Monthly Archives: September 2009

L’Shana Tova!

This weekend was Rosh Hashanah, the celebration of the Jewish new year. Tony and I aren’t Jewish, but we love to learn about and appreciate the spirituality of other cultures (especially when there’s delicious food involved), so we decided to make a traditional Jewish new year dish in honor of Rosh Hashanah.

One of the foods traditionally served on Rosh Hashanah is challah, a round sweet bread, to symbolize the cycle of the year. Apples and honey are often served to symbolize a “sweet” new year. In honor of both of these traditions, we baked apple-honey challah, and oh my goodness, it was more like a cake than a loaf of bread.

honey apple challah

We drizzled it with honey and served it for dessert last night and breakfast this morning. It’s a lot like a coffee cake: sweet, but not overwhelmingly rich. And the recipe is so simple.

I hope you all had a wonderful weekend, and to all of my Jewish readers, L’Shana Tova a day late!

Necessity is the mother of frugality

money jarTony will finish graduate school in May 2010, but after that he’ll have a semester of student teaching before he’s certified to teach. Right now he receives a stipend for teaching undergraduate classes, which he won’t receive while student teaching. Unfortunately, this means we’ll have to live on my income alone for about 7 months. The student teaching program is full time, and we’re hoping he’ll be able to work nights and weekends, but I don’t want to count on that considering the trouble he’s had searching for part time jobs in the past.

We’re also preparing ourselves for after the move. I’ve done a little research, and in the area where we’re moving, it looks like we can expect Tony to start somewhere between $32,000 and $35,000 as a high school teacher (according to what I read, he’ll be paid slightly more than a normal first year teacher because of his master’s degree and experience). Of course, this number is just an estimate. If you have any information about what starting teachers in the Indianapolis metro area make, by all means please pass it along!

I will continue to generate freelance income, but I won’t be working full time since we’re planning to start a family shortly after Tony finds a teaching job. Freelancing is feast or famine, so we don’t want to factor my income into our normal budget. That means we need to start planning now for a reduced income with a baby.

On top of all this, our savings goal has increased since we’d like to buy a house sooner rather than later.

To help us reach these goals, we’ve decided to reduce our monthly spending by about 5% and increase our total monthly savings amount by 25%. Put simply, that means we’re cutting about $150 from our monthly spending and adding it to our monthly savings.

I spent some time pouring over the budget. I determined that if we continue living on a cash budget, cut our weekly spending by $25 a week and make some minor adjustments in other areas, this is totally doable. If we hadn’t spent the summer on such a tight budget, I never would have thought this was possible. I thought we were saving as much as we possibly could, but after a summer of tight expenses, instead of feeling like we need more, I only see where we can cut.

In real terms, this means we’re cutting our grocery budget from $50-$60 a week to $40-$50. Our “shopping” budget, which covers household expenses like cleaning products and other miscellaneous items, is being cut from $20 per week to $15.

As we move into fall, we’ll increase our additional savings by another $50 when our electric bill drops from $100+ during the summer to $40-$60 a month during the cool winter months.

Over the next 8 months, this will increase our total savings by about $1500. More importantly, it will better prepare us for next summer and fall when we lose 1/3 of our total income. It will also make it easier for us to transition into a single income home in spring 2011 when I’m no longer working full time.

My point is this: if you’re looking ahead to a lower income, now is the time to make cuts. It’s always easier to transition slowly than it is to jump into the cold water. Don’t wait until you lose your income. Learn to live on less now so you can bank the extra money for the future.

Photo by jayd

On letting go of “stuff”

storage roomI’ve always been a bit of a pack rat. Not in the pathological sense, but in the sentimental sense. I often hold on to things for which I have no use either because I think I’ll need them or because I can’t let go for “sentimental reasons.”

Books, CDs, electronics, junk from college. I struggle to force myself to let go of things, which has led to an unfortunate amount of clutter stuffed into the closet in our guest room. Among the most embarrassing:

  • My old desktop PC that I haven’t used since I bought my laptop a year and a half ago.
  • A box of CDs that we don’t listen to (those are going to the record store this weekend, I promise).
  • Too many articles of clothing to count that I haven’t worn in probably two years.
  • A footlocker full of sentimental things from high school and college. Some of it is worth keeping (journals and letters and photos), but most of it is just garbage.

I’ve vowed to clear this stuff out of our apartment many times before, but this time I mean it. If it’s junk, it’s not coming with us when we move in 15 months.

If you’re like me, this change in behavior doesn’t happen overnight. Keeping things I don’t need has become a bad habit, but it’s one that I’m determined to break. I recommend the book “It’s All Too Much” by Peter Walsh if you’re trying to break your clutter habit.

