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As I'm sitting at my desk reading the morning news sipping a cup of tea, I headed over to MSN earlier this morning to read whatever tippets of news they have decided to give me today. One of the writers, a woman named Donna Freedman, has been writing about her life of extreme poverty over the last couple of years. Now, I like Donna just fine, was even interveiwed by her last year for an article. She always had good suggestions on how to make due and stretch and all those things poor people have to do.
So I read her first article about how grand life is without a car. OK, well and good, but I live in TEXAS, not feasable, even in the cities. And I have a child who goes to school several miles away, across roads that I'M afraid to cross with a vehicle, let alone on foot. The store? Miles away also, across a freeway. (I live in the middle of the city, btw.) I've been without a car several times in my life. No thanks. The second one was how that if you couldn't get a job, you should dump your stuff and move. Uh, no. Let's tell our child that we're dumping his clothes, toys and pets and moving with nothing more than what we can get in the car. Oops, I forgot, we're not supposed to HAVE a car! The third one I couldn't even read by this point. What has possessed MSN to put these lame ass articles online?? If you REALLY want to help, how about things like a couple of years ago, more practical ideas like how to make a turkey last a month's worth of meals, or fix a torn garment. I guess they are just out of ideas. Glad I'm not.
Even though we are 'poor' by Austin standards, we are living a great life. We have income, great insurance, own a house, two of our three vehicles are paid for. We eat steak almost every week, due to my awesome grocery shopping abilities, taught to me by my Depression era mother and grandmother. I can sew well enough to repair our clothes instead of buying new every time a hem drops or a seam rips. I was a chef until I became unable to work due to physical problems, but even my 13 yr old son can cook well enough to not have to eat out every meal. (More of my doing, he will be totally ready when he leaves the nest.) While living our urban homestead lifestyle makes much more work for me, since I grow/raise some of our food, fix things that break, and figure out how to do without, it is still better than many other people have it.
I'm just not in the mood lately to hear people whine and cry about how bad they have it. One of my friends lives in San Francisco, is homeless, and still lives what he considers a good life, and wouldn't give it up, even when I offered to help him come back to Texas. I know what he means. We could sell everything, pack up, and move to a less expensive town. Ugh. I grew up in small town Texas, and have NO interest in going back.
Do I want to live the rock star life again? (Yes, I am a musician also, and DID live that life for some years.) Hell YEA! I'd love to be able to go out to eat on those days when my body has rebelled against me and it is all I can do to cook a simple meal. I'd love to be able to go clothes shopping without having to look at the price tag, even at Target. I want the swimming pool/hot tub/shiny new kitchen and bath. I want an Ipod, a laptop, a Wii. Will I die without these things? Obviously not, since I don't have them. There's an old saying, I forget who said it, "I've been rich, and I've been poor, rich is better." Couldn't agree more, but I'm also going to be practical while I wait to be rich again.
Was doing some reading this morning on Freegans, and either the practice has become more mainstream, the economy's getting better, or people just don't care any more. I didn't run across any new articles, and few old ones. I've dumpster dived (dumpster dove?) on and off all my life. It's like treasure hunting, sometimes you find the chest of gold, and sometimes you find a bunch of sand. Never done it for food though. I was getting culled produce from a local store, but they got bought out by Whole Paycheck, who doesn't allow for that, no siree Bob. (The 'hippy grocery store' from Austin Tx doesn't allow poor people to make use of their discards any more. Hhhmmm......) The bread store, instead of throwing out the no longer saleable but edible items to be scavenged, they slash the wrappers, rendering it unusable for human consumption and selling it for animal food. The two racks I picked up the other day for the chickens had just been slashed, the bread was all still soft. If you were really poor and hungry, it could be eaten. Thanks the Goddess we're not at that point. The latest thing for Corporate America to do since the freegans came out of the dumpster is to pour ammonia on any discarded food items, rendering them totally unusable, even for animals. Many places have locks on the dumpsters, for several reasons, mostly to keep people from dropping off their trash. I understand this, since they have to pay every time that dumpster is emptied, and also to keep some idiot from hurting themselves and suing. (We've all seen something like that.) But how hard would it to park discarded food products outside for awhile every day and let the poor take it? It would be an urban version of gleaning the fields, a practice that still goes on today, where poor people are allowed in the harvested fields and orchards to glean anything useable that the harvesters missed. It's probably a legal thing, but sometimes, morals need to step up. Come on Corporate America, we're all in this together.
