Checking In

Hello, gentle readers:

Yep, still poor. In fact, we may be more poor than before. I'm just going to go ahead and take responsibility for that. I kept on telling (still-out-of-work) Husband that our financial position isn't great. Usually this "telling" came in the form of teary fights. But because he wasn't balancing the checkbook, he didn't realize what this meant. So one day, I gave him the check register and back statements. Things may have gotten worse once I did this. I use a credit card for day-to-day purchases (groceries, gas). I do this because I've paid it off every month (yes, sometimes dipping into savings to do so) and the cash-back bonus funds a good portion of our Christmas gifts. However, because Husband didn't see those daily purchases coming out of the account, he disregarded the amount of them and we couldn't pay off the balance last month (without dipping into savings more significantly this time).

So, starting today:

1) We are a debit card/cash only family. (Except for our 5% off purchases with the Target card. We'll still use that.)

2) We are on a wallet diet. We talked about it this morning and agreed that we won't be buying anything this month except necessities. This means every meal will be based on something that is in the pantry/freezer until we have nothing in the pantry/freezer. (Of course, supplemental food will be purchased to make a meal out of the stash.) This also means that we will only purchase toiletries and cleaning supplies when we've run out. (And maybe not even then. For instance, I can live without paper towels but I'm not sure I can convince Husband to try it.)

3) Other little things: The heater is set at 66. I'm only taking the toll road to commute 5 times per week.

Today's spending so far: $-20.30 commute tolls + return of unused items for Halloween costume

Free Kale Therapy

Let me tell you something. Nothing feels better to me after a long day of being pissed at my boss and wondering how he makes (probably) 3 times what I make when he is so incredibly incompetent than coming home to accidentally stumble into a tasty dinner made for pennies. It's my own silent revenge.

It also helps that--despite having to deal with some tremendous bullshit--I got some pretty great validation at work. It is the kind of "attagirl" that no one else will ever know about but it is real and important and extremely gratifying to me.

You know what else helps? Wine.

So here is what I'm eating, as I write this post:

Classy Ramen & Greens: Dinner today and lunch tomorrow
Ingredients (Sorry, I don't have my prices up-to-date. I quit keeping track around the time that I quit blogging regularly.)
1 package of Ramen noodles sans seasoning (I'm fairly positive that I bought this when it was on special. So something already known for its cheapness, but cheaper.)
3 slices of bacon (It's from Aldi. After I got married, I quit going to Aldi, although I wasn't a frequent shopper at Aldi before I got married. While he doesn't like to go to the grocery store, husband never complains about going to Aldi. I tend to buy stuff there that I wouldn't buy at the regular grocery store very often--like bacon.)
Kale (From my garden. That counts as free for me. Some kale wintered over so it's practically free x 2. Also, I love me some greens.)
Onion (From the CSA, I split with my friend, Aspiring Maven. It's not bargain basement cheap, but it is a good value and I like the idea of it. Plus, I get to try things I normally wouldn't buy. It keeps the carnivores in us happy all summer long since there is always something meaty included every time I pick up.)
Red Pepper (Also CSA. This particular pepper was close to going bad. So really, I salvaged money I otherwise would have thrown in the trash. Almost the same thing as making money, right?)
Cherry tomatoes (Also from the garden. One plant I bought but the other was a gift. They were close to going bad too. It's like I earned money on that one.)
Feta (I've discovered that one splurge goes a long way in a dish. Not that this feta was break-the-bank, but it was a dash of something unexpected. It helped make even ramen feel special.)
Splash of wine (Free. This is what happens when you are the chauffeur to a bachelorette party. You get good karma.)

Pour a glass of wine to drink. Fry up the bacon. Drain on paper towels and pour off any excess bacon grease. Fry up the onion and red pepper. Slice up the kale and throw it in the pan and cook for a bit. Refill your wine glass. Crumble the bacon and toss it in. Add the feta, cherry tomatoes and a splash of wine. Turn the heat to low. Cook your ramen. Drain most of the water and add the noodles and a bit of the water to the pan. Turn the heat up and let the water cook off while mixing up the noodles and kale mixture. Eat half now and save half for later. Drink more wine. Sigh deeply and enjoy the lingering aroma of bacon. Yum.