Here are the steps I’m taking in the next year to break my habit and clear the clutter from our apartment:

Get a second opinion.

Ask someone who doesn’t have a sentimental attachment to the item whether they can see a use for it. Your spouse or a close friend who doesn’t have a stuff collecting problem can offer you a fresh perspective. If you’re having trouble explaining why you still have your senior prom dress or you feel a little foolish saying that you you might someday wear that bright orange bridesmaid dress again, it’s time to let it go.

Put it to the one year test.

One of my favorite tips for reducing closet clutter is the one season test. At the end of the season, go through each article of clothing, and if you haven’t worn it at all, it’s time to donate it. Try using a similar test for those items lying around that you’re keeping “just in case” you need it again someday. If it’s been stuffed in a drawer or closet for over 12 months and you’ve never had a reason to use it, you most likely never will.

If it’s really that important to you, why is it collecting dust in storage?

My wedding dress has been stuffed in a closet since our wedding day. I saw no reason to have it preserved. I considered selling it, but it’s stained up on the bottom from our outdoor photos and I doubt any bride would want to wear a dress with grass stains. My plan is to use the salvageable fabric to turn it into a baby quilt, but I haven’t gotten around to it.

If you’re holding on to items that you can’t use anymore but can’t bear to throw away, find a way to repurpose them. That box of old photos can be put into a scrapbook; the baby furniture in your attic can be refinished and handed down to someone in your family who can use it; and the stone from your grandmother’s antique ring can be set in a setting that fits your style so you’ll actually wear it. If the item is really that important to you, it shouldn’t be collecting dust in storage.

What are your methods for fighting the war on stuff?

Photo by merrickb

Our music collection is finally going digital

CDs iPodA few weeks ago, we picked up an FM transmitter for our iPods, which has eliminated our need for CDs in the car. That was the last place we were listening to CDs at all, so at this point our music collection is just taking up space and collecting dust.

On Saturday we went through our CD collection and ensured that all of the music had been burned and saved to our hard drives. We boxed them all up and we’ll be taking them to the record store this weekend to sell what we can.We hung on to a handful of box sets and albums that we think might be worth a little more than we could get at the record store. We’ll try to sell them on Amazon or eBay. Anything too old or embarrassing for anyone to buy will go to Goodwill.

There are a ton of benefits to going digital with our music. The most obvious one is that we’re clearing the clutter in our apartment. But we also won’t have to move them again, and we’ll earn a little money for savings. Bonus! :)

My next step is going through my iTunes library, deleting duplicates, and organizing everything by album. Some of my music was burned with a different program years ago that required manual input of song information. I was lazy about it, so anything imported into my library before I got my iPod 3 years ago is a big old mess.

I’m considering trying one of the programs I found that automatically organizes songs, fills in missing file information, and deletes duplicates from the library: TidySongs or TuneUp. Both offer a free trial, but you have to pay $20-$30 if you want to edit more than 100 songs. Anyone had any luck with these programs? Or can you recommend a free alternative?

I’ll probably decide it’s not worth the cost and manually organize my collection, but that could take some time with almost 5,000 songs in my library.

How do you handle your music? Do you still listen to CDs or have you gone digital?

Photo by s3a

Menu plan: 9/12-9/18

I’m counting down the days to soups and heartier meals for the colder months, but we’ve still got some weeks to go before fall weather arrives in North Carolina. I’m finding some great compromises in the meantime.

We’re trying something new with our routine, and this week we finished our grocery shopping Friday night. I loved that it left the weekend open for more fun, but I feel like the produce selection was a lower quality than usual. Any other Friday night shoppers have that problem, or is it just an anomaly since we’re approaching the end of the summer?

Here’s our $50 meal plan:

Saturday: Porterhouse steak and baked potatoes
Sunday: Broccoli Cheddar soup
Monday: Leftovers/sandwiches
Tuesday: Black bean quesadillas
Wednesday: Spaghetti with meatless marinara
Thursday: BLTs
Friday: Pizza

For more menu plans, visit OrgJunkie. Happy Monday!

Dancing with myself

Yesterday was one of those days when our city didn’t seem so bad. A huge block of the historic downtown was closed to traffic for an annual Art Walk. Artists displayed their work, and we were free to stroll from tent to tent viewing everything from paintings and photography to crafts to homemade candles and soap.

We finally had a chance to stop at the record shop around the corner from our house, where we found four great vinyl albums in the $1 bin. We’ll be taking all of our CDs there sometime soon so we can sell them and make the switch to all digital music. We’ve started rebuilding our collection of vinyl albums, but we’re only buying those when we find them cheap.

