A couple days before Christmas, I started wishing we had put up a tree, since I really do think they’re pretty.  But we had decided it would just be a waste of time and money, since we don’t really celebrate the holiday anyway, and since we were going to my parents’ house for Christmas dinner – no one was going to be coming to our house.  Now that Christmas is over, I’m glad we didn’t get a tree.  No pine needles on the floor (or in the dog’s mouth), no tree to recycle, no decorations to put back in the crawl space.  But we did find out about a tree lot near here where they sell small trees that have been thinned from local forests to prevent fires.  They’re oddly shaped Charlie Brown trees, and I think they’re perfect.  So next year, I think we just might get one of those. 

Overall, we had a great Christmas season.  We only got gifts for three people: my husband’s parents, and one friend that I work with at the library.  My husband’s parents always send us a big box full of presents, and I do enjoy finding something they’ll like.  This year, I had pictures of their grandkids printed on a mousepad (for him) and a tote bag (for her).  They turned out super cute, and I know they’ll both get used.  For my friend at the library, I got a carved wooden plate when we were in Hawaii, and I also made her a set of notecards using pictures I took in Hawaii.  I also made ornaments for our five nieces, as I do every year.  For everyone else, we spent time rather than buying gifts.  None of our friends or family really need any more stuff.  But we could all do with spending more time together.  So over the last few weeks, we’ve had a dinner out with my best friend and her husband (who are in the hospital today in labor with their first baby!!), dinner with another couple my husband has known since college, two parties where we’ve been able to see lots of friends at once, and a wine/cheese/game night with another couple.  For each of these events, I’ve baked or cooked something to take along, and the atmosphere was festive all around.  Now that everything is winding down, we’re grateful to have had time to spend with our friends (some of whom we only see a few times a year).  I’ll take that over material gifts any day.

I’ve always been a goal setter. Be it school, work, or money, I set goals. I don’t normally write them down, but they’re always front and center in my head. I just read a post by Millionaire Artist about her new goal screensaver – very creative. It got me thinking – should I write down my goals? I am a chronic list-maker, and I still stick notes all over my desk (much to my husband’s chagrin, as he’s been trying for ages to get me to use electronic ‘post its’). Over the last few years, when we had lots of business start-up debt, I had a notebook where I kept track of exactly how much we owed to each creditor, and what the interest rate was. Each time I made a payment, I’d record the new debt amount, and each month I’d add up the current total. Even when the numbers were big, it made me feel better to be able to see them on paper and watch them slowly shrink. We currently have only one debt left besides our mortgage – we owe about $2800 to Discover Card. But we pay less than a dollar a month in interest on that debt (as long as we make one purchase a month, we only pay interest on the new purchases, not the original balance transfer. We spend between $1 and $2 each month for our required purchase). Since the HELOC portion of our mortgage is at 8.53% right now, we’d rather put extra money into that account, or into our ING account. So we only pay $100 or $200 a month on the Discover bill.

Anyway, since the vast majority of our debts are gone, I’ve stopped writing in my notebook. It was satisfying for a while to see all the zeroes, but now that there’s only the mortgage and Discover Card, I have the numbers in my head and don’t need to write them down anymore. I did start using a net-worth calculator last month, which I’ll keep doing, because I liked seeing everything in black and white. But what about goals? Maybe if I write them down, they won’t always be swimming around in my head, throwing themselves into my thoughts at random times – like when I’m about to fall asleep.

So here are my current goals:

