Author Archives: Karen

Flip camera winner

The randomly chosen winner of the “Great Piggy Bank Adventure” Flip camera from T. Rowe Price is Kim with her comment:

I think its easier to talk about these thing rather than money because there are so many families struggling with their financials right now.

I feel terrible admitting this, but I didn’t consider that perspective. I can see how people who are struggling or feeling bad about their financial situation would have a hard time talking to their kids about it.

If that’s the situation you’re in, I really want you to know that it’s never too late! Despite the unsure economy, you can dig yourself out of any situation you’re in and help your kids avoid mistakes in the future.

Congrats to Kim, and thank you everyone for entering. Stay tuned for more contests and prizes in the future!

Things I have seriously considered since my baby started crawling

This new stage of development does not agree with me. I much preferred the days when Judah would sit still, snuggled safely in my arms out of harm’s way.

It’s not that I wanted to keep him that way forever. I’m really looking forward to the fun stuff that comes along with having an older kid — the increased freedom, the family vacations, the conversations with my little person. But I am struggling with this in between time when he wants to go go go, but he’s not yet old enough to understand caution or danger or reason of any kind.

For a while, he was content to crawl around in the playpen if I needed a few minutes to get something done around the house, or you know, use the bathroom. But now he’s suddenly rebelling, and even the playpen is too much containment for his taste. He no longer plays contentedly in there. Now when I put him down, he stands up and screams at me until I take him out again and let him wander the house on all fours.

I realize this stage is crucial to his development, so I baby proof the house as best I can, do my very best to keep him safe, and chase him all day to prevent him from hurting himself. But on days like today when I’m exhausted and longing for the time when he snuggled safely with me, I start thinking crazy thoughts.

What if we converted the spare bedroom into a padded room so I could let him bounce around in there while I fold laundry?

What if we just padded the entire HOUSE? Then he could crawl around bonking into things to his heart’s content, and I wouldn’t have to worry.

Do they make rock climbing helmets and knee and elbow pads in size 6-9 months? They really should consider that for daredevil babies with absolutely no sense of self-preservation or caution.

Why on Earth don’t human babies learn to walk proficiently within hours of birth like colts and deer? Wait. That actually sounds worse. Scratch that. The LAST thing I want is a 1-week-old bonking his head on the coffee table.

I’m trying my hardest to relax and accept that I’m not always going to be able to protect him. The best I can do is prevent serious injury and hope that he’s designed well to withstand a few bumps along the way as he learns to get around. My dad always says, “They’re built low to the ground so they don’t have far to fall,” and I think he’s right. Mobile babies really are built tougher than we think and designed to handle the normal bumps and bruises that go along with learning to walk.

While this attitude helps my fear a little, it does nothing to help the exhaustion that comes with chasing him all day. Pfft. Slow down, baby! Mama needs a break.

Unplanning our menus

So at what point do you stop calling the postpartum pounds “baby weight”? Because my baby is almost 9 months old, and I’m still hauling quite a bit more around than I’m comfortable admitting. Methinks this is less about the baby and more about the absurd amounts of junk food I craved when I was pregnant. (Note: “Breastfeeding makes you lose weight” is a MYTH. Because homeboy is still nursing around the clock, and it’s not helping my waistline.)

In an effort to finally get serious about getting myself back to a comfortable weight, I joined a gym and met with a personal trainer for a free consultation. I told him about my diet, which honestly, is reasonably healthy. I cut out the junk food after Judah was born. We rarely eat out, and we never eat fast food. We cook fresh whole foods, lean protein, and lots of vegetables … but we also eat lots of carbs.

To keep our grocery budget down, we make a lot of big pasta dishes and sandwiches, and potatoes are usually featured pretty prominently in our menus. The trainer suggested I cut the carbs and focus on eating vegetables and lean proteins instead and see if that helps me shed the rest of this weight. That doesn’t seem tough to me. I’m not counting carbs. Just sort of leaving them off our menu.

