Tag Archives: goals

Shave your grooming budget with a safety razor

This is a guest post from my wonderful husband, Tony. You can read more from him at his movie review blog, Screen Savour. But first read about his experiences with an old-fashioned safety razor.

When we began to live the frugal lifestyle, I started looking for a way to become a frugal shaver. Shaving is something that’s required of me (growing a beard isn’t currently an option in my world), and if I’m going to do it, I think my face should feel good afterward. But that doesn’t mean I’m willing to drop a fortune to do it.

When I began shaving as a teenager, my first razor of choice was the electric razor for its quickness. But the skin on my face has always been too sensitive, and the electric razor not only irritated my skin but it never gave me the smoothness I wanted. Furthermore, for an electric razor to function well, the mechanical blades inside need to be replaced at least annually. Depending on the make and model of your razor, those can set you back. It wasn’t worth it to me.

Bags of disposable razors are cheap. I’ve used them before, and believe me, the little torn-off pieces of toilet paper covering up my shredded face are proof enough that there’s a reason they’re so cheap. So they’re out, too.

Replacement cartridge razors were my choice for most of my life. I initially used the three-blade model, then upgraded once to the four-blade and again to the five-blade. As the number of blades increased, so did the price of replacing those cartridges.

Replacement cartridge packs for the last razor I used were running me more than $25 for eight cartridge heads. If one cartridge head lasts for two weeks, that means I’m still spending about $100 (depending on the deal) to buy enough cartridges to shave for one year. And that’s not even counting the cost of shaving cream and aftershave!

Earlier this year, I found the solution to my shaving problem in the unlikeliest of places: a pro-environmental lifestyle magazine. The magazine urged readers to abandon the replacement cartridges (which waste tons of plastic each year) and convert to using a safety razor.

The safety razor is the cast-iron skillet of the shaving world. If you buy one and properly care for it, you’ll never have to buy another.

It’s an old-school device that screws together and sandwiches a single sharp, steel blade between two layers of polished and brushed metal. All that is exposed is the thin edge of the steel blade. When the blade becomes dull, the safety razor unscrews and all you throw away is a thin piece of steel (which is completely recyclable).

The device is very retro in appearance, and although it takes a little while to get used to, the shaves have been unparalleled.

You pay up front for the safety razor. The actual handheld device cost me about $25, which is on the lower end of the spectrum. (Editor’s note: Price of one safety razor = price of 8 disposable cartridges. Just saying. :) )

The real savings come in the replacement blades. They’re very sharp and functional, but also thin and cheap. Amazon is selling a pack of 30 razor blades right now at less than $15. That’s 50 cents per blade, compared to over $3 each for replacement cartridges. Even if I changed the blade every week, I would only spend $26 a year on razors. If I changed the blade as often as I did replacement cartridges for my old razor (every other week), I would spend just $13 a year.

I can’t speak to how well a safety razor works on shaving legs, but my face and wallet have been thankful for the change.

So there you have it. If you’re tired of filling up landfills and spending a fortune on plastic replacement cartridges and you’re willing to try something new, the safety razor might be right for you. It would make a great gift for the frugal, environmentally conscious man in your life.

Think a month ahead to save time & money

Each week, I plan a menu and a to-do list. In an attempt to reduce stress and plan ahead for the holidays (including a 2,000-mile road trip), I decided to try monthly planning.

In addition to using Mint to plan a zero-based budget based on our income (which I do every month), I also mapped out a month’s worth of meals, a pre-holiday/vacation to-do list, and I’m still working on planning a month’s worth of blog posts.

Using Notepad, I saved three documents on my computer desktop last weekend: December budget, December menu, and December blog schedule.

When it comes to my blog, I’m not so good at planning ahead. Between my full-time job, spending time with my husband, and home management, the blog typically takes a back seat. It’s not uncommon for me to sit down to write the next day’s blog post with absolutely no idea what I’m going to write.

This month, I’ve been pushing myself to stay ahead of the game. Not only am I attempting to plan ahead for blog post ideas, but I’ve been writing more on the weekends and scheduling posts ahead of time.

I have to say, monthly planning has made my life a lot easier.

