling for something you hate, just because you can afford it. She writes a lot about how to make the right decision the first time, so you don't waste time and money on things you ultimately don't like. I found all of this information incredibly helpful.

However, in the middle chapters she goes step by step through designing the ideal home - basically from the joists on down. In other words, this book is fabulous if you were building a new house or a condo and were overwhelmed by having to make all the decisions on everything from flooring to light fixtures. She helps you build a plan. The book would also be great if you were moving into a new house and were in the process of deciding what of your old stuff stays and what goes... and what you need to buy for the new place. But for someone like me, who has a house full of stuff and not planning on moving anytime too soon, it kind of misses the boat. I was hoping for a little more on how to use what you already have.

The other problem I had with the book was the idea of "a budget." The author and I have two entirely different ideas of what that means. She seems to think nothing of hiring a $800 an hour designer to help her buy stuff. Me? I don't have $80, let alone $800 an hour. Now, in her defense she makes a very good point - occasionally it makes sense to pay a professional on the front end so you don't make more costly mistakes later. Hey, that is why I had a pro paint my house rather than attempting to do it myself, but with the number of consultants she called, I kept thinking, "Good grief - you're a freelance writer, so how can you afford this? What in heaven's name does your husband do for a living??"

There was, however, one a set of questions in the front of the book that really set me on fire and motivated me. She suggested asking yourself these three questions...

Who am I?
Where do I come from?
Why am I here?

The question "Who am I?" gets at the heart of the matter and asks what you need in a house. A family of five is going to need something different than single woman, a sports lover has different needs than a book lover, and so on. Here's how I answered that question:

I'm a single divorced woman who loves to read, cook, garden, make things and work on projects. I have a small in-home business of selling books and I blog. I am a landlord. I am also extremely busy - I have multiple jobs and I do a lot of volunteer work. I do occasionally like to entertain, but it is usually either small gatherings of close friends or my annual big holiday party.

From this little paragraph I jotted down the following statements:

- My home needs to be a haven - a place I feel safe and comfortable.
- It needs to be organized and low maintenance because I am so busy.
- I need good working kitchen - I need to be able to get to everything I need.
- I need space for art, for working on my crafts and projects.
- I need a workshop and outdoor storage for tools.
- I need a home office for my computers and my files.
- I need space for my book selling business.
- I need a place for storing and displaying my personal books, as well as places I enjoy reading.
- The house needs to be as energy efficient as I can make it because of my tight budget, and sound efficient as I have a tenant.
- Entertaining should be a component in the house, but does not need to be a main focus.
- I need to be able to unwind at home. I want to be able to blow off stress when I get home.

I also jotted down some words that I want to use to describe my home:

Elegant, comfortable, warm, cozy, beautiful, happy

So, what did this tell me about my home? Quite a bit! Some of it was rather surprising. For example, one thing that I immediately realized is that I need to reorganize my kitchen cupboards. See, when my husband and I moved into the house, he and his daughter unpacked us. (I don't remember where I was at the time, working maybe?) Anyway, she arranged the kitchen. Then when I was separated, I just took a few things and left. My ex didn't change much either. So, when I moved in back, it was just easier to put things where they were. Essentially, I am working with a kitchen that was put together by the daughter of my ex-husband!

Now some things make sense - the glasses are by the sink, the silverware by the dishwasher, but a lot of it does not flow well for someone who loves to cook. I am always having to crouch down or get out my stepladder. It's logical - from my ex-stepdaughter's point of view - not mine! In fact, just recently I re-arranged three drawers to make them work better with how I cook. Instantly it felt so much better and made me just a little bit happier - and it cost nothing to do.

Keeping with the kitchen theme for a moment, the other thought that occurred to me was to get more and more off the counters. Because I am busy, I want to just wipe down the counters and go. Sure, I'll leave out the things I use every day, but other than that - I'm scaling way down. These are the things that I am really excited about. They aren't things I would have thought of, but these little changes are big to me. I remember when I first moved in thinking that I didn't like the way my ex's daughter had arranged a few things, and that I would fix it later, but out of convenience or compromise, I never did. Is it any wonder my house hasn't felt like my own?

The next question the author's list was "Where do I come from?"

I grew up in a home with handcrafted furniture that was made by my father and a mother who had very expensive taste in home furnishings, so I appreciate well made pieces. I am especially attracted to beautiful wood pieces in deep rich wood colors. I also have an appreciation for art, particularly local artists, and interesting objects that look handcrafted. I like things that appear to be “one of a kind.”

For a few years my mother owned an antique booth and I spent a lot of time there, so I love 1800s Victorian furnishings - elegant, decorative, rich with detail. This also fits my home, which was built in this era. I am sentimental and like having things that were given to me around me, along with photos and other objects that remind me of loved ones. That might be part of my love of antiques - creating my own history. I like things that have a story. For example, when I look at my friend Shelly's rocking chair, I remember our first annual Ladies Garage Sale. When I wind the Grandfather clock my father built, I remember all the stories it carries - not all of them good, but all a part of my life.

The final question on the list was, "Where am I?" and it referred to your neighborhood. The idea is that you can't change a tiger's stripes, and while the architecture of a house doesn't have to dictate how you furnish it, you may not want to do country in a New York penthouse or Modern in an old barn, unless you are very, very bold. My area is made up of older homes built mid to late 1800s to early 1900s. These are Victorian homes, frequently wildly painted, many with lots of details like gingerbread and decorative cornices. It is also an artistic community. My neighborhood has many of the newly popular restaurants, bars and shops. There is also a big interest in green technology in my area. My neighbors are a lot of college and post college aged people, as many of the homes have apartments in them. These are the kinds of people who like liking in quirky apartments and old houses.

This last question really just solidified what I was feeling about style - blending artistic with traditional. Keeping the Victorian style, but not being hemmed in by it. It is one more step towards figuring out this whole "style-thing."

Actually all these questions were helpful, and they pointed out a bunch of min-projects I can do, like cleaning off my counter tops, that will help make my house more functional, without spending money. If you are interested in picking up the book, you can find it here:

Before and after photos by: srbyug
Via: Flickr

More on Figuring Out My Style

2009-10-15T07:18:00.001-04:00

So now that I had some ideas on color, the next thing I did was walk around my house and see what other common elements leaped out at me. I envisioned one of those design boards like they have on the home design TV shows. What else would go on that tray? Metals were fairly easy for me, I like silver, pewter, copper and cast iron, but I am not a big fan of brass or gold tone metals. For example, I have a few bright brassy gold door handles that I just hate. I think my problem is that when those metals are done cheaply (and boy howdy are those some cheap handles I have,) it really shows in gold tones. In comparison I also have a number of antique copper and steel colored door handles, and while I don't think they were high end when they were put on, I love them.

I then looked at wood tones. I have pretty much every color wood under the sun in my house, from ultra bright white woodwork, to every shade of beige and brown, to deep cherry red and even black. In furniture, my taste tends to run from medium brown to black. My mother was fond of a color called "Golden Oak" and most of the furniture my father built is in that stain. Frankly, it is a bit too light for me, which takes the pale Scandinavian maples and ashes right out.

On my tour through my house, I noticed something else as well - another common design element. I love spirals. Now, this is something I have always known, but I didn't expect to see it in my home furnishing, yet sure enough, there it was. I have spirals on the rug in my library room, and so much of my furniture has ornate, curving designs. All this was really starting to pull it together for me.

The next thing I decided to do was to take some of Tracey's advice and go look at design magazines for photos of things I like, so I headed out to one of my favorite bookstores. The bookstore is located next to a Marshall's, and you know what? Just for fun I took one of my two store credit gift cards that I was unable to spend before. This time I went in with the shape of a plan in place. In no time I picked out three fabulous things that fit my home decor perfectly, that I love, and that are in my new colors! I know it is too soon to be shopping, really I want a better plan first, but this was kind of a mini celebration of being on the right track!

At the bookstore I met up with a friend of mine, a graphic designer, and we looked through magazines while sipping hot apple cider in the cafe. It wasn't long before I realized something...

Labels are kind of useless. Country, Old World, Modern... they don't really work for me. My taste is entirely too eclectic. Telling a friend recently that I liked well crafted wood furniture, they said "Oh, you should look at Mission." I replied, "I love Mission... until I don't." A Mission styled coffee table or rocker? Fabulous! I am all over it. An entire living room in Mission? Looks great in someone else's house. Or another example - I don't consider myself a fan of Country, with gingham plaids and geese, but show me a rustic wooden farmhouse kitchen table and I am in love. I also don't think of myself as being Modern, but hold up a bold colored rug with simple geometric designs and I am trying to decide if it would look best under the country kitchen table or the Mission coffee table! It's like high school, very few people could be pigeonholed entirely into the labels of jock, nerd, stoner etc. - no matter what the movies of the 80s tell us. Sure, there are a select few who are all one thing; my mom has a friend who did her entire house in log-cabin, as in rustic furniture with deer and moose and so on. My mom says it is cute, and I am sure it is, but most people I know have a mix - a little of this and touch of that. It is as individual as the person themselves. Just like yesterday I made up labels for my family and friends (which might not at all be what they think of themselves) I'll be making up my own label.

That label may end up having something to do with the word "Victorian." After sorting through several magazines at the bookstore, only two had enough photos in them that I wanted to take them home, and both were by This Old House. It fits - I have an old house. It was built in the 1800s! My antiques tend to come from the early 1900s to the art deco period and late 1930s. I love the ornate look, but even though I might be willing to add Victorian to my description I won't let that limit me - I won't be covering my house in doilies. (Actually, I kind of like doilies, but they are a bit fussy. My friends tease me that I am a 90 year old woman in disguise... I think I just proved it.)

Looking through the magazines also helped me realize what I don't like. While my graphic designer friend was oohing and aahing over bright teal walls with chartreuse chaise lounge chairs and purple couches, I kept thinking, "Not in MY house!"

Photo by: Maia C
via flickr

Finding My Own Style

2009-10-14T07:31:00.001-04:00

Awhile ago I wrote a series of articles about how I grocery shop and cook. People seemed to enjoy those, so now I am going to be writing about another topic that has been on my mind a lot - style. Specifically I'll be writing about the style of one's home and how to make it into a place that makes you happy. Why? Because this is something I am struggling with myself. Since these articles are coming from me - and you all know I have no money - this will also be on a very limited budget. Now, I know there are plenty of frugal fashionistas out there who write about how to turn a chest of drawers found on the side of the road into a beautiful buffet, and who knows? I may end up with a few articles like that too, but I am going to start off with something more basic - just trying to figure out what my style is. In between running to meetings and jobs the last couple of weeks, I've been turning off the car radio and musing about style and what it means to me.

See, I have so many friends with amazing style. In fact, I would say most of the people I know have great taste in either clothes, home furnishings, or both. I have three friends I want to tell you about who have homes that always impress me. Every time I walk into their places I just think, "wow." One is my mom. When my mom decided to sell my sister and I's childhood home and build a condo, she went all out and chose exactly what she wanted. I have to say - it is gorgeous, and I am talking modern home magazine gorgeous here. Seriously, her place could be right out of a high-end fashion magazine. If I were to give her style a name I would call it, "Clean Slate." For one thing, when she moved she got rid of pretty much all her old stuff. There is very little of my childhood in her new home. The other reason I would call it Clean Slate is because of the color scheme: her main living, dining and kitchen areas are in light and dark grays and the only color is splashes of deep garnet red. In fact, all of her color pallete throughout her house tends to be on the cooler side of the spectrum - even her yellow study is a cool, pale yellow. Now, I admit, the daughter in me misses the sentimentality of having things from my past in my mother's house, but the grown woman in me figures my mom should be able to spend her money any way she wants and have the house of her dreams, if that is what makes her happy.

Another person on my list with great home taste is my sister. Her house is warm and inviting and always very comfortable and yet still very hip. To me, her style is "Fashionable and Classy, slightly Whimsical - and Made for Entertaining." Okay, it is a clunky title, but basically, her home is a place you want to be and hang out in. It is made for entertaining. She has made it that way very deliberately, as her and her husband love to have people over. So from big parties to a few people over for dinner - her place is perfect. She likes classic lines combined with rich colors and her furnishings always have a touch of humor. I love it. She is so great at combining that element of fun with elegance. Walking into her house, I just smile. I also love how bold she is - my sister never backs down from a color, from chartreuse to slate blue to burnt orange to iron brown, she can pull it off and make it look like it was meant to be.

Don't think it is just my family that has style - you should see my friend Tracey. Tracey has incredible style from her clothes to her home, and I can't tell you how often I see something and think, "That is so Tracey." I've got to admit, I am envious of that - in fact, that is exactly what I am going for. Right now I can walk into a store and see things and know they would fit in Tracey's decor, but I have no idea what I want in my own! This whole quest is me figuring out my own look, my own style. To me Tracey's is "French - Napa Valley." Elegant and classy, her home is the best of the French stereotype. She, like my sister, is fabulous at entertaining and her home is a place you want to spend time in. She has a very distinct color palette, and though each room in her home is different, they are all very "her." She just recently moved into a new apartment and in her entry hallway is some seriously unattractive wallpaper, yet she hung her pictures on the wall updated some of the hardware, added her own touches and poof! It looks like it was meant to be. It works perfectly! She has such a sure hand and everything looks like goes together. She and I talked recently about all this and she gave me some great ideas. (I'll share more on that later.)

So, I have all these wonderful ladies in my life that inspire me, plus many other friends' whose homes I love, and I want a little of that in my life. Just to be clear, I am not talking about repainting every room and going through and buying all new furniture. I have neither the time or the money for that. However, recently I had two (store credit) gift certificates, one for Marshall's and one for Pier One, so I went shopping. I was thinking I would get a few items for the house, and you know what? I had no idea what to buy. I like so much that I ended up buying nothing. I feel like I have good taste, but I have no idea what I want. Basically, what I needed was a plan. So, let me tell you a little about what I am starting with and what have now...

I call my style "Uneeda." As in, "You need a chair? I gotta chair you can have." "You need a dinning room set? My aunt has one you can use." My house is almost entirely furnished with the following:

- Other people's furniture/decor they no longer need
- Gift decor from my family
- Furniture my father built
- Antiques, some of which I bought, some of which were handed down
- Items bought with my ex-husband, which meant a fair amount of compromise

It's pretty much a hodge podge of things I didn't pick out. In fact, recently I sat in my living room and looked around and realized that of all the furniture, art on the walls, decor items, throws, pillows, window treatments and so on... I had bought 2 things. One was a plant stand. The other was a plant. Even the color on the walls was painted by the people who owned my house two owners ago. This doesn't mean it doesn't look good. For one thing, as I said, my friends and family have fabulous taste - so what has been handed down through the Uneeda network is great stuff. Secondly, if I have any skill at all, it is taking disparate objects and putting them together in harmonious ways. I am really good at taking furniture in different color woods, styles and shapes and making them work together. Yet, I still feel though that something is missing, some element of "me-ness."

So, I am on a quest - I am on a quest to figure out what I like and what I want. How can I make my house feel like "mine" and what, for heaven's sake, is my style?

Thinking about the conversation I had had with Tracey, I decided my first step should be figure out what colors I love and want in my home. I considered going to a home improvement store and looking at paint sample chips, but I felt like that would offer far too many choices. I needed to narrow it down first. So, the first thing I did was to walk through my house and look at the things I had actually bought or picked out myself. The result was a little shocking. I found over and over again that I bought one color above all -

Red. Specifically dark reds, everything from true red to brick, to Merlot to what a friend of mine calls Venetian red - red prevails everywhere in my house.

Honestly, red is not one of my favorite colors. Nor is it something you see a lot of in my wardrobe, but I love it on home furnishings. It just "works" for me. That wasn't the only color, I found these shades also show up time and time again:

School bus/Sunflower yellow - not light yellow, not soft yellow, but bright in-your-face deep yellows.

Tangerine Orange - I have a surprising amount of orange in my house, usually paired with the yellow. I have two different sets of orange and yellow artificial flowers, for example.

Olive green - Somewhere between fresh avocado and bright olive, I love this shade of green. My dining room, one of the two rooms in this house I have painted, is an olive green below the chair rail and bright yellow above it. The artwork in there is red, yellow, orange and green.

It was like an epiphany, figuring this out. Here I had been instinctively doing something, without realizing it. Then something else fell into place - even though my dining room is yellow and green, it doesn't mean I'm going to go around the house and paint every room in one of these colors! These are the main characters, but they don't make up the whole play. I needed backgrounds for them. Once again, I felt something "click." I like warm neutrals - everything from ecru to oatmeal, cement to taupe. Already my library room, the other room I've painted (when I moved in it was painted hot pink... with black and white splatter paint) is painted taupe and the main accent color is dark brick red. It is already happening! Okay... now I felt like I was onto something.

Then something else fell into place. I have been wanting to paint my bedroom since I moved back in, back in June of 2008. I have had paint chips hanging on the wall since just about then... but I haven't bought a gallon of paint. Why? Well, I have this fabulous sunflower print my sister gave me that I was planning on hanging on the wall. I had envisioned painting the room around that, and the walls were going to be pale blue. So I picked out 5-6 pale blues and hung them on the wall - and was never able to make a decision. All of them were nice shades that I likes, but none of them "sung" to me. Why? Well, now I see that the reason might simply be that blue is just not one of my colors. When I imagined instead painting the room a soft beige and then using the sunflower yellow and green from the print as accents, something went "bing!' In my brain - now that I could do!

I also have two bathrooms that need love, but I haven't started on them. Oh, part of it is a lack of funds, but another part is simply that I haven't known where to start! So, this is my goal - to create a plan for how my ideal home would look. Before I pick up one brush or buy one gallon of paint, I want to have a road map of where I am going - for the entire house. That way I can make an effective budget and pick and chose projects that will have the most impact. I also want to see if there are things I can do, right now with what I have, that will make things work better for me without spending money. Already in the last few weeks I've made several discoveries - all of which I will write more about soon.

Photo by: 1zzy5
via flickr

It Ain't Small Potatoes to Me

2009-10-13T07:56:00.000-04:00

I have a problem with potatoes.

Has anyone else noticed this? Potatoes have changed, and I don't like it.