We're fairly poor. Not homeless, not taking-the-bus poor, living w/o power poor, but for Austin, pretty poor. I don't really feel poor though. We've got pretty much everything we need except a lot of money. We're able to put away a little every month, are paying down debt and getting things fixed that need it. Most of the work falls on me, since much of frugal living is time/work related. Have you ever fixed a meal from scratch? OK, so add even more time on that if you raised the ingredients yourself. While we don't live on a rural farm, we do have our urban homestead, a nice little patch. Our home is in a non-deed restricted area. When I was house shopping back in the 90's, I wouldn't even consider a deed restricted property. Bad enough I have to deal with government telling me what I can and can't do, don't want the neighbors doing the same. We're living a fairly frugal life at the moment. And yet I wake up happy pretty much every single day, and go to bed happy almost every night. Would money make me any happier? A little, some worry would be removed, which would bump up the happiness scale a notch or two. All in all, things here on the homestead are good, we're happy, mostly healthy, enjoy life and each other. Life is busy, but good.
Doing some reading on the Web this morning, and just for fun typed in 'frugal Pagan'. Not too much stuff came up, but one page I read talked about how you didn't have to have "stuff" to be Pagan, like Tarot cards, wands, cups, tons of candles and incense, etc. Not being Wiccan, I never use any of these things in my daily rituals. OK, I take that back, there is a chalice on the altar outside, which is filled with fresh water every day for the Temple cats. Being frugal in any realm is a matter of mind, over matter, as it were. You think you need a wand? Go find a nice branch or twig fallen off a local tree that appeals to you. Chalice? Try a half of a walnut shell, or coconut shell, depending on how many people are in ritual. Cloth? Any will do, even a dish towel (Especially good for Earth mages, it has the kitchen energy in it already!) Candles can be made cheaply or bought even more cheaply at the dollar store. Incense can be anything fragrant, even dried grass, if that's all you can afford, or dried flowers from your yard/garden. It doesn't have to be the heavy imported-from-India stuff, it just needs to smoke and smell at least not noxious, it's the smoke that's the important part, not the incense itself. Sometimes people forget that it's the thought behind the ritual, not the actions themselves. Really, you only need yourself, and that's always with you!
Thanks to my son and husband, I got a brand new smaller crock pot for my birthday this year. The one I had was huge, old and a bitch to wash, since I have small sinks. Today I'm going to try cooking part of a brisket, I figure even if it isn't great as itself, I can always throw it back in with some barbque sauce and make sandwiches. Today is Experiment #2 on the great clotted cream debate. Now that Sister #1 has retired, she's looking for something to fill her days, so we are embarking on cooking together. Cutting back on eating out will save her more than she thinks. Since she lives in the other half of the state, and Texas isn't a small place, we'll be doing things seperately and compairing notes. Should be fun!