1. To open Roth IRAs in Feb (with the tax refund I expect we’ll be getting), and fully fund our IRAs with a combination of money going to traditionals and Roths (we already have automatic transfers to the traditional IRAs).
2. To bump up our ING contributions to $150 (currently at $100) per month. This is our emergency fund money, so we don’t have any particular goals that we’re saving towards here – just a cushion for the proverbial rainy day.
3. To save $3000 to pay the midwife we plan to use when we have a child, hopefully within the next 2 years. We plan to have a home birth, so insurance will not cover any part of the midwife’s charge.
4. To increase our total net-worth by $20,000 in 2007. At least $8000 of this should be from decreasing the principal on our HELOC, which is currently our highest interest rate debt.
5. To run a 10K in under 44 minutes. My current best is 45:58. There’s a huge race at the end of May near where we live, and I’m hoping to take 2 minutes off my current PR. I’m working on this one right now, by taking a much-needed rest day.
6. To continue writing on this blog. It helps me see what we’re doing right, what we need to tweak, and I love the feeling of community that I have already gained from reading other similarly-minded blogs over the last few months.
7. To return to Tanzania, where I was a Peace Corps Volunteer in the late 90s. I have many friends there whom I would love to see again. And I want to show my husband where I lived and the school where I taught. This goal doesn’t have a definite time line. Hopefully it will be within the next 10 years though. We’ve taken some great trips in the last couple years (New Zealand, Hawaii, Jamaica, Georgia to go to the Masters…) My father is from Ireland, and all of his family is still there, so I’ve been to Europe a few times as-well. I feel really lucky in terms of places I’ve been and things I’ve seen, which is why I feel that I should work on the more practical financial goals on our list before I devote 5 grand to going back to Africa. But it’s on the list, because I might as well dream big, right?
8. To have the option to retire when we’re 55. This doesn’t mean that we absolutely plan to stop working in 25 years, but that we can if we want to. Staying in this house and continuing to live frugally will put us a lot closer to this goal, even if we never make 6 figures a year.

These are the things that swim around in my brain, vying for my attention when I’m drifting off to sleep or pacing myself through a 5 mile base training run. I enjoyed writing them here. I think I’ll write the gist of each one and put them on the fridge, where I can see them everyday. As I look back over my list, I feel very lucky. My list does not include things like ‘lose 40 pounds’ or ‘quit smoking’ or ‘save a down payment for a house’ or ‘get out of credit card debt.’ We have a really good life – everything on my goal list is frosting on the cake. My husband and I make our moderate income go a long way, we I have each other (way better than all the money in the world), we have our pets, we’re both healthy, we’re four years into paying off our mortgage, we have hobbies that make our lives full and entertaining, we have great friends… we have a lot to be thankful for. And with some hard work, some fun, a little luck, and goals posted on the fridge, 10 years from now we’ll have even more reasons to be thankful.

This has been quite a week for our appliances.  On Monday, we had to replace the heating element in our oven, and today we had to get a new thermostat.  I hope this pattern does not continue.  We started having trouble with our thermostat/furnace last spring, just at the end of furnace season.  Then summer came, and the A/C worked just fine, no thermostat troubles at all.  In October, we turned on our furnace, and it seemed to be working well.  But within a few weeks, we knew something was wrong.  We have a programmable thermostat, but sometimes we noticed that the temp in the house would be below the programmed level, and the furnace would not be on.  We found that banging on the thermostat seemed to help, although this did not seem like a feasible long term solution.  We crawled into the furnace space under the house and fiddled with it.  Turned out the doors were not mounted correctly, so the door switch wasn’t being pressed in all the way.  Fixed that, and the furnace worked for a few days.  Then the problem came back.  My brother came out and cleaned all the connection points on the thermostat, and everything worked for another few days before it died again.  Then my parents stopped by and my father found some faulty wiring in the power source to the furnace.  He fixed it, and we had about 5 days of uneventful furnace function – we thought we had finally fixed all the problems.  But yesterday, it died again.  Just in time for the Blizzard of 2006.  It started snowing yesterday morning, and stopped this morning, two feet of snow later.  When we woke up this morning, we couldn’t get the furnace to come on at all, and the thermostat appeared to be dead.  No amount of banging, poking, aluminum-foil-wrapping helped.  It was 54 degrees in our house when I called Home Depot to see if they were open.  Amazingly enough, they were (pretty much every non-essential business in the city was closed today).  But our neighborhood was completely snowed in – the streets were covered in two feet of snow, and only the main streets had been plowed.

So I put on my snowshoes and headed off to Home Depot.  It’s about a mile, but breaking trail all the way meant it took me over half an hour to get there.  I found a new thermostat ($28, for a fully programmable one – not bad at all) and made the trek back home.  Our house is now a cozy 68 degrees, and I feel confident that we’ve fixed the myriad of faults in our heating system.  I guess the downside to owning a house is that you get to deal with all the things that break.  But that’s an upside too, as we learn stuff every time we have to repair something, and we’re getting better at it as time goes by.  But I wouldn’t mind if nothing else breaks for a while!

