my goodness! I take my clothes to a public laundromat and wash them in a public washing machine.

I don't have someone doing them for me.... I've never had someone do them for me. When I was 10 years old our washing machine broke and my mother said "That's it! I wash no more clothes." So she gave me and my brother each a roll of quarters and a pull behind metal wire basket like people use for groceries and we walked about 10 blocks to a public laundromat. So all my life I've done my clothes that way. When I was a renter I didn't ask for a washer and dryer and now that I bought the house that I rented, I'm not buying a set.

Furthermore I like doing laundry once every two weeks for an hour and a half and that's that.

My friends with washers are always doing laundry. I can do 10 loads or 1 loads in the same 1.5 hours.

I know lots of people can't conceive of this but it works for me! And my water bill every month is under $41 and part of that bill is $10 for trash.

I wish I could post the picture of my water consumption here...

http://new.photos.yahoo.com/cusp_ryder/ ... 04212846/0

Dunno if that will work for folks or not but take a gander at a home without a washer and dryers water usage.

It is dramatic the difference in my usage vs the average homes in my area.

I can't imagine that is gallons but maybe it is short for 150 gallons per month...
Dunno but yay to laundromats and low utility costs. Oh yeah. My electric bill is $52 per month.

That's awesome! Of course you're actually using more water and electricity, it's just that it doesn't show up on your bill; it shows up on the laundromat's bill. You pay for that water and power in your laundry expenses, but it's still probably less than you'd pay if you had the machines at your own home.

I have to say, your strategy is interesting...$18/month for laundry isn't bad and you might in fact be saving money (even in the longer term) when you consider the cost of a washing machine, dryer, electricity, water, and detergent.

I think the key is that you don't do a lot of laundry. If you had a big family the story might be different.

When my girlfriend's teenage daughter moved in with us, all of our consumption went up dramatically. She is a big energy waster and does it in part to thumb her nose at us because we're so energy-conscious; it's part of her teenage rebellion. Our electricity bill doubled after she moved in. Other stuff too: we used to go through a roll of toilet paper every three days; with her in the house we go through two rolls a day (I don't want to know what she uses all that paper for!). She wears clothes once and tosses them in the washing machine (and I've learned the hard way that she never removes anything from her pockets and often leaves sanitary napkins in her underwear, which are not good for the washing machine!). I think if we did our clothes at the laundromat we'd spend more like $180/month instead of $18!

You make a great point:

I think the key is that you don't do a lot of laundry. If you had a big family the story might be different.

Everyday I am thankful it is just me and a part-time live-in boyfriend who does his own laundry somewhere else. No question if I was a mom I'd have a washer in my house. Altho when I was married we did not, we just did our laundry side by side at the laundromat. I didn't do his laundry even there.

Frankly living alone makes everything easier about this whole frugal makeover. I have friends whose families run through their whole paycheck before they can even decide where to save some of it.

I think if we did our clothes at the laundromat we'd spend more like $180/month instead of $18!

Yeeouch! I hope she grows up and goes away to college very quickly for you... hopefully on a full scholarship!

Well the tax man has cometh.

But at least I have the money to pay. $110 month til my refund next year.
Which all my homeowner friends assure me will be big.
Right?

oh I really really hope so...

Detergent/fabric softener isn't free at a laundromat, but I'm not sure how much money is really being saved if you were to consider the time involved. Having a washer & dryer at home for me isn't about saving money, it allows me a greater variety of multitasking options and greater flexibility in scheduling my household chores. My washer & dryer may not have financially paid for themselves, but they're far from unnecessary.

(Also consider that I don't live near a coin-op laundromat, so I'd have to pack everything in my tiny car and drive somewhere. Not cost-effective.)

Hi Tinyhands.

I think everyone find the solutions that work for them. And I agree that I still buy detergent altho in the spring of 2005 I found a sale on tide free and bought three cases of the jugs so I haven't bought detergent in YEARS! I still have 3 to go. I hope they go on sale again soon so I can restock.

And I'm agreeing wholeheartedly that moms everywhere need to be able to run their washing machine and go off and do other things.

FOR ME it is not a justifiable cost but I know this is a tiny minority opinion. I have to justify this to people more than you can imagine, (except all the other people who use the public washhouse along with me.) And I know I have had to leave sometimes because I came in behind a poor woman who has 15 loads of all the clothing of her family.

It is a big world with room for everyone. There are 6 billion ways to live a life.

You certainly don't have to justify anything to me, and I didn't mean to imply I was judging you in any way. I merely wanted to followup to Brads comments implying that NOT owning a washer/dryer was an effective money saving tip. Effective being relative, that is, since time is (often) money, whether one is a mom or not. If what you're doing works for you, I've got no reason to quibble.

Well I made my first mortgage payment today. The first of 120. 119 to go.

The best part of the YNAB system is I didn't even bother to check my balance today. I just knew the money was there. The odd thing to me is why I never thought to do this before: dump a whole month of salary into my checking to use as a buffer. I used to keep it in a separate account. It is a nice feeling. Frankly it was stupid to do it the other way since that was merely emulating living check to check when in fact I was nowhere near doing that. I had set it up in such a way that I never felt easy about things in that primary checking account. I was always worried about transferring this in and out.
Yay paid off HELOC on April 25th 2010.
Yay paid off house on June 1 2017.
Yay YNAB and Get Rich Slowly.

