Every road trip within 200 miles I bring The Complete Tightwad Gazette and mark in my notebook selected strategies. I wrote down about thirty, including books to send away for or trawl for (I LOVE the used bookstores in my area! We have so many readers!). It's a good month if I can save the cost of the book in that month.

I air-dried one laundry load.
I tried the 20-minute pasta cook strategy: boil water on the stove, put in pasta, bring to another boil, stir, then cover, and turn off heat. Stir once or twice during the 20 minutes.

Both of these worked well.

Some investments I made this week: more canning lids, Kerr's Blue Book of Canning, and wooden clothespins. I didn't think they were available anymore, but was surprised to see them in several areas. Shows you how little I frequent hardware stores.

I am hoping the karma bump will visit me in my jobhunt efforts fairly quickly. A company about 25 miles away, that also employs a long-term friend, is looking for someone with my skills, so I asked him about referral bonuses.

I did get a karma bump when I found most of the recipe for apple pie my mother made. You know how it seems most moms, especially the American ones, are revered for their apple pie skills? I have made apple pie but once, before my son was born, but he has salivated over my apple crisp since he was eight months old. I wonder what new levels of devotion he'll be taken to once I make the apple pie.

1. I have passport! And a place to stay in Osaka! This simplifies my savings goals: wedding gift, gift for sister-in-law, maybe gifts for brother's in-laws, tickets for bullet trains and trip to hot springs onsen.

2. I decluttered a bit: two boxes of books dumped in the aluminum 7' tall container by the Safeway, for charity. Am cleaning out the bathroom, because in a few days I will have new tiles, new fixtures, new bowl, new countertop, new soapdish, and new toilet roll holder, and a ventilation fan with lights!! Woohoo!

3. I visited the Vital Statistics office in Vancouver on Friday -- my change of name certificate has been mailed to me, so getting my kid's citizenship certificate has gotten one step closer to reality. I also visited the Canada Post office (it was my official 'Canadian government errands' day, including picking up the passport) to mail my elections registration info.

4. Mailed off order to the garage door replacement company.

5. I have posted ads to give away a lamp, a foam puzzle, and an afghan. Also am trying to sell a rare Elvis Presley 45rpm 7" EP for $5. An auctioneer in St. Louis is offering a similar 7" EP (same songs, different release, better condition of sleeve) for $500-$750 so I think if this doesn't go, I'm going to try eBay, where no doubt more Elvis fans with long-playing hi-fis still exist.

Enhanced Services Billing, Inc. fraudulently placed $8.43 in charges on my husband's bill, claiming I entered some contest or otherwise gave approval for them to set up voice mail. Unlikely, as I have voice messaging already, and was thinking of giving that up as a teleworker seldom thinks to pick up the phone to check for messages.

From the FTC Website:

The FTC's complaint, filed with the settlements, charged:

* that ESBI falsely represented that consumers were legally obligated to pay charges on their telephone bills for web sites and other items they had not ordered or authorized others to order for them;
* that ESBI unfairly attempted to collect - or arranged for local phone companies to collect - payment of charges from consumers for web sites and other items they had not ordered and that consumers were unable to prevent ESBI from causing such unauthorized charges to appear on their phone bills;
* that BCI falsely represented that consumers were legally obligated to pay charges on their telephone bills for an activation fee and monthly minimum fees for a calling card, when the consumers had neither asked for the card nor authorized anyone else to ask for it on their behalf; and
* that BCI unfairly attempted to collect - or arranged for local phone companies to collect - payment of charges for an activation fee and monthly minimum fees for a calling card that consumers had not ordered and that the consumers were unable to prevent BCI from causing such unauthorized charges to appear on their phone bills.

So, when caught, standard business practice is to continue, only include a paragraph in the billing statement saying that the charges might be fraudulent? Why is this company still in business? Oh wait, DEREGULATION.

