My mama taught me right. After about mid-September, regardless of the temperature, a lady wears hose and when it gets cold, tights. So the first clothing issue I will blame on my superior upbringing. I noticed the big hole in the upper thigh of my hose at about 9:00 am. I figured that it was high enough that I could just be careful and keep it from getting bigger and running down the leg. But as anyone who has worn hose knows this is not an easy feat.
Then during our morning meeting to my absolute horror I discovered a hole in the back of my dress at the end of the zipper. I asked my (female) intern to see how bad it was and she said that "they were small holes." THEY! So there were two holes in the main seam in the back of my...wait for it...$115 dress! Anything I pay more than $50 for I expect to a) work and b) not fall apart from normal wear. One hole I could have safety pinned, but two is a fashion emergency.
So I high tail it to the dry cleaner on the Hill where I take my suits. I know that they do alterations and they have a dressing room where I can hide in my tights while they repair it. I blow in there and show the nice Chinese lady behind the counter what is CLEARLY an urgent clothing matter and express how the fate of the day rests on her expertise in handling clothing matters. Her response? "I no do the alterations."
There is only one appropriate response from a true recessionista in this situation. Take the brown thread and needle, get in the dressing room, strip down and sew that bad boy up yourself. So there I sat, in my shoes, hole-y tights and bra sewing up a dress that NEVER should have fallen apart in the first place during my work day. Truly laughable.
Picked up a new pair of hose on my way back to the office and in less than a half an hour I am back at my desk in new hose and a flash repaired dress.
Sometimes when you need something done, you've got to do it yourself.
Tuesday, November 17, 2009
Monday, November 9, 2009
Treads
I have done it again. Thanks to my trusty, paid-in-Cuervo mechanic and Al Gore's glorious invention I am coming in almost $100 under budget for the great tire replacement project. I have dedicated both the September and October tutoring paychecks to tires so that I will keep it off the credit card. I bought cold weather tires online as per Julian's suggestion, had them shipped to Merchant Tire who is going to mount and balance them for me for under $20 each. Total is $450. I put away almost $560. Conclusion: I. Am. Awesome.
Now if only I could find a way to go home for Christmas without going into debt. It could be a very recessionista Christmas alone in DC....
Now if only I could find a way to go home for Christmas without going into debt. It could be a very recessionista Christmas alone in DC....
Thursday, October 22, 2009
Recessionista in love
In Colombia there used to be this great telenovela (soap opera) called "Hasta la plata nos separe" (Until money do us part). It wasn't a typical telenovela with sex, crime, scandal and interfamily drama. It was about two business partners and their struggle to run a successful sales team. They had schemes within the staff, did a big push to hit their sales numbers and went on business trips with hilarious conclusions. But the title is what hits me today: until money do us part. How often is money a source of conflict in relationships.
You see, your recessionista just started seeing a gentleman, and the most difficult issue to tackle thus far has been money. Inevitably dates are involved in dating relationships and dates have the distinct potential to cost money. I will be perfectly fair to the gentleman and say that significant financial investment on his part (a few elegant dates at nice DC restaurants for which I did not pay) played a part in convincing me to go out with him. We both make about the same amount of money, though only your recessionista has a large pile of debt. (Please see preceding blog posts for background on this saga)
So what is the modern, urban couple to do? The first thing I have discovered is that frank conversation about expenses is the most practical thing to do. To assume, as the old saying goes, makes an ass out of "u" and me. So I told him all the background information he would need to know why I am a tad paranoid about finances, why I work a second job (more on that soon!), and why I like to split the check, eat in and have him pay for things. Turns out though, that he is not much better off, having significant expenses and making about the same salary I do. This revelation brought us to a place of mutual understanding.
Compromise is proving a very healthy thing and surprisingly endearing to do, if not particularly glamorous. We try to split things, meet at each other's homes, and plan for "date nights" that involve spending. It's not perfect and sometimes it's uncomfortable but it's a challenge in communication that causes growth.
Deciding where the line is may prove difficult since the object of Recessionista affection (henceforth referred to as the ORA) is employed in the financial sector. I am sure he has a wealth of advice to offer (none that I can easily comprehend--he's kind of a financial wunderkind) and could help me improve my portfolio, but I am thus far ill at ease with advice about personal finance from him. I guess it's because there a more significant level of commitment that's necessary before you let someone influence how you spend your money and that is a long way down the road.
For now I am going to have to create a new column in my budget just for date nights with the ORA. Because planning ahead is sexy and being able to pick up the tab is even sexier.
You see, your recessionista just started seeing a gentleman, and the most difficult issue to tackle thus far has been money. Inevitably dates are involved in dating relationships and dates have the distinct potential to cost money. I will be perfectly fair to the gentleman and say that significant financial investment on his part (a few elegant dates at nice DC restaurants for which I did not pay) played a part in convincing me to go out with him. We both make about the same amount of money, though only your recessionista has a large pile of debt. (Please see preceding blog posts for background on this saga)
So what is the modern, urban couple to do? The first thing I have discovered is that frank conversation about expenses is the most practical thing to do. To assume, as the old saying goes, makes an ass out of "u" and me. So I told him all the background information he would need to know why I am a tad paranoid about finances, why I work a second job (more on that soon!), and why I like to split the check, eat in and have him pay for things. Turns out though, that he is not much better off, having significant expenses and making about the same salary I do. This revelation brought us to a place of mutual understanding.
Compromise is proving a very healthy thing and surprisingly endearing to do, if not particularly glamorous. We try to split things, meet at each other's homes, and plan for "date nights" that involve spending. It's not perfect and sometimes it's uncomfortable but it's a challenge in communication that causes growth.
Deciding where the line is may prove difficult since the object of Recessionista affection (henceforth referred to as the ORA) is employed in the financial sector. I am sure he has a wealth of advice to offer (none that I can easily comprehend--he's kind of a financial wunderkind) and could help me improve my portfolio, but I am thus far ill at ease with advice about personal finance from him. I guess it's because there a more significant level of commitment that's necessary before you let someone influence how you spend your money and that is a long way down the road.
For now I am going to have to create a new column in my budget just for date nights with the ORA. Because planning ahead is sexy and being able to pick up the tab is even sexier.
Monday, September 28, 2009
When I was your age...
So finally had the talk with my grandparents about the great debt repayment venture. I expected them to be proud of my current efforts. But the response was mixed. It started with "Why on earth did you ever use a credit card in the first place?" and ended with tales of life in the Great Depression. My grandmother's father was a pastor and she was one of three brought up on a preacher's meager salary. She said she couldn't believe that after three years of teacher she brought home more money than her father for 25 years of preaching. There are valuable lessons from the experience of our grandparents. I don't honestly know how anyone who was not working for the government survived the Great Depression.
The question: How did I get into this mess? is pretty easy explain. I needed to get started, I don't have wealthy parents and I don't have a trust fund.
Everything including a functioning car, furniture and all my work suits is because I have a credit card. I have a job because I sold my car back to the bank to live off of it. From my education to my position in my office to my ability to speak Spanish fluently (and therefore make some money tutoring) all comes from debt. Some of it is so called "good debt" like my college loans, some of it is "bad debt" on my credit cards. I will say that there were some dumb buys on my credit cards, but I can't consider all that debt bad. It's helped me get good things not least of which is the job that helps me pay it off.
And I am learning the lesson that my grandparents want me to know. If you don't have it don't spend it. I can see now that there are times in the past where my lifestyle should have looked a little bit more like it does now, low-key and frugal. But at least I am there now.
This sort of thing does not come naturally to America's young people. Very few of us have "the talk" about the power of credit cards and just how long that type of loan with interest takes to pay off. Too many of us figure it out the hard way. At least my debt was under $6, 000 when I finally had the wake up call.
The wisdom I take away from listening to tales from the Great Depression is that in hard times you do hard things. This is a hard time and I am doing the hard things I need to do to put me on more solid financial footing. I have a second and occasional third job. I am putting $200 a month toward debt more consistently than I ever have before. My parents did hard things to make sure I went to college and that I had that care as the one thing of value I owned. Our grandparents did hard things to support their families.
And now it is our turn to do hard things.
The question: How did I get into this mess? is pretty easy explain. I needed to get started, I don't have wealthy parents and I don't have a trust fund.
Everything including a functioning car, furniture and all my work suits is because I have a credit card. I have a job because I sold my car back to the bank to live off of it. From my education to my position in my office to my ability to speak Spanish fluently (and therefore make some money tutoring) all comes from debt. Some of it is so called "good debt" like my college loans, some of it is "bad debt" on my credit cards. I will say that there were some dumb buys on my credit cards, but I can't consider all that debt bad. It's helped me get good things not least of which is the job that helps me pay it off.
And I am learning the lesson that my grandparents want me to know. If you don't have it don't spend it. I can see now that there are times in the past where my lifestyle should have looked a little bit more like it does now, low-key and frugal. But at least I am there now.
This sort of thing does not come naturally to America's young people. Very few of us have "the talk" about the power of credit cards and just how long that type of loan with interest takes to pay off. Too many of us figure it out the hard way. At least my debt was under $6, 000 when I finally had the wake up call.
The wisdom I take away from listening to tales from the Great Depression is that in hard times you do hard things. This is a hard time and I am doing the hard things I need to do to put me on more solid financial footing. I have a second and occasional third job. I am putting $200 a month toward debt more consistently than I ever have before. My parents did hard things to make sure I went to college and that I had that care as the one thing of value I owned. Our grandparents did hard things to support their families.
And now it is our turn to do hard things.
Friday, September 18, 2009
Restrait in the face of seasonal lattes
I have settled for a new way to restrain my spending on my absolute favorite comfort food. Whereas in the past I was attracted like a moth to the green siren whenever the impulse struck me or I "just had a bad day" I am now restricting my latte consumption to one each pay day and whenever someone else is paying. Thus far this month I have allowed myself to visit Starbucks only twice on aforementioned pay days. Today was my one Pumpkin Spice Latte until October 5. Be proud of me. This was a major budgetary step.
Here's an prayer on payday:
Oh Lord, source of all my true income, thank you for this payday.
Thank you for the means to pay my bills and my rent. Help me to realize this independence is really a dependence on you for everything.
Thank you for my job and my colleagues. Thank you for every opportunity to earn a living, like the workers in the vineyard. Thank you for everyone who helps me along the way.
Teach me to be generous with the gifts you give me. Help me to think of the needs of others and know that you are taking care of mine. May I value the simple treasures you give us that cost nothing.
May every payday be a chance to praise and thank you and do what you ask:
To do justice, to love mercy, and to walk humbly with you.
Amen.
