We bought a new – to us – car.  Actually, we bought it a year ago, but we now have the title in hand, so it’s truly ours now.  If you’ve been reading this blog for a while, you know I was a fan of my Honda Civic.  But at 20 years old and with 225,000 miles on it, and with our second baby on the way, we had decided it might be time to replace it.  So last year, just before our second son was born, we bought a 2009 Mazda5.  We had been shopping on Craigslist for about six months prior to making the purchase.  We had our “car account” at ING that we had been funding for over a year, and we had about $5000 in it at the time that we decided to replace our car.  We had additional savings that were not earmarked for a car, and we debated whether or not to dig into that account to pay for a new vehicle.

I wrote out a pros and cons sheet.  I like doing things like that.

I talked to our credit union to find out what sort of interest rate we’d get on a loan.  Then I calculated the total interest we’d pay over the life of the loan, and the total interest we’d pay if we paid off the loan in one year instead of three.  (I just used a mortgage calculator that lets you see how extra payments impact the life of the loan).

We had initially been looking at vehicles that cost $5000 or less, in order to just use the money in our car fund and be done with it.  But the more we talked about it, the more we decided maybe we wanted something a bit newer that was still under warranty.  We wanted something with room for our kids and dog and whatever gear we needed to haul, but we also wanted something that was good on gas.  The Mazda5 jumped out at us as the perfect compromise between a car and a minivan.  Sliding doors (awesome), seating for six, and lots of cargo space in the back if you’re only using the middle row of seats.  Plus, I’ve averaged over 30 mpg (city/highway combined) every single time I’ve filled the tank in the year that we’ve had the car (I focus on gas mileage when I drive, so my numbers are always better than what a car is rated for.  I go about 68 on the interstate, and in town I avoid hard braking and try to plan ahead to allow myself to coast up to lights as much as possible, etc. )

Anyway, we paid $14,000 for our car.  It was two years old and had about 40,000 miles on it.  It’s under warranty until 60,000 miles.  We’ve put 7,000 miles on it in the past 14 months, so we should have another two years of warranty coverage at this rate (That’s all of our driving – we still have my husband’s 22-year-old car, but we’ve probably put less than 200 miles on it in the past year.  We could get rid of it, but it’s a cheap backup vehicle that costs very little to register and insure).

So back to paying for the car.  After much research and discussion, we decided to finance $10,000 of the purchase price.  We took $4000 from our car account for a down payment.  We saved the other thousand in that account to use for registration, insurance – which we upgraded to full coverage for the first time ever – and to have just in case other miscellaneous expenses came up.  Then we financed the other $10,000 through our credit union at 4.5% interest (better than the dealership could offer us on a used vehicle).

Our plan was to pay off the loan in 12 months.  It ended up taking us 14 months, although the last couple payments were quite small, and the interest charge the final month was about two dollars.  Over the course of the loan, we paid $227 in interest.  Back when we were considering financing the vehicle, I had calculated roughly $215 in interest charges if we paid off the loan in a year, so it came pretty close to our expectations.

Once we had decided that we wanted to buy a newer vehicle that cost more than what we had in our car account, we figured we had three options.  One was to keep funding the car account and wait until we had the money to pay the whole price outright.  Two was to raid our other savings account and pay for the car outright, which would have cleaned out most of the account.  It’s much more robust these days since we’ve changed our mortgage payoff strategy, but that wasn’t the case a year ago.  The third option was to finance part of the purchase and pay off the loan as quickly as possible.  Once we calculated that it would cost us just north of $200 to finance the money for a year, we decided that was worth it to us.  It allowed us to have a newer, more reliable, safer vehicle before our baby arrived, and the additional interest wasn’t a budget-busting amount.

Once the loan balance got down to the last couple thousand dollars, the total monthly interest charges were very low.  So the last few months, we prioritized our municipal bond fund over the car loan – which is why it took a couple extra months to pay off the balance.  But it’s paid off now, and we have the title in hand.  That feels good.  And the $227?  Totally worth it.  I gotta say, after eight years of driving my old Honda, the Mazda might as well be a Mercedes as far as I’m concerned.  I know that it’s safer for our family, and I like that too.  We’re able to fit two additional people in our car now too, which has been nice when we’ve had out-of-town visitors (like my in-laws) who arrived by plane.  And all winter long, every time I went to town for groceries, I brought home 15 2x4s in our Mazda.  They fit just perfectly down the middle between the seats.  I probably brought home 200 2x4s that way, and my husband was able to finish framing our basement a few months ago.  The car has been a good little work-horse.

