A Month of No Fast Food

So we're finally taking the plunge with our worst un-frugal habit: Going out to eat. Now I love homemade food, but I hate planning menus. I don't mind cooking if it doesn't take more than fifteen minutes to prep (cooking time is fine) and am a very picky eater. Therefore, my husband doesn't feel he can plan our meals and it falls on me.

I'm the type of person who is all or nothing, so now is the time. We're buying a chest freezer later in the week. Here is my plan:

1. Think about those nights I don't want to cook first. Quick food is always best, right? Our default is going to be hamburgers made with some black bean, oat, flax and minced onion with different seasonings. My two-year old will get plain hamburger/oat/flax/black bean patties. Since we prefer organic free-range meat we'll have to stretch it out a little - and that's okay! Chicken pot pies will be included in the freeze for later category, too.
2. Cook some things in bulk. I can easily make two batches of meatloaf and freeze one right in the pan. It freezes well, or so I've heard from my mother. (she uses the same recipe!)
3. Buy enough containers to store and keep the crockpot clean! I can always make a soup, but if the crock pot isn't clean I don't usually get to it in time. Yes, this is an investment that could be corrected by an attitude change, but if we have things in single or double serving freezer -> oven containers I think we'd be much more likely to *eat* them. And one change at a time is enough for my attitude. ;)
4. Figure out what to do with squash to store it and save as much as I can. If I can puree and freeze, I could use it in breads, muffins or soup. And it's fairly cheap this time of year!
5. Make sure to have snacks for the week. Sliced veggies and dip, perhaps, and flax-oat chocolate chip cookies.
6. Make dessert at least once a week. We don't order dessert out very often, but it would be nice to have Sunday dinner bread pudding or the like.
7. Set aside a cup to use as a biscuit cutter for hamburgers and crackers. PB&J crackers are more easily made than sandwiches for me, and the size would be great for my toddler. :) And somehow, I missed out on the biscuit cutter setting up my kitchen. I should ask my mother, the kitchen guru, if she has an extra before making the effort to use something that won't cut quite as well.
8. Make a large Sunday meal with meat enough for "plan-overs." Ham to reuse, roast to reuse, etc.

That's what I've got so far. There are a few other frugal things I'm doing (I'm trying to grow some cucumbers and tomatoes indoors) and individual specific things (considering a rice cooker for my sushi) but that's the gist. Do you have any other suggestions or things that work for you? Or that you think would work well?

Generosity and Dysons

The generosity of the blogging community never fails to amaze me. There are so many giveaways right now, and this one is for spreading information about a cause.

You know, I do appreciate the cause. It's for breast cancer. I just don't see how there can be more awareness spread by general awareness posts.

So here's my plea: If your breast is swollen. Develops a strange mole. Has a pimple. Becomes crusty. Is just "different." Please GO get it checked out! If you aren't comfortable with a male doctor or female doctor doing it, find someone you CAN be comfortable with. Knowing to go as soon as possible is very frugal and essential to "going home."

Now go check out your chance to win a Pink Dyson: Win a Dyson “Pink” Vaccuum in honor of Breast Cancer Awareness Month

My Personal Finance Success Story

Writing a title like that on my blog feels pretentious - fake. It's interesting how my husband and I have been slowly evolving and changing our mindset from truly believing that we were financially stable and progressive to acknowledging and embracing our debt. It wasn't an easy transition.

Like many things, breaking bad finance habits seems to come in spurts of ambition and lulls or backtracking laziness. It's difficult to build new habits, particularly when some habits come out of us on different levels and from different motives.

This is MY success:

1. I acknowledged our financial situation. My husband has been doing our books and such, so I didn't really know where we stood. Had I known sooner, I dare say we would have been out of this sooner - two people working for a solution work much more effectively than one! It would have been easy to rely on him to say whether or not we could afford something for the rest of our lives, but there's no telling how long we would have spiraled into debt - he could not tell me "No, there's no money for this."

