Why I hate thift store shopping

Thrift store shopping steps:
1. Drive twenty minutes, and navigate a cramped and seedy parking lot. Begin searching racks.
2. Check shoes only to find no shoes in narrow sizes.
3. Check pants. None in tall size. Just petite or XXL.
4. Check shirts and dresses. 75% are either petites or XXL.
5. Discard shirts with synthetic fabrics, ruffles, extremely low or high necklines, sequins, fringe, logos, or iron on pictures.
6. Discard shirts with stains, rips, frayed hems, pulled apart seams.

Exhaust possibilities. Set out for the next thrift store. Repeat 5-6 times in a four hour period.

Budget goals for 2014

So yesterday I went to open up my finances spreadsheet only to find that it was gone. :( My Syncplicity drive was getting too full, and I wanted to delete the folder that my Excel doc was in. I moved it to a new folder but for some reason the version that I ended up with was last updated back in May. Ugh.

Fortunately I have a pretty good idea of my finances because I did a evaluation of all my expenditures from January through November, to see if any of my budget categories need to be modified for the new year. The way we do finances in my house is my SO has his paycheck and I have mine, and we keep a joint savings account but separate checking accounts. We have the bills evenly distributed between the two accounts so that we are both left with the same amount of discretionary funds.

My take home pay after taxes and benefits have been taken out is $40K. So what do I spend that on?

• Mortgage: 33%. I pay one mortgage, and SO pays the other. We refinanced recently so the rates are very good. We pay just slightly over the required payment each month.
• Savings/Retirement: 20%. Boring but important.
• Bills: 10%. This is stuff like Terminex, Rapid Rooter, the alarm system, water, electric, cell phone service (we have no land line). We don't have cable TV. My job pays for my internet.

So those are all necessary payments, which leaves about $15K for the year. So where does this go?

• Groceries, both food and things like cleaning products, toilet paper, diapers. Anything that gets used up on a regular basis. This is the biggest category, about $6.5K a year.
• Pet care. Vet bills and food for two cats.
• Personal care. Facials, hair cuts, gym visits, and clothing (for me and for the baby). (About $2.5K a year)
• Clothing for me and for the baby. 
• Entertainment: Dining out, going to movies. Plus treats for me like computer games and books that aren't at the local library. (About $1.5K a year.)
• Baby gear.
• Car Maintenance.
• Home Improvement.
• Medical co-pays.

My financial goals are to pay off my mortgage by 2030, continue the process of fixing up our house, and to get six months worth of expenses into our savings account (right now it is closer to two months). Analyzing my spending gives me ideas for intermediary goals to set for the year.

1. Make as many cuts as possible to the consumables category by shopping carefully and buying only what is needed. For a lot of things I'm going to start going to the Dollar Store instead of Target, and to Super Saver Supermarket instead of Publix. I'm also going to try VERY hard to use cloth towels instead of paper towels, and beans instead of meat. Fingers crossed that the baby takes to potty training early and we can stop buying diapers.
2. No more going out for facials. This was only every other month anyway, but I'll have to start doing them at home. 
3. No more personal trainer after the contract ends in April. Now I know how to use the gym equipment so he has served his purpose. Fortunately my job pays for my membership so I can still exercise for free. 
4. STOP buying gifts or personal items online, especially if it means paying for shipping.
5. Clothing and baby gear is to be purchased cautiously. Buy as much as possible from garage sales, Craigslist, and Freecycle.
6. Turn off and unplug as many items as possible to combat phantom power. 
7. When Verizon contract ends in February, switch to a cheaper plan like Pages Plus Cellular.

 I'm hoping that all of these changes will let me save $5K in the next year, plus do the home improvement projects that I want to do. Those goals are important enough to me that the sacrifices I'm making don't seem too bad!

USDA Food Plan Versus Reality

It is shocking to me how high estimates are for the average cost of feeding a family of our size. The USDA's "thrifty plan" estimates that a family our size would spend about $450 a month for food, based on the national average for food prices. That is actually a bit high for us - we spend closer to $400. And we live in an area where food prices tend to be higher than the national average!

Why are our grocery costs so much lower than the national average? There is one booklet that describes the Thrifty plan, which has a spot for soda, candy, and convenience foods, but the vast majority of the plan is devoted to healthy foods. I have no idea why the foods are priced so high on the thrifty plan. I suspect that they are based on buying the most popular name brand goods instead of store brands, and not choosing cheaper substitutes (oatmeal for cold cereal, beans for red meat, etc.).

The second booklet is REALLY interesting though. The three "non-thrifty" plans are labeled low-cost, moderate-cost, and liberal-cost. All of these plans budget for items that were not on the thrifty plan at all - things like bacon, nut butters, cheese sauce, milk desserts, and game meats. A NORMAL food budget includes game meats??? Unless you shot it yourself, game meats belong on a liberal-cost budget. Bacon is tasty and wonderful, but it is also at least $10 a pound in my area. That is compared to $1 a pound chicken thighs. A lot of what is assumed to be standard fare on these budgets are actually luxury items.