Anyway, now we’re back to having only a mortgage on the debt side of the account balance.  I definitely like it better that way.  But I’m glad we got our car when we did, and I consider the interest payments well worth the benefit we’ve had from having the car over the past year.  I had always been opposed to the idea of financing any depreciating asset, but when I wrote out my pros/cons sheet on this one, I was convinced that this was the way to go.  Of course a big part of the strategy was to pay off the loan as quickly as possible, especially in the early months when the outstanding balance was highest (the first month, our interest payment was around $35).

We plan to keep this car for a very long time.  Given the fact that we had our 20-year-old Honda until it hit 225,000 miles, and how little we drive, I’d say we’ll still have the Mazda when our boys get to high school.  The Honda had 182,000 miles on it when we bought it, and we kept it for eight years.  Given that our Mazda was practically brand new (40,000 miles – I had never had a car with only five digits on the odometer!), I think it will serve us well for many years.

Have you ever financed a car?  Would you in the future?  If you had asked me that two years ago, I’d have said no on both counts.  But this ended up working out very well for us.  I doubt we’ll ever finance another car, given that we’re still contributing automatically to our car savings account and  are probably many years out from needing to buy a car again.  But this experience did make me consider loans in a slightly different light.  Rather than my usual “all debt is bad and I’m allergic to interest payments” attitude, our car-buying process made me think of the interest payments as the price we paid for having our car a year earlier than we would have if we had waited until we could pay for it outright.  To us, it was worth it.

A few days ago, I got an email from a reader named Katie who had this to say:

I was wondering if you would be interested in a post for us with kids or soon to be kids as in my case.  I am currently 32 weeks pregnant and agree with a lot of things you do/believe when it comes to child rearing.  I find myself spending a lot of time thinking about life in a couple of months and would love to hear more of your thoughts on things.  Maybe  a post about “What I wish I could have told myself when I was pregnant” from what you have learned now or even a summary of what you did that worked well or wouldn’t do again.  I hope that makes sense.  I fight a lot of the consumerism that is thrown at you, but still  feel like I am getting too much of what I don’t need and maybe not enough of what I do need. 

Also, what did you do for toys for your boys their first year?  I firmly believe in no noise making, lights flashing toys as they just over stimulate. I am going to load up on books and other simple toys.

Thanks in advance! I don’t always do the things you do, but really appreciate your ideas and putting yourself out there.  As I have simplified my life, it has been really wonderful reading about what others do for ideas and overall support!

A few days ago, I got an email from a reader named Kate who shared how her attitude towards money has changed over the years.  She mentioned that in the past, she would have spent a lot more money than she does now, simply because she would have considered so many more things to be needs rather than wants.  When we compare ourselves with the people around us or let ourselves be swept along with current trends, money has a way of disappearing rather quickly.  Here’s what Kate had to say:

I think you could do a whole post on saying NO. This past week and a half I have said no to :

1. Over priced CSA. (cheaper to go to farmers market and get produce) $400

2. Travel soccer for two daughters $400. 

3. Summer camps $500. 

4. Preschool $3000

5. Camping weekend $200

6. Gas on all the above activities has to be over $600

The old me would not have even realized that I was making choices on these things. $5000 and i would not have batted a eye 2 years ago. I considered them a must have because my friends were doing them. It was REALLY hard to walk away from preschool and travel soccer. Yet, I can’t afford them. I think we confuse paying for things with being able to afford them. Yes, I can pay for the $270 a month for preschool. (Plus then I am also spending money for fundraiser, class parties, gas, teachers gifts, etc.) But I can’t afford to pay for them and meet my financial goals or my goals to create a peaceful environment.

I love what she says about confusing our ability to pay for something with really being able to truly afford it.  Think about houses and cars that are usually purchased with a payment plan.  The most important number is the total price – including interest – that you’ll pay for the item.  Thinking in terms of whether you can make the monthly payment is a recipe for being in debt forever and for spending all or nearly all of what you earn each month.  Kate notes she does technically have the money to pay for those items.  But I love her thought process when she says that she can’t afford to pay for them AND meet her financial goals or her goals to create a peaceful environment.  