We spent the evening sipping wine, listening to our new albums, and dancing in the living room. Well, I danced in the living room anyway. Tony isn’t much a dancer. Howie tried, but he decided he’d rather wrestle than waltz, so I gave up on both of them and danced by myself.

Click the photo for this week’s slide show.

Howie dance

TGIF Round Up: Desperately seeking new blogs edition

I’d like to get some cleaning and organizing done around the house, but the weather is supposed to be beautiful this weekend. So we’ll see what actually gets done. :)

I’ve been in an organizing mood, though. I just did some cleaning up in my Google Reader, and deleted blogs that aren’t updated anymore or that I haven’t been reading. Now I’m in the market for some new reading.

What blogs do you read? I’m looking for personal finance, simplicity, organization, and lifestyle blogs. I can’t wait to read your suggestions!If you write a blog, let me know, and if I don’t read it already, I’ll add you!

And now for some links from some of the blogs I already read:

Happy Friday! Don’t forget to leave a blog suggestion in the comments!

Our method for digital photo organization

photographerBack in the days of film cameras, I always thought it was such a waste when I developed my film and half of it was taken up with bad photos. For every great shot there are 5 photos that are blurry, poorly framed, or just not as good as you thought they’d be, especially when you’re photographing kids and pets.

Digital cameras have made it easy to take hundreds of photos and pick and choose the best shots. It’s made amateur photography more accessible. However, it can also clutter your hard drive if you can’t let go of bad photos. Like anything else, if you don’t have a system in place for organizing them, digital photos can become a big headache.

I used to be one of those people that never deleted digital images. I just dumped them all on my hard drive. Now that we have a camera that shoots huge images, we have to be pickier about which images we keep to conserve space on our hard drive.

Here’s how we’ve been choosing and organizing images:

Look at each photo with another set of eyes.

I take most of the photos with our camera, so Tony and I sit down together and quickly go through each photo. If either of us likes the photo, we keep it. Most of the images deleted at this point are just plain bad photos.

Choose between similar images.

Sometimes when I’m trying to get a particular shot, I’ll take five or six similar photos. I used to keep all of them, but now Tony and I go through and choose the best. There’s no reason to quadruple the disc space you’re using with photos that are essentially identical.

Use a practical file system that works for you.

My old camera automatically uploaded images into files and folders by date. This new camera doesn’t. To make it easier on myself, all new photos are dumped into a folder called “New.” From there I delete anything I don’t want to keep, and I manually move the files into folders by date and event.

There are folders for each year and each month within that year. Within the month folders are separate folders for significant events, like “Graduation” or “Honeymoon.” If there is no significant event associated with the photos, then the folder is just named by a date.

This system has made it easy for us to find images quickly. Since I started manually moving images into the folders, it’s also made it easier for me to weed out throw-away photos to conserve space.

Invest in an external hard drive for back ups and archives.

You can get a pretty decent sized external hard drive for about $50 or $60. Ours is 120GB, and we paid $60 for it. We back up all of our photos on this hard drive as well as important documents from our computers. Eventually as our digital photo collection grows, we’ll probably invest in a larger hard drive for archives. This is an essential investment if you take digital photos. It’s like keeping digital negatives. Don’t let a computer malfunction erase all your memories!

How do you manage your digital photos?

Photo by bigtallguy

Sales tax increases are another reason to be frugal

Last week, the state where I live (North Carolina) increased its sales tax from 4.5% to 5.5%. With local taxes, that means our total sales tax has increased from 6.75% to 7.75%. A 1% increase may not seem like a lot, but it can add up for big purchases. On a $1000 purchase, that’s an extra $10 tacked onto your total cost.

I’m not sweating it, though. Paying less money in sales tax is just another perk of frugality. Here’s why:

I don’t buy a lot of stuff.

Since we live frugally, we just don’t make a lot of purchases that are subject to sales tax. Most of our expendable income goes to groceries, which is subject to a 2% sales tax in North Carolina. Our budget only includes about $100 a month for entertainment and household expenses like toilet paper and cleaning supplies. That means at most we’ll be paying an extra $1 a month with the increase.

Secondhand items are usually subject to 0% sales tax.

When a friend or family member gives you a piece of furniture or other item, guess how much sales tax you pay? 0%. The same is true if you shop at garage sales or Craigslist. In some states, you don’t even pay sales tax at thrift stores, particularly if they’re affiliated with a church.

If you’re worried about sales tax increases, think about ways you can live more frugally overall. After all, the less you spend, the less you pay in taxes.