Unfortunately, this makes menu planning tough. Most weeks our menu features at least one pasta dish and one sandwich night. Most days I also throw a sandwich together for lunch. On weeks when I’m having menu planning writer’s block, we’d even eat pasta or sandwiches twice. We usually bought potatoes in bulk and served them roasted or boiled as a side dish. Clearly, I’d have to rethink our entire menu planning strategy if I was going limit my carbs.

So we’re trying something new. We’re unplanning. In other words, we’re just buying one or two meats that are sale priced, and then loading up the cart with whatever produce is cheap that week. When we get it all home, we take stock of what we bought, and we build a menu around that.

Here’s an example of how it works. Last week, split chicken breasts were on sale for 99 cents a pound. We loaded up on a few pounds of chicken. Then we filled the cart with low-price produce — several heads of romaine, spinach, tomatoes, carrots, zucchini, squash, broccoli, sugar snap peas, onion and cauliflower. We have a ton of homegrown cucumber and herbs from the garden. For snacks, we bought fruit — peaches, pears, apples, and grapes. We also bought staples like milk, eggs, cheese, and some canned beans.

Surprisingly, because everything we bought was on sale, we stayed within our grocery budget. Tony basically shopped our produce selection each night and made something up. It turned out fantastic! Here’s what he came up with last week:

  • Roasted chicken breasts with squash and side salad
  • Chicken Caesar salad
  • Chicken stir fry
  • Chicken skillet with beans and vegetables
  • Chef salad with turkey
  • Grilled chicken and veggie kabobs

Yes, you end up eating a lot of the same meat all week, but you can change it up the following week. Pork and beef would work the same way. Or you could use beans instead of meat.

Of course, this method relies heavily on having an adventurous cook in the house. Tony is great at foraging the kitchen and throwing something together.

At the end of the week, we had a few items left — spinach and cauliflower mainly. We took stock of what was left, and we made sure we used up any leftover produce at the beginning of this week to avoid waste.

I really enjoyed everything we made last week, and shopping the sales motivated us to buy and use produce that we rarely eat — like zucchini and squash. It is a little harder control spending without writing an actual menu and grocery list, but as long as you stick to sale meat and produce and only buy about as much as you’ll eat, it shouldn’t get too pricey.

Now send me low-carb recipes! I doubt the planner in me will let this “unplanning” last too long.

Photo credit

Three years of blogging

Early in August, this blog passed a milestone, and it didn’t even occur to me until a few days ago that I missed it. As of August 3, this blog is three years old.

Normally when a birthday passes, people marvel, “Where has the time gone? It seems like only yesterday.” In this case, I don’t feel that way AT ALL. Instead, I’m all, “Seriously? It’s only been three years?! It feels like AT LEAST ten!”

My life is so drastically different now, it’s amazing to me that it was only three short years ago that I wrote the first post. For starters, just look at how skinny I was in the picture on the right — taken the night before my wedding a little over a month before I started blogging. Pfft.

  • My husband and I were newlyweds and child-free.
  • I was working full time while my husband was in grad school.
  • We lived in North Carolina.
  • We carried a large enough balance on our credit cards that we couldn’t pay it off in a month (though we were already well on our way to paying it off, and we’d drastically reduced our credit card debt in the year before I started blogging).
  • We were renters with no plans to buy a home for the foreseeable future.
  • We had no savings, no budget, and no financial plan.
  • The idea of saving money for an emergency fund, a down payment on a home, and our future was so overwhelming that I remember feeling like it was impossible.

I don’t feel like the same person I was when I started this blog. Probably because I’m really not!

  • I’m a mama now, which I suppose is the biggest change.
  • My husband and I have swapped roles, as I’m a stay-at-home mom while he brings home the bacon.
  • We live in Indiana again (and we couldn’t be happier about it!)
  • We no longer carry a balance on our credit cards.
  • We’re homeowners.
  • We have a healthy emergency fund.