A peaceful environment is a huge part of health and happiness.  And living below our means – often by saying “no” to lots of things that people sometimes assume are necessities – is a very good step towards creating a peaceful environment.  Knowing that you have money in the bank to get you through a tough patch (because tough patches will come up – it’s just a matter of when) is a very calming feeling.  Knowing that you don’t really need that much money each month to cover your expenses creates a sense of peace.

In order to determine if we can really afford something (as opposed to whether we’re simply able to pay for it), we have to look at our priorities first.  What are your most important financial goals?  For us, paying off our mortgage and having a solid emergency fund are far more important than any other wants we have.  So those come first each month, before any other spending.  If we were to just look at our total income and then spend it on whatever we wanted during the month, there might not be enough left to meet our most important goals.  Everybody has different “most important goals” but the key is to make sure that you’re spending your money in harmony with those goals rather than at odds with them.

Thanks for sharing your thoughts Kate!

When my husband and I got our first apartment together in 2001, we combined two very small “sets” of mis-matched dishes.  We used those for several years until one of my friends upgraded her dishes and offered me her old ones.  They were well-used discount store dishes, but we liked them better than our hodge podge collection of dinnerware, and they all matched!  We donated our old dishes to the thrift store and stared using the new ones right away.  They served us well for several years.

But we recently upgraded to a much nicer set of dishes.  My mother gave us a full set of Pfaltzgraff dinnerware that she had collected over the last few years.  She found all the pieces at thrift stores for a tiny fraction of what they would cost to buy them new, and they’re all in excellent condition.  It’s a pattern I love, and the pieces were obviously much better quality than the dishes we had been using.  We’ve had them for a couple months now, and we love them.

There was no way that I was going to stash them away somewhere and only bring them out when company came over.  Every day is a special day – might as well use the nice china everyday, right?  So that meant that the old china in our cupboards had to go in order to make room for the new dishes.  Normally, I would just donate stuff like that to the thrift store, but our collection had acquired quite a few chips over the years and I wasn’t sure Goodwill would accept them.  I’ve never seen chipped china for sale there, and I thought that it might just end up being more work for them if they had to toss it anyway.  Plus, I was hoping that someone could actually use it.  Although there were several chips, the dishes were still very usable – we had been using them up until we got the Pfaltzgraff set.

I packed the dishes into a couple boxes, and yesterday I posted them for free on Craigslist to see if anyone was interested.  I mentioned the chips and included a couple pictures in the listing.  Very soon after I posted them, I got a reply from a lady who said she’d love to have them.  I put them on our porch for her and told her she could come and get them whenever it was convenient.

This morning I got an email from her saying that she had picked up the dishes.  It said “thank you from the bottom of my heart” and how much it helped them to have the dishes.

I always try to avoid throwing stuff away if I think that there’s any possibility that someone else could use it.  I donate a lot of stuff to Goodwill, but I’m aware that they end up throwing away stuff that isn’t in good shape.  When I have things that aren’t good enough to donate to a thrift store, I always try listing them for free on Craigslist.  I almost always find someone who can use whatever it is that we don’t need anymore.  Baby stuff that has seen better days, boxes we used to pack our stuff when we moved, a broken lawn mower… all sorts of stuff that might normally end up in a landfill was happily carted home by people who had a use for it.

I feel like this is a better solution for things that aren’t in great shape than just dropping them off at a thrift store.  Sure, that method is faster and easier, but it also creates more work for the sorters at the thrift store who have to separate out the stuff that they can’t sell.  If it just ends up getting thrown away, it’s no better than throwing it away yourself.  Listing that sort of stuff for free on Craigslist allows people who actually have a use for it to come and get it, and doesn’t burden thrift stores with goods that they aren’t able to sell.  Plus, it gets it out of your garage or basement.  Win, win, win.

We’ve also benefited several times from other people listing stuff for free on Craigslist.  A few days ago we scored a baby wading pool for free.  Our boys are loving it, and it’s no longer taking up space in someone else’s garage.  It was no use to them anymore, but it’s perfect for our family.  So glad they didn’t just throw it away!