I'm talking about baking potatoes, specifically. The big brown root veggies perfect for turning into twice baked goodness have changed since I was kid. They've become... sweet. Not quite sweet like a yam, but getting there. The skin is super thick and has this sweet potato aftertaste. You know what? I hate sweet potatoes.

Personally, I blame Wendy's.

That's right, in my opinion, the fast food chain is to blame. You see, that is when I remember first tasting these weird slightly sweet baking potatoes - in a Wendy's baked potato. I remember when they first came out, they were kind of a big thing in my family. Mom was never a big fan of fast food, but she had two very busy daughters in school and sometimes it was the easiest option. The Wendy's baked potato was a welcome change from burgers and fries. Plus, my mom loves the Wendy's frosty. So, we'd get these baked potatoes, and even back then I thought there was something weird about them. At home I had no problem eating the skin of a potato. Okay, it wasn't my favorite part, but it was fine - and mom always said that was where all the vitamins were. However, I found it absolutely impossible to eat the skin of the Wendy's potato. First of all, it was thick - super thick, and at least a 1/4" of potato around the skin was thick and hard too. You certainly couldn't cut it very easily with the cheapie plastic fork and knife that came with it... so then you had this big thing laying at the bottom of your little plastic tub. How to eat it? It wasn't like you could just lift it up without making a complete mess. And even if you did manage to saw through it, it tasted funny to me. It was sweetish and just not what I was used to. Blech... easier to throw it out.

But it isn't just Wendy's....

These mutant potatoes are in the grocery stores too! More than once I have been fooled by these lovely, brown beauties only to bring them home and ewww - sweet! thick skin! blech!

That's when I started blaming Wendy's. Is it so far fetched to think that Wendy's needed a particular type of potato? Think about it - they all had to be relatively uniform size, right? You'd be ticked if you got completely different products every time you ordered right? I would. Yet, the potatoes I was used to always came in a wild variety of sizes. Then, you'd want them to all look sort of the same - again, consumer expectations. You wouldn't want too many eyes or too many weird nobs hanging off the sides. You'd want them to be tough - to be able to handle shipping for long distances without becoming black or start growing roots, so thick skin. And if you bred this, you might even use some sweet potato stock, since American consumers love all things salty, greasy and sweet.

Now say farmers were able to sell lots and lots of these potatoes - why not move them into the grocery stores as baking potatoes and increase the market? Now, I don't know if this actually happened, but let's be honest, our food has had a lot of strange things happen to it that has changed it and its flavor - it isn't completely out of the question. In any case, I don't like it.

So, I've changed potato varieties - I stick with ones I know - red skins mostly, but occasionally Yukon Golds or fingerlings if they have them at the farmer's market. My farmer's market doesn't really offer a lot of big potatoes. They have smaller whites, but they are the size for boiling, not baking. This last weekend though, I went up to the cabin... which is in the heart of potato country.

That's right, they even have a potato festival complete with a parade and people dressed as potatoes throwing out bags of chips to the crowd. It's pretty amazing. On my way up I stopped at a roadside stand to pick up homegrown green peppers, onions... and potatoes! "How much for the russets?" I asked the woman behind the counter. She moved her scarf to answer, "$8.00 for 15 pounds." 15 pounds??? A great price, but I am a single gal - I don't eat that many potatoes! The small 5 pound paper bags were $3. They were hand filled and each was closed off with a twist of copper wire. So I bought one of those and $1 each of onions and peppers and hit the road.

The next day I reached into the potato bag to cook up some for dinner. The first one I grabbed was as long as my hand and twice as wide, nobbled and oddly shaped. I grinned to myself - now that is a potato!!

And you know what? It was delicious!

Photo by: Dalboz17
via flickr

Where I've Been...

2009-10-12T09:34:00.004-04:00

Recently an anonymous commenter asked, "Where are you?????????????? Please don't tell us you have swine flu!!!!!!

Ha! No, I do not, I've just been insanely busy. I believe October will be my busiest month of the year. In addition to working for Part Time Job #1 at the beginning of the month, I will be working for Part Time Job #2 for a full week at the end of this month. If that is not enough, I am also doing some new freelance work. (All this is on top of my 9:00-6:00 40 hr. per week day job, of course.) The freelance work is particularly exciting for me since it is something new - I've worked in the field before, but not in this capacity. Basically, it requires a worker and a designer. I've been the worker many, many times, but this is my first opportunity as a designer. Because I know this month is busy, I have been diligently working on it every night. I have a master list of things that must be done, and each night I have a goal to cross at least one (if not more) items off the list.)

That system, so far, has been really working well. Sometimes on creative projects it is tempting to spend 90% of the time dreaming and thinking about what you want to do and 10% in a sheer panic rushing to get everything done. In fact, that pretty much describes every artistic project I did in high school! As an adult, I know that doesn't work for me - and I am way too old to pull all-nighters. Plus, knowing my schedule, I am trying to be a little ahead of the game. I know there will still be last minute things, but if I have all the big stuff done by then, the small stuff shouldn't be too bad. ....right??

Of course, working 3 - 4 jobs isn't really all that strange for me, so you know there are other things going on...

I've had several meetings for the nonprofit I am involved in, so that has taken up evening nights, plus I have recently gotten involved as an alternate for another non-profit. As an alternate I won't be helping them out all the time - just when they really need someone, and I can do it. My first night was last Friday and I had a ball. It was great fun! That is the only I night I have planned this month for them, (so far,) but still, that's one more night taken up. Then, this weekend I needed to head up to the cabin to get it set for winter. Truthfully, I needed to get up there anyway, I needed the downtime, but as we are starting to get hard frosts here, I had to make sure the pipes will be okay, so that made it a necessity.

On top of all this, my day job has been really busy. In this economy, this is a very good thing, but it has cut down on my blogging. Usually I blog at home, but if I am running behind, I'll blog on my lunch hours. Lately I have been skipping lunches or using them to work on the freelance gig!

And finally, my sister is moving. A couple of weekends ago my mother and I went over to her house to help her pack. I only planned on spending a couple of hours there - but there is something incredibly satisfying and fun about working with family on a big project, so I happily ended up spending the greater part of the afternoon there. I was glad I did, it felt good to do! She doesn't ask for help often, so I am glad to do it when I get the chance. She and her husband have a new house and a buyer for their house, but there is going to be a gap in between places to live. Since they need to give over their old house before the new place is ready for them to move into, they are packing up their things into pods and moving in with her sister-in-law for some where from 2 to 6 weeks. I have volunteered additional storage space. One thing I have plenty of is space! I am offering her room in the garage for yard stuff, and my spare bedroom and basement for boxes and furniture. There is just one thing... those places needed to be cleared out. They weren't bad, but since I did have the room they had all acquired a miscellany of junk. Along with my freelance work, another goal has been to work in one of the three rooms a little each night and get them cleared out. And like the freelance work, it isn't that big of a task if you do a little each night. The nice thing is that I have been wanting to clean out the garage and the spare bedroom for awhile - and this is actually getting me to do it. It like having a big party gets you to clean! I spent a little time on the spare bedroom last night and it is really starting to look fabulous. Once my sister is done with the space, I will be able to actually use it, rather than it being a "catch-all" as it has been!

So, yeah... very little writing time these last two weeks. I have lots, and lots of articles I want to write though, so as soon as I get a few quiet moments at the computer, I'll start filling up the page again!

Photo by: jordanw1985
via flickr

Simple Splurges are Sometimes Essential

2009-10-01T10:44:00.004-04:00

There is a end-of-summer, start-of-fall cold going around and unfortunately, I caught it. Because I felt so miserable, I went home early from work. On my way home I decided to pick up some necessary items from the grocery store - namely soup and juice. Here is the interesting thing - I find that when I am sick, I have no problem splurging.

First of all, I didn't have coupons with me. I always have coupons when I go to the store - maybe not for everything, but I at least take the time to look. I was feeling so rotten I didn't even bother hitting the coupon sites or checking out the store fliers. Normally I shop at the mega-mart, but the idea of a brightly lit, people packed super store made my already throbbing head hurt even more. There was no way I was in any condition to deal with crowds with carts. So next I considered the slightly rundown local grocery store that is just around the corner from where I live. Slightly rundown local grocery store (SRLGS) used to be a fairly decent store, but it has changed hands a few times and is not the nicest place to shop anymore. You would think that the lower quality of the store might mean lower prices, but you'd be wrong. Prices are typically higher than mega-mart. Plus (in my opinion) the store is oddly laid out. I can rarely find what I am looking for without a lot of neck craning looking for signs. I usually only go to SRLGS when I am in desperate need of something fast - like when I am in the middle of a recipe and realize I am out of some key ingredient.

Then I thought of my one time favorite grocery store (OTFGS). OTFGS isn't really on my way home, but it isn't terribly out of the way either. I used to work over by it, so I know the layout like the back of my hand. It is friendly, clean and though the prices aren't all that cheap, I like the store. So, that's where I headed.

I ended up buying 4 cans of high-end canned soup, 2 containers of frozen soup, 2 jugs of super ultra healthy juice, 2 single servings of another brand of healthy juice and a bag of clementines. Total cost $26.46. The soup in itself was an odd purchase for me. I don't buy pre-made soup usually, since I prefer to make my own. The frozen soup was really new to me, but I have been wanting to try it for awhile. We have a local company here that is known for their soup. They used to have a restaurant, and I remember getting French Onion soup there as a kid, but I hadn't tried their frozen packs. Being sick was as good of an excuse as any...

However, that $26 was not budgeted. My grocery money was already spent for the month. I spent my "Misc." budget on a few new shirts. But you know what? I didn't particularly care. That $26 was not going to bankrupt me - I had it (and more) in the bank. I can also justify the purchases by saying that the soup made for a fast meal so I could get home, eat, and get right into bead. Plus everyone knows the healing powers of chicken noodle soup. (Don't scoff, millions of grandmothers could not be wrong!) The juice and clementines were a quick and easy way to get my Vitamin C. All these things could help me feel better which means that I would not miss anymore work, which directly effects my bottom line. So, I could say that the purchases were an investment in my health and earning power... but that would be a lot of bunk. Yes, it is true, but the fact of the matter was that I was sick and I felt like indulging myself.

I bring this up because a dear friend of mine told me that the other night she had a really rough day and she splurged on a bottle of wine and chocolate, so she could go home, have a glass of wine and a nibble of chocolate and de-stress. Again, it could be argued that by finding ways to splurge a little and shake off the stress, you are helping your earning power by making it easier to deal with the day to day, but it could also be said that there is something to be said for small splurges.

This got me thinking about the times I have splurged. The good times have been on vacations or holidays, when I said, "It is ______. I'm going to enjoy myself." Other times have been on loved ones, especially on milestone birthdays. I have to say though, these are pretty rare and haven't happened much at all since I have been on a budget. I'm far more likely to splurge a little when I'm sick or feeling blue, whether it is indulging in a bubble bath, wine and chocolate or chicken noodle soup.

As long as it doesn't go overboard and the money is there, I don't think there is anything wrong with this - once and awhile, a small splurge, especially if it helps get you on your feet again, can be a very good thing.

Photo by: WookieWife
via flickr

Contemplating Clothing

2009-09-30T07:26:00.000-04:00

Recently J. Money at Budgets Are Sexy asked, "How Much Have You Spent on Clothing This Year?" When I saw his post, I popped over to Mint to try and figure it out - the answer was $191.39. Some of that came from thrift store shopping, some came from daily lingerie. (All the gals out there can probably attest to how ridiculously expensive women's undergarments are.) The only new piece of clothing I bought, other than the undergarments, was a sweatshirt I bought for $29.00. It was a custom design that was put together for the big non-profit project I worked on back in March.

Last week, I splurged and bought three new shirts. Each was $14.00. They were exactly the kind of thing I love for fall - roomy enough so I could wear a turtleneck underneath but dressy enough I can wear them to work. They also don't require ironing, which is a definite plus. I bought the same style in pumpkin, dark chocolate and a mossy green. I hadn't been planning on buying any new clothes, but I have a Misc. Fund designed for this kind of purchase, so I had the money set aside.

When the clothes come home though, I have rules about how to handle them...

Back when I shopped a lot I instituted a "one in, one out" rule. Even though I am now doing most of my shopping at the thrifts, I still find that is a good system. It works with gift clothing I receive as well. My system goes like this - one large item for one large item. In other words, I can get a pair of pants and give up a shirt or a skirt - it doesn't have to be like item to like item, but on the other hand I can't get a pair of pants and get rid of a necklace. Pretty much if it is something that has to go on a hanger, I get rid of something on a hanger.

I carry that through to other things too - shoes can be swapped for boots, necklaces for earrings. As long as the items are about the same size in the closet or jewelry box, it is fair trade. Everything gets either donated or placed in the garage sale box for next year's sale. The system has worked pretty well for me for a number of years.

How about you? Do you have any rules for clothing shopping? How much do you think you've spent this year? Do you have a clothing budget?

Photo by: wiccked
via flickr

Rome Wasn't Built in a Day... Neither is My Bank Account

2009-09-29T07:30:00.000-04:00

You know what is just a little frustrating? Sometimes I wish I could just wave a magic wand and be "done" with my finances, but that just isn't going to happen. Not for a long time.

The fact of the matter is, there really isn't an end to my financial work - as long as I am breathing, eating and using some form of money, I need to keep working away at my finances. It is a little discouraging in a way, but also really eye-opening. There was a time, not that long ago, that I never worried about shopping or spending money. When I first started this blog and rebuilding my finances, I thought it would only be a matter of time until life was "back to normal" and I could be that free again. I am not sure that is actually the case.

A good analogy might be building a house. In the past, I lived in shacks on the beach. Not very comfy, lousy in bad weather, put together with palm leaves and twine, but acting like it was a mansion and I was on permanent vacation. Now that the divorce hurricane came through and leveled everything, I see things differently. I realize that I had no foundation, no security, no support. When it comes to divorce horror stories, mine wasn't even all that bad, but it had the power to wash away all the finances I had saved up.

So now, things have changed...

Now I'm building myself a better financial house. Last year I turned the big hole I was in into a basement, poured walls for the foundation and started planning the shape of the house to come. I finally feel like I am out of the dark and sitting on the floorboards of the first floor, but that doesn't mean I can go back to beach living. Instead, I know now how easily that can be blown away - so I am planning on building walls, a roof, a thick door with a deadbolt lock. What I am trying to say is that even though I know I can make all my bills and can keep out of debt - I don't think I can ever be as carefree about money as I once was.

Mostly, that is a very good thing. While the past may have been fun, there was a level of danger that was there that was all the worse because I didn't know about it. In my case it was a divorce, but it could have been anything - medical emergency, job loss, who knows... anything could have blown that palm house to bits. I was lucky, it could have been a lot worse.

I can't say though, that I don't miss being that carefree. I do. Sometimes I think, "Well, when I get X, and X and X finished, then life will be just like it was." The truth is, I don't think that will ever happen. Even if I get the first three things done on my list - all I am going to do is add more. That metaphoric house I am building? It is going to need windows, shutters, carpet and more. My goal right now is simply paying off my mother, but that is just building the stairs out of the basement. I see so much that I still want to do - build a bigger stronger, emergency fund, build a fund for other needed home improvement projects, start investing... the list goes on and on.

Now I am more aware of what every dollar means and what it costs me. That isn't to say that I don't go on occasional splurges - I am wearing a fun little ring I bought the other day on a whim for $4.00, but even in that small purchase I can't help but think of all the times I have been grateful when a book sold for $2. I am grateful for that lesson and my new knowledge, but am honest enough to admit, I miss the ease of ignorance, just a little bit.

The hardest thing about it is time. It is so, so easy to blow tons of money and get into debt, it is really hard to pull yourself out and pay it off and build emergency funds. I feel like I have learned my lessons, I have mastered budgeting, now I just want to snap my fingers and have it done. POOF - I want my financial dreams to come true.

I know that is just wishful thinking though. If I want a sturdy, safe house, I need to do it brick by brink knowing that the time it takes just makes it all the better in the long run.

It doesn't mean I don't want to win the lotto though! Of course, now I would never spend the money to play it.

Photo by: Dean Terry
via flickr

House Painting Finale

2009-09-28T12:06:00.003-04:00

It is done.

The house is finally painted.

This morning I walked around with the painter and we took at look at the final job. There are a few touch ups and a couple little projects, but for the most part, it is done. I wrote my last big fat check today.

I asked my painter how long the paint should last. He used Sherwin Williams, which he said has a 15 year guarantee. Now, that is somewhat pro-rated for harsh weather, and it takes into account that you do some regular maintenance, but still, I am pretty pleased with that. One thing he pointed out to me is that if you "spot-prime" meaning you only prime the small patches that need it, the paint will not last as long. That is why he primed the entire house, it uses up more primer, however, it is the proper way to do it on these old houses and should help the paint last. I have to say, that is a load off my mind!

Now, I just have to pay back the loan I got from my mother...

I was sitting with a friend of mine, drinking wine and admiring her new apartment, when we got talking about finances. I mentioned my loan from my mom and how I wanted to pay it back by Christmas. As we were talking, I did the math... $2,700 over the course of 3 months equals... yep, $900 a month! What is it with me and that figure? Nine hundred seems to be the figure for 2009 for me!

I am going to try to take a photo of the house very soon. We've been having quite a bit of rain, so I couldn't really get one this weekend. I am excited to swap out that photo in my profile for one showing the new paint. Of course, the colors haven't changed much, but to me it is a symbol of a remarkable accomplishment. I not only was able to make finances work so I could pay off my car, pay off my credit card debt, pay all my bills on time and make up the difference I needed so the mortgage was taken care of... I also painted my house! Now, I just have this $2,700 loan to take care of and I can start working on the next big thing!

Photo by: Terence J. Sullivan
via flickr

The Long Route to Fixing Up Free

2009-09-23T10:23:00.004-04:00

I mentioned in a post last week that my computer died. I do now have a computer running again at home, but the lengths I went through to to make it happen, while spending as little as possible, are pretty amusing. Talk about stretching frugality to the limit!