Here's an prayer on payday:
Oh Lord, source of all my true income, thank you for this payday.
Thank you for the means to pay my bills and my rent. Help me to realize this independence is really a dependence on you for everything.
Thank you for my job and my colleagues. Thank you for every opportunity to earn a living, like the workers in the vineyard. Thank you for everyone who helps me along the way.
Teach me to be generous with the gifts you give me. Help me to think of the needs of others and know that you are taking care of mine. May I value the simple treasures you give us that cost nothing.
May every payday be a chance to praise and thank you and do what you ask:
To do justice, to love mercy, and to walk humbly with you.
Amen.
Wednesday, September 16, 2009
The sick recessionista and the tale of the bald tires
Just when I was starting to get all confident in my ability to budget and save money I got sick. Really sick.
If I didn't have FlexSpending money put away from every paycheck this illness would have set me back well over $100. I don't have $100 worth of flexibility any month. I saw the Urgent Care doc which was $20. I bought all the herbal supplements he recommended- $70. I saw my primary care doctor for a copay of $10. I bought all the medicine he recommended- $35. Luckily I have good health insurance at an HMO which does everything in-house, so all my lab test to check for serious illness didn't cost me anything.
Three thing set me ahead of other people who live paycheck to paycheck: good health insurance from my federal government job, decent credit, and FlexSpending. I seriously think that had I not set aside money for my health I can't honestly say if I would chose to spend it. I know right away that the herbal supplements would be out.
This is a little disturbing. When I zoom out I see that I already cut spending on food. I cut it on health care by not dedicating the mere $20 it would take to joint the company gym. I would further cut on health care if I didn't have Flex. What less essential things can I cut? Maybe I have to drop my cell phone plan. Maybe I sit down and do a hard analysis of the cost of gas versus the bus. By the end of the month I will have eaten out twice. Maybe that's got to go to zero.
I am not going to expound on the need for health care reform. This isn't a political blog. But I am getting a taste of what it is like to think about health and nutrition as someone who is poor. If there's not money for it I don't get it. If I do need it, I have to go into more debt to get it.
Which leads me to...bald tires. I was pleased with myself for having the connections to get my tires rotated, my brakes checked, my bike rack removed, and my clutch adjusted by a friend of a friend for a nice bottle of tequila. I thought this sort of cleverness was a very recessionista thing to do. I was even more pleased when, upon checking the brakes, the keeper of the Cuervo discovered they do not need to have the pads replaced. Also I was glad when he said I could get a chip in my windshield replaced and paid for by car insurance. Saving yours truly about $70.- $100.
Unfortunately the mechanic/acquaintance is a decent, upstanding and Subaru-savvy guy and he told me I would need 4 new tires before winter or the car would be too dangerous to drive. Fab. Also in 25,000 miles (not as far as it sounds) I need to do 100,000 mile maintenance which my good friend with the wrench assured me will cost around $2,000.
Recessionista reality check: $2,000 is the total debt I am painstakingly trying to pay off by next July. It was accumulated all over a period of years' worth of thoughtless spending and immature budgeting abilities. Not all in one day at a single auto shop.
I am wracking my brains trying to think of what I can sell in order to keep my car. What job can I do that will make me $2,000 before the end of the year? I don't even know how I am going to buy tires without going into more debt so this 100K maintenance is staring me down like a fire breathing dragon.
And my throat still hurts making me feel like a fire breathing dragon...guess that's another $20 visit to urgent care.
What's a recessionista to do?
If I didn't have FlexSpending money put away from every paycheck this illness would have set me back well over $100. I don't have $100 worth of flexibility any month. I saw the Urgent Care doc which was $20. I bought all the herbal supplements he recommended- $70. I saw my primary care doctor for a copay of $10. I bought all the medicine he recommended- $35. Luckily I have good health insurance at an HMO which does everything in-house, so all my lab test to check for serious illness didn't cost me anything.
Three thing set me ahead of other people who live paycheck to paycheck: good health insurance from my federal government job, decent credit, and FlexSpending. I seriously think that had I not set aside money for my health I can't honestly say if I would chose to spend it. I know right away that the herbal supplements would be out.
This is a little disturbing. When I zoom out I see that I already cut spending on food. I cut it on health care by not dedicating the mere $20 it would take to joint the company gym. I would further cut on health care if I didn't have Flex. What less essential things can I cut? Maybe I have to drop my cell phone plan. Maybe I sit down and do a hard analysis of the cost of gas versus the bus. By the end of the month I will have eaten out twice. Maybe that's got to go to zero.
I am not going to expound on the need for health care reform. This isn't a political blog. But I am getting a taste of what it is like to think about health and nutrition as someone who is poor. If there's not money for it I don't get it. If I do need it, I have to go into more debt to get it.
Which leads me to...bald tires. I was pleased with myself for having the connections to get my tires rotated, my brakes checked, my bike rack removed, and my clutch adjusted by a friend of a friend for a nice bottle of tequila. I thought this sort of cleverness was a very recessionista thing to do. I was even more pleased when, upon checking the brakes, the keeper of the Cuervo discovered they do not need to have the pads replaced. Also I was glad when he said I could get a chip in my windshield replaced and paid for by car insurance. Saving yours truly about $70.- $100.
Unfortunately the mechanic/acquaintance is a decent, upstanding and Subaru-savvy guy and he told me I would need 4 new tires before winter or the car would be too dangerous to drive. Fab. Also in 25,000 miles (not as far as it sounds) I need to do 100,000 mile maintenance which my good friend with the wrench assured me will cost around $2,000.
Recessionista reality check: $2,000 is the total debt I am painstakingly trying to pay off by next July. It was accumulated all over a period of years' worth of thoughtless spending and immature budgeting abilities. Not all in one day at a single auto shop.
I am wracking my brains trying to think of what I can sell in order to keep my car. What job can I do that will make me $2,000 before the end of the year? I don't even know how I am going to buy tires without going into more debt so this 100K maintenance is staring me down like a fire breathing dragon.
And my throat still hurts making me feel like a fire breathing dragon...guess that's another $20 visit to urgent care.
What's a recessionista to do?
Friday, September 11, 2009
Shout-out
A big ole shout out to M is for Money . This blog really has a lot of practical advice and no nonsense self awareness. The best part is that by the looks of the ad on both sides, this blog is monetized.
If you think I am in intense, be sure to check out M.
If you think I am in intense, be sure to check out M.
Thursday, September 10, 2009
Clip that goodness!
So I didn't have a change to brag about my awesome shopping trip this Saturday.
I went to safeway.com and checked out their coupons. They use coupon partner services. I signed up for all three but only was able to use two of them. My two favorites were P&G eSAVER and Shortcuts both of which allow you to upload the available coupons right onto your Safeway Club card. Coupons.com has a special program you have to download in order to print the coupons. I couldn't get it to actually print them. This could be because I have a Mac or because midway through the downloading process for the print program I forgot my administrative password and interrupted the thing. If you can get the printer program to download go for it, because they had a slighlt wider selection of coupons, including one I really wanted for contact solution, but alas I could not print. The whole process of checking out and uploading coupons online took about 30 minutes and it was totally worth it. Now my card is registered and I can upload coupons every time I go shopping.
I followed recessionista rule again writing down everything I picked up. I saved a record amount between my Club Card and the coupons just over $18. My goal for the next shopping trip is to save $20. I am working on going through all the fresh food first so I don't waste anything this pay period. My total grocery expenditure was about $85. I spent about $26 of that at Whole Foods, which is more expensive but carries gluten-free bread, which is nice to have. Whole Foods is also the only place I will buy meat because I can garantee nothing strange has happened to it. After making fajitas with my roommate yesterday I have decided that if I am going to buy beef, I have to buy much more expensive cuts than the ones I have been getting, cooked down the cheaper round or flank steaks are almost too tough to eat. So I have to plan ahead to get good beef.
And while we are on the subject of food, on Monday I went to Zatinya in Chinatown. It is probably the most delicious meal I will have all month. It's a place to eat delicately seasoned meats and well paired vegetables. The portion sizes are not North American-sized, but five tapas-sized orders were perfect for two people. There were only Greek wines on the menu, but this had the pleasant effect of causing me to branch out beyond my South American predispositions.
And the Recessionist was lucky enough to enjoy this meal in the company of a gentleman so in a rare occurance for this blog, she does not know what it cost.
I went to safeway.com and checked out their coupons. They use coupon partner services. I signed up for all three but only was able to use two of them. My two favorites were P&G eSAVER and Shortcuts both of which allow you to upload the available coupons right onto your Safeway Club card. Coupons.com has a special program you have to download in order to print the coupons. I couldn't get it to actually print them. This could be because I have a Mac or because midway through the downloading process for the print program I forgot my administrative password and interrupted the thing. If you can get the printer program to download go for it, because they had a slighlt wider selection of coupons, including one I really wanted for contact solution, but alas I could not print. The whole process of checking out and uploading coupons online took about 30 minutes and it was totally worth it. Now my card is registered and I can upload coupons every time I go shopping.
I followed recessionista rule again writing down everything I picked up. I saved a record amount between my Club Card and the coupons just over $18. My goal for the next shopping trip is to save $20. I am working on going through all the fresh food first so I don't waste anything this pay period. My total grocery expenditure was about $85. I spent about $26 of that at Whole Foods, which is more expensive but carries gluten-free bread, which is nice to have. Whole Foods is also the only place I will buy meat because I can garantee nothing strange has happened to it. After making fajitas with my roommate yesterday I have decided that if I am going to buy beef, I have to buy much more expensive cuts than the ones I have been getting, cooked down the cheaper round or flank steaks are almost too tough to eat. So I have to plan ahead to get good beef.
And while we are on the subject of food, on Monday I went to Zatinya in Chinatown. It is probably the most delicious meal I will have all month. It's a place to eat delicately seasoned meats and well paired vegetables. The portion sizes are not North American-sized, but five tapas-sized orders were perfect for two people. There were only Greek wines on the menu, but this had the pleasant effect of causing me to branch out beyond my South American predispositions.
And the Recessionist was lucky enough to enjoy this meal in the company of a gentleman so in a rare occurance for this blog, she does not know what it cost.
Monday, September 7, 2009
Only you can prevent wildfires
Woke up this morning to an email from eHarmony letting my know that they went ahead an renewed my dating-experiment-for-the -summer subscription to the tune of $30. I of course did not budget $30 for any such thing this month and it will be causing some fiscal pain. In further unfortunate news, it is a holiday. So I can't call my bank to have them stop payment, eHarmony doesn't even have a phone number you can call them on, and there is apparently no function on online banking that lets me stop a charge that I did not authorize. In the words of T-Pain "you've officially be chopped and screwed."