Before you throw stuff away, do you consider whether it might be useful to someone else and offer it on sites like Freecycle or Craigslist?  Obviously, some things are truly trash and nobody is going to want them (if you don’t get any replies to your free listing, that’s a pretty good sign that it does belong in the trash).  But you might be surprised at how often your trash is someone else’s treasure.

Find the best deals on car insurance with carinsurance.org.uk

My husband recently spruced up his bike to make it easier to carry stuff, and I thought I’d share his cool DIY design.  In the past, he always used a backpack to haul stuff on his bike, or he put stuff in next to our son if he was hauling the kid-trailer.  But now he has a luggage compartment on his bike, even if he’s not hauling the trailer.

He started with one of those skinny, flat, tray-like carriers that mount behind a bike seat over the back wheel.  We got it a long time ago at a thrift store, and it was the perfect mount for his new bike trunk.  You can see it in this picture, underneath that basket at the front:

He used scraps of wood leftover from framing the basement and some screws to attach an old milk crate to the carrier:

Then he cut the sides of the crate so that he doesn’t bump against it while he’s riding.  He also made extra room at the top so that he can still wear his backpack without it hitting the crate.  He has a bungee cord to hold things in place, and the whole thing works perfectly.

Other than the mount we found at a thrift store, everything else for this project was stuff we had sitting around in the garage.  But now it’s much more useful.

This is completely off topic, but look what I found at Goodwill yesterday:

Clarks.  No wear at all – no toe indents inside, not even a scuff mark on the soles.  Six bucks.  Retail price is $120.  They’re my mom’s size, so I got them for her – couldn’t pass up that sort of bargain.  I also got a complete set of bathroom towel rails (three rails plus a TP holder) for another six bucks.  Since we’re working on our basement bathroom, that was another good score.  And I also got a beginner’s guitar for our son for five dollars.  All in all, a good trip to Goodwill.

My little blog got a facelift today, thanks to my awesome husband.  It was time for a change, and I love the clean new look.  Both the boys are in bed and my husband is down in his basement office working late tonight, so I’ve had some time to just browse around online.  Well, and mop the kitchen and dining room floors.  For the first time since January.  Ahem.

So anyway, I found all sorts of great articles to share with you – I hope you enjoy my internet wanderings as much as I did!

I’m a week late to the party on this one, but Mr. Money Mustache has issued the Maximum Mustache March challenge.  If you’re looking for motivation and a group of other people all focused on making positive financial changes this month, head over and check it out.

I love this great homemade toy from Penny at Penniless Parenting!  It reminds me of similar toys that we made when I was a kid, although we just used yarn and string – I love the idea of using elastic hair ties to wrap around the nails.  Our son loves writing and spelling and he’s starting to really get interested in reading.  I think he would love this, and I’m thinking it will be a perfect project to do with him tomorrow.

This post at Simple Bites has a ton of recipes for making your own food from scratch.  Not just regular meal recipes, but recipes that tell you how to make staples like condiments that most people – even people who tend to cook all their meals from scratch – buy in a jar.

Another excellent homemade toy idea, this one comes from Budgeting With The Bushman’s.  Two tin cans and some string are all you need to make a pair of tin can stilts.  I can see our little guy having so much fun with this.  We don’t really buy any food in cans though, so I might need to raid the neighbors’ recycling bins first.  My dad made lots of stilts for us when we were little, and he would amuse us endlessly by making giant stilts for himself and walking all around the yard on them.  He just used long pieces of wood with little pieces of wood attached to the inside as a place to put your feet.

I love this DIY post about making blackout shades for your bedroom.  Monica and her husband spent just a few dollars to make their own blackout shades to go behind their bedroom curtains.  Looks like a relatively simple DIY project, and definitely less expensive than buying them already made.

Spring is coming… don’t throw your plastic containers in the recycling bin – plant something in them instead!  Here’s a great post about making your own mini greenhouse for seedlings out of clear plastic containers.  I’ve got a collection of small plastic containers right now that I’ll be using to start seedlings in the next week or so.  My parents start seedlings in clear plastic containers every year and they always end up with the most amazing garden.

Brave New Life is about a family’s journey towards early retirement.  It’s written by Mr. Brave New Life, but this post is written by his wife, giving her perspective on the whole adventure.  Although she was always the “spender” in the relationship and he was the “saver”, her post details how much she appreciates their downsized life and how much she’s looking forward to her husband’s early retirement.

