Tuesday, October 24, 2017

This Week Beyond Money 10/2 - 10/22

For me, a life beyond money is making choices so that you can live the best possible life, regardless of your income level. Obviously, you have to make a living, but there are many ways to improve your quality of life without increasing your income levels and correspondingly your expenses. This regular post will be some of the ways that we improve our quality of life beyond just trying to make more money.


Gardening:
* The garden is petering out. I am harvesting a couple cherry tomatoes and the occasional pepper or medium-sized tomato. It is almost time to pull everything out, level out the ground and sow grass seed. I also need to tackle the front garden. There is still some poison ivy in there (This is obviously super-hero strength poison that cannot be killed by any earthly means) so I dread the inevitable rash that will accompany weeding (even with gloves/long clothes/showering immediately after). Then I need to plant some fall bulbs and mulch heavily so springtime landscaping efforts will be minimal.
* Trucker did the autumn pruning.
* I harvested some baby carrots, turnips and a few more peppers.

Cooking/Groceries:
* We made loaded baked potatoes with a slice of bacon, crumbled, cheese, sour cream, butter, scallions and seasoning. Frugal and amazingly satisfying.
* Trucker bought me a loaf of seeded sourdough rye. It was amazing. I have been enjoying it with fried eggs as my after-work meal/snack. I froze half the loaf because I don't eat a ton of bread anymore.
* I made cheesy pasta with veggies: peppers, onion and garlic.
* I had some ground pastured lamb in the freezer. We used 1/3 lb to make meatballs to serve with pasta. We browned the rest for later use.
* We made gyro bowls with the rest of the lamb. I stopped at the all-night kroger on the way home from work. I found tzatziki for $1.89, garlic hummus for $1.50 (I got two), a cucumber for $1 and a small head of lettuce for $.67. Kroger usually sells all the varieties of lettuce for $1.99/lb. I buy the smaller heads so they don't go bad before we can finish them. I also had parsley and cherry tomatoes from the garden. The gyro bowls were fantastic and filling. We had enough for 6 meals with plenty of ingredients leftover for other meals.
* I found a half rack of ribs at kroger on managers special for $3. They were precooked, just needed reheated. I got them for trucker's dinner while I was at work. He really enjoyed them.
* We got a couple steaks. They were around $7/lb, but we found some packages with BOGO coupons on them, making them cheaper than the cheapest ground beef. We also found a huge package of stuffed clams for $4 (around 1.25/lb), salmon stuffed with crab stuffing ($5/lb, around 1/2 lb), a seasoned pork shoulder (2 lbs at $2.89/lb) and gorgonzola (6 oz for $3.50). We froze the steaks and salmon. We had the clams for lunch one day.
* I cooked the pork in the slow cooker. I strained off the cooking liquid to use as a soup base. We used the pork for tacos and pulled pork sandwiches (with gorgonzola, saurkraut and pickled peppers). I froze some of the pork for later.
* We hard boiled 2 dozen eggs for trucker to eat during the week. We got them for free at Meijer with a coupon.
* I went to a produce giveaway at the end. I got items that would otherwise have been thrown away. I got 3 large red cabbages, 10 lbs potatoes, 5 lbs apples, 3 cantaloupes, 10 ears of corn, 18 sub rolls and 6 dozen small eggs.

Food Preservation:
* I made caramelized onions in the slow cooker and froze in ice cube trays for winter use.The cooking liquid was frozen for soup making.
* I blanched and froze 6 ears of corn, cut from the cob.  I froze 6 sub rolls.

Fun:
* After our crazy busy weekend, we spent a couple mornings before work just watching movies from the library and eating. The rest was much needed.
* We went to the gallery hop one Saturday. It was amazing. It has been a long time since we were able to make it to one, so I appreciated it all the more.
* We went on a few coffee dates.
* We went to a play that a new friend was acting in. It was a nice evening and so nice to see her again.
* We went with my sister and her boyfriend to the art museum on the free day. We had a good time and great talks. Afterwards we went out to get and used a BOGO coupon. Each couple spent around $20 total for the date.
* Trucker checked out a special film for me from the library. It was a shocking film made by Salvador Dali, my favorite painter.

Nature:
* We went to a state park that was once a farm operated with rotational pasturing, French drains and other soil-building methods.
* We went to the arboretum for an afternoon.