Which leads me to today's painful lesson-- only you can prevent wildfires. Only you can protect yourself and your accounts. Everyone else wants to make, take, or steal your money and only you can keep it from happening. Maybe that sounds a little dramatic but since I started this blog $30 has a whole new significance and the loss of such a sum IS dramatic, especially since I have lost it to something which does not benefit me in the slightest (yeah, the summer experiment went that well.) I will have to make it up. Right now I am considering canceling my haircut, looking for a baby sitting job, and cutting out my second paycheck grocery budget.
It also leads me to bigger questions. What if this really were fraud and not just a really underhanded move from eHarmony? There is apparently nothing I can do about it today. I would have to wait until tomorrow while someone could be out there using my debit card and completely draining my account. There's no back up. There's no insurance for that. If my account gets drained and I can't pay my bills, that's it. I would have to put everything on the credit card for a few months and borrow money from other people to pay the credit card bill. My efforts from the last two months would be completely negated. I would be even more in the hole than before.
This shakes my faith in ANYTHING online from memberships to bill pay. Be warned that eHarmony might be a good idea for dating (it certainly wasn't for me, but that's a separate issue), but they automatically renew your subscription without any prior notification. This is a shallow move for a company that claims to have both integrity and your best interests in mind. The Recessionista will be boycotting eHarmony and any of its affiliates.
So when I do get ahold of the bank tomorrow we are going to have a long talk about security. And if they can't give me some reasonable assurances about fraudulent charges and protections I will be switching banks the same day. I got into this whole thing to control my money and today I failed in that mission. Money went somewhere without my explicit permission. I can't afford to lose even $30, I can't imagine what would happen if I lost my account balance.
The Recissionista is fired up.
Friday, September 4, 2009
Write that down!
So today is payday. I am going to try to keep track of every dollar I spend from now until the next payday. So far I have sent $244 worth of reimbursements to the Bank of America Visa. I also spent $1 on cream cheese at the cafe in the Capitol. Yes, I am planning on being that fanatical. No, I won't blog every purchase. Just the trends.
I also have some lessons learned from the last two weeks.
- If you buy fresh food you have to eat it all in the first week or so for it to be a good investment. It will go bad if you try to save it/ ration it out. Threw away kale, milk, broccoli and squash because they went bad before I could use them. This observation leads me to wonder if my dining choices come in cycles where the first and third weeks of the month are full of healthy food and the other two weeks I pop open cans and eat more processed goods. Perhaps I will spread out the shopping this cycle get more diversity of fresh ingredients.
- I have for a very long time, had a bad habit of using reimbursement checks from work or FlexSpending as cash on hand. I use the Visa for reimbursable health care and work expenses and the debt was piling up because I wasn't actually reimbursing myself. So this time around I kept tabs on the reimbursement checks and sent the exact amount to Visa on payday. We won't be going back to that habit again.
- I had $27 dollars left the day before payday. So my budget is close to accurate, but I still need to be saving more. Those last few days were definitely in the trenches. I even thought about leaving my wallet at home, but it turns out that just the knowledge that there's only $27 bucks in there is enough to keep you from opening it.
- I spent close to $50 in gas and didn't fill up all the way either time. So gas costs more than the $60 I budgeted for it.
Speaking of the car I am getting the oil changed on the car this weekend and the brake pads replaced next week. I will need to crunch the numbers and factor it in before I go grocery shopping. Additionally I gave my friend Anna $50 for lodging at her wedding and I sent another $50 check to a non-profit for an event in October. I have to count that $100 as gone starting right now or I will get a nasty shock when it is actually gone.
In fact looking at costs and bills I ALREADY know are coming I have a little over $500 for the rest of the month. This is why I have vowed to record where the heck that goes so I am not in the trenches until October 5th.
Whew! Reality bites.
I also have some lessons learned from the last two weeks.
- If you buy fresh food you have to eat it all in the first week or so for it to be a good investment. It will go bad if you try to save it/ ration it out. Threw away kale, milk, broccoli and squash because they went bad before I could use them. This observation leads me to wonder if my dining choices come in cycles where the first and third weeks of the month are full of healthy food and the other two weeks I pop open cans and eat more processed goods. Perhaps I will spread out the shopping this cycle get more diversity of fresh ingredients.
- I have for a very long time, had a bad habit of using reimbursement checks from work or FlexSpending as cash on hand. I use the Visa for reimbursable health care and work expenses and the debt was piling up because I wasn't actually reimbursing myself. So this time around I kept tabs on the reimbursement checks and sent the exact amount to Visa on payday. We won't be going back to that habit again.
- I had $27 dollars left the day before payday. So my budget is close to accurate, but I still need to be saving more. Those last few days were definitely in the trenches. I even thought about leaving my wallet at home, but it turns out that just the knowledge that there's only $27 bucks in there is enough to keep you from opening it.
- I spent close to $50 in gas and didn't fill up all the way either time. So gas costs more than the $60 I budgeted for it.
Speaking of the car I am getting the oil changed on the car this weekend and the brake pads replaced next week. I will need to crunch the numbers and factor it in before I go grocery shopping. Additionally I gave my friend Anna $50 for lodging at her wedding and I sent another $50 check to a non-profit for an event in October. I have to count that $100 as gone starting right now or I will get a nasty shock when it is actually gone.
In fact looking at costs and bills I ALREADY know are coming I have a little over $500 for the rest of the month. This is why I have vowed to record where the heck that goes so I am not in the trenches until October 5th.
Whew! Reality bites.
Wednesday, September 2, 2009
Squirrels
That's right. Squirrels.
That's my topic today. Why? Because like boy scouts and mothers of toddlers they prepare.
As the air cools three or four degrees returning the District of Columbia to a tolerable state, I am reminded that I need to prepare for the winter so I don't get caught off guard by costs that happen that time of year. I'm not just talking about Christmas gifts and birthday gifts for my brothers (October and December), but also the fact that the gas bill will double and I will have to start wearing tights again. (Yes, I am one of those girls- Good tights = $$)
So here is my list of preparations I need to make for the winter and expenditures that I can spread out over September and October so that the combination of the gas bill and dry cleaning my overcoat don't break the bank around Thanksgiving.
1) Coats- I have a pea coat and and over coat. They both could stand a good dry cleaning. The overcoat needs all new buttons. I think I will do the dry cleaning in the burbs at one of those $1.25/ garment places. Suggestions? As for the buttons, I really do need to pay a professional. The reasons the coat needs new buttons again is because I did sloppy job replacing them the first time. These coats however are a huge source of recessionista pride. I bough both of them at a trunk sale at my old office for $100. Not $100 each. Two wool winter coats for $100. So they are worth the tailor's fee and a full set of buttons.
2) Cancel the cable- I have talked this over with the roommate. The landlord is providing free wireless Internet. We don't watch the actual TV, we mostly Hulu.com our shows. The 6-month promo rate is going to run out and we could use the $50 for heat. This is one of those things I have been putting off for no good reason. Just gotta do it.
3) Car maintenance- There are just certain things you've just got to do to winterize your car. My car has been through an awful lot in the last year and I want to make sure that my brakes are good to go and it has new fluids. Starting this weekend we'll get the oil changed and then next week I am taking it to a friend of a friend (no expensive garages here) to get the brake pads replaced. It is pretty painful to spend money on the car, but it beats huge repairs when you least expect them.
4) Clothes- This is going to be very hard. I need to do a very strategic assessment of the entire wardrobe and zero in on only the things I really need. I hereby vow to not put ANYTHING on the Macy's card because of what they did to me when I missed one payment. When that card is fully paid off --$77 to go!--it's getting sliced and diced. My balance on my Old Navy card, another piece of plastic I use for clothing, is pretty high too. So I am hoping to minimize usage on that, but I can't rule it out completely yet. This might be one of those times I actually put cash in a jar so that I can get one new sweater, one new suit, one pair of boots, one...ect. I will stick to the basics and...shop only TJ Maxx, Ross, and thrift stores.
5) Crock Pot Recipes- My roommate, fabulous woman that she is, just got a crock pot which is perfect for hearty winter food and for storing food away for quick microwave meals. We already cut down the cost of black beans by making them in the pot. There are way too many (even for me) to eat this week so I am going to freeze them for future meals. Wish I could can them, but I think that's more of a capital investment. Crock pot recipes last all week, cook while you are gone (or asleep) and you can freeze the chili, soup, sauce, casserole, etc for later. So please, please send me you favorite winter crock pot recipes, keeping in mind that the cost of ingredients should be worth what I will get out of it.
And finally my last point on squirrels is that foraging is not just for nuts. I was walking the dog (side job #2) up Massachusetts Ave the other day and I saw this table that had clearly been built to go over the radiator. Since radiators present a counter space problem for my roommate's plants I went up to the owner of the house where the table was sitting in the yard. I asked how much she was selling the table for. And she said "You can have it." Free-sales are awesome and now my roommate's plants have a home and I have the itch to find other free things I need.
Craigslist anyone?
Monday, August 31, 2009
Faith in Money
Coin of Praise
By Simon Critchley
New York Times
Happy Days Blog
It is a peculiar fact that the severe economic turmoil of the past year has for the most part not led people to ask the most fundamental question about the root of all this angst: What is money?
Money is, of course, many things: the coins and notes rattling in our pockets, as well as the piles of real and virtual stuff lying in banks, or the smart money that tends towards disappearance and increasing immateriality, being shuffled electronically along the vectors of the financial networks.
That might serve as an initial, empirical description, but what does money really mean? What is the idea of money that we hold in our minds as we accept it, exchange it, squander it or save it? The core of money is trust and promise, “I promise to pay the bearer on demand the sum of…” on the British pound; the “In God We Trust” of the U.S. dollar; the BCE-ECB-EZB-EKT-EKP of the European Central Bank that runs like a Franco-Anglo-Germano-Greco-Finnish cipher across the top of every Euro note.
It’s not that we revere the things that money can buy. Rather, we venerate the money that enables us to buy those things.
In other words, the legitimacy of money is based on a sovereign act, or a sovereign guarantee that the money is good, that it is not counterfeit. Money has a promissory structure, with a strangely circular logic: money promises that the money is good. The acceptance of the promise is the approval of a specific monetary ethos. We all agree that the money is worth — in the best of circumstances — more than the paper on which it is printed. To buy and sell in the U.S. dollar, or any other currency, is to trust that each bill is making a promise that it can keep.