Have a wonderful Friday and a great weekend!

The scrubbie I use at the kitchen sink has been dead for quite a while.  Today it fell apart and I could no longer ignore the fact that I probably should have replaced it about a month ago. 

My next shopping trip is scheduled for March 12th.  That’s a long time from now.  And I have to wash a lot of dishes between now and then.

Then I remembered how my mother used to make her own scrubbies out of mesh produce bags.  Most of my produce comes loose, but if there’s a sale that makes the bagged stuff a better deal, that’s what I buy.  And I just happened to have come across such a sale the last time I shopped.  I had a big bag of grapefruit on the counter, in a nice red mesh bag.  So I dumped them into a bowl and made the bag into a scrubbie.

Nothing fancy, obviously.  I just folded the bag over on itself until it was the size and shape that I wanted.  Then I sewed around the edges using heavy duty thread (it’s almost like dental floss, which would also work great for this project).  I did it in about ten minutes, standing in my kitchen with little boys playing under my feet.  Definitely a “beginner” level sewing project – aren’t those the best kind?

I just used it to wash a sink full of pots and pans, and it worked great.  Admittedly, this isn’t going to save a lot of money.  Scrubbies are a few dollars at most, and usually a lot less.  But what I like about this was that I was able to avoid going to the store (sticking to my scheduled grocery shopping trips is a big part of my strategy for reducing our grocery bill), and I also kept a little chunk of plastic out of the garbage.  Reusing is the best form of recycling, and every little bit counts.

Do any of you do this?  Or do you have other things that you do with mesh produce bags?  Seems like a waste to throw them out, so share whatever ideas you have!

I recently came across Mr. Money Mustache in my internet wanderings.  If you haven’t already discovered his site, I highly recommend it.  He reminds me a lot of myself – he’s like a guy version of me with a few more rants and some colorful words sprinkled here and there.  Oh, and he’s retired too (we’re not there, but we’ve been working from home for a decade now, which is pretty awesome).   He also has a wife and a child, which makes him seem much more realistic from my perspective (since we have two children) than some of the ultra-frugal bloggers who don’t have children and live on next to nothing.

Anyway, I was browsing around his site and it got me thinking about our spending.  We already save about 40% of our after-tax income.  We put more than a full mortgage payment into our mortgage payoff/emergency fund each month.  We save for retirement.  We have an HSA that would cover several years of having to meet our health insurance deductible.  We’re saving for our boys’ education (not a lot, but we put $100/month into each 529 account).  All of our “stuff” comes from thrift stores and Craigslist.  We are frugal in just about every regard.

Ever regard except food.

Our food budget is very high.  My rough estimate is that it was running about $1000/month for the past year or so.  We don’t eat out (seriously – we’ve eaten out once since September, and that was to take a dear friend out to dinner for his 90th birthday), so there’s no dining-out expense at all.  But still, $1000/month on food is a bit crazy.

I’ve written several times about what we eat.  I refuse to compromise when it comes to what my family eats.  I cook nearly everything from scratch.  We don’t eat foods with long ingredient lists, preservatives, food coloring, artificial sweeteners (and avoid added sugar most of the time too – treats around here usually rely on the natural sweetness in fruit).  And almost everything we eat is organic.  That means that I almost never shop at the local grocery store here in town, because they carry very few organic items.  Instead, I drive into the larger town nearby to shop.  And for the past year or so, I’ve been pretty much making it a one-stop shop at the health food store.  That – combined with Costco every few months – has resulted in some pretty large grocery bills.  We’re squarely in the “liberal plan” on this USDA chart for a family of four.   Although I have to assume that most families have a dining-out budget that is higher than zero dollars per month.  So that helps me to justify our food bill a bit.  But still.  It could be much better.

While I’m extremely budget-conscious with pretty much every other aspect of our spending, I had let myself get lax when it came to groceries.  Although I would snap up things that were on sale, I would also buy pretty much whatever I wanted to cook, regardless of whether it was on sale or not.  I didn’t go online to look at the sale ads for the larger grocery stores in town (they have much larger organic selections than the small store here in our town, but obviously not as much as the health food store where I normally shop – but I should at least be looking to see what they have on sale each week).  I basically told myself that it didn’t matter how much we spent on food.  We’re very healthy, and I work very hard to keep it that way.  I’m convinced that diet is a huge factor in health, which is why I won’t compromise when it comes to our diet.