Spending more on food is investing in your health - if you do it right. I spend extra to buy pork, chicken, and beef that are hormone free. I buy some "standard" vegetables, but if it is on the "dirty dozen" list I buy organic. I buy Wild Planet canned seafood because it is the only one I can find that has a low mercury guarantee. But in order to do this I compromise by getting cheaper cuts of meat, buying store brand whenever it is an option, and making simple dinners with just a few ingredients.

Bugs and more bugs

I don't know whether it is due to the weather changing or what, but we have bugs everywhere now.

Outside the house we have ants that don't build a little mound and call it quits; they dig up everything. If there is a crack in the any pavement it quickly gets rimmed by piles of dirt that run along each edge. Sweep this away, and the ants put it back ten minutes later. Annoying, but at least they stay outside. This is also the time of year that Florida pusley blooms in everyone's lawns, so bees are everywhere too. Which I actually see as a positive since I keep hearing on the news about their population decreasing.

Inside - cockroaches. Ugh. I keep the house clean as possible, but with a toddler and two cats this isn't easy. Plus we still have a half inch gap between the floor and the bottom of the baseboard pretty much throughout the whole house, so the roaches are having a great time climbing around in the walls. Typically I just find dead/dying ones, although yesterday I went to get a paper towel and as I pulled it from the dispenser a cockroach fell from somewhere below the cabinet and bounced off my hand. (Shudder) In Florida we have both American cockroaches and Florida woods cockroaches (aka Palmetto bugs). People are so used to the nickname "Palmetto bugs" that they insist that these aren't really cockroaches, they just look like them. Sorry, no. They ARE cockroaches. But the good news is that according to this guy cockroaches no dirtier than any other bug, and cleaner than most humans, so good news there? Supposedly the best way to get rid of roaches is to get a glass jar with a top that curves in, like a glass applesauce jar, and set it out with a little food in the bottom. The roaches climb in to get the food and then can't climb out. Of course the problem is that you then have a jar of squirming roaches to deal with, which is more than I want to deal with.

Also inside the house are a variety of annoying little drain flies and gnats. They actually are attracted to moisture, not food lying around, although they will take what they can get. We have to be careful to make sure that the tabletop, counter top, and sinks are not only clean but also DRY.  Even what we throw away has to be as dry as possible or we get flies in the trash. And if it is too humid we have to run the AC even if it is actually a nice temperature outside. And used dishtowels and washcloths can't be left in a damp pile under the sink. We don't succeed in all of these, but we do enough to at least keep the flies in check. 

A Craigslist Christmas

I got a major chunk of the baby's Christmas shopping done tonight. She will be a year and a half old this Christmas. On one hand I don't want to make it too much of a big deal, on the other hand I'm trying to get into the mindset of only buying toys for her twice a year - Christmas and birthday - so I feel like I need to make it count. So I made a list of the things that we most want to get for her: a tricycle, a doll cradle, any of the various Little People sets, and a set of farm animal figurines (action figures? dolls? not sure of the terminology there). I checked the two biggies in our area - Toys R Us and Target. Some of the things were cheaper at one place, some were cheaper at the other, but neither were more than a few dollars cheaper. Not good enough.

So I turned to the internet: Craigslist!!! I've both bought and sold things from Craigslist before and I've never had a bad experience. About fifteen minutes searching yesterday allowed me to locate an offer of various used toddler toys at about a twenty minute drive away. A few texts secured me an appointment at the seller's home. (Some people are concerned about showing up at a Craigslist seller's home and ending up in little bitty pieces in their basement. Anything is possible, I guess, but I've only met super nice people. You never know who will answer your ad. I've had hugely muscular guys covered in tattoos come by to pick up things I've sold, and they are not creepy at all, just happy to get some cheap used baby clothes for their own little girl.) Tonight everything worked out great. The trike was in great condition, and so was the Little People playground that she had. And, as usually happens, we fell into conversation and she realized that she had some other things that I might be interested in buying. So I also got a Little People house, an animal noises game, and a basic Leapfrog learning to read thing. All for $60! So now her Christmas shopping is pretty much done. I'm still going to get her the farm animal figurines since they are about $8 at Toys R Us, and may be able to get SO to build her an inexpensive doll cradle with cast off wood, but that will be it.

15 months later...

Well, that was a bit more of a hiatus than I had in mind! The baby was more of a handful than I expected over the past year, and I had to take an adjunct position on the side. But LO is in daycare now, and my college students get their final exam tomorrow, so HOPEFULLY I will be able to stick to a reasonable posting schedule again.

In the meantime, I'm rereading The Complete Tightwad Gazette. A lot of it is great, but some of it is dated. The tips contained in it were originally published in the 1990s, and I don't think they had things like Skype or Ziploc containers (much easier to wash and re-use than Ziploc bags!) Plus I don't know where the author lives (lived?) but her tips are based on a completely different climate than here. For example - line drying? I am dubious about its efficacy in ninety percent humidity, and the blogger of Frugal in Florida agrees.