I've been dealing with the fallout from my big mouth again.

I'd offered to help a young woman who'd fallen on hard times. I'd offered to put her up in case all her other options fell through. Well she called me on it. When faced with having to have a stranger living in my home with me I jumped into action. I called on lots of people I know, managed to raise $810 to get her in into her own little studio. And then ended up coughing up $235 of my own money to take care of the rest of her problems.

I need to remember to be careful what I offer.

I'm looking at the one year anniversary of buying my home and becoming consciously frugal. Oddly, I have less and less to say about it since it's become more and more of a habit. I do have a new appreciation for the role the freezer plays in my food budget. I'm still learning to just toss left-overs into it and to cook and store in freezer bags.

For example. My lastest trick is to buy a quart of egg fried rice for $5. I then take whatever leftover meat's in my fridge and dice it up and mix it with the fried rice. I then put 3 giant serving spoons into a ziploc bag and roll it up and tape it and put it in the freezer.

I also do that with a bag of fresh carrots. I'll buy them on sale, I think it was .99¢/1lb my last bag. I peel and slice and put in a pot with a little bit of water, a pat of butter, and a teaspoon of honey. Then I put two spoons into a ziploc bag, roll and tape.

I grab a bag of rice and a bag of carrots when I leave for work, along with my chicken soup container. They defrost at my desk and when I'm ready to eat I dump both bags into a ceramic bowl and nuke. I can get 5 lunches out of that qt of fried rice. I don't know if that is as cheap as I can get but it certainly is a good marriage of convenient, nutritious, and inexpensive for me.

Whenever I make hamburgers I make a couple extra to toss in the freezer. They nuke quickly and make a hot quick meal at work. My work shift requires me to eat two meals at the job, (11:30-8pm.) I don't tend to eat much at home. just a bowl of grits or oatmeal in the am.

After a year on my frugal diet though I'm the same weight and have a good health report at the doctor so a lot of the fears of folks that my diet was too low in calories early on didn't pan out. So I'll cast my vote with the woman who wrote "How to cook a wolf" who, during the war rations, suggested that you eat a balanced nutritious day instead of trying to get it at each meal. It is working for me.

Yeeesh. One way to get a nice perspective on your problems is to help someone else sort out theirs.
I've been whining to myself about my extremely limited budget for the next 3 weeks.
But for the last 2 weeks I've been trying to help a very very hard luck case get on her feet.

When she admitted to me today she had no toilet paper I realized how fortunate I am to have money to worry about.

So I took her to the supermarket. She's obviously hungry. In the store she instinctly grabbed for the store brands and the lowest priced stuff. We managed to get her some staples in her cupboards and some napkins and TP and dish detergent for under $25. I was relieved because I have $50 to get through the week and needed to spend some of that on my own food supplies.

Lessee: 2 box of mac n cheese, some buy one get one free of spaghetti sauces and pasta, pack of hot dogs and some cans of baked beans, two boxes of tuna helper (b.o.g.o. free) and 4 cans of tuna on sale, a $1.19 loaf of bread, a little bag of yellow rice. I gotta bring her some milk and butter and eggs but it is enough for now anyway.

She instinctively scanned the lowest shelves of the store.
You can tell she comes from a family who has known hard-times.

I then went to the store for myself and managed to squeeze in what I needed for $22 for the week. Yikes.

Please let the next week pass without any money surprises!!!

(yes yes. I know. I have an emergency fund. This doesn't strike me as an emergency though. Just tight.)

I was deeply saddened to watch a guy flag down the ice cream truck today though and realize that I don't even have enough cash right now to by a creamsicle.

But this too shall pass. Next wednesday is the anniversary of buying my house. All my bills are paid. My credit score is creeping back up from the hit it took buying the house. I have food in my freezer and (big cheer!) 8 rolls of toilet paper in my house. And at least one 21 y.o. girl is not in a homeless shelter. Life is good.

A happy update on the little chica. She got a full time job at Walgreens today. Yes!
She managed to get 1/2 her rent money scraped together and will hopefully
get paid in time from Walgreens to make the balance on the rent made by the first of the month.
(Me and the landlord agreed it might be easier for her to pay $225 every two weeks. Instead of $450 every month.)

Whew!

And a special thanks to the two folks who read my entries who sent money to the landlord to help her.

Y'all are beyond kind to help someone who you don't even know. Much love out to ya.

A happy update on me.... I closed on my house one year ago tomorrow.

I'm still here! YAY!

I think I'm getting weird.

I beginning to save the stock/water/drippings from whatever I'm doing with vegetables. I put them in the freezer and when it is time for the chicken soup to be made I toss it all in the pot. My soups are getting tastier but I'm starting to worry that I've become of of "them."