Hair-raising experiment

You know how sometimes people who are afraid of heights decide they are going to go sky-diving to get over it? Over Memorial Day weekend, I decided I wasn't going to wash my hair.

I have this thing about washing my hair ever day. I'm so self-conscious if I don't wash it every day. I think it itches and is visibly greasy. So from the Friday morning before Labor Day to the Tuesday morning after, I decided I wasn't going to wash my hair. Here's what happened.

Friday, the usual.

Saturday, got up to help Aspiring Maven move. I DIY dry-shampooed my hair by using cornstarch from my pantry to soak up some of the perceived greasies. Which was dumb because I was just going to help moved boxes out of one house and into another, but I felt a little better about it. Cornstarch Pro: It works, Cornstarch Con: I imagine that it bring out the white in my graying hair. Post-move, I was hot and sweaty, I came home and showered but didn't get my hair wet. I cornstarched again. Not bad but maybe my hair smelled a little like I hadn't washed it. Not dirty hippie stinky, just not Suave Coconutty. And you had to stick your nose in my hair to be able to tell.

Sunday, I cornstarched my hair again and used a bit of baking soda to absorb the unwashed scent. That worked, too. I spent most of the day painting the kitchen wall. So again, I didn't have to look presentable and I was doing actual move-about, you-may-sweat work. By the end of the day, I dug out some old cheap off-brand dry shampoo, just to take the edge off. Con: Again with the white hair.

Monday, I woke up with beautiful, bouncy, full-of-body, Pantene commercial hair. However, by mid-day my hair started to hurt. Have you even gotten your hair done or just worn it up for a very long time and your roots felt like they were angry at you for making them stay in such an unnatural position for so long? Just me? Well, that's how my hair felt by Monday afternoon. So I washed my hair with vinegar. I had never tried vinegar before and it was really weird-amazing. It worked really well and my hair felt pretty soft without using conditioner.

Since then, I've mostly gone back to my old daily-shampoo ways. Except the day I mowed the lawn and washed my hair in the evening and then didn't wash it in the morning and WENT TO WORK! That was a big step for me. And once I just used the vinegar again.

Water You Doin'?

Just this week, Husband told me the water rates in this fair Midwestern "city of fountains" is going up and that we should try to use less water. Whether it's a money thing or a conservation thing, that is always something I can get behind.

I hate hate hate it when someone suggests "turning off the tap when I brush my teeth" as a way to save water. Duh, dummy. I actually read this suggestion from a celebrity in a magazine recently. Um, yeah, the rest of us did that 25 years ago. Also? You're rich and famous. I feel like you should try harder than that.

So here are the other, less conspicuous ways Husband and I are saving water now:

1. Cutting Husband's hair. We cut off 8-9 inches of Husband's white man 'fro--buzzed it right off. (He's going to try to sell it. I'll let you know if he's successful.) That will really cut down on shower time. As for my hair, re: short v. long, I feel like it's a wash (pun intended). When I have short hair, wash/condition time is faster and I use less shampoo/conditioner. But I use a blow drier, straightener, and product, too. When I have long hair, I usually don't even bother to blow dry it, especially in the summer.

2. Recycling. We don't have a grey water system going on, but we have a dehumidifier in the basement that runs a lot. Rather than dumping the water down the drain, we have started to use it to water plants and flowers.

3. Making our own rain barrel thing. We used to have the big oil tanks in our basement because the house used to be heated with oil. Husband and FIL got the tanks out of the tank room and sealed it, painted it, and built great storage shelves. We now have an awesome storage room/storm shelter. But enough bragging, we also ended up with two huge tanks sitting in our back yard. One went to the scrap place (it didn't really make us any money if you count the time spent cutting it open, washing it out, and transporting it to the scrap yard). The other is getting turned into a rain barrel. Husband is going to put a gutter on one side of the detached garage that will drain into the old oil tank. It already has a spigot on it so it will be great for filling up buckets to water the back garden beds.

4. Not running the rinse cycle on the dishwasher. Husband used to do this and it drove me crazy. He's stopped, thanks to the rate increase.