But I could be much more frugal and still not compromise.  I’ve known that for a while, but I’ve justified my lax grocery budget in lots of ways.

• We can afford it (true, but we could save even more if I put more effort into keeping the grocery budget down).
• We deserve to buy great food, since we eat all of our meals at home (also true, but why not focus on great meals that can be made without spending as much money?)
• I love to cook, so a high grocery budget is ok.
• I don’t have time to stop at multiple grocery stores with the boys in tow (I don’t want to drive all over town, but there’s a major grocery store about two blocks from the health food store where I normally shop.  Is it really that hard to make one more stop in the same general area?)
• I love to browse food blogs and find new recipes to try, which often means adding new ingredients to the shopping list.
• We’re very frugal in every other area of our lives, so it’s ok to spend a lot on food, which is what matters most to us (true, but if we can eat just as well while being a bit more budget-minded with food, doesn’t it make sense to do so?)

I thought about all of this, and decided to make some changes.  That was about three weeks ago, and so far, so great!

• I’m limiting my grocery trips to three times a month instead of once per week (in the summer, I always cut down to about every other week, because our garden gives us so much fresh produce.  But in the winter, I’ve typically always shopped every week).  To facilitate this, I’ve scheduled my grocery trips on the calendar.  I have a visual reminder every day of when my next shopping trip is, and can plan our meals accordingly.  I had found that even going every week, I was still spending a lot at each trip.
• I’ve unsubscribed from the food blogs that I used to read every day.  I can still go to their sites when I want, but the emails aren’t in my in-box every day, tempting me to try new recipes.  This is good in a few ways.  First, it keeps me from always adding new ingredients to the shopping list.  Second, it saves time in the kitchen because I’m mostly cooking meals that I’ve prepared before.  And third, it cuts down on my computer time, which is a good thing.  Don’t get me wrong – I love food blogs.  But I was spending too much time on them.  I already have a Google Docs file with several pages of recipes that the whole family loves – I could cook them every day for a month and not repeat myself at all.  There comes a point when enough is enough.  For now, I’ve reached that point.  I’ll just continue to make the meals I’ve already perfected, and – mostly – avoid new recipes for a while.
• I’ve started preparing meals for the crock pot and freezing them.  This has been a huge success.  I just bought ingredients to make several more bags, which I’ll be prepping tomorrow or Saturday and stashing in the freezer.  The soups and veggie concoctions I prepare are relatively inexpensive (even though all the ingredients are organic) because they mostly rely on root veggies, beans, and lentils.  The bullion I had been using was relatively pricey, but I tried making my own and it worked perfectly – for about a quarter the price.
• No more exotic superfoods. (or at least a drastic reduction in how much we buy)  Gogi berries are great.  But do we really need them?  Pecans are delicious, but almonds are a third the price and work just as well – we can save pecans for a rare treat instead of tossing them in the cart every time we shop.  Sunflower seeds and pumpkin seeds can be substituted for a portion of the nuts in many of the nut-based recipes I like, and they’re dramatically less expensive than nuts.
• The money we’re saving is already accounted for – automatically.  We upped the contribution to our mortgage payoff/emergency fund by $300/month, because that’s what I’m estimating we can save on groceries.  That means the money won’t be burning a hole in our pockets.  If it’s not there, we won’t spend it.
• I’ve started looking at the sale flyer for the major grocery store in the area of town where I normally go shopping.  It paid off in a big way this week – they had vitamin supplements on sale buy one, get one free.  So I stocked up on all of the supplements we already use.  For the rest of the year, we’ll be shopping in our pantry for supplements instead of adding them to the grocery list.  The vast majority of the stuff in the sale flyer is never going to make it into my cart, since most of it is processed food.  But I found a great deal on organic potatoes and apples in addition to the supplements.  Definitely worth the extra trip (I spent $167 and the savings total on my receipt was $118 – not bad).
• I’m being much more selective with our produce.  Although I only buy organic, I’m focusing on the items that are on sale, and basing our menus around those, rather than creating menus and then just buying the food that I need to make the meals I’ve planned.
• I’ve always shopped with a grocery list, and I’m good at sticking to it – no impulse buys.  But I’m usually pretty lax about what I put on the list, and I don’t usually worry about what’s on sale when I’m making the list.  I just add things to the list as we run out of them, and I also add things to the list when I come across a recipe that includes a new ingredient.  These days, I’m being much more careful about what I put on the grocery list.  I’m looking at sales and I’m also questioning whether we really need to replenish each thing we use up.