This ethos, this circular money-promising-that-the-money-is-good, is underwritten by sovereign power. It is worth recalling that gold coins called “sovereigns” were first minted in England under Henry VII in 1489 and production continues to this day. It is essential that we believe in this power, that the sovereign power of the bank inspires belief, that the “Fed has cred,” as it were. Credit can only operate on the basis of credence and credibility, of an act of fidelity and faith (fides), of con-fid-ence. As historians of language have shown, there is a strong etymological link between ideas of belief, faith and forms of economic exchange. The goddess Fides or trust was sometimes depicted on the verso of Roman coins. “In Fed We Trust,” as the title of David Wessel’s new book has it.
There is a theological core to money based on an act of faith, of belief. One can even speak of a sort of monetary civil religion or currency patriotism. This is particularly evident in attitudes in the U.S. to the dollar, particularly to the sheer material quality of the bill. It can also be found in the U.K.’s opposition to the Euro and to the strange cultural need for money marked with the Queen’s head, underwritten by the power of the sovereign, who is also — lest one forget — the head of the established church.
Plato defines a “simulacrum” as something that materializes an absence, an image for something that doesn’t exist in reality, for example the god Poseidon or Bob the Builder. Such is money, in my view. In the absence of any gold standard (but ask yourself, how real is the value of gold? Is it not simply yellowish metal?), money is only sustained through an act of faith, belief, promise and trust in sovereign power.
To push this a little further, we might say that in the seemingly godless world of global finance capitalism, money is the only thing in which we really must have faith. Money is the one, true God in which we all believe. It is this faith that we celebrate in our desire for commodities, in the kind of fetishistic control that they seem to have over us. It’s not so much that we revere the things that money can buy. Rather, we venerate the money that enables us to buy those things. In the alluring display of shiny brands that cover the marketplace, it is not so much branded objects that we desire, but rather those objects insofar as they incarnate a quantifiable sum of money.
To wear a brand is to display the money that was able to buy it. With us, it is not so much that the money-changers have desecrated the temple, but that the only temples where we can worship are places where money changes hands in some perverse parody of a religious service. This is the strange mass that we celebrate in the cathedral-like malls that litter the land.
It is an understandable misunderstanding of capitalism to declare that it is a materialism that consists of a voracious desire for things. I would argue that we love the money that enables us to buy those things for it reaffirms our faith and restores the only theological basis we have for our trust in the world. Money is our metaphysics. In that God we trust. And when trust breaks down, as it has done so dramatically in the last year, then people experience something close to a crisis of faith.
In response to this crisis, the only political response (by Obama-Geithner-Summers over here and Brown-Merkel-Sarkozy over there) is the attempt to restore faith, to shore up the credit systems by making governments the bank of last resort. Sadly — or happily for the politicians — people have short memories and their momentary crisis of faith is washed away in the waters of forgetfulness and overcome by a relentless will to believe.
Of course, as ever, Shakespeare elucidated this powerfully. In “Timon of Athens,” the protagonist speaks of money, in the form of gold, as “Thou visible God.” Fascinatingly, Timon goes on, “That sold’rest close impossibilities/And mak’st them kiss.” In other words, there is nothing that money cannot solder together. But this can be linked to another phrase from the same play: “Thou common whore of mankind.” Money, we might say, is both the visible God and the common whore.
As a learned philosopher once remarked, money is the pimp between need and object, making available all objects and objectifying all beings, especially human beings. In a society like ours, where money is the one true God, everything is for sale and everyone is a prostitute insofar as value can be ultimately determined in financial terms.
Of course, some readers may object that my approach is overly philosophical and doesn’t really seem to help if you’ve lost your house and medical insurance. True enough! But the curious thing about money is how something so real can at the same time be so illusory.
By Simon Critchley
New York Times
Happy Days Blog
It is a peculiar fact that the severe economic turmoil of the past year has for the most part not led people to ask the most fundamental question about the root of all this angst: What is money?
Money is, of course, many things: the coins and notes rattling in our pockets, as well as the piles of real and virtual stuff lying in banks, or the smart money that tends towards disappearance and increasing immateriality, being shuffled electronically along the vectors of the financial networks.
That might serve as an initial, empirical description, but what does money really mean? What is the idea of money that we hold in our minds as we accept it, exchange it, squander it or save it? The core of money is trust and promise, “I promise to pay the bearer on demand the sum of…” on the British pound; the “In God We Trust” of the U.S. dollar; the BCE-ECB-EZB-EKT-EKP of the European Central Bank that runs like a Franco-Anglo-Germano-Greco-Finnish cipher across the top of every Euro note.
It’s not that we revere the things that money can buy. Rather, we venerate the money that enables us to buy those things.
In other words, the legitimacy of money is based on a sovereign act, or a sovereign guarantee that the money is good, that it is not counterfeit. Money has a promissory structure, with a strangely circular logic: money promises that the money is good. The acceptance of the promise is the approval of a specific monetary ethos. We all agree that the money is worth — in the best of circumstances — more than the paper on which it is printed. To buy and sell in the U.S. dollar, or any other currency, is to trust that each bill is making a promise that it can keep.
This ethos, this circular money-promising-that-the-money-is-good, is underwritten by sovereign power. It is worth recalling that gold coins called “sovereigns” were first minted in England under Henry VII in 1489 and production continues to this day. It is essential that we believe in this power, that the sovereign power of the bank inspires belief, that the “Fed has cred,” as it were. Credit can only operate on the basis of credence and credibility, of an act of fidelity and faith (fides), of con-fid-ence. As historians of language have shown, there is a strong etymological link between ideas of belief, faith and forms of economic exchange. The goddess Fides or trust was sometimes depicted on the verso of Roman coins. “In Fed We Trust,” as the title of David Wessel’s new book has it.
There is a theological core to money based on an act of faith, of belief. One can even speak of a sort of monetary civil religion or currency patriotism. This is particularly evident in attitudes in the U.S. to the dollar, particularly to the sheer material quality of the bill. It can also be found in the U.K.’s opposition to the Euro and to the strange cultural need for money marked with the Queen’s head, underwritten by the power of the sovereign, who is also — lest one forget — the head of the established church.
Plato defines a “simulacrum” as something that materializes an absence, an image for something that doesn’t exist in reality, for example the god Poseidon or Bob the Builder. Such is money, in my view. In the absence of any gold standard (but ask yourself, how real is the value of gold? Is it not simply yellowish metal?), money is only sustained through an act of faith, belief, promise and trust in sovereign power.
To push this a little further, we might say that in the seemingly godless world of global finance capitalism, money is the only thing in which we really must have faith. Money is the one, true God in which we all believe. It is this faith that we celebrate in our desire for commodities, in the kind of fetishistic control that they seem to have over us. It’s not so much that we revere the things that money can buy. Rather, we venerate the money that enables us to buy those things. In the alluring display of shiny brands that cover the marketplace, it is not so much branded objects that we desire, but rather those objects insofar as they incarnate a quantifiable sum of money.
To wear a brand is to display the money that was able to buy it. With us, it is not so much that the money-changers have desecrated the temple, but that the only temples where we can worship are places where money changes hands in some perverse parody of a religious service. This is the strange mass that we celebrate in the cathedral-like malls that litter the land.
It is an understandable misunderstanding of capitalism to declare that it is a materialism that consists of a voracious desire for things. I would argue that we love the money that enables us to buy those things for it reaffirms our faith and restores the only theological basis we have for our trust in the world. Money is our metaphysics. In that God we trust. And when trust breaks down, as it has done so dramatically in the last year, then people experience something close to a crisis of faith.
In response to this crisis, the only political response (by Obama-Geithner-Summers over here and Brown-Merkel-Sarkozy over there) is the attempt to restore faith, to shore up the credit systems by making governments the bank of last resort. Sadly — or happily for the politicians — people have short memories and their momentary crisis of faith is washed away in the waters of forgetfulness and overcome by a relentless will to believe.
Of course, as ever, Shakespeare elucidated this powerfully. In “Timon of Athens,” the protagonist speaks of money, in the form of gold, as “Thou visible God.” Fascinatingly, Timon goes on, “That sold’rest close impossibilities/And mak’st them kiss.” In other words, there is nothing that money cannot solder together. But this can be linked to another phrase from the same play: “Thou common whore of mankind.” Money, we might say, is both the visible God and the common whore.
As a learned philosopher once remarked, money is the pimp between need and object, making available all objects and objectifying all beings, especially human beings. In a society like ours, where money is the one true God, everything is for sale and everyone is a prostitute insofar as value can be ultimately determined in financial terms.
Of course, some readers may object that my approach is overly philosophical and doesn’t really seem to help if you’ve lost your house and medical insurance. True enough! But the curious thing about money is how something so real can at the same time be so illusory.
Friday, August 28, 2009
Completely. Fascinating.
I think it might take me a while to get to this point. But I know people who, like the 1 billion mentioned in this story, live on $1 or less a day. Now it's a big diverse world and some of the folks I know abroad don't pay regularly for housing i.e. rent. But to just single out food and try to dedicate that cost to $1 is fascinating and a truly worthy goal. Special thanks to Brendan for pointing this out to me.
From Time Magazine's The Cheapskate Blog
"How to Eat on One Dollar a Day"
By Brad Tuttle
The next post in the continuing frugal gastronomy series features a pair of schoolteacher-writers who gave themselves the toughest of all restrictions: All their food had to cost no more than $1 per day per person. Amazingly, if they invited guests over to eat, the guests' food had to be covered by the $1 allotment. You'd have to really like the guest, I suppose.
Once again, I'll repeat: Eating on a budget is not a contest; it's a conversation. I've asked several other bloggers who write about their low-cost food adventures to answer questions similar to those posed to the 50 Bucks a Week trio, which started the entire conversation. The responses will be posted here to keep the conversation going.
Up today are Christopher Greenslate and Kerri Leonard, whose food budget averaged $1 per day per person for 30 days. They write the blog OneDollarDietProject.com, and their book, currently titled On a Dollar a Day, can be pre-ordered at Amazon.com and Borders.com.
Cheapskate: How and why did you start writing about eating on a tight budget? Did it spring out of necessity, as a lark, or what?
Christopher Greenslate & Kerri Leonard: Right before the worst of the recession hit, Kerri and I were in the checkout line at our local natural foods store and by the time the checker was finished ringing us up we stood in shock (and mild desperation) at the cost of our groceries. We were spending about $100 a week on groceries for the two of us, not including things like shampoo and dog food, and we felt like we were being priced out of our store. On the way out to the parking lot Kerri was exasperated and said we had to do something in order save money. Half joking, I said, "about a billion people live on a dollar a day … we could try that." Over the next couple of months the idea simmered and finally we decided that we would try it. We would eat on a dollar a day, each. We started the blog so that our friends and family could follow along.