A few years back I had a lovely iBook, which unfortunately died. Apparently there was a known defect with it (there might have even been a recall on the part that I didn't know about) and mine died about 8 months after the extended warranty that Apple provided for it ended. To fix it, it would have cost me between $400 - $500, which really wasn't worth it. If I had had that kind of money, it would have made sense to just save up for a new one instead, however, this was during the time of the whole marriage separation, and the last thing I had was extra cash laying around.

So, for the time being I was using my computer at work. I'd drive into the office on Sunday afternoon and check email and take care of all my online business. My boss, running into me one afternoon, took pity on my and offered me a "permanent loan" on an old PC he had laying around in a closet. I could use it as long and I wanted and when I was done, I was to give it back to him so he could donate it.

Well, on September 12th, it died. The hard drive had been going for quite awhile, but this time it locked up, shut itself off and would not turn on again. I knew it was probably heading down that road, since it had been making weird noises for awhile, so I hadn't kept anything valuable on it. Of course, naturally it died the same time my cell phone did, plunging me into a world with the inability to call or email anyone. However, I wasn't completely out of luck, as I had another computer standing by...

A good friend of mine, knowing I was using a dying, borrowed PC, offered me his old iMac. There was just one problem. It only had an internal cable modem, and I used the neighborhood wireless. So, I chatted with a buddy of mine in the tech team here at work about what I could do. He suggested a usb wireless adapter antenna. There are a lot of them out there, and if I had a PC, they are pretty cheap. But since I had a Mac, I wanted one that said specifically that it was Mac compatible. After a lot of searching, comparing of prices and brands, I finally decided on one I found on NewEgg for about $50.

The night my phone died, I decided to try out my new antenna - and that is when I ran into a problem. It needed OS X, and I had OS 9. Sigh.... back to the drawing board.

The following Monday I went into the office and talked with my tech buddy again and asked him about getting a copy of OS X. (I was starting to wonder how much my "free" computer was going to cost me. ) Good news! My office (where we all use Apple computers) had a few copies of OS X.3 laying around - and I could have one - for free! Sweet! So that night I went home, downloaded the new software and the software needed for the antenna....

and it still didn't work. It seemed to me that the problem was the iMac itself. It's curvy plastic body, while looking cool, seemed to have a design flaw. The usb didn't connect very well. The next day, I went back to the tech team. By this time the whole team knew about my mission to get a computer running as inexpensively as possible. The tech director said he had had the same problem with the iMac and his son's iPod, and he dug through a box of pieces and parts and handed me an extension cable. It was maybe a foot long, and looked like it would do the trick... except, it didn't.

That night I went to the computer, excited to try it with the new cable... and to my vast frustration, the cable didn't fit. The male end plugged in nicely to my computer, but the female end had some kind of wacky bump on it. It wasn't a traditional usb fitting - even though at first glance it looked like one. I tried a few other usb ends into it - my keyboard and mouse - and nothing fit, including my antenna.

I admit, I did have a bit of amusement watching the director of technology go through the exact line of thought I did, when I handed it back to him the next morning. He too tried plugging a bunch of things into it and, for a moment, looked equally confused. He solved the mystery when he found out that the cable worked beautifully with some of the office keyboards. Apparently they have a special connection. The tech director wandered off into "tech land" (the back of the office where there are tons of dead and dying computers and computer parts) and emerged awhile later with a screaming bright aqua blue 15' cable usb extension, with standard ends. He gave it to me and said I could have it on "permanent loan." A lot more cable that I needed, but by borrowing it I could at least figure if the problem with the antenna really was that it wasn't plugging in properly. I still wasn't 100% sure this was the root of my problem.

I was right, it wasn't. The cable worked great and everything fit where it was supposed to, but the computer still didn't acknowledge the wireless. I tried my limited store of computer knowledge, then gave up. The next day I brought it into work.

My tech buddy had it on his desk for two days. He updated all the software and then found some drivers that could be downloaded for the antenna. I did still need the cable, that had been a problem, just not the only problem. He also put in a little extra memory he had taken out of his wife's computer when she upgraded. He found that the battery is pretty dead and the on/off switch is a bit wonky, but other than that - it lives! Taking it home, I held my breath plugging it in. I had my coworker's cell number in case there were problems, but I hoped it wouldn't come to that. Fortunately it didn't - I am now up and running and online!

Cost:

Computer - FREE
Antenna - $50
Assorted parts and software - FREE
Tech advice - FREE
Box of gourmet chocolate chip cookies and chocolates for the tech department to thank them for all their help - $12

So, for $62 I have something I can limp along on. Would I like something else? Sure, but this will do just fine until I can get something else. A computer is low priority right now, but when I do buy one, I want to have all the money saved up and put away so I can just walk in and pay cash.

Photo by: Stephen Hackett
via flickr

Getting Out of the Office

2009-09-19T08:24:00.001-04:00

It looks like my office will be moving some time near the end of the year. We currently have a huge office and don't need half of the space. Our lease is coming up due soon, and it just makes sense to find someplace smaller. Now it just so happens that the company founder owns a building, with a suite that is the perfect size. In fact, when I was first hired in, our company was located in that building. As the company grew, we finally got too big for it, and ended up moving to our current space. Since the economy went screwy, we've gone through so many layoffs that we are now planning on moving back there. To give you an idea - when we moved to this office in 2000, we had 90+ team members, now we are down to 14.

Anyway, the tech director and I will be responsible for the move. He will be handling the "hard side" of the move - the computers, servers and cubical relocation, I will be handling the "soft side" of of the move - deciding how the new office will be laid out and where people will sit, what is going to go into storage (and what will be Freecycled) and so forth. Now here's the thing, we have 3 Vice Presidents at the company, one President and one Accountant. All of us at this time have private offices, but in the new space, there are only 2.

Those two offices will undoubtedly be given to the President and the accountant, as they have the most sensitive information. The rest of us VPs will go back to cubicles. Now believe me, I am not a very materialistic person, and I totally understand how foolish it is whine about losing an office when so many other people have lost their jobs, but I have to admit - when I looked at the map and realized how things were going to have to be, my heart sank a little...

It is silly, I know. Yet at the same time, I have to admit that I really like my office. I have artwork on the walls that makes me happy, I have my plants and all my file cabinets laid out just the way I want them. I also appreciate the privacy an office offers me - though I keep my office door open 98% of the time, if I do need a little privacy, I can just walk over and close the door. If I am being 100% honest, I also like the status the office gives me. Titles don't mean a lot in our company, but the office is a physical symbol of how far I have come - I am the only woman VP, so that matters a bit to me. Giving it up makes me just a little sad, even though I know in my heart that it doesn't change my place in the company at all.

Truthfully there are benefits. In the past, my company has offered profit sharing. With the recent economy, we haven't seen any of that profit sharing in quite awhile. Moving over to the old building means dramatically lower rents, which could just be enough to start putting cash back in my pockets - or at least getting us back on the right road toward it.

Now, how does all this relate to finance? This minor angst of mine has made me think a lot about how the economy has effected so many people in much bigger ways. I've been pondering how difficult that internal struggle is when we think we are losing status. To give up something you've never had or to defer something you've been planning on is one thing, but to lose something you've worked for - that hurts.

My situation is so small compared to people who have had to downsize their cars, homes, vacations and so on, but it has given me a taste for how bitter that pill is to swallow. In my life, I have occasionally felt like I have been floundering, but I didn't really have that "step back" emotion. I've had to struggle for money and making sure the bills were paid, but through all that I was gaining a beautiful house. Though my lifestyle has changed, it still was moving forward... if you use society's definitions of "moving forward."

In its own way, this little hiccup of mine has helped me understand how difficult it is for people to give up good things they have always had. It isn't just the loss of the thing itself, but it is also all the emotions tied in with it. Our self worth and self confidence should not be tied up in "things." How big our office is or how nice our house is shouldn't effect how we see ourselves... but it does to some degree. Especially when it is "taken away from you" by circumstance, rather than given up by conscious choice. I think acknowledging how hard it really is is one of the first steps for getting past that emotion. For myself, I can admit that I am sad to lose my personal space at work, but rather than seeing it as a step back, I can chose to view it as a chance for the company to rebuild and get stronger - which can only further my career. For others, their losses might also be a chance to create something even better and far more stable.

I'll let you know how it goes. In the meantime I will be starting to go through my file cabinets and start cleaning out what I can. No sense moving what doesn't need to be saved. I will also be looking forward to working for a leaner, meaner company that gets stronger all the time.

Photo by: Chris Blakeley
via flickr

Being TOO Frugal?

2009-09-18T07:41:00.001-04:00

At the beginning of the week my mother called up and asked if she could swing by the house. She had a couple of things to drop off and she wanted to see how the new paint job was coming along. We set it up for Wednesday night. I get out of work at 6:00, so we agreed to meet at 6:30.

Wednesday morning she called to verify the time and then asked if I wanted to meet at the coffee shop first. She said, "I know you will be hungry after work, so I thought we could get a sandwich beforehand." My immediate thought was, "she's only dropping a couple of things off and looking at the house, it shouldn't take more than 20 minutes. I can wait that long to eat!" Plus I had some great chicken leftovers in the refrigerator - why pay for food? I told her a little of this and said I would be fine to wait to eat until after we met. She was fine with that and the conversation moved on to other things, when suddenly a very distinct thought popped into my brain:

Wait a minute, knucklehead. She didn't ask you to the coffee shop because she is worried you'll faint from hunger. Nor is she worried about money, she knows she's going to pay. Your mother just wants to have dinner with you!

Oh. Well, that changes things...

Fortunately this thought occurred to me before we got off the phone. As we were wrapping up I said, "Hey mom? About that coffee shop, why don't we meet there after all?" I could tell she was pleased. That night we had a nice light dinner together.

I think this is one of the first times I (almost) turned down spending time with someone I care about over money. Even in my most lean times, I have always had a budget for entertainment and dining out. About the only thing I haven't done is attend big charity fund raisers where I knew friends would be, but otherwise I have made seeing loved ones a priority. It didn't have to be an expensive night - sometimes just a bottle of wine and a little homemade appetizer shared while sitting on the couch. Other times I have chose less expensive options like meeting for breakfast or lunch instead of fancy restaurants, or just just meeting for a single cocktail or cup of coffee, but overall I have always done what I wanted to do. Now that finances aren't so tight, I feel a lot more comfortable going out to dinner, though obviously, some habits die hard.

If you've read my blog for awhile you know that I view personal finance as just that - personal. I think we all have different priorities. For me, the small amount I have spent on social spending has come back to me threefold in love, support, and laughter. I don't know where I would be if I didn't have such a great network of people who care.

So, have you made frugal choices that surprised you? Ever turn down going out because of money? Has caring about money meant you spent less time with people you love, or more?

Photo by: km6xo
via flickr

T-Mobile Phones - Discounts and Insurance Plans

2009-09-17T07:17:00.000-04:00

Yesterday I wrote about my cell phone dying and being home Saturday night with no phone or computer. Sunday morning I decided to head over to T-Mobile to see what they could do for me.

My phone, fortunately, is still under warranty. They ordered me a new one and then gave me a loaner phone while I wait. I still have to pay $9.99 in shipping, but other than that, I should be all set. When the new phone arrives I take my broken one and the new one to the store and they see if they can rescue any of my information. While chatting about my options, the T-Mobile rep told me that my phone warranty will end on December 10th of this year.

I am no longer under contract, so I can get a new phone whenever I want at the "new customer" price, or I can continue with my current phone, going month to month, as I am. If my I keep my current plan, my rep suggested that I consider putting insurance on the phone. If it is after December 10 and the phone breaks again, I can't put it on after the fact, so his suggestion was to put it on now, keep it on as long as I keep the month to month plan (especially once the warranty expires) and then cancel it when I get a new phone with a new warranty.

It made sense, but there is just one thing, I hate paying for extended warranties...

I've written about this before - and in fact canceled this very plan. Why pay $3 or $4 bucks a month on top of the warranty? I tend to get pretty low-end inexpensive phones, to me it just isn't worth it. By the time I get through a year of paying for this extra insurance - I could easily buy a new phone and keep the money in my own pocket!

I explained some of this to the rep, and he said, "Well, let's see if we can get you the insurance for free." For free? Well, now that makes sense. I don't mind having insurance if I am not paying for it! It turns out that T-Mobile has a new program with certain corporations and quite a few colleges and universities that gives a 15% discount to employees and alumnus. My university was one of them! So, he applied the discount, then added in the insurance, which meant my total bill will probably be about $4 less than what I have been paying. Great! (One funny note: in order to get me the discount he asked what my email address was at the university... I started laughing - when I was in college we didn't have email! I certainly didn't get one from the college. Gee dude, way to make me feel old!)

So, my plan is this - I will keep my present phone for the time being, but start researching new phones. Since this is the second time in a year I have had to replace it, I don't think it is a "high quality" phone, despite the fact it is made by Motorola, who I usually think quite well of. I'll definitely keep it through December and probably through to next year. In the meantime I will make the effort to research my next one. I don't care about Bluetooth and a lot of the fancy features, but there are some wacky little things I like in a phone and they aren't the kind of things they usually list on the T-Mobile website. That means I will need to go into the store and pick up different ones and play with them. Once I find one I want, I will keep an eye out for a deal - they frequently have discounts on the web.

While I normally hate insurance plans on appliances and the like, since the rep found a way for me to add it and lower my bill a little bit, I am a lot more open to it. Plus, this gives me time to use all my frugal shopping skills for the next one!

Photo by: JonJon2k8
via: flickr

Change in Focus and Money Goals

2009-09-16T11:46:00.003-04:00

In the mail yesterday was my monthly statement for my mortgage. When I opened it, the amount due seemed off. Not by a lot, but the number didn't look familiar. Fortunately, I always have the previous month's statement close at hand so I grabbed the month's prior statement and compared them. I was right - there was a difference. My mortgage payment actually went down by $6 and some change!

Just last year at this time I would have been elated. At that point, even $6 a month was a big deal. It would have been yet another drop that would help me fill my nine hundred dollar bucket. I would have adjusted my online automatic bill pay accordingly and then added my $6 to my monthly goals.

Now when I got it, I had a different reaction...

After a year of struggling, I have made enough changes in my life that I don't need that $6 like I once did. The fear of having to fight foreclosure is much further off. Barring an emergency (knock on wood) I can make it now - I even have some breathing room.

I decided to just leave my bill pay as it is. My mortgage company has been great in the past at applying over payments correctly and as long as they keep doing that, I'll shoot that extra money over there. At $6 a month, I am not going to be paying off my mortgage much faster, but as I have learned, every single bit helps!

It is good not to have to stay up at night worrying anymore, but I admit, I miss some of my "gazelle like intensity". So much of what I do now is automatic - my bills are all paid online, my savings are built in, my paycheck is larger and is deposited straight into my checking account - where it is automatically divvied up to pay every bill. I don't have the same fear driving me anymore, and I find myself relaxing. Maybe this is natural - if you've ever watched gazelles (to build on Dave's analogy) they aren't intense for long stretches of time. As soon as the danger is gone, they go back to grazing.

I've got two big goals right now -

1.) Finish the house painting, then repay my mother $2,700 before Christmas
2.) Keep on going like I am - paying all the bills on time and keeping out of debt.

Perhaps that is enough. Once the first goal is done, I can concentrate on a new goal for 2010 - like building my emergency fund with 6 months of income stashed away. As for the second goal, the main thing I need to be aware of is to not let my relaxation turn to into spending temptation. I have to keep my frugal hat on for awhile yet!

What about you? How are your goals going?

Photo by: shoothead
via flickr

Turn Off the Power

2009-09-16T07:39:00.001-04:00

Last Friday, during the garage sale, I noticed that my cell phone battery was very low. This was kind of annoying, since I had people all day calling me about the sale, but what can you do? I threw it on the charger. By the evening, it was charged up again.

Saturday my phone starts beeping and letting me know it is low on power again. I thought it was kind of odd, but I had been texting a bit and that always uses up a lot of power, so back on the charger it went.

Saturday night after the sale I went to grab my phone off the charger to make a call.... and it was hot. Really hot. I have to admit, I wasn't too surprised when it wouldn't turn on. It was fried. I had someone I was supposed to call, and I knew they would be concerned if they didn't hear from me, so I decided to send them an email and let them know the scoop.

So, I went into my office, turned on the PC, clicked to go to the internet, and then it whirred oddly for a moment... and died...

I can't say I was terribly shocked, I knew it had been close to dying for quite awhile. You see, a couple of years ago my beloved iBook died. This was about the time when my money troubles were starting and the divorce was looming. I didn't want to buy a new computer (and it would have cost over $500 to fix mine) so I started going into the office on the weekends to check email and do banking. My boss, running into me one Sunday evening working away, felt pity for me and offered me an old PC he had laying around - warning me that he suspected it had hard drive problems. Now, I'm an Apple girl because that is what I use at work and I love them, but a free computer is a free computer and all I needed it for was simple internet kind of stuff, so I gleefully accepted.

My office has a number of computer parts laying about, so they threw in a monitor, and I was in business! Sure, the PC made horrible noises and occasionally froze up, but for the most part it would work. I just never saved anything of any importance on it.

Then a friend came to the rescue. He had an old iMac - one of the old cute red plastic ones. Fabulous! Quite a few years ago I had had one of those on my desk at work - I was thrilled to accept his for home. There was only one tiny problem... he used a cable modem and I needed wireless. I've had the computer for awhile, but finally last week I decided to buy a USB wireless antenna. I had some help from the tech team at my office picking one out and it arrived last week Monday. With the garage sale, I hadn't had time to install it, so I figured now was the perfect time! I could kill two birds with one stone - get the antenna set up and send out my email. That's when I discovered another problem... the antenna was only compatible with OS X, and guess who had OS 9 on her "new-to-her" iMac? Sigh.....

So, I was pretty much out for the count Saturday night. Unless I wanted to use semaphore or smoke signals, no one was going to be hearing from me. I briefly considered getting dressed and going into the office to make a call, but it was very, very briefly. You have to understand that this was 10 p.m. at night, I was dead tired from the sale, in my pajamas and in absolutely no mood to put on shoes. I decided that my calls would just have to wait until Sunday.