Frugality:
* I needed some new jeans as my one remaining nice pair is starting to look a little on the tired side. I went to a thrift store and bought three pairs of jeans. Each pair was the half off color tag. I paid $5, $3 and $1.50 for decent brand jeans in good condition. Trucker also got a pair of very nice jeans for $7.50 and a pair of dress slacks for $2.
* I updated our health tracker to earn gift cards and a discount on health insurance through my employer.
* I paid off the credit card with the highest interest rate. It had the smallest balance, but I am still excited to have a minor victory. I also made extra payments on the credit card with the next highest balance.
* Every pay day, I look at my bill calendar and see what bills will come out before I get paid again. I subtract that from the current checking balance. I estimate what we will need to spend on living expenses for the week. I give a little wiggle room, and the rest is transferred to extra credit card payments.
* I continue to have money from my paycheck automatically put into both my savings account and 401k.
* I got signed up for insurance for next year. I signed up for the cheaper plan for a few reasons. First, it is hundreds cheaper in premiums each year and the deductible and max out of pocket is the same. Finally, if I don't spend a lot on health care in a given year, some money rolls over for future years. Any money in the account when I retire goes with me then. I signed up for a health savings account and have a small amount from each paycheck put in. I could get free dental insurance or pay $2.29/wk for better insurance. By getting the better insurance, i I don't have a deductible. That essentially drops the cost to $44/yr and we each get an additional $500 in care for the year. We get free vision, life and disability. I made sure to get a waiver since Trucker doesn't have an offer of health insurance elsewhere. That saves us $1800/yr in premiums. I made appointments for our biometric screenings. That is the last thing we have to do for our wellness discount of $1000/yr. All told, I will pay $780/yr for our health, dental, vision, disability and life insurance. This is by far the best part of this job. There are some aspects of the job that I don't like (primarily the commute and the shift), but the realities of the benefit package outweigh those costs.

Waste Reduction:
* I have a very fun vintage necklace that I adore. One of the beads had a crack in the finish. I knew it would eventually chip off and since it is the most prominent piece, the necklace would then be worthless. I got my mod-podge (left over from other projects) and painted over the bead. It dried clear and will keep the crack from getting worse. It was only a $3 necklace, but I like it.
* While we watched a movie from the library, I mended some of Trucker's clothes. Two shirts needed buttons. One shirt had a spare, but the other didn't. We were able to find a close enough match in my button stash. Two other shirts had small tears that I mended.
* I used saved food containers to give food to people.

House and Home:
* We are eating down the pantry. We are wanting to get it more organized and have it take up less real estate. We will also save a good amount of money by eating from the pantry instead of buying everything.

Work:
* I've been working some overtime. Lots more coming.

Future:
* We stumbled upon a perfect farm at an absurd price. We set up everything to go see it and confirmed we could afford it, only to find out the next day that the house had gone into contract days previous and the listing hadn't been updated. It was disappointing, but we had planned on looking in spring so we would be in a stronger financial stance going into our second home. I did have a good talk with our REA about what we want and told him if he finds a place that meets our needs at around the same price, we want to go look immediately. It will likely be a year until we find such a place again, but it is exciting to be starting to look.

Health:
* We are active on our days off. Lots of active activities, such as walking around an art neighborhood for a couple hours or hitting the parks.
* We are eating lots of produce now. I do food prep when I can so adding produce is easy.

Community:
* My mom sends out cards. A lot of cards. She sends thousands of cards a year for birthdays, holidays, anniversaries and just because. We joke that she alone keeps their tiny village's post office open. She wants to make sure people feel appreciated and remembered, but it does cost her a lot of money over the year. I know what kinds of cards she likes, so when I'm out thrifting, I look for boxes of cards at a good price. I found 4 boxes this week at about half the price at the dollar store and they were really nice cards.
* My coworker and I exchanged snacks.
* I gave another co-worker some kraut. He has been having some digestive problems, so hopefully that helps.
* I gave a friend half of the items I got at the produce giveaway. We had a great time talking with her and her boyfriend.

How was your week?

Wednesday, October 4, 2017

This Week...Beyond Money 9/25 - 10/1

For me, a life beyond money is making choices so that you can live the best possible life, regardless of your income level. Obviously, you have to make a living, but there are many ways to improve your quality of life without increasing your income levels and correspondingly your expenses. This regular post will be some of the ways that we improve our quality of life beyond just trying to make more money.
Gardening:
* I harvested a few cherry and medium-sized tomatoes and a few Christmas Tree peppers.
* I planted more mustard micros.
* I harvested some micros.

Cooking/Groceries:
* I made a strawberry apple crisp pie. I used a boxed pie crust (again, bleck) to use it up. The apples were from my parent's trees and the strawberries were just a few left from snacking that needed to be used soon. I made a crumble topping. I didn't add any sugar other than to the topping, so it wasn't overly sweet, but made for nice breakfasts.
* I made a cheesy pasta using up a box of elbow macaroni (store brand on manager's special, $.50/lb), the rest of the cheese and milk (to use up before our trip), two onion halves (I had previously cut into one not realizing I already had a half in the refrigerator), sweet peppers, hot peppers, cherry tomatoes (sauteed) and carrots. We used it for lunches for a couple days.