CS: What are your ground rules? How exactly do you define what's in your budget and what meets your standards and restrictions? Give us the fine print, including how you deal with beverages and dining out (that is, if you ever dine out).
CG & KL: We had five rules for our experiment.
1. All food consumed each day must total $1 for each of us.
2. We could not accept free food or “donated” food unless it is available for everyone in our area (i.e. foraging, samples in stores, dumpster diving).
3. Any food we planted, we had to pay for.
4. We would do our best to cook a variety of meals; ramen noodles could only be prepared if there is no other way to stay under one dollar. (We had six packages and would buy no more.)
5. Should we decide to have guests over for dinner they must eat from our share; meaning they don't get to eat their own dollar's worth of food.
Some of the rules didn't end up applying, like number three; as schoolteachers starting up a new year, we simply did not have the time to start gardening.
In order to stay at a dollar or less, we only had to pay for what we actually cooked and ate. This gave us the ability to buy in bulk and pay the lowest price per ounce for everything we ate. So we bought things like a 25 lb. bag of pinto beans for $15, but an actual serving would cost us seven cents, and something like rice would cost 11 cents. For things like homemade tortillas, we would have to calculate the cost of the flour and shortening and figure out the cost of a batch. Then divide the cost of the batch by the number of tortillas we could get from it. They ended up being about five cents each.
The thought of dining out never crossed our minds; we simply assumed in was not possible. If we had gone to a place like Taco Bell for lunch and ordered the cheapest thing on the menu, Triple Layer Nachos, that would have cost 79 cents, leaving us almost nothing for breakfast or dinner. The dollar menu at McDonald's would have given us only a salad for the whole day. What you're getting at those places is pretty expensive when you consider how we ate. What you're really paying for is convenience. So eating out was out of the question.
CS: What are some of your favorite cheap ingredients or spices -- you know, the little something that doesn't cost much but adds a lot to a meal?
CG & KL: The basics like salt, pepper, and garlic were our biggest go-to seasonings. If you like things spicy, Jalapeños are usually cheap. Spices are pretty expensive though. The best things you can do to save money on food are: plan menus in advance, buy in bulk if you can, plant something, prepare food from scratch (especially things like bread), and don't let anything go to waste. Most people don't have the time, money, skill, or interest in doing things like this, but if you're serious about saving money of food, you have to start somewhere. You stretch yourself, and do what you can.
CS: What has been the hardest thing to do, or to go without, since you started cooking and eating on a supertight budget? What are you dying to splurge on and eat right now?
CG & KL: The hardest things we dealt with were: finding time to cook, getting bored with eating the same things frequently, and overcoming urges. Right now I would love to have some Peanut Butter Bomb Vegan Cheesecake from Gianna's in Philadelphia, but that be an unnecessary and costly batch of calories. For me, it's those sweet and fatty comfort foods that are hardest to stay away from. Which is true for lots of people. Nutritionally speaking they're outrageously expensive, but they are also delicious. I would love to have a root beer, but it would cost my wallet, and my body. I would be better off having some fruit salad, and a small glass of soymilk, which would be cheaper and more healthful.
CS: When you told people about your food budget, what sort of reactions did you get?
CG & KL: People were pretty stunned, which is why we ended up doing interviews with the New York Times, People Magazine, Fox & Friends, and NPR. I think what was most fascinating was the fact that millions of people heard about what we were doing and each person had a different response. People said things like, "They proved you could eat well on a dollar a day," and others would say, "They proved you couldn't eat well on a dollar a day." People would read the exact same thing and come to completely opposite conclusions. It has been truly fascinating.
CS: In the big, grand, save-the-world sense, what have you learned about yourselves, and about how people in general consume food and function as consumers, while you've been blogging about eating on the cheap?
CG & KL: The best part of this whole thing is that a lot of folks visit our blog and share their own stories with us. We hear from moms in the Midwest who are struggling to feed their families after being laid off, and from middle-upper class fathers who want to get involved to help with hunger issues. The responses have been overwhelmingly positive, but I think that's because more people than ever are in need of help, and regardless of competing ideologies, at our core we don't want to see people suffer. Our project to eat on a dollar a day assisted in bringing some of these issues to the surface. Everyone needs to eat, but not everyone can afford it. There are innumerable paths to choose from for people who want to get involved in food issues, like cost, or health, or safety, you just have to start where you're at. For us, that meant our kitchen. We still have a lot to learn, which has prompted some new experiments in the economics of eating well, all of which will be recounted in our forthcoming book on Hyperion in January.
From Time Magazine's The Cheapskate Blog
"How to Eat on One Dollar a Day"
By Brad Tuttle
The next post in the continuing frugal gastronomy series features a pair of schoolteacher-writers who gave themselves the toughest of all restrictions: All their food had to cost no more than $1 per day per person. Amazingly, if they invited guests over to eat, the guests' food had to be covered by the $1 allotment. You'd have to really like the guest, I suppose.
Once again, I'll repeat: Eating on a budget is not a contest; it's a conversation. I've asked several other bloggers who write about their low-cost food adventures to answer questions similar to those posed to the 50 Bucks a Week trio, which started the entire conversation. The responses will be posted here to keep the conversation going.
Up today are Christopher Greenslate and Kerri Leonard, whose food budget averaged $1 per day per person for 30 days. They write the blog OneDollarDietProject.com, and their book, currently titled On a Dollar a Day, can be pre-ordered at Amazon.com and Borders.com.
Cheapskate: How and why did you start writing about eating on a tight budget? Did it spring out of necessity, as a lark, or what?
Christopher Greenslate & Kerri Leonard: Right before the worst of the recession hit, Kerri and I were in the checkout line at our local natural foods store and by the time the checker was finished ringing us up we stood in shock (and mild desperation) at the cost of our groceries. We were spending about $100 a week on groceries for the two of us, not including things like shampoo and dog food, and we felt like we were being priced out of our store. On the way out to the parking lot Kerri was exasperated and said we had to do something in order save money. Half joking, I said, "about a billion people live on a dollar a day … we could try that." Over the next couple of months the idea simmered and finally we decided that we would try it. We would eat on a dollar a day, each. We started the blog so that our friends and family could follow along.
CS: What are your ground rules? How exactly do you define what's in your budget and what meets your standards and restrictions? Give us the fine print, including how you deal with beverages and dining out (that is, if you ever dine out).
CG & KL: We had five rules for our experiment.
1. All food consumed each day must total $1 for each of us.
2. We could not accept free food or “donated” food unless it is available for everyone in our area (i.e. foraging, samples in stores, dumpster diving).
3. Any food we planted, we had to pay for.
4. We would do our best to cook a variety of meals; ramen noodles could only be prepared if there is no other way to stay under one dollar. (We had six packages and would buy no more.)
5. Should we decide to have guests over for dinner they must eat from our share; meaning they don't get to eat their own dollar's worth of food.
Some of the rules didn't end up applying, like number three; as schoolteachers starting up a new year, we simply did not have the time to start gardening.
In order to stay at a dollar or less, we only had to pay for what we actually cooked and ate. This gave us the ability to buy in bulk and pay the lowest price per ounce for everything we ate. So we bought things like a 25 lb. bag of pinto beans for $15, but an actual serving would cost us seven cents, and something like rice would cost 11 cents. For things like homemade tortillas, we would have to calculate the cost of the flour and shortening and figure out the cost of a batch. Then divide the cost of the batch by the number of tortillas we could get from it. They ended up being about five cents each.
The thought of dining out never crossed our minds; we simply assumed in was not possible. If we had gone to a place like Taco Bell for lunch and ordered the cheapest thing on the menu, Triple Layer Nachos, that would have cost 79 cents, leaving us almost nothing for breakfast or dinner. The dollar menu at McDonald's would have given us only a salad for the whole day. What you're getting at those places is pretty expensive when you consider how we ate. What you're really paying for is convenience. So eating out was out of the question.
CS: What are some of your favorite cheap ingredients or spices -- you know, the little something that doesn't cost much but adds a lot to a meal?
CG & KL: The basics like salt, pepper, and garlic were our biggest go-to seasonings. If you like things spicy, Jalapeños are usually cheap. Spices are pretty expensive though. The best things you can do to save money on food are: plan menus in advance, buy in bulk if you can, plant something, prepare food from scratch (especially things like bread), and don't let anything go to waste. Most people don't have the time, money, skill, or interest in doing things like this, but if you're serious about saving money of food, you have to start somewhere. You stretch yourself, and do what you can.
CS: What has been the hardest thing to do, or to go without, since you started cooking and eating on a supertight budget? What are you dying to splurge on and eat right now?
CG & KL: The hardest things we dealt with were: finding time to cook, getting bored with eating the same things frequently, and overcoming urges. Right now I would love to have some Peanut Butter Bomb Vegan Cheesecake from Gianna's in Philadelphia, but that be an unnecessary and costly batch of calories. For me, it's those sweet and fatty comfort foods that are hardest to stay away from. Which is true for lots of people. Nutritionally speaking they're outrageously expensive, but they are also delicious. I would love to have a root beer, but it would cost my wallet, and my body. I would be better off having some fruit salad, and a small glass of soymilk, which would be cheaper and more healthful.
CS: When you told people about your food budget, what sort of reactions did you get?
CG & KL: People were pretty stunned, which is why we ended up doing interviews with the New York Times, People Magazine, Fox & Friends, and NPR. I think what was most fascinating was the fact that millions of people heard about what we were doing and each person had a different response. People said things like, "They proved you could eat well on a dollar a day," and others would say, "They proved you couldn't eat well on a dollar a day." People would read the exact same thing and come to completely opposite conclusions. It has been truly fascinating.
CS: In the big, grand, save-the-world sense, what have you learned about yourselves, and about how people in general consume food and function as consumers, while you've been blogging about eating on the cheap?
CG & KL: The best part of this whole thing is that a lot of folks visit our blog and share their own stories with us. We hear from moms in the Midwest who are struggling to feed their families after being laid off, and from middle-upper class fathers who want to get involved to help with hunger issues. The responses have been overwhelmingly positive, but I think that's because more people than ever are in need of help, and regardless of competing ideologies, at our core we don't want to see people suffer. Our project to eat on a dollar a day assisted in bringing some of these issues to the surface. Everyone needs to eat, but not everyone can afford it. There are innumerable paths to choose from for people who want to get involved in food issues, like cost, or health, or safety, you just have to start where you're at. For us, that meant our kitchen. We still have a lot to learn, which has prompted some new experiments in the economics of eating well, all of which will be recounted in our forthcoming book on Hyperion in January.
Thursday, August 27, 2009
Honesty...is not such a lonely word
Well. The feedback has been awesome. Seriously excited about Clare's suggestion on eye glasses and also pretty excited about all the great free stuff I am planning with Amy. Particularly movie night and potluck...sign me up for that.