It was a very strange feeling to know that I had absolutely no way of contacting anyone. People today are in such constant contact with others. I actually myself getting tense and nervous about it, and for a little while I felt really uneasy. Then I thought about it more. This is really only a problem of today's society. If you go back just 8 or 9 years, you would have found me living in an apartment with no cell phone, no internet and only a land line. There were times when that land line went down. I didn't worry about it - I barely thought about it. In fact, if you go back just a little further, I remember having only a land line and no call waiting or voice mail. If someone was on the phone (or accidentally left the phone off the hook for 3 days the way my parents did once) then too bad. Now my blood pressure was rising because if someone wanted to contact me, they couldn't. It was bizarre.

Once I realized how silly I was being, I settled down. In fact, I wondered if maybe this wasn't someone looking out for me - I was in absolutely no shape to talk to anyone Saturday night; the best thing I could have done was just sit quietly for awhile, and that was just what I was forced to do. It was good not to have to think about that little hunk of metal and plastic that I carry around all the time. I started to wonder if maybe I needed to do this more often. I do it a lot at the cabin - I don't have internet there and cell reception is spotty, but I don't at home. Maybe I need to turn the phone off a little more at home. Electronics are wonderful, but only when they are working for us, not when we are slaves to them.

(By the way, I did solve both the phone and the computer problems, but more on that in another post.)

Photo by: rtisbute
via flickr

The House Painting Continues...

2009-09-15T10:09:00.007-04:00

Well, I am finally getting the other two sides of my house painted. Back in April I had the South and East sides of my home done. When I started the project, I had hopes that I would be able to get the whole thing done at once, but I realized that realistically I probably wasn't going to have the funds. So, my painter and I worked out a deal - he would do two sides at a time. As he finished each side, I would pay him. That helped spread out the financial burden. He and I also talked about the fact that I might need to do two sides at the beginning of summer and the other two at the end, as I needed those summer months in between to raise the rest of the money. Which is exactly what happened. There is only one problem - I didn't come up with enough to finish the job. Ultimately, I ended up borrowing from my mother - something I really didn't want to do.

I should say here that I am really pleased with my house painter. His prices have been very, very reasonable and I love how willing he has been to work with me. He knows my situation so he has worked to keep my supply costs low. He has passed his paint discount on to me and he has gotten very creative in replacing only the siding that needs it. Cedar siding is running me a $1 a foot, so this is important! However, I do own a big old Victorian house - that's a lot of work and a lot of paint. Considering that my financial situation is already precarious, this is an awfully expensive project...

Not having part time work really put a dent in my extra income. My book sales were also down, and though I had two garage sales and really scrimped and saved, it just wasn't enough. Last month I knew it was getting toward the end of painting season and I really had to think about what I was going to do. Since I only had about half of what I needed to finish the job, I figured my options were:

* Wait until next spring to finish the job.

* Try to get a loan somewhere or do a cash advance on my credit card.

* Borrow from mom.

* Wrap the last two sides of my house in Tyvek Priority Mail envelopes and call it "art." (What? They are red, white and blue - just like my house.)

If I waited until Spring, then it would be another Michigan winter hitting the two unprotected sides of my house. Remember that $1 a foot cedar siding? I'd be buying a lot more of it! The only good side is that I might save a little in scraping costs - as my paint is flaking off so badly, a few hard storms might take the rest off!

Last spring, when I knew I might be in this situation, the thought of getting a loan to finish the job or even using a credit card to pay for it didn't seem like that bad of an idea. I even talked to a bank about special loans designed for Michigan homeowners who are doing repairs. However, now that I have all my debt paid off (except for mortgages, of course) the thought of going back into debt made me literally sick to my stomach. Every time I thought about it, I would just tighten up. I can't do it. I'm not saying that I won't ever have debt ever again, but it is just too soon. It feels amazingly good being debt free - I want to enjoy that for awhile.

Technically, borrowing from mom is still debt, and that is part of why it bothered me. Though really, that wasn't the main reason I tried to avoid this option. My problem with a "mom loan" came from the fact that I just didn't want to have to borrow from family. I'm a pretty independent gal and my emotions here were about accepting charity; being in my mid-thirties and needing to ask for help. There was a lot of shame and embarrassment involved.

As for the Tyvek envelopes, as stylish as that might be, the thought of buying all the tape to put them up with ruled it out. ...that and the fact that as funny as the idea was, it wasn't exactly practical!!

Then I went out to dinner with my friends Catie and David. I had pretty much made my mind up that I should borrow from my mom and just get it done, but I was glad for the chance to run it by them. They are both smart people, my age, who own old houses. They knew exactly where I was was coming from! They immediately recommended borrowing. As Catie pointed out, my mom has been wanting to help me out since my divorce. She is always offering to do something for me. By giving her this chance, I can actually make her happy and make her feel like she is supporting me. And as David pointed out, waiting to get it done would probably mean more money in materials come spring. After our dinner I thought about it some more, and then decided to bite the bullet and borrow from mom. When I emailed Catie and David my decision, (and complained once again about how I feel about borrowing) David said something to me that really made sense:

But you'll be able to have the painting done before winter, and instead of budgeting to save the money, you just budget to pay back the money. By the time you get to where you would have had all the money to do the painting, not only will the loan be paid off, but you're house will already be finished! Win-win!!

He is absolutely right. For me to get that $2,700 at $900 a month it would've taken me until November. By then it would be too late to paint. However, if I borrow the money now and get the house painted, I can still focus just as I would have, but now it will be on repayment. The time frame is the same.

So, I told mom I needed a loan. Catie was right - my mom was thrilled to help me out. As I said, she has been offering since the divorce, before that even, to help me in any way she can. I'm too stubborn to normally take any kind of help, but this time I did, and I think it made my mom feel needed.

So, for the next three months I am going to have one simple goal - pay my mother back in total, well before Christmas.

I've got a good start. I have a separate online savings account that I've put the house repair money into, and I have plenty to finish the job. In fact, I am hoping I have more than I will need. If so, once the painting is done, I'll be able to cut mom a check right away for at least some of what I owe her. In addition, I have a lot of part time work lined up, so repayment is very doable. Naturally, I'll keep writing about how it all goes!

Photo by: M J M
via: flickr

Garage Sale Week

2009-09-13T13:29:00.005-04:00

Last week I didn't post because I was extremely busy with garage sale planning. I came back from the cabin on Monday night and then on Tuesday and Wednesday it was crunch time for work. I had to get a lot done because I took Thursday off to prep for the sale, which we ran Friday and Saturday. I host the sale at my house and my best friends all bring their junk to sell. We had just tons of stuff to sell, and while it didn't all go - a fair amount of it did.

We lucked out - the weather was beautiful! We got a lot of traffic. I would guess that we had even more shoppers than we have in past garage sales, which makes me wonder if having it at the end of the season like this there was a lot less competition! All told, our sale made close to $900 - not bad considering we only had a few things priced over $5, most of it was $2 and less! Personally, I came in at about $180.

I won't lie to you, it is a lot of work, but the best part of it is, not only do we earn a little money, but my friends and I also all get to hang out with each other for a couple days straight - it was fabulous! Now here are a few tips for a fun garage sale....

1) Have your sale with friends - people you want to spend the greater part of two days with. A friend of ours who stopped at the sale said she threw hers all alone or with one of her (very) unwilling children to help her out. She got so bored at them, she gave it up. I promise you - if there was one thing I wasn't this weekend, it was bored. Even in the rare lull of traffic, I still had fun people around me that I like to spend time with, sitting and having a beer with me, which brings me to...

2.) If you enjoy adult beverages, I highly recommend drinking. If you happen to have friends (as I do) who make amazing mixed tropical drinks or show up with cases of beer or bottles of wine, all the better! Not only does it make the afternoons more enjoyable, especially now that you are in the company of good friends, it makes it so much easier when you watch that candle holder you paid $30 for, go for $.25.

3.) Plan on food. You are now going to be spending hours in the sun drinking - you need food. This time I planned ahead by having sandwich fixing in the fridge for everyone, plus friends brought all kinds of munchies. This was a very good thing.

4.) Make it fun! We crack ourselves up with funny signs (on a latch hook wall hanging of a carousel horse - "Don't laugh, my grandmother made this. $3"), we joke with the customers, we send out emails and facebook posting to other friends to stop by and have a beer, we proudly proclaim that we have "The Best Yard Sale Ever." If you look at the cost to dollar ratio of work to income earned, garage sales don't make me that much money, however, once you add in how much fun I have - I'll do one every single year I have a yard and friends that are willing!

Photo by: William C Hutton Jr.
via flickr

Weekend Plans

2009-09-04T09:16:00.003-04:00

Last night I was busy getting ready to head up north. I fueled up my car, went to the grocery store and spent part of the evening packing. My plan is that as soon as I get out of work, I run home, grab my bags and hit the highway. I can't wait!

An anonymous commenter yesterday asked, "Non-financial related, but was just wondering if you ever have any safety concerns being out there yourself?"

You know, I don't. The photo I posted yesterday wasn't actually my cabin, it was just one that had the same "feel" as mine. When I saw it, reminded me of how I see my place, so that is why I chose it. This photo was actually taken at my cabin. That's me down by the water. What neither photos show is that there are other properties nearby. In fact, both of my neighbors up there are year round residents.

When it comes to critters, so far the largest beastie I've seen up there is white tailed deer in my backyard. The cabin is miles away from any large cities, but isn't that far from several small rural towns. If I needed help, there are people around. Honestly though, there is no more danger up there than there is living in my home in town alone. The hazards, such as they are, are more likely to come from a cooking accident then anything else. In fact, if you want to talk about concerns being alone, my house is in a bit of an "edge" neighborhood on a street that gets a lot of foot traffic. I am more concerned about two legged menaces at home than up north.

In just a few hours, I'll be heading up there for a long relaxing weekend...

I made a menu for the next couple of days, although I kept it light, since I tend to eat less up there. I prefer sporadic small snacks and little meals, rather than three square meals. I do like to cook though, so I have a two dishes planned. I am going to be making a Caribbean citrus chicken with coconut rice and beans and a Chinese beef and tofu soup. One will be enough for a couple of dinners and the other will be great for lunch. The rest I'll just wing. I'm bringing up some favorite foods for throwing together - fresh tomatoes, homegrown garlic, basil, oil cured olives, goat cheese. Guaranteed I can make something out of that!

Other than food, all I need is a few t-shirts, some underwear, a pair of jeans and a pair of capris. The other advantage to not renting out my cabin is that I can keep it stocked with everything I need. I have a full kitchen, and keep salt, pepper, sugar and other spices there as well as non perishables like cooking oils, tea and hot chocolate. I have spare clothes up there for chilly nights or if I decide to work on a project. Heck, I don't even need to pack a toothbrush - I have one there!

Making Extra Income - a Look at Bringing in More Cash This Fall

2009-09-04T08:07:00.000-04:00

During this past summer I had very little part time work. Fortunately, as we ease into fall, I have quite a few things lined up. First up is another garage sale. Coming up soon I'll be posting signs and setting up tables. I'll put out all the stuff that was left over from July's sale, along with lots of new things from my own house and the leftovers from a sale my aunts had last month. Some of my friends will be joining me, so that will help too. Garage sales are a lot of work, but a great way to get rid of unwanted items and make a little extra cash.

I also just submitted my schedule for one of my part time jobs. That will give me the potential to pick up extra work at the end of this month through the first of October. This is my main part time job, and I typically work a few 4-6 hour shifts after my day job (6:30 p.m. to 10:30 p.m) or on the weekends. They will have shifts available throughout the fall to next spring, so that will certainly help!

In fact, October is actually going to be a busy month for me. I have quite a bit of work lined up! One of the other part time jobs needs a hand for a week in the last half of the month, plus I have another job lined up as well. I know that all of this on top of the day job makes it seem like I have no free time at all, but that really isn't the case. Since I am single I can afford to work a few long days, and since I love what I do, it actually is fun for me.

Of course, this isn't all for yours truly...

Book sales have been picking up a bit lately. Has anyone else noticed that? It has been really nice since those sales make my day. Quite a few of the books that I haven't been able to sell are going in the garage sale. Hopefully I will sell a few more that way. What I don't sell I may take over to my local library and donate. They can add the books to their sale, and I get the tax write off - it is win-win.

I do have another thought too. We have a local artists' market here and my friend Catie sent me a link on it. It runs throughout the summer. At the time she sent it, it was spring and I knew I didn't have time to get anything together for it, but I am thinking about putting together some items over the winter. It will depend on how much time I have and how motivated I am, but I love making Christmas gifts and could use some of those ideas make items to sell at that market next summer. That might help with income next year, as I have learned I need to expect summer income to drop off.

Of course, I am still a landlord and receive rent from my tenant. I don't include those figures in my income goals though. Interestingly, I have a friend shopping apartments right now and from her I've been finding out what rents are going for nowadays. It looks like the rent I charge is a real bargain!! I have no intention of raising my tenant's rent, she's quiet and pays on time, but should she move out, I will definitely look into it.

There is a lot going on around here over the next few months. I find that I am actually looking forward to it!

(...of course ask me if I still feel that way in a few months!)

Photo by: on2wheelz
via: flickr

Financial Choices, Personal Growth - Life at the Cabin

2009-09-03T11:40:00.004-04:00

I'm a little frustrated. I had two posts I was working on when BLAM! The power went out. They weren't completely lost, both were partially saved, but I hate rewriting something I have already worked on. So for now, they are both in the "to-do" pile, waiting until the irritation fades and I feel like diving into them again.

If you are here in the States, do you have plans for Labor Day weekend? I will be heading up to my cabin. It has been a couple of weeks since I have been there and I am looking forward to setting up my lawn chair down by the water and just taking it easy. It will be five years ago this weekend when I first saw my cabin. It was a cool crisp Sunday when I first walked in and fell in love. Despite the piles of trash and clothes, dog feces in the corner and wasps surrounding the garbage, and I knew within 10 minutes of being inside that it would be home. The owner had rented it to a "friend" who responded by throwing her electric bills in boxes and burning trash in the woodstove. Yet, despite all this, I could see the diamond in the rough. Sure, the cabin had been through some abuse, but the "good bones" showed through. It would take some elbow grease, some paint and a lot of love, but underneath the trash, the cabin was made for me.

Although yes, I know that in some ways, having the cabin has contributed to my financial woes...

but I also know it helped keep me sane throughout the divorce process. The cabin and therapy were two things (along with my friends and family) that helped me deal with the changes that were taking place in my life. I am never more at peace than I am when I am there. Just getting in the car and hitting the road I feel all my stress and worry leave my body and fly out the car windows, and I leave it tumbling along the highway.

In many ways, my therapy and my cabin are very similar. Both were big expenses when times were tight. There was quite awhile there that I was going to therapy twice a week, and my insurance does not cover it. Some hardcore financial folks might wonder about the need of spending that much money on things that aren't strictly "necessary," as in, they don't fit in that bottom rung of Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs. While it is true that I could have lived without either, not having them would have changed who I am.

The therapy got me through the divorce and helped me get my head on straight. As I have said many times in this blog, it was because of a session that I decided to fight back and get nine hundred dollars each month instead of caving in. The life skills that I have learned, first through therapy and second, through my financial journey over the past 14 months, are lessons that will help me throughout my life. I have learned resilience, forgiveness, creative thinking, gratitude, and how to have confidence in myself and when to ask for help. I have learned practical skills like budgeting, plumbing, refrigerator repair, tax planning, and all sorts of skills need for running two houses and being a landlord. I have improved my writing and web skills from having this blog, and in turn, that has helped my job. All of this came with the help of therapy. Had it not been for it, I might have given up and given in.

The cabin, on the other hand, has been my haven. Think for a moment of your favorite place in the world - the one spot where you felt completely at ease and at peace. Think of how you feel on a relaxing vacation, no stress, no worries, no phones. Now imagine, that all you have to do is get in your car and drive one hour and you'll be there. That's what it is like at the cabin for me. My therapist says that instead of having this somewhere else, I should work on creating this in my own home, but there is a fundamental problem with that - my house has a lot of memories of my ex. It isn't so bad now, and now I am finding new appreciation for my house, but at the time, thinking of my home as a haven was ridiculous.

The cabin too, is an investment. At this point, it is not "rental ready." It needs some repair work as well as some money spent on amenities that I can live without, but a renter would expect. While I might be able rent it out now, I couldn't get the kind of renters I would want. (In other words, I might be able to rent it to a group of hunters who are a lot less picky, but are those really the types of renters I want?) However, in time, I could see turning it into a property that could earn an income. Even as it is, going by local sales and rough appraisals (and the fact I bought it dirt cheap,) it has increased in value - even considering the real estate market of today.

However, I didn't buy it to make a profit. I bought the cabin because it makes me incredibly happy. It was something I have always wanted, and I was able to achieve that goal. The fact that I have had to work hard for it over the past year has just made it more dear to me.

It is interesting to me that it really only took me a year to change things around. Sure, sometimes it felt like a looooong year, but in reality, it really didn't take that much to create a working budget and get my financial house in order so I don't have to worry about fighting foreclosure or coming up with nine hundred dollars each month. I still have goals that I need money for, but I have breathing room now - and I did it while keeping the things that were important to me. I feel really good about that.

Photo by: pixiesticks23♥
via flickr

Evening Contemplations... Looking at My House Through Other Eyes

2009-08-26T09:30:00.004-04:00

Yesterday I mowed my lawn at 8:30 at night. The days are getting shorter here in the Midwest and though just a month ago there would have been plenty of natural daylight to finish the job, last night it was pretty darn dark out by the time I finished. I hadn't mowed in quite awhile, and the lawn was looking pretty shaggy. I knew that it was supposed to rain, and since I can't mow when it is wet, I figured I better get it taken care of while I could. I'm sure I missed a spot or two, but it was at the point where no matter what I did, it was bound to look better than it did! It turned out to be good timing, a few hours later it started to pour.