Although I am not (yet) in crisis, sometimes I feel overwhelmed attempting to impose order and routine and to create a plan. I don't do the most obvious and elementary things like track spending. I don't schedule my time well enough to bake loaves of bread. I fear I have to take some steps backward, for example decluttering my kitchen and donating extra food or disposing waste, before springing for bulk containers to hold milk powder, flour, et cetera.

Sometimes I want to turf everything out and begin anew. Mostly I want to start new and healthier habits. I want to escalate my debt repayments and savings, and I don't think I can achieve adequate results without my family's participation or without a black belt in family budgeting and scheduling (preferably a working mother, not a 'oh I do everything right and always have because I am so gifted to be born in an upper-middle class family and I am so perfect no partner will ever live up to my standards and I'll probably miss my childbearing years so I sit alone in front of the blue glow of my laptop screen posting on forums intended for people less perfect than I how I am so much better than they; I wonder if they will ever suspect how lonely and insecure I am and how I make little dolls out of dryer lint and scraps I find in the dumpster outside the strip mall's fabric store and name them after the international children I adopt through CARE or World Vision' type) sitting down with me over tea and cookies, going through expenses.

I want to know how to request statements of beneficiary appointments, or restate my beneficiaries for my accounts.

What brought this on? Reading that the average mortgage debt owed in 2004 for my current age group was only around $108682.

Bleah. If only I knew what one or three simple actions I should take immediately to make the rest of the actions simpler.
If only I knew what the ideal percentages for slush fund allocations should go to Home improvement, replacement car, Tokyo, college, Roth, and disability insurance.

What is frugality? Is it living below your means? Is it living on one person's income and saving the other's, when the income division is close to 50-50? Is it saving 10% of your gross income?


None of the above. Frugality is the practice of acquiring goods and services in a restrained manner, and resourcefully using already owned economic goods and services to achieve a longer term goal.

Yes, I ripped most of the above paragraph and everything below from Wikipedia's frugality entry.

Common strategies of frugality include:
• the reduction of waste,
• the curbing of costly habits,
• suppression of instant gratification by means of fiscal self-restraint,
• the search for efficiency,
• traps avoidance,
• defiance of expensive social norms,
• embrace of free (as in gratis) options, using barter, and staying well-informed about local circumstances and both market and product/service realities.

I don't know what means 'traps avoidance' but the first thing that comes to my head is cell phone plans. I'll be working on the first four strategies. I feel I have near-mastery of defiance of expensive social norms: our mortgage plus tax plus insurance plus utilities plus maintenance is still less than what we'd be paying as renters in our area.

As we can't be bothered to check the phone for voice mail on a regular basis, I'm going to get rid of voice mail. It's a waste. I also want one scooter gone. Somehow we will meet Jean Chatzky's '$10 a day' challenge. Even if it means me preparing lunches in the evening for the next day, or soaking beans (hey, what about those soaked lentils in the fridge?) learning to love eggs and cheese as cheaper protein alternatives to fish, fowl, and meat.

Link du Jour: Frugality tips from Pinchtown (why do I have the Steve Miller Band in my head?)
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Another Link du Jour: Interesting Web Interactive Applications served up by the New York Times in its July 20 Debt and Credit feature.

How I stack up or suck:
2004 the average debt on a home by 35-44 year olds was $108062. Ours was $170000 (we were not yet 35).
2004 the average house price was $264,000. Ours was about $296500. Then again, 52% of families aged 35-44 had $100K - $320K in mortgage debt back then.

I like how the 1941-1946 period is the one period over 88 years where savings outnumbered debt.

Link du Jour: 3000 miles debunked

My auto manufacturer still recommends 3000 miles as the appropriate interval for oil changes, but it's good to know that of the cars I am most likely to purchase in the next two years I can postpone the Grease Monkey trip.
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from the etc. bin: I am so tantalizingly close to completing two savings goals! When I can deposit two cheques into the accounts I can consider #2 (bathroom) and #6 (garage door) complete! Maybe I should start #1, #4, #5, and #7 in earnest on 7/25 to keep things quarterly.