Basically, I’m getting back to basics a bit more.  I will still only buy organic.  And I’ll still have a grocery bill that is higher than average (which I think is fine, given that we never eat out).  But I’m getting back on track with applying my frugal skills to the grocery budget – just like I do with every other aspect of our spending.

I’m feeling very good about all of this.  An extra few hundred dollars a month that we can put towards our goal of paying off the mortgage, and we’ll still be just as healthy and well-fed.  It takes a bit more planning and I can’t just throw whatever I want into the grocery cart, but that’s ok.  I’ve always justified the higher food bill with the fact that all of our other bills are so low.  We do all of our other shopping at thrift stores so that we can afford to buy our food at the health food store – but it doesn’t have to be all or nothing.  I can still buy very high quality food without spending quite so much money.

Many thanks to Mr. Money Mustache for the reminder.

What’s your budget soft spot – if you have one?  Do you justify high spending in one area by being frugal in other areas?  Have you thought about ways you could still honor the importance of that aspect of your life but spend a little less money on it?  And of course I’d love to hear your ideas for saving money on nutritious groceries.

Tomorrow morning when I go into town to run errands with the boys, we’ll be stopping at the local hospital to drop of 17 bags of breast milk that I’m donating.  It will be pasteurized and combined with milk from other donors, and then distributed to sick infants in NICUs across the country.  I’m going through an HMBANA Milk Bank – even though there isn’t an HMBANA location very close to us, they have a drop-off depot in the town where I normally go to shop, so it’s very convenient.

I started thinking about donating milk a few months ago.  I read about the process and where the milk goes, and I found this article to be particularly helpful when I was figuring it all out (if you’re thinking about donating, definitely read that article – lots of good info).  I knew that I didn’t want my milk to be sold to a pharmaceutical company that would turn around and make a profit from it, so I double checked that the local milk collection depot was part of the HMBANA Milk Bank program.  I had several good conversations by email and phone with the lady who runs the Milk Bank, and felt very comfortable with her and with the program.

I never pump for our son, since I’m with him all the time – he just nurses.  But I had a little mini-electric pump that my sister-in-law gave me before our first son was born.  So I tried it out, and it worked just fine.  The milk bank sent me paperwork to complete, release forms that needed to be signed by my midwife and our baby’s doctor, and milk storage bags.  They also sent a bag that I can use to sterilize the pump parts in the microwave after each use so that I don’t have to boil them every time I use them.  In addition to the paperwork, I had to stop by the lab at the local hospital and have some blood drawn, just to make sure that I don’t have any illnesses that would prevent me from donating.

Once all that was finished, I was cleared to start donating.  I’ve been pumping a 4 – 5 ounce bag of milk approximately every other day, and tomorrow I’ll be dropping off the milk I’ve collected and frozen over the past month.

It feels great.  It only takes me 10 – 15 minutes to fill a bag and stick it in the freezer.  It’s a unique and special way to “give back”.  I’m providing something very valuable, but it’s very easy and convenient for me.  I don’t have to go anywhere, and I can pump anytime I want.  I’m planning to drop off milk once a month, and the hospital isn’t really that far from where I normally go in town when we’re running errands.  I didn’t get involved with this program until our son was 9 months old, and they only accept milk until the donor’s baby turns one.  So I only have a couple more months of pumping and donating.  But at my current pace, I’ll be able to donate somewhere around 220 – 250 ounces of milk.  That feels good.

Obviously this isn’t something a mom should do if she’s overwhelmed with other stuff, or if she’s having difficulty nursing her own baby or producing enough milk for her own baby.  But for those of us with a plentiful supply and well-established nursing relationships with our babies, donating milk is a pretty cool volunteer opportunity for new moms.  And it’s a very frugal way to “give back”  too.  You might not have money to donate to causes that are close to your heart.  And you might not be able to fit volunteering into your schedule (especially with a new baby!).  But you can donate milk.  It doesn’t cost anything except a little bit of time for pumping and a few extra snacks here and there to keep up with the additional milk-production demand.  All in all, it’s a pretty great volunteer opportunity for new moms.