During the week that I couldn’t access my blog, the Festival of Under 30 Finances went up at Money and Values.  I liked the list of best financial decisions One Frugal Girl has made.  I consider a lot of those decisions (going to a state school, paying off a car, buying a house, getting married) to be among the best I’ve made aswell.

I was reading a post from Tired but Happy the other day, about the financial help she’s had from her family over the years.  She mentioned that it’s not easy to talk about the gifts she’s received, but that it’s been a big part of her financial picture.  It got me thinking about what we’ve had in the way of financial help from our families.  Just a few months ago, J and I sold an old RV that my parents had given us last year, as we were no longer using it.  We had put about $500 into it, and we sold it for $1800.  My parents would not take any of the money – so it was basically a $1,300 gift.  My parents also gave us $5,000 as a wedding gift.  They plan to do the same for each of my siblings.  Some parents pay for their daughter’s wedding; the gift my parents gave us was much more valuable, as we used it as part of the down payment on our house. 

J’s parents have also helped us out.  When we were starting our business, they bought us a computer and printer (about $2,000 total), which not only helped out financially, but reminded us that they believed in our ability to succeed with our business.  J’s parents also paid for college for him, and he was debt-free when I met him.  My parents helped me pay for college as well, although I covered most of the cost with scholarships and jobs that became almost full-time during the last couple years of college.  When I graduated, I had $3000 in the bank, and no debt. 

Not counting J’s educations, I’d say we’ve received about $10,000 from our parents over the years.  This has helped a lot, but the more I thought about it, the more I realized that the biggest financial help my parents ever gave me was the money-sense that they taught me as I was growing up. 

My parents paid us for doing chores (about 5 cents for doing dishes, or 25 cents for a bucket full of weeds pulled from the garden…) around the house, and we would sometimes get $5 or $10 in birthday money from our grandmothers.  My parents always encouraged us to save our pennies.  When I was 6, they took me to the bank to get my own account.  I had about $50.  I would put a few dollars in the account every month, and I loved watching it grow.  Our bank accounts were a one-way street: we knew that the money was “for college” and that we couldn’t take money out until we got to college (which seemed so far off that it basically felt like permanently inaccessible savings).  When I was in high school, I started tutoring a neighbor’s child, and I babysat for just about everyone on our block.  By the time college stated, I had almost $3000 in my account.  As it turned out, I never had to use that money for college, because I got scholarships and jobs to pay for it.  So that money that I saved throughout my childhood became part of the down payment on our house when I was 24. 

My parents not only encouraged me to save for the future, they also taught me how to really stretch a dollar.  Shopping at yard sales and thrift stores, driving older cars, not buying anything you can’t afford to pay for right now – these were all such a part of our daily lives that they were second-nature to me by the time I had a household of my own to manage.  The things my parents taught me about money have put me thousands of dollars ahead of where I would be if I had grown up in an environment of debt and constant consumerism.  I am very grateful for this gift. 

I must apologize to my legions of devoted readers for the lack of posts over the past week.  I have not been able to access my blog site due to some unspecified error in cyberspace.  I called Bluehost and Comcast, and they both said that the problem was with AT&T.  I didn’t even know they had anything to do with my blog, but apparently it’s a big complicated world wide web.  Anyway, other people have still been able to get to my blog, but from both of the computers at our house, we could not access it.  So today is a happy day, because my personal pathway to my blog is working again. 

Last weekend, we went to see some friends for dinner, and I baked a pie to take along.  During the baking process, I heard a pop and hiss noise coming from the oven (never a good sign, especially when you’re baking something to take to someone else’s house…)  I waited for the noise to end, and peeked in the oven.  The lower heating element had a spot that looked like it was on fire.  I figured something must had dripped on it, but the pie seemed to be intact.  The hot spot on the element receded, the pie turned out great, and I thought nothing else of it.  Then on Sunday, I wanted to bake a casserole, so I set the oven to preheat.  30 minutes later, it still wasn’t ready, and upon further investigation, I realized that the heating element had actually burned itself out the day before - nothing had spilled on it, it had just come to the end of its life. 