In the past, I’ve tried similar planning using calendars and date books. For some reason, these simple little Notepad documents have worked better than anything I’ve ever tried. Maybe it’s because I spend so much time in front of my computer, or maybe it’s because they’re so incredibly simplified, like a little electronic Post-it note.

I finished my budget and menu plan last weekend. Even though my blog post schedule isn’t finished, I have a head start on the month’s posts. Most importantly, I have a place to put those ideas that randomly spring into my head.

My premature new year’s resolution is to keep it up. I tried this method to make the holidays easier, but I can see how it could save me tons of time and money the rest of the year, too.

Having a monthly menu plan has made it easier to take advantage of grocery sales on nonperishables. For example, we’re making vegetable beef stew in two weeks, so when we found beef stock on sale for 50 cents a can last week, we picked up four cans. It saved us $2.

In the future, I plan to use the previous month’s menu plans to simplify my planning process even further. Because we have many favorites that we like to make over and over, I can refer to old menu plans when I need ideas for the next month’s meals.

My monthly to-do list has made it easier to manage my time. I know what I need to finish each week, so I won’t end up with a million things to do the week before we leave town.

It’s also made my weekend a lot more enjoyable. I didn’t feel stressed Saturday morning before grocery shopping, because I knew our menu plan was already finished. I also didn’t feel rushed or guilty thinking about what I should be doing. My to-do list dictated a few tasks I needed to finish to stay on track. Once they were done, I was free to relax.

I can’t wait to perfect this monthly planning process to maximize my savings and productivity. That definitely works for me.

Planning ahead for the big stuff

Photo by martie

frugal goalsLiving frugally eliminates a lot of life’s spontaneity. Because we’ve made the decision to live with as little debt as possible, we save for every purchase instead of charging it. We plan ahead for everything and scrimp and save to reach our goals. But planning and saving take a lot of time.

Yesterday on a long walk with the dog, Tony and I had a conversation about where our money will go when our debt is paid and our savings is fully funded. Mostly we were just dreaming about what we’d do with our money if we were free to spend it however we like.

By planning now, we can map a plan for saving. We can also keep our eyes open for frugal ways to make it happen sooner. Here’s our tentative plan for buying the things we want and building our future.

New furniture and television

All of our furniture is second-hand. We’re still sleeping on the second-hand double bed my grandmother gave me before I moved away to college. We bought our only couch and dresser drawers second hand as well. (I actually love the dresser and will probably keep it, but we really need a second chest of drawers since we’re sharing one now). Someday we’d like to have new bedroom and living room furniture. It’ll probably be a pretty long time since it’s pretty low on our list of priorities.

Also bought second-hand, our TV is pretty much an antique. It’s not even a flat screen (gasp!). But it still works. Stations are now broadcasting in wide screen, so our TV cuts off the sides of the picture. It really bugs my husband. Eh … doesn’t really bother me much. A TV isn’t a necessity at all, so this will also wait a while.

Sometimes I check Craig’s List, but I’m never impressed with the cost considering what they’re selling. I’m happy to wait a while until we can save up for furniture we really like rather than dropping a chunk of change on something we don’t. When we replace our TV it will most likely be second-hand, too, but I see no reason to do it until the one we have stops working. I’m keeping my eyes open, though!

A house of our own

Someday we’ll finally settle down in a nice suburb near a university that wants to hire Tony for a tenure-track teaching job. Then we’ll buy a little house with three bedrooms, a big open kitchen, a wood-burning fireplace, and a nice big fenced-in backyard with room for a garden. (I haven’t been thinking about this one at all. :) ) First we have to get Tony through school and pay down our student loan debt. Soon we’ll start saving for a 20% down payment. It’ll be years before we get there. I still like to dream, though.

A family

I’ll be honest, I wish it could happen sooner rather than later. But I want to be able to stay home with our baby. Until Tony is finished with school, we need my full-time salary. We’re planning now so we can start a family in the next three years, but it’ll probably be another two years before we can really start thinking about it.

This list used to be even longer, but through craftiness and frugality we found a way to get some things sooner. Come back tomorrow, and I’ll share that list with you!

What about you? What would you spend your money on right now if it didn’t take years to save?

October budget round up & November goals

Another month of spending more than we earned. Sigh. We were a total of $93 over budget for this month.