You know. One of those old ladies whose houses smell kind of funny and the plastic bags are hanging from the faucet to drip dry and the old bedhseets are now rags in the garage and the cats are breeding under the house.

sigh. At least I don't save newspapers.... yet.

Today is another low point in my buffer. Due to a quirk of the calendar the HELOC (25th) and the Fixed Mortgage (1st) fall in the same pay period. In the 53 weeks of owning the house this is the first time that has happened.

As my honey likes to remind me, at least I have the money to pay it. The people out there who do not have enough money to cover their bills are the ones really in trouble. I'm only in pout mode because I have no cash above my bills in my working checking account.

This, too, shall pass....

Well I'm back home and back into my routine after a very long 2 weeks. My brother passed away on April 27th. I got the call at midnight that sunday night.

Monday morning I first went to the credit union, my emergency funds, to get $500 out.

I then went to Wachovia and put $250 in my working checking account, tucked a $100 bill and a $50 bill deep in my wallet and got the rest in 20s and smaller to be accessed quickly.

I then went to my safety deposit box and got out my BOA and my green Amex card.
The BOA has a $0 balance with a $6000 limit. The Amex card is of course next months cash.

I then went to Avis and picked up a rental car, $175 for 7 days. The airfare was running $700 to Atlanta from Tampa and of course I'd still need to rent a car anyway. So I reserved the car at 3am that night and picked it up at 11am monday morning. The woman gave me a VW Jetta. Said it was probably the best mpg on her lot. She didn't take into account my lead foot but I got 27 mpg so that was better than my pickup truck.

Tuesday night was my first inkling how much this kind of stuff costs. My mother wrote a check for $3895 to the funeral home but asked them to hold that check until the 6th and then put the charges on her American Express card so she could get the miles. (Made me laugh to see frugality in action even at a time like that. Proof it becomes a habit.)

But I needed to pay for the food for the collation afterwards. (Collation. A word that proves that my parents are in their late 80s.) That was $300. The gas burned running around up there was $80. The paper plates and stuff to feed us for a week in the hotel was $48. The gas to get to Atlanta ran me $65. The meal on the road was only $5.5 but my Daddy's coffee every morning came to $12. The family breakfast I picked up came to $85 and the dinner the night before was $92. The sodas and plates for the collation was $42. The mandatory valet parking at the hotel was $125.

Fortunately the whimper in my voice tuesday night around midnight alerted my cousin to my financial straits. She sent me $1000 to cover my expenses so that check was waiting for me when I got home on Sunday May 4th.

Thank GOD for family. SO many people chipped in to help us defray costs. The NYT obit was $418 for just 7 lines!!!

The other beautiful thing was that I've never seen my family rise to the occasion before. What an awesome group of folks in my family. The strength and support and love was unbelievable.

Additionally when I returned to work the sweet folks I work with had done a collection for me! $465. Unbelievably kind. So at this point my credit card is back to a zero balance and I am only down $83 in my emergency fund. Thank goodness I had things in place so that I could jump into action first thing Monday morning. The only thing to give me pause is what if that call had come on Saturday night. I'd have had to wait until Monday for the banks to open. So I think I'm going to keep 1 card frozen in my house so that I can leave anytime.

(And yes he was young, 45, but so so sick. He had been battling leukemia since 2003 and these last 6 months had been brutal. Poor thing was suffering terribly so it is a relief not to have to watch him in such pain any longer. So sad.)

Oh and Quicken says that I crossed over into the black on Tuesday the 6th. I'm solvent again. But so in the habit of being frugal that when I went to take myself out to dinner I merely drove around and then went back home. I couldn't spend my money in a restaurant.

I'm so sorry for your loss.

Thank you Saro. The thought catches me at odd times, ya know.

Well I discovered today where my rebate check is.... It was deducted from the back taxes I owe. Now I only owe $4300 to the Feds. I'm sad. So much for being solvent. That $600 would have done comforting things to my working buffer.

Oh well. I've been walking on the precipice for over a year now. I can just keep toddling along for another few months. 8/8 is the payday that I cross into a comfortable 4 figure buffer in my working checking account.

I use the word solvent to mean when all my bills are paid and I have at least $1000 acting as a buffer in my working checking account. This has nothing to do with the 2K I keep in an emergency fund. Or my utility checking that I auto-pay all my utilities from and where I keep 1 months of those bills as a buffer. Or my savings account.

And a note about food: I've been loving my discovery of Vigo yellow rice. I can get the single serving on sale for .50¢
and I add a small can of peas. Today I bought $2 worth of steak and sliced it into tiny strips and cooked it. I then scrambled an egg and tossed it all together. I got 2 ziploc containers out of it and I estimate the cost per meal was $2. It was yummy and not unhealthy. Dinner is my usual chicken soup.