I’m sharing this to spread the word about milk donation.  If you’re a nursing mom (or will be someday), it might be something you’d like to try.  After going through the enrollment process and pumping for a month, I definitely give it two thumbs up.

I wanted to share a couple of good links with you today.  Minimalist Mom is always a great source of info, and her most recent post included a link to this free e-book to help you cut down on your “digital overwhelm”.  If you feel like you spend too much time online or using digital devices, this book might be a very helpful read.  I especially love that all you have to do is click on it and it appears on your screen – no need to sign up for a newsletter or provide your email address.

Angela of Oh She Glows (who has a cookbook deal worked out – congratulations Angela!!) is one of my favorite food bloggers – I make stuff from her site a couple times a week and it almost always gets two thumbs up from my guys.  I made these crackers last week, and they are awesome!  I didn’t have any sesame seeds, so I used hemp seeds instead (I get those auto-shipped in bulk from Amazon every three months, and our new supply just arrived) and they turned out great.  I also used the dehydrator instead of the oven, which made them especially easy to make – no need to check on them to make sure they’re not burning.  But I love that Angela provides recipes that use simple appliances (like an oven) that everybody has, instead of complicated ones that require specialized equipment and gadgets.  I had a dehydrator on my wish list for about three years before I bought it, and we saved in advance to pay for it.  So I love to use it.  But if you follow the directions in the recipe, all you need for these crackers is your oven.  Enjoy!  They are perfect snack food for munching on while you watch a movie.  We ate them while watching the last couple episodes of Arrested Development on Netflix.  (Such a good show, if you haven’t seen it yet.)

Speaking of Netflix, I’m curious as to what my readers did when Netflix announced that the streaming and DVD-by-mail were becoming two separate programs.  We had been using Netflix for about two years when that change occurred.  We don’t have a TV or any TV service, but we do have cable internet (necessary for our online, home-based business).  So Netflix has been a perfect solution for us.  A few nights a week, we set the laptop on the coffee table after the boys go to bed, and watch an episode of a TV show or a movie.  The price was right and we were quite happy with the selection.  More often than not, we opted for streaming content rather than DVDs.  We probably averaged three or four DVDs a month with the old plan.  So when they announced that we were going to have to pay extra to keep getting DVDs, we opted to just have streaming Netflix.

We rarely watch movies anymore, because they’re just too long.  By the time we get the boys in bed, play a game of chess, clean up the house, etc., we might have time for a 42 minute episode of a TV show (hour-long shows are only 42 minutes if you’re watching them on a service like Netflix with no commercials).  But watching a movie requires planning ahead to fit it in, or else we end up breaking it into chunks and watching it over two days (I know, we’re old and lame.  But that’s ok).  Recently, however, I went searching on Netflix to try to find a few newer movies that friends had recommended.  And all of them are only available on the DVD-by-mail program rather than streaming.  Bummer.  It made me wonder for a second if it would be worth adding the DVD program, but then I reminded myself that it’s pretty easy to put the movies on hold at the library and check them out for free.  Basically, the streaming Netflix is great for TV shows, but not so great for movies.  Out of these five classic casino movies, only one (Croupier, from 1998) is available on Netflix as a streaming movie.  The other four all require that you have the DVD program.  And out of the top ten movies on this list of best comedies, none are available via Netflix streaming (and those aren’t just new movies – Hitch is from 2005 and Knocked Up is from 2007).

Back when Netflix included both DVDs and streaming in one package, it was easy to add movies to either queue and just wait for the ones that had to come in the mail.  These days, we don’t use Netflix as much as we used to.  Part of that is just because we’re busier (two kids instead of one, a basement that is requiring many many hours to finish, work that seems to be busier than ever…), but part of it is that there just aren’t that many movies we want to see on the streaming program.  What do you think?  Did you opt to have both packages, did you keep just one, or did you ditch Netflix all together?  Are you happy with your choice?  I haven’t really used our local library for movies since we moved to our current town, mainly because it was so easy to get movies via Netflix.  But I think I might start using the library again for movies, at least until we’ve seen the ones that are currently on our “want to see” list.