While I was outside pushing my mower about, I got to thinking about my house. Sometimes I get so wrapped up in the bills that I forget how wonderful the place really is. Recently one of my coworkers, let's call him Darren, asked me about where I lived. "Hey, don't you live on Fabulous Boulevard*?" he said, "I have a friend who is looking at home for sale on Fabulous Boulevard." I confirmed that yes, that was where I lived and yes, it really is fabulous. Darren then asked how to get to Fabulous Boulevard, as he wanted to see the house his friend was looking at. I gave him directions and then said, "And hey, if you want to see where I live, it is the big blue one with the dark blue trim." (I have worked with Darren for years, and had even went with him to look at a house back when he was shopping for one for himself.)

So, Darren grabbed his roommate and they went off to see the house their friend was looking at. Apparently, as they were driving around, they also checked out my house - several times. According Darren's roommate (who happens to work with my sister, which is why I know this part of the story**) they drove by my house a couple of times - going around the block and coming back to admire it. (Rereading this I realize it makes Darren sound a bit creepy - trust me, he isn't. He is just like me, someone who loves old houses.)

This story made me step back and look at my house in a new light, figuratively speaking. In actuality I was stepping forward pushing my mower in the gloom, but you know what I mean...

It was one of those moments when you suddenly step out of yourself and see things from a completely different view. I've always loved these big grand Victorian dame houses - and here I am, living in one. True, it isn't exactly under the conditions I would have wished, but how often does life go perfectly according to plan?

I occasionally get stuck on how big the house is, how old it is and how much work it can be, but then there are moments like last night when I realize that other than the paint and occasional landlording problems, the house really isn't that much work. Once the house is painted, I don't have any huge problems that must be done. I have some that should be taken care of in time, but nothing all that pressing. Yes, it is big, but I never feel 'lost' in the house. I don't feel like I am rattling around in it. The size works for me. And yes, it is really old, but then again, that is part of its charm.

So, I go back and forth in my mind about whether I want to sell it or not. There are days I want nothing more, and other times, like last night, when I start to question if that is really what I want. The truth is, the point is moot. I am not going to put it back on the market until the economy picks up a bit anyway. Until that happens and I see homes in my area selling, I'll just keep going at it as I am. Still, it is nice to have moments like last night when I can look through someone else's eyes and see how lucky I really am.

* No, Fabulous Boulevard is not really the name of the street where I live. It is a red herring to protect me from financial blog stalkers.

** What can I say? It is a small world. When you consider I am only 4 degrees of separation from Chuck Norris, three from Dan Ackroyd and two from the late Pavarotti (and no, I am not famous nor do I know anyone who is - it's just chance,) the fact that my coworker's roommate works with my sister just isn't that big of a coincidence.

Photo by: tsuntsun3
via flickr

Weekend Shopping

2009-08-25T09:59:00.001-04:00

This weekend I was feeling a bit decadent! I ended up spending the majority of the weekend at home, taking care of all those little nagging home projects that we all have. I weeded the garden, started pruning back some trees (got rained out though), did laundry and cleaned the house. I also tackled some improvement projects that have been bugging me - re-gluing a mirror that had come out of its frame, fixing my drain spout and spot cleaning my dining room rug.

In addition to all this time at home, I ended up running a few errands about town and I spent more than I am used to. It was a strange feeling - I've rather gotten out of the habit of shopping! I don't usually go that often anymore, and when I do go, I tend to make one quick stop and that's it. This weekend was a little like the old days and how I used to shop, with a few little exceptions....

The first thing was, I had serious coupons. In fact, not once, but twice, did I have employees of different stores say to me, "Wow, this is like what we get as our employee discount." I've got to say, that felt pretty good! The second thing was how many of purchases were preventative maintenance. Not all, but most of the items I bought were to try to prevent future damage. Here's some examples:

Nightlight and timer - I bought both of these items for safety and security. The nightlight is for my cabin. I always keep a low wattage dusk-dawn nightlight on up there so that the house looks a little occupied, even when I am not there. I saw the last time I was up there that the one I had had burned out. The nightlight (with LED bulb) was about $7. Well worth the peace of mind! There were cheaper ones, but I liked the LED light for low electrical usage and I liked that it was a yellow/white light rather than blue. The blue ones are fine, but I think the yellowish light looks more "homey", if you know what I mean.

The timer was for at home. My big old Victorian house looks mighty dark at night, even when I am home (as I tend to be in the back part of the house.) The other night when I drove home from a friends', I noticed how dark and abandoned the place looked from the street, and I decided it would be a smart idea to get a programmable lamp timer for a light that was close to the front of the house. That way, whether I am home or not, the place looks occupied. I decided on a programmable timer would let me do different settings for weekday and weekend modes. It was $14.00. For both of these items I had a 10% off coupon.

Duster - Although this isn't strictly preventative, it is part of maintaining a house. My house has 10' and 12' ceilings, plus all sorts of old fashioned nooks and crannies. I bought an inexpensive microfiber duster with an extend-able pole so I could get up there and clean out the cobwebs. Lowes had them on sale for 20% off. I will say this, I've always felt that tidy house = a tidy mind, so cleaning out that dust and those cobwebs (some of which I am sure have been there since I moved in) felt great!

Plumber's snake - My tenant is having shower drain problems again. I was up there this winter and cleaned it out, but then last week she let me know it was clogging again. Both times that I have gone up to clean it out, I borrowed my co-worker's snake. I know he'd lend it to me again, but for $10, I decided it was just easier to buy my own, especially since I got an email from her today saying that even though it is a lot better, it still isn't completely draining. Guess who will be heading up there with her elbow length rubber gloves again this week?

Dental Items and Hair Care - I had a 20% off coupon for Rite Aid (one of the places I got the employee discount comments.) which was only good for this weekend. I bought some mouthwash that prevents cavities and some Head and Shoulders shampoo. I was really happy with the sample I got of their new line and I've been wanting to pick some up. My plan is to alternate shampoos each time I was my hair, that way I can stretch my high end stuff out a little longer and my hair doesn't get fatigued with using the same thing over and over.

Books - Not at all preventative. However, I had a great coupon (this was the second of my employee discount comments) for 30% off two paperbacks. I had one in mind for a gift and I splurged on the other for myself. I haven't bought a new book for myself in I don't know how long... probably over a year. (This is coming from a woman who used to drop $150 every couple of months on books. Not anymore, though!) So, I let myself splurge, and I have to say it was worth every penny of the $7.00, especially since I am a re-reader and know I will read what I bought again and again.

Rug - This was my one "big" purchase this weekend. The rug is 30" x 40" and was $25.00. Why did I buy it? Well, when I was vacuuming and cleaning my bedroom, I noticed that the carpet near my vanity was getting lightly spotted with makeup. It wasn't too bad, but I do have light gray carpet. Since I plan on selling my house in a few years, and don't plan on replacing the carpet, I bought a pretty dark red rug for under my vanity. It looks great, is washable and will help protect my carpet!

Watch batteries - Okay, also not preventative, but it is money making opportunity. I have some watches that are really great, but needed new batteries. Now that they have batteries in them, I can turn around and sell them on eBay.

Drain Spout - As mentioned, my downspout needed repair. It was horribly mangled recently when a friend of mine ran it over with a very large truck. Accidental, of course, but one of those things that definitely needed fixing. Without this section, the water would come down off my gutters and pool up near the foundation - not good! I replaced the portion that moves the water out and away from the house. It only cost $8, but does a lot towards keeping the basement dry.

When I got home I was kind of surprised by the number of shopping bags I had.* I don't remember having that many for a long time. The best part was that I didn't have one drop of buyer's remorse. I felt good about everything I bought, and it all had a purpose - even my book splurge!

* I brought my own reusable bags, I hate plastic bags.

Photo by: the G
via flickr

Car Repairs and Budgets

2009-08-24T09:50:00.004-04:00

I mentioned a little while ago that I was in the process of completing a few routine car maintenance items in order to keep my car on the road longer. My car is five years old and I am determined to drive it until it falls apart! I paid it off this June and I am absolutely loving not having a car payment and I want to make that feeling last as long as I can. Shortly after I wrote that post, a coworker of mine noticed that one of my brake light bulbs had burned out out, so I added that to my list of auto repairs. I also took a peek at my car's manual for other standard services I should have done. I missed my 30,000 mile routine service by 10,000 miles, so now I am going through the manual and picking them off one at a time as I have the funds.

Currently, I am in search of a local mechanic I can trust. I've read some reviews on some local shops and heard some good things about a place down the street, but I haven't been won over yet, so for the past few years, I've been taking mainly it to the dealership for oil changes. I know that everyone says that dealerships overcharge, but I have to say, I really like my dealership. The service people are all friendly and helpful and in 5 years they have never tried to get me to buy something I didn't need. Awhile back I had a horrible experience with one of those little quickie oil change places - not only were they incredibly pushy, but the oil change cost about twice what it does at my dealership! At that time I swore, "Never again! From now on it is either the dealership or a reputable mechanic for me.

So, off to the dealership I went - I had the bulb replaced, the oil changed and the air filter replaced. While these are all things I could have (and have in the past) done myself, I know that if it was up to me, the job would never get done...

My dad was a car guy and he taught me how to change oil and change air filters. It isn't hard, just a little dirty. Changing bulbs is even easier, but let's face it, I'm busy, and if those things had to wait until I had the time and more importantly, the motivation to do them - they wouldn't get done. I'm all about being frugal, but this not a job I was excited about doing myself, so I didn't.

The cost for the oil change was $27, the tail light was $4.83 and the air filter was $29.85. All total, with tax and everything else, it came to $64.41. Now here's the great news - I had the money all set aside in my budget. When I redid my budget back in June I started a car maintenance fund. I have a Honda and it has been incredibly reliable so far, but as I said, it is 5 years old, and this is the time things start to break. Currently I am putting $50 a month into the account, so I had plenty to pay for these repairs. In the future, once things have settled down a little, I plan on upping that amount considerably. I plan on it being not only my repair fund, but also my "next car" fund. As I said, I am really liking this no car payment thing. It would be great if I could pay for my next car in cash!

I am really pleased with my car maintenance budget. Last year I had $25 in my budget each month for repairs, but I didn't actually take the money out of my regular checking account. This meant that some months that extra just ended up in general funds, but when I did need the money, I never had enough. Now, I take that $50 out of general checking and it goes into a small savings account. That way, it is actually there when I need it! When I got back to the office, I just did a quick transfer between accounts and poof! everything is taken care of. Man, is that a nice feeling.

Photo by: His Noodly Appendage
via flickr

Conversations on the Benefits of Having a Budget

2009-08-20T10:58:00.005-04:00

So the other night I was sitting with a friend of mine, we'll call her Maxine (since that is what she calls herself) and we were discussing budgets. Maxine has a seasonal job. She works very hard fall through spring, but in the summer her work is so slow that she usually is laid off. I should note this is an actual lay off - unlike what is happening now where "lay off" essentially means "fired" - she is rehired again once work picks up.

Maxine was telling me that for the first time, she used a budget to plan out her erratic year, and she was really happy with how it came out. "I love my budget," I sighed dreamily. Maxine looked at me, puzzled. She had discovered how good a budget can be, but hadn't yet found the love. "Why?" she asked. "Tell me why you love your budget."

So I did...

Prior to having a budget, I equate my financial situation with walking through the woods - blindfolded. I knew that there were rivers and bears and trees and grassy meadows out there, but I didn't know where they were. People say that ignorance is bliss, but not in my case. Sure, I could pretend to be happy because I didn't see any danger ahead, but inside I always felt lost and scared - never knowing when something terrible was right in front of me. Even the good times were filled with fear - was the sun shining on my face because I had made it to a big sunny clearing, or was I standing on the edge of a cliff?

Over the last year I've been perfecting my budgeting strategies. Simply figuring out what bills I had to pay and how much money I needed each month was like taking that blindfold off. Sure, there was still danger, but at least now I knew where it was. Suddenly, I could see the little roots across the trail that used to trip me up. I could easily avoid them. Do you know that in the last year, when I have had to come up with nine hundred dollars each month and seriously feared foreclosure, I have never had one late bill? That I have never had to use my overdraft protection? And in fact, I have had far more money in my account than I ever had before? The biggest step was just taking off that blindfold.

Then I have tweaked that budget, tried new budgeting challenges and even created an extra budget based on time, which was like creating a map. The blindfold is off, I can see what is ahead of me, and now I even have a map so I can plan ahead. Sure, nothing is perfect, surprises could still pop up, but the big obstacles I can avoid or find my way across. It is so much easier to find the sunny meadows now.

Don't get me wrong, I still wish I had more money.. who doesn't? I have big goals and am working hard to make them happen, but I while I still have my own internal drive, I don't have nearly as much fear. Getting your financial house in order isn't about being super organized or being great with numbers. It isn't about sacrifices, suffering or scrimping. It is about putting everything on automatic so you don't have to worry anymore. It's making it so you can just glance around and see where you are in the woods, rather than having to feel your way every inch. People sometimes say to me about how much work it must take to do what I do, and I just keep trying to tell them, yes it is a little work - but all it does is make life so much easier.

Photo by: kwefeldein
via fickr

A Few More Tips and Tricks on Menu and Meal Planning

2009-08-13T12:45:00.007-04:00

So, you have your grocery list in hand, menu sketched out, now what?

Psychsarah made a comment in my last post about how she makes her grocery list with items sorted by aisle. She says:

I find this doesn't take extra time to make my list this way, and it saves me tons of time at the store, because I don't go down aisles I don't need anything from, and I don't have to double back because I get everything I need in that aisle all at once.

Her comment was very timely because I was going to recommend doing the same thing! My ex and I used to have a word doc that we would print off with different grocery categories: Produce, Dairy, Canned Veg., Meat, and so on. Now, because I prefer to jot my list on the back of a junk mail envelope (with my coupons tucked inside, naturally.) I just roughly group items together by where they are in the store. Produce goes on top, then I leave a little space and jot in meat items, then a bit more space and put in dairy, etc. It isn't perfect, sometimes I end up writing something in sort of crammed in on the side because I didn't leave enough space, but for the most part it works - and, as Psychsarah said, it saves going up and down the aisles.

So, you are about to go to the store, what now? I make sure I have my calculator, a pen, my list and coupons. I also try to make sure to grab the recyclables (in Michigan you can return soda bottles and cans for $.10 a piece. Since you can do it at the grocery store, I consider my bottle return money a grocery coupon.) Finally I get my reusable cloth bags. Now, here's the thing. I find I have to put my recyclables and reusable bags in the front seat. If I don't, I forget - guaranteed. I won't remember until I am deep in the freezer aisle and getting ready to head towards the check out, so my goal is to always make sure I have those things where I will remember them. Some grocery stores will give you a small credit if you bring your own bags, but that isn't why I do it. I do it because I hate what plastic bags do to the environment.

But it is my calculator that is my true shopping friend...

Math is just not one of my strong suits, and remembering strings of random numbers, even less. On the back of my envelope, I jot down the price of each item as it goes into the cart. When I have 5 or 6 items, I pull my cart over to a quiet spot and add them up. This way I can keep a running total of my purchases and not end up going over. This is really important when using a cash system for grocery shopping. If you don't know how much is in there, what happens if you get to the checkout and find you are over? Do you have the guts to ask the sales clerk to put something back? I don't - I get embarrassed easily! I would much rather know I can afford everything in my cart before it is rung up.

My calculator is also my friend when it comes to figuring out item unit prices. My store usually has it on the shelf label, but not always, and especially with sale items. Buying the larger package isn't always the better deal. As I said, I get embarrassed easily and at first I was a bit self conscious about walking through the aisles with calculator in hand, but I quickly got over it. In this day and age, everyone has their own ways of saving a few dollars and this is one of mine.

So, you've got your groceries, you've gone through the checkout, loaded all your purchases in your reusable bags - now, don't forget to check your receipt! At some places I can see everything as it rings up, but some times it is hard to do. If the number is drastically different than what I have calculated, I try to find out why. I admit, how hard I work at this depends on the amount and whether I have ice cream melting, but people are fail-able as are the computers they program - more than once I have found errors on my receipt.

One more tip that has saved me money - when I get home, I try to never put produce in the "crisper" drawer anymore. Most of my produce now goes on the second shelf - right in front of my face when I open the refrigerator. For me, that simple change really helps prevent spoilage. In fact, I noticed this morning that a cucumber I bought at the market is looking a touch wilted. Tonight I am going to make refrigerator pickles so it doesn't go to waste. Having the produce where I can see it reminds me to make the dishes that have perishables in them first, and save the dishes that call for frozen and/or canned items for later.

Hmmmm... writing this article has just made me very hungry!

Photo by another meal planner: Kurt Wagner
via flickr

The Who, What, Where, When and Why of Menu Planning

2009-08-06T14:14:00.010-04:00

Who:

You! Menu planning is all about making it easier for you. I'm writing about how I menu plan and grocery shop, but really this is all about you. Take whatever you can use from this and discard the rest. For example, I readily admit that I have never had kids or had to cook for a larger family. The closest I have ever come was making a menu for a dinner party, so there may be considerations when it comes to making food for multiple people day in and day out that I won't even think about. Just like there isn't one set perfect budget for every single person, there isn't one set way to make a menu. Do what works for you and your family.

What:

Here's what you will need to make a menu - 1 pen or pencil and 2 sheets of paper, scrap is fine.
Optionally you may also want a cookbook or two and/or access to a computer. You may also want your coupons and/or store fliers.

One sheet of paper is going to contain your menu. Personally, I really recommend writing your menu down. If you want, do it day by day. My ex and I used to do this. Having your menu by day has some advantages, specifically in that you can see in a glance what the week looks like. You can also stack the menu so that the dishes containing perishable produce are first and the ones using frozen or canned items are last. Our menus would look something like this:

Monday Dinner
Turkey Kabobs, Oven Fries (Weight Watchers, pg. 85)

Tuesday Lunch
l/o kabobs and fries

Tuesday Dinner
Out, dinner with friends
Note: thaw chicken for Wednesday!

