Frugal in the Fruitlands

I think it’s required that if you write a blog and do monthly wrap-ups, you have to say “It was another great month here on X!”

This is me not doing that.

Here are the key posts from this month, if you missed them:

• Nine Ways to a Frugal, Unconventional Wedding was my entry in a Moolanomy’s Best Wedding Tips and Stories contest. This was my first time writing for a contest, but I think it was a good inspiration.
• In What Alternate Clutterverse Am I Living In?, I reflected on Peter Walsh’s organization/decluttering book, It’s All Too Much.
• Vacation Bloat is my confessional tale of Too Much Vacation Spending.
• Also this month, I succeeded in making an $1800 repair to the Subaru without going into debt (not even a little).

If you missed any of these stories, and don’t care to miss anymore, I’d recommend subscribing to my RSS feed. This little WikiHow article will show you how to add an RSS feed to your personalized Google homepage or to Google Reader.

How did I do on my May goals?

• My fitness goal for this month – to exercise 30 minutes daily, followed by a 5-minute stretch – was even less successful than in April, with only 15 days exercised. I also wanted to start adding in a strength workout, but clearly I wasn’t ready for that yet – I only managed this on three days! Still, I feel like I’ve at least got the habit of exercising two or three times a week down, and that’s a start.
• Google Reader tells me I have a grand total of 9 readers as of this month. Somewhat like Key the Metal Idol, I need 100 readers to meet the goal I’ve set. Don’t let this little robot down.

And my goals for June (I’m feeling ambitious this month):

• My longest consecutive stretch of days exercised is 10, so I’m going to attempt to beat that in June. (I’m not going to make exercise a monthly challenge, though). I’ve exercised for the last three days, so just 8 more days to go. Weekends are the hardest, but my husband just put the DDR (Dance Dance Revolution, a movement-based video game) setup back together, so I can do that now, too.
• My ZenHabits June challenge is to work on my blog for 30 minutes daily. Hopefully this means you’ll be hearing more from me! I’ve even set up a system of rewards. You can read more about my goal here.
• I’m participating in Give Me Back My Five Bucks’ June Dining Out Challenge, challenging myself to spend on $100 this month on eating out.
• I have another crucial goal which I’ll write more about at a later date. I’m such a tease.

Alas, I haven’t gotten Frugal in the Fruitlands its own domain name yet (Matt?) or written any money memoirs, so those are also On the List.

See you in June!

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I’m sure it’s possible to vacation inexpensively.

I did not, however, do it.

After adding up all the receipts, I spent approximately $500 on my trip to New Mexico with my mom. That’s impressively low for a six day vacation, until you consider that my mother paid for the airfare, lodging, and membership in the dance camp we attended.

My responsibilities were food and gas – and given that food totaled $187 for the weekend (our food was included at the dance camp), and gas only $55, there was definitely some, uh, discretionary spending in there.

So where did it go?

• $110 went to parking at Boston Logan airport’s economy lot for six days. Some economy that was! A better option would have been to have someone drop me off, but my flights were midday, making that inconvenient. Parking at the Woburn branch of the Logan Express and taking the shuttle also might have been cheaper (though likely not by much). Flying out of Manchester, NH might have been an option in other circumstances, but was not in this case (this trip was a replacement for a canceled trip to England, and our non-refundable airfare could only go towards a flight out of Boston).
• Around $122 went to souvenirs – not including some that my mother bought for me. I am pretty happy with my purchases, though. I tried to pick things that were consumable or which stimulated the local economy (which appeared to desperately need it). Hence I ended up with a sterling silver zipper pull made by a Native American artist in Santa Fe, a bottle of honey made in Escondida, some hand-crafted soaps from Taos, and a jar of pinon salve made in Datil. I probably spent the largest amount of money at once at the gift shop at Bosque del Apache wildlife refuge, where I spent one of my best days, but was consoled by the fact that it supported a non-profit, environmental organization.
• Interestingly, the places that were the most expensive to eat were also the most “institutional” and unspectacular – such as an Applebee’s near the airport, or the Shark Reef Cafe at the Albuquerque Biopark. Eating local food would have been the cheaper option in most places.
• Speaking of the Albuquerque Biopark, we paid $24 ($12 x 2 admissions) for a combo ticket that also admitted us to the zoo and let us ride the train between the Biopark and the zoo free of charge. Of course, we never got on the train, nor did we get to the zoo! We could have saved $10 if we’d only paid for admission to the Biopark. Ah, planning.