So this is what the high gas prices have come to? Young bucks reasoning "oh no evil clowns will eat me if I stop at a stop sign or at an intersection I must show my freedom and liberty and run down the pedestrian blocking my way by walking on the sidewalk instead, or in the crosswalk. Or else terrorists win or something." My life was endangered twice last night, and all I did was walk in a crosswalk, observing traffic (which did not observe me nor a stop sign in return), and on a sidewalk, which was slightly inconvenient to some driver who could not handle a red light at an intersection. They drive crazier than Margot Kidder on my front lawn.

I've never been that kind of a driver: what goes on in their minds other than a whoosh of air? Do they think exactly as I've described in the first paragraph? Is it a chromosomal or hormonal malady I need to be more compassionate toward? Did the blind or hard-of-seeing win their emancipation to commandeer heavy motorized vehicles unattended? Can someone tell me how much money they save on gas by foregoing stoplights at intersections and just veering off through gas stations, or by disregarding stop signs? Is that what saved America from the 1970s gas crisis -- driving like over-entitled jackasses?

I'm going to ask the Mayor's Office how they expect people to choose to go green through bicycling or walking if 'speshully entitled drivers' are endangering them through illegal driving. Do you get a 'speshully entitled' designation for an extra fee at the licensing office? 'Oh I am above stopping for pedestrians who are visible in crosswalks and sidewalks in daylight' -- who sells those decals? Is the idea to free up resources by killing off some of our citizens? I don't think I should be killed off: I contribute consumption, business, and property taxes to my local government, and I think my government therefore should protect its tax base.

some notes from a July 15 Andrew Tobias column:

HOW TO THINK ABOUT DEBT

You want to owe as little as possible, especially adjustable-rate debt (because it’s hard to see how at some point inflation will not get reflected in higher interest rates).

The one big exception is a good long-term fixed rate mortgage. This is a great deal, because the lender is on the hook to you for 20 years (say), at 5%, whereas you are on the hook to the lender, typically, not at all – you can pay off the debt any time you want. So in case we had nutty inflation for a while, the $200,000 you had borrowed at 6%, which was a stretch at the time, would seem ever less daunting with each passing year.

Yeah, with 90 banks identified by the FDIC as failing, who's gonna buy my mortgage from my privately owned regional bank surviving from before the Great Depression? I did see today that a bank that issued a HELOC to a friend has gone under.

1. Read through How to Say It
2. Read through Content Management books
3. Look for interview clothes
4. Start addressing thank you notes for everyone on my interview list
5. Fill out application form
6. Pray pray affirm affirm pray eat sleep
7. Clean out car
8. Think of/write down interesting questions to ask the interviewers

I'm reading Jean Sherman Chatzky's Pay it Down!, about how to save $300 a month. I'm gradually becoming convinced I CAN save an extra $10/day. The questions are: am I motivated enough to do it? Can I get my family to pitch in? What are the best allocations for those extra ten dollars? Can we drop/adjust our healthcare premiums when it's not "open enrollment" time?

I checked My Rate Plan to compare telecom plans: family and pay-as-you-go. Pay as you go is about 20 cents -> 34 cents a plan. Only T-Mobile and AT&T have plans cheaper than what I'm getting with our 25% discount at Sprint, and I'd have to buy a phone.

I prepped some beet salad and cooked some lentils for eventual salad use.

I've mentioned Weiss Ratings elsewhere as a useful site for checking the best and worst of insurers and savings and loans. For thrifts ratings, check out Office of Thrift Supervision. I cannot rule out that the whoo-hoo(tm) rollercoaster ride that is WaMu did not prompt me to post this. Speaking of rollercoasters, I learned that they are faster than they were when I was in the prime rollercoaster riding years. I wish my tot were tall enough to ride with me in one. I also learned, through the same exhibit at the science center, that I can expect to zip from London to NY and then to SF by 2049, if I am not toast by then. I can imagine myself being irritated at not having a longer time for working on a virtual crossword or listening to books-on-implants. And where would the fun be in a family cross-Canada railway trip if we can finish it in the time it takes to finish a copy of People Magazine?