Food Preservation:
* I froze several medium-sized tomatoes. We were leaving on a weekend trip and they were going to turn before we had a chance to use them. I tossed them, skin and all into the freezer.
* I froze portions of the pasta dish to use later.
* I froze some shishito peppers (sauteed) for later.

Fun:
* We had a long coffee date one day before work. Trucker had to run errands afterwards and I had to go to work, so when we got hungry we decided to order food there. I had a coupon that if I placed my order online I got $5 off. We ordered online and just walked up to the counter to pick it up. After the coupon and taxes, the meal was $2.75. Not too shabby for a pretty filling meal for two. We used our travel mugs to get a discount on the coffee.

Nature:
* I loved spending time on the beach. Letting the water crash in around my legs. Climbing rocks. Watching that awesome sunset. I got a cold from getting wet but it was totally worth it.

Frugality:
* Trucker has opened a couple of micro-investment accounts. One he has a small portion invested each week. The other rounds up his purchases to the next dollar and invests that money. He also has a Roth IRA that he has money transferred automatically each month. I ran the numbers and just at those three accounts, he is putting away 10% of his after-tax income. He also saves a variable amount into a savings account. I make more than he does, and he does more around the house than I do (especially important as we are working at getting the house sale-ready). However, between the two of us, we are saving a good percentage of our income and making progress.
* Between debt repayments and savings, including retirement, I saved 30.3% of my after-tax income in September.

Work:
* I worked a bit of overtime most days.

Future:
* Trucker filmed for a new movie this week. He played a villain and got shot!
* He also had another audition.

Health:
* We ate way too much during our weekend trip. Back to the diet now!
* My blood pressure is decent.
* Trucker is running a lot at softball. I am really proud of him.

Setbacks:
* One day while organizing we found a paper that was supposed to be sent to the insurance company for our new house insurance policy. I called to let them know what had happened and that I'd be sending it out that day. It was a good thing I called. Apparently, they did an inspection, saw the unused dog kennel out back that I hadn't gotten around to dismantling ("evidence of a dog"). Since my application didn't state we had a dog (since we don't), they didn't know whether the breed was on the restricted breed list or not, so they assumed it was and cancelled my policy (but had never contacted me for clarification and I hadn't gotten the cancellation notice). I explained the situation and am waiting to find out if my policy is going to be reinstated. The woman I talked to said that time was of the essence, but seemed to think that it would be reinstated.

Community:
* Two of our dear friends got married this weekend. We took a weekend trip so we could be there. Originally, I was supposed to work the day of the wedding and wouldn't have been able to get there until the reception was wrapping up. Thankfully, work was cancelled the day before. As his gift to them, Trucker was the officiant for the wedding (He got ordained online and paid a $10 fee to be licensed in our state) so he went up the night before for the reception. I got off work at midnight and drove 2.5 hours to the hotel (Used hotel.com and earned two nights towards a free one). The next day we went to the wedding. It was a brilliant affair. Their friends let them borrow their beach-front house and the neighbors let them set up the dinner tent on their yard. We ate tacos (taco bar) and pizza (they got a pizza truck with mobile wood-fired oven!). The ceremony was beautiful. Trucker did a great job. Afterwards, we stayed for several hours playing Cards Against Humanity, nibbling leftovers, and I ran out into the water and climbed rocks along the water front (despite the fact that it was frigid!). They are two of the most lovely people I know and I was so glad they each found such a perfect person to spend their lives with. I couldn't be happier.
* I wanted to share a sweet thing I witnessed. It was the birthday of one of my coworkers this week. His family is all in Puerto Rico and he is really worried. So one of my other coworkers (the amazing woman who is always taking care of everyone) decided to make it the best birthday she could. She brought in homemade salsa and chips and birthday cake (she had the boss sneakily chat with the guy to find out what kind of cake was his favorite). It meant so much to him. It was beautiful to see her do something to bring some joy to a stressful birthday. There is good in the world.
* That coworker and I brought snacks for each other. I gave her some Israeli snacks that I got at a salvage grocer (Which she liked until her daughter's friend told her the texture reminded her of fried mealworms!) and another day brought her more Korean crackers since she said her grandson adored them. She brought me Rice Krispie Treats the next day. The snacks I bring don't cost a lot, but she feels appreciated and we are building a friendly sharing relationship.
* Her grandson went into the hospital while we were at work one day and she mentioned that her husband had taken him to the hospital in her car. I offered to drive her there after work, but her daughter's boyfriend picked her up.

How was your week?
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