We started the month with a trip to Seattle. We bought our plane tickets months ago. For this month, we budgeted for gas to drive to and from the airport, parking, boarding costs for the dog, and meals on the run at the airport. We did a pretty good job of staying on budget for the trip, but we struggled to get back on track after we got back.

The result was an out of control $125 overage in our food budget. Part of the problem is that I knocked the budget down about $50 from our normal monthly food budget to account for vacation spending in other areas. Then we ate out a handful of times, including a pretty expensive sushi meal for my birthday. Those meals out really add up.

There’s good news, too, though. We were on track in all other spending categories. We were even under budget in a couple, which made up for about $32 of our out of control food spending.

The bottom line is that we spent $93 more than we made this month. Not good. We managed to reach our monthly goals for savings and debt payments, but my goal is to make sure that our output, including debt and savings, is less than or equal to our income. In that respect, we failed this month. :(

For November, my obvious goal is to make sure we’re not spending more than we make. Eventually, I’d like to get to a point where we’re under budget consistently and sending that extra money to savings and debt. We have a long way to go before we get there, though.

This month will also mark my final credit card payment (yay!). That’s one bill I’m looking forward to paying this month.

I’m still waiting to hear from Chase about my personal student loan consolidation. Once my credit card is paid off, I’ll start focusing on paying off my student loans. Hopefully the consolidation will go through, which will lower my interest rate and minimum payment and make it possible for me to pay off the debt sooner.

We’re beginning our Christmas shopping, so I moved some funds around from other areas to give us some extra “spending” money to put toward gifts. We’ll have to keep everything else pretty tight to meet our goals. We’re shopping for our five nieces and nephews and our parents. For our nieces and nephews, I redeemed MyPoints for a $50 Amazon gift card. I’ll use that to shop for toys. We’re buying a number of small gifts to make a gift basket for our parents, so we’ll be spreading those purchases out throughout November and December.

How did you do this month?

Credit crunch hits close to home

With only two payments left on my credit card debt, it’s time to get serious about paying down my ridiculous private student loan debt.

For the past year, I’ve been working hard to claw my way out of leftover debt from college. My first goal was to focus on my high-interest credit card debt. I can’t tell you how thankful I am that we’re almost completely credit-card-debt free just as the financial world is crumbling.

After paying down credit card debt, my next goal is high-interest private student loan debt. My plan was to lower my 8-12% interest rate by consolidating my high-interest private student loans at today’s lower rates. I planned to attack those loans for the next three years until only our low-interest federal debt was left.

I’ve been keeping an eye on two separate lenders for private loan consolidation: CitiBank and Chase. Since it takes about 6 weeks for processing and my forbearance period ends at the end of December, it’s now time for me to apply for these consolidation loans.

Last night I logged into CitiBank’s website to find out what information I would need to gather to apply this week. Unfortunately, it appears that CitiBank has stopped offering this type of loan in the past two weeks. I guess it’s not surprising, but it’s certainly disappointing.

Private student loan consolidation is still listed as an option on the Chase student loan web site. However their information hasn’t been updated since June. It’s highly possible that they’re no longer accepting new applications either. Sigh.

My credit score is excellent, so I’m hoping I’ll be able to find a company that’s still offering private student loan consolidation. Unfortunately, my timing couldn’t be worse. I need to find a lender before December at pretty much one of the worst times in history to get a loan. With lenders cracking down even on credit limits, this type of high-risk private student loan consolidation seems to be next to impossible to get even for people with high credit scores.

We’re currently devoting $325 a month to debt. Without consolidating to a lower interest rate, my monthly payment is about $300. Luckily, we have enough money in our budget to cover the payment as is, but I was hoping to cut our minimum monthly payment in half. If our minimum payment was only $160 and we continued to send $325+ every month, it would greatly reduce the amount of time it took to pay down the debt. If we could gradually raise that amount to $500 a month, we could pay off $20,000 in about three years.

Obviously, things could be much worse. Even if we have to keep the high interest rate for a little longer, we’re still better off than we were a year ago with $4,000 in credit card debt.

I’m grateful that we’re able to make ends meet and save a little money at the same time even as the financial market crumbles around us. It’s still a bummer. I had lofty goals to pay off my private student loan debt in the next three years. If we can’t get a lower interest rate, then that’s clearly not going to happen.