Most importantly, the past three years have taught me that no financial goal is impossible. Sure, it can be overwhelming, but if we’ve been able to make it work on our income, you can, too!

We’re a single-income household earning pretty close to the median income for our area. And yet careful budgeting, prioritizing, and planning allow us to live comfortably — even afford some little luxuries — without living paycheck-to-paycheck.

It’s amazing how much can change in three years. I wonder what the next three years have in store for us! I have a few new goals:

  • Now that we’re homeowners, our focus is shifting to finally paying off our student loan debt.
  • We’d like to increase our emergency fund savings to provide extra protection now that we have a mortgage to pay.
  • We also have a list of home improvement projects we’d like to undertake once we’ve saved the cash.
  • Totally unrelated to our finances, I’d like to be that skinny again. Whether that’s possible remains to be seen. Oof.

I hope you’ll stick around to find out what the next three years brings. I plan to keep writing as long as you keep reading. Actually, for the first 6 months or so, no one was reading, and I kept writing anyway. So I guess I’ll be around as long as I’ve got something to say, whether anyone wants to read it or not. :)

Financial literacy, your kids & a chance to win a Flip camera!

Sorry, entries for this contest are now closed. A winner has been chosen, and I will be announcing as soon as I’ve received the prize from T. Rowe Price and contacted the winner. Thanks for participating!

When I was a kid, my parents were a pretty open book. We talked about money just like we talked about everything else. My parents never kept us in the dark. We understood the financial choices they made, and they shared things with my sisters and me candidly.

Now that I have a baby of my own, I’ve already put thought into how I’d like to educate him about money. I think it’s important for parents to talk to their kids about money from an early age. The lessons should be age-appropriate, of course, but I think we’ll start Judah’s financial education pretty early.

We plan to ask Judah to put aside a portion of birthday and Christmas money given to him by grandparents into a savings account. He’ll be allowed to make choices about how he’d like to use the money, but we’ll talk with him about the value of saving money and spending it responsibly.

I’m not sure where I stand on the topic of giving an “allowance.” My sisters and I were given an allowance off and on throughout childhood, and it was usually tied to completing certain household chores. I think kids should learn that contributing to the household by doing chores is part of their responsibility as a member of our family — not an incentive for money. However, I think there’s value in teaching kids that work = money, and if they want to earn an income, they have to work for it.

Most importantly, Tony and I plan to be open with Judah and future children about our financial situation and choices. When they’re old enough to understand, I’d like to teach them about paying bills each month and show them how much things cost. I’d like to go over the family budget with them to show them where our money goes and discuss our emergency fund, savings, and other financial choices in depth.

I want to encourage our children to work part-time after school when they’re teenagers, and give them financial responsibilities of their own like car insurance, gas, and spending money. I was given financial responsibilities as soon as I was old enough to work, and I think it taught me a lot about money management and responsible spending habits.

As part of their financial literacy campaign, T. Rowe Price asked me to write a post about talking with kids about money. According to a recent survey conducted by T. Rowe Price, they discovered that parents found it more difficult to talk to their kids about money than talking to them about dating, drugs, smoking, or alcohol. That sort of blows my mind. I think money is a topic that you can begin discussing with children at a much younger age than I would bring up those other topics.

It doesn’t have to be complicated. It can be as simple as playing “store” or “restaurant” with a young child and teaching them to exchange play money for toys or play food. The lessons can grow with your child as you discuss more complicated financial issues like budgeting, saving, and investing.

To help parents start talking about money with their children, T. Rowe Price and Disney have teamed up to launch the Great Piggy Bank Adventure, an interactive website designed for children ages 8 to 14 to teach them about important financial concepts like saving, spending, inflation, and more complicated investing concepts. In addition to the website, T. Rowe Price is also the sponsor of the Great Piggy Bank Adventure experience at Epcot Center at Walt Disney World. There, children and their parents can learn more about financial planning in a hands-on, interactive environment.