P.S. Do you think perhaps the new catchphrase for WaMu should be "Ka-Boom!"? Or is that trademarked? I am not gloating. I have not shorted WM, have no plans to short WM, nor have I counselled anyone to short WM. My child has money in WaMu, and I've had volunteer and work connections in the regional thrift. I will not continue to volunteer next school season in that capacity, but in a different way that helps the PTA.

Huzzah -- a quote for replacing the garage door came in at $900 under what I was expecting. Can you say "freed up money?"

Aiyee -- dreamt last night that the market would drop 600 points today. I typically buy an ounce of gold when the Dow drops 300 points. I'm several drops overdue, but the darn coin shops are closed when I come visiting.

Huzzah -- according to David Wann, my wee house inna city, in an area undergoing 'community condensation', with my small but vital garden, will eventually be considered very valuable as people downscale and move away from the burbs. 2/3 of what David Wann wrote in his book of Simple Prosperity is an Aiyee.

Aiyee -- my child wanted to write a letter to the Tooth Fairy asking to up the payment per tooth to $2200. No doubt to cover emotional damages from seeing and feeling blood, and separation anxiety. What's worse -- he thinks the Tooth Fairy is Dick Van Patten in a pink tutu.

Huzzah -- call me Jimmy Carter, I'm growin' peanuts! A peanut shell dropped by a bird into my raised bed is sprouting. The Urban Farm Boys are surprised to see how well my tomatoes are doing, but what they don't know is that I give them tomato food every week.

Another huzzah -- found a recipe for making creme fraiche. Perhaps that will save me gas-fueled trips to Whole Paycheque.

I've seen posts where people are looking for work, and report upcoming interviews, or blog when they're waiting to find out. Comments along the lines of "we're rooting for you!" "Keeping you in my prayers!" "holding a good thought for you" ensue.

If you posted about an upcoming interview, and you received those comments, did you get what you wanted? Or did something better come along very soon after?

I'm going to assume that commenters honestly made the effort to align the universal unconscious with the poster's stated goal: if you've been a commenter, have you charted your success/failure rate?

I'm asking as I'm both applying for a job that seems a GREAT FIT for me, and WELL-TIMED, and also because I'm praying for something else (nonmaterial/nonphysical) at the moment. The only downside I can think of is that I'd probably have to start riding the scooter or taking the car to work or waking up early to catch two buses each commute, with extra fare.

If you're in debt, and it's a taboo subject to bring up, do you suppose everyone else is in debt too, or do you suffer silently convinced you are the only one?

This is of course the wrong question to ask on a Savings blog: the readers are money-conscious and goal-oriented. But before you got here, if you were in debt, which did you believe? Were you better off thinking you were the only one, or that consumer debt would always be a fact of life?

I still have a hard time believing so many other people are in debt: they have higher retirement accounts, bigger houses, newer cars, mommy and daddy to leech from. A quarter of the houses on my street are paid-in-full. I never see a trace of worry on their faces. I tend to think people pay in cash for vehicles and home renovations, because we ought to. And I think the taboo custom here is what reinforces my belief. My friend has no problem getting people to confide they owe money -- me, I do not give off those vibes at all. I only give off the vibes of being approachable for money, despite how ill-fitting, wrinkled, or old my clothes are. Yet when I ask my self-employed friends with their $600K+ houses how they set up their Keoghs or SEP-IRAs they don't respond. Is that a taboo, or are they too cashpoor?

What would the nation look like if people were open about how much they owed? Would people get out any faster? Would they be in peer collectives sharing their strategies as middle-income households rather than heeding a milionaire talking head or a spoken voice over a mass medium?

Ka-ching! Consumers spend more on credit cards

Credit card debt more taboo than sex** I was banned from commenting on this one, due to the IP address I was using (shared by 60,000+ other people) so I am commenting on it here. I see the Consumer Smarts blogger hasn't mentioned whether she is debt-free or has consumer debt.