I’m calling Chase tonight to see if I have any options with them. If not, I’ll call my original lender and see if I can bargain for a lower interest rate. I’m hoping I’ll have some bargaining power thanks to my high credit score, but I’m kind of doubting it. With lenders cutting credit limits and saying “see ya” even to responsible borrowers to reduce their credit risk, I’m thinking they’ll be unlikely to take on a loan like this.

Just goes to show how much harder it is to achieve lofty goals in this crazy financial market …

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September Budget Round up

The good news is we were on budget in most of our spending categories in September. The bad news is we were $42 over in our miscellaneous “shopping” category. Part of the problem was five shirts I bought on clearance for $21 a couple weeks ago. I also forgot to budget for the $25 I spent on Tony’s birthday present. Oops.

We also went $30 over our food budget. As I look through our spending, I’m seeing red flags like Starbucks and ice cream shops. Looks like we stopped for a coffee, ice cream, or other snacks while running weekend errands several times throughout the month. Those little purchases added up to a $30 overage in our food budget. Good thing I’m getting my diet back on track now. It’ll be good for my waistline and my wallet!

Setbacks: Overspending in food and shopping. These are our two biggest discretionary spending categories, and also the ones we need to watch closest to avoid overspending. It also looks like this months’ budget included five trips to the grocery store instead of four. (The last shopping trip of the month in August and the last shopping trip in September were both included in September.) I’m not sure how to account for this in future budgets. What do you do when that happens?

Successes: We’ve been putting money aside for our dog’s yearly vet bills and flea and tick prevention medicines. Last week, Howie was due for his yearly physical, vaccinations, and city license. The $100 bill didn’t throw off our budget at all, because we had $75 saved and $50 budgeted toward pet expenses for the month. So we ended up being $14 under in pet spending instead of $60 over. Yay for planning ahead for necessary expenses!

This is also the second month that we immediately moved a little over 10% of our income into savings. I used to try to move what was left at the end of the month into savings. Bad idea. As you can imagine, there was usually not much left. I love getting it out of the way in the beginning of the month. It removes the temptation to spend what we should be saving.

Snowflakes: $50 refund from Costco membership (my employer pays provides membership as a perk, so I was able to cancel our current membership and get a refund). $60 printer cartridge refund from 123InkJets.

October Goals: Remember to account for everything in the budget, especially purchases outside our regular monthly expenses, like Tony’s birthday gift. Avoid letting little purchases add up to a big overage in the budget. Check up on spending in food and “shopping” every week to make sure we’re on track.

Bottom line: +$14 (from pet spending category) – $72 (overage in shopping and food) = -$58 for the month of September. Not counting snowflakes and the money we put into savings, we spent $58 more than our income this month. Not good. I’m reminding myself that this is new, and it’s going to take us some time to get used to sticking to the budget. Next month is an opportunity to do better and learn from this month’s mistakes.

Hope you were more successful that we were in your budgeting for September!

The hidden danger of budgeting?

Photo by jonnystiles

When we created our first budget, I felt instantly liberated. I knew our absolute spending limits. As long as we didn’t go over those amounts, I knew we’d have enough to pay for everything. I no longer had to wonder, “Can we afford this?” I knew exactly what we could afford. I also knew exactly how much we could afford to put toward savings and debt.

I view our budget as a challenge. “How low can we go?” That’s my mantra when it comes to discretionary spending for groceries, entertainment, and other shopping. Every penny we go under budget automatically goes toward savings or debt, and watching those balances go up or down is my favorite part of budgeting. It’s what makes me feel so free. I’m constantly trying to lower our budget for discretionary spending so I can increase our savings and debt repayment.

Over the weekend, I had an interesting conversation with my husband about the different ways that we view budgeting. It made me realize that everyone doesn’t view budgets the same way I do. For some people, budgeting can actually work against them.

After creating our menu plan and grocery list, we realized we’d be on the low side of our grocery spending limit. I was happy, as my goal every week is to lower our spending so we can be under budget.

My husband’s first reaction, though, was to start adding things to the grocery list … things that we don’t need. “We can afford it this week,” he said. “We’re under budget.”

Wha …? I had never thought about it, but it made perfect sense once he put it that way.