Welcome to the fist installment of my March month long series, How to Survive The Economic Meltdown For The Everyday Person 101. I looked around the other day, and it seems like while everyone else is tanking financially, we're doing ok, on half or less of what many other people are making at the moment. So I started thinking "Why is that?" Turns out, many reasons. Some easy, others not so much, but all doable by just about anyone. We're doing our best to live within our means, and it's not always fun or easy, but so far has been worth it.And what exactly does that mean? In most cases, effort. It takes effort to deny yourself something, and believe you me, I know, especially when looking down the barrel of a chocolate eclair. There's lots of things you can do, you just have to try everything and see what works best. Some things, however, are a must, like reducing your debt. First you have to stop creating it, then you have to whittle away at it until it's gone. It may never be gone, but it can definitely be made less of a burden. Here's some of the things we've used successfully so far to reduce our outstanding debt and still enjoy life;1. Pay yourself first.I can't stress this one enough. I'd heard this all my life from older relatives, and thought "What a silly outdated idea!" OK, so I was wrong. It really means 'Have cash/money in the bank at all times' which is a really, really good idea. I'm not talking Roth, 401k, money market accounts, etc. I'm talking the most basic of basic. There are a few ways to accomplish this on even the most limited budget. Cash is a good way to start out. For every day spending like food, gas, bus/cab fair, pay cash for anything you can. Now, get yourself a jar or can, and set a 'carry limit' for yourself, like you won't carry any denomination of cash with you larger than X. We started out putting all coinage in our jar. After awhile, it got to be a game, seeing how fast the jar filled up. We now put anything smaller than a $10 bill in the jar, and when the jar becomes full, it's off to the bank to savings. The jar is great for immediate emergencies where you have to have money RIGHT NOW, like for medical stuff, cab fare the day car breaks down an hour before you're supposed to be at work, less diapers in the box than you thought and it's all the money you have access to till Friday, fun things like that. We do sneak a fiver once or twice a year for something naughty, like Starbuck's. It is NOT for things like cigs and beer. You can get a savings account with very little effort. I started out with a basic no frills savings account at the local branch of a national bank. It didn't pay much in interest (like next to none!) but it was a good place to park some money. We eventually opened a higher interest account with an online bank. We've found this has been a great way to save, since it takes 3 business days to get the funds from the online bank to our local branch national bank, it forces us to think very hard about using it. You will be surprised how fast this adds up to a healthy savings. 2. Limited credit card usage. Credit card usage like it was meant to be. We try really hard to not use our cards, and to pay off any outstanding balances. Yes, weakness does strike when we see that Ultimate Thing we've been Wanting for Ever So Long. So if we do buy it, then nothing else goes on the card until that Ultimate Thing is paid off. And of course there are the unavoidable things, like my mother's death last year. Had to be dealt with, plastic was the solution at the time. We are still paying off debt from several years ago during a bad spell of no employment. It'll be a few years before that's gone, but it's shrinking, and that's the important thing. Small purchases are used to maintain the cards, like using it for gas and paying the balance every month. This will hopefully keep the credit card company from doing anything really nasty like dropping our limit or jacking the interest. Fingers crossed there, there's only so much when dealing with credit card companies that the consumer can do, except not use them at all, which can be it's own hassle, unless you've got enough cash in a debit account to cover things like rental cars, which need a credit card. Tune in this week for the next installment, paying down/off outstanding balances.
OK, so I've been really lazy and not posted anything for awhile. That doesn't mean that nothing's been going on tho. The holidays went by smoothly, we puppy-sat for my ex, which was fun, like having a grand-puppy to play with for a couple of days then sending it home. January and Febuary '09 are going to be our major stocking up months for this half of the new year. Come March, we enter another frugal period. We're shooting for two months this time, we'll see how it works out. Everything's getting stocked, right down to hobby items. We will be doing lots of cleaning/catching up projects around the homestead, and working on shifting our lifestyle back to a more home grown flavor.
So, I'm cruising the Net reading other ppl's frugal ideas, and I finally run across one that uses waste paper in a good way. Now, I've already got several uses for waste paper (junk mail, phone books, sale papers), such as hand made paper (fun, but really only usable for crafty stuff), worm bedding (White paper only), compost, filling in holes in the yard or putting in the bottoms of potted plants to keep the dirt from getting out of the holes. Still, we have bags and bags of paper lying around. Enter home made kitty litter! I ran across a website that uses waste paper to make kitty litter. So you are asking about now, "What's the deal, kitty litter isn't THAT expensive!" It is, when you have 11 cats. And with any luck, it won't track all over the place from the 3 cat boxes. I'm trying it today, I'll post more once it's done.