I love the idea of the Great Piggy Bank Adventure, because I think it makes financial literacy fun for kids and parents. There’s no reason to feel overwhelmed about teaching your children about money. It can even be a game!

As part of their campaign, T. Rowe Price asked me to talk to you about how you talk to your kids about money. In exchange for your participation in the discussion, you’ll be entered to win a Great Piggy Bank Adventure Flip camera provided by T. Rowe Price. Here’s how to enter:

Write a comment answering one or more of the questions below. For each question you answer, write a separate comment. Each comment will be counted as a separate entry.

That’s it! It’s easy. The winner will be chosen randomly on Friday, August 12 at 9 p.m. EST, so you have until then to enter.

Here are the questions:

  • Is it easier for you to talk about drugs and alcohol than your family finances? If so why?
  • Why do you think it is easier for parents to talk about drugs and smoking than family finances with their kids?
  • Was the topic of money “taboo” in your family growing up?
  • What advice would you give to other parents talking to their kids about the family finances?

Good luck!

Disclosure: In exchange for writing this post, T. Rowe Price provided the Flip camera for this giveaway and also provided me with a gift card for my participation. T. Rowe Price is not involved in or responsible for the outcome of this giveaway.

Photo credit

Are you managing your money, or is it managing you?

budgetingWhile visiting my best friend last weekend, we had an interesting discussion about budgeting. She and her husband are in the same place Tony and I were when we decided to start living frugally. They’re looking for ways to cut back after moving to a new city and taking a pay cut. Like a lot of 20-somethings, they have a lot of aspirations for their money, and they’re looking to make their dreams come true faster by saving more and spending less. They’re definitely on the right track.

During the conversation, we came to a conclusion that I think explains proper budgeting more simply than any way I’ve tried before: The problem is that many people choose the lifestyle they want, and they try to earn enough or stretch their money so they can live that lifestyle. Proper budgeting is the other way around. You need to look at how much money you have, and determine the lifestyle you can live with it.

This is the number one mistake I see new budgeters making. If you’re trying to make your income match the lifestyle you want, you’re setting yourself up for a life of debt, paycheck-to-paycheck living, and constantly feeling behind financially. Proper budgeting is about finding the best balance for spending the money you have.

Controlling my budget this way also makes it easier to increase savings. Extra money shows up as a surplus in our budget. I’m already used to getting by on less, so I’m more likely to throw extra money into savings. If I was constantly working on a deficit, that money would just be eaten up by daily spending.

I’m not against working harder to increase your income if you can do that. But don’t budget for that lifestyle until the money is in the bank.

Zero-based budgeting is the easiest way I’ve found to do this. If you’re setting up your first budget, don’t look at expenses first; look at income. Zero-based budgeting forces you to divvy up your income based on exactly what you earn. It allows for greater flexibility in your income. Some months you may earn more. Some months you have extra expenses. Creating a budget every month based on the money you have allows you to stay in control.

Remember, budgeting is about controlling your money. If you feel like you’re not in control of your money, it’s time to reevaluate your budget.

This article from my partners at Debt Advisory Centre * provides a little more budgeting advice.

Photo by think panama

*This post includes a link from one of my partners.

Is gardening really frugal? An update

Since I wrote an update on how line drying is going and what I’ve learned from that last week, I thought I’d share how things are going with our little vegetable garden.

You might recall, I’ve had trouble with container gardening in the past. I worried that I was doomed to a black thumb forever. Thankfully, that doesn’t seem to be the case. My little vegetable garden is doing pretty well considering how late in the season it was planted and how little I knew what I was doing when I started.

Here’s how it looked right after I planted it:

And here it is yesterday:

Unbelievable what sunshine, water, and time can do for a garden!

I sort of rushed planting this garden, because it was late in the season, and I wanted to get some experience under my belt before I try my hand at some more ambitious gardening next year. I’d like to plant directly into the ground next season, but that’s going to take some considerable prep time that I just didn’t have this year. Instead, I put this tiny raised bed into the existing flower bed in front of the house. I planted red pepper, tomato, cucumber, sage, peppermint, parsley, oregano, rosemary, and basil.