So after all the sopapillas and green chile cheeseburgers are out of the way, can we afford this? Tentatively, yes. It won’t send us spiraling into debt, but it is a bit of a hurdle. We may need to dip into the emergency fund, and, as you might know, green chile cheeseburgers are not an emergency.

The upshot is that I feel bloated, like after a heavy meal. I need to take it easy for a while; curl up with a book from the library and eat dinners out of my pantry.

All that said, what I really paid for is the chance to spend time with my mom. That’s priceless.

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This post is my entry in Moolanomy’s Best Wedding Tips and Stories Giveway.

The typical depiction of a “fairytale wedding” makes me retch. Maybe it’s the prescribed rituals and formulas that erase any individuality. Maybe the idea of being rescued by a fairytale prince offends my Vassar-graduate feminist self. Maybe the focus on the event over the actual relationship disgusts me. Maybe I just don’t like white. Or, more likely, the idea of forking over $20,000 on one day appalls me.

When my husband and I decided to get married, we knew, quirky people that we are, that we wanted a moment that was uniquely us. We didn’t want our guests to be bored by a show that had nothing to do with who we – or who they – were.

Also, we didn’t want to go broke.

Luckily, it’s less expensive to have an unconventional wedding than the traditional one. Here is how we took control of the day and took control of our finances at the same time.
Continue Reading »

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This afternoon I’ll be heading off to New Mexico for vacation. The event I’m ostensibly attending is FolkMADness at New Mexico Tech in Socorro, but I’ll also be visiting a few other places, including Santa Fe. I have an article I plan to post before I leave, and I may or may not set up some to auto-post while I’m gone, but if you don’t hear from me for a week, don’t be surprised (like I haven’t gone a week without posting before!)

To update you on my monthly challenge (to walk 30 minutes daily, followed by a 5 minute stretch; plus a strength workout 3 times per week)… well, I’ve done even more poorly than last month. I’ve only walked/stretched 10 days this month, a 50% success rate. I’ve done three strength workouts total, which is far below my goal. I know I need to be working out more vigorously than this, but it seems like such an imposition on my time.

As much as I’m down on gyms, I wonder if I couldn’t use some sort of mechanism to motivate me and keep me on track. I notice that in the office park I work in, a One2One Bodyscapes is opening, a personal training facility. I think if I were to go in the direction of paying some entity to help me with my fitness goals, this is the way I would go, especially as there’s no contract or monthly fees, and you just purchase as many sessions as you want. Anyone know anything about this place and can recommend/not recommend?

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I’m reading Peter Walsh’s book It’s All Too Much, which I just picked up from the library. Peter Walsh is the organization guru on TLC’s Clean Sweep, of which I am (not so) secretly a huge fan. Peter’s sort is my favorite part of the show. I habitually turn it off after that, unless Eric the Carpenter is having Antics. It’s like, screw this decorating shit, I want to see some people play trivia games to keep their favorite DVDs!

This quote from It’s All Too Much struck me:

… Or are you saving enough stuff to furnish a whole alternate universe in a which a skinnier you uses that dusty abdominal crunch machine every morning before inserting all your photos into a new album and then dons that old wig you’ve been storing for a costume party you’re hosting at which everyone will be lounging in the extra chairs that have been languishing in your basement for the last six years?

His point is that our stuff is supposed to represent who we are, but too often it represents someone we’ll never be. We need to let go of what’s less important to us so that what’s really important can shine through.