Wednesday Lunch
Ham and Cheese wrap sandwich, apple, yogurt

Wednesday Dinner
BBQ Chicken (Grilling C/B, pg. 105)
Grilled onions, corn on the cob, boiled potatoes

...and so on. It works well, especially at pointing out times you need to plan a spare lunch or extra food for company. We also made notes about thawing food and marinating food for the following day. However, menus like this can feel constraining. It comes back to that old inner rebel not wanting to make what is on the sheet. That is why I don't make my menu that way much anymore. Now I tend to make lists of things I can make and then just cook them up whenever I want. In some ways it requires more thought, because I have to plan the night ahead if I need to thaw food out, but it still works better for me. My menu now looks more like:

Shrimp Curry (Penzy's Catalog)
Rice with Onions (Indian pg. 161)

Tuna Salad stuffed tomatoes

Grilled chicken
Lebanese potato salad (Lebanese, pg 86)
Green beans

...and so on. This gives me a little more flexibility and I can even swap out things. If I don't want the green beans one night, I can look down the menu and maybe have broccoli instead - that kind of thing. It is up to you what will work best but, however you decide to make your menu, write it down. After all, the best laid plans of mice and men often go awry... especially when they are forgotten.

The other sheet of paper is for your shopping list. Here's what I do - as I jot down a dish to make, I also jot down all the ingredients I need on my shopping list. For me, this is the big advantage to making my menu ahead of time. I can create my shopping list right then, while the recipe book is open. I can also make sure I have whatever I need - a quick look in the kitchen to see if I have enough chickpeas for the hummus recipe, for example. Personally, I like to make my grocery list on the back of an old junk mail envelope. Then I can tuck my coupons inside and I am ready to go. Because I am now on a cash system for groceries, I use the other side of the envelope to add up the price of what is in my cart.

Where:

Recipes can come from different sources. You can get them from books, online, in magazines, from friends and family, even make them up on the spot. Let me give you a couple of tips when it comes to using cookbooks...

When you are first starting out, use just one or two cookbooks for your entire menu. When I started making menus, I cooked almost entirely from The 15 Minute Single Gourmet, sadly out of print now, but what I loved about this book was that recipes were 15 minutes from fridge to table. On top of that they were all healthy and designed to make a single serving. Ironically I usually doubled the recipe so I had leftovers for lunch the next day! Now my cookbook of choice is Mark Bittman's The Best Recipes in the World. My theory is that an abundance of choices sometimes makes it impossible to choose. Limit yourself and make it easier by flipping through just one book.

Personally, I enjoy occasionally flipping through my cookbooks over my morning coffee. I mark recipes that look good with little markers I have made by cutting sticky notes into strips. (I also have some reusable Post-It arrows that work well too.) I don't do this often, maybe once a month, if that, but I mark anything that looks good. Then when I make my menus, I can just flick to the page and know there will be something that looks tasty.

When:

When you make your menu is up to you. My ex and I used to do it over Sunday morning breakfast. We'd pack a tote with a few cookbooks and go out to eat. Pouring over cookbooks while eating breakfast, waiters always thought we owned a restaurant! Now I like to make mine Thursday or Friday night so I can make my list to take with me to the Farmer's Market. Kari from How I Became a Fiscal Fussbudget says she makes hers at the store after seeing the manager's special on meat. When you make it is up to you - I like to do it when I can get on the computer afterward and search for coupons, but I see the advantage of waiting until you see the store deals. It is up to you.

Why:

I pretty much discussed this in depth yesterday. Why is because it will save you time and energy. The goal of a menu isn't to be a straightjacket - it's to be a map. It is to help you stress less and enjoy your evenings more! I am all about that.

Photo by: Urban Combing
via flickr

Why Menu Planning is Worth the Hassle

2009-08-05T10:54:00.010-04:00

Continuing with my series on menu and meal planning:

So, why do a menu at all? Isn't it a lot of time and effort?

Because making menus saves you time and money, plus it is good for your health and your stress levels. Here's how:

Time

When you have a list of meals you can make right at your fingertips, it saves a ton of time staring into the refrigerator with the door open. Instead, with a menu, right when you walk in the door you already know what's in there and what you can make.

Many people think cooking takes longer than eating out, but if you think about it, the average pizza delivery is 30 minutes, but there are tons of cookbooks out there with meals that take 30 minutes or less. I even have several cookbooks all dedicated to 15 minute or less meals! If you know what you are going to make and know you have all the ingredients, you can make a meal in less time than a restaurant can serve it.

No more emergency grocery store runs. Ever realize in the middle of cooking a meal that you don't have an ingredient you thought you had? Making a menu (and a shopping list from that menu) prevents this.

Less time spent shopping - when you know what you need, you can get it and get out. Having a plan means you have to spend less time going up and down every single aisle in the grocery store, and more time at other things you would rather be doing.

While making a menu does take a little extra time, you save far more than you spend. It isn't about being super organized, it's about making your life easier.

Money

You know what one of my biggest pet peeves is? Throwing away produce that has gone bad. Ugh I hate that! I used to do it to myself a lot, and it is just like taking your money and throwing it into the compost pile. With a menu I am more likely to use up what I buy while it is still fresh.

Personally, I am not a big fan of stocking up. I know people who are, and I see why they do it, but in my case, money is scarce enough that I want it in my bank account rather being tied up into 50 cans of sale priced tuna. With a menu I buy just what I need, when I need it. On the other hand, when I do occasionally stock up, having a menu helps me use my sale items. Say chicken is on sale and I buy a family pack. I'll put chicken on the menu several times so I use it up, rather than forgetting about it until it looks like an ice age hit it.

Menu planning also curbs my impulse grocery shopping. When you have a detailed list in hand you can hit the grocery store, get exactly what you need, and get out. Oh sure, occasionally something I didn't plan on still ends up in my basket, but very rarely - and certainly a lot less than when I used to roam up and down the aisles looking for whatever "looked good."

If you have a plan, you can search for sales and/or coupons. After I have made my grocery list, I always hit the computer and look for coupons for those items and then look through store fliers for sales. Sure, you can go to the store and just buy whatever is on sale, but what about the other ingredients? For example, say you see ground Italian sausage is on sale and you have a coupon for some pasta - lasagna starts to sound good. Now what about the ricotta cheese, the tomato sauce, the spices? Do you know if you have them at home? Will you try to find a coupon or just buy them at full price? If you planned it ahead of time, you would have known what you had in the cupboard beforehand and had a chance to look for sales.

Cooking from scratch is almost always cheaper than restaurant food or processed food. Think about it... let's take an $.89 burrito. Yes, it will cost me more than $.89 to buy all the ingredients to make a burrito, however, I can make a lot more than one burrito with what I buy. My favorite tortillas are $1.25... for 30. Add together the cost of the food then divide by the number of meals you can make, and you will almost always do better by cooking at home. Personally, my budget is $125 a month. If I didn't buy cleaning supplies, pharmacy items, bags, wraps etc. also out of that budget, (which I do) my meals cost would roughly be about $1.40 per meal. When you throw in all the other stuff that I buy with grocery money that isn't actually food, I bet I am a lot closer to that $.89 number, and I eat well, really well. Tonight on the menu? Grilled bruschetta chicken, sweet corn on the cob and fennel salad. For desert? Haagen Daas ice cream. (chocolate) Take that $.89 burrito!

And that isn't all...

Health

As I wrote in yesterday's post, I believe it is easier to plan a menu around what you already eat than to try and change your diet all at once. That doesn't mean that you can't start slipping in a few healthy meals here and there. Even just planning out your healthy snacks rather than hitting the work vending machine makes a difference. As I mentioned yesterday, on my most recent menu I tried to hit some seafood dishes because I was feeling like I wasn't eating enough fish.

The closer food is to its original state, the healthier it is. Doing a little bit of pre-planning means you can start eliminating overly processed foods that are high in sodium and fat and low in nutrition.

When we don't eat well, our bodies don't feel well. For example, if I eat too much greasy food, my face will begin to feel oily. If I don't drink enough water, I can get major headaches. Too much rich food leaves me feeling bloated. I do love to eat out and I do love me some horribly unhealthy food, but I have learned that, like everything else, it needs to be done in moderation. By making sure I eat well most of the week, I can allow myself to indulge a little now and again, without feeling bad. (Like my Haagen Daas. heh!)

Stress

Let's face it, there are very few hours in a day once you subtract time spent commuting, working, running errands and sleeping. Having a menu takes a little stress out of your day by giving you your time back. You can walk in the door, glance at your menu and put together a lovely meal to be enjoyed in the comfort of your own home. I don't know about you, but I don't find grocery shopping relaxing. I enjoy it, but I would much rather do a few, very productive trips, then do what my coworker does and go nearly every day.

It might seem counter-intuitive, but having a menu actually allows you to be spontaneous. Let's say three of my friends called me up and said they wanted to have dinner tonight. I could easily invite them to my house - I know I have chicken marinating, I have two left over salads in the fridge, and have fresh summer corn ready to go. I could plan a meal in minutes, just based on what I already have on the menu. But what happens if they would rather go out instead? No problem! I can just shift my menu items to another night.

Any time spent worrying is adding to your stress level. The reason to have a budget, ultimately, is to get your financial situation in order so you never have to worry about it. Making a menu works the same way, the goal is take away the worrying and the over thinking, and put things on automatic so you can just relax.

Photo by: seq
via flikr

Fighting Foreclosure's Frugal Menu Planning

2009-08-04T09:06:00.011-04:00

Angelica of Learning to Manage My Finances wrote a comment on yesterday's post that I wanted to respond to. She says:

It´s interesting you´ve written about grocery shopping when I was about to ask you to write something on the subject. Could you write some more on food planning and menus? I tried menu planning but it turned out to be a total failure: I plan what I should eat, buy everything, and then always want something else :) Maybe I should base on not what is needed and useful, but what I usually tend to eat. After scrupulous writing down all my expenses I discovered I live mostly on fried rice! I was really, really surprised that I eat rice that a lot. Sometimes I cook something else, but I have to kinda force myself. Maybe this month I should use my habits as the guide and buy more rice and some things to cook risotto, paella and the like (a chance to learn to cook them, too) :)

So, could you please dwell some more on your eating habits and menu making? If that´s not a secret you don´t want to tell :)

Angelica, I will be happy to, thanks so much for asking! In addition, you might want to check this post that I wrote awhile ago about how I choose what to cook. As I started to write today's post, I realized that this is a question that I want to explore in depth, so I am going to turn this into a series. Over the next few days I will write about my years of menu planning, shopping and cooking and the lessons I have learned from it. Today I am just going to hit some general ideas about planning a menu and talk about a few pitfalls I have encountered.

Menu Planning:

Awhile ago I read something that said that all the unread books on our bookshelves are there because we want to be the kind of people who read those books... but aren't. We want to be someone who has read Last of the Mochians, Naked Lunch or The Heart of Darkness, but what we really go back to, time and time again, is our dogeared copy of Agatha Christie's Miss Marple stories. I think we frequently get too ambitious with our menus too. We want to be the kind of person that bakes their own bread and makes pasta by hand, or we think it would be a great idea for our health to eat salads all week, but the reality is, by the time we get home from work the last thing we want to do is bake bread, and after the second salad of the week, we are speed dialing the local pizza place.

My first piece of advice on menu planning is to be honest with yourself and make menus that actually reflect how you eat. Know your schedule and how long you will have to cook each night. I like to have a variety of things on my menu - some slow cook dishes for the weekends, some 30 minute or less meals for weekdays and some items I can throw together in just a few minutes for those nights I have no time at all or am just plumb exhausted by the time I get home. For example, on my current menu I had a shrimp curry (cook time 1 hr. 15 min) for the weekend. It worked great because while it was cooking I was doing laundry and cleaning the kitchen. Last night I had salmon with ginger glaze and crunchy fennel salad (cook time under 30 min.). It worked because I got home at my usual time and had time to cook, but tonight, when I will be working the part time job until 10:00 p.m. I need something fast and easy, so I'm planning on tuna salad stuffed tomatoes (cook time 10 min. or less).

I am all for trying to improve your diet or be more frugal through your menu, but my strong suggestion is not to overdo it. Start changes like that in moderation. For example, I realized that I have not been getting a lot of fish in my diet, so I made an effort to have a couple fish based meals, but I made sure to pick things I know I like and counter it with other non-fish meals. (The rest of the week I have chicken and vegetarian dishes on the menu.) I have tried making menus based entirely on "what I thought I should eat" rather than "what I actually eat" and it was a recipe for failure. Slip one or two new dishes in, if you want, but also plan on old favorites. Creating a menu of food you won't eat is like making a budget you won't stick to - in the end it's just a waste of time and energy. I have done it, many times. Now I know that when it comes to making my menu, I need to be honest with myself.

Here's another tip: Punishing yourself is no way to eat...

It is easy to sit on high and tell yourself you will eat what's on the menu when your belly is full, but that changes dramatically when you're hungry. For example, I don't care for cooked carrots, but awhile back I was given a large bag of frozen carrots. It came with other foods I did want so I didn't feel right about turning them down. Last month I found a recipe for a spiced carrot soup that sounded pretty good, and I really do want to get those carrots out of the freezer, so I put the recipe on the menu... however, it never sounded like something I wanted to eat - so I didn't make it. I moved it over to this month's menu, but if I don't make it, I'm going to scrap the recipe and maybe make the apple carrot muffin recipe I found instead. Know what you are really going to eat. Buying ingredients for food that doesn't get eaten is just a waste of money.

One other quick point about menu preparation - a menu is a guide, not a lawbook. Some people work really well with a weekly regimen like Monday meatloaf, Tuesday pasta, Wednesday chicken, etc. I don't. I don't know what I am going to be in the mood for and I hate being locked into having to have something - my inner rebel comes out. Instead, I prefer to make a much looser menu and then just pick off it what sounds good. Sure, by the end of the week the choices are a lot more limited, but as long as I have made sure there are things on it I like, that usually isn't a problem. I do always have a back-up though. Sometimes I don't feel like a meal, so I plan for that. I might make sure there are ingredients for grilled cheese or toast with peanut butter in the house. I might know that I have pasta, fresh basil and tomatoes at hand. I like those "third tier" options as backup plans - they are my defense against getting frustrated and eating out.

To summarize:

- Create a menu that has dishes on it that fit your busy schedule
- Make sure it has food on it you actually like and will eat
- It is okay to set goals with your menu, but do them in moderation or it will backfire
- Don't punish or try force yourself to eat something you don't want to eat by putting it on the menu. You either will regret it later or just never do it at all.
- Making a menu day by day is great for some people, but if you need flexibility then be sure and give yourself other options. Don't turn your menu into a straight jacket!

Over the next couple of days I will right about how and where I get my recipes, how I grocery shop and other meal planning techniques. Thanks again to Angelica for asking such a great question that has me inspired!

Photo by: cloth.paper.string
via flickr

August Grocery Shopping - Experiments in Saving Money

2009-08-03T10:31:00.003-04:00

So as I mentioned in my last post, I am determined to have a better plan heading into August than I did in July - starting with my grocery shopping. Friday night I worked at my part time job then came home and kicked back with my shopping lists, coupons and recipe books to create a menu for snacks and meals for the next couple of weeks. I ended up with a list for the farmer's market, the grocery store and a couple of spices needed from Penzy's. Saturday morning, I hit the farmer's market early. The place was hopping and up to the rafters in beautiful produce. I was thrilled to see that the first ears of corn are hitting the market, which meant I could pick them up and cross the bagged frozen corn off my grocery store shopping list! I love shopping at the market, but I hate the crowds, so I try to make sure that I am well out of there by 9:00 a.m.. Other purchases there included: tomatoes, green peppers, potatoes, cucumbers, parsley and raspberries. Yum!

After the market it was back home for coffee and breakfast (including some of my fresh picked raspberries.) Over coffee I hopped on the computer to see if there were any additional coupons I could get for my shopping list and also peeked at the sale flyers. There were some pretty good deals out there this week! Then it was time to grab my bottle returns, shopping lists, coupons and my calculator and head out the door. The first stop was to Penzy's. I try to buy all my spices there or at other small spice shops. Ounce per ounce, it is frequently less expensive than the megamart, and the quality is much, much higher - not to mention fresher. It is also frugal in another way - I have found that certain Penzy spices (namely cinnamon and cayenne) are so intense that it makes sense to use a little less (up to a third less) in recipes.

After Penzy's it was off to the grocery store, but first I decided to make a little detour and try something new...

Along my route from the spice store to my usual grocery store was a Save-A-Lot. I have never shopped there before, but had heard they were a bit like Aldi... of course, I had never shopped at Aldi before either. But I thought, "Why not?" I had my grocery list in hand and figured I could swing in and see what it was all about - and maybe find a few things for less. Here's what I ended up getting:

- One can of black eyed peas $.59
- Two cans kidney beans, $.59 each
- Two cans of black beans $.69 each
- 3 pound bag of frozen, skinless, boneless chicken breasts $4.99
- One box of aluminum foil, 25' $.79
- Ground turkey $2.69
- One bag of green lentils $.79
- 3 pound bag of yellow onions $1.99
- One red onion $.99 a pound, my onion was $.56
- Plain string-less tea bags $.99

Total - $16.00

These were all things I was planning on getting at my local grocery and none were on sale there, so price-wise, I did quite well. Now the question is quality. I've already cooked with the onions and the lentils and they were great, but it isn't as though there is much in the way of processing there. It will be interesting to see what I think of the meat, tea and canned beans. I will be sure and let you know.

Shopping at Save-A-Lot was interesting. Not all prices were low, milk for example, is cheaper at my megamart. I also noticed they were missing some things that seemed like obvious foods for them to carry - like butter and plain yogurt. On the other hand, they had a lot of Hispanic based foods, including a big endcap devoted to everything you need to make tamales. (This store is located near some Hispanic communities.) In the meat section I noticed a lot of unusual cuts - smoked neck bones and fresh pigs feet, for example. I wondered if they had them because they were relatively cheap pieces of meat, or if they were, like the tamales, a cultural preference of their shoppers. In a way this is an advantage to me - I happened to love tamarind flavored products and can usually only find them in my Middle Eastern market. They had quite a selection at the Save-A-Lot and while I stuck with my shopping list this time, I might give something a try next time.

I will certainly say this in favor of the store - it was clean, well lit, and the people working there were very friendly and helpful. Since I am not a fan of crowds, I also really appreciated the wide aisles and the fact that was pretty quiet compared to most grocery stores. Their selection wasn't a large as a regular grocery, but if I end up being satisfied with the quality, I will certainly go back there again.