The cucumber plant is my biggest success. I’ve already picked two cucumbers, and I see about 10 or 15 more tiny ones growing now. The basil and rosemary are thriving, and we’ve gotten the most use out of the basil for pizzas, pesto, and other cooking. I’m not quite sure what to do with the other herbs, but I want to harvest them late in the season and try my hand and drying them out for later use. I was worried about the tomato for a while, because I wasn’t seeing any signs of fruit, but now I’ve got several blossoms. I’m hoping to see at least some tomatoes, but I probably could have grown more if I hadn’t waited until the middle of June to plant.

Because I was so rushed, I made a ton of mistakes. But I learned! And that’s what’s important, right?

Lesson #1: Cages should go on tomatoes, cucumbers, and any other plant you want to grow vertically immediately after planting. This isn’t something you can do later. Doh. Consequently, when the cucumber and tomato plants started taking over my garden, I tried to rig a cage to hold them up. It’s sort of doing the job, but not as effectively as it should. I feel pretty stupid about this one, because it seems so obvious now.

Lesson #2: Plan your garden carefully and avoid giant plants in tiny beds. Seriously, look at that tiny little cucumber plant in the first photo. I had NO IDEA the thing would grow to be so giant and try to take over the entire bed. I had an idea about the size of tomato plants, but I probably shouldn’t have planted the red pepper plant right next to it. Sadly, my red pepper plant is not going to make it because it’s so overshadowed by the tomato. I was able to rig the cucumber plant in a cage to prevent it from taking over everything, but the parsley isn’t doing well because it’s under the cucumber.

Lesson #3: Plant what you eat. I sort of grabbed the plants that looked best to me, and there wasn’t a lot left in the middle of June. I knew we’d have a ton of uses for basil, but I’m sort of at a loss for what to do with the rest of the herbs. And I have no clue what I’m going to do with 20 cucumbers that will likely ripen within a week or two. I see lots of pickles in our future. When I plant my big garden, I’m going to be more careful about selecting what to plant to ensure that we get lots of use out of the food we grow.

Lesson #4: Gardening doesn’t always save money. I had hoped my garden would reduce our grocery bill. It’s taking forever to grow anything, though, and most of the herbs are things we don’t use regularly anyway. Between plants, the prefab raised beds, and soil (who knew soil was so expensive?!), I spent about $100 on my garden. I doubt I’ll yield enough to cover my overhead this season.

Next year I’ll lower my costs my planting directly into the ground (or building raised beds myself from lumber). We plan to start a compost bin soon, which will provide us with fertilizer, and tilling the soil and planting in the ground will mostly eliminate the high cost of soil. I will probably still buy seedlings next year, because I’m not confident enough in my ability to grow from seeds just yet. But in the future, I’d like to grow from seeds to cut down on plant costs. I also plan to learn about canning so we can make the most of our harvest during the winter months.

In other news, I’d like to welcome Merchant Warehouse as a new partner. They offer credit card processing services, and I’m happy to have them onboard. Click through to check them out if you’d like to process credit cards on your website!

Line drying laundry — an update

For the last two months or so, we’ve been line drying our laundry on the clothesline in our backyard. I’ve developed a pretty good system, and I’ve learned a few things about what works and what doesn’t for us, so I thought I’d share some of my discoveries.

For the most part, I don’t have many complaints. It’s a relatively easy way to reduce energy consumption and shave some money off your monthly electricity costs. Unfortunately, I’m still not sure exactly how much we’re saving. We started line drying pretty much right after we moved into the house, and with the heat wave and increased square footage, our electricity bill has definitely gone up from what we paid in apartments. I didn’t establish a base line, so I’m not sure what it would cost if we were using the dryer. I’m sure I’m saving something, though, and decreasing our footprint, so it’s worthwhile to me either way.