Over the last 24 hours I have found that the more I spread the good word about revamping my fiscal outlook the more generosity flows. It's a little like dieting. When you tell people that you're on a diet and that's why you aren't getting fries, a beer, etc, too often they protest and try to get you to eat something. When you fess up and honestly say it straight out, "Thanks guys but I can't pitch in tonight. I am just here for your smiling faces." Everyone wants to buy you a round while you hang out with them.
Mind you this is NOT the goal as I previously stated. I am not angling to be taken care of. I can afford a cold one, I just shouldn't direct my resources that direction. $8 can buy a whole lot of something else.
Another advantage I have is knowing the bartender. I only know a few, but a frosty glass of Yuengling in my hand is proof that they are true friends and very generous. As I overcome this budgetary boulder in my path I shall increasingly tip these people more and more.
So in the last 24-hours I have been outright spoiled by good friends. A few rounds with the bartender, a few bottles with office friends, cup of frozen yogurt with a good buddy. All this makes me think of the end goal of doing a financial overhaul.
The end goal is to be so financially stable that I can be that girl who shares with others, who gives great Christmas presents, who buys the bar a round, who can fly off and see her little sister for the weekend. I want to be so independent that I can be the good friend that mine are to me-- at least in a monetary sense.
Eyes on the prize
Over the last 24 hours I have found that the more I spread the good word about revamping my fiscal outlook the more generosity flows. It's a little like dieting. When you tell people that you're on a diet and that's why you aren't getting fries, a beer, etc, too often they protest and try to get you to eat something. When you fess up and honestly say it straight out, "Thanks guys but I can't pitch in tonight. I am just here for your smiling faces." Everyone wants to buy you a round while you hang out with them.
Mind you this is NOT the goal as I previously stated. I am not angling to be taken care of. I can afford a cold one, I just shouldn't direct my resources that direction. $8 can buy a whole lot of something else.
Another advantage I have is knowing the bartender. I only know a few, but a frosty glass of Yuengling in my hand is proof that they are true friends and very generous. As I overcome this budgetary boulder in my path I shall increasingly tip these people more and more.
So in the last 24-hours I have been outright spoiled by good friends. A few rounds with the bartender, a few bottles with office friends, cup of frozen yogurt with a good buddy. All this makes me think of the end goal of doing a financial overhaul.
The end goal is to be so financially stable that I can be that girl who shares with others, who gives great Christmas presents, who buys the bar a round, who can fly off and see her little sister for the weekend. I want to be so independent that I can be the good friend that mine are to me-- at least in a monetary sense.
Eyes on the prize
Tuesday, August 25, 2009
A busy recessionista
I am perfectly aware that this sort of piecemeal blogging is not the way to build a following. But I have been a VERY busy recessionista trying to get my ducks in a row. Here's a short summary of the recession-beating exploits of the last few weeks.
1) Breakfast with Catherine at her house.
Instead of going out to our favorite Alexandria, Va. coffee shop "Buzz" we met at Catherine's house to make pancakes and eggs. Saved some green, had a good breakfast, and a great conversation.
2) Conquering Safeway.
I had exactly $50 to spend on groceries to take me from the second paycheck of the month, which arrives on the 20th until my next payday on the 5th. I needed to cover food 100 percent leaving no room to eat out, grab a beer, or get a cup of coffee. I had to get breakfast, lunch, and dinner for two weeks in one trip-- and not spend more than $50.
I started by looking only for items on my list that also had a Safeway Club price or deals like 2/$5. The next step I took was to write down the exact price of everything that went in my cart. I was meticulous. I even weighed all my produce to calculate the price of a pound of bananas, heads of broccoli, two onions, a tomato, etc. I have one word for my fellow savvy shopper- kale.
Kale was $1.69 a pound, it's leafy, green, full of vitamins, easy to cook, and it's so light that a huge bag is much less than a pound. I got kale for the week for about $0.78.
Major deals were two pints of blueberries for $3.99. Two big boxes of Cornflakes for $5 (if all else fails at the end of my two weeks I can eat cereal and blueberries a few meals a day.) I also got 3 cans of my favorite legume, black beans for $0.99 a can. If you buy more than 10 containers of Yoplait you get them for $0.50 each. I love yogurt and you can freeze them and make them last longer.
My big splurges were cheese- a small block of mozzarella for sandwiches was over $3 at Safeway and bread- gluten-free bread from Whole Foods is around $5. I could probably save money by gathering gluten-free flours and making my own bread. I did find a decent Californian Cabernet for $4.99 at Whole Foods. The wine snobs can hush.
Safe to say I conquered the Safeway with a final bill around $47. It was probably the most I have ever saved on my Safeway Club Card- just over $15. I am trying to find a way to post my receipt on the blog. That's how proud I am of this shopping trip. So. Proud.
3) The second job.
You can't save it all. Sometimes you have to add money coming in. I just got a second job tutoring Spanish and College Essays after work and on the weekends. This is the most ideal second job I can think of. I can set my hours, work with as many clients as I can handle, and do something I love--teach! Additionally, as silly as it sounds to say, another job keeps me from going out to eat, grabbing a beer, going to baseball games-- all activities that cost money.
4) Coupons.
I am really getting serious about these. Especially with CVS. If you have a CVS Card you will get automatic coupons on your receipt. I have started to tear off the coupons and label them for what they are good for and keep them in my wallet, which I am likely to have with me when I go to CVS. I got $2 off Zyrtec, which is an allergy med I take everyday and got a 3 oz. tube of hand lotion for free. I also sent in the bottom of a receipt that promised a $5 coupon good toward any purchase. It took 2 seconds and I didn't even need a stamp, just did it right there at CVS.
5) A different way to pay.
I have been working on a different paradigm of how to pay the bills.
I completed the balance transfer for the zero-interest credit card. Payments started this month. With the second job, I hope to bump up what I am able to pay on it. Thankfully this has made the payments on the other card go way down as well. I am hoping to make those payments at more than the minimum as well. I am also making a comprehensive list of anything and everything that can be reimbursed from the FlexSpending Account. I have over $600 left and I plan to stock up on contacts and health care supplies, get new frames for my glasses, see the dentist, and get some Yoga classes paid back. There won't be a penny in there on December 31.
The biggest change I have made is paying all my bills on my first paycheck. I get two a month, but the second one is usually exclusively reserved for rent. And with rent going up by $60/ month in October, I will need to start treating the first paycheck like the only paycheck. I get that check on the 5th and all my bills- from credit cards, to cell phone, to car insurance, etc. are paid by the 7th. Then I know exactly how much I have to work with for groceries, gas, and what minimal discretionary spending there might be (read: not much).
Now the Recessionista need your feedback:
I miss my friends! I have barely been "out"all month. I went to see two baseball games (which cost a total of $30 for the cheap seats. $30 is probably the upper limit of my social budget for the month) I'd rather not spend any money on food or alcohol or well, anything, while I am out with my friends. I tried it twice this month. I made sure my water bottle was full at work and met some friends at a bar in Columbia Heights where I focused on conversation and not consumables. That went fine and I ate at home afterward. Baseball and beer go together really well. So the second baseball game was a little weird. (I got a surprise treat the first game!) But it wasn't the end of the world and my team won!
I don't want to be the cheap friend who never pitches in or buys a round and I don't want to be a complete recluse. My friends aren't there to buy things for me, either. How to I downsize my debt and still have friends? My breakfast with Catherine was a great example of how it can work, but even that involves an investment in groceries. I live in Washington, D.C. There have to be more free things in this city than anywhere else on Earth.
At the end of the day, no matter when I saw my friends last or how many days I have in the trenches until the next paycheck, I remember something wonderful my mom told me about her first few years of the working world. "Honey, some days it was all I could do to have a glass of wine and watch 'Dallas.'"
It's good to know that this penny-pinching seclusion is something most 20-somethings do. At least I have Hulu.com
1) Breakfast with Catherine at her house.
Instead of going out to our favorite Alexandria, Va. coffee shop "Buzz" we met at Catherine's house to make pancakes and eggs. Saved some green, had a good breakfast, and a great conversation.
2) Conquering Safeway.
I had exactly $50 to spend on groceries to take me from the second paycheck of the month, which arrives on the 20th until my next payday on the 5th. I needed to cover food 100 percent leaving no room to eat out, grab a beer, or get a cup of coffee. I had to get breakfast, lunch, and dinner for two weeks in one trip-- and not spend more than $50.
I started by looking only for items on my list that also had a Safeway Club price or deals like 2/$5. The next step I took was to write down the exact price of everything that went in my cart. I was meticulous. I even weighed all my produce to calculate the price of a pound of bananas, heads of broccoli, two onions, a tomato, etc. I have one word for my fellow savvy shopper- kale.
Kale was $1.69 a pound, it's leafy, green, full of vitamins, easy to cook, and it's so light that a huge bag is much less than a pound. I got kale for the week for about $0.78.
Major deals were two pints of blueberries for $3.99. Two big boxes of Cornflakes for $5 (if all else fails at the end of my two weeks I can eat cereal and blueberries a few meals a day.) I also got 3 cans of my favorite legume, black beans for $0.99 a can. If you buy more than 10 containers of Yoplait you get them for $0.50 each. I love yogurt and you can freeze them and make them last longer.
My big splurges were cheese- a small block of mozzarella for sandwiches was over $3 at Safeway and bread- gluten-free bread from Whole Foods is around $5. I could probably save money by gathering gluten-free flours and making my own bread. I did find a decent Californian Cabernet for $4.99 at Whole Foods. The wine snobs can hush.
Safe to say I conquered the Safeway with a final bill around $47. It was probably the most I have ever saved on my Safeway Club Card- just over $15. I am trying to find a way to post my receipt on the blog. That's how proud I am of this shopping trip. So. Proud.
3) The second job.
You can't save it all. Sometimes you have to add money coming in. I just got a second job tutoring Spanish and College Essays after work and on the weekends. This is the most ideal second job I can think of. I can set my hours, work with as many clients as I can handle, and do something I love--teach! Additionally, as silly as it sounds to say, another job keeps me from going out to eat, grabbing a beer, going to baseball games-- all activities that cost money.
4) Coupons.
I am really getting serious about these. Especially with CVS. If you have a CVS Card you will get automatic coupons on your receipt. I have started to tear off the coupons and label them for what they are good for and keep them in my wallet, which I am likely to have with me when I go to CVS. I got $2 off Zyrtec, which is an allergy med I take everyday and got a 3 oz. tube of hand lotion for free. I also sent in the bottom of a receipt that promised a $5 coupon good toward any purchase. It took 2 seconds and I didn't even need a stamp, just did it right there at CVS.