Update: Decided not to register for this event, after reading the biographies of the facilitator and the financial advisor. I told my friend I'd welcome a different event for us to hang out and learn, and that I'd keep an eye out for such things as well.

Cons:
1. I could use that time meal planning, returning library books, cleaning the house, gardening, riding my scooter to get the battery to bounce back, teaching my child to ride his bicycle.

2. I have already attended a touchy-feely seminar about money. I still get whacked out about poverty. Maybe this will work, maybe it won't.

3. Car insurance, utilities, day camp, and bathroom stuff are collectively going to stomp my savings into a flat greasy spot this month.

Pros:
1. I can save my friend $25 off her registration if we register together.

2. It's downtown, and I can shop for groceries at the market and get decent books from the library.

3. I love my friends and don't see enough of them. This friend helped me get $167 post-tax as she listed me as a referral for her current job.

This is not an MLM seminar. This seminar has the following description: 'Using a whole systems approach, this one-day introductory seminar will help me to:

•Be more confident in negotiating for what I really want (this I need)

•Explore cultural, gender, and class conditioning (bo-ring! already took 1st yr women's studies, thankyouveddymuch)

•Identify and get beyond my own “glass ceiling”' (this I need, my spouse is happy in his salary gutter and I am too stressed and unhappy where I am)
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Home Energy Front: According to EnergyStar.gov's Home Energy Yardstick, my house energy score is 9.1 out of 10. "Your score is excellent and your energy use is well below average. 91% of U.S. homes use more energy than you." I guess because I average $85/month in heating costs (we don't have air conditioning) and neither our exterior walls nor our basement walls are insulated I figured we sucked mightily.
Wanna Try?

I'm declaring my emergency fund covered.
I am 94% of the way to meeting my bathroom budget, and 93% of the way to buying a new refrigerator. Halfway to Rothville.

Bought some Mason jars for preserving our expected bumper crop of tomatoes... I bought five plants, but three have surfaced as surviving seeds from last year, making eight in total! Boy it's a good thing I love tomatoes! I also want to try pickling ginger, beets, radishes and cabbage, to get the nutrients and enzymes from lacto-fermentation.

I started a book by John Cummuta. His Web site hawks a program for $79.90 but I can save you nearly $80 by just sharing this with you: arrange for 10% of your take-home pay to go to your debt payments. That 10% is the "amazing Accelerator Margin." Where to find that 10%? Ideas abound on this board, other personal finance forums and Websites. Such a favour I do for you. Now you can do something for me:

Find me a 2001-2007 era vehicle that gets 37 mpg highway/29 mpg in-city and can carry at least three people (no Fits, SmartCars, motorcycles nor scooters) and have storage space in the back for Costco runs.

Show me how I can knock 10% off my heating bill this year on $100/month: duct sealing? insulating the water heater? Do not suggest windows, insulation in the attic, programmable thermostat, nor leaving the house unheated from 8:30 AM to 3:30 PM in the winter when someone works in the home. These have been considered and have either been implemented or discarded as physical cruelty. The government's home energy savings Website tells me I can save maybe $71 extra per year, if I ditch my old refrigerator.

Carbon footprint of house: 6.2
Carbon footprint of car: 6.8

I brought some books with me on the trip to Vancouver: that's right, I spent the Fourth of July applying for a Canadian passport. One book was Doris Janzen Longacre's Living More with Less. I read through it, and saw how relevant these simple living and "living lightly" strategies still are: don't eat so much meat, material possessions aren't everything (they certainly don't make us happier in the long run), share with the less fortunate.
Also am reading Brent Kessel's It's Not About the Money. When I have the emergency fund, bathroom, landscaping, garage door, refrigerator and the Osaka trip squared away, I can think about expanding the giving budget. For now, I am working on donating 10% of my food budget to local food banks.