This book is really helping me to see the connection between clutter and the loss of control I sometimes feel in my life. For a while it boggled me that whenever I walked into my house at the end of the day, I felt stressed, not happy to be home. Then I have to take into account that the mudroom is the smallest room in the house, doubles as a laundry room, and is often (as it is right now) strewn with recyclables, garbage, shoes, empty TidyCat containers, snowshoes, coats, laundry baskets, etc. Either I need to organize it or I need to start using the front door!

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Our first step in solving the Subaru transmission dilemma was bringing it to a transmission specialist nearby. This, as it turned out, was the only step needed, as he confirmed what our mechanic had said (the problem was the rear differential) and told us it would cost approximately $1,800-$2,000 to replace.

All right. $2,000 is a lot less than a new car, we said. The transmission mechanic also said that the work was guaranteed for 12,000 miles or a year, and that he didn’t expect there would be future issues due to this. He was unsure why the problem happened in the first place, but suggested the differential fluid had been neglected or had been drained out and never replaced. For my part, never having had an all-wheel drive car, I didn’t even know there was a fluid to maintain. Now that I know, I’ll be a lot more cautious.

In short, we decided to fix it.

The repair took a few days, and we picked the car up this morning. The total cost was $1,850, $1,000 of which was the part itself. Ouch.

It was not, however, so ouch that we had to put it on credit. Nay, we didn’t even need to dip into our emergency fund (in part because we just received our economic stimulus rebate). That was an immense relief.

I hope this signals a new era in our financial lives – a time when other unexpected expenses can’t manage to throw us off the path to financial freedom.

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I haven’t offloaded any Links Relevant to Mah Interests lately, so here are a few for you:

Moolanomy is sponsoring The Best Wedding Tips and Stories Giveaway. A little over three years ago Matt and I had a relatively frugal wedding at our favorite restaurant in Burlington, MA, so my own entry to the contest will be forthcoming in a week or two.

Student economist Ashwini Agrawal wrote his dissertation on the behavior of the labor union AFL-CIO’s pension fund, finding that “the A.F.L.-C.I.O. pension funds were voting in ways that might help workers when they were A.F.L.-C.I.O. union workers, but not after they switched union affiliations.” This may be unsurprising finding to all of us, but apparently this so angered the AFL-CIO that they’ve been threatening him with a lawsuit.

Unclutterer.com brings us A Simple Way to Simplify Email, using the Remember the Milk extension for Gmail. This so impressed me that I’m in the process of switching from my beloved Tasktoy to Remember the Milk. I’m loving the ability to link tasks to specific emails, and thus keep my inbox clear, but Tasktoy still seems like it’s better for keeping track of things like what blog posts I want to write.

Euphorify is a new but promising happiness/lifehack blog that I found through the ZenHabits forums. Now, if I could break my habit of spending hours reading lifehacker-style blogs, I might actually get something done!

This Bulb Lady article on Naturalizing Bulbs caught my eye. I think I’ll try this with my scilla and grape hyacinths…

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I stopped at Hannaford last night to pick up a few essentials for sandwiches. We went through the express lane, because we only had a few items (deli meat and cheese, wraps, cream cheese), and I was surprised to see my order ring up at $35. I briefly thought food prices really have gone up, huh?

While Matt was swiping his card, I looked at the cashier’s screen then, and noticed the only double-digit item: Black Forest turkey ham: 1 lb @ $19.75.

Matt realized it at the same time I did. “What?” he said, at the same time I said, “That’s not right.” The sign at the deli had said $4.49/lb, but now I realized that the sticker from the deli read $19.75/lb. Why I didn’t notice this mistake when I put it in my cart, I don’t know.

They gladly fixed the error and gave me a shiny new $20 bill back. My only regret is that I didn’t catch the error before Matt swiped his card, because cash, as I’ve discussed before, has a different psychological weight than plastic.

What’s also alarming is that I caught the error simply because there was another row of digits – they could have charged me $9.95/lb and I probably wouldn’t have noticed.

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