5) A different way to pay.
I have been working on a different paradigm of how to pay the bills.
I completed the balance transfer for the zero-interest credit card. Payments started this month. With the second job, I hope to bump up what I am able to pay on it. Thankfully this has made the payments on the other card go way down as well. I am hoping to make those payments at more than the minimum as well. I am also making a comprehensive list of anything and everything that can be reimbursed from the FlexSpending Account. I have over $600 left and I plan to stock up on contacts and health care supplies, get new frames for my glasses, see the dentist, and get some Yoga classes paid back. There won't be a penny in there on December 31.
The biggest change I have made is paying all my bills on my first paycheck. I get two a month, but the second one is usually exclusively reserved for rent. And with rent going up by $60/ month in October, I will need to start treating the first paycheck like the only paycheck. I get that check on the 5th and all my bills- from credit cards, to cell phone, to car insurance, etc. are paid by the 7th. Then I know exactly how much I have to work with for groceries, gas, and what minimal discretionary spending there might be (read: not much).
Now the Recessionista need your feedback:
I miss my friends! I have barely been "out"all month. I went to see two baseball games (which cost a total of $30 for the cheap seats. $30 is probably the upper limit of my social budget for the month) I'd rather not spend any money on food or alcohol or well, anything, while I am out with my friends. I tried it twice this month. I made sure my water bottle was full at work and met some friends at a bar in Columbia Heights where I focused on conversation and not consumables. That went fine and I ate at home afterward. Baseball and beer go together really well. So the second baseball game was a little weird. (I got a surprise treat the first game!) But it wasn't the end of the world and my team won!
I don't want to be the cheap friend who never pitches in or buys a round and I don't want to be a complete recluse. My friends aren't there to buy things for me, either. How to I downsize my debt and still have friends? My breakfast with Catherine was a great example of how it can work, but even that involves an investment in groceries. I live in Washington, D.C. There have to be more free things in this city than anywhere else on Earth.
At the end of the day, no matter when I saw my friends last or how many days I have in the trenches until the next paycheck, I remember something wonderful my mom told me about her first few years of the working world. "Honey, some days it was all I could do to have a glass of wine and watch 'Dallas.'"
It's good to know that this penny-pinching seclusion is something most 20-somethings do. At least I have Hulu.com
Wednesday, July 29, 2009
Everything I know about recession, I learned in Ecuador
**Cross posting from a previous blog, this post is helpful for understanding how I came to be a recessionista.
My generation is coming of age during the most unprecedented economic downturn in modern history. Unemployment is creeping toward 9 percent, the stock market tumbles everyday, prices for food and gas and health care are rising. Our neighbors, friends, and relatives are losing the houses they live in. Violent crime is climbing upward. This might be the worst time to graduate college in the past 3 decades; this might be the worst time to search for your first job. But I have been through recession boot camp. Everything I know about recession, I learned in a small invasion town in southwestern Ecuador.
10. Crime happens. A lot. (But if you're smart it might not happen to you)We were 11 out of possibly 20 North Americans living in Duran. We stuck out. And yet, we rode the buses, worked at schools full of street children, visited prisons and public hospitals and walked down the streets of Ecuador's most dangerous metropolitan area. But... we didn't wear fancy watches, we didn't wear nice jewelry, we carried $5 or less for the bus and Pura Crema.
And I am not about to deny the fact that we lived in a gated compound with 24-hour guards. That helped. Some of the guys did get robbed on the bus. But the difference between our potential as targets of crime and the actual occurrence of crime was great. This was because we were prepared and we knew our neighbors.
9. Know your neighbors.As strange as it was, being artificially inserted into a neighborhood in a slum in a foreign country, getting to know our neighbors was easy. We were pathetic at first. Unfamiliar with the language and customs. Barely able to buy supplies and cook for ourselves. Everyone wanted to know the new "gringos," everyone wanted to help us out, teach us new things, introduce themselves and have us over for dinner. Because they knew us and they knew everyone else, our greatest protection for ourselves and our guests was their presence.
In our country it is much more difficult to get to know your neighbors. (though much like our start in Arbolito, it will be equally awkward) But knowing and caring about the people on your street, in your building, at your work and at your church, expands the safety net of people who care about you and will look out for you. Having a big web of people who care about you is social protection, in a time when we (slightly individualistic Americans) are having a hard time protecting ourselves.
8. Lunch is the most important meal of the day. After I pay all those things I am obligated to pay: rent, loans, insurance, and taxes, the next and most important expense is food. Ecuadorians, at least my fellow residents of Arbolito, don't eat large breakfasts, in fact sometimes breakfast is just called "cafe" or coffee, since it probably just a cup of instant coffee and a roll or two. Additionally, by law Ecuadorian employers are obligated to provide one meal per 12-hour shift to their workers. Lunch is a pretty good investment. Lunch, whether at work or in the home, is the biggest meal of the day. Most moms I knew would also save portions of lunch for a light dinner (dinner is almost always light) and stretch lunch into two meals. The conclusions of this are: eat lunch, eat free lunch when at all possible, make lunch count, and save your money on the other meals of the day. As an American, where dinner is bigger, you can reverse this thinking a little and take leftovers from dinner for lunch. But even this saves money.
7. Be clean. And iron.No matter how poor the family in Arbolito, everyone has an iron. It doesn't matter if a kid slept on the floor or didn't eat that day or couldn't afford a notebook- that kid looks like a million bucks when she walks out of the house in her school uniform. I ironed more in Ecuador than I do now. But ironing more would save me money in dry cleaning bills. And while having Armani is nice, in tough times, looking sharp in whatever clothes you've got is key. You look good, you feel good and all of that helps you get a job or keep your job and no one has to know that your clothes aren't new. There's no shame in being broke, but there is pride in looking clean and pressed.
6. Work hard.The official wage earner's work day in the U.S. is 8 hours. And if you get sick and you can't work all 8 hours, chances are good they will pay you for the hours you do work. That's not to say that the labor/wage system in the U.S. is perfect, but it has improved considerably since the dawn of unions and the Department of Labor. In Ecuador most wage earners must work a full 12 hours to earn their pay. A good monthly salary? $160 a month. Everyone works hard and long. And then some of them come home and work on construction on their house or do laundry by hand or don't go home at all because they live in the house or factory they work in. So if you have a job work hard, if you don't have a job work as if finding a job were your full time job. And if you have to work two jobs, you are the same as 82 percent of the world's population. Give thanks for labor laws, social security, sick days and ERs that treat you even when you can't afford insurance.
5. There are free or at cost clinics out there. They're not perfect, but they work.The clinic I worked at to charged $1 for an adult visit and $0.50 for a child visit to see an M.D. or an OB/GYN or a dentist. We sold prescriptions at cost. We served very poor people and had to treat injuries and diseases that most North American doctors will never see. It was right down the street and all the volunteers went there for our checkups and parasite tests. But our little clinica wasn't the only one out there. If you don't have health insurance, it won't help your major health problems, but you can be seen by a doctor, get basic lab tests, and get generic prescriptions at cost. I have seen outright medical miracles worked by a nurse, a doctor, and the guy who guards the door.
4. Eat with other people.This is along the lines of the lunch lesson. But if you eat with other people, chances are that they will share in the effort of putting food on the table. The potluck is the ultimate social recession survival meal. It's not always meat and potatoes, but it is a lot of food in exchange for the one dish you had to bring. Sitting down with my community we not only shared in the same pot of locro de papa but in each other's struggles and experiences. We shared in the preparation of the meal, eating it, and clean up. Too many people think that to save money they have to eat less and eat alone. But sharing in the cost, effort and then the meal itself is a deeper community experience. In hard times I have to bring back my rule from college. I have to eat at least one meal a day with other people.
3. Enjoy simple pleasures.A long nap before dinner, a guanabana flavored Pura Crema on the bus, a coffee break at Lupe's house, lounging at Francisca's house watching novelas and getting our hair braided, movie night with AJS, blogging during recess at Mundo. All of these things were simple pleasures and except for the $0.25 Pura Crema, they were all free. We didn't have the money to go out to clubs often and we didn't have the lifestyle to go to the beach on the weekends. But we found simple pleasure's everywhere. If you look closely, you will probably find that the things you take the most pleasure in are simple things like a phone call home, a pizza with your roommate, a long walk or a chocolate-banana-peanut butter smoothie. (I highly recommend this last one)
2. The world can be conquered. It was a day when I was walking back from the dispensario. Past Patricia's shell house (it's a big brick house with bedrooms now, but at that point it was sad lean-to crudely assembled from the remains of their first house) Patricia and Diana were doing laundry. Scrubbing the harsh soap out of the jeans and T-shirts of their family, standing in the sun, rinsing by hand with the precious water from the tank. "Doña Patricia, que hay?" I called out. She looked up wiped the sweat from her forehead with a sudsy thumb and said, "Can't you see? We're conquering the world." And then she threw he head back and laughed a hearty, joyful laugh. From a pile of laundry to the job hunt to your thesis paper to paying off your credit card, the world can be conquered, but only one step at a time. Or as the great Billie Holliday once said "The impossible will take a little while." Which leads me to the most important thing that Ecuadorian people taught me.
1. Poco a poco.Call the U.S. economy a super tanker, a air craft carrier, a Mack truck...and it's still the same. The thing can't turn on a dime. It doesn't get better overnight, even if it gets bad all at the same minute. You can't learn Spanish in one day. You can't get a good manestra de lenteja right your first time. You have to go poco a poco. And this theory of little by little only works if you have hope. You have to believe that it will get better even if the increments are so small you can't even see or sense them. As North Americans go I am on the high end on a scale of impatience. I want immediate change, instant gratification. Most of us are like that though. We'd like the Dow to hit 14,000 again tomorrow. We want the kind of quick returns that hedge funds offer. We run up our credit cards, we don't want to save, it takes too long. But the truth I saw in Duran is that improvement DOES take too long. But we can only shoulder the burden of change with hope and go forward poco a poco.
My generation is coming of age during the most unprecedented economic downturn in modern history. Unemployment is creeping toward 9 percent, the stock market tumbles everyday, prices for food and gas and health care are rising. Our neighbors, friends, and relatives are losing the houses they live in. Violent crime is climbing upward. This might be the worst time to graduate college in the past 3 decades; this might be the worst time to search for your first job. But I have been through recession boot camp. Everything I know about recession, I learned in a small invasion town in southwestern Ecuador.