Take one small successful step after another....

A ten-year mortgage? Did I miss something somewhere? How'd you get one of those? Kris and I wanted one when we got our house, but couldn't find one. Ultimately we went with a 30-year, though, because we couldn't even afford fifteen!

Well what they GAVE me was

$139,000

(27,700) in a 25 year ARM at 9.5% for the 20% = $242/month
(111,150) in a 30 year fixed at 6.625% for the 80% = $1062 includ tax/ins

What YNAB and Quicken and I are opting to PAY is

$1062 to the fixed for 36 months while I send an additional $125 to the HELOC every month *and*
on October 16th and April 16th of EVERY YEAR an additional $3000 to the principle.

That is 6K off the principle annually.

That 18K in 3 years plus the $4500 (36 months of $125) = $22,500 in principle reduction in 3 years.

The rest of the balance is taken care of by the minimum payments they are asking for.

On April 16th 2010 the HELOC is retired.

On June 1st I begin sending everything I sent to the HELOC to the Fixed Rate mtg along with the
3K every 6 months.

Voila.

June 1st 2017 the Big mortgage is paid off.

Just because they give you a 30 year mortgage doesn't mean you have to pay it off that way!

I'll save myself 40K in interest on the HELOC and 95K interest on the big one.

http://www.mortgage-x.com/calculators/e ... ulator.asp

There is the calculator I've been using.

I need the master plan to be crystal clear in my mind so that I can say no to other things that want my money.

Oh and just because that is my goal doesn't mean I'm going to get there.

But I am going to point all the resources I have towards that goal and if I get close I'm still ahead of the game.

The way I'm doing the 3K is I'm starting with 3K in an account. I'm putting $125 into that account every week.

Every six months I'll skim 3K off to go toward the principle and that'll leave $250 more in the account.

($3250 accrues every 26 weeks in that account.)

That is also my emergency fund.

Speaking of emergency funds I did a very very stupid thing last Saturday and in a fraction of a second I destroyed my computer. A computer that my ex had left me when he moved out that was a screaming fast machine. Ran flawlessly for 3 years 6 months until I did my "VERYSTUPIDTHING."

Sunday I got very lucky though. I found a sale at Best Buy. $513 out the door for a compaq presario, with 1024mb memory, writeable DVD/CD color printer and monitor. This is the first computer I have bought since I got a mac back in 1991 for $300 used. Came with Vista. Discovered my quicken backup hadn't run since 4/20 but other than that I was up and running again within minutes of getting it home, (yay cable modem.)

All that to say, thanks to YNAB I simply pulled out my debit card and bought it cash. Didn't blink, didn't worry about whether I had the money, or if I could transfer funds on a sunday. I just did what I needed to do, after I admit a long night of debating if I needed to replace it. Since I'm taking an online class though I decided it wasn't an option to go without.

Yesterday I got around to taking a check from the emergency fund/credit union and putting that money back into my checking account.

This was a good example of my emergency fund working though.

Blah blah blah.

Well this made up for not posting in a week.

I'll have to take a closer look at YBAB. I've heard good things about it, but since I'm not a budgeter myself, I've never really paid much attention...

My PDA with my beloved BillWizard died a week ago friday (6/1).
My computer died the next day, saturday.
I replaced the computer on Sunday but it came with Vista.
Palm install does not work with Vista.
My quicken backup hadn't run since 4/20
My PDA backup on my old computer was lost.
My PDA backup card has a physical problem that doesn't allow it to slide into the card slot on my replacement PDA.

All that to say my four way backup system failed all four ways.



I had some printouts of things that I have spent the last week trying to re-enter but I no longer trust any of it.
I bought a graph paper moleskine and every facing page will now be a payday.
The old fashioned paper ledger never failed anyone. (I know about fire and water but I hope that doesn't happen!)

So now I'll use paper backed up by electronics instead of the other way around.

Well maybe it is getting to be a habit but I've had 2 straight weeks of orange coded days on my calendar.

A few posts back I started this system on the calendar:
Orange for "No Money Spent Today"
Blue for "Budgeted money spent"
Green for "Bad Girl! Your wallet sneezed."


I'm nowhere near the people who seem to be frugal by nature but I'm getting to the point where my teeth aren't gritted when I turn down a purchase. I accepted a baseball game invite with some friends last night but I went to the CVS and bought two .99 cent bags of snacks and a bottle of water. They spent $65 feeding their family cold badly cooked stadium food and I ate my pretzels and smartfood popcorn and dreamed of a paid off house and stole a few fench fries before their kids threw them away uneaten.

Of all the things I've read online in the last three months of hard core penny pinching the guy who blogged about eating on a $1 a day has had the most impact on my mindset. Somehow knowing it can be done on 3/4 *less* than I'm spending on food makes this seem doable. My $30/week food budget is not starving me. My $5 fun money budget is fine and has gone unspent 2 of the last 3 weeks.

The other thing that I read recently that struck me was the NYT article on frugality when the writer said one of the best side effects of living frugally now is that there won't be a huge shock upon retirement when a fixed income will demand frugality. It will already be a habit. That is keeping me on track too. I keep reminding myself this is a choice. This has an end date. At any time I can decide to extend my ARM burning party a few months and splurge if I must.