In My Home This Week: Frugal All Week Long

Our drying rack which is such a boon to drying clothes indoors.  This one is metal and quite sturdy.

(Ignore the date on the photo, I never do set the dates on my camera as it must be reset each time you turn it on or change batteries.)

Saturday:  I am a little ticky about things.  I want throws that match my current color scheme in the living room but don't have any.  So...I do without as I continue to look and John uses a red one but it bothers me because red isn't in the color scheme.  I discovered this morning that one of the quilts has a cream backing on it...Which is lovely with the living room when turned to that side.  It works for me for right now.

John made breakfast this morning.  He used some cooked diced potatoes to make hash browns.

At dinner today, I made Rice Pilaf with some leftover rice.

Although it was windy and cold outdoors I opted to turn the heater up within one degree of the usual daytime temperatures.  I counted on the sunny day to offset the chill.  I noticed that the moment I started to feel cool air drafts the heater came on and was satisfied I'd struck the right balance.

Mama wanted me to order something for her yesterday.  I was able to use Swagbucks Shop and Earn to order the items.  I will get those points later next month.

Retirement Remedies: How We Use Sub Accounts to Stretch Our Money

Sarah asked me several questions about what I call Sub Accounts and I realized that this might be as unclear to others as it is to her.  So I thought perhaps a detailed explanation and an example might be in order.  Now the easy way to do this would be to take a photo of one of my actual ledger sheets but my husband would have a fit if he saw it on public display.  So for the sake of his sanity, I will show an example of how our checking register is set up.  The figures are totally fictional and used only as an example, just so you know.

We gave up using a check register about a year ago when we found that we now had to pay extra for them along with checks.  For about $3 I can buy a notebook full of ledger sheets (or print off the web) for about the same costs in ink which is less than we'd pay for the 2 registers!  Crazy, ain't it?  So we now use ledger sheets and because they are inexpensive, I use one for each pay period.  As a bonus the ledger sheets are so much easier to read than those tiny lines in the registers.

We have, as most folks do, certain things that come up routinely.  For us those would be electric, Internet, cell phone bills, insurances.  Each pay period we set aside HALF of the total amount due.  Then we set money aside in what I refer to as "sub-accounts".  These categories include car maintenance, home maintenance, tags and taxes, etc.   We take the average annual costs and divided them by 26 (we are paid every other week, 52 weeks in a year divided by 2 is 26).

Frugal Fail: What It Is and What It Isn't

I suppose it was really brought home over Christmas because I was doing what I normally do each year at that time: watching every version of Dickens A Christmas Carol.   It's our tradition to watch all available versions of it, excluding cartoons.   I like A Christmas Carol ! Scrooge  has money enough to meet his needs but he suffers privation in a prideful way.  He eats poor meals, refuses to allow sufficient heat in home or work place, even begrudges his clerk his wages and makes Bob feel shame and embarrassment for asking for his deserved and much needed pay.  He implies that Bob, who is poorly paid and has a family to feed and clothe, squanders his money in a frivolous way.  Scrooge is a miser.  He doesn't care for money for what it can do for him or others.  He only accumulates it.

I write a good deal about frugality on my blog.  I follow other frugal blogs. I really enjoy reading other people's frugal doings, but I have noticed a trend of late of people apologizing for any sort of spending or for any indulgence or splurge.  It's almost as though there is a contest on to see who can be more frugal, in a miserly way, than another.

Sometimes someone takes another person to task for not doing a certain thing that they personally have found frugal.  Oh the brouhaha that can get started because of a spending point that others disagree with!

In My Home This Week: Planning the Week Ahead

It's another new week...they do seem to keep coming around regularly don't they?  I haven't gotten nearly as much done as I wanted for this month and here we are in the last week.  I'm going to approach the week cautiously, not wanting to aggravate my back which has been acting up to some degree all month long.  Old pesky thing.  I finally determined there were plenty of jobs I could do that were low stress on the back.   Trouble is they are just not the jobs I want most to be doing.  I was thinking more along the lines of mulching and digging and painting and shifting furniture.  Well.  Instead I am sorting out drawers and trying to make things look a tiny bit fresh.

My pantry and freezer are full.  I need to purchase only produce, bread and dairy for foodstuffs.  I think this next month I shall focus on stocking paper and personal care products and one or two pantry items that are very low (rice and pasta comes to mind).  That's the plan for the next two pay periods...

Coffee Chat: Winter Serenade

Here we are!  Time to stop and have another chat...I've got some lovely Cherry Almond Cupcakes.  You can find the recipe right here.  They turned out the most perfect shade of pink.  I am really fond of cherry cake.  I'm always looking for a good recipe and I think I've found one.  Next time I'll chop cherries to add to the batter of the cake because I like to bite down on a bit of cherry.  If I'd known how pretty pink these were going to turn out I'd have saved the recipe for Valentine's Day.  But then that would be later and this is now and so have one and some half and half in your coffee and let's chat a bit.

Oh Half and half...First I'm going to address a comment from Pam earlier in the month.  Carageenan is a seaweed (Irish Moss) byproduct that is used to thicken and stabilize dairy products. I haven't meant to say it is bad for any/every one.  I have mentioned that it's bad for me because it causes me to have mild respiratory symptoms that I dislike.  The more of it I imbibe the more I feel I can't get a proper breath.  When I stop using products that contain it, I find I breathe easier.   It's an allergic reaction and it's mild but it's unpleasant enough to make me want to not feel that way.   It seems wise, on my own behalf, to watch for the product in the ingredients list and avoid those products.

And Angela asked about the Butter Chicken recipe.  I sort of combined two recipes but this one was one of those.

This Week In My Home: Frugal All Week Long

 I freshened two areas in my home (this one is in  the back entry) using what I had on hand.  I re-potted the ivy into a prettier pot and everything else was moved about from other areas.  It all looks fresh and new and I love it!  No cost decorating.

Saturday:  I promised John a breakfast of sausage gravy.  We had that over leftover warmed biscuits.  Yum.

I made a simple at home lunch even though I had no desire at all to cook.  It was quick and easy.  I thawed frozen burger patties (I made up when we brought the ground meat home at first of year) and cut two medium potatoes into oven fries.  Everything went into the oven to cook.  It was quick and easy and painless for clean-up as well.  I cooked two extra burgers to put in John's work lunch tomorrow.

After sunset, I prepared items to go into John's lunch for work tomorrow.

The New Savings Culture

I have reported before that I spend a few hours each week trolling about on Pinterest reading frugal blog posts.  There's always the off chance I might learn something I haven't known before, or relearn something I'd forgotten (just as good as a new trick is a forgotten trick!)...Most blogs tend to stick to the old basics that we've all learned and repeated: stop eating out (as much), stop buying new when used will do as well, stop spending what you haven't earned yet...You get the idea.  Sort of a 'Frugality for Dummies' mentality.

However, there is a new savings culture out there and I've noticed it creeping in amongst frugal blogs with a subtle message: Frugality isn't worth it.

How, you might ask, do they justify their position?  By trotting out the old and hackneyed methods of savings (stop eating out, stop buying lattes and stop overspending) and hinting that small savings are the least effective way to manage your funds.  The new take is this:  You should work to earn more because a new and better job will reward you many times over.  You should invest instead of save. You should cook from scratch but forget coupons or meal plans.  That's too much work for too little return.  You should buy top quality as you can afford to pay cash but used is not necessarily the way to go, if it requires repairs or sprucing up.  You should skip the work of a vegetable garden but find a good CSA that will deliver organic vegetables and fruits to your door on a weekly basis...