5. Low flow shower heads and aerators in the sinks. You don't even notice you're using less water.

6. Also those other duh, dummy ways of saving water.  Full loads of laundry, not washing a small cycle as a large cycle, etc. Also, a lot of times I'll use pasta water to make the pasta sauce or the water from steamed vegetables in the garden. Just a lot of little things. I'm sure there are lots of others I overlook from time to time, but we try.

7. I'm trying to figure out how to wash my hair less. I used to wash/condition it every time I took a shower and if I run in the evenings or push mow the yard, that's two showers a day. I've cut out the 2nd wash of the day bit, but I could probably do more than that...

Here are some things I'm interested in if we ever manage to add a bathroom to the basement or redo the upstairs bathroom:

1. Dual-flush toilets. Not the low-flow toilets because you just end up flushing them extra times. Dual flush lets you choose how much flush you need: a lot or a little. That's all I have to say about that.

2. The kind of shower where one knob controls the hot/cold on/off. Right now we have a knob for cold and a knob for hot. This makes navy showers very difficult--so difficult I don't even try. (With one knob, I'm really good at navy showers. I even used to catch the water coming out of the tub spigot while the water was warming to the right temp and reuse it for plants.) 

Things I feel that Husband would never agree to:

1. Full-on gray water recycling.

2. One of those sinks that empties into the toilet tank and then you use your sink water to flush the toilet. They delight the hippie in me.

Times that we are huge water wasters:

1. Step-daughter likes to open her backyard "water park" once a summer and have her cousins over and fill every trash can, bucket, pool, water balloon, slip & slide, sprinkler and make a general mud slick of our back yard. But you're only a kid once, right? And it's a lot more fun than going to the real water park. It delights the suburbanite in me.

Things I don't want to give up ever:

1. An occasional long hot bath. It's cheaper than therapy, dude.

The Penny Savers

You know what will keep you in a frugal mindset long after one of your cars' oil leaks has been fixed? (And by "fixed" I don't mean "fixed" I mean "ignored" because it isn't that bad and it will cost too much to fix it.) Owing taxes.

So you have to pay taxes on unemployment. Maybe this is evident to all the rest of you, but I've never been on unemployment nor can I see the logic of paying taxes on government benefits. (Do you have to pay Social Security on your Social Security benefits? Seriously, do you?) Apparently taxes used to be withheld from your unemployment. But they don't do that anymore. (Government jobs still have taxes withheld, how is unemployment so much trickier now?) Had I been told about all of this, I could have had extra withheld from my paycheck. However, I wasn't. So now, not only do we have to pay income taxes on unemployment, we have to pay a penalty because we owe taxes. Since we're already living on the cheap, we can cover this as long as we delay a major purchase or two. (C'mon washer & dryer, you gotta keep it together for another 6-12 months!)

I noticed this morning all the penny-saving things we've done this week, some of which I've never blogged about before.

1. You know when you use your bar of soap down to the point where it's just a bunch of little pieces? I save those pieces. I cut the leg off a clean but runned pair of tights. I keep in it the shower, hanging over my wash-cloth bar and stuff those little pieces in the tights every time I end up with just the broken bits. Then when there are enough broken bits, voila--soap on a rope. I've been doing this for probably over a year and I've maybe saved myself buying a couple bars of soap. So, yeah, we're talking pennies.

2. Husband likes candles--especially if they smell like vanilla. When you buy the candles in the jars, you usually end up with a bunch of wax left over in the corner. A year or so ago, we bought some cheap wicks from the craft store. Then when we're left with wax and no wick in a candle jar, we put it in a pan of boiling water to melt it. Then we pour it into a leftover emptied out jar with a new wick and, voila--new candle.

3. Sunday morning I used all the coffee creamer. I put it on the grocery store list but then I realized: I have powdered milk in the freezer (for making bread in my bread maker) and cocoa powder, sugar, and orange extract in the pantry. I rinsed out the old coffee creamer bottle and poured all those things in with some water and, voila--orange mocha creamer.

While I realize the savings on these things is minimal, I've really been digging on the idea of using what I have to try to delay buying more stuff, especially when two of the three things are unnecessary. (I'm sure everyone appreciates that I use soap.) It's a double-win because the less money I spend now, the less money I'll have to scramble to find when April rolls around and the more stuff I use up, the less stuff we have cluttering up our house.

What are your penny-saver ideas? We always need suggestions.