Our house is 21 years old, and I assume the stove is the same vintage.  I love to cook and I use my stove every day.  I would love a great new stove, maybe with a flat ceramic top, or a stainless steel model… I’ve looked at new ones a few times, but the $700+ price tags always made me remember that my current stove was working just fine.  But now it was no longer working just fine.  The though crossed my mind to get a new one.  But instead I called around and found a store that carried oven parts.  The new element cost us $35, and the stove is working just fine again (and it’s cleaner now, because I cleaned the inside while I had the element out).  So alas, I still do not have a new stove.  But I have a functional stove that should last us a few more years.  And I did not go into any debt over the weekend.  Right now, our emergency fund has $837 in it.  I think I should get that a little higher before I go looking for a new stove. 

Yesterday I spent about 5 hours cooking.  It was off and on, and I was able to do other stuff during the “simmer” parts of the process.  It wasn’t strenuous by any means.  But now our freezer is stocked: a spinach lasagna, spaghetti pie, baked ziti, lentil curry, chili, red clam sauce, pumpkin muffins, and chocolate muffins.  I have to give credit to the book Frozen Assets for giving me the idea.  I’ve always been a fan of cooking large quantities of soup or chili and putting the leftovers in the fridge for later in the week.  But I’ve never cooked several main dishes in one day and frozen everything.  I spent about $40 on groceries for my big cooking day, and ended up with ready-to-cook meals that will last us about 14 meals.  And it’s such a great feeling to know that everything’s in the freezer and just needs to be thawed and heated.  I stuck a list on the freezer door, so we know what’s in there, and when it starts to run out, I can spend another Sunday cooking several meals.  And the problem of don’t-feel-like-cooking-better-go-out-to-eat is solved.

Cooking everything in one day worked well for me.  I stayed motivated because I could watch the freezer filling up as I went along, and I was able to use the same ingredients in multiple dishes.  We don’t eat a lot of meat, so I used one package of groung buffalo and cooked it with a bunch of diced tomatoes, onions, and bell peppers.  Then I was able to use this meat/veggie mixture in the lasagna, spaghetti pie, and chili.  It was easier than starting from scratch to add meat to each of those dishes. 

I’ve checked the Frozen Assets book out of the library two or three times, and each time I thought it would be a great idea, but never got around to actually doing it.  I’m so glad that I finally tried it.  I enjoy cooking, so yesterday was fun for me, and will make my weeknights a lot easier.  Even for someone who hates to cook, making a bunch of stuff (it doesn’t have to be fancy) in one day at least gets the process out of the way for a while. 

 

 

I’ll start this post by saying that I have no problem with sounding like a grinch when it comes to the commercial part of Christmas.  And for that matter, I’m an atheist, so the religious aspect of the holiday has no significance for me either.  What do I like about Christmas?  I like the lights.  And the food.  And spending time with family and friends.  I do not make a big deal out of Christmas.  This year, J and I are planning to volunteer at a shelter during the holiday week, to remind ourselves of how fortunate we are, and to give a little bit of ourselves to others who could use a hand. 

In years past, I have been known to buy Christmas gifts for 20 people.  I used to think I needed to, which is odd, because my family is not like that.  My parents bought or made Christmas gifts for us when we were young, but they stopped by the time we were in our late teens, as they consider Christmas to be a holiday for children.  Anyway, I have not always been immune to the Christmas shopping madness.  But as the years go by, I find myself more and more disgusted with the whole concept of buying gifts just because it’s Christmas.  What a crock.  It saddens me that even as adults, we continue to be sucked in by the notion that  1) we need to be buying gifts for everyone just because it’s Christmas time and Madison Avenue has convinced us that we must, and  2) that we need to spend a certain amount – the more the better – in order to not seem cheap.   I just refuse to be part of the madness anymore.

My two best girlfriends and I have been exchanging small Christmas gifts since 1994.  The three of us all have pretty great lives.  We have husbands who love us, warm houses, good jobs that we enjoy, and great friends.  Every year, we get each other small gifts for Christmas.  I had started to feel frustrated with this process a couple years ago, but I bit my tongue and went shopping anyway.  It just started to feel pointless. There is really nothing that any of us need, and yet we were caught up in the trap of feeling that we had to get something for each other in order to prove our friendship.  So this year, I said something.  I talked to each of them separately, and told them that their friendship means far more to me than whatever gifts we may buy for each other, and that I’d rather we just spend time together during the holidays, and skip the whole mandatory gift exchange.  Turns out they both wanted the same thing!  They were trying to simplify their holidays aswell, and were thrilled with the idea of getting together to just chat over a cup of coffee, sans the trinkets. 