2. We've made some big changes. These came in layers and spurts, mostly when I felt we could be doing so much more toward our debt. We sold our vehicle back to the dealer. While we could have fetched more selling it elsewhere, we were both in such an emotional state over the heavy realization of the mess we were in that it was an effective and instantaneous relief. We are paying down the negative equity from two car purchases back now as a result. We chose a smaller place to live that had what we were looking for - allergy-free carpeting for me, but more importantly, a yard for our son. It's not perfect and it hasn't had the walls painted in some time, but it is more than adequate enough (as long as the furnace lasts longer than the refrigerator!)

3. We've made some little changes. We are thrift shoppers by nature for some things, so it came naturally that my son's desk would come from Goodwill. Praise the Lord for sending us the exact thing we were looking for at a $20 price! Nearly everything we buy is on sale, but instead of buying what we want because it's on sale, we buy what we need - looking further into the future. Beyond four people, our Christmas shopping and birthdays are caught up through January!

4. We're thinking differently. It's almost a game and a continual challenge - how much more can we save? If we buy a deep freezer, will it pay for itself in two or three months if we don't go out to eat? I'm learning to combine coupons with sales, and though the curve is steep I know I can do it! I will also be taking up sewing - if that fails, I will do tie-quilting! We buy far less for our son to play with and use our old things to entertain him or hit things on Freecycle (a sandbox, for instance). We have a sheer curtain panel set up as a tent. (I will blog that as a separate post sometime! V. nice tent!) Our want list for him is short and only includes items we know he will love and enjoy.

5. We're feeling differently! Instead of relying on shopping and things to bring us joy, we look to each other and select items to augment what we already have and enjoy carefully. We deserve quality but don't require luxury. Loving where you are and who you are with is the best success you can ever have.

Thank you to GRS for the idea on what to post. Not only did it clear my mind and heart, but gave me the patience to realize that where we are is not a bad place to be. Though the debt is going away more slowly than I'd like, we are making progress in more ways than just the numbers.

Minor setback

There are certain benefits to living in a rental property, as long as you have a nice landlord. We lost our refrigerator today and had a new one within 6 hours. Unfortunately, it'd been slowly getting warmer, so we lost some meat and a gallon of milk.

Here's a photo for comparison:


It's not the most energy efficient new unit, but it'll probably save us a bundle in energy costs over the year over that one. The estimate is that it was 14 years old. o.O

Now to buy some LED lights and a solar jar from ThinkGeek....

Where we start

Courtesy http://www.ncnnetwork.com/

How did we get in so much debt to begin with? I'm not the one who was managing finances, and my husband says he doesn't really know, either. <---- (scary, that!)

$11000 is my student loan. DH has about $4500 (I think). We have about $6000 negative equity from the car.

That's a lot of junk to make up the rest. I'm sure some of it was home improvements. My hospital bill probably went on a card "to be paid off later."

Let me tell ya, paying stuff off later isn't all it's cracked up to be. But we're putting our nose to the grindstone and doing it.

So far, we sold our car back to the dealer, are using a borrowed vehicle, DH takes the bus to work and back, we eat as cheaply as we can (when we don't succumb to eating out), and we constantly evaluation whether we really *need* something - whether we've bought it already or not!

This is our journey.

Inspiration

Frugality is tough. Sometimes it feels like we're doing too much with one hand and saving too tight with the other. It is really tough to wait.

Patience is a virtue.

"Keep your lives free from the love of money and be content with what you have, because God has said, 'Never will I leave you; never will I forsake you.'" Hebrews 13:5

"But godliness with contentment is great gain. For we brought nothing into the world, and we can take nothing out of it. But if we have food and clothing, we will be content with that. People who want to get rich fall into temptation and a trap and into many foolish and harmful desires that plunge men into ruin and destruction." 1 Timothy 6:6-9

Catching Everyone Up

Afraid to talk about money? Letting one spouse handle it while the other asks for the okay?

That's a recipe for where we are right now, my friends - in debt. I wish I could show you how much debt, but my chart was deleted from NCN. I used a questionable name, and would redo it, but I don't remember the exact figure of where we are right now.

I suppose I can estimate high and go from there.