I see the budget as an absolute limit. Ideally, we’ll spend less than that, but we absolutely can’t spend more. My husband, however, viewed the budget as the number we’re trying to reach. If we go under, it’s a license to spend more. We can afford it, after all. It’s in the budget.

I have to admit, the conversation somewhat blew my mind. We’ve been married since May, but this is only our second month of strict budgeting. I had no idea he viewed it this way.

The conversation illuminated a hidden danger in budgeting. By setting hard figures, are we in danger of reaching them? Can a budget actually lead to overspending? When people like my husband manage budgets, do they overspend without knowing it? Maybe they could spend less, but they’ll never know because they’re constantly reaching to meet their budget goals.

It’s a scary thought. Luckily, my husband and I are working together to amend both of our bad habits when it comes to money. He shares my views on savings and debt repayment. He also feels liberated as our savings account grows and our debt diminishes, and he agrees that the best way to make them grow and diminish faster is to spend even less than we’ve budgeted to spend.

His view on the budget was just if we’re meeting our goals, why change them? The budget is an outline of how much we can afford to spend, so why not spend it? He didn’t see the harm in spending all of our budget as long as we’re meeting our goals for savings and debt.

Though we set our budget together each month and discuss how to manage our money, I handle the day-to-day finances. So his views on budgeting haven’t caused problems in the past two months. But it could have eventually if we never discussed it and explained our differing points of view.

I guess the moral here is something about the importance of communicating about money. Mostly, I just thought it was a fascinating perspective on budgeting, and something I never even considered. I always thought that people got into financial trouble by not budgeting, and never once considered the idea that for some people, the budget can be part of the problem. Huh.

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My personal (student) loan experience

As part of the Extended Group Writing Project at the Personal Finance Bloggers Network, I’m sharing the story of my biggest financial mistake: my student loan debt.

I was in the same position as many high school graduates. I knew I needed to go to college if I ever wanted a chance at a successful career. Unfortunately, two of my sisters were also in college at the time. I didn’t qualify for grants or financial aid, but my parents simply didn’t have enough money to cover the high cost of tuition for three children simultaneously. My grades were good, but I didn’t think they were good enough to earn me scholarships, so I didn’t apply. I know, stupid.

I didn’t choose an expensive Ivy League or out-of-state school. I was happy to attend a state school. State schools are still expensive, though.

I often hear people say that living in an off-campus apartment is a luxury that students on a budget can’t afford. I completely disagree. For the first year I lived in the dorms. In addition to tuition, my food and boarding costs alone were $800 a month. It was much cheaper for me to live off campus in an apartment with roommates.

My parents generously contributed by covering my rent. I worked part-time all the way through college, but most of my time was devoted to classes, homework, and extensive work for the campus paper. I didn’t have time to work the hours I needed to cover my tuition and living expenses.

Each year, I took out federal Stafford loans to cover my tuition. Then I took out additional private loans to cover my living expenses.

The truth is, I didn’t really know what I was getting into. I was very young, and I thought, “I’ll be making so much after I graduate, paying these loans won’t be a big deal!” That might be true for low-interest federal loans. Not the case when it comes to $20,000 in private loans at 8-12% interest. Ouch.

I had no understanding of interest rates. I didn’t know the difference between a 4% and a 12% interest rate. I’d never paid down debt, so I didn’t know that the difference between those percentage points was thousands and thousands of dollars.

That money paid for me to eat and live, but I certainly could have lived more frugally. I didn’t really shop for groceries. I ate out constantly. I bought stuff I didn’t need. I had a lot of fun.

Was it worth it? Yes and no. If I could go back and do it all over again, I would still go away to school. Those four years were essential to my personal growth. I became the person that I am today because of those four years of independence and learning. If I hadn’t gone away to school, I never would have met my husband. I’ll take some debt in exchange for my husband and an invaluable education.

I would have stopped at the federal loans, though. I would have taken out as much as I could at 4% interest and worked my butt off in my part-time job, lived as frugally as possible, and earned my education without that extra $20,000 at an average of 10% interest.

I’m paying the price now. My private loans have a minimum monthly payment of $250. If I paid the minimum payment, it would take 30 years to pay them off.

They’ve been in forbearance steadily accruing interest for the past 2 years. I simply don’t have the money to pay the minimum payment and pay off my credit card debt. Paying down this debt is my only way out of it. Like federal student loans, private student loans cannot be discharged even in bankruptcy.