Still struggling with having fun in this lifetime and yet paying off the mortgage semi-rapidly. I learned today from a friend that it's not unheard of for Vancouverites to be spending up to 74% of their takehome pay on housing. Ach du lieber!** No wonder YVR's called "Hollywood North," eh?

During the Great Depression the market fell by 83%. I do not believe I can stomach that kind of loss. Time to move some assets to cash.

I guess there's always something more I could do to save energy/cut costs/save the planet/get in shape/save time, but figuring out what can be mesmerizing and time-consuming. I'm obsessed with the idea of doing something cheap that results in a 10% decrease in energy costs.
For our debt support group meeting on Sunday, I plan to visit a county library branch and get as many books in the 332.02402 call number as are available. Or reread my current books and come up with plans to reduce, reduce, reduce. Maybe I'll buy a refrigerator this weekend.

** Ach du lieber is short for Ach du lieber himmel: German for "oh for the love of heaven."

Semi-annual auto insurance, bimonthly utilities, monthly full-time child care. The $300 promised to us for the boy's stimulus package is not going to take care of all of the above. Bleargh. Am hoping the bill for the bathroom can be paid the second week of August without penalty.

June 2008 - June 2009
73260
Annual Monthly Budget
Food at home $4,747.25 $395.60
food away from home
$4,043.95 $337.00
booze $600.00 $50.00
Housing $18,315.00 $1,526.25
Natural Gas $1,236.00 $103.00
Water/Sewer $1,025.64 $85.47
Electricity $366.30 $30.53
Telephone $842.49 $70.21
Household operations
$1,794.87 $149.57
Household supplies
$897.44 $74.79
Household furnishings
$2,417.58 $201.47
Apparel $1,794.00 $149.50
Maintenance $3,300.00 $275.00
Pet expenses $900.00 $75.00
Auto Expenses $4,249.08 $354.09
Public Transport $360.00 $30.00
Insurance $952.38 $79.37
Tabs $216.00 $18.00
Healthcare $1,200.00 $100.00
Entertainment $1,620.00 $135.00
Personal Care $1,200.00 $100.00
Telcom/Internet $323.40 $26.95
Childcare $2,010.00 $167.50
Gifts $900.00 $75.00
Reading $219.78 $18.32
Education $1,260.07 $105.01
Miscellaneous $1,260.00 $105.00
Cash Contribs. $1,223.44 $101.95

This comes out to $4940 monthly, on average. I'm trying to cut some of my expenses to get our outgo to be closer to $4716 -- I am greedy and want to squeeze more $$$ toward my savings. Food seems a likely culprit -- all that Alaska wild salmon, pasture-finished meat, local farmer produce. But hey, my foods haven't been recalled.

Gifts go to distant friends, relatives, and schoolchildren who invite our child to parties.

Healthcare includes copays and medications, and dental expenses. Electricity includes a $6.00 monthly Green Up! optional payment to enable the utility to purchase "green" power.

Personal care includes vitamins, soap and haircuts.

Booze includes beer during the summer, wine for cooking, and the occasional birthday party cocktail and scotch for Mr. Works Fifty Hours a Week.

Education includes non-credit community courses, yoga, registration fees for the lad's courses.

Entertainment means movie rentals, public radio memberships, movies out, birthday party dinners, espressos with friends, crosswords, magazines, video games, school auctions.

Auto expense does not include insurance, but covers oil changes, maintenance, car washes, air filters, and gasoline.

Cash contributions include church and highly rated local charities and friends doing Breast Cancer Runs for the Cure.

I'm pessimistic -- I'm thinking that food is the easiest one to cut, for two adults and one six-year-old. Fave bookmarked URLs for eating-on-the-cheap or even how to organize the working week so we can use the crockpot more often and eat on the cheap would be good. We strive for no more than 4 oz. of meat a day, and at least 70% of our food intake to be vegetable matter. Maybe I can get by on D3, calcium/magnesium, Emergen-C, eye support, cod liver oil, and iron supplements only, and leave out the B-complex and E vitamins.