For those of you who are looking confusedly at the date right now, It's Samhain, the end of the old year and the beginning of the new one. If you really want to know more about it, here's the Wiki link: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SamhainNovember is our second frugal month. Until December 1, we will not spend any money except for bills, food, gas and medical needs. This one's gonna be a bit tighter than the previous one, since our food stockpile is running low. The chickens are cutting back on egg deliverys due to the shorter days, the fall garden's barely got a start, and no more freebie produce from the local natural foods store, as they've been bought out by a corporation in CA, and corporate policy is all culled produce must go into the dumpster to be taken to the landfill. They throw out at least 50-100 pounds of perfectly edible produce every DAY. Staggering to think of how many people that could feed. So, it probably won't be till tax refund time until the food stockpile is totally restocked. At least gas prices are dropping, thank the Goddess!
As we continue on our frugal lifestyle, I can see where many people are blindsided by all of a sudden loosing their lifestyle and having to adopt a more frugal one. I'm really glad I'm not one of them. I guess I'm just an old hippy at heart, I'm enjoying raising my own food, cooking from scratch, riding my scooter instead of driving the car. For the most part, my family seem healthier and happier, and definitely more appreciative of the things we do have. We're actually living better on less. I do get tired of it on occasion, but there are enough windfall periods that we don't really feel like we're missing out on much of anything. Of course we're worried about things, but we're doing a lot better than many people. We are still enjoying our life, but then, we've always been a little different. ;)Gonna try to do the frugal month every other month. November is the next one, which means holiday shopping is put off till December. No biggie really, since most of our gifts this year are home made, and it'll be a good time to work on them.
The month of Frugal Living is almost over. Except for one expenditure for eating out (We had free coupons, which did not, however, cover W's chicken strips and fries, cost $3.99) we stuck to our guns and didn't buy anything except necessities, food and gas. LOTS of coupons got used, and I am once again trying the library. Being back on the school schedule should make it a bit easier to get the books back on time, since I have to pick up W from school several times a week. While we would like to do this every other month, it'll have to wait until January, since the next month would be November, and I do my holiday shopping then. Yes, I COULD do it in October, or December, but there are several reasons I won't, the main one being that I use my earnings from surveys for the majority of it, and the closer I get to December, the more I will have saved up. We won't be going hog-wild in three days. There are a couple of things I want to get, and after seeing how much we were blowing on Half-Price Books, eating out and other stuff, we realized that it's not that hard to trim down our expenses and put the money in savings. We would like to be mostly debt free in 10 years, and we are halfway through Year 1. So far so good!
Update on the sun butter experiment, it was a success! The recipe does need a bit of tweaking tho. I used roasted salted seeds, which turned out WAY too salty. Mixed it half and half with roasted unsalted almonds, still salty, but edible. I will look and see if I can find unsalted roasted, or I might have to dry roast raw ones myself. Other than that, the butter was great, nutty and very tasty. At about .75/cup to make, this is definitely a keeper!
Even though we've been practicing frugal living for several years now, it occurred to me that we could be doing better. I started keeping track of things we were spending money on, like once a week trips to Starbucks, and once or twice a week eating out. When it comes down to it, it all adds up. So for the month of September, we are living very frugally. Instead of buying Teddy Grahams for the boys lunches, I spent a good part of Sunday in the kitchen, baking dried fruit and nut filled cookies. We also are resurrecting Meatless Nights, where once or twice a week we have a meat-free supper. (Last night was millet/chickpea patties, very tasty!) Something else we're doing is spending no money this month on anything except necessities. No trips to Half-Price Books, no eating out, no buying anything except food, medical stuff, and gasoline until October. This also includes no going out, unless it's to a free event, and then we take our own food and water, since we can't buy anything there. So far none of the free events have been anything we've been interested in, but hope springs eternal. The first week hasn't been too bad, except for S's trip to the game store to watch the new 40K rollout, but he managed to restrain himself from buying anything. (Way to go S!)Three and a half more weeks to go, then we can see how much cash we have at the end of the month, which will be put into savings. If it goes well, we're going to try doing it at least one month out of every three.