What about you? Are you an Aldi or Save A Lot shopper? What do you think?

Photo by: Alicia Griffin

The Benefit of Having a Plan - July Savings and Spending

2009-07-31T10:40:00.003-04:00

Yesterday I wrote about my July income. The other part of the equation is comparing my spending and saving to my budget each month. Here's the breakdown for July:

In most areas I was right on target with my budget. This has been something I have been really working on a lot over the last year - not only figuring out the numbers, but also figuring out how to make it all work. I've written a lot about making finance personal, and gotten a lot of great comments in agreement from all of you on how budgets need to be customized to the person. There is no "one size fits all" budget. Of course, once you have a budget, it can't just be some sheet of paper that gets tucked in the back of the drawer - for far too long that is what I used to do. I'd make these great budgets and live with them for a month or two before I forgot about it or got bored with it. This past year I have found that my budget needs to be a living, breathing, changing document. It has to have the flexibility to fit with my circumstances, but also, I need to find ways to make my circumstances fit the budget.

A couple of examples are my Car Maintenance and Gift funds. Each month I was allocating a set amount to each of these areas, figuring that some months I would spend it, and some months I would save it and add the extra to my emergency fund. But you know what? Life doesn't work that way. Some months there are multiple birthdays, weddings and special occasions - other months have none. It is frequently feast or famine. I found that in the quiet months I would end up with extra in my budget but in the busy months I always ran short. Car Maintenance is the same way. There are months I don't need to do repairs, but on the months that I do it was almost always more than amount I was budgeting. It took me awhile to realize that what I needed to do was have small saving accounts for these items and have the amount automatically put into them each month. That way my budget comes out right each month and the money is there when I need it. This is working far better for me than the old system.

The other change, that I have mentioned before, is the use of the envelope system...

If you've been reading my blog you know that I've been trying an experiment of using the envelope system for Grocery and Home Improvement expenses for the past two months. These were tough areas for me, I had set budgets for them that I knew I could live with, but was regularly going over. The envelope method has helped a ton in this area! This month I spent all of my Grocery money, but I didn't go over. In my Home Improvement fund I actually have $26.00 still in the envelope!

But once again, this month I learned something about myself, or perhaps I should say I was reminded of something that I have known about myself - I am a planner and I work much better with a solid plan. Usually I make make bi-monthly menus and plan my grocery shopping accordingly. That way I always have a list of dishes I have all the ingredients for, ready to go. I come home, pick something off the menu and start cooking, knowing it will be something I like and that everything is at hand. This month was kind of a wonky month. For some reason I didn't make my menus, instead choosing to wing it. Not smart. I just don't improv that well, especially when I am busy. I spent all the Grocery money, but with very little left over and actually running short at the end of the month. It was fine, I mean I had food I could eat, but I had a couple days where I had to get a little creative there. That wouldn't have happened if I had planned better. So, tomorrow I plan on sitting down with cookbooks and menu planning pad and being a lot more organized for August. I will feel better, eat better and spend less.

Interestingly I not only spent all my Grocery money, but I actually went over my Dining Out budget. It was only by $22.14, but still. Some of it was that I was a bit more social this month, and I am totally okay with that - spending time with friends and family is important to me, but some of it was dining out because I didn't have a better plan. Again this goes back to the difference between knowing I have great food waiting to be made and served up, and having to come up with something on the fly with the weird ingredients I had on hand. Sometimes it seemed easier to grab a meal out. That's something I can fix by simply making a menu and stocking up on some healthy ingredients for quick on-the-go meals.

The other area I went over in my budget was my "Misc." category which this month paid for my haircut the other day and some expenses relating to the garage sale. Again, it was only by about $20, but with a little better planning, that could have been avoided.

However, I was able to save considerably in a few areas - my utilities were way down (I do the budget plan and they reset this month, giving me one month of gas that was prepaid,) and auto fuel was also low. My electric and cell phone bills were also lower than budgeted. That, combined with my home improvement excess, (minus my overages) means that I was able to save $192.37 this month! Money not spent is money saved baby! It will get added to my income meter on the right there and be moved into the House Painting fund. Sweet!

So, over all July wasn't my best month, but not the worst either. Some lessons learned, for sure. On both the income and the savings side, I am expecting August to be even much better.

Photo by: Djnn76

Fighting Foreclosure July Income

2009-07-30T14:55:00.004-04:00

Well, I am taking a look at the last month and naturally, a little disappointed in my extra income. This is the lowest amount I've gotten to date. However, it isn't all bad news! Remember, I reset my budget this June and am not counting all the gains that I get every single month due to all the work that I did last year - both in increased monthly savings and increased earnings. I started June 2008 being $900 in the hole every single month and by June 2009 I was getting $250 more than what I needed. So, though that number on the sidebar there is low, I still paid all my bills on time and in full and had money to set aside.

There are other bits of good news as well - this month has been great for book sales. Of course most of my transactions are $3.00 or less so it takes a lot to make a significant amount of money, but still, I've been very pleased with how things have been going. Especially since things were so slow the month before. I love having book sales - even though they don't add a lot, those little snowflakes of income really boost my mood.

Plus, there are good things on the horizon...

Part time job 1 has some work available from the end of this week through next week. Happily I was free almost every single time they needed someone, so I will be picking up 5 shifts over the next week. That will be fabulous! In addition, I just got my contract for part time job 2 in the mail. They need me 3 weeks out of the year, one in October, February and May. I am glad to have that work all lined up! Those extra paychecks really add up.

The garage sale I had this year was a lot of fun and helped my budget by nearly $200. I am hoping that I can plan another one in early fall and make a little more money. Not only does it help earn a little extra, it also helps me clean out my closets and drawers! That's always a good thing.

The other good news is in spending. I continue to be pleased with using the envelope system for Home Improvement and Grocery purchases. While I admit, the pantry is a little low right now and I am at the edge of the grocery budget with just $4 left in the envelope, I still have food to eat and only one more day before I can go grocery shopping if I want to. Since this was continually an area where I went over in my budget in the past, I am proud that I am reigning it now.

So, even though things weren't quite as good as I would have liked, I cannot complain. I have money in my pockets and the bills are all paid. Since I paid off my credit card and car last month, I feel like a bit of the stress has been lifted off. Now, all I need to do is get enough put away to paint the last two sides of my house! My birthday is in September and I would love to have it done by then!!

Photo by: pixieclipx.

Budget by Date - When Are My Bills Due?

2009-07-29T11:46:00.006-04:00

I've been working on a new type of budget - one based on time.

That's right, time.

You see, I get paid twice each month, on the 7th and the 21st. Almost all of my bills (well over half) are due sometime in the middle of the month so they are paid out of that 7th paycheck. The other part of my bills are paid after the 21st, and so come out of it, but here is the sticky part - my 7th paycheck is not enough to pay for all the bills that are due then. This means I have to save some out of the 21st to pay for the next month's bills. The question is, how much? How much many dollars have to stay in my checking account from the previous month to pay for the following month?

Confused? Try living it.

I needed to calculate that carryover number for a couple of reasons: 1) I hate worrying about money. If I know how much has to be in the account, then I will make sure that happens, but without knowing the dollar amount, I feel like I am floundering. Knowledge is peace of mind. 2) If something does go awry, I'll know. That gives me the chance to fix it... rather than finding out when I get an overdraft slip in the mail. 3) Extra money that I earn and that is left over is going to my house painting fund. I need to know how much I can take out, while still leaving a buffer.

The first thing I did was print out a couple of my bank statements, and then I went through and made a list of my bills and when I pay them...

Here are some examples:

7th - Gas bill, cabin
7th - Electric bill, cabin
7th - Gas bill, home
7th - Monthly transfer to car registration fund
7th - Mortgage, cabin
8th - Mortgage, house
13th - Gas credit card
18th - Electric bill, home
1st, 7th and 14th - Weekly transfer to insurance fund
1st, 7th and 14th - Weekly transfer to Christmas fund

21st - Monthly transfer to water bill fund
21st - Phone bill
22nd - Monthly transfer to trash bill fund
22nd - Monthly transfer to emergency fund
21st and 28th - - Weekly transfer to insurance fund
21st and 28th - - Weekly transfer to Christmas fund

Even though I haven't included the amounts in here, you can easily see how heavily loaded the first of the month bills are. In fact, the last part of the month is almost all transfers - these are small amounts I take out each month and have auto-deposited into accounts I have set up for specific annual reasons, like my Christmas fund and my insurance fund (which pays for auto and life insurances.) In addition, after that first paycheck each month I have been taking out the money for my envelope system grocery and home improvement budgets. That makes for a sort of lopsided bill payment schedule. See I have the money to pay for everything - I just need to make sure I have it when I need to pay it.

So, along with listing all my monthly expenses by date, I jotted down the amount of each bill. This allowed me to add up all the expenses and figure out exactly how much I need in my account at any one time - as well as that magic carryover number. Now on the 30th of the month I know how much I need to keep in checking for the following month, which also tells me how much extra I can siphon into that house painting fund.

My time budget is not going to replace my standard budget, but it did point out a couple of things. For one thing, I realized that instead of doing weekly transfers, I would be better doing monthly transfers at the end of the month. One of the first things I did was adjust those to one lump sum to be transferred on the 22nd. I did the same thing with my car registration fund transfer - moved it from the 7th to the 22nd. (I should note that some of these funds are for very small amounts of money, but I hate having "unexpected" bills of $100 or more. Because I budget monthly it is so much easier for me to have a little taken out regularly over the course of the year rather than have something hit when I am not prepared.)

The other thing I realized is that I don't have to wait until the 7th to take out my grocery & home improvement money. Actually, it is smarter to take it out on the 1st. Making these changes will take some of the burden off the 7th and spread it out a little more evenly. It still isn't a perfect system, I still have to make sure that there carryover, but its getting better, and I definitely have a better handle on it.

Photo by: RG of CS.

Nine Frugal Hairstyle Tips

2009-07-28T10:06:00.004-04:00

Today I am going to get a much, much needed haircut. My hairstyle is pretty simple, it is just long and straight, but I haven't seen a stylist in awhile and I am starting to feel a bit like Rapunzel. My ex was a hairstylist, so for quite awhile I had direct access to great hair care. Now I see a friend of my sister's who, conveniently, just happens to work across the street from me. So, from having a few stylists "in the family" as it were, I thought I would put together some tips for saving money on hair care. Don't worry, I am not going to tell you to shave off all your hair or let it grow long like Crystal Gale. Nor am I going to suggest dreadlocks or a using a flowbee. Your hairstyle is your own and your own personal style. I'm just going to list a few ways you might be able to shave (ha!) a few pennies off:

1. Talk to your stylist. Do you go to the same person every time? If so, and you are looking to cut down the cost of hair care, be honest with them, however do not expect or even ask for a price break. To ask them to discount their prices for you is not only downright rude, but it also implies that you do not value their work. Besides, in many cases the prices are set by the salon, not the stylist. Instead, ask them to help you figure out ways to meet your budget. Maybe change your style slightly so you can go a little longer between cuts, possibly changing the products used (some color options cost less than others), or skipping on extras like after cut blow drying. Enlist them to help you get the look you want at a price you can afford.

2. Sometimes one aspect of a cut is more important than the other. If the color is key, you might still want to spend more on a top notch colorist, but can get the cut done elsewhere, or vice versa.

3. If you don't have a stylist that you are dedicated to, consider shopping around. Many people have had luck with the stylist schools. For me, this would be fine, since my cut is basically just making sure it is cut straight across, but for some people this isn't an option, I know. In that case, talk to your friends. Get referrals from them and ask them how much they are paying. Look for someone who will treat you right, but at a price that is comfortable.

If you have a particular cut or type of hair, a less expensive salon or school may not be an option. If so, you might want to look at other small discounts...

4. While my hair is mostly low maintenance, I do tend to like salon shampoos and conditioners. However, if I use one brand for too long, it will stop working for me. No mater how much I scrub, my hair simply won't feel clean anymore. That's when I know it is time to switch shampoos. Recently I tried a sample of the new Head and Shoulders Volumizing shampoo and loved it. I haven't used H&S since I was a kid, so I was really surprised! I am going to pick up some and start switching back and forth between it and my more expensive salon shampoo. Hopefully this will keep my hair from getting over saturated by one brand. It will save me money by stretching out what I can use - plus it will make the salon shampoo last longer.

5. If you do like higher end shampoos, look for them at stores like Ulta. Prices there are similar to what a salon charges, but unlike a salon - they offer specials and coupons on a regular basis.

6. You have probably read this in other blogs, but most folks use way too much shampoo and conditioner. A dime to a quarter size dollop is really all you need - slightly more for longer thicker hair, less for finer short hair. If you haven't, give it a try. Decrease the amount you are using a bit at a time and see if you notice a difference.

7. Barter - If you have a stylist that owns their own business or rents a chair, some may be willing to barter. For example, my ex used to trade haircuts for two bottles of wine from a wine salesman. He also swapped cuts for massages from a therapist. One thing to note here, if you get your hair colored, remember that the stylist is purchasing that hair color for you. So, depending on your cut and what you have to trade, you might want to offer to purchase the supplies. You wouldn't expect a mechanic to install free parts, would you?

8. Air dry your hair - Okay, this is not an option for some of you ladies, I know. I will say though that the hair dryer eats up a ton of electricity. If you can let your hair dry naturally (or do as I do and wash it at night and let it dry while I am sleeping) you will cut down on your electric bill.

9. Be kind to your hair and your body - Most of us know that over-processed hair just stops looking good after awhile, and let's face it, there is little a stylist can do in that situation except cut it all off. Do what you can to treat your hair well, use more natural products and keep the backcombing to a minimum. Also, be sure drink lots of water and make sure there is Vitamin E in your diet - there is absolutely nothing like having clean, shining hair - naturally.

Photo by: Eleventh Earl of Mar

The Week of the Garage Sale

2009-07-27T10:30:00.003-04:00

I think this is the first week I have gone without posting since the start of my blog! Sorry about the interruption in service there, I was busy trying to make money by having a garage sale. Make no mistake about it, having garage sales are a ton of work. I made almost $200, which was fabulous, but I would hate to calculate my return per hour spent on planning, setting up, cleaning and manning the sale. That's why it is worth it to have some other benefits built in to the event...

1. I got to spend time with some of my favorite people in the world! My sister came over sign making night and we got to hang out and then I had several dear friends help set up, help man the sale and sometimes just stop by to hang out and chat. It was fabulous!

2. I got to meet a lot of my neighbors. As I wrote about recently, I have been just starting to meet the folks in my area. I don't consider myself much a social person, but there are real advantages to getting to know the folks who live nearby. One neighbor wants me to let her know when I have my next sale, since she will try to have one at the same time and we can double our signs and other efforts and hopefully get more folks to the sales. Another neighbor offered to lend a hand with one of my house projects. Another gentleman stopped by who used to live in my house back in the 80s. He was a lot of fun to talk to!

3. I cleaned out my garage. I hadn't realized how badly my garage needed a cleaning until I went to have this sale. It was pretty bad! I swept it all out and moved out all the lawn equipment to another spot for the sale. Now I am going to use this as an opportunity to reorganize as I put it back in.

4. It was an ego boost. I got so many wonderful compliments from so many folks on my house and garden. Since I am still in process of getting the house painted and getting the yard in shape, it was so, so nice to hear people letting me know that they liked what I was doing. I live in one of those "edge" neighborhoods. It has some beautiful homes, but also some rough looking ones. There are a lot of rentals, and while some are well cared for, some aren't. It is definitely an up and coming neighborhood, but there is still some "up" to go. I got the feeling that neighbors definitely appreciated the work I've been doing, which was nice.

5. We moved out a lot of "stuff." Most of my items were priced at $2.00 and under, so to make $200, I had to sell a lot of my former treasures. (Well, a lot of it was also my mother and sister's who both generously donated their stuff to the sale and said I could keep the money that was made from it.) Some of the things I sold were from my marriage, and it was great to see objects that bring me pain going to good homes and people who were exited about having them.

So, that is what I have been up to all week. I'll try to write a Fighting Foreclosure/Getting Nine Hundred Guide to Garage Sales later this week. In the meantime, I need to catch up on my blog reading!

Photo by: lesleyraez

Auto Repairs and How to Keep Your Car on the Road

2009-07-20T12:11:00.005-04:00

I spent last weekend (which was cold and rainy, by the way) up at my cabin. On the way up north I heard the Car Guys on NPR talking about an article they had on their website about how to keep your car running forever. Since one of my goals is to keep my little buggy going as long as I possibly can, I made sure to look it up. You can find it here: Best Ways to Keep Your Car Running.

I admit, I need to do some routine maintenance for my car. I've been keeping up on my oil changes (mostly) but I missed my 30,000 mile check up ah... 10,000 miles ago! The article recommends taking a look your owner's manual to see what is needed, as they put it:

If you're wondering how often to do these things, there's a book that explains it all to you. It's called the owner's manual. You'll find it in your glove box, shrink-wrapped in plastic, because — if you're like most of us — you've probably never looked at it. In the back you'll find a list of service intervals, and the services that are recommended during each of them. If intervals in the book stop at 120,000 miles, that doesn't mean you're done with maintenance. Go back to the beginning and start over (so, for instance, do all the services called for in the 7,500-mile service at 127,500). Nice try, though.

Because I really am inspired to keep this car running as long as I can, that is on my to-do list for this week - look at the manual and see what services I should consider doing. My car is running great - and I want to keep it that way. Again, to quote the article, "It's the stingy man who makes the most boat payments!" Getting these things done on a regular basis will mean less expensive maintenance down the road, I know... now all I have to do it come up with the money...

That seems to be a big problem this month. I have nothing coming in! Don't get me wrong, all the changes I have made over the last year has made it so all my bills are being paid in full and ahead of time. Theoretically I could "coast" for awhile if I wanted to, but I just can't. I have too many goals I need to complete in the next year.