I’ve developed a system that works pretty well for me, but it’s certainly a lot more involved than my previous laundry system, which was basically “You’re running low on underwear? I guess I’ll do laundry today.” I don’t do laundry every day. I wish I was disciplined enough to do laundry every week, because it would make things easier on myself, but I’m not. I usually wash everything every other week (aside from diapers, which are washed 2-3 times a week).

I’m much more aware of the weather forecasts now, so I can plan ahead for the best sunny days. My lines hold about half of two weeks of laundry, so I usually split it up over two days. I try to do laundry when we have two sunny days back to back, so I can get it all done relatively quickly.

The night before laundry day, I separate everything by color — whites, colors, and then towels and jeans. I put in a load first thing in the morning. When Judah goes down for his morning nap around 10 a.m., I get the first load onto the line. Sometimes I’m lucky, and he sleeps long enough that I can get the second load out, too, before he wakes up. Sometimes he has to come outside with me and hang out in the Exersaucer while I hang clothes.

My clothesline is half shaded by a large tree, so I try to make sure that bulkier items like jeans are hung on the sunny side. This ensures that they dry completely. Thinner items like t-shirts dry relatively quickly even without a lot of sunshine, so they can hang in the shade.

Sunshine is a remarkable natural stain remover, so I always hang anything with stubborn stains in direct sunlight. Usually after 8 hours in the sun, even the most stubborn stains are completely gone. It’s like magic.

I leave them out there all day — usually until around 8 p.m. after Judah is in bed. It works out nicely, because I can bring the clothes in and fold while I’m watching television, and I don’t have to worry about entertaining Judah because he’s sleeping.

About 90% of our laundry is line dried. There are a few things I don’t line dry, though.

Diapers – It’s a shame that I can’t get line drying diapers to work for me, especially since diaper laundry is the main reason I decided to start line drying. Unfortunately, no matter what I try, line drying makes my cotton prefolds feel like roof shingles. They’re scratchy and stiff, and I just can’t imagine it’s very comfortable on Judah’s skin. I tried vinegar in the rinse cycle. It didn’t make much difference. I tried fluffing them in the dryer. That helped a little, but they weren’t as fluffy as I’d like, and to be honest it felt like the extra step defeated the purpose of line drying.

Stained diapers go onto the line after they’re dry so I can take advantage of the remarkable stain removing ability of the sun. Other than that, diapers go into the dryer.

Towels – I have the same problem with towels as I do diapers — they’re too stiff and scratchy when line dried. We hang towels to dry in the bathroom so we can reuse them for a week, so our towel laundry is minimal anyway.

Socks and underwear – We don’t have a fence in our backyard. Our clothesline is mostly shielded from view by our neighbors’ garage, but if they were out doing yard work on the other side of their garage, they could easily see it. To maintain our privacy and spare our neighbors from seeing our undies, I chose not to line dry them. I suppose I could conceal them on the back line or devise some sort of rack for hanging them inside. I may do that. For now, I don’t mind throwing them into the dryer with the towels. Socks are just tiny, and it’s a pain in the butt to hang a million of them, so I throw those in the dryer, too.

Some items — like my husband’s polos — tend to stretch out and start to look saggy after several line dryings. When that happens, I go ahead and use the dryer to shrink them back up a bit.

I’m happy with our system, but line drying is harder work — especially in this heat wave. I try to get the laundry out in the morning and take it down in the evening to avoid the hottest part of the day. Even so, standing in direct sunlight hanging clothes is usually enough to work up a sweat.

There have been days when I probably should have done laundry, and I skipped it because I wasn’t feeling well or I was too tired. Laundry used to be a lazy day task — it just required switching loads and a little folding. Now it feels like more work, and if I’m not feeling great, I’m likely to put it off.

I feel good about it, though, and there’s a strange sense of accomplishment that goes along with seeing all of our laundry neatly hanging on the line. I’ll probably continue through the early fall until the first freeze.

So tell me, do you line dry? Do you have any tips or questions for me?