My federal loans are $75 a month, and my husband’s small amount of federal student loan debt is deferred until he graduates. When we finish paying our credit card debt in November, those private student loans will become our focus.

My credit score is very high, so I should be able to consolidate them for a lower interest rate. That will cut the minimum payment almost in half. Then my goal is to pay off the high-interest student loan debt in 3 to 5 years. I don’t want to be paying my own student loans when it’s time to send our kids to college.

My biggest mistake was that I signed up for a loan that I didn’t understand. I will never again do anything with my money that I don’t understand.

I’m overwhelmed by the debt, but we have the tools now to pay it down. It took four years to acquire it. My hope is that it won’t take 30 years to pay it down.

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A productive weekend in the fight against clutter

For once, I actually stuck to my vow for a productive weekend.

Yesterday, I bought a cheap coupon organizer from the bargain bin at Target for $1. I categorized all of my coupons in a system that works for me.

I’ve struggled with coupon organization in the past, so I’m hoping that getting organized will make the process easier for me. For the first time, I was excited to go through the Sunday paper this week instead of dreading it. Unfortunately, the coupons in this Sunday’s paper kind of stunk. :(

Last night, Tony and I emptied the plastic drawers in which we had crammed all kinds of miscellaneous junk and important documents. We threw away a lot of junk. Our birth certificates were jumbled in the same mess as credit card statements that we don’t even have a reason to keep.

Using a larger organizer (also purchased from the Target bargain bin for $1), I filed our most important documents, including our birth certificates, insurance information, credit and student loan documents, and tax information. The rest of the stuff in the drawers was categorized and organized.

This jumble of miscellaneous junk:

Became this organized drawer of office supplies:

And this organizer filled with important documents:

The photos above only represent one drawer. We went through six “organization bins” that have mainly become vessels for a jumble of quilting materials, office supplies, miscellaneous junk, and important documents.

Our important documents are now filed in the organizer and kept in a safe location. Our six drawers are now separated and organized: two drawers for office supplies, two for quilting materials, one for electronics, and one for owner’s manuals and warranties for our electronics. I’m feeling pretty good about the fact that everything is finally organized in a functional way. Now I can get to the batteries when I need them! We’ll see how long it lasts.

I wasn’t thrilled with our closet organization efforts. The result was a small donation bag for Goodwill and a little less clutter. We still have a few weeks before we can switch out our summer clothes for our winter wardrobes. Overall, the difference is negligible. I’m telling myself it’s because our seasonal closet purge has been effective in keeping clutter to a minimum.

Our biggest project for the weekend was purging our CD collections. For two years, our obsolete CD collection has been cramping our style. Though we mainly listen to music electronically on our iPods and computers and only use CDs in the car, we’ve been hesitant to clear the CDs and jewel cases out of our apartment. Over 100 empty jewel cases have been taking up valuable closet real estate for the past two years, and stacks of loose CDs were in our way in every room. Today, I was finally motivated to get rid of them once and for all.

We collected all of the loose CDs from around the apartment. Then we matched the CDs to their jewel cases. We sorted them into three piles: already burned, not yet burned, and don’t want to burn. Many of them I didn’t even want. I spent the afternoon burning the music that I wanted to keep on to my hard drive and reorganizing my iTunes library.

Then I searched for each of the CDs on Amazon to see what used copies are worth. Most of them were only selling for a penny. I found some good selling prices for about 25 of them, including a Bob Dylan box set that’s currently priced at $40. We’ll be listing the ones that are worth $2 or more on Amazon for a little lower than the current lowest selling price to see if we can make a little money.

We decided that the CDs worth under $2 aren’t worth the hassle of selling on Amazon. We’ll keep the ones we might listen to in the car, and we’ll try to sell the rest at a local used music shop. If no one’s interested in buying, then we’ll just donate them to Goodwill or the library.

Two years ago I wasn’t ready to part with my CD collection. Now, after letting them collect dust and take up space for so long, I’m finally ready to let them go. Sometimes all it takes to comfortably let go of clutter is a little time.

It feels really good to cross this stuff off my fall clutter clearing list!

What about you? Do you still have CDs that you don’t use or other clutter lying around the house? Why not get rid of it?