One thing I am working on is a garage sale for this weekend. Hopefully that will bring in some extra money and will clear out some much needed space. It is also a nice time to hang out with some great friends and chat with my neighbors. There is also a little part time work available starting at the end of next week. I put in for as many shifts as I could possibly get, even volunteering to learn another department if they want. Hopefully, the two things will really help, because I still have to get the rest of this house painted and I am afraid I might have to borrow it from my mother......

Photo by: Miz GingerSnaps

Fast, Fabulous and Frugal Comfort Food

2009-07-15T11:02:00.004-04:00

I've had a couple of rough days at work lately and last night I was feeling the need for some comfort food. Fortunately, I had just read Small Notebook for a Simple Home's post on 20 Tips to Waste Less Food. One of Simple Notebook's tips was to make fried rice out of day old rice... and it just so happened that not only did fried rice sound like the perfect comfort dish, I also had all the ingredients at hand.

I used a basic fried rice recipe I found online and then modified it to fit what was in my kitchen. Here is the recipe:

Ingredients:

1 - 2 green onions, as desired
2 large eggs
1 teaspoon salt
pepper to taste
4 tablespoons oil for frying, or as needed
4 cups cold rice
1 - 2 tablespoons Soy Sauce or Oyster Sauce, as desired

Preparation:

Wash and finely chop green onion. Lightly beat the eggs with the salt and pepper.

Heat a wok or a frying pan and add two tablespoons of oil. When oil is hot, add eggs. Cook, stirring until they are lightly scrambled, but not too dry. Remove eggs and clean out the pan. (Note from me - eggs continue to cook when you take them out of a pan, so the best thing to do is slightly under cook them, otherwise by the time you eat them they will be overdone. This is especially true in a dish like this where the eggs will be cooked twice.)

Add the remaining 2 tablespoons of oil. Stir-fry the rice for a few moments, using chopsticks or a wooden spoon to break apart. Stir in soy sauce or oyster sauce, as desired.

When rice is heated through, add egg back to the pan. Mix thoroughly. Stir in the green onion. Serve hot.

Note: If you are adding other ingredients, increase the eggs to 3.

I, of course, made a few changes to this recipe. Here's what I did...

It just so happened that a friend and I had made a stir-fry this weekend with chicken and all sorts of great veggies. The leftover rice I had was from that. I also happened to have a small handful of mushrooms and the middle heart of a bok choy. After cooking the eggs, I added my oil (I used sesame, but only because I had it on hand and I like the flavor.) I didn't use 4 tablespoons though, you can cut that down to just what you need to coat the pan. After I cooked the eggs, I removed them per the instructions, and then re-oiled the pan and quickly stir-fried up some garlic and the diced mushrooms.

After a minute or two, I dumped in the rice and then I used one tablespoon of soy and one of fish sauce - again, these were just things I had on hand. Finally I returned the eggs and added the chopped bok choy and the green onions.

It was so, so good. Better than a restaurant version and so very quick and easy! It was the kind of dish that I wanted to just keep eating - not because I was hungry, but because it tasted so good!! The thing I liked about this dish though, was that it felt so flexible. You could add any leftover veggie - broccoli, carrots, corn, peas - even leftover mixed vegetables. I could also see myself adding nontraditional ingredients like cauliflower or green beans. Adding chicken, salmon, shrimp or pork would be great too!

So, here you go - a frugal, functional, quick and easy dish to help you use up the last of the leftovers! I can't wait to have the rest for lunch!

Photo by: brilarian

Living Together Before Marriage - The Frugal, and Not So Frugal, Side of It

2009-07-14T10:27:00.004-04:00

Before I got married I lived with my fiance' for around a year. My goal was to see if I could live day in and day out with this person. I could see we were heading towards marriage, and for me, it was a chance to "try it on" if you will. I guess I thought that was why the majority of people chose to shack up, but according to this study, I was wrong:

Almost half of cohabitors of both sexes said spending more time together was a reason they moved in together, with only 9 percent of men and 5 percent of women citing "to test the relationship before marriage," the study of 1,294 unmarried Americans ages 18 to 34 indicated.

It is probably for the best. As you all know, my relationship ended in divorce. I'm not alone there - according to the study 50 to 75% of people that get married have lived together first. However, census data tells us that almost half of marriages end in divorce. Let me tell you, from a financial standpoint, two of the most expensive things you can do (and most stressful) are getting married and getting divorced.

Which brings me to another reason people move in together... cost. The old idea that two people can live much cheaper together than apart is not necessarily true. There can be cost savings, but there can also be hidden expenses...

Ask any "saver" who has ever tried to live with a "spender." Just as water will seek its own level, spending levels change when these two types hook up. The spender may end up saving more, but you can also bet that the saver will end up spending more. It is hard to be a financial curmudgeon when your partner is throwing dollars around like a ticker tape parade! After all, they always look like they are having so much fun...

The idea is that by living together you can save on gas, utilities, food, home furnishings, and of course, rent. I agree that couples who are actively working together to save money this way can do it, but I also submit that purchasing habits change when two people live together. For example, take food. I know I experienced this, and Get Stuff Done has mentioned it on her blog - living alone I tend to eat less expensive, more vegetarian meals. When I lived with someone, he liked big meals, and hey I'll admit, I enjoy eating them with him, but it was a kind of shopping I hadn't really done before then - at least not to that level. I don't have facts and figures from that time of my life unfortunately, so I can't do an exact comparison, but I would guess we spent at least twice, if not a lot more, on groceries than I do now. Also, my ex loved wine and I too, became a regular wine drinker and that added up in a hurry! That increased the cost for him as well, because I know for a fact that we bought better bottles of wine together than he did as a single man.

Which gets me into another spending element - people tend to buy better things when they are going in on something than when they are buying it for themselves. The Blu-Ray player that was $150.00 on sale might have been good enough when we are alone, but suddenly the $599 one with all the extra features is a lot more appealing when someone else is chipping in. It slips in slowly and isn't even something you would notice, but those spending habits creep up. I suspect a little of it is altruistic - you love your partner and want something nice for them. You might be willing to sacrifice yourself, but are hesitant to ask you partner to. The same goes for home furnishings - ever notice how many people move in together and need new furniture? Beds, for obvious reasons, are frequently the first to go.

Utilities are another area that doesn't really save. Think about it - twice as many bodies to wash, dishes to clean, trash to throw out. Even electricity, which you would think people can share, is used by different people different ways. My electric bills are considerably lower than what my ex's were when he lived alone in the same house, simply because we use power differently.

Then there are those great savings on rent... of course, after you've been settled in for a bit, the place starts to feel a little cramped. Maybe one (or both) need an office or extra closet space. Maybe an extra bedroom for a visiting family member... next thing you know your hoursing costs just went up. That's what happened to me - my ex's apartment was just too small for us, and that's how we ended up with a house that I am still paying for.

That isn't to say that two people can't save money by living together. I think they can. Especially, if they are both on the same page in spending and have the same financial goals. Having someone to help go through the budget and sort out financial decisions can be fabulous. There is nothing better than having someone you can work with and who will help you achieve more.

Photo by: interpunct

A Couple of Frugal Shopping Trips

2009-07-10T12:21:00.003-04:00

I wanted to post about a couple of bargains I got recently. The first was last night's shopping trip to Target thanks to Money Saving Mom. I didn't do quite as well as she did (I had run out of allowable coupons to print) but I was still really pleased! After dinner with the family last night I stopped over to Target with coupons in hand. I bought 2 boxes of Kashi cereal, 2 boxes of Kashi granola bars and 2 boxes of their dark chocolate oatmeal cookies... all for $8.16. Considering the retail price on the cereal alone was $3.86, that's quite a bargain! I love Kashi products. I like the flavor and the quality, so I was pleased as punch with this deal.

Here's how it worked - the Kashi products were already on sale for $2.50. Then I used the Target web coupons combined with a manufacturer's coupon. Money Saving Mom had said in the comments of her post that Target's corporate policy is that you can use one Target coupon and one manufacturer's coupon together on a single item. (Though it may vary store to store.) Sure enough, when I got to the counter, the salesperson sorted my coupons by Target web vs. manufacturer's coupons and made sure I only had one of each for each item. Then she rang them all through and complimented me on my purchase... and even asked where she could get some of those coupons! Click over to MSM's post and she'll tell you where to print them.

The second deal was earlier this week when I had lunch with my mom...

ebates offers a 15% rebate on purchases through Restaurant.com. So, knowing mom and I were planning on going to a restaurant that has gift certificates on Restaurant.com, I first clicked to ebates and then selected Restaurant.com. On Restaurant.com I can get a $10 gift certificate for $4. However, they are also running a special right now where you can use adcode SEVENTY and get 70% off that. So, for $1.20 I got a $10 gift certificate, and ebates gave me a 15% refund, which admittedly is only $.18, but all it took was one click, and it dropped the price of the gift certificate down to $1.02. Not bad!

I especially liked this offer because my mom refuses to let me pay even a portion of the bill when we go out. She knows about my financial situation so it is kind of her way of helping out. However, she (like me) won't ever turn down a coupon. I showed up with the printed gift certificate in hand and was able to take care of over half the bill!

What about you? Found any great bargains lately?

Photo by: M J M

How Do You Fight Apathy?

2009-07-10T09:17:00.004-04:00

I've been feeling a bit apathetic lately. I am not sure how to describe it - I just haven't felt any desire to do much of anything lately, financial or otherwise. My motivation seems to have gone down the drain. I find myself sitting at home thinking I should do this or I should do that, but I can't find the energy to actually do it! I am sure it is just one of those cyclical things - I'm just in a bit of a slump.

Do you ever get these attacks of apathy? I can't even say I have the blues, because I am not sad, but I just don't seem to have any energy. What do you do to combat them?

I was talking to my friend Catie the other night and she had a good suggestion...

She has been giving herself some small, achievable goals. Of course, the hope is that once you start working on something, you'll have the motivation to just keep going, but if not, at least you know you're tackling a few things every day. I loved the idea, so the last two nights I have been trying it myself - I've set 3 small goals that I am determined to achieve before the day is done. Wednesday night I did laundry, wrapped my brother in law's birthday gift and watered the front planting bed (which is a project since it means either hauling a hose all the way around the house or filling my watering can over and over.) Last night I celebrated my brother in law's birthday with family, so I didn't have much time in the evening so, I set my goals accordingly. I cleaned out my black travel bag (the one I always take with me to the cabin), watered the back garden and swept the kitchen. I still don't really have any energy, but I do feel better about myself because I am at least getting a couple things done.

I've also been making sure I list a few books on Amazon and Half.ccom each weeknight. I figure at least I am working on something for my finances. As for the rest, I am keeping up with things the best I can and trying not to let my apathy turn into full on sadness.

How about you? What do you do to shake a slump?

Beautiful Photo by: Creativity+ Timothy K Hamilton

Energy Efficient Incandescent Light Bulbs

2009-07-08T11:26:00.009-04:00

My friend David sent me an interesting article from the New York Times called, "Incandescent Bulbs Return to the Cutting Edge." One of the frugal things that I have done over the past year is switch over as many light bulbs as I can to cfls. This, along with being diligent about turning out the lights when I leave a room, has cut my electric bills in half.

However, there are some bulbs I have not been able to replace. For one thing, I haven't yet found a dimmable cfl that actually works, and while I have gotten used to the too-bright odd colored cold light of the cfl in most rooms, I still haven't been able to replace the incandescent bulbs in my favorite reading lamps. This New Your Times article says there is still hope:

For lighting researchers involved in trying to save the incandescent bulb, the goal is to come up with one that matches the energy savings of fluorescent bulbs while keeping the qualities that many consumers seem to like in incandescents, like the color of the light and the ease of using them with dimmers.

That sounds like a worthy goal to me! In fact, they already have some incandescent bulbs on the market that are more energy efficient available at Amazon and Home Depot...

I haven't tried them yet, but I am very interested in the possibilities. Truth is, while I love the cost savings from the cfls, I haven't been fond of much else about them. Light bulbs that could give me the same cost savings but have a warmer light, no mercury, and turn on instantly would definitely be appealing. I would love to see a new line of high efficiency, long life bulbs that came in a variety of sizes, including floods and candelabra style, and that also had dimming capability.

In the meantime, I will stick to my cfls. If all the marketing information is correct, I shouldn't have to replace them anytime soon!

If you are thinking about switching to cfls, here are a few tips:

1. Start with bulbs that are on a lot, but aren't used for heavy reading. These are the "low hanging fruit." Ideal bulbs to replace are porch lights, garage lights, basement and workshop lights.

2. Try a few different brands. I have found that different brands have different colors. (Some of mine are peachy and one of mine is positively purple.) Find what works well for you.

3. Consider how you use the room and the lighting. For example, in my kitchen I put a cfl in over the sink. That is the light I use the most for washing dishes and prepping food. However, I have dimmable flood lights in the ceiling. I won't replace these with cfls, in part because I haven't found a good dimmable cfl flood, but also in part because this is a better light for entertaining.

4. The best energy control is simply not wasting it. Remember to flick the light off when you leave the room, unplug appliances and chargers that are sucking up energy, and use natural light whenever possible. You'll have those energy bills down in no time!

EDIT: Check out this post by Frugal Dreamer who was also able to make some differences in her bill through turning out those unneeded lights. Way to go!

Photo by: jnpoulos

A Budget Backfire!

2009-07-07T14:03:00.006-04:00

Well, shoot!

My No Spending Challenge and my ultra frugal Envelope Shopping System for June ended up biting me in tush!

I have a fabulous 4% checking account through my credit union. Yes, you read right - my checking account pays 4%. However, there are a few rules to get it:

Direct deposit
Minimum of 10 debit card purchases
Minimum 4 log-ins to their online banking system
Receive eStatements (emailed bank statements.)

Can you guess why I didn't get my interest last month? Yep. I only made 8 debit card purchases!

Part of me is really irritated. I mean here I am, trying my hardest to save money and keep it in the bank and they are penalizing me for not spending it! In this economy, slapping people on the wrist for not spending seems a bit irresponsible.

On the other hand, I can't help but see the humor in it...

Last month I did so good at not spending money that I forfeited my interest rate. Let me say, this has never happened to me before. Ever since I've had the account I have had no problem meeting the requirements.

So, what to do? I really liked using the envelope system and frankly, it saved me a lot more than I would have earned in interest. I am definitely not going to go out of my way to use my debit card more just to get a little extra cash, (no matter how much I like bank interest) - that way there be dragons. It would be quick trip down a slippery over spending slope. I'll just monitor how it goes the next couple of months and see if this a fluke, or if maybe there is a better account for me. I am also going to write the credit union a letter. I see why they have the requirements they do, and I don't particularly think they are unreasonable, but nonetheless, I would like to express my opinion on the matter.

Heh. My boss always warns me to keep an eye out for unexpected consequences. I certainly didn't expect this!

Photo by: NoHoDamon

How I Found My Part Time Jobs and the Power of Networking

2009-07-07T10:17:00.004-04:00

Sharon of Musings of a Midlife Mom asked a question on one of my recent posts, " Where do you find your part time jobs?" It was a great question and definitely worth a post of its own - Thanks Sharon!

I found them through networking. Although, I got to tell you, I hate that term. In fact, I hate what networking has come to be. In the business world where I run, networking seems to mean these terribly awkward sessions of needy people sitting around tables flashing business cards and schmoozing up to other people they barely know. It's like speed dating with none of the long term glamorous romance. I am part of a couple of business groups and they all have "networking" sessions beforehand and I just hate it. It feels so.... slimy.

However, that is not to say that networking doesn't work, especially in its original intent. In fact, this article says that at least 60% of jobs are found through networking. By original intent, I mean simply getting out and telling people you know that you are looking for work. Putting the word out - talking to friends, family and neighbors about the kind of work you are looking for.

In this economy, I think it is easier to find small part time jobs than full time jobs. I don't have numbers to back this up, just gut feeling and personal experience. There are so many people out of work and companies keep laying more off all the time. The full time jobs are few and far between. However, that doesn't mean that companies aren't looking for a little part time help to fill in the gaps. They might need someone to answer phones a few hours a week, or give a hand at month end when the accounting department goes into high gear. They might need someone for a small project or to fill in when a regular staff member is sick. And the best way to find these jobs is to talk to people.

After all, these aren't the kinds of jobs that are usually advertised...

These are the jobs that are given to friends, kids, spouses and neighbors of another co-worker. Hiring someone is expensive - there is all the cost of advertising, then the time and energy of sorting through resumes, having interviews, making selections. I've done it. It is a huge investment of time and energy. Who wants to do all that for someone who will be coming in to help file for 4 hours a week? It is so much easier and faster to hire someone that someone already knows. Besides, there is a unwritten high level of expectation you have when you hire someone like that - they want to do well for their friend and their friend wants to make sure they do a good job, since they recommended them. It usually works out well.

I have several little part time jobs, all with very limited time frames. For example, I might have a two week period where I can pick up 4 shifts, or another one of my jobs offers me three weeks a year where I work 20+ hours. I got them by asking friends and letting them know I was looking for work. In one case it was a job I had done before and left; I heard that they might need help again and asked my old coworker if she could use me.

In my case, my jobs all came a direct result of people I am good friends with, however, I have heard that it is far more likely that the jobs will come in from a distant acquaintance or a friend of a friend. In other words, you tell all your friends and family that you are looking for an 8 hour a week office job, even knowing that they don't have any work available. But, your aunt files it away in the back of her mind and then when she is sitting next to her friend at church who is starting up her own business and could use a little office help, she thinks of you.

One suggestion - know what you want and how many hours you can work before you get into this. This is especially true if you are doing the part time job along with another full time job or have a family. The goal should be to add to your income - not burn yourself out. Frugal Dad wrote an article about this today that is well worth reading. You don't want to get into something you can't handle - saying you'll do "anything" means you could end up in something you hate, which will just add stress to your life and embarrass your friend when you quit. Also, having a plan makes it more memorable. Saying, "I'd love to find a small retail job on the weekends" is easier for people to help you with than "I need to make some extra money." Hey - who doesn't?

I've been very fortunate in my work. It is true that I do occasionally have some very busy months... and very slow ones like this month, but the type of work and the hours work well alongside my full time job. Anyone else out there working a part time job? How did you find it? What are your tips for success?

Photo by: caffeina