I will continue to make ornaments for my nieces, because I agree that Christmas is a special time for children.  And I have a few other gifts that I make or buy each year – the ones I buy usually involve getting photographs enlarged.  But I refuse to be one of those bleary-eyed shoppers trudging through the mall with 10 shopping bags and a scowl on my face, trying to find that ‘perfect’ gift – just because it’s Christmas time.  With so many people complaining about the crowds, the money, the commercialization of Christmas, it’s amazing to me that the concept of Christmas shopping still has such a strong grip on so much of the population.  In the words of Mahatma Gandhi, you must be the change you wish to see in the world.  I’m doing my best.

Last night I was working at the library, and talking with some of my friends there about a book I’m currently reading.  It’s called Not Buying It – My Year Without Shopping.  I waited on the hold list at the library for over two months for this one, as it seems to be a pretty popular book.  Anyway, it’s the story of Judith Levine and her domestic partner, Paul, as they spend 2004 without buying anything non-essential.  They can buy unprocessed food, toilet paper, work supplies, etc.  But movies, clothes, dining out… all the non-essentials are axed for the year.  It’s in journal format, and I’m only to April, but it’s very interesting so far. 

As we were talking about it, one of the other librarians mentioned that someone should try to go a year without buying anything NEW except for food and other obviously consumable stuff – toilet paper comes to mind.  She was musing out loud about whether it would be possible to only buy stuff at thrift stores, garage sales, Craigslist, freecycle, etc.  I mentioned that I pretty much do that already, and she said I should write a book.  Or I could just blog about it. 

As it is, we never buy clothing new, and we rarely buy anything else new.  The exceptions are few.  I am a runner, and I buy new running shoes every 7 or 8 months.  Used running shoes have already formed to someone else’s foot, and if they’re in a thrift store, chances are the shock absorption has seen better days.  Since this has an impact (literally) on my knees, I have found over the years that new running shoes are an invaluable investment.  Underwear and socks I buy new, although I have been known to buy the occasional pair of socks in a thrift store.   I just found a sweet pair of Patagonia hiking socks for $1.  Didn’t look like they had ever been worn, and I’ve seen similar socks for $15 in sporting goods stores.  We will be buying a new computer in January.  We have an on-line insurance agency, and since we work from home, the computer and our phones are really the only infrastructure we need in order to work.  We use them pretty intensively, and mine is almost 5 years old.  It will be retiring soon.  We’re going to buy J’s dad a heart rate monitor this weekend, as he’s recently gotten into biking and is working really hard to get himself in good shape.  He’s doing a great job, and we want to encourage him.  I go to the scrapbook store every 6 months or so, but I could skip that for several years and probably still have supplies left over – I have enough paper to last the rest of my life. 

Other than that, we pretty much buy everything used.  Our cars, full suspension mountain bikes, bike shoes, bike jerseys and shorts, clothes, furniture (and no, our house does not look like a college student’s apartment), dishes, pots and pans, comforters, our juicer, even our pets were recycled! (Humane Society).  And we’re not into upgrading or replacing stuff just because.  We pretty much keep the same stuff until it’s no longer useful.  We’re not likely to go buy new furniture or dishes until what we have falls apart.  It’s the ultimate recycling – keeping what we’ve got already.

So yes, I think it’s absolutely possible to spend a year only buying used stuff.  I can’t imagine buying only new stuff.  That would take all the fun out of it, since I’d be worried about the money I was spending, and because I love how thrift stores are like a treasure hunt.  You never know what you’re going to find.  Not so in Banana Republic or Pottery Barn, where you can pretty much picture what’s in there before you even walk inside.   

The Festival of Frugality is up at Frugal For Life.  It looks like she put a lot of thought into it – very creative.  I liked the entry from Not Made Of Money with ideas for homemade gifts – one of my favorite things about Christmas.  Happy reading everyone.