10. Crime happens. A lot. (But if you're smart it might not happen to you)We were 11 out of possibly 20 North Americans living in Duran. We stuck out. And yet, we rode the buses, worked at schools full of street children, visited prisons and public hospitals and walked down the streets of Ecuador's most dangerous metropolitan area. But... we didn't wear fancy watches, we didn't wear nice jewelry, we carried $5 or less for the bus and Pura Crema.
And I am not about to deny the fact that we lived in a gated compound with 24-hour guards. That helped. Some of the guys did get robbed on the bus. But the difference between our potential as targets of crime and the actual occurrence of crime was great. This was because we were prepared and we knew our neighbors.
9. Know your neighbors.As strange as it was, being artificially inserted into a neighborhood in a slum in a foreign country, getting to know our neighbors was easy. We were pathetic at first. Unfamiliar with the language and customs. Barely able to buy supplies and cook for ourselves. Everyone wanted to know the new "gringos," everyone wanted to help us out, teach us new things, introduce themselves and have us over for dinner. Because they knew us and they knew everyone else, our greatest protection for ourselves and our guests was their presence.
In our country it is much more difficult to get to know your neighbors. (though much like our start in Arbolito, it will be equally awkward) But knowing and caring about the people on your street, in your building, at your work and at your church, expands the safety net of people who care about you and will look out for you. Having a big web of people who care about you is social protection, in a time when we (slightly individualistic Americans) are having a hard time protecting ourselves.
8. Lunch is the most important meal of the day. After I pay all those things I am obligated to pay: rent, loans, insurance, and taxes, the next and most important expense is food. Ecuadorians, at least my fellow residents of Arbolito, don't eat large breakfasts, in fact sometimes breakfast is just called "cafe" or coffee, since it probably just a cup of instant coffee and a roll or two. Additionally, by law Ecuadorian employers are obligated to provide one meal per 12-hour shift to their workers. Lunch is a pretty good investment. Lunch, whether at work or in the home, is the biggest meal of the day. Most moms I knew would also save portions of lunch for a light dinner (dinner is almost always light) and stretch lunch into two meals. The conclusions of this are: eat lunch, eat free lunch when at all possible, make lunch count, and save your money on the other meals of the day. As an American, where dinner is bigger, you can reverse this thinking a little and take leftovers from dinner for lunch. But even this saves money.
7. Be clean. And iron.No matter how poor the family in Arbolito, everyone has an iron. It doesn't matter if a kid slept on the floor or didn't eat that day or couldn't afford a notebook- that kid looks like a million bucks when she walks out of the house in her school uniform. I ironed more in Ecuador than I do now. But ironing more would save me money in dry cleaning bills. And while having Armani is nice, in tough times, looking sharp in whatever clothes you've got is key. You look good, you feel good and all of that helps you get a job or keep your job and no one has to know that your clothes aren't new. There's no shame in being broke, but there is pride in looking clean and pressed.
6. Work hard.The official wage earner's work day in the U.S. is 8 hours. And if you get sick and you can't work all 8 hours, chances are good they will pay you for the hours you do work. That's not to say that the labor/wage system in the U.S. is perfect, but it has improved considerably since the dawn of unions and the Department of Labor. In Ecuador most wage earners must work a full 12 hours to earn their pay. A good monthly salary? $160 a month. Everyone works hard and long. And then some of them come home and work on construction on their house or do laundry by hand or don't go home at all because they live in the house or factory they work in. So if you have a job work hard, if you don't have a job work as if finding a job were your full time job. And if you have to work two jobs, you are the same as 82 percent of the world's population. Give thanks for labor laws, social security, sick days and ERs that treat you even when you can't afford insurance.
5. There are free or at cost clinics out there. They're not perfect, but they work.The clinic I worked at to charged $1 for an adult visit and $0.50 for a child visit to see an M.D. or an OB/GYN or a dentist. We sold prescriptions at cost. We served very poor people and had to treat injuries and diseases that most North American doctors will never see. It was right down the street and all the volunteers went there for our checkups and parasite tests. But our little clinica wasn't the only one out there. If you don't have health insurance, it won't help your major health problems, but you can be seen by a doctor, get basic lab tests, and get generic prescriptions at cost. I have seen outright medical miracles worked by a nurse, a doctor, and the guy who guards the door.
4. Eat with other people.This is along the lines of the lunch lesson. But if you eat with other people, chances are that they will share in the effort of putting food on the table. The potluck is the ultimate social recession survival meal. It's not always meat and potatoes, but it is a lot of food in exchange for the one dish you had to bring. Sitting down with my community we not only shared in the same pot of locro de papa but in each other's struggles and experiences. We shared in the preparation of the meal, eating it, and clean up. Too many people think that to save money they have to eat less and eat alone. But sharing in the cost, effort and then the meal itself is a deeper community experience. In hard times I have to bring back my rule from college. I have to eat at least one meal a day with other people.
3. Enjoy simple pleasures.A long nap before dinner, a guanabana flavored Pura Crema on the bus, a coffee break at Lupe's house, lounging at Francisca's house watching novelas and getting our hair braided, movie night with AJS, blogging during recess at Mundo. All of these things were simple pleasures and except for the $0.25 Pura Crema, they were all free. We didn't have the money to go out to clubs often and we didn't have the lifestyle to go to the beach on the weekends. But we found simple pleasure's everywhere. If you look closely, you will probably find that the things you take the most pleasure in are simple things like a phone call home, a pizza with your roommate, a long walk or a chocolate-banana-peanut butter smoothie. (I highly recommend this last one)
2. The world can be conquered. It was a day when I was walking back from the dispensario. Past Patricia's shell house (it's a big brick house with bedrooms now, but at that point it was sad lean-to crudely assembled from the remains of their first house) Patricia and Diana were doing laundry. Scrubbing the harsh soap out of the jeans and T-shirts of their family, standing in the sun, rinsing by hand with the precious water from the tank. "Doña Patricia, que hay?" I called out. She looked up wiped the sweat from her forehead with a sudsy thumb and said, "Can't you see? We're conquering the world." And then she threw he head back and laughed a hearty, joyful laugh. From a pile of laundry to the job hunt to your thesis paper to paying off your credit card, the world can be conquered, but only one step at a time. Or as the great Billie Holliday once said "The impossible will take a little while." Which leads me to the most important thing that Ecuadorian people taught me.
1. Poco a poco.Call the U.S. economy a super tanker, a air craft carrier, a Mack truck...and it's still the same. The thing can't turn on a dime. It doesn't get better overnight, even if it gets bad all at the same minute. You can't learn Spanish in one day. You can't get a good manestra de lenteja right your first time. You have to go poco a poco. And this theory of little by little only works if you have hope. You have to believe that it will get better even if the increments are so small you can't even see or sense them. As North Americans go I am on the high end on a scale of impatience. I want immediate change, instant gratification. Most of us are like that though. We'd like the Dow to hit 14,000 again tomorrow. We want the kind of quick returns that hedge funds offer. We run up our credit cards, we don't want to save, it takes too long. But the truth I saw in Duran is that improvement DOES take too long. But we can only shoulder the burden of change with hope and go forward poco a poco.
Saturday, July 25, 2009
Divide and Conquer
So today I took the first step toward paying off my credit card debt. I opened a new credit card.
I know, I know, sounds crazy. But this new credit card has zero percent interest on balance transfers for a year. So I will be taking half of the monstrous debt on my Visa and transferring it to the new card. Half is what I think I can reasonably pay off for the 12 months that the interest is nothing. Once the transfer is complete that card goes into a drawer never to be seen again. The interest rate will hopefully go down on the other card and I can make lower payments on the Visa, while maximizing payments on the new zero-interest AmEx.
Elizabeth Brokamp at the Motley Fool offers some good pointers:
What you need to know:
- You have a tough competitor. Credit card companies aren't making these offers out of the goodness of their hearts. They are gambling that they'll win, based on experience and hard numbers. "Winning" for them means that you'll fail to pay off your balance or neglect to switch your balance to another credit card before the grace period is up.
- There are few guarantees. Just because you're offered a teaser rate, it doesn't mean that you are guaranteed that rate, especially if your credit history is anything but spotless. Make sure that the 0% offer stays at 0% when your card comes in the mail.
- Look for 0% on both balance transfers and purchases. Some cards offer 0% on balance transfers but not on subsequent purchases. In addition, they require that you pay off the balance transfer amount first, leaving the new, higher-interest-rate charges buried underneath. For example, if you transfer $10,000 to take advantage of a balance transfer offer, and then charge $15 on the new card for that cute shirt you saw on sale, your payments will go toward the $10,000 first, while the $15 is accumulating interest charges at the normal (translation: outrageously high) interest rate.
- It pays to be choosy. Don't let the teaser rate make you turn a blind eye to the card's other features. You'll still want to shop for a credit card with no annual fee, for example, as well as looking at perks like cash-back plans and fraud liability coverage. If you decide to hold on to the card when your balance is paid off, you'll be happy you shopped around.
- Make sure "free" means free. Some credit card issuers charge fees for each balance you transfer to their card. Again, you'll want to check the fine print on the offer.
- Pay on time. Pay late even once and your low teaser rate will take a hike, leaving you with a new and much less desirable rate. You may also be slapped with a nasty penalty fee. To be absolutely sure you hold on to your good deal, you may want to set up automatic bill payment. Be sure you're paying more than the minimum monthly payment, however, so you can whittle down the balance.
- Stay organized. Take note of the date your 0% deal will end and mark it on your calendar. Now back up six to eight weeks and make another note on your calendar to shop around for another balance transfer offer just in case you haven't yet paid off the balance. Don't rely on the credit card company to remind you.
- Know when to fold 'em. Credit card companies know that you're trying to outfox them and will recognize a pattern of hopping around. That may hurt you in the long run by damaging your credit or causing all those low-introductory-rate offers to dry up. Credit card issuers simply won't want to waste their time on someone with a proven track record of cutting and running.
She works hard for the money
"Hi Dad, I need to borrow $200."
Thus began my quest to become a financially responsible adult. No self-respecting 25-year-old should ever have to say those dreaded words. But after 17 calls from a debt collecting agency in Hyderabad after one missed Macy's credit card payment, I was desperate. I had wiped out any small savings I had set aside last month registering my car at the DMV. If I wanted to close this card and get the ever-so-persistent-Hindi-speaking debt collectors to stop calling me, I was going to have to go to the bank of last resort- Dad.
The mortification at the realization of having only achieved semi-independence was too much to handle. If anything motivates a change it's having to tell your father that you've maxed out your first credit card. So this is it.
On this blog I will do my best to record the trials and tribulations of paying off my debts, cutting corners, managing my money, and being fabulous in a time that is somewhat less than fabulous. Please comment with your own experiences, tips and advice as no true recessionista operates alone.
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