A neighbor brought me the yummiest container of chicken and dumplings on Sunday. I'd never had it before, oddly. It was really good. And after looking online I realize it is not hard either. So perhaps I'll try to make that this weekend. I found a recipe that calls for thighs. That'll be less expensive than the whole fryer I hope.

Re chicken and dumplings: I have found that the parts used do not really matter--- in fact, fricasseing was invented to deal with old, tough birds. Good luck!

fricasseing? I thought that was something only Bugs Bunny did!

To fricasse...

Hmmmm. Google here I come.

Either decrease your spending or increase your income....


Well since I can't do more in the first part, I'm gonna try the second. Just got asked to do some freelance work for $40/hour. Ok! I'm a little worried about the taxes part. I've never done stuff on the side before but I can't turn down that kind of money. And hopefully I'll get more requests if I do this one well. The guy says to simply save 25% of the check I'll get and that should cover it. I'm thinking I'll just toss it all into my savings account so that the money will be there come tax time. I won't step up my spending just because my income is going to go up a smidgen.

Wish me luck in this new money making chapter!

Hey there Cady,

I find that I spend less money when I have a 2nd job, no time to shop! The only thing to keep in mind is the potentially spending your money on things like take-out dinners or lunches out because you're too tired to cook or pack a lunch. That's usually my problem anyway.

Thanks for the heads up, Saro. This isn't a second job per se. I don't have to leave my living room to do it since it is all online.

And my food production line has 22 lunches ready to defrost in my freezer. Better food than any restaurant around here to my way of thinking. My honey is an awesome cook and really really thoughtful about helping me out food-wise. Like last night he came over to cook us dinner and then on the side made a big pot of tiny bowtie pastas, string beans and sliced sausage with alfredo sauce. All food he bought and brought over. That made 3 ziploc containers for lunches for me and one big container to take back to his house for him and his mom. Once every week or so he'll be here making some big pot of something. Last week it was 6 containers of yellow rice with cow peas. He made a killer shepherd's pie 2 weeks ago and I got 4 lunches out of that. I call them lunches but I eat them for dinner too. The small ziploc bowl containers makes one meal for me. My neighbor with the dumplings? still have one of those up there. I'm at the point where I make a meal and take out one lunch portion and put it in the freezer regardless of what I've made. So that I'll have a variety to pick from when I look in there.

My mom and I go around about this a lot. My parents have been married 58 years. Around about the 50th anniversary my Dad complained about a burnt biscuit and that was that. My mom stopped cooking for him. Poor guy now gets blistering speeches about how he should have thought about his Friday dinner back on Tuesday when the thing he wanted was on sale.

I can't seem to get my mom to understand that the ability to plan ahead and cook foods and make menus takes a long time to acquire. What she does unthinkingly, (buys a bag of frozen peas on sale this week because she knows she has a turkey in the freezer and she will make Turkey a la king next saturday,) takes years of practice. My poor Dad hears his stomach rumble and then looks around for food. He isn't planning menus three days out.

That is the one big thing I've gotten out of this year of chicken soups: planning ahead so that'll I'll have food on hand. That coupled with a long span of not eating out means I don't even WANT the restaurant food out there. I haven't eaten at a fast food restaurant since I read 'fast food nation' so that takes care of all the urges to "quick buy a whopper." And I simply do not have the money to eat at a real restaurant. I carry no credit cards so I can't do it on a whim. And lastly, it is rare that I think the food in a restaurant is worth what I paid for it.

After being a bartender I stopped drinking outside my home because the mark-up horrified me. After this year of frugal cooking the markup on restaurant food is starting to bug me as well. Yeah I know why: salaries, papergoods and electric bills, oh my. But even knowing why I don't want to pay it when I can buy a 1lb bag of carrots for $1.29, rice is pennies, and small piece of steak is $3.50.

But as I said. It took a year of trying to live in $30 a week to bring me to this point.

Thanks for commenting Saro and for the advice! If I'd had to physcially go somewhere for the job I might not have been so quick to take it.

Cady, your post made me hungry

I will definitely head back over to your fiscal journal for food preparation tips. I know that groceries/eating out is probably the main way that I spend money 'unconsciously'. It's good to know that you're eating well on a budget, I hopefully will be able to do the same!

I keep thinking I ought to come in here and post something but I'm still in the phase where nothing very interesting is happening. I'm staying afloat, paying down debt and eating home cooked meals.

Although last weekend when I was buying paper towels I ran across something worth posting. I like the bounty select-a-size. I usually just grab a pretty pattern and toss it in the basket. But I was counting all my pennies last week and decided to eyeball all my options. I then noticed that the plain white roll of select-a-size had more sheets for the same price. A lot more. I don't remember exactly anymore but I think it was 78 sheets in the roll with a pretty pattern and 138 sheets on the plain roll. Which was a significant difference. Just thought I'd pass it on. Of course ink costs money but I never realized how much more they charge for it.